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Isan No Footprints in the Blue Sky 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Isan No Footprints in the Blue Sky 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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One night Isan was in attendance on Hyakujo, sitting till late in the quietness of the mountain temple.“Who are you?” Hyakujo asked.“Reiyu,” replied Isan.“Rake in the fireplace,” instructed Hyakujo.Isan did as he was told and said, “I find no embers left.”Hyakujo took up the tongs and, raking deep down, brought up a tiny burning ember, which he showed to Isan, and said, “Just this, you see!”Isan was suddenly enlightened. He bowed deeply and related his point of realization to Hyakujo, who said, “You have reached a crossroads on the buddha nature; you should observe time and causation. When the time comes, you will realize it, just like remembering something you have forgotten. It is not obtained from others. Therefore, when you are enlightened, your original nature manifests itself. Now you have attained it – carefully cultivate it.”Maneesha, today we start a new series of talks on Zen, particularly on Master Isan. The name of the series will give you an indication of what kind of man Isan was. The title of the series is Isan: No Footprints in the Blue Sky. He was as great a master as one can be, but has left behind him neither great scriptures nor great commentaries. Isan functioned exactly as Buddha had said an authentic master would – to disappear in the blue sky like a bird, leaving no footprints.Why this idea of leaving no footprints? It has great implications in it. It means a great master does not create a following; he does not make a path for everybody to follow. He flies in the sky, he gives you a longing to fly, and he disappears into the blueness of the sky – creating an urge in you to discover what it is like to disappear into the ultimate. Isan followed exactly what Buddha had said. He is a great master, but almost forgotten.Who remembers people who have not created great followings, who have not made organized religions, who have not chosen their successors, who have not made their religion into politics, a power in the material world? Isan did none of that. He simply lived silently. Of course thousands of disciples were attracted toward him, but it was not his fault. You cannot blame him for it – it was just the magnetic force that he had become by disappearing into enlightenment. The light shone to faraway lands and those who had eyes started moving toward a small place hidden in the forest, where Isan lived. Slowly, slowly thousands of disciples were living in the forest – and Isan had not called a single one. They had come on their own.And remember the difference: when you come on your own, you come totally. When you are called, there is a reluctance, a fear – perhaps you will be dominated. But when you come on your own, you have lived your life, you have known the meaninglessness of it. You are coming out of a great understanding that life has nothing to offer. You are coming with your wholeness and totality – and with an urgency because nobody knows, tomorrow you may be here on the earth or not. Death can knock on your doors any moment, it is unpredictable. It rarely comes to warn the person, “I am coming.” Once in a while it has happened, in stories…So the next moment is not certain. All that you have is this moment. So don’t disperse your consciousness; concentrate it on this moment. If you really want to know the ultimate source of being and the tremendous blessings of it, this single moment is enough.Don’t follow anybody’s footprints. Truth cannot be borrowed, neither can the path that somebody else has trodden. You have to enter a virgin land of your own inner space, where nobody can enter anyway.The deeper you go, the more alone you are. Friends and foes, families and the society, slowly, slowly all drop away as you are dropping your mind. Once the mind is finished, you are left in total aloneness. And this aloneness is such a great joy. Remember, it is not loneliness. Loneliness is a desire for the other. Aloneness is a fulfillment unto oneself. One is enough, one is the whole universe. So whatsoever the dictionaries say is absolutely wrong. They make aloneness and loneliness synonymous – that is not true.As far as existential experience is concerned, Isan lived alone. But his aloneness became such a radiant splendor that people came toward him on their own, toward this great silence, this immense beauty of truth.This man has reached home; just by being in his presence, perhaps you may find your way also. He is not going to give you the way, but in his presence many things are possible. One is, you will become certain that the experience of enlightenment is not an imagination of poets, or a philosophical system of philosophers. It is an authentic realization. You can feel it, you can almost touch it, and if your heart is open, you can see your heart dancing with joy. Near a man like Isan, your whole life will take wings.So thousands came. But Isan has not given any guidance; therefore I have chosen the title from Buddha’s statement: Isan: No Footprints in the Blue Sky. He just fluttered into the sky, attracting those who had forgotten their wings; provoking, challenging those who had forgotten their sky, their freedom. Then he disappeared into the faraway sky, into the blueness, leaving no footprints but leaving a tremendous urge to go to those dimensions where you are no more.Your being no more is the ultimate realization of truth.You are the barrier, you are the problem. You are the only problem. As you melt away, something in you which is eternal, which you cannot call your self, something in you which belongs to the whole cosmos, starts appearing. What you used to call your self was only dust.Before I take the sutras, a little introductory note about the life of Isan:Isan Reiyu, otherwise known as Wei-shan Ling yu, lived from 771 to 853. He left home at fifteen to become a monk, studying under the local Vinaya master in what is today the Fukien province.These are things that may seem nonessential, but I feel they have a great meaning to be understood. He left home at fifteen – at that time there was a totally different world, a totally different urge in humanity. What is a fifteen-year-old boy…? But the urge must have been so widespread and so thick in the atmosphere that even a fifteen-year-old boy is intelligent enough; he will catch the fire.It is said that there are people who go on repeating the same foolish act again and again, but never learn anything. That’s why history repeats – it is because of the idiots. Otherwise there is no reason for history to repeat. Every dawn will always be new; it will not be old and rotten, already lived and completely finished. But history has to repeat because idiots go on and on repeating themselves, and they are the makers of history. It is unintelligence that makes it possible for history to repeat.The saying is that the unintelligent man will not learn from his own mistakes, but the intelligent man can even learn from others’ mistakes. And the man who can learn from others’ mistakes has a great potential. At the age of fifteen, Isan must have learned from others’ mistakes. He must have watched carefully his parents, his neighbors, his teachers – their lifeless lives, their meaningless wanderings, no sense of direction except misery and suffering. All that they have is some promising hope that may be fulfilled in the future, perhaps in the next life or perhaps in paradise. But this life is going to be a suffering, it cannot be otherwise. It is the nature of life and they have accepted it. At the age of fifteen he left his home. He was not going to commit the same mistakes that everybody else was committing.“He left home at fifteen to become a monk, studying under the local Vinaya master.” A Vinaya master is only a rabbi, a pundit, a learned scholar. Vinaya is the name of the Buddhist scriptures. The very word vinaya means humbleness because Buddha teaches that to be humble is to be close to nature. All his scriptures, and there are many, have been called the Vinaya scriptures because their fundamental teaching, from different directions, is the same: just be nobody, just be ready to disappear into the blueness of the sky without leaving any footprints.Obviously Isan was in search; he went to study under the local Vinaya master. A fifteen-year-old boy does not know where to go. So whoever was in the locality, the most famous and learned scholar – he went to him.“He was ordained at Hangzhou at the age of twenty-three.” Being ordained means that now he is making an absolute commitment to find himself. He is declaring to the world, “Help me to not go astray.” It is an announcement on his part of his innermost longing. Now it becomes socially known that he is a seeker, and in those days seekers were helped by the society in every possible way – with food, clothes, shelter. The whole society seemed to be running around the central longing of becoming a buddha. If circumstances wouldn’t allow them at that time, people were waiting for the right circumstances so they could escape into the blue sky.Today we are very small in that sense. Our desires are for money, our desires are for beautiful houses, our desires are for success in the world – fame, name, political power. According to spiritual skill we have fallen, certainly. In those old days people were poor, with no science, no technology, but still they were superior in the sense that their whole longing was to search for the meaning of life. And anybody who was searching for the meaning of life…at least if you could not go so far, you could help. Helping anybody who was searching for truth was in itself considered a great virtue.And I accept that idea. A society should live like that. Of course everybody cannot be a monk if my strategy is followed. But it is a little complicated to remain a witness in your ordinary life. It is easier to be a witness if you live in a monastery, or if you are a monk and you don’t deal with ordinary life. You don’t earn any money, you don’t have any power, you live just on begging – just one meal a day. Because the society was so poor, Buddha told his ordained monks, “You should collect your one meal” – only one meal was allowed in twenty-four hours – “from seven houses. Just piece by piece, so you are not a burden on anybody.”Now, just one monk going to beg from seven houses is not a burden on a household because each is only giving him a small piece of food.Because their food would come from begging, the seekers and searchers would not be involved in business and waste their time. Their total energy should be directed toward a single point, their central being. Society should help them because their rising consciousness is going to help the society also.You may know, you may not know: the few buddhas that have happened in history have raised your consciousness without your knowing. Without them you would still be in the jungle. You have not done anything, but the atmosphere has been changed by each buddha – each has given so much abundance, don’t think that a piece of bread is enough to pay him. We cannot pay him in any way; his contribution to human consciousness is so much; as is his carefulness.Buddha told his monks, “Take your meal from seven houses, and never stay in a village for more than three days. Go on moving because by remaining in one village you may become a kind of drag to people. Every day they have to give you something. Leave before they become in any way annoyed by you.”And it is a great psychological insight because it takes people four days to become familiar with persons or places. If you move house, it will take four days for you to become at ease with the new house. Before the village becomes familiar, you should leave. You are an outsider, you are not allowed to become familiar, friendly. You have to remain a stranger. You have chosen the path of being a stranger.“Ordained at Hangzhou at the age of twenty-three, he traveled to Chiang-si and became a disciple of Hyakujo.”He found the master. The learned teachers that he must have come across could not fulfill his appetite. They could not give him what he was asking for. He was not asking for more knowledge; he was searching for one who knows. He was interested to inquire into the very structure of the knower, of the witness.Naturally, the scholars cannot do that. They can quote great quotations, but they cannot radiate buddhahood. They are not an argument for their own quotations, they are not a support to their own learnedness. Their whole life is so ordinary, it does not show the grace and the beauty and the blissfulness that they are talking about. So any intelligent seeker will soon realize that this man has only words; he does not know the meaning. He is carrying a dead corpse but he is not aware that the person is dead.All the scholars of the world are gravediggers. They dig deeply into graves and find the bones of all kinds of people, but they never dig deep into themselves. They may find the bones of Buddha; they even worship the bones when they find them.In Sri Lanka, in Kandy, they have a great temple devoted to a tooth of Buddha. Every scientific test has proved that it is not a tooth of a human being, it is too big; it can only be that of an animal. But who cares about it? Kandy attracts more pilgrimages to Sri Lanka than any other temple because it has a tooth of Gautam Buddha.Scholars sometimes seem to be so stupid. There was a hair in Srinagar, in Kashmir, thought to be Hazrat Mohammed’s. Mohammedans worshipped it because that was the only relic left from the body of Mohammed. Nobody knows whose hair it is and there is no way to prove that it is Mohammed’s hair. But a few years back it was stolen and then there was great fuss all over the world amongst the Mohammedans.That mosque, Hazrat Bal – bal means hair; even the bal is to be called Hazrat – “revered hair.” And it was such a difficult situation. Riots started happening because Mohammedans thought certainly it must be the Hindus. And the Hindus are a very small minority in Kashmir. Even though Hindu leaders in Kashmir declared again and again, “We are not concerned at all with your religion,” it was to no avail. Finally the Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had to send the chief of the armies with a great number of soldiers to surround the mosque and somehow manage to restore the hair.Now, how can you manage? But somehow it was managed: somebody’s hair was put in the tube which was empty. Now everybody was happy that the hair has been found. What kind of stupidity…? What will you do with the hair? But people are concerned with absolute absurdities – they are so involved, and this is because of the scholars, the so-called learned who provoke the masses.Isan must have moved from one teacher to another teacher. He went on looking for a man who is essential, who is not a Buddhist but a buddha, who does not believe in any hypotheses – who knows. And when he came to Hyakujo, immediately something transpired. He found the master.That was the way students, disciples, devotees, went on searching, from one monastery to another monastery, from one monk to another monk. There are no visible signs, no certificates to say who is enlightened. You have to find with your own heart someone in whose presence your heart starts dancing. It is an inner finding – one in whose presence your whole life becomes light, in whose presence certainly your mind is gone as if it had been a shadow, and utter silence falls over you.When he came to Hyakujo, he immediately became a disciple.“Later, Hyakujo sent Isan to Mount E as abbot. Isan lived as a wild hermit initially, but by and by began to attract disciples; they finally increased to one thousand in number. Isan taught at Mount E for more than forty years.”This was just a small biographical note. Now the sutras.One night Isan was in attendance on Hyakujo, sitting till late in the quietness of the mountain temple.“Who are you?” Hyakujo asked.“Reiyu,” replied Isan.“Rake in the fireplace,” instructed Hyakujo.Isan did as he was told and said, “I find no embers left”– the fire is completely gone, there are no more embers left.Hyakujo took up the tongs and, raking deep down, brought up a tiny burning ember, which he showed to Isan, and said, “Just this, you see!”– you did not go deep enough.On a silent night in a mountain temple… Everything a master does has a purpose. He has asked Isan to find out if there is any fire left in the wood. The night is becoming colder; just find out. Ordinarily, it is an insignificant act. Isan did as he was told, but said, “I find no embers left. The fire has completely gone out.”Hyakujo took up the tongs… This is the way Zen is – a direct teaching, no words. Hyakujo took up the tongs and, raking deep down, brought up a tiny burning ember, which he showed to Isan, and said, “Just this, you see!” You did not go deep enough.Isan was suddenly enlightened.…because this was the exact situation in his meditations. He was going, but not deep enough to find the fire of life. Immediately, without saying anything – enlightenment is not being talked about – but seeing Hyakujo’s action, that by going deep he has found an ember, Isan must have gone deep into himself. He had been meditating, but must not have been going deep enough to find the living fire.Isan was suddenly enlightened. It is very difficult for rational people to understand how enlightenment can be sudden. It is sudden if you understand how Zen masters create, out of every situation, some indication which cannot be said in words. In words he has said again and again, “Go deep!” But it can only be said; it all depends whether you go deep or not.Hyakujo has to create a very clear-cut, existential situation to show Isan that he has not been going deep enough. And a simple thing – finding the ember – made Isan go as deep as possible within himself. In that silent night he found his inner fire; he became enlightened. It looks sudden. It is not so sudden – years of studying, years of meditating. But at the right moment the master gives you a situation which will indicate to you what is missing.He was not daring to go to the very center; otherwise how can you miss the living fire? You are alive! How can you miss your divinity, how can you miss your buddha?Isan was suddenly enlightened. He bowed deeply and related his point of realization to Hyakujo, who said, “You have reached a crossroads on the buddha nature; you should observe time and causation.”Even though he has become enlightened, he has to give roots to his enlightenment. Otherwise, it will remain just a faraway glimpse, soon forgotten, or maybe remembered only as an echo, miles away. Now you should carefully water the sudden flowering within you. Now you should keep watch around the clock that your treasure is increasing, that your inner sky is spreading wider and wider, that your wings are growing, that the time for the ultimate flight of the dewdrop to the ocean is coming closer.Hyakujo said to him: “You have reached a crossroads on the buddha nature; you should observe time and causation.” Now, be watchful. What has caused your enlightenment is an ordinary, mundane thing. You should remember now that by going deeper, suddenly you became enlightened; you can go still deeper. There is, in fact, no boundary line where you have to stop. You can go so deep that you become the depth. Only then has your enlightenment grown roots. Now it cannot be destroyed, it is no longer a seasonal flower.“When the time comes, you will realize it, just like remembering something you have forgotten.”What you have seen today is the first glimpse, which has put you on a crossroads. You can still go astray, the other roads are still available. Now be careful. What has caused it is going deeper, so go on, deeper and deeper and deeper. Never stop before you yourself become the depth, just an empty abyss.That is the time when spring comes to your being. You will realize then that you have not achieved anything; it is just like remembering something you have forgotten. It has always been there, so it is not something new that you have achieved. It is something that you have forgotten so long ago that you don’t have any idea when you forgot it. Now you have remembered.The moment your enlightenment becomes just a remembrance, it becomes your very breathing, it becomes your very heartbeat. Then you don’t need any meditation. Then your whole life is meditation. Without any effort, effortlessly, you are a buddha. If there is any effort, that means something is missing. When the buddha is natural, you are a buddha even in your sleep. Waking, working, whatever you do – your fragrance of buddhahood will be there around you.But this will happen only when you have reached the ultimate depth and the realization is not taken as an achievement but only as a remembrance. So don’t start bragging about it because it is not an achievement – what is there to brag about? You simply drown yourself into this new, abandoned, forgotten space, which is your very being.And millions of things are going to happen, but you are not the doer. They will be simply happening because your presence has reached such depths. When your witnessing has reached the ultimate depth, flowers will start blossoming, lotuses will open – a dawn has come to you, you are reborn. You were dead, now you are alive. A new life spreads all over you and brings great beauty and truth and grace.“It is not obtained from others. Therefore, when you are enlightened, your original nature manifests itself. Now you have attained it – carefully cultivate it.”This is a very significant statement of Hyakujo. You cannot cultivate enlightenment, that will be phony. You can walk like a buddha, you can manage to sit in the lotus posture – it may take a little time for you, the bones…and particularly people coming from the West will find it more difficult. Colder countries devise chairs; in hotter countries people have no problem in sitting on the floor. But in colder countries, to sit on the floor is difficult. So if Buddha is sitting in the lotus posture, that does not mean that you have to sit in the lotus posture, that only then you will become a buddha. You can practice it – there are many idiots who are doing that, unnecessarily torturing themselves.Buddhahood is your nature, so you cannot cultivate it. But what Hyakujo means is totally different. He is saying: “Now that you have attained it – carefully cultivate it.” This attainment is so new, it is possible to fall back into darkness. It is possible to start thinking again that it may have been an imagination. All kinds of possibilities are there. Your glimpse is very fresh and young, and your past of ignorance is very long – four million years; it has a weight. This new insight can be destroyed by that weight. This new flower that has blossomed in you can be crushed by a mountainous past.You cannot cultivate enlightenment if you have not attained it. So first, attain it. It looks strange – first attain the glimpse and then protect, cultivate it; then make arrangements so that the past does not overtake you because the weight of the old is very great and the new is always delicate.So remember, Hyakujo is not saying to cultivate enlightenment. He is saying, first get it and then be careful in every possible way to protect it, to refine it, to go deeper into it, to find more roots to it. The real work starts when you have become enlightened. All that work you have done before enlightenment looks like a very tiny effort.The great effort starts with your first glimpse of enlightenment. You can fall from it – the whole past will be pulling you backward, the whole past will be saying to you that this is all imagination.You have to be very alert that the past is your enemy. This fresh sprout, this new flower – so small and so fragile, but so beautiful – if you can manage to protect it, it will soon become your eternity. Soon it will become your nature. Then there is no effort.When Zen masters say “effortlessness” they mean the state when your enlightenment is well-rooted. Now there is no need of any effort; now you can be relaxed and at ease, it will grow on its own accord. It will bring much foliage and many flowers, and many blessings.Sekiso wrote:The dharma springhas never run dry;it is flowing even now.A single drop has fallen and spreadfar and deep.Don’t be caughtby the decorations at the edgeand the wall around it.In the dead of night the moon shinesfrom the middle of the pond.What Sekiso is saying is very symbolic. “The dharma spring” – the spring when those who are ripe become suddenly full of flowers, when the dark night ends and the morning has come – “The dharma spring has never run dry.” He is saying, “Remember, the dharma spring has never run dry; it always comes, just as it used to come in Gautam Buddha’s time, or even before.” It is part of eternal nature. It is just that you have to be ready to catch the train. The train always comes, but mostly either you reach the railway station before the train has come, or you reach after the train has left – you always find an empty platform. Sad and frustrated, you go back home.I have heard…Three professors were discussing very hotly about some philosophical point at a railway station. Two of them had come to say goodbye to the other who was being transferred to another university. They got so involved in the discussion and they forgot that the train stops there for only three minutes. As the train started moving, still they were not aware. Suddenly one of them saw, and all three ran to catch the train. Only two could manage to get on to the last compartment. One was left, and he was standing there so sad that a porter, who had been watching what was happening, said, “Why are you so sad? Soon there will be a second train coming and just within a few hours you will meet your friends.”He said, “That is not the point. I am the one who was supposed to go! They had come only to see me off. Now everything has become a mess.”But in a hurry, it can happen.“The dharma spring has never run dry.” It is always available; it is just that you are not ready. The whole responsibility has to be taken by you, on your own shoulders. Existence is as much in favor of buddhas as it has always been, but you are not even looking at it. You are not preparing, you are not even witnessing so that when it comes…In fact it never comes, it is always there – you come to it. The deeper your witnessing, and suddenly you find a tremendous reality flooding you. In your very innermost center it is still waiting.The dharma spring has never run dry;it is flowing even now.A single drop has fallen and spreadfar and deep.The ocean of dharma spring is always ready to absorb you; it always has space for you, you are always welcome. Nobody has been rejected by dharma nature. If even a single drop has fallen, it has spread all over the ocean, “far and deep.”Don’t be caughtby the decorations at the edgeand the wall around it.In the dead of night the moon shinesfrom the middle of the pond.We are all attracted by decorations, by nonessentials. A lake may have a wall around it with beautiful statues, sculpture, architectural designs. And you may get so involved in those decorations that you fail to see that the pond is reflecting the moon, exactly in the middle.This is just symbolic. It is saying that the existential truth is always shining in the middle of all this whole world of decorations. Power, all kinds of desires, motivations, longings – amongst this whole crowd, exactly in the middle, exactly in the center of your being, the full moon is reflected. Don’t get caught in decorations.Maneesha has asked:Osho,I have heard you say that the enlightened ones, like birds, leave no footprints behind them. Yet people like Isan touch our consciousness hundreds of years after they have died. Could you please comment?Maneesha, touching your consciousness is another matter. To the open consciousness, all the buddhas are available this very moment to celebrate you, to take you into the new space that you have been avoiding for centuries. But that is not making footprints. It is beyond the capacity of a bird to make footprints in the sky.The inner world is almost like the sky – it is the inner sky. And the people who have entered the inner world also cannot leave footprints. It is just to say that you cannot follow them from the outside, through their words, through their scriptures. You have to go into yourself, and suddenly you will be surprised that you have disappeared and a buddha has appeared. You were not following Buddha’s footprints – he cannot make any. In the sky you cannot write anything.All the scriptures and all the great religions are befooling and exploiting the masses. One has to go within, and all the religions are supporting you to go out – toward Jesus, toward Moses, toward Mohammed, toward Buddha, but go outward. Follow their teachings, follow their commandments. That is what Buddha says is going astray.No buddha can leave any footprints, so how can you follow him? Following is simply impossible. You can only go within yourself. You can understand a living buddha, you can absorb his energy; you can hear his song, you can understand his silence; you can be filled by his presence – but this is not following. This is simply the alchemy of being with a master. You can simply disappear in the silences of the master. But you are not following his footprints; you are going within yourself, you have your own path from the circumference to the center.Now comes the time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. The poor fellow has to wait so long, and he brings his rainbow turban with such care. He used to be just an old hippie. Suddenly he has become a mini guru! And he is enjoying it so much, and directing many. This is called transformation.Ronald Reagan and George Bush go hiking together in the Montana mountains. They have been walking all day, discussing the forthcoming presidential election, and Ronald is giving George lots of advice about how to wear his make-up and look good on TV.Suddenly they look up and see a huge grizzly bear coming over the hill toward them. Immediately, Bush reaches into his pack and pulls out a pair of running shoes. Then he starts taking off his hiking boots and putting on the sneakers.“Hey,” says Ronald, nervously. “You don’t think you can outrun that grizzly bear, do you?”“I don’t have to,” says Bush, with a grin. “I just have to outrun you!”Kowalski is returning home from a morning’s hunting, with his shotgun in one hand and his hunting bag slung over his shoulder.His friend, Slobovski, sees him across the road and calls out, “Hi, Kowalski! Been hunting?”“That’s right,” replies Kowalski. “Been hunting ducks.”“Far out!” says Slobovski. “How many did you get?”“Well,” replies Kowalski, “if you can guess how many ducks I’ve got in my bag – I’ll give you them both!”“Ah!” says Slobovski, scratching his head. “Three?”Harry and Harriet are a very devoutly religious couple. They observe all the Christian religious festivals by remaining strictly celibate until the festival is over.During Lent, which lasts for a whole month, they decide to give up sex. They are especially careful – they even sleep in separate rooms, to make sure they won’t be tempted.Lent finishes at six o’clock in the morning on Sunday, and sure enough, at exactly six o’clock, Harriet hears a sharp knocking on her bedroom door.“Is that you, Harry?” asks Harriet.“Yes!” he cries. “This is your ever-loving husband!”“Ah, Harry!” giggles Harriet. “I know why you are knocking!”“You know why I am knocking!” cries Harry, “but you should see with what!”This joke was given to me and Nirvano told me about it. Somebody must have made it up having a Jaina couple. The husband’s name was Halvabhai and the wife’s name was Mevabhai. And the Jainas have a religious festival, Paryushan, so the festival in the joke was Paryushan. The rest of the joke has remained the same.But as I told Nirvano, jokes have their roots. You cannot change their context. Now, for a Jaina couple the joke will not be fitting. About Jews you can tell any kind of joke; their appetite is big enough, everything fits. But about Hindus, about Jainas, about Buddhists, you cannot just change the names. They will be absolutely unfitting because they will not have any natural context.India has no jokes of its own. All the jokes are imported – fortunately there is no taxation on importing jokes! You can just change the names to Indian names, but it will not be right; it will not sound right. Even a joke has a certain context, a certain reference. It is not just a joke. You cannot implant it anywhere you like; it has a climate of its own. For example, a Jewish joke cannot be transplanted to another race because that joke has a history of its own.Nobody writes jokes, you know. There are no joke writers. From where do jokes come? From folk wisdom for thousands of years they pass through many hands, many situations and then they come to refinement. Nobody can claim that he is the writer. And never try to change the names because they will look absolutely out of context.If you cannot find out to whom the joke should belong, just put some Jewish names in it. They are the only people rich enough, and it is for a particular reason that they can absorb any joke. They have suffered so much since Moses brought them out of Egypt in search of Israel. Their whole life for these four thousand years has been that of suffering and suffering and suffering.I have heard about an old Jew dying, praying to God. His family was surprised at what he was saying. He was saying to God, “God, enough is enough! Now you should choose somebody else as your chosen people.”This stupid idea that Jews are the chosen people has been the cause of all their suffering. But suffering has to be somehow consoled – some ointment for so many wounds. Jokes have grown in the Jewish context. They had to laugh; otherwise how to forget the agony? How to forget all the suffering that they have passed through? They lost their land; they have got it back, forty years ago, and now it is a struggle to keep it.All around they are surrounded by the Mohammedans. And there is no way, I can’t see any possibility of their survival there. It is the ugliest and most criminal act of the American politicians to give them back Israel, which has been in the hands of Mohammedans. But it was a clever strategy. This way they could get rid of many Jews without killing them. They were doing exactly what Adolf Hitler did. He killed six million Jews because the problem was that if the Jews are the chosen people, then who are the Germans? This was the conflict. Adolf Hitler thought that his people, the Nordic Germans, were the chosen people of God and the Jews would not agree to that. He finished off six million Jews.America did the same, but in a more diplomatic way. After the Second World War they gave the Jews Palestine, which was once Israel and had fallen into the hands of the Mohammedans. For centuries, the Jews had lived without any land of their own – and I don’t think there is any need. “Lands” should disappear, boundaries should disappear; everybody should be living on the planet. But because Palestine was in the hands of America after the Second World War, the Americans played a very ugly trick. They gave it back not to the Mohammedans, but to the Jews. It is true that it used to belong to the Jews centuries before. But now it had been in the hands of the Mohammedans for so long that even the name had changed. It was no longer called Israel, it had become Palestine. Under the enforcement of the Americans who were holding Palestine, they made it Israel.Nations are not made like that. Now thousands of Jews from other countries, particularly America, have moved to Israel. And they are surrounded from all sides by Mohammedans. For forty years they have been continuously fighting and being killed.This is the fundamentalist Christian mind, which played a very clever trick. And I cannot see any future for Israel. Any day America stops giving arms to them – they are a small island, surrounded by millions of Mohammedans – they will all be killed. But America played a game, forced the Jews, and they thought that they were being favored by America. They had a great hope some day to have their own land, so they rushed there with all their money. The other Jews who remained behind sent their money and they are still sending money – so all their money is being destroyed in Israel.Now they are in such a difficult position: neither can they go back – they have brought everything they had – nor can they see any future when they can live in peace. Every day it is continuous war, terrorists of all kinds; nobody is secure.This situation is very rare. Four thousand years ago, on some unfortunate day, Moses brought the Jews to Israel. Forty years it took him to find this barren land that he used to call “the holy land.” He had to call it the holy land, otherwise his followers would have killed him! In forty years’ search in the desert, two thirds of the original members who had come with him had died. And he passed up Saudi Arabia and Iran – the Jews can never forgive him. If he had stopped at Saudi Arabia, they would have been the richest people in the world today. But at that time nobody knew about the petrol or the oil, so it is not his fault. But one thing is certain, that he is not a great prophet. He could not see that just there, below the earth, there was so much petrol and oil. What kind of prophet…?Then, finding that it was getting late – he was now eighty and the holy land seemed to be nowhere – in utter desperation, he simply declared Israel, which is just a barren land, to be the holy place of God, the holy land. Just to satisfy his followers. Although the followers were not very satisfied. Looking at the holy land they said, “My God! And we are the chosen people of God and this is the holy land?”Moses escaped on the excuse that a small tribe of the Jews had got lost in the desert – “So I am going to find them and bring them back.” And he never came back. He found them – they were here in Kashmir. And Kashmir looks like a holy land: it is so beautiful, incomparable to any place on the whole earth; its beauty is superb. If Moses had just brought all the Jews to Kashmir, they would have been satisfied: “We are certainly the chosen people of God and this is the holy land.”That one small tribe that had wandered away from the main caravan of the Jews found themselves in Kashmir, and they thought that they had arrived! They remained in Kashmir and when Moses came – his grave is in Kashmir – he lived with them. It is a strange coincidence that Jesus also died in Kashmir, and both graves are at the same place.Jesus never knew that he was a Christian. He was born a Jew, he lived as a Jew, he proclaimed himself as the last prophet of the Jews. And that was the reason that the Jews crucified him because they did not want to accept a donkey-riding carpenter’s son as their last prophet. It was irritating.So the resurrection is just a story. Jesus was brought down from the cross after six hours because the Jews observe Saturday as a holy day; no work is to be done. So on Friday evening – it was only six hours that Jesus had been on the cross – they had to bring him down before sunset because that would be work.And the Jewish cross is a very primitive, old type of mechanism. If you want to die you need to hang on it at least forty-eight hours. Within forty-eight hours you can change your mind; that’s why nobody ever commits suicide on a Jewish cross because who can maintain the idea of committing suicide for forty-eight hours? Just within one minute or two he will say, “Let us think it over again. What is the hurry? And anyway I am feeling hungry.”So after six hours – Jesus was a young man, only thirty-three, robust and healthy – he escaped. It was a pure conspiracy with the Roman governor. Judea was under the Roman Empire. The Romans were not interested in Jews’ problems, that Jesus is, or is not, the prophet. It was irrelevant to them. Pontius Pilate, the governor, had an interview with Jesus before the crucifixion to see whether this man needed to be crucified. He found that the man was absolutely innocent – maybe a little nuisance because he is just riding on the donkey, followed by twelve idiots who believe that he is the only begotten son of God, and he has promised those idiots, “You will have a special place in the Kingdom of God.”Naturally, other Jews thought that this was very annoying and irritating. Everybody laughs at the whole thing – “This is your last prophet?” It is even suspected that his father was not his father.After six hours Jesus was taken down, and the Roman governor and his soldiers kept guard on the cave in which he was put when he was brought down from the cross. The Roman governor allowed Jesus’ followers to take him out of Judea. No resurrection happened because even death did not happen. He was perfectly alive; it took just a few days for the healing of his hands and feet, which had been nailed.Seeing the situation, any intelligent man would not go back to Judea. He also went in search of the one lost tribe and ended up in Kashmir. Moses died in Kashmir and two thousand years later Jesus died there. Their graves are together there. Neither the Jews nor the Christians want to recognize it, but it is so evident: on both the graves the writing is in Hebrew, and on both the gravestones the names of the persons, Moses and Jesus, are engraved. The family that protects the graves is still Jewish; it is the only family in the whole of Kashmir which Mohammedans did not convert to Mohammedanism. All other Jews were forced to become Mohammedans, but they left this family alone because they were protecting and taking care of Moses’ and Jesus’ graves, and because Mohammedanism also accepts Moses and Jesus as prophets. So this family is the only family. But no pope goes there to look at poor Jesus’ grave, and neither do the Christians talk about it, nor do the Jews ever bother what happened to Moses.And the Christians have no answer: even if Jesus was resurrected, he must have died sometime afterward. Where has he gone? Do they mean that he goes on resurrecting? Then he must be somewhere here!Because of all this suffering, the Jews have found a way of laughing, even in misery, and that way is the joke. The joke is purely a Jewish invention.And you should never make any change of name because just changing the names won’t help. A Jaina couple… It is impossible for them to say what the joke says: “You know why I am knocking,” cries Harry, “but you should see with what!” No Indian will say that. It is just impossible.So I told Nirvano, “Change the names. Put in some Christian names” …because the Jews are being hit so much. And I love them. Half of my sannyasins are Jews, and most of them are my sannyasins because I am the only person who loves Jewish jokes. They have a flavor which is their own. Countries like India are very serious. To tell a joke… The Indians will feel very hurt, they are such a repressed people. Here there are a few of my old friends who are Jainas. I told Nirvano, “Do you want them also to go?” Hearing the joke about Halvabhai and Mevabhai, then they are not going to stay!The people who are translating my books from English to Hindi continuously send me notes: “What to do about the jokes?” And the people who are translating my Hindi books into English – they again and again ask me, “What to do with the poetry?”So I tell them, “If you can manage, translate the poetry into prose. If you cannot, then just leave it out.” And to the people who are translating from English to Hindi I say simply, “You cannot do anything except leave out those jokes.” Indians will get absolutely mad – they are already mad about me. Such a seriousness has been a long sickness, a wound that has not healed.The Jews have certainly proved their mettle. In all their agony they have maintained their laughter, they have not lost it. But it is a strange psychology that the people who are in suffering will always love laughter. That gives at least some time to forget the misery. People who have lived peacefully, with no suffering, don’t know what laughter is.I have been thinking many times that I should speak on the psychology of jokes. It has so many implications, why a certain joke is a joke and why it arose; who were the people, who must have been the people who managed that joke? In what background has the joke flowered, and was it refined? – because it is centuries of work. A single joke can be traced back for centuries, and you will find little differences happening and finally it comes to perfection. It is a work of art. But it needs a certain climate and a certain understanding and a certain openness, a certain unrepressed joyfulness; otherwise it can backfire.This is a beautiful joke – but Nirvano is not a Jew. She thought it better to make it Christian because she knows the Christian names better and she knows the festival of Lent. In a Jewish context it would have been even better because they are the most unrepressed people in the world. It is not a coincidence that Sigmund Freud – a Jew – started a new science: psychoanalysis. The whole science is against repression.Every joke has a long history and background. It will be good sometime to give the whole series to Sardar Gurudayal Singh and find the roots of these jokes – their psychology, the people, because there are many people. For example, Jews tell jokes about themselves; they are intelligent people. Other people tell jokes about the Polacks, who are very unintelligent people. They cannot make a joke themselves, that is impossible. But they are good in a way; they allow the whole world to make jokes about them. Nice guys!Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes and feel your body to be completely frozen.Now look inward.Gather all your consciousness as a spear, piercing toward the very center of your being. Deeper and deeper, and you are bound to find the fire of life.This fire does not burn, this fire is cool. This fire is like flowers. These flames are your eternal, divine sources.At this moment you are the buddha.Take care of the buddha twenty-four hours; cultivate the buddha twenty-four hours. Not for a single moment forget to remember your buddhahood.As your remembrance deepens, as your awareness becomes clear, as you dissolve into your witnessing, the buddha spontaneously arises – in your actions, in your words, in your silences.He becomes your whole life, and a life of great joy, a life of blessings, a life which is pure poetry, essential music, an eternal dance.But keep the witness clear because in your whole body only the witness is eternal; everything else is mortal. Sooner or later it will be in some grave. It has come from the earth, it will go back to the earth.Only the witness will fly, without leaving its footprints in the blue sky, to become part of the cosmos.Buddha is simply a name for your witnessing.To make it clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax. Witness the body lying there almost dead. The mind is there – maybe chattering a little bit – but you are not it. You are simply a watcher.In this moment, you are at the greatest peak of your consciousness, and also the greatest depth. Thousands of flowers are showering on you.In this silence, in this serenity, the evening has become tremendously beautiful. Before Nivedano calls you back, collect as many flowers, as much fragrance, as much juice of your life as possible. And persuade the buddha to come with you. He has been hiding in the center for centuries – bring him to the circumference, the world needs it.This is the right moment for every buddha to come out. That is the only hope for the whole planet. If buddhas can come out to their circumference, in their daily activities, we can change the very fabric of human life on the earth. It can become a benediction.Man has lived uncivilized for a single reason: he never went deep into himself. I call only those people civilized who have reached their center, and who have seen themselves as buddhas.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but show even in your coming back the grace, the silence, the joy, the blissfulness of this moment.Sit for a few moments, just to recollect the golden path you have traveled and the strange man, the buddha, that you have found – not as a separate entity from you, but just as your innermost being, your very soul.

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Isan No Footprints in the Blue Sky 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Isan No Footprints in the Blue Sky 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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On one occasion, a monk asked Isan about the need for cultivation of one’s spiritual life after enlightenment. Isan responded that it was needed because of the “inertia of habit.” He then went on to say:“What you hear must first be accepted by your reason; and when your rational understanding is deepened and subtilized in an ineffable way, your mind will, of its own spontaneity, become comprehensive and bright, never to relapse into the state of doubt and delusion. However numerous and various the subtle teachings are, you know intuitively how to apply them – in accordance with the occasion.“In this way only will you be qualified to sit in the chair and wear your robe as a master of the true art of living. To sum up, it is of primary importance to know that ultimate reality, or the bedrock of reason, does not admit of a single speck of dust, while in innumerable doors and paths of action not a single law or thing is to be abandoned.”Maneesha, it is one of the most important problems for any seeker to understand a clear distinction between cultivation and enlightenment. You can cultivate enlightenment, but that will be only phony. You may believe in it, but your belief cannot make it true. Even if the whole society supports it, it does not matter.Truth needs no support; it has to be self-evident. And how can you cultivate enlightenment if you don’t know it? You will simply imitate other enlightened ones. But every enlightened person has a unique character of his own. Nobody can be another Isan. However hard he tries to cultivate, imitates every action of Isan, every word, still he cannot be Isan. He will remain himself, only with a cultured, cultivated layer around his mind. It will remain a mind act, and certainly enlightenment is not a mind act. So nobody can cultivate enlightenment.But after enlightenment…Enlightenment happens suddenly. You can follow a device, with no guarantee that it will lead to enlightenment. But if you have a living master with you, watching step-by-step where you are moving, supporting you with one hand, as one of the Indian mystics, Gora, used to say… Gora was a potter, a very poor man, but he came to the same height as Gautam Buddha. His language, of course, was that of a potter. But sometimes the raw language of the villagers can express things which very sophisticated language cannot.Gora says that the master has to use both his hands, just like a potter. The potter hits the mud that he is turning into a pot from the outside with one hand, and supports the mud from the inside with the other hand. His hits, his support, slowly create the pot.The master has to use every possible way to bring you to the point where enlightenment is possible. Just a little push – either of circumstances or by the master, or by the disciple himself – just a little turn. One step, and the old world is gone and you have entered a new sky.This is very sudden because you were not preparing for it – although for the master it is not sudden. He was preparing for it from every possible corner. Hitting you, shouting at you, being respectful to you – in every possible way the master was bringing you to the brink from where you need to take one more step. Only you can take that step; the master can just bring you up to the brink.It needs an articulate master. No ordinary master can do that; hence there are many mystics, but very few masters. To be a mystic is difficult in itself. But to bring the message to somebody else, or to transform somebody else’s consciousness toward mystic experiences, needs one to have many qualities – an articulate way of giving an incentive to your longing, a reasonable approach, to even making the irrational at least look rational, to turn even the absurd into a beautiful explanation. And to manage devices, meditations, from different corners of your being.One never knows from which side you are most vulnerable: north or west, east or south. But the master slowly, easily, becomes aware from which side you are most vulnerable. Then that side has to be hit as hard as possible because the weakest link in your chains is going to give way first.Your liberation, your enlightenment, is a tremendous artwork of the master. To find the weakest link in your chains, and to hit you in such a way that rather than being angry, you feel grateful – it is almost a miraculous alchemy. But as far as you are concerned, enlightenment happens suddenly. The master was preparing, step-by-step; but that was in his consciousness, it was not part of your consciousness. To you, the door suddenly opens.The master never declares that you have reached the door. He waits for the right moment – when you will be absolutely silent, utterly empty, the season comes on its own. And as you are maturing and ripening, the door is getting ready to open for you. But it is always a surprise to you, not to the master who has been preparing for years in different ways, bringing you to the point where you can disappear and evaporate.After sudden enlightenment, a certain cultivation is needed because the sudden can become a glimpse. Your sleepiness is so deep, your unconsciousness is so vast that a sudden glimpse, a lightning – and again dark clouds have taken over. That beautiful moment will be remembered and you will even start doubting it: “Did it happen or did I imagine it? Was it a reality or a dream?” But the sweetness of it will remain with you. The fragrance of it will remain with you.Cultivation after enlightenment simply means to avoid any situation that can destroy your glimpse. You have to pour your whole energy into the glimpse to make it more and more authentic, more and more deeply rooted in you, so that it becomes an indubitable truth. No clouds can destroy it and no sleepiness, no inertia is capable of taking it away from you. Isan’s statement has to be understood in this light.On one occasion, a monk asked Isan about the need for cultivation of one’s spiritual life after enlightenment. Isan responded that it was needed because of the “inertia of habit.”That includes everything: …the inertia of habit. George Gurdjieff, one of the most important men of this century, had a certain idea about the mind which no scientist has denied.Every scientist knows that the brain is divided almost like a cross, in four parts. The right side is divided in two parts, the front and the back; and the same is true about the left side. Whatever we have done to look into the brain, we have not found any way to determine what the purpose is of the back sides. They seem to be absolutely unnecessary. But nature never produces anything unnecessary. And particularly the brain is existence’s greatest creation; it will not contain unnecessary parts. The probability is that we have not yet discovered their functions.When the researchers looked into the brain they found a strange thing: the right hand is connected with the left side of the brain and the left hand is connected with the right side of the brain. So when I am moving the right hand, it is being directed by the left side of the brain.The people who are born left-handed – and their number is not small; it is ten percent of the whole population – they are in a difficulty their whole life because they are born in a right-handed society but with a left-handed personality. And nobody knows the deeper problems – neither the parents nor the teachers. They force left-handed children to write with the right hand, just as everybody else is doing, not with the left hand. They are not aware what they are telling the child; neither can the child say anything against them. He can see that everybody is writing with the right hand and it is strange that he writes with the left hand. But because of continuous enforcement, he tries the right hand. It is not so easy, but continuous practice makes him capable of writing with the right hand. Only a very few people keep writing with their left hand. People who are left-handed and are writing with the right hand are creating a great confusion in the mind.The back of both sides of the brain, as far as we know, seems to be completely useless. But it is not. According to George Gurdjieff, who is the only one who has pointed out the fact, both of these back sides of the brain are a kind of robot. You learn something with the right hand; at first the front side of your left brain is active, but only in the process of learning. Once you have learned it, the front side delivers the learning to the back side. The back side is like a robot, or a computer. We don’t see any function, but it goes on working without our knowing.For example in Africa, one tribe has been found to eat only once in twenty-four hours and they are perfectly healthy. When they saw the Christian missionaries they could not believe it – “What kind of idiots are these? Their whole concern is eating and eating and eating. First the breakfast, then the lunch, then the afternoon tea, then a coffee break. And it goes on!” Those simple people could not understand – what is the point?And the people of this tribe live longer, they are healthier; they live almost twice as long. If the average person here lives seventy years, in that small tribe he will live one hundred and forty years or one hundred and fifty years very easily. And even at the age of one hundred and fifty he is not old; that tribe has known only young people dying. At the age of one hundred and fifty he is functionally as young as any young man at the age of thirty-five. But they have been habituated for thousands of years to eating one meal a day.If you are habituated in the American way, then one meal will kill you! What will you do in the remaining twenty-four hours? The American eats five times, and in between cigarettes are needed, chewing gum is needed; somehow the mouth should continue to chew. They have become so accustomed that even to take away somebody’s chewing gum you have to hospitalize him because of the withdrawal effects! Chewing gum – such a simple thing. In the first place you were doing something stupid and now you are talking about withdrawal effects! So something else has to be given in place of chewing gum; then something else, less addictive, and it takes a few weeks to get out of the habit.The problem is, the habit goes into the back side of your brain, and we don’t yet have any direct approach to the back side. The back side is still the unknown continent and it controls everything. It freaks out if you drop any habit. It forces you to take the habit back.I was staying in Kolkata with a friend, in the house of one of the richest men of India, Sohanlal Dugar. He is dead now. He must have been at that time seventy or seventy-five years old, and he told me, “I have renounced sex four times.” The stupid man who was with me was very impressed.When we were left alone the man said, “This is great – four times!”I said, “You are an idiot. You don’t understand: you can renounce sex only once. How can you renounce it four times?”Then he said, “Yes, that is right. If you have renounced once, you have renounced.”I said, “Let Sohanlal come back and I am going to ask what happened the fifth time.”I asked him when he came back, “You were telling us about your celibacy, that you tried four times, and my friend is very impressed. So I am asking you, what happened to the fifth time?”He said, “It is a disaster. The fifth time I did not renounce it because four times I have already failed and learned the lesson that there is no point in renouncing; it is better to keep silent about it.”That’s why everybody in the world is silent about sex. Particularly the celibates are absolutely silent because they know the problem, how many times they have renounced and it comes back again. It is not in your control and it is not your personal habit. It comes with your very birth, it is a biological habit.So, there are many kinds of habits. A few habits you can drop, but a few habits are very deeply rooted. And to remain ignorant and unconscious is a very long, millions of years, old habit. In just a single moment, you allow it and it will take you over.Enlightenment is a very new phenomenon and there is everything against it: your whole old mind, your unconsciousness, your tendency to forget. The English word sin originally meant forgetfulness, but the priests destroyed the beauty of the word. Forgetfulness is certainly a sin – not against anybody, against yourself. But you have remained forgetful so long. It is not chewing gum, that within four weeks you will drop it. And it is such a consolation to remain in forgetfulness: it is cozy, it does not create problems, it does not create an eternal quest, a search for the truth. It does not take you on dangerous paths. It keeps you mundane and ordinary, a part of the crowd, very happy in stupid things.Just see people celebrating marriages – everybody knows what is going to be the outcome! Everywhere, all around, there are ruins and wrecks of marriages; still, idiots will sit on horses, will wear a turban. Once they used to carry a sword, but now it is a shorter version, a small knife. What is all this hullabaloo? The bands, and people are singing, and a festivity, a celebration. Two people, one man and one woman, are being hanged and all these fools are celebrating. And also the man is enjoying: for the first time, and perhaps the last time, he is sitting on a horse like a king, with a crown and if not a real sword, then just a vegetable-cutting knife.Such a drama, and the ultimate result? Then nobody bothers about you. All those who had gathered to celebrate your crucifixion…nobody comes for the resurrection. Then you work it out, it is your problem. And everybody must have noticed: all the old stories end up with the marriage; they don’t go any further. All the old stories say, “They got married and lived in happiness forever afterward.” That is the finishing touch, as if both have died – because to get into what happens after marriage, the intricate and complex problems, is dangerous.In India, or anywhere else, tragedy in the movies or in the novels is loved more than comedy. Comedy seems to be not related to life at all, but tragedy – that is everybody’s experience. Everybody knows the taste of it.Enlightenment, first as a glimpse, has to be protected from all your miserable habits, old patterns of behavior, unconscious ways of doing things like a robot. This is what cultivation is. You are fighting against a very long past which has known only a dark night, not even a star. And suddenly you have come to have a glimpse of the dawn, and heard the songs of the birds, and smelled the fragrance of the opening flowers. In the first place, you cannot believe that this can be true – perhaps you are dreaming. Because your whole experience is of a dark night; you have never thought that this dark night was going to end at any time. It seems to become darker and darker and darker. You have never understood the logic, that the darker the night becomes, the closer comes the dawn. But the dawn is unbelievable when it comes for the first time.And the dawn I am talking about, and Isan is talking about, is not something outside you. All your patterns, your old habits, are also inside. They will try to destroy the new inside that is growing and is fragile. And your old habits are like stones, hard and heavy – the fight is between a rose and a stone. It is a difficult problem to protect the rose against all the rocks that you have grown in the past.To experience the first glimpse is not very difficult. The real difficulty begins after the glimpse: How to save it? How to make it so true, and so deeply-rooted, and so strong, that nothing can destroy it, that no doubt can arise about it, that its truth becomes self-evident? You have to live it. That is the only way to cultivate it.How have you cultivated your habits? Just by living them. If you have not lived a certain habit, you cannot see why somebody else cannot leave it. You laugh at chewing gum because you have not become habituated to it. You laugh about smoking because you have not become habituated to it. Or alcohol. Each goes deeper, transforms your chemistry and biology, becomes a deep hunger in you. In spite of yourself, you have to drink alcohol; you don’t want to, but what to do? When the time comes the urge is so strong, every cell of your body is asking for it. And you think, “Perhaps one more time will not do much harm.”But this goes on for years – “One more time.” But the next time also, the same situation will arise. One needs to have courage to cut any habit with a sword, in a single blow. And whatever the withdrawal symptoms, it is better to suffer them for two or three weeks than to be defeated by your habits.A man who is not a master of his own habits cannot remain enlightened. Even if he is fortunate enough to have a glimpse, that glimpse will make him even more miserable because now he knows what is possible. Now he knows where he can reach, now he knows what is his potential. But he has to live in the darkness of his old habits and he cannot get out of the pattern.Cultivation is the only way. Don’t think of enlightenment just as an inner experience. In the beginning it is an inner experience – then slowly bring it into your outer life. That’s what I have been telling you every day, that whatever you experience, don’t think the work is finished. The experience that happens in meditation has to be present in your day-to-day affairs.Whether you are a housewife cooking, or you are working in an office, or in a shop – any kind of life you are living – your meditation has to be staying alert in every activity. This is what cultivation is. The more you live it, the more it becomes a normal experience. The more you live it, the less is the possibility of it being taken away by old habits. They will come like floods, but you have to remember one thing: that a small flame of a candle is enough to destroy the darkness of millions of years. The darkness cannot say to the candle, “You are too small, don’t be foolish. You are trying to fight against a darkness millions of years old? You have some nerve!”Nothing of that kind of dialogue ever happens. Just a small flame and the darkness disappears, however old. Your glimpse of first enlightenment – in Japan they call it satori – is strong. It may be fragile, it may be new. It will be difficult to protect it, but it has a strength of its own. If you support it totally, it is going to take over your whole being. Satori is going to become samadhi.Satori is the first glimpse of samadhi, and samadhi is when your whole being is afire. You don’t have to remember, you are it. But this is possible only if you cultivate it in all your day-to-day affairs.Isan responded that it was needed because of the “inertia of habit.” The cultivation in your day-to-day life is needed because of the inertia of habit.He then went on to say: “What you hear must first be accepted by your reason…”Whatever you have seen inside, first you should make it part of your reason. It should not be put aside as an irrational, absurd episode. Isan is saying that if you think about it as irrational, doubts are bound to arise. So the first thing is that you should make it in tune, in synchronicity with your rationality. You will not be able to protect something absurd – and in fact it is absurd. The very experience is beyond reason; it happens when there is no mind.So the first cultivation is to bring it closer to the mind. First you have made every effort to go away from the mind – now bring your enlightenment closer to the mind. Make it acceptable to the mind so that the mind becomes a friend rather than an enemy in the long fight between your inertia and enlightenment. Now, make the mind your ally.“What you hear must first be accepted by your reason; and when your rational understanding is deepened and subtilized in an ineffable way, your mind will, of its own spontaneity, become comprehensive and bright, never to relapse into the state of doubt and delusion.”A very practical and scientific man – nobody else has said it so clearly. The first experience is beyond mind. Now the problem is that the mind will try to create all kinds of doubts. The mind is full of your habits and your new enlightenment is almost like a stranger who has suddenly arrived with new habits, with new directions, with a new lifestyle – it wants to change everything in you. Obviously, your old personality and your old mind are going to give a good fight.Isan shows a tremendous pragmatic insight. He says the best way to avoid the fight is to bring the enlightenment closer to your reason. How can you bring it closer to your reason? If you start living according to your enlightenment, the mind at first will be unwilling, reluctant, resistant – but soon it will see that the way of enlightenment is far superior to the old, unconscious lifestyle. The mind is intelligent enough to recognize this. But this recognition will be possible only if the mind can see it working, can see that enlightenment works better in love, in friendship, in life – that everywhere it brings a better result. The mind will soon be willing to accept it as a better way of life.Once the mind accepts enlightenment as a better way of life, you have destroyed the greatest enemy. Then the mind also starts using the insights of enlightenment and is willing to change itself. Once the mind is convinced that enlightenment gives you a better life, a more refined, graceful life, a more blissful life; that it changes everything, that it makes your touch a golden touch, that whatever you touch becomes gold… Then the mind is intelligent enough to see and to choose that which is better: the old unconscious life, or the new conscious life.This is the only way of making: …a rational understanding deepened and subtilized in an ineffable way, so your mind will, of its own spontaneity, become comprehensive and bright. If the mind accepts rather than fighting, if it accepts a friendship with enlightenment, it will be filled with light, with more joy, with more blissfulness, with more ecstasy. It will be flooded with so many treasures that it cannot fight against enlightenment.Inside you there is going to be a fight: finally to choose the path of light, or to remain on the path of darkness. There is a point of departure. The mind has to be allowed to have a chance to see how enlightenment functions in transforming your actions, your being, how it brings more joy to life, more songs to life, more flowers to life, more dances to life. That is the only argument to persuade the mind to accept that enlightenment has a tremendous value. There is no need to fight; a friendship is valuable. Once the mind has become friendly to the stranger, you can be comfortable and at ease. There is going to be no fight anymore. The mind itself will bring more and more of enlightenment into functioning; this will become its own work.However numerous and various the subtle teachings are, you know intuitively how to apply them – in accordance with the occasion.Once the mind is a friend to your enlightenment, once it has seen the glory and the splendor in becoming friendly – because in becoming friendly that splendor and glory is reflected in the mind too – your intelligence will grow. Everything in you will start moving to a higher point. Once this synchronicity has happened, the mind knows intuitively how to respond to any occasion in accordance with enlightenment. Remember always one thing, that you will choose the better.I have heard about a beggar who was the laughingstock of a whole village. The village was a tourist center because of its very ancient ruins, palaces, forts. And that beggar was also one of the special attractions – the guides who used to take the tourists around would also always take them to see the beggar.The guides would say, “You will have to see this strange phenomenon: just show him a rupee and a paisa, one in each hand, and tell him, ‘You can choose either.’”They said, “But we don’t see… What is the miracle in that?”The guide would say, “Try it! You will see the miracle.”So people tried – the beggar would always choose the paisa. And then everybody would laugh and they would say, “Strange! – can’t this beggar understand that he is choosing a paisa against a rupee?” Then others would take the chance, and that was the beggar’s whole work during the day, to choose the paisa against the rupee.One day a very curious man saw all this happening. He remained behind after the tourists were gone; he went to the beggar and he said, “I can see that you are not an idiot. You are very intelligent. But why do you choose the paisa?”He said, “Because of my intelligence! Once I choose the rupee, the game will stop. The game is continuing every day, for years.”Then the man became aware of the greatness of the beggar’s intelligence. “He is right: if he chooses the rupee, the game is finished. Then the guide will not bring anybody, and nobody will try to test his intelligence. They enjoy…”And the beggar said, “I also enjoy their stupidity! My daily income is nearabout ten to twelve rupees average. But it is because I continue to choose something which nobody expects. Even the retarded person will choose the rupee – but because I am doing something absurd, they laugh and they enjoy. I also laugh, but I don’t show it. I laugh when everybody is gone.”Whatever mind you have, it is capable to see the fact that enlightenment brings a tremendous treasure to all your actions, a beauty to whatever you do, a joy that remains like an aroma around you. The mind is absolutely capable of understanding this. And once the mind has understood it, it is no longer an enemy; it dissolves itself into the tremendous phenomenon of enlightenment. That is the right action on the part of the mind, but it can happen only in a certain way: you have to give the mind a chance to see the effects of enlightenment.“In this way only will you be qualified to sit in the chair and wear your robe as a master of the true art of living. To sum up, it is of primary importance to know that ultimate reality, or the bedrock of reason, does not admit of a single speck of dust, while in innumerable doors and paths of action not a single law or thing is to be abandoned.”A man of enlightenment has come to an agreement with the mind and the body – which happens almost simultaneously because the body follows the mind. As the mind accepts enlightenment, the body accepts it also; it happens simultaneously. Once it has happened: “There is not a single thing,” Isan says, “to be abandoned in life.”You can transform anything you want, but the idea of abandoning things is of the old mind, of the escapist, so-called religious people – “Abandon this, abandon that; abandon the whole of life.” That is not a very courageous way; that is the way of a coward. And all the religions have been teaching the way of the coward.I teach you the way of the courageous, the way of the lion. Remain in the world. Don’t abandon anything, transform it. If something is poisonous, you don’t have to drop it; it will drop the moment you understand that it is poisonous. You will not have to make any effort. You will not abandon it, it will simply be dropped without any effort, and your life becomes more and more simple.Sekiso wrote:The mountain range,the water, the stones,all are strange and rare.The beautiful landscape, as we know,belongs to those who are like it.I will have to repeat it:The beautiful landscape, as we know,belongs to those who are like it.The upper world, the lower world,originally are one thing.There is not a bit of dust;there is only this still and fullperfect enlightenment.If you are enlightened, then there is no duality of this world and that world, of a lower world and a higher world, of a material world and a sacred and holy world. In the moment of perfect and full enlightenment: “There is not a bit of dust…” The mirror is so clean it reflects the whole in its totality. You become the truth, you become the beauty, you become the divine. There is not anything other than your vaster self. You lose your smaller self into the oceanic self, into the self which is cosmic. Who is there to abandon what? One simply enters the dance and disappears.I have just remembered an old Chinese Zen story. I have loved it so much that each time I remember it I rejoice in it immensely.The emperor of China was a very great painter. He loved painting, and he used to call other painters to the palace every year to have an exhibition. When he had become very old, he declared, at an annual function, “Now I am very old and I want to see the most perfect painting in the world. I will give a place in the palace to the painter and whatever he needs.”So a few painters who thought they could create such a painting stayed in the palace. Somebody completed his painting in one month and brought it to the emperor. He had done well, but it was not the most perfect.By and by three years passed, and only one painter remained. For three years he had been painting – and he was not painting on canvas; he was painting on the wall of the palace where his room was allotted to him. He had painted a beautiful forest, a moonlit night, a small river, and a very small footpath going round and round around the trees and then disappearing in the forest.After three years he came to the emperor and said, “Now you can come. Whatever I could do I have done. I think it is the most perfect painting in the world. So I invite Your Honor to come, and I don’t ask any reward – these three years were the most precious that I have lived. Just your seeing it is enough.”All the other painters had been painting for reward, and when you are painting out of some motivation, for some reward, your painting cannot be perfect. Your motivation will be the dust.This painter said, “I am not at all interested in any reward; you have already given it to me. These three years I have lived such a beautiful life, day and night. Nothing could be more than you have given me. Now just look at the painting so that I can go back home. My children, my wife, may be waiting for me.”The emperor went with him. Certainly this painter had done the greatest job. He became so interested that he asked the painter, “Where does this small path go, finally?”The painter said, “I have never gone on it but if you are willing to come with me, we can go and see where it leads. This question has arisen in me also many times, ‘Where does this small path lead?’”So the painter and the emperor both entered the path and disappeared behind the trees, and nothing has been heard about them since.This story has always made me immensely happy – that there is no returning from perfection, there is no going back. Perfection takes you and you disappear.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Is there any relation between awareness and the instinctive alertness man once had to rely on for his survival?There is a certain relationship. There is a physical, biological, instinctive wisdom. You are not aware of it, that your body is doing miracles every moment.If for just six minutes a certain amount of oxygen does not reach the brain, it will dissolve. Those cells depend on oxygen. The body, waking or asleep, is continuously supplying that much oxygen, neither more nor less. Where the blood is needed, how much of it is needed – the body is working it out, it is not dependent on you. How to transform your food into blood, into flesh, into bones, into nerves – the body knows all the secrets.Even our scientists are still far behind. To change bread into blood will be thought a great miracle! Jesus only changed water into wine and it was thought to be a great miracle, and your body is changing thousands of things. What kinds of vitamins have to reach certain places in the body – the body does not ask you, it does not bother you at all. It has its own wisdom and you should be respectful of this great wisdom.Just as the body has its own wisdom – it is called instinct – your soul has its own wisdom. It is called intuition. Your mind is a borrowed thing; it has nothing like instinct or intuition. It is just a computer which goes on collecting all kinds of information. But it has tremendous power over you because it has all that you know. If it is erased you will be simply dumb, not knowing who you are, where you are going – for what? What is your business?The mind functions according to the knowledge it has gathered: it is a borrowed thing in you. The body functions according to nature – and your consciousness functions according to nature. In the middle of these two is the mind, which functions as a computer. It fills a great need. As a servant it is good; as a master it is dangerous.Once the intuitiveness of your consciousness has started functioning, the mind immediately recognizes who is the master. Once it recognizes the master, it will be a very good servant, very efficient. Because the mind is only a mechanism, it can do miracles, but it needs a master to guide it. Without the master, the mind starts thinking itself to be the master and that creates problems. The mind is not a master. It has not even any natural wisdom of its own. Even the body is in a far better situation.You have to bring enlightenment to your consciousness, and make it evident to the mind that it is a far better way of living. The body is always functioning naturally; only sometimes the mind tries to master the body. That’s what all the religions have been telling you. All the scriptures are full of teachings on how to force the body into a certain discipline. Celibacy is an idea of the mind, the body knows nothing of it. And the mind cannot manage celibacy, so the body goes into a repression, functions abnormally, becomes perverted. The body is very innocent. It is the mind – the priest, the philosopher, the educator – which tries to interfere in everything.The enlightened man does not interfere, does not allow the mind to interfere in the body. You become a solid pillar of wisdom. Your body is already in tune with nature and your mind has stopped interrupting. It has also fallen in tune with your higher consciousness, your enlightenment. Your whole being becomes a pure pillar of light.This is the function of the whole Zen experiment on man: to turn him into a single whole, a pillar of wisdom.Before you all become pillars of wisdom, a little foolishness for poor Sardar Gurudayal Singh – just for his sake. He is again sitting there with that rainbow turban. Where did he get it? [Osho turns in Sardarji’s direction and chuckles.] Yeah, that’s great. That’s great.Maureen and Peggy, the wives of Paddy and Sean, are sitting in the Dainty Dandelion pub drinking wine coolers, when Maureen shakes her head and moans, “My husband is so ugly that if I want to make love to him, I have to put a bag over his head.”“That’s nothing,” says Peggy. “My husband is so ugly that when he was born, the doctor slapped his mother!”Harold the Hippie is sitting around in his pad smoking a few dozen reefers and grooving to the television program “Daffy Duck” when the phone rings.“Hullo,” says Harold, completely stoned.“This is the overseas international operator,” says the voice on the other end. “I’ve got a long-distance, collect call from Mabel Beeks. Will you accept the charges?”“Wow, man!” says Harold, puffing madly on his reefer. “This sounds like a bad connection. Mabel who?”“Mabel Beeks! Mabel Beeks!” shouts the operator.“Ah, no, man,” replies Harold, his eyes rolling around in his head. “Mabel is not here.”“No! No!” screams the operator. “Mabel Beeks is here! This is a long-distance call from Mabel Beeks!”“Really?” says Harold, completely confused. “Where the hell is Mabel Beeks?”“No!” shouts the voice. “This is Mabel Beeks!”“Hey, sorry,” says Harold. “Mabel’s not here.”“No! You idiot! This is Mabel Beeks!” cries the operator.Then Mabel Beeks herself interrupts and says, “Never mind, operator. Let me try. Hello, this is Mabel Beeks – is June there?”“June?” cries Harold, scratching his head, and looking out the window. “I don’t know where you are, but here it is still November!”Big Leroy and Ruby get married and go to the Humping Hippo Honeymoon Hotel in Mexico. Ruby is a virgin and she is very worried about the size of Big Leroy’s machinery.“Don’t worry, baby,” comforts Leroy. “I will just show it to you a bit at a time, so it doesn’t scare you.”“Okay, precious,” says Ruby, shyly. “Now you go outside and wait in the hallway, while I get undressed and ready for bed.”A few minutes later, Ruby is tucked under the sheets in the bridal bed. “Come on in honey!” she cries nervously. “I’m ready!”“Now, sweetheart,” says Big Leroy, from the hallway, “before I come in, I’m going to poke my prick around the bedroom door, bit by bit, just so you can get used to the idea.”Leroy pushes the head of his machinery inside the doorway.“Are you scared, darling?” he asks.“No, baby,” replies Ruby. “I’m not scared.”So Leroy pushes another two inches inside the doorway.“Are you scared now, sugar-pie?” asks Leroy.“No, honey, I’m not,” replies Ruby, wide-eyed.Then Leroy pushes another six inches through the open doorway.“Are you scared now, sweetie?” he asks.“No, baby-cake,” replies Ruby, “I’m not scared. You can come to bed now!”“Okay, then!” cries Leroy, “I’m coming up the stairs!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes, feel your body to be frozen, completely frozen.Now look inward. You have to reach the center of your being. Collect all your consciousness, your whole life energy, like a spear piercing toward the center of your being.At the very center you are a buddha. Your only quality at the center is witnessing, watching, awareness.As your insight deepens, suddenly the whole universe starts rejoicing with you because your center is also the center of the whole cosmos. At your very center you are a buddha. And from this moment onward you have to persuade the buddha to come to your daily activities – not remain hidden inside, but come to the surface, to the circumference, to actions, to words, to silences.To know the buddha is to know your eternal being; to know the buddha is to know your disappearance. Here you disappear – and suddenly the buddha appears.Everyone is pregnant with the buddha.This silence, this tremendously beautiful serenity… You are fortunate to be here. Nowhere else in the world are thousands of people trying to discover their hidden splendor.To make this golden space more clear to you, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax. But remain a witness. The body is lying there as an object, the mind is there as an object. You are the witness. You are neither the mind, nor the body. You are a pure consciousness. This pure consciousness we have been calling the buddha. The buddha is only a symbol.So many flowers have blossomed, so much fragrance… All boundaries have disappeared and the Buddha Auditorium has become a lake of consciousnesses without any ripples. You have to bring all this fragrance with you, all these flowers with you.Now I have brought the Buddha statue, just in front of the Buddha Auditorium. He is waiting there. When you pass by, remember: he was also one day just a human being, as you are. Pay your respects. Pay your gratitude because this man alone introduced the world to a new dimension of beautitude, of truth, of dignity. This man alone declared that man is God, and other than man there is no god. This was the greatest revolutionary statement ever made.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but with the same gesture of peace, silence, and grace. Bring the buddha with you. Sit for a few moments silently, reminding yourself of your potential, and the glimpse, the center and the silence. Remember the beauty of eternity in the moment and the encounter with your buddha.You have brought a few invisible flowers; while going out of the Buddha Auditorium you can shower Buddha with flowers in gratitude.At this moment you have become his contemporary. I want to make everyone in the world a contemporary of Buddha. This is the only possibility for humanity to survive on a higher plane.You are not working only for yourself, you are also working for the survival of this beautiful earth.

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Isan No Footprints in the Blue Sky 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Isan No Footprints in the Blue Sky 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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On one occasion, a monk came to Isan’s monastery to be taught, and, seeing him, Isan made as if to get up. “Please don’t stand up!” exclaimed the monk.“I haven’t sat down yet!” said Isan.“I haven’t bowed yet,” the monk said.“You rude creature!” commented Isan.On another occasion, Isan was watching a brush fire, and asked his disciple, Dogo, “Do you see the fire?”“I see it,” replied Dogo.The master asked Dogo, “Where does the fire come from?”Dogo said, “I would like you to ask me something that has nothing to do with walking around or zazen or lying down” – at which Isan left off talking and went away.Once, Isan was asked by Ichu to compose a gatha for him. Isan replied: “It is foolish to compose one when face-to-face – and, in any case, writing things on paper!”So Ichu went to Kyozan, a disciple of Isan, and made the same request.In response, Kyozan drew a circle on paper and wrote a note next to it that said: “To think and then know is the second grade. Not to think and then know is the third grade.”Maneesha, before discussing your sutras, a little biographical note on Isan is essential. I say it is essential because unless you understand the man, his background, his upbringing, his qualities, you will not be able to grasp just the pure sutras. They are almost writings in the air, or, if you prefer, in the water. The man who has written the sutras or told the sutras, or managed these anecdotes, has to be understood, to understand all that is connected with him because his whole being covers and colors whatever he says. You cannot take it out of context.Isan is a totally different personality than Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma was a hard master; Isan was very polite. Naturally his politeness would affect whatever happened around him. He was a very humble person, he never tried to convert anybody, but on the contrary he slipped deep down into the forest, so nobody came to him. He felt it a little embarrassing to be the master and degrade somebody as a follower – a very nice, very delicate personality, the personality of a poet, of a singer, of a dancer.Isan was a mellow and patient master in guiding his disciples to attain their enlightenment.He never used shouting or hitting or beating; that was not possible for him. He was such a loving, compassionate being that to think of him hitting the way Zen masters hit is impossible. He was very humble; hence he had to create absolutely different devices than those of Bodhidharma or Nansen.Isan was a mellow and patient master in guiding his disciples to attain their enlightenment. Unlike those Zen masters who preceded him, he did not use the stick or shout.However, his mildness of manner was only a veneer for the iconoclast and rebel within.You should not understand that his humbleness was not a rebellious quality. You should not think that his humbleness made him compromise with the past and the traditions. He remained a great rebel against all that goes on in preventing the enlightenment of a person.So his mildness of manner was “only a veneer,” just a cover, “for the iconoclast and rebel within.” Deep down he is fire. On the surface he was very polite. There were many who came to him because of his politeness – because they were afraid of the Zen masters who would beat, who would hit, who would suddenly jump on you; their behavior looked so irrational. Isan looked very good compared to the other predecessors. Although he was never interested in people, still one thousand disciples had gathered in the deepest forest. They had come from such faraway places just because they had heard that Isan was not a man to hit or slap. He was so mild and so humble and so loving.But this was “only a veneer.” Inside there was glowing fire. Once you had come close to him because of his humbleness, because of his very friendly behavior, you were caught in the net. As you would come closer, you would know the fiery nature of his being – but it was too late to go back. You had fallen in love with the man. Now whatever happens, if you have to pass through this fire, you will pass through this fire.Maneesha has brought one anecdote:On one occasion, a monk came to Isan’s monastery to be taught, and, seeing him, Isan made as if to get up.“Please don’t stand up!” exclaimed the monk.“I have not sat down yet!” said Isan.When you are in the middle, it is very difficult to say whether you are going to sit down or you are going to get up.Mulla Nasruddin used to suggest to his followers that if you don’t want to be bored by anybody, just take your umbrella and stand in the door. If the fellow is all right and you would like to welcome him, you can say, “You came at the right time. I was just coming in.” And if the fellow is a bore, you can say, “Excuse me, you came at a wrong time. I am going out.” But just standing at the door with the umbrella, now it is very difficult to decide where the man is going, whether in or out. He is standing in the door, in the middle.The same was the position here: the man has come: …to be taught, and seeing him, Isan made as if to get up. It was a strategy to see how the other man will behave, to know his response. Isan was not getting up; he just made as if he was going to get up.“Please don’t stand up!” Because you stand up to give honor to someone, the man naturally thought that Isan was going to honor him by standing. “Please don’t stand up!” exclaimed the monk.But such was the subtle way of Isan to know about the inner mind of man. This man looks perfectly right in saying, “Please don’t stand up!” But on what grounds has he assumed that Isan should be standing up to welcome him?“I haven’t sat down yet!” said Isan. “What about standing up? – I was just going to sit down. Why did you assume…?” Perhaps that assumption is a deep expectation that he should be honored. Perhaps it is unconscious, but Isan has brought it to the surface. The man could have thought that Isan was going to sit down. He was in the middle – both possibilities were available to him – but the man had chosen the possibility that Isan was going to stand up. That shows his mind – a deep longing, a desire to be honored, although he has come only as a student to be taught.Isan said: “I haven’t sat down yet!” The question of standing does not arise. But the poor monk did not understand the subtle way:“I haven’t bowed yet,” the monk said.“You rude creature!” commented Isan.Very strange encounters! When Isan said: “I haven’t sat down yet!” that was the moment to bow down and touch his feet, and for the monk to offer himself for the discipline, for the meditation, for all his teachings.Rather than taking that, he retorted – he thought as if Isan was making a fool of him: “I haven’t bowed yet,” the monk said.“You rude creature!” commented Isan. “This is not the way to be with me. You have to be grateful to be allowed to see me. Instead of it you are showing your ego.”“I haven’t bowed yet.” He is saying, “Don’t consider that I am your disciple or I am your student. I have not even bowed yet.” And he has come to learn, but ego is such a subtle phenomenon that without your knowing, it immediately asserts. The ego simply retorted: “I haven’t bowed yet.”Now, this has to be understood. There are things which should not be said; the very moment you say them they lose all their grandeur, all their gratefulness. You have to behave in a way that shows your gratitude, not your words. Bowing down is a gesture of saying, “I am ready. You can trust that I will not misuse the time that you will give me, or the meditation or any kind of discipline. I will not misuse it. I have come to you whole-heartedly.” It is just a way, without words, of saying, “I am available.”But the man said instead: “I haven’t bowed yet.” As if a man like Isan is in need of your gratefulness! By being grateful to a person like Isan, you are not making him in any way richer; on the contrary, you are becoming richer. You are learning a new way, a new gesture and its significance.In the West, it never evolved that the disciple should touch the feet of the master. Even today the Western mind thinks it really strange for one human being to touch the feet of another human being. But they don’t know the significance of it, they don’t know the esoteric significance of it.When the disciple touches the feet of the master, just what you see is not the only thing that is happening. Something else is also happening. When the disciple touches the feet, the master touches his head. A circle of energy is created that is not visible to the eyes – because no energy is ever visible to you. You only see the gesture: one is touching the feet, the other is touching his head.But the East, for at least ten thousand years, has come to know this secret way of approaching a master. And the master will put his hand on your head only if he feels your energy is worth it. By touching his feet… You should remember that energy moves only from the fingers of the hand or from the toes of the feet; energy moves from points which are dead ends. When somebody touches his feet, the master immediately recognizes the kind of energy. If he feels that the person has to be accepted, is worth being worked upon, then he touches his head and with his hand he gives a taste of his energy, and then both energies become a circle. And if the circle becomes smooth great possibilities can happen.But for the outsider it seems simply that one person is touching the feet of another person. The West has not been able, even today, to understand. Life is not what it appears from the outside; it is much more, immensely more, on the inside.The man showed an egoistic pattern of his mind. That’s why Isan had to comment: “You rude creature!” He was not accepted as a disciple.To be accepted as a disciple by a great master is not a small thing. In that very acceptance your enlightenment has come miles closer, your liberation has taken a tremendous quantum leap. You are just on the verge, ready, just because the master has accepted you. He accepts only when he sees the possibility, the vulnerability, the openness. It is an inner drama which is not visible to the eyes.On another occasion, Isan was watching a brush fire, and asked his disciple, Dogo, “Do you see the fire?”Now, it will look strange – the fire is there, Dogo, his disciple, is there, Isan is sitting there. There is no reason why Dogo should be asked: “Do you see the fire?”Replied Dogen, “I see it.”The master asked Dogo, “Where does the fire come from?”Dogo said, “I would like you to ask me something that has nothing to do with walking around or zazen or lying down” – at which Isan left off talking and went away.Dogo has closed all the doors. When Isan was asking: “Do you see the fire?” he should have been alert. When you are with a master you have to be alert every moment. What he says must imply some greater significance which may not appear in the words.Now, it is a strange question. They are both seeing the fire, but if the master asks, “Do you see the fire?” he means many things which Dogo is missing. He means, “Are you here?” You can be seeing the fire and yet you may be somewhere else and the fire may be just a faraway, faded thing. It may not be a living experience right now. If your mind is full of thoughts, you can even miss the fire because who is going to see it? You have to be here – that is the point that is hidden behind the question.If Dogo had had the understanding, he would have immediately thought that the question means his mind has moved somewhere else. He must have been thinking of other things, other worlds, other matters.I have told you a story about two friends…One morning they met. The first friend said, “You will not believe it: last night I had a dream I had gone fishing, and I caught such big fish that I had to carry one fish at a time. The whole night it continued. It was strange – for years I have been fishing and I have never found such great fish. You should have seen what a joy it was.”The other man said, “That is nothing. Last night I dreamed that in my bedroom, in my bed, on one side was Marilyn Monroe, utterly naked, on the other side Sophia Loren, utterly naked. I was greatly shocked. I had never believed that this chance would arise in my lifetime.”The first friend said, “You idiot! Why did you not call me?”The second man said, “I did call, but your wife said you had gone fishing!”People seem to be somewhere, but their minds may be anywhere. To be in the moment is a clear-cut message of Zen.Isan’s asking Dogo, “Do you see the fire?” certainly meant that Dogo was not there. He was just sitting there but his mind had roamed away. It would have been right for him to say, “I don’t see it because I have gone into my thoughts somewhere else.” But rather than telling the truth he said: “I see it.”The master asked Dogo – If you see it, can you tell me – “Where does the fire come from?” Now he is asking from where do all things come from – the fire is only a symbol – and where do they go finally? What is the source from which they arise and what is the point where they disappear?To the meditator it becomes slowly clear that the source and the goal are one. The same point is the source; the energy moves in a circle and comes back to the same point. You are at the same point both times – when you are born and when you die. You may have changed much meanwhile – so much experience, so much knowledge – that’s why you miss the pure innocence of death. You missed the innocence of birth because of your ignorance, and you miss the innocence of death because of your knowledge.Of course you were not expected to recognize innocence in your birth, you can be forgiven for that; you were not told or taught. The experience was so new, you could not even name it. But the man who dies full of knowledge again misses the innocence because of his knowledgeability.In mystic circles around the world, it has been a long-standing understanding that unless a man is just like his birth-innocence when he dies, he missed the whole point and the whole dance of life, he missed the whole significance of life. He has taken a long route of seventy or eighty years and has come back to the source, but missed it again.In India, the word for the experience of this circle, the word that is used is sansara. Sansara means both the world and the circle. The whole world is a circular experience. In the beginning you are innocent; you should be innocent at the end. Then your life has been a great life of love, of understanding, of many flowers, of many blessings. You have not lived insanely, you have lived intelligently, you have lived meditatively; you have lived out of silence, not out of anxiety, anguish, and thoughts.A man is complete only when at the moment of his death he is again the same as he was when he was born, again a child – the second childhood.So when Dogo was asked by the master, “Where does the fire come from?” the fire was just an excuse. He was asking, “From where do things come and where do they go?”But Dogo again missed. Rather than answering the question: Dogo said, “I would like you to ask me something that has nothing to do with walking around or zazen or lying down” – at which Isan left off talking and went away. Dogo has closed all the doors. He is saying, “You should ask me something which is not concerned with zazen – that is intense meditation – or a walking meditation, or a lying down meditation.”Buddha used all actions in life as an opportunity to meditate. Walking, you should walk meditatively, each step with full awareness. Lying down, you should lie down with awareness, not just out of old habit. And zazen is the intense and urgent quality of meditativeness.Dogo is saying to his master, who has asked: “Where does the fire come from?” He has not answered the question because that question implies meditation. Only in meditation can you know that everything comes from the same source and goes back to the same eternity. Nothing ever dies, nothing is ever born; everything is, only forms go on changing. What was wood sometime before is now fire; what is fire soon will be smoke.These are the ways of disappearing into the ultimate reality. The fire was hidden, for so long it remained hidden in the tree. Now it has blossomed, just as flowers blossom; it has come out of the prison. A little dance, a little joyful life, and the fire will turn into smoke. Smoke will have a little joyful life and slowly, slowly will disappear into the eternal. This implies a meditative experience.Rather than answering it, because only a meditator can answer from where the fire comes… Unless you know your own center, how can you answer from where your fire comes? Your life is a fire, and where does it go finally? Does it disappear outside or does it again relapse into the origin? Only the meditator has known the secrets of inner life. Life sometimes is dormant in the center and sometimes comes to the circumference, and when tired goes back to the center.One of the greatest men in history was Patanjali, who created a whole science of Yoga single-handed. It is very difficult to create a whole science alone. Five thousand years have passed and not a single word has been added because it is so complete; neither has a single word been taken out. The system is so complete in itself that there is no possibility to go beyond Patanjali as far as Yoga is concerned.But only people who go deeper into themselves will know that they are carrying both the source and the goal at the same center. Everything comes from the same center of the universe and goes back finally into the same center.But rather than answering the question – perhaps he was not able to answer it – on the contrary, he was closing all doors. He was saying: “I would like you to ask me something that has nothing to do with walking” – because in Zen monasteries there is a special place for walking meditation – “or zazen” – which is sitting meditation – “or lying down.”These three meditations are followed by all meditators on the path of Zen. He is saying, “Leave these out and ask me something.”Now, Zen is not concerned with anything else. In fact, there have been cases when a new disciple comes to a master and the master almost always asks, “From where are you coming?” The authentic seeker will say, “I don’t know. I have come to you to find out from where I am coming.” This kind of disciple will be immediately accepted.But instead of it he says, “From some town, some village…”And the master asks, “How much is the price of rice in that village?”And the person starts talking about the prices, not knowing that the master is trying to find out whether this man has the capacity, the consistency to be a meditator.One Sufi mystic, Bayazid, went to his master for the first time. The master was staying in a mosque. Bayazid entered the mosque – he was perfectly alone, as far as could be seen – but the master immediately said, “Keep the crowd out! Come alone, this is not a place for the crowd.”Bayazid looked all around and said, “What crowd? There is no one here except me.”The master said, “Don’t look around, look in. You have been carrying a whole crowd – all the friends you have left behind, your wife, your children, your parents. They had all come to say good-bye to you at the boundary of the village, but they are still in your mind. I am talking about that crowd. Just go out, and until that crowd is gone don’t come in.”It took one year for Bayazid. He remained outside, sitting, watching his mind, waiting for the moment when the mind was empty. The moment he found, “Now the crowd is gone,” he entered the mosque.The master hugged him and told him, “My hands are small, I cannot hug a whole crowd. Now you have come alone, something is possible.”Once, Isan was asked by Ichu to compose a gatha for him.Gatha means a poem. Ordinarily that question is not right; it is asked only at the time when the master is dying. The disciples ask as a memorial, “Just write down a small poem. Your last word, in your own handwriting, will be our greatest treasure.” That last word is called gatha.…Isan was asked by Ichu to compose a gatha for him. That was so stupid a question because Isan was not going to die.Isan replied: “It is foolish to compose one when face-to-face…”When I am face-to-face with you, read me, read my heart. A gatha is written when a master is dying because he will not be available anymore. It is so foolish to ask such a thing when we are face-to-face. Feel my presence.“…and, in any case, writing things on paper!”Isan is saying, “In the first place, it is foolish when I am present not to rejoice in my presence, not to dance with my presence, not to be ecstatic and drunk with my presence. And secondly: …in any case, writing things on paper! What will be their value? When you cannot understand the living master and his word, that dead paper, that dead ink – what are you going to do with it?”So Ichu went to Kyozan, a disciple of Isan, and made the same request.In response, Kyozan drew a circle on paper and wrote a note next to it…It is a beautiful note. He has not compiled a gatha, but he has responded in a different, unique way, in his own way.He has not composed a poem; on the contrary, he:…drew a circle on the paper and wrote a note next to it that said: “To think and then know is the second grade. Not to think and then know is the third grade.”He has left out the first grade because something has to be left for the disciple to find. What is the first grade? He says: “Not to think and then know is the third grade. To think and then know is the second grade.”But Ichu did not ask him, “What is the first grade?” The first grade is just to know; no question of thinking or not thinking, but just to know.The moment you enter deep meditation you pass through many things: the thinking mind, the feeling heart. You come into a space where everything is empty, only witnessing has remained. That witnessing is the only authentic knowing; that is the first grade.But Ichu went on missing. In all these sutras he could not make a single step deeper into the mystery of life, although every possibility was made available to him.Soseki wrote:Don’t ask why the pine treesin the front gardenare gnarled and crooked.The straightnessthey were born withis right there inside them.It is a very significant statement. You see the tree – a pine tree or any tree which is not straight for any reason. Circumstances may not have allowed it to be straight, or perhaps the gardener did not want it to be straight, but in the innermost being of the tree the possibility of being straight is still there.All these poems are about you. Whatever the symbol – the fire or the pine tree – these symbols don’t matter; they simply give you an indication.Don’t ask why the pine treesin the front gardenare gnarled and crooked.The straightnessthey were born withis right there inside them.This is exactly the case with you all. Whatever you have become, however far you have gone from your natural potential, it does not matter. Your buddha remains within you. Your straightness remains within you. You can come back home any moment you decide with totality and utter urgency. Nothing can prevent you.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Last night I saw for the first time that the mind need not be inimical to meditation. Does what you said about the mind accepting enlightenment also apply to its acceptance before enlightenment, of, for example, witnessing? Can the mind acknowledge that witnessing is often more useful than thinking, and so just step aside in those moments without throwing a tantrum?Maneesha, it is impossible. Enlightenment has to be first. As an experience, the mind can understand it, and seeing its gracefulness in action can become a friend to it. But before enlightenment, the mind can only believe, it cannot become a friend.The mind can only believe that there is enlightenment. At the most the belief is possible – but belief is of no use. The mind has to experience enlightenment in function, not as a belief but as activity. And the same is the case with witnessing: the mind will always be against witnessing because it stops the mind’s long heritage of thinking. The mind is familiar with thinking; witnessing at the most can become a thought, but it cannot become an actuality.You have to put the mind aside to become a witness, and obviously the mind resists it. Who wants to be put aside? And particularly from a place where the mind has been the master for centuries. And you want to put it aside for something that you don’t know what it is? The mind will not allow you to remain a witness for long.You can try a small experiment. Just put your wristwatch in front of yourself, start looking at the second hand and remain watching and witnessing. You will be surprised: not even fifteen seconds have passed and you have fallen and forgotten that you are witnessing. Some other thoughts have come. Suddenly you will awaken after a few seconds: “My God, it was only fifteen seconds!” Not even sixty seconds – one minute – can you persist in witnessing. The force and the flood of the mind is too big.That’s why an articulate master creates strange devices to put the mind aside without making it an enemy because sooner or later, when you become enlightened, the same mind has to be used as a friend. It is a very useful mechanism. But in the beginning it is going to be against any effort to put it aside.Meditation is nothing but putting the mind aside, putting the mind out of the way, and bringing a witnessing which is always there but hidden underneath the mind. This witnessing will reach your center, and once you have become enlightened, then there is no problem. Then bring the mind in tune with you. It is a great art. First you have to put the mind aside, then you have to bring the mind back again, but now it comes as a slave. It used to be the master before, so if you try before enlightenment, it is going to throw all kinds of tantrums. There is no need because those tantrums will hinder your progress into witnessing. Just don’t create the enemy.Silently start witnessing, without making a direct attack on the mind. You have to be very careful to reach the center. Mind will try in every way to take you away for a worldwide tour. And it allures, persuades you, gives you great promises: “Where are you going? What is there inside? The boyfriend is waiting outside the gate and you are going inside. The party is arranged in the Blue Diamond – and who has ever heard of a party inside?”The mind will create many kinds of things, but you have to very lovingly and carefully put it aside. Remember my words, lovingly and carefully. Don’t hurt the mind because the mind will be of much use after enlightenment. Before enlightenment it is your hindrance; after enlightenment it is an immensely complicated mechanism which can be used for all kinds of things. Then it is no longer your enemy. Just the master has to be awakened, and once the mind sees the immense light inside you, it spontaneously falls in tune. There is no question of fighting. But before enlightenment, the mind will give every fight if you are going to leave it behind or put it aside. This is simple psychology.Gurdjieff used to say that in a class where the master has gone out, there is havoc. Children are shouting, jumping, fighting, doing whatsoever they always wanted to do, but could not do because of the master. And then the master comes in and every child is sitting in their place looking into their book. That does not mean that they are reading; that simply means they are showing that they are occupied and that there is silence.Gurdjieff used to say that something almost similar happens when you become enlightened. The master comes in and the mind, seeing the master, suddenly recognizes what its position is. Before such a splendor it is reduced. At that moment you can make a friendship with the mind and it will be immensely happy to be of any service to the eternity that you have brought with you. But don’t try it before enlightenment: then the mind is going to give you unnecessary trouble. The more you will fight with the mind, the more you will be engaged in the mind rather than becoming a witness.Witnessing is simply slipping out of the mind – a very graceful way because the moment you start witnessing the very thought process, you have slipped out without creating any fight. You are just watching the caravan of thoughts within you. You are no longer part; you are standing aside, by the side of the road, and the traffic is passing. You are not in a fighting mood, you are not even judgmental. You don’t say, “This is good and that is wrong.” Whatever is passing, your whole work is just to see. Soon this silent seeing…and the mind is put aside.It is witnessing that will take you to enlightenment. After enlightenment the mind can be used, can be very significantly used. It is the greatest biological evolution. It has not to be thrown away in the wastepaper basket; it has to be used. But first find the master who can use it. Right now the mind is using you. Everybody is a mind slave unless he is enlightened. Then enlightenment is you and the mind becomes your slave.It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. I have found the secret of his rainbow turban: he keeps it tightly bound around his head, otherwise it will be very difficult to be patient so long. And he is very clever also because when everybody starts throwing all kind of gibberish, that turban protects it.Farmer Meadow-Muffin’s barn catches fire and burns down in the middle of the night.The next day, the insurance man, George Grabbit, comes to inspect the damage. “It is the company policy,” explains Grabbit, “to build a replacement barn of the same size and with the same materials, instead of paying you cash for the damage.”“Well, if that’s the way your company does business,” snorts the farmer, “you can cancel the insurance on my wife!”Herman Humpski is getting married to Hilda, his childhood sweetheart, but he is very worried because he is not sure about what to do on the wedding night.He confides in his experienced friend, Kowalski, who thinks for a moment, and then comes up with an idea. “Listen,” says Kowalski, “no need to worry. I will take the hotel room next to your honeymoon suite and when it is time to go to bed, just sneak into the bathroom and I will give you instructions through the wall.”“Great idea!” says Herman, very relieved, and the two of them go to book the hotel rooms.The wedding goes fine and at the reception, the cake is served by Hilda, the bride, who manages to eat an enormous quantity of it herself.Later, at the honeymoon hotel, the young couple are getting ready for bed, when Herman sneaks into the bathroom, locks the door and knocks on the wall. Kowalski and Herman have difficulty in hearing each other through the wall, so the instructions take a long time.Meanwhile, back in the bedroom, Hilda is dying to relieve herself of the mountain of wedding cake she has eaten. She pounds on the bathroom door but Herman will not let her in.Finally, in desperation, she shits in a shoe box and leaves her deposit outside the bathroom door.Sure enough, when Herman has received all Kowalski’s instructions, he flings open the bathroom door and steps right into the shoe box.“Ah!” cries Herman, “this box is full of shit!”From the other side of the bathroom wall, Kowalski shouts, “You idiot! Turn her over!”Pope the Polack is shocked and horrified to learn that many of his Roman Catholic priests are catching AIDS. So, in a hopeless attempt to try and preserve Christianity, he issues an edict. The edict states that all his cardinals, bishops, and priests should become married immediately – to women.Everything goes beautifully and all sorts of strange and wonderful Catholic weddings take place. Of course, the biggest of them all is Pope the Polack’s own wedding to Sister Suzie, at the Vatican in Rome.The Vatican is packed with priests and politicians getting ready for the big event. And in his chambers, Pope the Polack is getting dressed in his best pope outfit, aided by his best man, Ronald Reagan.“Are you sure that you will be able to manage married life?” asks Reagan.“It should be simple, Ronnie,” replies the Polack pope, admiring himself in the mirror.“Yes, but you have been celibate all your life, haven’t you?” says Reagan. “Are you sure that your machinery will work?”“Ah! don’t worry,” replies the pope, confidently. “I tried it with my own hands last night, and now,” he adds, crossing himself, “it is in the hands of God!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes, and feel your body to be completely frozen.Now you are ready to go inward with all your consciousness, with all your life energy. Move toward the center of your being. That is from where you have come and that is to where everybody goes back.Deeper and deeper… The deeper you go, the more fragrant becomes the air. The deeper you go, suddenly flowers start showering on you. At the deepest point you are the buddha.The buddha simply means witnessing, pure witnessing. Just witness: the body is there, the mind is there, but you are neither.You are a separate force which comes from the center, and the center is joined with eternity. It knows no birth, no death. This buddha is your ultimate potential, the very Everest of consciousness. Great is the splendor of this moment.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax, and continue to remember witnessing. Witnessing is the only thing in you that is eternal. Everything else is temporal; only witnessing is your reality, your very soul. I call it the buddha because it is a great awakening.This moment the Buddha Auditorium has become a lake of consciousness without any ripples. It is such a joy to join the cosmos, such a joy for the dewdrop to disappear into the ocean.The evening was beautiful in itself, but your presence and your tremendous experiment have made it a thousandfold more beautiful, more graceful. The whole existence is rejoicing because you have reached the center of your being.Collect all the fragrance that you can manage. Remember, any moment you become a witness, you are a buddha. So bring the buddha with you.Soon Nivedano will be calling you back. Before that, collect as many treasures as possible, and persuade the buddha to come with you. It is your very innermost core, it is not something separate. It has remained hidden inside. Now you have to bring it to the circumference, to your ordinary life.If we can create a great number of buddhas around the world, we can have a great transformation happening. More love, more songs, more ceremonies…Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but with the grace of a buddha, silently, peacefully. Sit down for a few moments collecting the experience.Each day you are becoming richer and richer. Each day your circumference is coming closer to your center. Each day you are bringing buddha more and more in your day-to-day life.I am against renunciation. I want buddhas to be here in the world doing all kinds of things. It was unfortunate in the past that buddhas escaped from the world. If they had remained in the world, we would not have been so barbarous. More humanity and more culture and more consciousness would have been available to us.That’s why I say nobody has to leave the world. We have to transform it. We are bringing a new approach in religion. You don’t go away from the world, but rather go deeper into it and change it. This is more courageous, more rebellious, more significant.

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Isan No Footprints in the Blue Sky 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Isan No Footprints in the Blue Sky 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Once, to Kyozan, Isan commented: “All the buddhas in the samadhi enter a speck of dust and turn the great wheel of the law.”Kyozan said to him, “How about you?”Isan responded, “There is someone; making him an example, we can get it from him.”Kyozan pointed to a water bottle and said, “Please get in it.”Isan’s response was: “All the buddhas by their occult powers are at present in the mouth of the bottle, turning the great wheel of the law. Can you see them doing it?”Kyozan then said, “This is the turning of all the buddhas. How will you turn it?”Isan observed, “It cannot be done if we are separated from the thing itself” – at which Kyozan made his bows.Maneesha, before I discuss the sutras, something of great importance has to be understood. Zen is neither Buddhism nor Taoism; it is a crossbreed. When the great Bodhidharma met the masters of Taoism in China, the meeting and their dialogues created something new, which has the flavor of Buddhism in it but is not dependent on Buddhist literature. It has also the flavor of Tao in it, but is not dependent on Taoist tradition. It is independent of both the parents.As all crossbreeds are better than the parents – even philosophical systems, theological ways, meditation, function in the same way as fruit, as animals, as human beings – the crossbreed by nature itself takes the best of both the parents and leaves all that is nonessential.Zen’s greatness and height is because it has left all the nonessentials of Buddhism and all the nonessentials of Taoism. Two great peaks have merged into a higher peak, which has only the flavor of both. But the synthesis of the flavors makes it a totally new phenomenon.Hence the traditional Buddhist will not give any credit to Zen. He will simply laugh and will say, “It is just crazy.” The traditional Taoist also will say the same thing: “It is crazy. It is not part of our system.” But this became a great opportunity to rebel against all traditions. Zen is pure rebellion.But unfortunately, the way history moves, even the very rebellious people… Gautam Buddha himself was a great rebellious mind; he rebelled against Hinduism, he rebelled against Jainism, he rebelled against the whole past of India. He had the guts and the genius to do it.But this is the unfortunate part: sooner or later Buddha had to die and his words would then fall into the hands of the scholars. He could not prevent it – although his last premonition was this: “Don’t make me an institution. Don’t make me a tradition! I have been against the traditional way; I don’t want to myself become a tradition, but I will not be here to prevent you. So my last words are: Don’t make my statues, don’t make my temples, don’t write my scriptures – so that I can disappear just like the birds’ footprints in the blue sky. Don’t be worried that my disappearance will be in any way a disturbance in the evolution of humanity. Better buddhas will be coming, greater revolutionaries will be coming. I don’t want to stand in their way.”But nobody listens. The moment he died, the next thing his disciples did was to collect all that he had said in forty-two years’ of continually speaking, morning and evening. And he had not allowed anybody to take notes, for the simple reason that these notes would become scriptures. But the words were so profound that the first gathering – just the second day after Buddha’s death – decided that all the enlightened disciples should gather together. There were five hundred enlightened disciples. This was called the first great meeting and they decided that everybody should relate his experience, “So we can somehow collect the great treasure that is going to disappear if we don’t collect it now.”One can understand their concern that Buddha should not be lost for the future generations. But one can also understand that although they were enlightened, they could not agree about Buddha’s last statement, his last words, and they did not even feel that they were disagreeing. So each person who had heard whatever Buddha had said related whatever he remembered. There were great troubles because somebody said something and somebody else contradicted it saying that Buddha had said something else.Soon it was clear that they were not all agreeing. Thirty-two schools arose; thirty-two different schools and traditions – each claiming to be the right tradition – and they started to make Buddha’s statues, scriptures. In the whole world nobody else’s statues exist more than Buddha’s.When the Arabians and Persians came into contact in Mongolia with the statues of Buddha, they had never seen anybody’s statue, so Buddha’s statue became to them exactly the word that symbolizes statue: buth. Buth is a form of buddha; they did not make any distinction because there were no other statues – only Buddha’s statues – so buddha became synonymous with buth. Even today in Urdu, in Persian, in Arabic, buth means statue. It is derived from Buddha, the man who has forbidden making his statues.Buddhism became a tradition and again somebody of the same genius and greatness had to revolt against the tradition. It was not a revolt against Buddha; it was a revolt against the traditionalism, the ritualism. The priests with whom he had been fighting his whole life had come back; the scholars had again become important.Bodhidharma rebelled against the Buddhist tradition, and part of his rebellion was meeting with the Tao and bringing all the flowers of Tao and creating a new experience. But he was as unaware of the fact as Buddha was. Buddha was saying, “Don’t make a tradition of me,” but the tradition was made. Bodhidharma rebelled against the tradition, but was not aware that he also would fall into the same trap of the human mind. He became a tradition himself.Soon it was realized by Ma Tzu that this is a sad story, that Bodhidharma, a man of fire, burning all scriptures, destroying all beliefs… Ma Tzu was also of the same caliber. To revolt is not easy. You need to have tremendous resources within you; otherwise you become futile, your words don’t have the traditional depth. Tradition gives a certain depth, a certain richness, a certain refinement. A single individual, if he stands against all tradition, needs to be of a great genius, of great creativity.Ma Tzu rebelled against the traditionalism that had grown after Bodhidharma. He introduced totally new ideas, new devices – hitting, shouting. Nobody had ever heard that you can wake up a man just by shouting at the right moment; it was a great contribution to human consciousness that hitting can become a reward.In the hands of Ma Tzu, Zen became fresh again – as fresh as Buddha wanted it to be. After a thousand years, Buddha would have loved Bodhidharma and Ma Tzu, the people who rebelled. A rebellious spirit loves the very creativity that any rebel brings to any action, thought, meditation, art, music. But Ma Tzu again – it has to be, it seems, a matter of course that every rebellious person also becomes a tradition.Isan also wanted to rebel against Ma Tzu. It was not against Ma Tzu, but the Ma Tzu that the tradition had created. It is a strange phenomenon: Isan loved Ma Tzu as he loved Buddha and Bodhidharma, but he could not accept the rituals that had grown afterward, when they had died.But Isan was not that great a genius. He could not be compared to Ma Tzu or Bodhidharma. He was very polite and his politeness prevented his rebelling completely. You cannot be polite and revolutionary; you have to be iconoclastic and you have to hit hard against the dead tradition. Politeness will make you respectable, but not revolutionary. And that is what happened – it is a misfortune. Isan became a respectable master. Because he became respectable he lost the grandeur of a revolutionary.Whenever a person becomes respectable, he cannot say anything against the mass mind. The collective unconsciousness will feel hurt if he says anything revolutionary, and anything revolutionary will take away the respectability.He was very respected, and he managed the respect. That’s where he lost the beauty of rebellion. That shows in his sutras: they are not very great or very profound; they are good enough, but very lukewarm. Just because he wanted to rebel against the rituals that had grown after Ma Tzu, Isan left shouting, he left hitting – but he could not substitute anything else in their place. So he became in a way very poor. His humbleness was great, his simplicity was great, but he could not contribute anything new or profound to human consciousness.You have to remember it: respectability and rebellion don’t go together. If you want respectability, you have to conform to the society – and the society consists of blind people. Even though you have eyes, you have to walk like the blind, you have to keep your eyes closed. If you want respectability from the blind… They can give respectability only to another blind person. A man who has eyes does not belong to the masses, seems to be a stranger. Isan could not gather the courage to be a stranger.Those who have lived a life of being a stranger come to know strange things, which ordinarily you will not come across in life. Just the other day I received a letter from a sannyasin who was present in a Jaina gathering, which had also one night invited the great poets of the country. One of the greatest poets of contemporary India, Neeraj, was there – he has been here, so you are all acquainted with him – and he was hooted down, forced to leave the stage, and the reason was that he mentioned my name. He introduced himself before the recital saying, “All my poetry belongs to Osho. He is my source of inspiration.”Thousands of other writers and poets go on repeating what I am saying, but don’t have the courage to make it clear to people from where their inspiration comes. Sheer fear of the crowd! But Neeraj is a man of all the qualities of a lion. He said, “It does not matter even if you shout. This hooliganism, this gunda-ism, won’t make any difference.” He left the stage saying, “Long live Osho!”People are afraid to come here and you can see the reason: if somebody knows that they have been here, then they must be connected with me in some way or other. There are many people who want to be here, but do not have the guts to face the masses. Even to come to hear me needs courage! Nobody is asked to agree with me; they may disagree with me – but they cannot come to listen to me even for disagreement. They read my books hiding them under the covers of other books because if somebody knows that they are reading my books, their respectability is at risk.One of the chief ministers of Gujarat used to come here before he became chief minister. After becoming chief minister he stopped coming; not only did he stop coming, he told my secretary, “You should not come to see me for any work in Gujarat because I don’t want anybody to know that I have been influenced by Osho, or have any association with Osho.” Then he was defeated and again he started coming here. When you are defeated there is no need to fear: already people are not in your favor. He came here a few months ago. I told my secretary, “Anyway I am not seeing anybody – and particularly I will not see this man who is such a coward that when he comes to power, he sends the message that it should be kept a secret that he has been following me, attending my camps. I don’t like such cowardly sheepish human beings.”He understood that that is right. Now he has again become the chief minister and I told one of my sannyasins there, “Ask him: does he want to see me?” He said, “Just don’t mention his name – at least while I am in power!”To be rebellious you have to live as a stranger amongst your own people. Isan had the possibility of becoming a rebel – and then there would have been some profoundness in his statements. In his anecdotes some new quality, some new dimension, some new flowers may have blossomed. But because of respectability he kept his rebellious spirit dormant. So once in a while something comes out; otherwise he is an example of a rebel who has repressed his rebellion.A small biographical note:Isan’s foremost disciple was Kyozan, also known as Yang-shan.You will be wondering why all these masters have two names. The reason is because of China and Japan; one name is Chinese and one name is Japanese.Between master and disciple a new sect was established, known as the Kuei-Yang school.Isan tried his best to rebel against Ma Tzu, so between the master and the disciple – between Isan and Kyozan – a new school was established; its name was Kuei-Yang.It was characterized by the distinction made between the Zen of meditation based on the Lankavatara sutra, and instantaneous Zen, which completely divorced itself from the sutra.The Lankavatara sutra is one of the most profound books in the world. It contains the very essentials of Buddha, and hence it is respected and loved throughout all the Buddhist countries. China, Japan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Tibet, Taiwan, Korea – the whole Far East loves the Lankavatara sutra. It has tremendous beauty. It is not like other religious books; it has a great poetry in it, it is a creative work of art.This new sect that Isan and his foremost disciple Kyozan established was against the Lankavatara sutra. It was a difficult task. I don’t think Isan or Kyozan was capable of doing it. Of course, Ma Tzu could have done it. They didn’t have that genius, but still what they did was good. Every rebellion is good, even if it is a small rebellion.The Lankavatara sutra fundamentally preaches gradual enlightenment, which seems to be more rational, practical, and understandable. Step-by-step you move and discipline yourself, and when the time is ripe and you have come to the point where enlightenment is supposed to happen, it will happen. But it is not an instantaneous thing; it is not like instant coffee. You have to prepare yourself to receive it and that preparation can take years. Twenty years, thirty years it may take for you to become a vehicle for enlightenment.It was a logical system, hence the Lankavatara sutra had never been opposed. Even people like Ma Tzu and Bodhidharma did not mention it. They simply avoided it. They did what they wanted to do – which goes against Lankavatara sutra – but they did not mention it because they also loved it. Its beauty is so profound that to go against it will look almost like going against yourself. So they did not mention it, they simply bypassed it because their preaching was instantaneous Zen. They were opposing the Lankavatara sutra in the very foundations, but they were capable – Bodhidharma and Ma Tzu, these two persons were certainly capable – of bringing a new insight: Drop the idea of gradualness and bring the idea of instantaneous Zen.Its implications are great. The moment you drop the gradual Zen, all discipline becomes useless, all rituals become useless, all worshipping becomes useless. The only thing that remains significant is meditation, and to remain in the present as a witness. I agree with them, rather than with Lankavatara sutra.And that was the effort of Isan – but he was not that great a genius to bring out something great and profound, comparable to Lankavatara sutra. So he was in a difficulty.The school that evolved through the work of Isan and Kyozan was an effort to formalize the anti-sutra position of Ma Tzu.Ma Tzu had an anti-sutra position, but Ma Tzu had the quality to create something as a substitute – because you cannot take away from people’s hands something that gives them consolation. You have to substitute something for it, otherwise your work is destructive, not constructive – and both Bodhidharma and Ma Tzu substituted.Bodhidharma had his own methods, not included in the Lankavatara sutra. Ma Tzu went even further; nobody had ever before heard of his methods of shouting and beating. His effort was so new – that enlightenment is possible if the master hits you at the right moment, or shouts at you at the right moment; his very shout takes your consciousness to the deepest center of your being. What meditation does slowly, slowly, a good shout of the master, unexpectedly, in a situation when the disciple was asking some question, and the master jumps and shouts, or hits him, or throws him out of the door, or jumps over him… These methods were never known. It was purely the very creative genius of Ma Tzu and he made many people enlightened.Sometimes it looks so hilarious: he threw a man from the window, from a two-story house, and the man had come to ask on what to meditate. And Ma Tzu not only threw him, he jumped after him, fell on him, sat on his chest, and he said, “Got it?”And the poor fellow said, “Yes” – because if you say “No,” he may beat you or do something else. It is enough – his body is fractured and Ma Tzu, sitting on his chest, says, “Got it?”And in fact he got it because it was so sudden, out of the blue – he could never have conceived it. He had heard that Ma Tzu hits people, Ma Tzu shouts at people, but he had never heard that he throws them from a two-story building. He had multiple fractures and then Ma Tzu jumped on him and sat on his chest. At that moment he was absolutely in such a shock that the mind stopped functioning – and that was the purpose of the whole thing. Because the mind stopped functioning, and Ma Tzu was sitting on his chest, looking into his eyes – a great silence, the same blissfulness that comes out of meditation… What a strange way!His anti-sutra attitude – Ma Tzu burned sutras. Buddhists have more scriptures than any religion because thirty-two schools have their own scriptures, commentaries upon commentaries; it is a whole different world of literature. He burned sutras, but he substituted something.Isan wanted to be another Ma Tzu, but he had not the guts of that man. It is not easy to throw a man out of the window, and the man said, “What about my fractures?” Ma Tzu said, “Forget about the fractures! One day everybody has to die. You have died today. And there are only seven days to choose from – not much of a choice. But you have got it, and that is the essential thing.”In that utter shock the man simply moved to his center. In shocks that happens. Sometimes it has happened just accidentally: your car turns over on the road, rolls into a valley, takes a few turns. Obviously your mind will stop functioning and if you understand Zen, that is a great opportunity because you will be at the center. Death may occur, but if you know anything about Zen, it will not occur to you. It will occur only to your body – your consciousness will open its wings and fly to freedom.Zen has to be made available to every person in the world because no one knows – every day thousands of accidents happen, but because you don’t know how to use the accident you miss a great opportunity. You just get multi-fractures and a few months in the hospital – a chance that could have made you a buddha.I always think that if Ma Tzu were alive today, he may knowingly turn over a car on a cliff and send you rolling down, running after you, pulling you out from the wreckage, and asking you as the first question: “Got it?”But Isan was not another Ma Tzu because he remained concerned about his respectability. Ma Tzu dropped the idea of respectability. People like Ma Tzu don’t care a bit what the world thinks about them. The world thinks they are crazy – so what? They say, “We think that the world is crazy!”We are all equal in that way: the world thinks we are crazy; we think the world is crazy. The decisive factor is that our craziness is blissful and ecstatic and intelligent, and their craziness is just retardedness, misery, suffering. So if both are crazy, then too you have to choose our craziness. Your craziness is simply suffering, a tragedy that you go on carrying from the cradle to the grave, from one death to another birth, to another death. This is called the wheel of birth and death. That will come in the sutras.The sutra:Once, to Kyozan, Isan commented: “All the buddhas in the samadhi enter a speck of dust and turn the great wheel of the law.”It is a mythological wheel, which goes on turning, and you go on clinging to some spoke of the wheel. Again and again the same thing happens: the birth, the marriage, the business, the misery, the death – again the birth. But who goes on moving this wheel? That is the question that Kyozan is asking.“All the buddhas in the samadhi enter a speck of dust and turn the great wheel of the law.”Kyozan said to him, “How about you?”That’s where he shows his mildness, mellowness, humbleness. It is a mythological thing – no buddha turns into a speck of dust and no buddha turns the wheel; in fact every buddha is trying to get you out of the wheel. Every buddha is functioning to take you out of this wheel of birth and death. You have died and been born so many times, repeatedly, and you have been doing the same things again and again. You don’t get anything universal, immortal; you are just an actor in a drama. The curtain rises and the curtain falls, and it goes on and on.It is immensely good that you don’t remember your past lives, otherwise you will go instantly crazy because you have done all these things so many times that you cannot believe that you are such an idiot, so ancient an idiot; that you have been doing all these things for centuries, for many, many births – the same things, nothing has changed, you have not learned a single bit.Buddha’s work is to help you get out of this vicious circle.So the question is not right in the first place, but Isan, being always humble and trying to be polite, will not say so. If this question had been asked to Ma Tzu, he would have given such a good beating that the person would have never again asked any question. Ma Tzu declared again and again that “It does not matter what you say, you will still get a hit. Don’t think that I am hitting you because you are saying something wrong! I am hitting you because you are saying something – and I want you to reach the place where nothing can be said.”So whether you are saying something right or wrong does not matter; it is just superficial. The hit is certain. And in what way will it come? It is spontaneous. Nobody knows whether he will throw you, or hit you on your chest with his leg, and he used to have a big staff… And he was really perhaps the rarest man in the world; he walked like a cow, on all fours, and he looked like a tiger. His eyes were as fiery as any tiger’s can be, and this behavior – walking like a cow his whole life… He never walked like a man; it was below his dignity. He was a very strong man, and you could expect anything from him – anything! One never knew what he was going to do. But still the man was lovable.If this question had been asked to Ma Tzu, multiple fractures were absolutely certain because the question is utterly baseless.But Isan was a humble person. So when Kyozan asked him: “How about you?” You are also a buddha. Have you turned into a speck of dust? And do you help the rolling of the eternal wheel of dharma?Isan responded, “There is someone; making him an example, we can get it from him.”He avoided the question, “How about you?” because to say “Yes, I am also a buddha,” needs much more humbleness than Isan possessed. To declare yourself a buddha is not a declaration of ego because egolessness is the essential part of a buddha. The moment you say, “I am a buddha,” you are saying, “I am no more.” It is only a different way of saying that you don’t exist – only a pure awareness, a witnessing.Kyozan pointed into a water bottle and said, “Please get in it.”If you are a buddha, and you can become a speck of dust, then here is a bottle – enter it.”Isan’s response was: “All the buddhas by their occult powers are at present in the mouth of the bottle, turning the great wheel of the law. Can you see them doing it?”Now he is not being relevant. Rather than saying clearly, “Your question is absolutely absurd,” rather than saying, “Yes, I am a buddha, but no buddha turns the wheel; every buddha is trying to stop the wheel of life, so that everybody can be immortal – without any birth and without any death”… So he goes on getting into more trouble. Just because he wants to remain humble, not to be like Bodhidharma…Bodhidharma told the emperor Wu of China, “You are an absolute idiot!” Anyone else, Wu would have cut off his head, but looking at Bodhidharma he could see that “In comparison to him I am nothing more than an idiot. He is not being rude; he is simply being factual.” That shows the great cultured mind of the emperor. But Isan has not that quality, so he goes on getting into more trouble.Kyozan brought a bottle and said: “Please get in it.” It should be an example for you that whenever you are getting into any absurdity, stop in the beginning! The deeper you go, the more difficult it becomes to stop it. If you have taken one step into absurdity, you will have to take another step to be consistent with yourself – and where will it end? It is better from the very beginning to say, “This is nonsense!”But Kyozan was his chief disciple, and between the two of them they have created a new school of Zen. So naturally he could not be rude with Kyozan who was his successor. Isan was too considerate of the other person and that was his failing. That is the reason the Zen people in Japan have ignored him completely. Nobody talks about Isan.It will give you an insight that you can have respectability among your contemporaries, but nobody will remember you in the coming centuries. You will be forgotten completely, like a name written on water. But those who are condemned by their contemporaries may be remembered for centuries to come.I am reminded of Socrates. The chief justice, who pronounced the judgment of a death sentence on Socrates by giving him poison – that was the Greek way – called Socrates close to him. Socrates had been arguing for days in the court. Nobody was able to argue with him, for the simple reason that Socrates himself had no position. He never proposed anything – any god that you can discuss, that you can argue against or for. He never proposed anything. So you were in a difficult position: whatever you said, he could contradict it. He was a great genius as far as argumentation was concerned. He contradicted everybody, finished everybody. The chief justice was impressed by him.But in Greece in those days there were only city states and a very different kind of democracy. The whole city had the right to vote on any decision, and a decision on the fate of Socrates was so important that the whole city gathered. Against his will – the chief justice could see that this man was innocent, and this man was a glory to his land. But fifty-one percent of the people of Athens wanted him to be killed. It was just a question of two percent of the people this way or that way: forty-nine percent of the people were in favor of Socrates’ being released. But that was not the question; the decision depended on the percentage.The chief justice decided against Socrates, even though he did not want to do such a thing. Before telling the masses who had gathered to listen to the judgment, he asked Socrates, “Of course I have to judge against you because fifty-one percent of the people of the city are against you. Personally I am not in favor of killing you. So I will give you a few alternatives: the first is that you can go out of Athens. There, the law of Athens is no longer applicable. You can be just on the boundary, so people can meet you there.”Socrates refused. He said, “I cannot go anywhere else. If Athens, which is the most cultured city in Greece, cannot allow me to live, who is going to allow me to live? There I will be more of a stranger. Here I have lived my whole life. I have not harmed anybody – but still fifty-one percent of the people are against me, they want me dead. Anywhere else the same thing will happen.”The chief justice had to agree that that was true. He said, “The second alternative is: you stop teaching and take a vow of silence.”Socrates said, “That is impossible! So many people are stumbling in darkness, and I know the way and I can show them the way. No, I cannot remain silent, seeing people stumbling in darkness and blindness. I will have to speak.”The judge said, “You are making things impossible for me. Then the only alternative is: you have to be ready because by the evening you will be given poison.”Socrates said, “That is not much of a problem. One has to die one day; perhaps my day has come. I am ready! I just want you to remember that your name will only be remembered in reference to me. Otherwise nobody will ever know that you existed.”And it is true. Nobody would have known who the chief justice was if Socrates had not been poisoned and killed. But Socrates certainly is going to remain in the memories of men as long as human beings are here on this planet.Isan is forgotten, purposely because he considered public opinion more, and an authentic master does not consider what the public says. He is not here to agree with someone; he is here to declare his truth. Whether anybody agrees with it or not, it is immaterial. But that is the difficulty. Isan understood humbleness in a very wrong sense. His humbleness became a compromise, his humbleness became a fear. Otherwise it was so clear that he should have told Kyozan in the beginning, “What are you talking about? – buddhas turning into dust? Only buddhas don’t turn into dust! They turn into a more cosmic consciousness.”But because he did not say anything against Kyozan, Kyozan asked him: “How about you?” Being a humble person, he could not say, “I am also a buddha.” That’s where Kyozan was trying to drive him: to show him whether he is really humble or not. But humbleness does not mean to compromise with lies, to compromise with absurd hypotheses. Humbleness does not mean to have a friendliness toward lies. Humbleness is not a sheep, it has to be a lion. But because he was trying to create a different school from Ma Tzu, he was caught in a difficulty: he could not shout, he could not hit, and all these other things that from the times of Buddha masters used to do. He wanted to create something new and original, and he was not capable of it.He was a simple man, a humble man – but not very courageous. And humbleness needs more courage than anything else; to be nothing needs more guts than to be something. When he was asked, “How about you?” he should have said, “I am a buddha – and no buddha helps turn the wheel of life and death, no buddha turns into dust. And you are being absolutely absurd: just because I am not Ma Tzu and I am trying to create a new school – you know perfectly well I will not shout and I will not hit you – that does not mean that you can go on asking absurd questions. I can at least say to you, silently, peacefully, lovingly, and without shouting: ‘Don’t be stupid!’” But even that he could not manage.Kyozan pointed to a water bottle and said, “Please get in it.” That’s what I am saying: Don’t agree with anything stupid, otherwise there is no way to turn back. Now he has accepted that buddhas turn into dust, he has accepted that buddhas turn the wheel of life and death, Kyozan is driving him deeper. He says, “Now, please get in this bottle. You are a buddha.”Isan’s response was: “All the buddhas by their occult powers are at present in the mouth of the bottle…” Such stupid nonsense! All the buddhas will choose a bottle in Isan’s house and they are all gathered in the neck of the bottle, so Isan cannot enter it because it is blocked. Once you accept any absurdity, then there is no end; you will have to accept more absurdities. You will become more and more of a mess.And what are all these buddhas doing there? – “…turning the great wheel of the law,” in the bottle! Even I would have hit him as hard as possible and I am a nonviolent person. He is saying, “They are turning the wheel of the law. Can you see them doing it?”Kyozan then said, “This is the turning of all the buddhas. How will you turn it?”Isan observed, “It cannot be done if we are separated from the thing itself” – at which Kyozan made his bows.Isan has not proved his mettle, although his last statement is correct – that’s why Kyozan made his bows. Kyozan has asked, “How will you turn it?”Isan observed, “It cannot be done if we are separated from the thing itself. “I am no more close to the wheel; I am still alive, I have not turned into a speck of dust. That’s why I am separate from the wheel and I cannot turn it.”But accepting the very idea that buddhas turn into dust, and then their work is only to turn the wheel of life and death, is so strange and so against the very spirit of Zen that Isan needs a good beating. If you meet him somewhere, on my behalf do a good job!Soseki wrote:Virtue and compassion togethermake up each one’s integrity.Nothing that comes through the gatefrom outsidecan be the family treasure.Throwing away the whole pilein your heart,with empty hands you come,bringing salvation.Beautiful poetry – and significant too.Virtue and compassion together make up each one’s integrity.Compassion in fact is another name of virtue. All acts of virtue are acts of compassion. They are not two, only two words for the same quality.Nothing that comes through the gatefrom outside can be the family treasure.He is saying, “Nothing that comes from the outside can be considered your treasure. Your treasure is already inside; it does not have to come from outside.”Throwing away the whole pile– that comes from outside –in your heart,with empty hands you come,bringing salvation.If you can throw away everything that comes from outside, your empty heart, your empty being is the greatest treasure, which brings salvation to you.That’s what we are doing in our meditations. Our meditations are concentrated Zen. In a very simple and joyful way, with a great playfulness, we are trying to find the treasure inside. There is no need to be serious about it. It is there – just a little moving inward, a single step in fact, and you have arrived at home.Maneesha has asked:Osho,These days when you say the word witness, it has the same impact that the words love or relationship once had. I listen as if it is actually food to nourish something vital inside.Is that the art of the master – to arouse appetites one never knew one had?Yes, Maneesha. The whole function of the master is to make you aware of your own thirst, of your own appetites, of your own longings that you have avoided facing.The whole art of the master is exactly to make you thirsty, hungry to reach your own being – because unless you reach your own being you will remain blind and you will remain in darkness. You will suffer birth and you will suffer death, and you will suffer all that happens between these two.…to take you beyond suffering, to allow you the freedom of the whole sky, to create an intense urgency because one never knows: I may not be here tomorrow; you may not be here tomorrow. Tomorrow is so uncertain – one has to gather all his forces in this moment if he wants to do something.Reaching your center is not something that can be postponed. Everything else can be postponed, but not your entering into your center because that is the very purpose of life. That is the only goal worth anything. And it is your source, so if you make an intense effort to search for it, you are bound to find it.Nobody can miss being a buddha; one can only postpone. You can postpone for tomorrow, for another life – but sooner or later, this century or another century, you cannot ultimately avoid coming into contact with your own nature. So why not do it now?But before you do it – because you may come back, or you may not come back… Nivedano does not allow you to go too far. The moment he sees that now a few people are going too far, immediately they are called back.And it is a very perfect time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh to have a good laugh because who knows? – one may or may not come back to laugh again. So before entering in, have a good laugh. This laughter will help you to be lightweight; this laughter will make your meditation a joyful, a beautiful, nonserious playfulness.All the religions down the ages have made meditation a great seriousness. I consider it to be one of the misfortunes because nobody wants to be serious – life is making people serious enough – and on top of it, nobody wants to get into any serious trouble.But meditation is not serious. It is just one of the easiest, most silent things, a dancing toward your being.But anyway, first comes Sardar Gurudayal Singh.Bonzo, the Australian boundary rider, hangs up his saddle for the last time.“Come on, Bill,” he says to his old faithful dog, “I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to become a truck driver.”Bonzo practices his driving skills for many days and finally goes for his truck driving test.“Now, tell me,” says the examiner, “what would you do if a kangaroo hopped in front of your truck?”“I would stop,” replies Bonzo, “and shoo it away.” “Good,” says the examiner, “and supposing you ran over a prickly pear and got a puncture, what would you do?”“I would have a few beers, eat the prickly pear, change the wheel, and then carry on,” replies Bonzo.“Good,” says the instructor. “And one more question: Supposing you are driving along a two-lane highway and you see a truck coming toward you. At the same time another truck is overtaking you, and then you see another truck overtaking the truck coming toward you. There is no chance of avoiding a huge collision. What would you do?”“Well,” says Bonzo, smiling gleefully, “then I would wake up Bill.”“Really?” asks the examiner. “Who is Bill?”“Bill is my dog,” replies Bonzo.“Really?” says the examiner. “And what good would that do, waking up your dog?”“It wouldn’t do any good,” replies Bonzo. “But Bill loves to see a good smash!”Gorgeous Gloria leaves the city one sunny morning for a drive in her little red Alfa Romeo sports car. She is speeding through the country lanes when suddenly there is a loud banging noise from the engine. Gloria pulls the car over to the side of the road and gets out.Obviously the car is not going any further and it is getting late, so Gloria walks to a nearby farmhouse to explain her trouble.Old Zeb, the farmer, offers a room to Gloria and she sleeps there for the night.The next morning, Gloria wanders into the barn and watches Zeb’s daughter milking a cow.“That looks like fun,” says Gloria. “Can I try?”“Sure,” replies the girl, getting up from the milking stool.Gloria sits down beside the cow, grabs its tits and starts squeezing. A couple of minutes later she asks the girl, “Hey, how long do you have to pull on these things before they get hard?”Rear Admiral Kowalski, the commander-in-chief of the Polack navy, decides to make a snap inspection of the Polack fleet. So he takes a small seaplane with Captain Cliffski, the ace pilot, to fly to the naval harbor.While they are in the air, Rear Admiral Kowalski takes the controls of the plane and starts to guide the seaplane toward a nearby runway.“Ahem! Excuse me, sir,” says Captain Cliffski, “but this plane can only land on water, not on the ground.”“Oh yes! Silly me!” says the old Polack sea dog, and he immediately turns the plane toward the harbor and makes a perfect touchdown on the water.As he gets out of his seat, Rear Admiral Kowalski turns to Captain Cliffski.“I want to thank you, captain,” he says, “for being so polite and tactful in telling me I was about to make a big mistake. You saved me from making a real fool of myself!”Rear Admiral Kowalski then salutes smartly, opens the door and steps out – straight into the sea!Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen.Now look inward, gathering all your consciousness, all your life energy – almost like a spear, piercing toward the center of your being. It is a single step; all that you need is a great urgency.Deeper and deeper… Remember, at the center only the witness remains, just like a small flame of awareness.It seems as if the body is miles away – and the mind is even farther away. You are just a witness, and this witnessing makes you a buddha.I don’t teach Buddhism, I teach the Buddha.I don’t want you to learn any philosophy, any teaching. I want you to know that you are Buddha himself.This moment, just witnessing, such a great silence has descended over you – a great fragrance of a new dimension. Flowers start showering… Just hold on to the center.To make it clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax, remain just a witness. That is the only quality that goes on with you eternally. That is your eternity. That is your real life.The body will go down into the earth. In you, only one thing is immortal and that is your witnessing quality.The evening was beautiful in itself. The presence of ten thousand buddhas enjoying the splendor of witnessing has made it immensely great.I can see the Buddha Auditorium turning into a lake of consciousness. You are disappearing as a separate individual, relaxing into the cosmos, without any ripples. Gather as much experience…because you have to bring the buddha to your ordinary life.We are not the renouncers, we are the ones who rejoice. I want my buddhas to be singing, to be dancing, to be loving, to be blossoming in all colors, in all dimensions. The whole life is ours; there is nothing to abandon, but everything to be transformed, refined, made better.At this moment you are the most fortunate people on the earth. You have to spread this cool fire around the globe. Only this cool fire can prevent this earth from destruction.And the time is very short: just twelve years. Either the life-affirmative are going to win, or the life-negative, life-destructive are going to destroy. It has never been so urgent to be a buddha as it is today.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but come as a buddha – with the same grace, with the same silence, with the same dance in the heart.Just sit down as nobodies for a few moments to recollect the golden path that you have followed in going to your center, and you have come back from the same path again.The buddha goes on coming closer and closer to your circumference. Soon he will become your circumference too. That day will be of great rejoicing.

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Isan No Footprints in the Blue Sky 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Isan No Footprints in the Blue Sky 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Isan said to Kyozan, “I have heard that when you were with Hyakujo, if you were asked about one, you could answer about ten. Is that true?”“I wouldn’t like to say,” replied Kyozan.“Attempt to say something that expresses the highest point of Buddhism,” said Isan.Kyozan just opened his mouth, about to speak, when Isan shouted, “Kwatz!”Twice more, Kyozan went to speak and twice Isan silenced him with a shout.Kyozan bowed his head and wept, saying, “The former teacher said that when I met another, I would gain enlightenment. Today I have met him. It is three years since I began to seek for buddhahood, and it was no more than looking after a cow.”Maneesha, I have told you yesterday that Isan is trying hard to be a rebel against Ma Tzu – not that he does not love Ma Tzu, but Ma Tzu has become a tradition, and he wants to get away from the traditional mind because tradition kills everything. It makes the dead more significant than the living.It is such an absurd effort to force living human beings to worship the dead rather than finding the deeper layers of life within themselves. Giving them teddy bears outside, consolations – ugly consolations, degrading consolations.So when Buddha became a tradition, Bodhidharma revolted against the tradition – not against Buddha. Who can revolt against the buddha? The buddha is your very nature. You can go as far away as possible, but you cannot go far away enough. Your nature will be with you. The buddha is your highest peak of consciousness.We are not using the word buddha in its historical sense. Gautam the Buddha was one of the buddhas. The title “Buddha” does not denote him personally; it is simply a quality of witnessing, an arriving at home. Certainly he has become the symbol – and a beautiful symbol if you don’t make it a tradition, if you keep it alive, if you don’t start worshipping it, but just start watching the beauty of it, the silence of it, the grace of it, and reminding yourself that this all belongs to you too.So when Bodhidharma revolted, he revolted not against Buddha – nobody can revolt against the buddha – he revolted against the scholars and the pundits and the ritualistic religion that has grown in Gautam Buddha’s wake after he was gone. But Bodhidharma became in the same way a tradition. It was very difficult to revolt against the Buddhist tradition, but Bodhidharma maintained a tremendously high quality. His rebellion brings him to the same height as Gautam Buddha. And he was capable enough – he had a genius mind – to create a totally different atmosphere for the seeker on the path.But when Bodhidharma died, the same thing happened again: he became a prototype to be followed, to be imitated. Ma Tzu could not tolerate this stupidity. He had to revolt. It is not against Bodhidharma or Buddha; it is against the inertia that tradition creates.But to revolt you need immense courage, eloquence, and a great mastery – not only of yourself, but of the mind as such. And the mind expresses in thousands of ways! A master has to deal with thousands of types and he has to be capable to encounter each type spontaneously.Ma Tzu maintained it even better than Bodhidharma. Ma Tzu’s revolution against all tradition, against all sutras, was an immense event in the history of consciousness. He burned the sutras; he simply forced the disciples not to look out, but to look in.Isan was trying to revolt against Ma Tzu now because Ma Tzu had become a tradition. But Isan does not have the quality of a Ma Tzu or a Bodhidharma. He is a very intelligent person and he can see that the tradition is becoming rotten and that new sources of life should be made available, otherwise it will become a dead tree. Flowers had stopped blossoming on it.Intellectually he could see the point, but he was himself not the type of master who could manage such a vast phenomenon: rebelling against a tradition is rebelling against four million years of mind, its whole structure. And it is possible to convince people only if you have such a presence, such magnetic force, that when people come to you they are ready to drop the whole past, just for your sake. Isan was not capable of such a great love affair.That’s why yesterday I told you that his sutras are humble, simple, but they don’t have the splendor and the majesty. Today you will see that he has fallen back on Ma Tzu. He could not find a substitute for Ma Tzu. He wanted to break away from the tradition that Ma Tzu’s life had created, but he was not greater than Ma Tzu. Only a greater man could have managed, and Ma Tzu was impossibly greater. It is almost impossible to find a man who is greater than Ma Tzu; his inventiveness, his creativeness, his absolute strangeness in the world – nobody has been able to surpass him.Isan has the longing to break away from the tradition. He tried, but he could see that he was failing, it was not working. He was intelligent enough to see that he cannot substitute anything in place of Ma Tzu’s methods – shouting, hitting, or throwing people out of the door, or closing the door in people’s faces. Isan could not find what to do. People had become accustomed to expect from the master the unexpectable. He was a good teacher, but goodness is not the point.Ma Tzu was a very dramatic teacher, very magnetic – he lived in a way nobody has ever lived. He walked like a cow his whole life and looked all around like a tiger. He has those eyes and the face of a tiger, and also the innocence and the beauty of a cow. A strange combination! And he never bothered about any conformity, any respectability, any mannerism. He acted spontaneously; even he was not aware what was going to happen, but whatever is going to happen spontaneously is right.No man has lived so spontaneously. Obviously he looked absurd, a little mad, to outsiders. But he attracted seekers tremendously; they could see behind the eyes of a tiger the eyes of a buddha. They could see behind his outer behavior the inner beauty, the inner joy, the inner splendor and the possibility to get from him the transmission of the lamp.Isan was a totally different kind of person. He tried to revolt against the tradition of Ma Tzu, but finally he had to fall back on the same techniques that Ma Tzu had created. They had never existed before.Isan said to Kyozan, “I have heard that when you were with Hyakujo, if you were asked about one, you could answer about ten. Is that true?”Kyozan is Isan’s chief disciple and finally is going to be his successor. He is under preparation, he is almost chosen by Isan to be his successor – undeclared, but it was known to all the disciples that Kyozan was going to be the next master. Hence Kyozan was allowed the privilege of asking all kinds of questions because he would have to face the same kinds of questions when he becomes the successor.In this question Isan is asking: “I have heard that when you were with your master, Hyakujo, if you were asked about one, you could answer about ten. Is that true?” He is saying, “I have heard that you were such a man of wisdom, that if one question was asked, you could answer the same question in ten different ways. Your multidimensional wisdom was very appreciated by Hyakujo.”“I would not like to say”…“Any attempt to say something that expresses the highest point of Buddhism,” said Isan.The highest point of Buddhism cannot be said, not even one time – there is no question of answering it ten times in ten different ways. To answer even one time is to commit one mistake; to answer ten times is to commit ten mistakes. Only silence is the answer if the highest point of Buddha’s experience, his enlightenment, is concerned.Kyozan just opened his mouth, about to speak, when Isan shouted, “Kwatz!”“Kwatz” is just a sound, but it means indirectly “shut up”! But “shut up” is meaningful, hence it is avoided. It does not have that quality of “Kwatz!” “Kwatz” is not part of any language; it is simply shouting to produce the result of shutting his mouth. He has asked enough, now he should not open his mouth anymore.Twice more, Kyozan went to speak and twice Isan silenced him with a shout.Now, the shout is an invention of Ma Tzu. It is very difficult to create new devices, new methods. It needs a totally different kind of personality. One can be enlightened, that is one thing; one can follow the well-trodden path, the well-experimented methods, and can be of immense help to people. But if he wants to be an individual peak, if he wants to stand on his own, then he needs the qualities of a buddha himself.And as time passed it became even more and more difficult for Isan to find new ways. Great masters have passed before and they have almost exhausted every possibility of finding new methods. Isan relaxed, he understood well that he was enlightened but he could not be a rebel. And to fight against Ma Tzu is impossible. Even to think what you will do against Ma Tzu… He has simply finished everything. Whatever you do will look cheaper, will not look as dramatic and as novel and as original as Ma Tzu.Finally he has to go back to Ma Tzu. These shouts are the steps of going back – because Ma Tzu had invented shouts. Before Ma Tzu shouts were not used, sticks were used; the master would beat the disciple. Those sticks don’t hurt.Just a few days ago I received a Zen stick from Korea. I am waiting for the first German enlightened man, Stonehead Niskriya, to give that to him. It is a very good device. It is a bamboo, cut down the middle in two parts. On one end you can hold it, and beyond that it is cut in the two parts, so you can hit. It makes a loud sound but does not hurt anybody.The point was the same, but Ma Tzu… Because suddenly hitting a person who is asking a relevant question stops his mind – “What is the matter?” It is incomprehensible by the mind. And that is the point: that the mind should be silent, even for a moment, and you will have a glimpse.When for the first time these anecdotes were translated into other languages, people simply laughed: “These anecdotes constitute a religion?” It seems so strange, reading that the master hits the disciple and the disciple becomes suddenly enlightened. One could not understand the rationale of it. How can it happen that the master has hit the disciple and the disciple bows down in deep respect and gratitude?It is possible. You can understand it. If your mind stops completely, even for a single moment, by any method, you will have a glimpse of your own innermost nature. And that glimpse is so beautiful, that glimpse is such a majesty, such a treasure, it is your eternity. The master has shown you the way that the mind has to stop thinking. For a moment you have seen the path; now follow on!But Ma Tzu found shouting to be even better than hitting because just hitting on somebody’s head, it is not necessary that his mind will stop thinking. The mind may even start thinking more, “What is the matter? Why am I being hit? I have asked a relevant question and what kind of stupidity is this?”But when a master shouts, the shout goes deeper into you than any hitting can go. Hitting can only touch your body, your head, but shouting can go piercing like a spear and your very heartbeat may stop for a moment. Ma Tzu’s great contribution was shouting, and certainly shouting goes deeper in stopping the mind than any hitting can do.You can see the difference: hitting is a material phenomenon, shouting is psychological. And to stop the mind, some psychological hit is needed. Shouting is a kind of hit – invisible to your eyes, but it hits the mind completely, shakes it up, leaves it in a kind of amazement.Someone has come from far away, hearing about Ma Tzu, his greatness, that hundreds of people have become enlightened through him, and that thousands of people live in his monastery. A person who has traveled for miles comes to Ma Tzu, asks a very relevant question, and never thinks that this man is going to shout, or jump upon him and sit on his chest, and looking into his eyes ask, “Do you get it?”All that the person gets is a stunned mind – but in that stunned mind there is hidden a revelation of his own nature. He may have tried hard to find it. The mind is almost like a vast jungle of thoughts; you can go on and on, it is not a small phenomenon. To take you out from the mind instantly, shouting was a very great device.But only a great master can do it, it is not for everybody to do it. And Isan wanted to bring something new, but failed. These shouts show that he has fallen back on the old devices of Ma Tzu.Twice more, Kyozan went to speak and twice Isan silenced him with his shout.Kyozan bowed his head and wept, saying, “The former teacher said that when I met another, I would gain enlightenment. Today I have met him. It is three years since I began to seek for buddhahood, and it was no more than looking after a cow.”These shouts worked. Kyozan has been with a teacher – but a teacher is not a master. A teacher can give you all the instructions that are written in the scriptures. He can make you very knowledgeable, and he has made Kyozan very knowledgeable. But those days were days of great honesty – and particularly about truth, nobody tried to deceive.The teacher said that “I am only a teacher. When you meet the master you will become enlightened. With me you can become only more and more knowledgeable, a great scholar, a great intellectual because I have not found the truth myself. I myself am searching for the master who can provoke me, who can wake me up.”In the days of Gautam Buddha this country had seen a tremendous phenomenon: thousands of people moving around the country, searching for a master. They will live with teachers, and then they will find that he was only a teacher. And the teacher himself will say to them, “Whatever I could tell you, whatever I have heard, I have told you. Now move on.”Even Gautam Buddha, for six years before his enlightenment, went to many teachers. And those teachers were in a very awkward position because they were very well-known teachers, with thousands of followers, but the reason for their remaining unexposed was that no disciple was following absolutely what they were saying. So the disciples thought, “It is our fault. We are not following totally what is being said.”But Buddha created trouble. He did a little more than those teachers had asked. He created immense embarrassment in those six years for many teachers. They had to admit to him that “I am not enlightened myself and whatever I knew was only scholarship. Nobody has exposed me because nobody has really tried to follow me. They listened, they were happy, they accumulated knowledge, they became scholars. But you are not interested in scriptures, you are not interested in scholarship, you are not interested in knowledge – you insist, ‘I want to see the truth!’”So whatever strange ascetic practices they said to do, Buddha did. You won’t believe it, but the last teacher he left had told him that he should reduce his food from one meal a day. The quantity should be only that which can be held in two hands cupped, it is not a great quantity! Then go on reducing it, bit by bit, till you come to a single grain of rice. Buddha did that. A statue exists in which he is just a skeleton, all the flesh is gone because it took three months to come to the point where he was taking only one grain of rice per day. What can one grain of rice do?The teacher had never thought that any man would be able to do this process, this fasting, but Buddha performed it perfectly and then asked him, “Anything more?”The teacher had tears in his eyes and he said, “Now I have to accept my defeat. I am not enlightened myself, but I have been giving such practices to people that they can never complete. That has been saving my face and my grace. You have exposed me. Now my advice is that you move on.”Thousands of people were moving all around in search of a master. There were thousands of teachers, but it was very rare to find a master who has truth as his experience.Buddha got enlightened in a very strange way; the day the teacher said, “You have to move on. I am only a teacher, not a master. I was pretending and I am very sorry!” Buddha was too tired. Just bones remained, and he was sitting under a bodhi tree in Bodhgaya.The name Bodhgaya comes from Gautam Buddha’s becoming enlightened there; bodh means enlightenment. Just because of Buddha, the great city came into existence because thousands of people wanted to live there and to meditate under the same tree where Buddha had meditated. They wanted to try doing the same walking meditation behind the tree – by the side of the temple that one king had raised as a memorial to Gautam Buddha’s enlightenment.Buddha was taking a bath in a nearby river, Niranjana. It is a very small river; in the summer it shrinks to be so small that you can walk across it, it is not even one foot deep. And he was taking a bath, but he was so weak that even that small current he could not cross. He had to hang onto a branch of a tree for a few moments to gather some energy so that he could get out of the river. That experience made it clear to him that just by fasting you can kill yourself, but you cannot attain enlightenment. This is a good gradual process of suicide, but it is not a process of samadhi.“If I cannot cross this small stream, what about the mythological river, a vast river, that divides this world from the other heavenly world? If I cannot cross Niranjana, a small river, what are the possibilities for me? I will not be able to cross that vast river that divides these two worlds. It is almost like an ocean.” It is mythology, but in his mind at that time – up to that time – there was only mythology, philosophy; he was not yet enlightened. But hanging onto the branch or the root of the tree, he thought, “I have been wasting my time.”He came out of the river. It was a full-moon night, and he was so weak that he could not go into the town that day to beg, so he remained under the tree. But by chance one woman, Sujata – her name, Sujata means wellborn or born in a high-class society. I have discussed with Buddhist scholars that her name simply shows that she was born in a low-caste society. You can see it: in India the blind man is called kamalnayan, lotus-eyes. If you have eyes, nobody will call you lotus-eyes; that is reserved for the blind man – not to insult him. Sujata cannot be a high-class woman, otherwise she will not have that name. That name suggests that she comes from the lowest sudra caste, the untouchables. As a consolation they give good names.In India, when somebody dies, they say he has become beloved of God. And then what are we all doing here? Only the dead become beloved of God. God seems to be a kind of cannibal! The more people die, the happier God is, of course – more beloveds are coming. When the corpse of a dead man is taken from his home to the funeral pyre it is called mahayatra, the great journey. It is not more than one mile or two miles, it is not much of a great journey. The poor fellow has died, but reading about it you may think he has gone on a great journey. Just to hide the truth, man has always been clever with words.This woman Sujata, according to me, is a harijan, and only harijans would come to such a poor place near the Niranjana river. She had been worshipping the tree, and only the lower classes worship trees, not the richer. She had promised the tree that if a boy was born to her, she would bring many sweets, many flowers for the tree. And this was a coincidence, just a mere coincidence, that in the full-moon night a beautiful young man was sitting under the tree. She thought, “The god of the tree has come out to receive the sweets!” She was immensely happy because it rarely happens that the god of the tree comes out, and she offered Buddha all the sweets.This way, after three months, he had a right breakfast; otherwise, living on smaller and smaller quantities… And yesterday he had eaten only one grain of rice. Sujata was very happy. The son had been born and the god of the tree had accepted. After eating, Buddha for the first time dropped… Six years before he had dropped the kingdom and all the material things of the world, all possessions. He had carried only one longing – for truth. This night, with the full moon in the sky, he dropped that longing too because that longing had become his desire, and whenever there is even a small desire, the mind continues. It does not matter whether you desire money or God, it does not matter whether you desire power or enlightenment; desire is desire, and with desire the mind remains alive.That night he dropped the last desire. For six years he had taken all kinds of torture upon himself. It was enough! And he slept for the first time in six years, utterly relaxed – no desire, no longing, no future, no hope – he simply slept without any mind, no dreams. All were shattered. He was finished. “There is no truth and there is no world. It is all nonsense and I have simply spoiled myself.”That night he slept without a mind, and a sleep without a mind is very close to samadhi. That’s how Patanjali defines it: there is our ordinary waking state, below it is our dreaming state, below that is our dreamless sleep, and below that is our enlightenment, our absolute awakening.The whole night he slept in a dreamless sleep. That created the opportunity. Just one inch more, a little push more… As he opened his eyes – for the first time without any desire – the last star was setting, and with the last star setting, he suddenly became aware, so full of awareness… The sun was rising outside and the sun was also rising inside. From dreamless sleep he had fallen to the fourth state of awakening, of buddhahood.This buddhahood was attained when he had dropped even the desire to be a buddha. The mind has to be utterly empty. And the master’s function is to help you on the way of emptiness because emptiness is the opportunity of fulfillment.First you have to be empty of everything that you know of, only then can you be filled from the divine, by the divine. Flowers can start showering on you from unknown sources – and in emptiness a great flame of awareness arises in you which brings you the sense of eternity, immortality, a great peace that passeth understanding, a serenity, a silence, a blissfulness, and an ecstasy that knows no ending. You are for the first time drunk with the divine.Those were golden days in the sense that there were at least thousands of people searching. The people were poor, there was no technology and no science and no progress, but they were rich in a different sense: their search for the innermost treasure made them the richest people of the world. Thousands attained enlightenment and hundreds became masters of creating situations – because enlightenment is your nature, it is not an achievement; you have not to go anywhere, you have to just be here and dig deep.As you pass beyond your skull and beyond your bones, your skeleton, and you find the life source from where the life is spreading to your body and the mind, immediately you have found the eternal cosmic existence. Your small river of life is coming from the great ocean that surrounds you all around. It is the same ocean the trees are being nourished by, it is the same ocean the birds are being nourished by, it is the same ocean all life as such is being nourished by.Man is the most blessed animal in the world, in the sense that he is not only capable of life, he is also capable of consciousness; not only capable of consciousness, but also capable of becoming totally conscious. This total consciousness gives you the freedom, the salvation, and the blissfulness that you were seeking in small and mundane things, where it does not exist.When it is said that somebody has become enlightened, it simply means he has found the source of his life and consciousness. But by finding the source of your life and consciousness, you have found the source of all life and all consciousness. By becoming a buddha, you have become one with all the buddhas. There are no longer any separations of bodies, there are no longer any separations of time and space.If I am speaking on these buddhas, I am not a scholar and I am not speaking as a scholar. I am speaking according to my experience. These buddhas, Ma Tzu or Isan or Kyozan, cannot have another experience. It is the same ocean. Anywhere you taste it, it tastes salty.Kyozan bowed his head and wept… This weeping is of great joy. There are times when you cannot say anything through words, but you can say through tears. In a moment of great love it is so absurd to say, “I love you!” It is so profane! In a moment of gratitude, to say “Thank you” is ugly.In India it is almost impossible – the West has not known the deepest meaning. In India, if a father does something for the son, the son cannot say, “Thank you, father.” He can show his gratitude by touching his feet, he can show his gratitude by his tears, but not by words. Words are very empty, tears are very full; and tears come from your depths, words come only from your mind.Kyozan bowed his head and wept – wept out of great joy and gratitude – saying, “The former teacher said that when I met another, I would gain enlightenment. Today I have met him. It is three years since I began to seek for buddhahood, and it was no more than looking after a cow.” He has been with teachers and they would give him jobs – looking after the cows, looking after the kitchen, looking after things. But without giving him any job, Isan had given him only three shouts and he had become enlightened.It does not mean that people should not work; it simply means, “Work only around a master, a living master, otherwise you are just taking care of the cows.” And being with a master simply means being no more. Dissolve yourself. Become utterly empty, with no desire, and the blessed moment can happen just now. It does not need any great practice or any ascetic torture; it needs only going back into your uttermost depth. There you are a buddha already. Once recognized, you know the path. It is very small.Slowly, slowly you can start bringing your buddha from the hidden sources to the surface of your life. Your every activity, your words, will start having a new golden flavor. Your silences will start becoming songs – a music of a different dimension. Your ordinary walking will become like a dance – so joyful. Your whole life will be spread as a blissfulness, a drunkenness. You will live with your totality, you will love with your totality, and this life will be your last life.If you can attain enlightenment then you don’t have to wander from one womb to another womb. You have been wandering for centuries from one womb to another womb.If you become enlightened in this life, death will not take you into another womb, you will disappear into the cosmic life, into the cosmic fire. You will become one with the whole – you will be the whole.Soseki wrote:I have slept by the cold window andcome back from the land of dreams.The eye of my mindhas opened by itself,with no need of the morning star.He is referring to the morning star of Gautam Buddha. He is saying,The eye of my mindhas opened by itself,with no need of the morning star.All of heaven and earth hold upthis mountain covered with snow.Where in the world is there a placefor Sakyamuni to practice?Sakyamuni is another name of Gautam Buddha; that is his family name. He was a sakya – a tribe of warriors – so he is also called sakyamuni: sakya who has become silent. It is a very loved name – just to call him Sakya.Soseki is making a very beautiful statement: “I have slept by the cold window and come back from the land of dreams.” Your land is the land of dreams. Soseki is saying, “I have come back from the land of dreams. The eye of my mind – the third eye, the eye that looks within – has opened by itself, with no need of the morning star disappearing into the blue sky.”Every man has to become enlightened in his own way. Although he loves Gautam Buddha, he is saying, “There is no need to follow his footprints because no buddha leaves footprints. A buddha is just like a bird, flying into the blue sky, leaving no footprints.”All of heaven and earth hold upthis mountain covered with snow.Where in the world is there a placefor Sakyamuni to practice?He is making a statement in the Zen language: “There is no need and there is no place in the world to practice. Why did Sakyamuni practice for six years unnecessarily? You can become this very moment the buddha. Why unnecessarily practice – where is the place and where is the time?”A loving criticism of one’s own master. Soseki is right. But Buddha had his own problem. He was, as far as we know, the first buddha who has created a great impact on humanity. Certainly, it is probable that many buddhas had appeared before Gautam Buddha, but they have not left such an impact.Even in the times of Gautam Buddha, eight contemporaries declared that they were enlightened – and most probably they were enlightened. A few sentences have come from Buddha and Mahavira concerning the other six – a few statements criticizing them. These six seem to have been more rebellious people because they never wrote anything and they never allowed any following.Buddha and Mahavira have remained in the memory of man. Mahavira has remained a very local figure; for very small reasons he could not become a world figure. Otherwise, he was older than Buddha and certainly a great individual, but he created strange confinements for himself. First, he was naked. Now no country would allow him entry naked, they don’t allow me even with clothes! I can try naked…Secondly, he had such strange ways that, just like Ma Tzu, he would have been thought of by other people as insane. He remained for months on fasts. In a twelve-year period of silence, when he remained silent, he ate on only three hundred and sixty-five days – in twelve years! And he would not accept food from just anyone. He had such a strange way, but it has its own meaning. In the morning, when he would be meditating, he would decide that if he knocked at a door for food and a certain situation was fulfilled, only then would he accept food; otherwise he would go out of the town.For example, if he knocks on the door and the woman is weeping, or she is doing a certain kind of work, or on the road two cows are standing – anything that came to his mind in the meditation – and if that condition was not fulfilled, he will go back. His idea was that “If existence wants me, then it has to fulfill my conditions. If existence does not want me, I don’t have anything to do here. Why should I force myself on existence? I leave it in existence’s hands.”A strange idea, but it has great meaning. His trust in existence is absolute: if it wanted him, then good. Otherwise, “I can relax, I can disappear. Why should I carry on unnecessarily without existence needing me?” It was clear to him that “If existence needs me for any purpose, it will manage my life. I have left it in existence’s hands.”Now, such a man would have been in difficulty in any other country. He would not cut his hair with a razor, he would simply pull his hair out – because he would not use any kind of technology. What technology is a small razor? But it is technology. He would not use any technology – he was far ahead of Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi at least used the spinning wheel; that is a technical thing.Mahavira did not use anything – no clothes, so there was no need for a spinning wheel; he did not use even a begging bowl. What is the need of a begging bowl? If all the animals can manage without begging bowls, you seem to be utterly stupid… He drank water from the river just like any dog or any animal, and he would pull out his hair. In psychology they have a certain kind of insanity in which the insane person tears his hair out – and particularly women: when they have a tantrum, they start tearing their hair.In any other country Mahavira would have been thought insane. First, he was naked; secondly, his strange behavior of eating; thirdly, his pulling his hair out – but he had a reason for everything. But that confined his impact, it remained only a small stream in India. Now there are only twenty-two naked monks – it is a very small stream. But the idea behind it was absolutely clear.Even the followers of Mahavira don’t discuss exactly the meaning of his nakedness. I have not come across a single scripture in twenty-five centuries which discusses the point about his nakedness. They simply say, “Because he has dropped all possessions, that’s why he has dropped clothes.” But that is not the real thing. The real thing is his celibacy: according to him the celibate person should live naked; only then can he prove that he is celibate. Just think, all your celibate monks… Because the whole mechanism of sex is such that an idea arises in your mind and immediately your sexual machinery starts giving you hints – and the whole society will see, “What kind of celibacy is this?”I don’t think that any Catholic monk, the pope, or any shankaracharya is capable of fulfilling the test of Mahavira. His test is absolutely correct. The question is, “How do we know that you are celibate?” Even to think in your mind about sex will immediately affect your body and everybody will know that you are not celibate.In twenty-five centuries nobody has considered his scientificness about it. He is absolutely scientific because behind the clothes you can be celibate and still enjoy dreams of making love to Sophia Loren, and nobody will know. But if you are naked then it is very difficult: the moment you start thinking of Sophia Loren, immediately your flag starts rising up.I absolutely agree with Mahavira that every celibate – if he wants to be celibate – should be naked. I am not in favor of celibacy, but if somebody wants to be celibate, then he has to follow the rules of the game.But Jaina monks perhaps are the only ones who can be said to be celibate. It takes years – five stages of training. Only on the last stage they can become naked, when the master allows the disciple, “Now you can become naked.” Because the sexual center is not in the genitals, but in the mind. Unless that center is controlled by your meditations and purified completely of any desire, you cannot stand naked; you will be immediately exposed.Those six others were also enlightened – but everybody follows his own way. Buddha used clothes, and just because Buddha used clothes, he became a world-wide phenomenon. The whole East became Buddhist. Although Mahavira was old and a very beautiful personality, the way he proposed to live was not for everyone; it was immensely difficult. Just the clothes made the difference.There must have been other buddhas. Mahavira was a buddha. You have to be aware of the fact that Jaina scriptures use both the terms for Mahavira: jina – jina means “the conqueror of oneself” – and buddha, “the awakened one.” The Buddhist scriptures also use both the terms: jina, the conqueror, and buddha, the awakened one. But by and by it became settled – because this would be confusing – it became settled that Gautam Buddha would not be called jina and Mahavira would not be called buddha, to make things clear. But both are both!And the other six perhaps were more colorful personalities, but they did not allow any followers. Obviously, if you don’t allow any followers, who is going to collect your teachings, collect your life for the coming centuries? Sooner or later your name will disappear. But that was the point of those six: “There is no need for our names to remain. Just as we disappear, our names should disappear. What is the purpose for our names to remain, or our teachings to remain?”There is a great point in it. Their insistence that “There is no need for our teachings to remain” has many implications. Firstly, “Only living masters can transform human beings. Our words, our teachings won’t do that; they will create only teachers.” Secondly, “Why should we keep the coming future in bondage? We lived our lives, we shared our lives with our contemporaries. Now let the future be free for new masters to take place, for new buddhas to take place. We should not be a hindrance and we should not become a burden on the future.” A tremendously rebellious attitude. All these people…Soseki says, “Where is a place, where is space, where is time, for Sakyamuni to practice?” He is against practice. I am against practice. Practice can make you only an actor. You have to be spontaneous, not disciplined and practiced. You have to be yourself in your naturalness, in your wildness, in your spontaneity.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Is our identifying with our body and–or mind all that is preventing us from being one with everything?Yes, Maneesha. Identification with the body, with the mind, with our possessions, with our families, with our friends – any kind of identification takes you outward. All your possessions will be outward: your wife, your husband, your children; your body – your body is outside you; your mind – your mind is outside you.The only thing that is not outside you is the witnessing. Just the watchfulness – that is your buddha. Identification means losing witnessing, falling into the trap of attachment. That is our misery, that is our slavery.Now it is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.He seems to be sitting very far away. Just put the light on! Everybody has to see his rainbow-colored turban!One morning, Mad Melvin, Loony Larry, and Crazy Karl all escape from the Sunnyvale Insane Asylum.Happy as larks, the three loonies go into town and come upon the construction site of a huge skyscraper. They look around curiously, when suddenly a man in a hard hat walks up to them.“Hey, you guys,” shouts Klopski, the job foreman. “Get back to work and finish digging that trench!”The three loonies all smile and nod in unison, then run around and start working on the trench. A couple of hours later, Klopski comes back to see how they are doing. He is shocked to find Mad Melvin digging furiously, while the other two loonies are standing motionless, holding their shovels in the air.“What the hell are you doing?” screams Klopski at Loony Larry and Crazy Karl.“We are street lights,” replies Loony Larry.“You must be nuts! You are fired!” shouts Klopski, sending the two loonies away.But Mad Melvin stops working immediately.“No,” says Klopski. “Not you, you are working well, just continue your digging.”“What?” cries Mad Melvin. “In such darkness?”The Medical Corporation of America decides that there is only one way to cure AIDS and that is with money – lots of money. So they arrange with all three TV networks in America to have a giant AIDS Telethon, to take place on Saturday night.The idea is that Rock Hunk, the famous movie star, will make love to five hundred women on TV, while the American public phones in its pledges.On the big night, Rock Hunk gets up to four hundred and seventy-five women and the money is pouring in. Rockefeller Foundation phones in and donates millions, NASA phones in and donates the funds for the space program. Even Ronald Reagan phones in and donates Nancy’s dress fund. Money is pouring in and it looks like AIDS is going to be cured for sure.But when Rock gets to four hundred and ninety-five, he passes out. They throw buckets of iced water on him and he staggers to his feet and wobbles over to the next woman. At four hundred and ninety-eight, it looks like he is really finished, but the woman somehow manages to arouse him and the money keeps pouring in.But at four hundred and ninety-nine, Rock passes out and no one is able to wake him up. The whole country is furious and everyone phones in and takes back their pledges.Eventually, George Bush, the host of the show, manages to revive Rock and drag him into the office.“We almost cured AIDS!” cries Bush. “What the hell happened?”“I just don’t understand it!” replies Rock. “Everything went fine this morning at the rehearsal!”Nancy Reagan is walking into the White House dining room to have lunch with Ronald and discuss their retirement plans. Suddenly Alvin Mindbender, a close family friend, races past Nancy in a sweat and disappears down the hall.Nancy goes on into the dining room, sits down over a big lunch, and starts chatting to Ronnie.Meanwhile, in the Oval Office, Alvin Mindbender is frantically phoning all over the country to find Vice President Bush, who is finishing up his presidential campaign tour.Two hours later, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Alvin at last gets Bush on the line.“George, thank God!” cries Alvin. “I’ve been trying to reach you for two hours! There has been a terrible tragedy at the White House!”Meanwhile, back in the White House dining room, Nancy has just finished her banana split dessert. “Now, Ronald,” she says, wiping her mouth. “I insist we take down those purple and green striped curtains in your bedroom at the ranch-house.”Suddenly, Alvin, still sweating buckets, bursts into the room. Seeing Nancy chatting to Ronald, he stops dead in his tracks and his jaw drops open.“Holy shit, Nancy!” screams Mindbender. “What the hell are you doing? Ronald died two hours ago!”Nancy, takes a close look at the senile old president. “My goodness,” she says, “how can you tell?”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen.Now, look inward with your total consciousness, with a great urgency, as if this is going to be the last moment of your life. Deeper and deeper, and you will find the path.It is a small path, getting out of the mind, getting out of the body, and reaching the source which is connected with the cosmos. Its only quality is witnessing. So just witness and be a buddha.A great silence will start falling over you and a deep desire, a deep longing to disappear into the cosmos will be felt for the first time. A great joy – for no reason at all – will fill your whole space.This moment is precious. Even for a moment to be a buddha is a great blessing. If you know to be a buddha even for a single moment, you know it. You can be a buddha twenty-four hours, round the clock. Just remember: being a buddha means being a witness.Great flowers will start showering on you – of peace, of bliss, of ecstasy.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax, but go on holding the witness.You are not the body, you are not the mind. You are the one who is seeing the body, seeing the mind and as your witnessing deepens, your separation from others will disappear. The Buddha Auditorium starts becoming a lake of consciousness with no ripples, no distinctions – just a pure dance of bliss and ecstasy.Rejoice in it and collect as much experience of witnessing as possible. The fragrance that is surrounding you, the ecstasy – gather all of them to bring back to the circumference.From the center to the circumference you have to bring your buddha slowly, slowly. It is a tremendous treasure. You can bring as much as you want, it is inexhaustible.At this moment you are eternal, you are immortal, you are one with the cosmos.This evening has been a beautiful evening on its own accord, but you have made it more golden by your silence, witnessing, by your joyfully relaxing into the home.Before Nivedano calls you back, collect as much fragrance, as many flowers…Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but come back as a buddha, with the same grace, with the same silence, with the same beauty.Sit down for a few moments, just recollecting where you have been, on what golden path you have moved, forward and backward, and how much of witnessing you have brought from your very life source.This witnessing has to be carried around the clock.A day certainly comes when you don’t need to meditate, when buddha remains in every circumstance present, fully radiant. All actions are his actions, you are no more. The buddha sings, the buddha dances, the buddha smiles. You have become just a passage for the buddha.That day is not far away. It can happen any moment. Be prepared. It is not a practice, it is simply creating the right moment for the spring to come and bring all that is possible to your potentiality. Thousands of flowers…

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Isan No Footprints in the Blue Sky 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Isan No Footprints in the Blue Sky 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Isan said to Kyozan: “Most of the people upon this great earth, with their limitless consciousness of cause and effect, lack the awareness of that original nature which they should rely upon. Can you tell whether they have this awareness or not?”Kyozan replied: “I have experienced this difficulty.” Just at that moment, a monk passed by and Kyozan called out to him, “Jari!” and the monk turned his head.Kyozan commented to Isan: “This is a case of wide cause and effect consciousness without awareness of the fundamental upon which one should rely.”Isan observed: “It is a drop of lion’s milk which will curdle six gallons of donkey’s milk.”Once, Isan commented to Kyozan: “The whole day we argued about Zen and what did we get out of it all?” – at which Kyozan drew a line in the air.Isan observed: “If it were not I, someone would be deceived.”Maneesha, the anecdote touches a very fundamental problem. To understand it, you have to understand the implications of it. We all think we are aware; that is one of our unawarenesses. We are only functionally aware.We have learned to do things, to go to bed, to get up early in the morning, to go to work. Everything has been learned. Even a robot can do the whole process. You are not needed. And that’s exactly what has happened to humanity. It is a robot humanity. You have learned everything that is necessary and given it to your robot mind who goes on doing things on your behalf. And you have gone to sleep putting the mind in charge.The whole effort of the buddhas is to bring out your consciousness and to make you clearly aware of the distinction between functioning consciousness and a pure consciousness which has no function, just a mirror. A mirror has no function; it has utility, but even while you are looking in the mirror, the mirror does not do anything. The reflection is spontaneous. Even if you don’t want the reflection, it will still reflect – and the mirror is not in need of you to stand before it.The way Zen expresses it is this: The full moon shines in the lake. Neither the full moon desires to be reflected – but it is reflected – nor does the lake want to reflect it, but it does reflect it. Neither are doing any active work at all in this reflection. Both are just being themselves and the reflection comes on its own accord. You do your things and only in doing your things can you separate the functioning consciousness and the pure consciousness.When you walk, do you know you are walking? When you are silent, are you aware that you are silent? When you are eating, is there any awareness standing by the side, watching your function of eating? That awareness is the great enlightenment. It has no function, it has no utility, it is not a means to some end. It is enough unto itself. It is such a contentment, such deep satisfaction with oneself and the cosmos, such a strong let-go, that you don’t have to do anything. Just being is more than you can have conceived – the joy of just being, the blissfulness of just being.I pass by Mukta’s pond every day, and those two swans are just twenty-four hours a day enjoying, doing nothing. And they look so dignified, so utterly contented. Not even a shadow around them of any desire or any ambition, or of any position, of any success. All those are stupid things. They are enjoying every moment, just sitting in the pond.A consciousness is just like what Basho calls, “Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.” What he is saying is, “As far as I am concerned, I am not doing anything, neither am I desiring anything. The spring comes on its own accord, uninvited. The grass starts growing without any effort on my part. I am just a watcher, sitting silently, doing nothing.”This non-doing awareness, which has no function in the world but is simply a blissfulness, an ecstasy, a drunkenness utterly centered in the present moment… That is the whole idea of the buddhas: to make you aware that something is hiding inside you. But because it is of no use, you don’t care about it.The world consists of utility, and your consciousness is of no utility. You cannot earn by it, you cannot sell it, you cannot do anything by it. It is not a doing energy. It is simply being – a being energy that stands just like an Everest, silently, for centuries.In this anecdote, Isan is trying to make his disciple, Kyozan, aware of this non-doing effortless isness of your existence. It is the greatest beauty and the greatest truth. There is no other beyond it.Isan said to Kyozan: “Most of the people upon this great earth, with their limitless consciousness of cause and effect, lack the awareness of that original nature which they should rely upon.”People are conscious, but very superficially, of ordinary things. They are functional beings and they do a thousand things, so you cannot say they are absolutely unconscious. At the most they can be called superficially conscious.According to the psychologists and their measurements, only one tenth of your consciousness is being used. Nine tenths – nine times more consciousness – simply remains and you are not even aware of it. And that is your eternal treasure. That is your original face. That is your innocence. Everything in you will die, except only that consciousness which simply witnesses – as Basho is doing. Sitting silently, certainly he is a witness; doing nothing, he is a witness; the spring comes, he is a witness; the grass starts growing by itself, he is a witness – but other than as a witness he is not involved. This witnessing is our ultimate ground of existence. This is our eternity.Isan said to Kyozan, “Can you tell whether they have this original witnessing, this original consciousness? Functional consciousness I can see, everybody can see.”Kyozan replied: “I have experienced this difficulty.”Because a man is doing things and seems to be perfectly aware, how can we know whether he is originally conscious or not? In the very depth of his heart, is he aware?“I have experienced this difficulty.” Just at that moment a monk passed by and Kyozan called out to him, “Jari!” and the monk turned his head.Now this is functional.Kyozan commented to Isan: “This is a case of wide cause and effect consciousness without awareness of the fundamental upon which one should rely.”Now this man who is being called turns his head. Obviously he is a little bit conscious, but is he aware that he is turning his head? Turning the head is a function; it needs very little consciousness. But is he also aware that he is turning the head? If he is also aware of turning the head, then he will have the original consciousness, the witness. If he is only conscious enough to turn the head, that can be done by a robot, by a machine – but no machine can ever become a buddha.You have to understand. It was not available to Buddha or to Isan, but to us things have become more clear. The computer can do better work than you, far more efficiently, without getting tired. But it can do only that which it has been taught to do. If something new comes, the computer will be at a loss to respond because it knows only ready-made answers. You can put whole libraries in it; it is capable to absorb in its memory all the libraries and whatever those libraries contain will become the content of the computer’s memory. If you ask a question that is one of the contents of the memory of the computer, immediately the right answer will come. But if you ask something that the computer has not been fed before, the computer will remain utterly silent. It cannot respond on its own because it has no original consciousness.So your superficial consciousness is not of much more value than a robot mechanism. If your name is called, you will turn and look – but are you also aware that your name is called and you are turning and looking? Only that deeper awareness can transform your life; otherwise you will remain a computer. What is your whole education for? – to make you a better computer, to feed you more information.Whatever you do and whatever you say, ask the question: Is it you or has your mother told you to do it this way, or your father, or your teacher, or your priest? Is it you, or is it somebody else who is manipulating you? And you will be surprised that you have never acted even once spontaneously, you have always relied upon the memory. The memory comes from others. It may come from your experiences, but the response should not come from memory, it should come from your alertness.One day, a man asked Buddha some philosophical question and Buddha answered him. The man contemplated on it. The next day he again came to Buddha and he said, “My problem is not solved.”Buddha said, “Repeat your question.” And Buddha answered in a totally different way.The man was puzzled. He said, “Yesterday you have said something, now you are saying something else.”Buddha said, “Yesterday was yesterday and today is today. And don’t trust me: tomorrow is going to be tomorrow. I respond moment to moment. It is not a question of memory and time; it is a question of my being totally available to you right now. I don’t remember your question, neither do I remember my answer. Yesterday is finished.“And it is such a beautiful day today, why bother about yesterdays and tomorrows? Let us face each other now, this very moment. You ask the question, my mirror is ready to reflect. But I cannot promise you that I will remain consistent tomorrow also because who knows? – things change, everything is in a flux. What is right this moment may not be right tomorrow.”This is functioning from the original consciousness. The original man is never consistent, cannot be; only a dead man can be consistent.It came as a surprise to me that for almost ten years we have been fighting the Indian government on the question of whether our school is a teaching school, an educational system, because they have taken away our tax-exempt status. The government had no answer to the question. But what the supreme authorities of taxation finally came to conclude was that while I am alive, tax-exempt status cannot be given because I can change tomorrow. I agree with them. Tax-exempt status can only be given to dead people because they cannot change howsoever they toss and turn in their graves. Everything has become dead. Then it is acceptable, respectable. But a man who is alive and spontaneous is dangerous to the status quo.As I entered America the first question they asked me was, “Are you an anarchist?” They had a big file already on me.I said, “You look like an intelligent person. I can say I am not an anarchist and tomorrow I can become one because my today cannot make a confinement, a slavery for my whole life. So what is the point of asking such questions? Consistency is not my way. If it is convenient to you, you can write that I am not an anarchist, nor a communist – but as far as I am concerned, I am both and a little more.”He said, “A little more?”I said, “Of course – because Bakunin is dead, Kropotkin is dead, Marx is dead. If they were alive they would have changed many things in their philosophy. And I have to do the work of completion; that is the ‘little more.’”Life is always an open river. You never know where it will take a turn. You cannot take a promise from the river that it will not turn at such a point. Nature never promises you anything. A promise certainly means a confinement, it means a bondage. It means you are accepting that from this moment you will not live. When you say, “I am a Christian,” you are dead. You cannot go beyond Christianity or against Christianity. Even if you see clearly that something is wrong, you have to keep your mouth shut. You are a Christian.The moment you belong to an organization, to a religion, to a political party, you have to give up your freedom of thinking, you have to become blind; you cannot see because things may be different than your dead ideology which was decided hundreds of years before.You should watch… Just now you are listening to me. Are you aware that you are listening? Separate the function of listening, and be a witness also that your mechanism of listening is functioning and you are just a witness watching it. This separation is of ultimate urgency because we have to separate all the garbage that has gathered around the witness, so the witness becomes absolutely free, in the present, having no ideology, having no prejudice, having nothing – just an empty mirror. Then its capacity to reflect the truth is immense. Then its capacity to reflect the beauty is immense.Kyozan commented to Isan: “This is a case of wide cause and effect consciousness without awareness of the fundamental upon which one should rely.” This man has turned his head, but he is not aware what he has done and why he has done it.I have told you the story many times about Gautam Buddha.One day, walking on the road from one town to another, he was talking to Ananda. A fly sat on his forehead, and just as you do automatically, he remained engaged in talking to Ananda and waved the fly away. Then he suddenly stopped and he again raised his hand, with great grace, and moved the hand. Ananda was absolutely puzzled. He said, “The fly is gone. What are you doing?”Buddha said, “I did that act mechanically. I continued to talk to you and I left the functioning mind, the automatic mind to do the work of shooing the fly. But I was not aware. I did it, but without any original awareness. Now I am doing it as I should have done it.”Another time he was passing through a village and thousands of people were against him, as it is bound to be. Only small people are respectable; great people are greatly condemned. The enemies had gathered and they started abusing him in as ugly a language as possible. He listened, standing silently, just like Basho. Those people felt a little embarrassed that he was not answering anything.Buddha said, “Just complete your thing because I have to go to the next town. And there is something for you to contemplate. In the previous town people love me, and they had brought sweets and flowers and many presents. I cannot carry them – it is not possible for me to carry things – so I told those people to go back and distribute from me all these sweets and flowers to the people of the village.“Now I ask you – you have come with abuse, ugly words, nasty expressions. I don’t accept them. You have come too late. You should have come ten years ago and there would have been bloodshed. These hands are of a warrior. Ten years ago, if a single word that you have said to me had been uttered, all these heads would be rolling on the ground. But fortunately you have come a little late. Now I don’t function as an automatic machine. I can see you are ignorant people, I can see your unconsciousness – and unless I take your abuse, you cannot give it to me.“You will have to take all this garbage that you have brought back home. What will you do with it? – distribute it on my behalf to the whole village. And if something is left to say, when I return again by the same road, I will make it a point to stay here one day. You can blame me, you can tell as many lies, complaints as you want, but remember, unless I take them, your work is absolutely futile. You are talking to the skies. Not even a scratch has happened to me by your talk. I simply enjoyed it. Thank you.” And he moved on.Ananda, his disciple – because he was also a warrior, and a cousin-brother of Gautam Buddha – said, “I was forgetting completely your whole idea of compassion and kindness and love. I was getting ready to cut off their heads. I was just looking for my sword – however, I could not do anything in your presence. But I had forgotten completely.”Ananda remained unenlightened until Gautam Buddha’s death. He became enlightened after Buddha’s death, the next day. And Buddha had said, “You will remain unenlightened while I am alive. Your attachment to me is a barrier. Your love toward me is a barrier. You cannot forget that you are my cousin-brother. That prevents you from becoming a disciple, so your disciplehood is just hypocrisy. And I know you are helpless, you cannot do anything. You try to do everything, but trying to do is one thing, and its arising spontaneously is another.”And the strange thing is that it actually happened the day Buddha died. The next day, Ananda did not move from the place where he was sitting the whole day without food, without water. Everybody wanted to help him. It was such a shock because he had been for forty-two years continuously in service, day and night, never bothering about himself, but only that Buddha should have all the comforts possible. Perhaps the shock was too much. He had closed his eyes and was just sitting like a stone statue. But nobody dared to disturb him either. It was too delicate a matter. Only by the evening of the next day he opened his eyes and he said, “After all he was right. Now you can cut off my head, but you will not scratch my consciousness.”So the functioning consciousness is one thing; everybody has it. You have to find out the deeper original witness which can witness your body, your mind, your thoughts, your actions, and still remain far away from any attachment or judgment. This discovery is the greatest discovery in the history of consciousness. No discovery of science or of any other subject, mathematics, or logic, or philosophy – no discovery can be bigger, greater, with more splendor, with more ultimate categorical character than the discovery of the witness. The witness makes you a buddha.Isan observed: “It is a drop of lion’s milk which will curdle six gallons of donkey’s milk.”He is saying that the original consciousness, even a small drop of it, is so valuable that it will fill oceans. Even a single moment of original consciousness, a simple and single encounter with yourself, and you will never be the same again. You will be a totally new man – the new man I talk about every day, just to remind you that the new man is ready to be born within you. It just needs a little more witnessing.Witnessing is nourishment to the pregnant buddha in you. And as your nourishment goes deeper and deeper every day, one day you will suddenly see: you don’t have to go to the center; the buddha has come to meet you on the circumference. Suddenly one day you may wake up as a buddha and with that awakening, the whole world changes its color. Things take a different beauty, a different sacredness, a different grace. Sounds become sweeter and more musical. Small wild flowers become as valuable as any lotuses or roses.To be a buddha is not only a revolution within you, it is a revolution in your very conception of the world, of relationships, of love, of friendship. The revolution is total. It changes all your perceptivity, all your conceptuality. It changes all your old mechanical habits. It makes you for the first time not a robot.Once, Isan commented to Kyozan: “The whole day we argued about Zen and what did we get out of it all?” – at which Kyozan drew a line in the air.Isan observed: “If it were not I, someone would be deceived.”Kyozan has answered with great clarity. The whole day discussing about Zen is just like making a line in the air. Discussions can’t lead you, they don’t have the potential to lead. Words lead to other words and it is a vicious circle. You can go on with argumentation, but it will not lead you to the center of your being, so it is as futile as a signature in the sky. While you are making the signature, the signature is already erased.Isan said, “You are perfectly right – because I can see, I have the eyes to see the invisible. But anybody else would have been deceived. He would have thought that something has been attained, something is attained by discussion; just he is not able to understand what this line is. Even this gesture of making the line is a disturbance. You should have been absolutely silent because nothing is attained, not even a line in the sky. If anybody was in my place, there is a possibility he may have been deceived – that if you go on discussing, slowly, slowly you will attain Zen, you will attain buddhahood.“As far as I am concerned,” Isan said, “it is perfectly right because I can see a line in the sky means nothing – but anybody else could have been deceived.”This is all the process of preparing a successor. Kyozan is going to be Isan’s successor. Isan is giving him all the possibilities that he will have to encounter. Just to be enlightened is not enough. A mere enlightenment will give you all the joys of the world, but you will become absolutely dumb. You will not say anything, you will not find any way to express.Before enlightenment the master has to prepare the people who are going to succeed him, to make them more articulate, to make them more able to transform the wordless into words, the absolutely silent into songs, the absolutely unmoving into a dance. Only then will he be able to convey something and may be of help to the blind humanity.Because of this fact, Buddha has divided his enlightened people in two categories. They both have the same height – there is no quality of lower or higher – they both belong to the same cosmic reality, the fundamental nature. But he has made two categories: one category he calls the arhats – the arhats are the ones who become enlightened and remain silent – and the second category he has called bodhisattvas. They also become enlightened, but their work is to convey something, some device, some hints about their experience to people.Arhats are called hinayana, a little boat in which one man can row and go to the other side. Of course he reaches the other shore. And bodhisattvas he has called the mahayana; it is a great ship in which thousands of people can move to the other shore. The other shore is the same, but the bodhisattva helps many. The arhat is not articulate; he is a simple, nice, utterly humble person, but will not utter a single word of what he has attained. It is too much for him to say anything. He is completely contented, why should he speak? And anyway, everybody has to find his own way, so why unnecessarily harass people? The arhat has his own standpoint.Buddha used to argue with the arhats and the bodhisattvas because both kinds of people became enlightened in his own lifetime. It was a constant struggle. Arhats have their point: you cannot deny it, that everybody has to find his own path, so it is not necessary to convey anything to them. That may become a hindrance. All the scriptures have become hindrances.No arhat has written any scripture. He does not move even a single finger to point to the moon because the danger is that people may cling to his finger thinking that this is the moon. He keeps himself completely silent. Don’t think that he is not compassionate; it is just that compassion has many ways of expression.He is expressing his compassion by not interfering in your life, and he is showing his trust that existence will bring you somehow – if not today, then tomorrow, if not tomorrow, then in the next life. But eternity is available, so what is the hurry? “And if anybody is intelligent enough, he can see my small boat moving toward the other shore. That is enough of a hint. If he cannot understand that, he cannot understand anything else.”So Buddha finally allowed two categories of the same height, without any comparison of lower and higher. “Arhats,” he said, “go on your way silently.” And to bodhisattvas, who were ready to try, he said, “What is the harm? You have become enlightened, you cannot lose it – there is no way of losing it – so what is the harm in trying a little effort at provoking people and challenging people, creating a great urge and thirst in them? You may work on thousands and perhaps one may be ready, but even that is great compared to the ignorance of the whole earth. In the darkest night even a small candle glowing… Its light and splendor is great because it may give an indication to others to find candles: Why live in darkness?”Bodhisattvas moving in the masses are like torches, with a joy and with a dance and with a grace. They will create an urge, a deeply repressed hunger and appetite for the ultimate.Soseki wrote:A few puffs of white clouddrift around the mouth of the cave,without hindering my dharma friendwhen he comes to knock at my door.I’ve never found a wayto hide my doing nothing,day after day.We join hands and walk back and forth,back and forth.A tremendously mysterious statement, but very simple. Sometimes simplicity is more mysterious than complexity. “A few puffs of white cloud…” Just visualize because Zen poems are not for reading, but seeing. Just visualize a cave: “A few puffs of white cloud drift around the mouth of the cave, without hindering my dharma friend…”Who is the dharma friend? We have been calling him the buddha. These white clouds cannot prevent my buddha: “…when he comes to knock at my door. I have never found a way to hide my doing nothing day after day.”He is saying that these clouds cannot prevent my being a buddha. The knock does not come from the outside; you have not heard the knock that comes from inside. The buddha wants to come to the circumference. Enough is enough. He has lived hidden in the center of your being for lives, for centuries, for millennia. A day comes that he also wants to see the sunrise and the sunset and the starry night and all the beautiful flowers of the world.The meditator finally one day hears the knock from inside. You have heard only knocks from the outside, but you will hear one day, in the middle of the night, somebody knocking from inside. It is a very strange experience. Don’t be afraid, it is your dharma friend. It is your very being that is saying, “Now you are ready, open the doors, allow me to come out. In your activities, in your gestures, in your words, in your silences – now let me take over.”If sometimes you hear the knock, don’t misunderstand. Anando hears the knock. She thinks somebody – particularly me – is knocking on her door. And I am closed in my room and the key is with Nirvano; I cannot get out from there. And Anando… I again and again try to convince her, so she started thinking, “Perhaps Maitreya, who has died, is knocking.” Because he used to live by her side, he was her neighbor and great friend, exchanging newspapers. “Perhaps in the night, lying in the cold grave, once in a while he wants to know what is happening in the world. He may be knocking, that is possible.”But as far as I understand, the main door is closed, everything is closed. The knock is coming from inside, but because you have never heard it coming from inside, the misunderstanding arises that it is coming from outside.So Anando, remember next time the knock comes, it is not coming from outside or from any ghost, holy or unholy. All kinds of ghosts are here, but it is your own being that is knocking. Don’t repress it, don’t try to avoid it. Listen to it. What does it want? It wants to come out. Your being wants to come out in the world with all its glory.Soseki is saying, “Nothing can prevent the friend when he knocks at my door.”Of course Soseki is worried, “What will he think? Because: “I have never found a way to hide my doing nothing, day after day. I simply go on doing nothing.” A small worry arises, “What will the buddha think about it? What kind of a lazy fellow, so lousy, doing nothing, day after day…?”But finally: “We join hands and walk back and forth, back and forth,” from the center to the circumference, from the circumference to the center. By and by you and the buddha become one, there are not two beings.As you become more silent, more indefensible, more vulnerable, as you open yourself completely, those two hands are your own. Then begins a new dance, a dance whose beauty cannot be described. Then begins a drunkenness which is not of this world. You can only call it divine wine; that’s what Sufis have called it.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Just before dropping off to sleep each night I silently repeat the word witnessing twenty times, recalling the space itself as I do so. Inevitably, the first or second thought on waking is the remembrance to witness.What is happening? Is the mind being hypnotized to remember the witness?Maneesha, the first thing: you should not count twenty times, you should go on repeating, you should fall asleep repeating. Then it will not be the first or second thought. It will be absolutely the first thought when you will wake up, if you continue repeating “witnessing” and also creating the space – not just the word witnessing, but the space that comes around the word that you experience in your meditation. With that space and the word, you simply go on. Don’t count, don’t be so miserly – twenty times…It is good that Ma Tzu is not here in my place, otherwise from here he would have jumped right on Maneesha and made her a lifelong witness – dead or alive, it does not matter. You are doing rightly. Don’t call it hypnosis because that word has been condemned by Christianity. It is a beautiful word and the whole process is beautiful, but still because you have been brought up as a Christian it is very difficult to get rid of your upbringing.So if you call it hypnosis, immediately the Christian mind will say you are doing something wrong. Forget about hypnosis; it is meditation. You are simply trying to make the mind remember that as you wake up, the first thought should be of witnessing and the whole space of witnessing. It is a beautiful process.If you go on repeating the word and the space, overlapping the sleep, it enters your sleep. You fall asleep, but your deeper mind goes on repeating the word and the space. The whole night becomes a meditation. In the morning, obviously, it is going to be the first thought because the whole night it has been there as an undercurrent.But don’t call it hypnosis, although there is nothing wrong in hypnosis; it is another name for meditation. But Christianity has done such damage to the world that a great phenomenon is being avoided which can reveal many mysteries in man, which can cure many mental diseases. But just because of Christianity – and other religions have also started imitating because unfortunately Christian nations became great empires around the world. So even though the countries were not Christian, their education pattern, the whole climate that the Christian empire created has entered Hindus, Mohammedans, Buddhists.The disaster has not been only to Christians, the disaster has been worldwide – but to the Christians more so, and particularly for Maneesha. She has been trained in Christian schools to be a nurse because nursing is a virtue, taking care of the sick is a great virtue; you will be rewarded very much in the other world.So the more people get sick, the better, particularly for Christians. The more people are orphans, the better for Mother Teresa, for Pope the Polack to convert them to Christianity. The more poverty spreads in the world, the better for Christianity because only the poor will be converted.No rich Buddhist can even consider in his dreams to be converted to Christianity. Christianity is such an ordinary religion, so childish and so stupid that no cultured Hindu, or Mohammedan, or Christian – yes, I include the intelligent Christian also – is persuaded by the Christian theology. He simply formally maintains that he is a Christian.I was in Greece. Amrito is here; I asked her what percentage of people the Greek Orthodox Church has in that country. She told me that nearabout ninety percent of the people are Greek Orthodox Christians, but only four percent ever attend church.What about those other eighty-five percent? Just formal Christians. Any intelligent person cannot belong to a third-rate religion like Christianity. And it depends on the poor, on the orphans – and just to create more poor and more orphans, it is against birth control.It is a strange phenomenon, seeing the world situation, that the population will kill itself; man will be killing man, eating man. A moment is going to come by the end of this century when the whole of humanity will become cannibals due to the courtesy of Christianity. Maneesha carries the deep unconscious upbringing of a Christian.So don’t use the word hypnosis. Otherwise it is a beautiful word, as beautiful as meditation. It is synonymous, but it is better to avoid it. Meditate and don’t count because if you are counting, who is meditating? If you are counting, who is witnessing? Don’t count because in counting your witness will be lost. The space of witnessing will be lost.And what is the hurry? Sleep will come on its own accord. You simply go on enjoying the space of witnessing and let the sleep merge with it. You will hear a faraway echo for a few moments and then you will forget all about witnessing. But it will continue as an undercurrent. You can turn your six or eight hours of sleep into a tremendously fruitful meditation.And the sign that it has been successful is that the first thought as you open your eyes – or even before you open your eyes, just as you become aware that sleep is finished – the first thing that you will encounter will be the last thing that you left before you went into sleep. That means there is a connection; it remained continuously flowing underneath, from when you were awake in the evening to when you wake up again in the morning.You are doing a beautiful meditation. Just two things you have to drop: don’t count and don’t call it hypnosis.Now it is Sardar Gurudayal Singh’s time. Put the light on him. Right! Just look at his turban. He comes with such a great joy. Once he brought a turban for me too. He wanted me to come to the auditorium with the turban. I said, “This will be too much! The government is already suspecting that I am creating chaos in Punjab. I don’t go out of my room, and government detective agencies are continually inquiring what my position is about the Punjab problem. If I come with this multidimensional turban, it will create great difficulty unnecessarily.”But he comes like a bridegroom to celebrate. I have to find jokes for him. I don’t know… He is very ancient, any day he can pop off. But we will keep him stuffed with the turban in his place – that is a promise – because without him I would not like to tell any jokes!Nancy Reagan is having a confidential chat with her best friend, Hester Mindbender, next to the White House swimming pool.“Life is terrible,” sobs Nancy into her Pineapple Kool-Aid. “Ever since Ronald became four hundred percent impotent, there is no happiness in my life!”“Now wait a minute,” says Hester. “One hundred percent impotent is bad enough – but four hundred percent impotent? He must be really rotten!”“You don’t understand,” whines Nancy. “He’s been one hundred percent impotent ever since John Wayne’s horse kicked him in the balls, in the cowboy movie, The Big Muddy. But last week,” continues Nancy, “he fell out of his wheelchair, and broke both his hands and bit his tongue!”The bells of the Vatican in Rome ring out a slow and dull message: “Pope the Polack is dying.”In Saint Peter’s Square, the faithful Catholics gather to pray for their Polack pontiff, and Cardinal Catsass starts to perform a special ceremony.“Listen,” says Catsass to the crowd, “I want some of you sheep to donate a part of your life to God’s faithful Polack – I mean, pope. Pray before God that he will take a piece of your life and give it to our own Pope the Polack.”Mrs. Chlorex steps forward, raises her arms and cries out, “I will give a week of my life for our Polack pope!” There are muffled cheers in the congregation.Then Father Fumble steps forward. “I offer two days of my life for Pope the Polack!” he cries. The crowd sighs its approval.Just then, Moishe Finkelstein and a bunch of Jewish tourists enter and immediately Moishe starts waving his arms around and shouts, “I offer twenty years of my…!”“What?” interrupts his friend, Hymie. “Are you crazy? So much? – and you are a Jew!”Moishe looks at Hymie and continues, “…of my mother-in-law’s life.”Every Friday, Nellie Nutzo escapes from the Sunnyvale Insane Asylum and streaks naked throughout the forest surrounding the institution.And every Friday, Loony Larry, Mad Melvin, and Crazy Karl watch her take off her clothes and disappear through the fence.And every Friday, Attendant Eggski, the asylum guard, sends the three loonies to bring back the naked Nellie.This time the three loonies are gone for a long time, so Attendant Eggski decides to go and look for them. He enters the forest and immediately naked Nellie Nutzo streaks by him with a wide grin on her face. Then Eggski sees Loony Larry and Crazy Karl come chasing right behind her in hot pursuit.A couple of minutes later, Mad Melvin comes huffing and puffing along, carrying a bucket full of sand in each hand.“Hey, wait a minute, Melvin!” cries Eggski. “What are you doing, running with those buckets of sand? How the hell are you going to catch Nellie that way?”“Well,” gasps Mad Melvin, out of breath. “It is my turn to carry the sand because I caught her last week!”You will get it in the right time!Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen.Now look inward with your total consciousness, with an urgency as if this is the last moment of your life on earth. Only with this urgency can you reach in a quantum leap from the circumference to the center.Deeper and deeper… As you start reaching toward the center, the whole climate of the Buddha Auditorium changes. A great serenity, a silence starts descending with great flowers of joy and peace.Just remember one thing: at the center you are nothing but the witness – the witness of the body, the witness of the mind, and the witness of all the splendor that you will experience at the center. At the center you are all buddhas. The Buddha Auditorium is a gathering place for buddhas.This moment you are joined with your eternity. This moment you are no more. The Buddha Auditorium has become a lake of pure consciousness without any ripples.Rejoice in your blessedness because the whole world has forgotten the beauty of the source of life, the blissfulness of the original face, the tremendous blissfulness and benediction of disappearing in the ocean just like a dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf into the ocean and becoming the ocean.To make it absolutely clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax. But go on remembering that you are a witness. The body is not you, the mind is not you. You are nothing but a pure witness. That is the only thing in you which is immortal; everything else is just mud.The evening was beautiful on its own accord, but you have contributed tremendous beauty and grace by being at the source of being. You have made it a memorable moment.You are witnessing the firecrackers all around; they are in the memory of a great meditator, Mahavira. He attained enlightenment on the night when there is no moon. That night is coming soon. And the festival of lights in India is in the memory of Mahavira. He attained enlightenment.Enlightenment is nothing but a festival of lights.You are carrying within you the buddha with all its glory and splendor. Your whole life work is to bring the buddha from the hidden center to the circumference of your activities, to your songs, to your dances, to your ordinary activities and functions. Hand in hand, bring the buddha back, and soon you will find you are melting slowly and the buddha is taking your place.The great day of festival is when you are no more and only the buddha is. Collect this beautiful space and the flowers that are showering on you because soon Nivedano will be calling you back.Be prepared.Persuade the buddha to come with you. He has never failed anyone. He is always ready to come – just a little graceful invitation, a prayerful approach.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but come as buddhas, with great silence, peace, serenity, grace.Sit down in your places just for a few moments to remember what it has been going to the center – what it was like, the taste of it, and what golden path you have followed back and forth because you have to follow that path. It will become smaller and smaller every day, and one day suddenly, out of nowhere, the center and the circumference have become one.You are the circumference; the buddha is the center. The day they meet together, the new man is born. And the new man will be the glory of the world. The new man will be the splendor of the world. The new man will create a new world spontaneously. The new man is the only hope.

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Isan No Footprints in the Blue Sky 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Isan No Footprints in the Blue Sky 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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On one occasion, two Zen monks came from a rival community and, arriving at Isan’s monastery, commented: “There is not a man here who can understand Zen.”Later, when all the monks were out gathering firewood, Kyozan saw them both resting. He picked up a piece of firewood and said to the two: “Can you talk about it?”Both were speechless, at which Kyozan commented: “Do not say that there is no one here who can understand Zen.”When Kyozan got back to the monastery, he said to Isan, “Today, I exposed two Zen monks.”“How?” Isan asked, and Kyozan told him of the exchange.Isan commented: “I have now exposed you as well.”Maneesha, the Zen encounter is not that of words. The zencounter is a communion in silence. When two Zen masters meet, whoever speaks first has fallen from his status. Days may pass by, they may eat together, they may look around at the beauty in the sunset and in the morning and in the starry night, but nobody is going to say a single word. Not saying a single word and remaining just a mirror…The mirror never says anything about the reflection, neither does the lake. The moon may be beautiful, the moon is reflected; the lake should dance with joy.Similar is the case with consciousness. At its ultimate peak, words are left far below, as if you have risen above the clouds. The moment you bring any word in, you have spoiled the whole communication.Zen is the only teaching in the world which discards absolutely words, language, scripture. This small anecdote will show it to you. It does not seem to have much meaning on the surface, but in the depths it has all the meaning that truth can have, that beauty can have, that God can have.The anecdote is simple. Zen does not believe in complexity, in unnecessary linguistic jargon. It points to the fact directly, without even taking the help of words because words can never help you. In fact the word is the barrier. Remove the word, allow the no-word, no-mind state, and everything is as crystal clear, as clean as it has been since eternity. Just your eyes were clouded with words, your minds have gathered so much rubbish, which you call religious. In fact, all rubbish is religious, and vice versa.The function of Zen is just like a sword; to cut all this rubbish in a single blow, without hesitation, and the whole sky is yours, the whole expanse of the universe is yours.On one occasion, two Zen monks came from a rival community and, arriving at Isan’s monastery, commented: “There is not a man here who can understand Zen.”There were rival monasteries of Zen. It started the day Buddha died: thirty-two schools immediately arose, and all those thirty-two schools were saying something essentially true – but it was incomplete truth. Perhaps it is not possible in language to say the whole truth. It has so many facets – you can cover only one facet and it is so engrossing, so enveloping that you forget that this is not the whole truth; you have just touched a corner.After Gautam Buddha’s death, the first thing the monks were concerned about was to collect all the incidents, sayings, parables, for the future centuries – but they could not agree with each other. Amongst them were one hundred enlightened monks and even they were not ready to agree with each other. The ultimate outcome was thirty-two schools, and then branches and sub-branches… Buddhism became a vast tree of much foliage.So don’t think that rival monasteries are enemies to each other. The word rival will give you a wrong impression. Rival monasteries are simply saying that “This is the way we have found the truth.” They are not saying that your way is right or wrong. They are not saying anything about your way. And it was a great educational method: masters even used to send their disciples to the rival masters, simply for the sake, “You should know that truth has other aspects too. I have no monopoly over it.”This is a very different and very compassionate effort. Ordinarily in the world, the Christian will not send his disciples to learn from a Mohammedan Sufi, or a Buddhist monk. It is already accepted that “We have got the truth. If anybody else proclaims he has got the truth, he is wrong.” Christianity and Hinduism, Mohammedanism and Judaism, have fallen very low. You can proclaim your truth, but you cannot claim a monopoly over truth and everybody is claiming a monopoly.The Christian can accept that Buddha may have realized truth, “but our way is far better, far shorter.” He is simply conceding because he wants a coexistence in the world. Coexistence accepts the rival but does not allow the rival the same superiority as he goes on carrying in his own heart: others are also good, but not so good.Zen has taken a very different approach from the very beginning, more human, more existential, more truthful. Zen does not want the truth to adjust with itself; it wants itself to be adjusted to truth. The man of Zen is ready to give everything – he is ready to throw all his conditionings, all his scriptures, all his statues. And he is aware that truth is such a big phenomenon that nobody can claim its totality.We are accustomed to Aristotelian logic – which is a very poor logic because it allows only yes or no. It is simple, clear. If somebody asks you, “What do you think about God?” either you say, “Yes, God is,” or you say, “No, God is not.” Alas, reality is not so simple.Gautam Buddha’s logic has four divisions, not two. If you ask Buddha about God, his logic is fourfold. He will say, “Yes, God is”; “No, God is not”; “Yes and no both,” and the fourth, “Anirvachana – that which cannot be said.”Now, this will look very confusing; you will not be able to get any right direction where to go. Yes or no or both, or that which cannot be said…Mahavira went even further. His logic is the ultimost – sevenfold logic. Yes, no, both, that which cannot be said – these four are accepted by Buddha. Mahavira goes a little deeper: yes and that which cannot be said; no and that which cannot be said, and the seventh, just the unsayable.These differences are very indicative. They show that these people are not concerned about philosophy, they are more concerned to bring as much truth to you from as many sides as possible. That’s why the last point is always anirvachana – that which cannot be said. You have to go to the place within you where no word can ever reach, and from that point you cannot bring any explanation. You can bring an experience. You will be transformed, you will be reborn, but you cannot bring a philosophy from there. You will be a new being, a new joy, a new laughter. New flowers will blossom in you, but all that you can do is sing, dance, play on your flute. Words are the lowest as far as expression is concerned.On one occasion, two Zen monks came from a rival community and, arriving at Isan’s monastery, commented: “There is not a man here who can understand Zen.” Obviously, the ordinary mind always thinks, “I am superior, I am more intelligent. I have more of truth.”Later, when all the monks were out gathering firewood, Kyozan saw them both resting. He picked up a piece of firewood and said to the two: “Can you talk about it?”Both were speechless, at which Kyozan commented: “Do not say that there is no one here who can understand Zen.”You cannot even explain wood on fire; what can you say about firewood?One of the most important philosophers of this century, G. E. Moore, has written a book, What Is Good? He was concerned his whole life with the meaning of good. His final conclusion is – after two hundred and fifty pages of long discussions about good – the conclusion at the end is that good is indefinable.That’s what Buddha is saying: anirvachana. That means indefinable. That is what Mahavira is saying: avyakhya – indefinable.But after two hundred and fifty pages of very complex argumentation, at the very end Moore says that you cannot define anything. For example if somebody asks you, “What is yellow?” what are you going to say? You will say, “Yellow is yellow,” but that is not much of an answer.You will be left speechless as you come closer to reality. Even words like yellow become indefinable. Firewood? What can you say about it? What can you say that has not been said before?The two monks remained: …speechless, at which Kyozan commented: “Do not say that there is no one here who can understand Zen.” Take your words back.When Kyozan got back to the monastery, he said to Isan,the master,“Today, I exposed two Zen monks.”“How?” Isan asked, and Kyozan told him of the exchange.Isan commented: “I have now exposed you as well.”This is the point to be understood – because Kyozan himself is on the way, he has not reached. What does he know about enlightenment? What does he know about exposing a person’s ignorance? And if you start exposing people and come with pride that you have done a great service…He had come to master Isan to be praised. But Isan could not be deceived so easily. Isan said to him: “I have now exposed you as well.” You are as stupid as those two monks. Neither they know what silence is, nor do you know what silence is.And truth is an absolutely silent state of being, so silent that you almost disappear, so silent that you become simply an awareness. No body, no mind – all are left behind; there is just a small flame of awareness in the beautiful silence surrounding you. Nothing can be said about it.Just a few days ago, you must have heard firecrackers all around. People don’t understand, they have forgotten why we have these fireworks, firecrackers. On this night Mahavira had become enlightened. And Mahavira is an exception because all the buddhas had become enlightened on the full-moon day; Mahavira became enlightened on the no-moon night. Nothing can be said except thousands of candles in praise of Mahavira. All over the country millions of candles – it is the Festival of Lights.If somebody asks you, “What is truth?” show him your silence. Show him your fragrance, show him your love. Share with him your presence.It is said about Lao Tzu…He used to go every morning for a walk in the mountains. A neighbor asked him, “Can I come with you?”Lao Tzu said, “The road does not belong to me. But if you want to come with me, then there is a condition: you cannot speak a single word.”And the neighbor managed. He gained enough insight just by following into the deep forest in silence. Just the presence of Lao Tzu slowly, slowly became more and more intimate. Soon he understood why Lao Tzu had put the condition “no talk,” because talk would have disturbed this great benediction, this great blissfulness that was arising from both the hearts – these small flames, this radiation of light.But one day the neighbor asked Lao Tzu, “A friend has come to stay with me for a few days. Can I bring him also with me?”Lao Tzu said, “With the same condition.”But the friend was not aware that it was not to be taken casually. He kept silent as far as he could, but there were many moments when he was just going to say something and prevented himself. But when the sun started rising, it was so beautiful – and the songs of the birds – that he could not contain it. He forgot the condition and he said, “What a beautiful morning!”It was not much, but Lao Tzu looked at his neighbor. And back home Lao Tzu said, “Your friend cannot come with me. He talks too much.”The neighbor said, “He has only spoken one single sentence in two hours: ‘What a beautiful morning!’”Lao Tzu said, “You only hear what he has said, you don’t hear what he is talking inside and controlling. Because of him my whole morning has been contaminated. And if he feels the morning is beautiful… Are we blind? We can also see the morning is beautiful; what is the point of saying it? To whom is he talking?”There are moments when you suddenly feel an expansion of consciousness. It may be listening to great music, to great poetry, or seeing a great painting, or just meditating, sitting silently, doing nothing.Nobody can surpass Basho – no poet in the whole world, in any language – when he says, “Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.”Just learn to be silent, not a single ripple in your consciousness, and you are a buddha. This small barrier of language is the only barrier. Otherwise, everybody is a buddha. Hence I say that it is very simple to be a buddha.One day, seeing that the barrier is only language, I dropped it. And if spring comes for Basho, it comes for me too. If the grass grows by itself, then why bother? I simply settled in my buddhahood.There is no need to make any effort; all efforts are to destroy effort, to tire you, to bring you to a moment when you completely drop dead, tired – “Enough of it!” That is the moment when a new life source, a new starry night, new roses start blossoming around you.Soseki wrote:All worries and troubleshave gone from my breast,and I play joyfullyfar from the world.For a person of Zen,no limits exist.The blue sky must feelashamed to be so small.Only a man of Zen, only a man of enlightenment can say that.The blue sky must feelashamed to be so small.Your consciousness becomes so vast and in that vastness, in that oceanicness, who cares about trivia, whether your tie is tied rightly or wrongly? Who cares about small things? And all our worries are about small things. You have never worried about anything great. Just look back and you will not find a single thing about which you can say, “It was great that I worried about it” – just very small things.Mulla Nasruddin used to purchase shoes which were too tight for him, one size too small. He was continually complaining and grumbling to everybody, “I will die with these shoes!”People said, “Why don’t you change them?”When he came the next time to the shoe store to change them, he again asked for the same size. The shoemaker said, “Are you mad or something? That shoe is always going to give you problems.”Mulla Nasruddin said, “There is a great philosophy in it. I have so many problems; this shoe keeps me busy and all other worries become small. I have to manage to walk in these shoes. The only way I know to avoid those other worries is to create a bigger worry. This is so simple. And in the night when I come home and I take the shoes off… Boy, what a relief! This shoe is my only hope to find some relief in life.”Maneesha has asked:Osho,Does the time that you are away from us have a significance of its own in your work with us?Maneesha, everything that is happening here has its own significance. You have to learn my presence and you have to learn my absence, and you have to come to a point where presence or absence don’t matter. You are not going to be tied to my presence.That’s why Gautam Buddha said to his disciples, “If I come in your meditations, immediately cut off my head. Don’t cling to me, otherwise I will become a barrier.”And the love between a disciple and a master is the most intimate, is the ultimate. You have to learn my absence; you have to rejoice my absence the same way as you rejoice my presence because I cannot remain here forever. And don’t postpone it because any day…My work is absolutely complete as far as I am concerned. If I am still carrying on, it is just out of my love for you. But you have to learn from my absence because the days of my presence will be shorter. Every day the days of my presence will become shorter; my days of absence will be longer.I am not going to come again in the body; this is the last time. You have to become as silent, as loving, as meditative with me or without me. The difference between my absence and my presence should be completely lost.Maneesha has asked another question:Osho,The story of Buddha mechanically brushing away the fly is puzzling. Was it still possible for him to do something without being conscious, sometimes mechanical? I thought once one was enlightened, one could not help but be conscious in all that one did, twenty-four hours a day.Maneesha, you have raised a right question.I have spoken with Buddhist monks in their assemblies. The head of the Buddhists in India, Anand Kausalyayan, was very puzzled by the story because it is not written anywhere. But even he could not ask the right question. He asked me, “Where is it written?”I said, “That does not matter. You can write it!”But he said, “The story is beautiful, makes the point of mechanical behavior and conscious behavior very clearly.” But even he could not ask the right question.Your question is far more significant. I was hoping someday somebody would ask. It is true that once a buddha, you are always a buddha. Then how do I explain the story?This was a device for Ananda, who was following him. Even on the first occasion he was not mechanical, he just acted mechanically – with full consciousness. And then he stopped and again moved his hand. Ananda said, “What are you doing? The fly is gone.”Buddha said, “The first time I did it mechanically; that was wrong. I continued to talk with you. I should have been more conscious and aware, more graceful, more loving in shooing the fly. That’s what I am doing now. The fly is not there, but what I should have done – and I missed the situation – I am making up for it.”As far as I know, Buddha could never be mechanical. He acted mechanically for the sake of Ananda to make the clear distinction between the conscious act and the unconscious act. And he made it really beautifully. But it is not in Buddhist scriptures. What to do? The story is so beautiful that it should be.I have written it in my book on the Dhammapada. After all, Buddha has not written anything. Anybody writing anything is writing after Gautam Buddha – somebody one day after, somebody one year after. I am writing twenty-five centuries after! And a living river should move on to new territories, new pastures. The moment it stops flowing it becomes stagnant and dead.Now comes the time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. He has been waiting so long and now he has come in his full glory, with the rainbow turban. I was worried whether I would see him. But he is a very stubborn guy: he is sitting in his place with his great turban, waiting for his time.Pope the Polack has a terrible problem: he wets his bed. He gets so embarrassed by this habit that he goes to see Doctor Feelgood, the psychiatrist, in the hope of a cure.“Sit down, your holiness,” says Feelgood, “and tell me all about it.”“Well,” says the Polack pope, “every night, when I go to sleep, I dream about this little red devil with horns and a tail, who says to me, ‘Pope, now it is time to do a pee-pee.’ And then, when I wake up, I find that I have wet my bed.”“That is very interesting,” says the shrink, “but very simple to cure. Next time this little red devil comes into your dreams and tells you to urinate, just say, ‘No, devil! I don’t need to pee. I don’t want to pee – so I won’t!’”“Great idea!” says Pope the Polack, and he thanks Feelgood and goes back to the Vatican. Sure enough, that night, when the Polack is asleep, the little red devil with horns and a tail comes into his dreams and says, “Hey, Pope, now it is time to pee-pee.”But the pope says, “No, devil – I don’t need to pee. I don’t want to pee – so I won’t!”“Aha!” says the devil. “So you don’t want to pee-pee? Okay then – tonight you can do ka-ka!”Father Finger and Old Father Fungus are trying out some new communion wine after Holy Mass in the church one night. An hour and two bottles later, they are feeling great, so Father Finger suggests that they go for a ride to the park.Off they go, Father Finger driving on his moped, carrying Old Father Fungus on the back – both of them utterly drunk. They are speeding and weaving along the city streets like two little bats out of hell, when Father Finger holds up both his hands and shouts out, “Look! No hands!”Just then they swerve past Police Officer Muldoon, who is cruising slowly along on his motorcycle.When the cop pulls the two priests over, he smells the wine, and pulls out his notebook and pencil. “That will be a fifty dollar fine, Father,” says Muldoon. “Your hands were not on the handlebars and you are drunk.”“But, officer!” slobbers Father Finger, “I was praying, so God took over the driving.”“Okay,” smiles the cop, writing on his paper, “then that will be a one hundred dollar fine – for driving with three drunks on a moped!”Farmer Meadow-Muffin’s young son Cyril comes running into the farmhouse one day, crying. His arms and legs are covered in bee stings.“What happened to you?” asks Farmer Meadow-Muffin.“Well, Dad,” howls Cyril, “I was just walking through the cow field, past the beehive, when all the bees flew out and stung me!”“Nonsense!” says the farmer. “Bees don’t sting for no reason. You must have been fooling around with their hive.”“No, Dad, really,” sobs Cyril. “I was just walking past and they all flew out and stung me!”“You are lying!” says Farmer Meadow-Muffin. “And to prove it, you can tie me naked to that apple tree next to the beehive and leave me there for the rest of the day. And by the evening I bet you that not one bee has stung me.”“Okay, Dad!” says Cyril, brightening up. And then he ties his naked father to the tree and goes off to play.All through the day, Cyril hears his father shouting and screaming, but he leaves him there to teach him a lesson. That evening, Cyril goes along to release his father.“What was all that shouting about, Dad?” he chuckles. “Did you get stung badly?”“Not one bee touched me!” snaps Meadow-Muffin. “But you see that baby cow there? All day long she thought I was her mother!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen.Now, look inward with your total consciousness, and with an urgency as if this is your last moment of life.Your center of being is not far away. Just all that you need is a total urgency.Deeper and deeper, like a spear… The deeper you go into your being, the deeper you are going into existence.This moment you are a buddha, and to be a buddha is to attain the ultimate potential of your being. The seed comes to blossom in a blue lotus.This very body the buddha, this very earth the lotus paradise.Remain a witness. That is the only thing that is eternal in you. Everything is mortal except witnessing. Witnessing is another name of buddha.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax, but remain a witness. You are not the body, you are not the mind; you are pure consciousness. And soon you will find you don’t have any limits.This Buddha Auditorium becomes a lake of consciousness without ripples.Gather as many flowers that are blossoming in the invisible around you, as much fragrance… And remember that this buddha has to come slowly, slowly onto the circumference of your life, in your ordinary day-to-day work. Then even that work becomes meditation. Anything done with awareness is meditation.Before Nivedano calls you back, gather as much of this pure space as possible. Bring with you the dance of it, the music, the poetry.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but show even in your coming back a grace, a beauty, a silence. Sit for a few moments remembering the experience you have gone through.You have to become a buddha in your day-to-day affairs, twenty-four hours. Living or dead, you have to be a buddha. Only the buddha does not die.To be a buddha is your destiny.There is no other blessing that goes higher.There is no other ecstasy that goes wider.There is no other blissfulness that goes deeper.Meditation is the only revolution in the world. All other revolutions are fake.

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Isan No Footprints in the Blue Sky 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Isan No Footprints in the Blue Sky 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Kyozan once returned to Isan to interview him. Isan said to him, “You are now called a good and clever teacher. How can you distinguish between those who come from all parts and know it, and those who don’t know it; the masters who have inherited it, and those who have not; the profound learning, and the meaning learning? Explain and let me hear.”Kyozan replied, “Kyozan has had this experience. When monks come from all directions, he raises his stick, and asks them if this is expounded where they come from or not. Further, he says to them, leaving this aside, ‘What are the old masters where you come from teaching?’”Isan admired him and said, “This has always been the claw and fang of our sect.”Maneesha, the silence here is so dense, one feels a little afraid even to utter a word. It may disturb the silent lake of your consciousness. But always remember that in the wake of words, silence is deepened. The higher the mountain, the greater will be the valley surrounding it. A great mountain cannot have a small valley. There is a tremendous balance in everything as far as nature is concerned.The essential Zen is an effort to bring you to the language of existence that you have forgotten completely. You have forgotten completely the most important, and you are filled in your mind with all kinds of gibberish.You may know, you may not know, that gibberish is not an English word. It comes from Persia, modern day Iran, and it comes from a very mystical person, Jabbar: he never spoke anything relevant. Not only was it irrelevant, there was no grammar, there were no words at all, but only sounds. Because of Jabbar, the name gibberish came into existence.But Jabbar was saying something through his gibberish. He was saying, “All that we can say about existence is gibberish.” He was very much in tune with existence.It seems unbelievable that he had one thousand disciples. Sitting by his side, when he was silent they would be silent; when he would go into gibberish, they would go into gibberish – and nearabout twenty-five people became enlightened. Not a word was said by Jabbar, nothing was heard by anybody.You cannot write a treatise on Jabbar because he never spoke anything except gibberish. But he was a radiant man, a man who had come to flowering, whose spring had come, and who was not afraid to be vulnerable and open and receptive. He went along with the wind.Zen has done the same from a different angle, but you must be aware of the fact that any authentic master – to whatever age, to whatever country he belongs – is not interested in preaching you a doctrine. His interest is to bring you into communion, into balance with the reality that surrounds you.Zen has used many methods never known before. You cannot conceive in a Greek context the validity of any method of Zen. Even Socrates and Plato would have been at a loss if they had met Bodhidharma or Jabbar.I always think what a hilarious meeting it would be: Jabbar meeting Socrates. Socrates was so logical, so rational. His honesty was exactly the same as Jabbar’s; he was ready to risk his life for his truth, but still he did not rise to enlightenment until the last moment of his life. The day he dropped all knowledge, all wisdom, the day he dropped language as such, that very moment a tremendous silence descended upon him. And those of you who are slowly, slowly moving toward the great experience will become aware of it – not because I say so, but because you experience it so.How can you say anything about the tremendous silence that is here now? Our minds are preventing us, our minds are taking us away from the very center of our being. The mind is not interested at all in an interior exploration. It is absolutely committed to the outside and the objective.Before I talk about Isan’s sutra…because this sutra will be the last of this series and also this sutra is the last of Isan’s life. This sutra ends exactly at the time Isan dies.The death of a person indicates how he has lived, whether he has lived at all or not. You may be believing that you are living, but don’t be so certain.Every madman in all the madhouses in the world believes absolutely that he is not mad. He wonders why people consider him to be mad. Slowly, slowly he comes to the conclusion that the world is mad: “Poor fellows, they cannot understand my state.”A man who had been crazy all his life went beyond the boundary. Small trips beyond the mind can be tolerated, but he went a little too far; he started saying, “I am dead.”Everybody laughed, everybody said, “This is too much. You have already been doing great things… And how can you be dead? – you are speaking!”He said, “So what? Dead people speak.”They told him, “You are walking, you are eating, you are sleeping.”He said, “That does not prove that I am alive. That simply proves that I am vegetating. But as far as my deadness is concerned, I am absolutely certain.”They took the man finally to a psychoanalyst. The psychoanalyst said to the family, “Don’t be worried. It will take a little time. Leave him with me. He has to come for a one hour session twice a week.”All this time, the madman who had become dead was smiling.The first question the psychoanalyst asked him was, “Why are you smiling?”He said, “Strange. A single man is alive amongst a group who are all dead. But just to convince themselves that they are alive, they are trying to convince me that I am also alive – and I have never seen anything living in me.”The psychoanalyst was at a loss himself because this was an absolutely new case. He had never dealt with dead people, but he figured out a way. He took a knife and cut the madman’s finger. Blood started coming out. The psychoanalyst said, “Have you ever heard that dead men don’t bleed?”The man said, “Yes. While I was alive I heard this saying.”The psychoanalyst felt great pride, but the madman said, “Don’t be proud. It does not prove that I am not dead. It only proves that the proverb is wrong. Dead men do bleed. I am an example, a living example!”After two, three sessions, the psychoanalyst was continuously thinking about the man. And slowly, slowly a doubt started arising in him, “If somebody asks me to prove it, how am I going to prove that I am alive?”That night he could not sleep. Next day was his session. He said to the man, “I will not charge you anything, but please leave me alone. You can find some other psychoanalyst – they are a rupee a dozen – because I am becoming suspicious about my own life. Rather than convincing you that you are dead, you are by and by convincing me that, who knows? – I may have died! Perhaps I am dreaming that I am alive.”What proof do you have that you are not dreaming?Death is the criterion in the tradition of Zen. How a man dies proves whether he has lived or not. Only a living man can die; you cannot afford to die if you have not lived.I have heard about a great scholar. He became aware that he was alive only when he was dead. Then suddenly he realized, “My God! I used to be alive and I never took any notice of it.”Particularly in Zen, the masters show the highest peaks of consciousness. Death is the criterion. If you can die gracefully, blissfully, almost dancingly, that proves that you have lived, and you have lived so deeply that you know that death is only the changing of the house.Kyozan once returned to Isan to interview him.You will be surprised… That is another specialty in Zen, that disciples come to interview the master; nowhere else. But Zen is very playful. Its playfulness is so deep that it takes nothing seriously.Kyozan once returned to Isan to interview him. Isan said to him, “You are now called a good and clever teacher. How can you distinguish between those who come from all parts and know it, and those who don’t know it; the masters who have inherited it, and those who have not; the profound learning, and the meaning learning. Explain and let me hear.”Kyozan replied, “Kyozan has had this experience. When monks come from all directions, he raises his stick, and asks them if this is expounded where they come from or not. Further, he says to them, leaving this aside, ‘What are the old masters where you come from teaching?’”Isan admired him and said, “This has always been the claw and fang of our sect.”A few things to be noted.Kyozan succeeded Isan. But to interview the master before he became enlightened shows his daringness, his courage. And it also shows the grace and greatness of Isan that he did not object to it: “You don’t know anything about it, and you are trying to interview me?”But without saying it, if you look at the whole thing, it becomes just the opposite. It is an interview not of Isan by Kyozan, but an interview by Isan of Kyozan. He did not say anything to hurt him, he did not reject the interview or say that “You are not of the quality yet; you have not experienced your innermost core.” Rather than rejecting, Isan accepts it and starts the interview himself.Kyozan replied, “Kyozan has had this experience.” Isan has asked, “How do you teach people? And how do you know whether somebody knows or not? Whether somebody is a master or only a pretender?” And Kyozan has forgotten completely that he has come to interview Isan, and he is being interviewed – the craftsmanship of a great master.Kyozan replied, “Kyozan has had this experience. When monks come from all directions, he raises his stick, and asks them if this is expounded…” He is not asking about the stick, he is raising the stick to indicate “thisness.” Are you coming from a master who has explained to you “thisness,” the present moment of splendor, the great moment of being nobody? Because a master never hits a disciple unless a disciple is really able to be awakened by a single hit.Kyozan said: “When monks come from all directions, he raises his stick, and asks them if this is expounded where they come from or not. Further, he says to them, leaving this aside, ‘What are the old masters where you come from teaching?’” In fact, if you have found a master you have found your home; there is nowhere to go. Or wherever you go you will find your master and nobody else.When Gautam Buddha became enlightened his first words were strange: “Not only I am enlightened, the whole of existence is enlightened with me. This music, this music of silence, soundless, these flowers, invisible, falling all over the place – I was just keeping my eyes closed. Today my eyes are open, but that does not make me superior. From the smallest blade of grass to the greatest star. everything is in blissfulness.”Man has created only one thing: misery for himself and misery for others. We are great creators of misery. If someday nothing terrible happens to you, that day is wasted – something terrible so that you can talk about it, rejoice about it, some great tragedy. People don’t like to see comedies, people like to see tragedies.When there is a war going on, everybody gets up early in the morning to find the newspaper, to see what is happening. Everybody looks fresh; something terrible is happening, so many thousands of people are dying. We have become so accustomed to tragedy and comedy seems to be tasteless.When you have found a master, you have found him. You can remain, you can go, but the master has settled in your heart.Those who go on and on are simply indicating that they have not found the man who makes their heart dance. They have not clicked with somebody. They have not found a man of presence who engulfs you with love and joy, compassion and light, life and love, beauty and truth, and all that is divine in existence. Unless you have seen those two eyes in which is reflected all that is divine, you have to go on in the hope that somewhere you may find.But remember always – because you can miss a real master – that you have to be absolutely receptive, utterly open, with no doors closed, with no windows closed. The fresh breeze comes with great fragrance, the coolness of it, the perfume of it is always available; it is just that your doors were closed.So if you don’t find a master, don’t think that there is no master. First, begin to see: Are you able to receive a master? Is your heart open? Is not your mind burdened with many kind of prejudices?What are all your religions except prejudices? No man of intelligence can depend on birth; birth is accidental. You are born a Hindu, that does not make you a Hindu. You are born a Mohammedan, that does not make you a Mohammedan. Such a great phenomenon as religion cannot be left hanging on the accidental phenomenon of birth. You have to choose it. You have to find it. Everybody has to go into a deeper search.Isan admired him… Remember, admiration is not the real appreciation of a master. If Isan had given him a good slap, or a good stick, that would have been appreciation.Our stick-holder – because I am a lazy man, I cannot carry the stick – has come from Germany. Just show your stick and hit poor Maneesha! [Niskriya takes the stick and taps Maneesha on the head. It makes a loud, sharp click.]Good!Isan admired him and said, “This has always been the claw and fang of our sect.” Seeing that Kyozan would not understand, he is not yet ripe, Isan avoided the stick.Isan taught for over forty years during which time he gathered innumerable disciples. On February 20th, 853, he went through a ritual ablution, seated himself in the meditation posture and, smiling, died at the age of eighty-three. His stupa was erected on Mount Kuei, home of his monastery.The emperor gave him the posthumous title Ta Yuan (Great Perfection).Isan must have worked hard in polishing an ordinary stone into a diamond. The whole glory and credit goes to Isan. He turned an ordinary man into a great perfection.Kyozan does not show much insight, intelligence, meditativeness, but it is the compassion of the master to do his best. Forty years he worked on Kyozan. It is a long time, but for compassion neither time means anything nor space means anything. Isan succeeded in bringing him home.I am reminded of a great emperor who dreamed one night that a great black shadow was standing before him. With trembling hands and throbbing heart, he asked, “Who are you?”The shadow said, “That we will discuss later on. I have come to inform you that tomorrow evening as the sun will be setting you will die.” The shadow disappeared and with the shadow, the sleep also disappeared.The king was perspiring. He called the attendant. In the middle of the night all the astrologers, palmists, prophets were called to interpret the dream: What does it mean?They started looking in their great scriptures, “Is there any precedent?” There was no precedent at all because death never informs anybody; it just comes without even knocking on your door.The sun was rising. The old attendant of the emperor, who was almost like his father – because his mother died early, and his father was so engaged in wars that he had given the small child to this old servant to take care of… The servant had taken care perfectly, so although he was a servant, the emperor almost respected him like a father. He was a substitute father.The old servant came close to him and said, “I am not a scholar, I am not an astrologer, and I am not an alchemist. I don’t know anything about these great things but one thing I do know is that you should not stay in this palace. Take our best horse and move as fast and as far from the capital as possible. If possible enter another kingdom.“And as far as these scholars are concerned, they have never come to any conclusion – ever! They discuss and discuss and every argument leads to another argument, but in the end the hands are empty. So let them discuss. You should not wait because once the sun has started rising, the setting will not be too far away. In the rising sun itself, the setting of the sun is intrinsic.”It appealed, so he left without saying anything to the great scholars, leaving them to confute each other and fight and argue. He took his best Arabian horse and he told the horse, “We have to reach as far away as possible. It is a very critical moment.” Horses and their lovers have a certain way of communicating, just as dogs have a certain way of communicating.The horse started with full speed. They never stopped for a single moment even to drink water or to eat something. They were happy that before the sun set they had crossed the kingdom; they had reached into another kingdom.Outside the kingdom there was a great mango grove. The sun was already setting, and the king thanked the horse. He said, “I had no idea that you can go so fast. I knew that you were one of the greatest horses, but this speed…”And just at that moment he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked behind him and saw the same black shadow. The black shadow said to the horse, “I was also worried whether you would be able to come this great a distance or not because the emperor is destined to die in this mango grove. I never inform people, there is no need. The need arose because the distance was so great, and there was no reason for him to leave the palace and to come to this mango grove. Just as the emperor is grateful to you, I am also grateful.”A beautiful story, but some deeper approach is needed.The mind always takes you far away. The servant was perfectly intelligent, rational – far more intelligent than those so-called scholars. But the mind is the mind.If an enlightened master had been there, he would have said, “There is enough time; just go in. A horse is not needed, you don’t have to move a single inch outside. Just go in and there is no death. Death exists only for those who live their lives in the outside world. To those who have known their innermost core, death is just a shadow. It has no solidity, no substance, no reality.”But Isan continued to teach Kyozan for over forty years.Enlightenment can happen in this very moment. It depends on your urgency, your totality. Time is not a question, neither is causality. Nothing is needed for it to happen because it is already there; you only have to turn your vision to look inside.For forty-two years, Isan, a great compassionate master, worked on Kyozan and finally managed for an almost dead man to become a buddha.Isan’s stupa – stupa is the Buddhist word for a memorial – still exists on Mount Kuei where after his enlightenment he established his monastery.Certainly he must have been enlightened; his death shows it.On February 20th, 853, he went through a ritual ablution, seated himself in the meditation posture and, smiling, died at the age of eighty-three. His stupa was erected on Mount Kuei, home of his monastery.The emperor gave him the posthumous title Ta Yuan (Great Perfection).The whole glory and credit goes to Isan. He turned an ordinary man into a great perfection.Soseki wrote:Once in a thousand yearsthe Udambara blossoms…Udambara is a metaphorical tree.Once in a thousand yearsthe Udambara blossoms.It has opened its auspicious flowers.Many labored to bring itfrom India to China.Its heady fragrance lingers,without fading,and is not lostamong the thousand grasses,the countless weeds.The same fragrance reached its crescendo in Japan.Anybody who realizes the fact of his being a buddha becomes a flower that blossoms once in thousands of years. And even if the body of the buddha dies, the fragrance remains. Those who have the right sensitivity can smell even this moment Gautam Buddha or Bodhidharma.It is not a question of time. Buddhahood is such an experience… In the body the buddha will die, but in the spirit he will float around you for eternities to come. He has melted into the universal and you can find him even this very moment. We are searching for him every moment. The buddha is our nature.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Is witnessing a learning or a remembering?Maneesha, it is both and it is both not.It is both in the sense that in the beginning you have to learn to enter your inner temple. And then you have to remember continuously because to forget again and again is human. But as your remembrance becomes a silent breathing in you, the moment you start breathing buddha in and out, then it is neither learning nor remembering.It is simply you.You have not achieved anything, you have not discovered anything; it has always been there. And whether you remember it or not, it will always remain there.That’s why Zen does not take things seriously. What does it matter? In this life or in some other life you are to become a buddha.The buddha is the New Man. He is the man of the future. The whole human consciousness is moving toward buddhahood.Strangely, it is already there within you, but you are not aware. Hence, a master can be helpful to you.It is just like tickling you [Osho makes tickling gestures toward those sitting in the hall.] and you start laughing, and I have not tickled yet! [Again he makes the movement.] And you will start feeling… [For the third time, he stretches his fingers toward the people in the hall.] The master’s work is to tickle you. And it is a joy to tickle ten thousand buddhas!Now it is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. He waits and waits for his time. If I go on telling you jokes, one thing is certain: I may die, but Gurudayal Singh is not going to die. He will still wait.At the end of the Sunday school class, the teacher, Miss Holynose, turns to the kids and says, “Now, how many of you children would like to go to heaven?”Everybody shoots up their hand, except for one little girl.“Come on, Sally,” says Miss Holynose. “Don’t you want to go to heaven?”“Sure I want to go to heaven,” replies Sally looking around. “But not with these guys!”The body of Mendel Kravitz is lying in an open coffin in Finkelstein’s Funeral Parlor. As the mourners file past to pay their final respects, Hymie Goldberg clucks his tongue and shakes his head.“He was an atheist, he never believed in heaven and hell, you know,” Hymie says to Grandpa Finkelstein, who is standing by the coffin, looking somber.“Really?” replies the Fink, looking at the dead Mendel’s immaculate suit and tie. “Then I guess he is all dressed up with nowhere to go!”Gorgeous Gloria is fed up with her usual boyfriends, so she decides to join a computer match-making service. She sends in all her personal information and preferences and then waits excitedly for the result.The very next day she gets a phone call from her first prospective date. After ten minutes of chatty conversation, the guy suddenly says, “I’m nine inches long and four inches around! Are you interested?”“Interested?” cries Gloria. “I’m fascinated! And how big is your prick?”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen.Now look inward with your totality of consciousness, with an urgency as if this is going to be your last moment of life.Deeper and deeper…Silence starts deepening. A subtle, undefinable bliss starts arising, a fragrance of the Udambara tree. You are very close to buddha; just a little more and you are the buddha.The only quality that buddha has is witnessing. Both the words mean the same: be a witness and you are a buddha.To make this witnessing clear, more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax. The body is there, the mind is there, but you are neither.You are the witness.This witness is your only treasure. Everything will be burned on a funeral pyre; only the witness cannot be touched by any fire, by any sword. The witness is your eternity.The evening was great on its own, but your silence, your peace, your blissfulness have made it a thousand times more beautiful. If you can keep witnessing throughout the day, twenty-four hours, your whole life will become just an ecstasy.A man who dies without knowing ecstasy lived in vain, or lived not.Before Nivedano calls you back, collect as much fragrance as possible to bring with you. You are coming back as a buddha, with the same grace, with the same joy, with the same fulfillment.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back silently.Sit for a few minutes recollecting the experience you have been through because you have to keep this experience around the clock. A day will come when you will not need to remember it. It will be there whether you look at it or not.That day comes! I can say it with absolute authority because it has come to me; why can it not come to you?Every human being is a seed of the buddha.And blessed are those seeds which come to their total flowering.

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I Say Unto You Vol 1 01-10Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 1 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Matthew 5And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.The Gospel starts in an incredibly beautiful way. No other book starts that way, no other book can start that way. The Bible is “the book of the books.” That is the exact meaning of the word Bible – the Book. It is the most precious document that humanity has. That’s why it is called “The Testament,” because Jesus has witnessed to God in it; Jesus has become the witness to God, a testament. It is the only proof possible. God cannot be argued, but only a man like Jesus can become a proof for him.The Gospel carries all that is beautiful in Jesus’ flowering – the Beatitudes. These statements are the most beautiful ever made. Not even Buddha, not even Lao Tzu, have spoken that way. Buddha is very philosophic, very refined; Jesus is very plain, simple. Jesus speaks like a villager, a farmer, a fisherman. But because he speaks the way common people speak, his words have solidity, concreteness, reality.Buddha’s words are abstract; they are very, very high words, philosophical. Jesus’ words are down-to-earth, very earthly. They have that fragrance of the earth that you come across when the rains have started and the earth is soaking up the rains and a great fragrance arises – the fragrance of the wet earth, the fragrance that you find on a sea beach, the fragrance of the ocean, the trees. Jesus’ words are very, very earthbound, rooted in the earth. He is an earthly man, and that is his beauty. Nobody else can be compared with that beauty. The sky is good, but abstract, far away, distant.So I say to you, no other book starts the way the Gospel starts; no other book talks the way the Gospel talks. The word gospel comes originally from the word godspel. God has spoken through Jesus. Jesus is just a hollow bamboo. The song is of God, and Jesus’ metaphors are very true to life. He is not spinning concepts, he is simply indicating the truth as it is.First the beginning: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judas, and Judas begat Phares, and Phares begat Esrom, and Esrom begat Aram…” And so it goes, on and on: “…and then Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.”Then this genealogy stops suddenly. Forty-two generations have passed from Abraham to Jesus. The Gospel records the forty-two generations, and then suddenly Jesus is born and the genealogy stops. Suddenly there comes a full stop, because Jesus is the fulfillment; there is no beyond. Jesus is the culmination; there is no way to go further on. So “Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob…” It continues. Then there is no way to go beyond Jesus; the ultimate has come. Jesus is the flowering and the fulfillment. That’s why the Bible calls Jesus the pleroma, the fulfillment.Those forty-two generations are fulfilled in Jesus. The whole history that has preceded Jesus is fulfilled in him. The home has arrived. He is the fruit, the growth, the evolution of those forty-two generations. Jesus is the fulfillment, that’s why the Gospel does not say anything further. Jesus did not beget anybody, Jesus begat himself. And that is the meaning of the word christ.There are two kinds of births: one, through others – from the father, from the mother – that is a bodily birth. The other birth you have to give to yourself, you have to be born out of yourself; you have to become the womb, the father and the mother and the child. You have to die as the past and you are to be born as the future. You have to beget yourself. That’s why I say that the book starts in an incredibly beautiful way – very significant: Jesus begat nobody, Jesus begat himself.That is the meaning of crucifixion and resurrection. The body is crucified, you cannot crucify the spirit. You can destroy the body. You cannot destroy the spirit. The body is gross; the sword can cut it, the poison can kill it, and even if nothing is going to kill it, death is going to come and the body will be gone. It has to go, it is meant to go; it is only there for the time being. Those who are conscious use that time to create spirit in them.The body is like grapes, the grapes will have to go. You cannot keep grapes for long – they will go rotten. But you can create wine out of the grapes, that’s why it is also called “spirit.” You can create spirit, a wine, in your being. Grapes cannot be accumulated, they are temporary, momentary. But wine can stay forever. In fact, the older it becomes the more precious and valuable it is. It has a non-temporal duration; it is something of eternity. The body is like the grapes, and if you use it rightly you can create the wine in you. The body is going to disappear, but the wine can remain, the spirit can remain.Jesus has done many miracles. One of the miracles is that of transforming water into wine. These are metaphors – don’t take them literally. If you take them literally, you destroy their meaning, their significance. And if you start proving that they are historical facts, you are stupid, and with you Jesus also looks stupid. They are metaphors of the inner world. The inner world cannot be expressed literally, but symbolically – only symbolically. Turning water into wine simply means creating the eternal from time, creating that which remains from that which cannot remain.If you keep water, sooner or later it will start stinking. But you can keep wine for ages, for centuries. And the longer it is there the better it becomes, the more powerful, the more potent it becomes. Wine is a metaphor for the eternal. Jesus is transformed through his sacrifice. Nobody is ever transformed without sacrifice. You have to pay for it; the cross is the price that you pay. You have to die to be reborn; you have to lose all to gain godliness.Jesus begat himself. That phenomenon happened on the cross. He hesitated for a time, he was very puzzled – it was natural. For a single moment he could not see God anywhere. All was lost, he was losing all; he was going to die and there seemed to be no possibility… That happens to every seed. When you put the seed into the earth, a moment comes when the seed is losing itself, and there must be hesitation – the same hesitation that happened to Jesus on the cross. The seed is dying, and the seed must cling to the past. It wants to survive – nobody wants to die. And the seed cannot imagine that this is not death, that soon it will be resurrected in a thousand-fold way, that soon it will start growing as a sprout.The death of the seed will be the birth of the tree. There will be great foliage and flowering and fruits, and birds will come and sit on the branches and make their nests, and people will sit under the shade of the tree. And the tree will talk to the clouds and the stars in the night, and will play with the sky, and will dance in the winds; and there will be great rejoicing. But how can this be known to the poor seed which has never been anything else? It is inconceivable. That’s why God is inconceivable.It cannot be proved to the seed that it is going to happen, because if the seed asks, “Then let me see what you are going to do,” you cannot make it available, you cannot make visible to the seed what is going to happen. It is going to happen in the future, and when it happens, the seed will be gone. The seed will never meet the tree. Man never meets God. When the man is gone, God descends.Jesus hesitated, was worried, bewildered. He shouted, almost shouted against the sky: “Why have you forsaken me? Why? Why this torture for me? What wrong have I done to you?” A thousand and one things must have crossed his mind.The seed is dying, and the seed is completely oblivious to what is going to happen next. It is not possible for the seed to conceive of that next step; hence faith, hence trust is needed. The seed has to trust that the tree will be born. With all the hesitation, with all kinds of fear, insecurities, with all kinds of anguish, anxiety – in spite of all of them – the seed has to trust that the tree will happen, that the tree is going to happen. It is a leap into faith. That leap happened to Jesus: he relaxed on the cross and he said, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done…” His heart was palpitating. It is natural. Your heart will also palpitate, you will also be afraid when that moment of death comes to you, when that moment comes when your self disappears and you are losing yourself into a kind of nothingness, and there seems to be no way to survive, and you have to surrender.You can surrender in two ways: you can surrender reluctantly, then you will miss the real point of it, you will simply die and be born again. If you can relax in deep acceptance, trust, if you can surrender without any resistance… That’s what Jesus did, that is the greatest miracle. To me that is the miracle – not that he gave health to somebody who was ill, or eyes to somebody who was blind, or cured the leprosy of somebody; or even helped Lazarus to revive, to come back to life after he had died. No, these are not real miracles. To me, they are all parables, metaphors. Every master has given eyes to those who are blind, and ears to those who are deaf. Each master has brought people out of their death that they call life, has called them out of their graves. These are metaphors. But the real miracle is when Jesus – in spite of all of his hesitations, worries, doubts, suspicions – relaxes, surrenders, and says, “Thy will be done.” That moment Jesus disappears, Christ is born.Teilhard de Chardin calls it “Christogenesis”: Jesus begetting Christ. Through Christogenesis man becomes that which he really is; he loses that which he is not and becomes that which he is: man becomes “Christified.” Be Christified, never become a Christian. The Christian is one who follows the Christian dogma. Christified means one who dies as a seed and becomes a tree. Christified means that you drop the ego, you disappear as yourself and you start appearing on another plane in a kind of transfiguration, a resurrection. Christified means you are no longer alone: existence is in you and you are in existence.This is the paradox of christ consciousness. Christ calls himself many times the son of man, and many times the son of God. He is both: the son of man as far as the body is concerned, the son of man as far as mind is concerned; the son of God as far as spirit is concerned, the son of God as far as consciousness is concerned. Mind is the mechanism of consciousness, just as the body is the abode of the spirit. Mind belongs to body, consciousness belongs to spirit. Jesus is the paradox: on the one hand man, on the other hand God. And when God and man work together, then if miracles happen there is nothing to be surprised about. Miracles happen only when God and man function together in cooperation.Leo Tolstoy has said, “Christ is God and man working together, walking together, dancing together.” St. Augustine says, “Without God, man cannot; without man, God will not.” Christ is the combined operation – the meeting of the finite with the infinite, time and eternity meeting and merging into each other.An old gardener was digging his plot as the priest came along. “George,” said the priest, “it is wonderful what God and man working together can do.”“Yes sir,” replied George, “but you should have seen this garden last year when he had it all to himself!”Yes, that is true. Man alone is impotent. God also cannot work alone. God alone is potent but has no instrument. Man alone is a hollow bamboo – nobody to create a song on it, nobody to fill it with music, harmony, melody. God alone has the capacity to create a melody but has no hollow bamboo to create a flute. Christ is the flute on God’s lips. So whatsoever has come from Christ is godspel, is gospel.Fourteen generations passed between David and Jesus. That too is very symbolic. Books like the Bible are not written by ordinary people, they are what George Gurdjieff used to call “objective art.” The Bible is one of the representative objective works of art in the world. It is not like a book written by a George Bernard Shaw or a Kalidas. These people create subjective art. They write something, they write beautifully, they have the aesthetic sense, but they are as unconscious as any other human being. They have a nose for beauty, but they are as sleepy as anybody else. Their works of art are subjective; they express themselves.But books like the Vedas, the Koran, the Bible, the Upanishads, are not written by people who are asleep, they are not written as beautiful poetry or prose; they are written by people who know what truth is, who have awakened themselves to truth. Then whatsoever they write is almost like a map. You have to decipher it, you have to decode it; otherwise you will go on missing it.Why fourteen generations? No scholar has asked, no biblical scholar has asked. Why only fourteen? Why not fifteen? Why not thirteen? I am giving you this as an example of objective art. It is fourteen for a certain reason. It has to be decoded. The spirit matures just like the body matures. The body matures in fourteen years – it becomes sexually mature, it can reproduce sexually. At fourteen years the body is ripe as far as sexual reproduction is concerned: the boy can become a father, the girl can become a mother; they can reproduce replicas of themselves.In exactly the same way the spirit also matures. Just as it takes fourteen years for the body to mature sexually, it takes fourteen generations for the spirit to mature spiritually. That is the meaning of fourteen generations: from Abraham to David, from David to the exile in Babylon, and from the exile in Babylon to Jesus. When the spirit has come to its maturity, when the fruit is ripe it falls from the tree. Unripe, it clings to the tree. Unripe, it has to cling – if it falls unripe, then it will never become sweet; it will remain bitter, sour. It will be useless. To ripen, it needs to cling. Clinging simply shows, “I am not yet ready to leave you.” Whenever somebody is ripe, that very ripeness becomes freedom, then clinging disappears.Jesus disappears into existence, Jesus disappears from this tree of life: the fruit is ripe. That’s what we in the East say, that whenever a man has become perfect – perfect in the sense that he has grown all that he could grow on this earth, in this situation – he will not return again. He crosses to the beyond, he passes beyond the point of no return and he never comes back. We call him a buddha, or a jina.Jews used to call that state, christ: one who has gone beyond and will be here only for a time. The fruit is ripe and waiting to drop any moment – any small breeze and the fruit will be gone forever, and it will disappear into existence. Hence, the tree stops at Jesus; he remains unmarried, he does not reproduce. This celibacy has nothing to do with ordinary, repressed celibacy. He is not against love, he is not against sex, he is not a puritan, he is not a moralist.I was reading the other night that Dostoevsky has said that moralists are always very miserable people. This seems to be an absolutely true observation. Moralists are miserable people. In fact only miserable people become moralists. They are so miserable that they would like to make everybody else also miserable, and the best way to make people feel miserable is to make them feel guilty.Jesus is not a moralist. His brahmacharya, his celibacy, has a totally different quality to it. It simply says that he is no longer interested in reproducing on the physical plane, he is interested in reproducing on the spiritual plane. He does not give birth to children, he gives birth to disciples. He creates more abodes in the world for godliness to descend into. He does not create bodies, he creates souls. He is a miracle master; he created many enlightened people on the earth – he had that magic touch, and he created them out of nobodies.Buddha created many enlightened people, but they were very, very grown-up souls. A Sariputra was already a very grown-up soul; the fruit was ripe. My own feeling is that even if Buddha had not come into the life of Sariputra, he would have become enlightened sooner or later; Buddha was not very essential. He helped, he speeded up things, but was not very essential. If Sariputra had not met him, maybe in one life or two lives he would have come around the corner by himself; he was already coming, he was just on the verge. So was Mahakashyapa, so was Maudgalyan, and so were Buddha’s other disciples.But Jesus really did miracles. He touched ordinary stones and transformed them into diamonds. He moved among very ordinary people: a fisherman throwing his net. Jesus comes, stands behind him, puts his hand on his shoulder and says, “Look into my eyes. How long are you going to catch fish? I can make you a catcher of men. Look into my eyes.” The poor, ordinary fisherman – uneducated, unsophisticated, uncultured, has never heard about anything, may not have ever been interested in spiritual growth; was contented with catching fish and selling them, and was happy in his day-to-day life – looks into the eyes of Jesus, throws away his net and follows him. This fisherman – or a farmer, or a tax-collector, or even a prostitute, Mary Magdalene – becomes an enlightened person. Jesus transforms ordinary metal into gold. He is really the philosopher’s stone. His touch is magical: wherever he touches, suddenly the spirit arises.Buddha enlightened many people, but those people were already on the path. Buddha moved with sophisticated people, learned, virtuous, special. Jesus moved with very ordinary people: down-trodden, oppressed, poor. This was one of the crimes against him put by the priests: “He moves with gamblers, with drunkards, with prostitutes. He stays with prostitutes, he stays with anybody, he eats with anybody. He is a fallen man.” And on the surface, to all appearances, he looked like a fallen man. But he was falling only with those people to help them rise; he was going to the lowest to turn them into the highest, and there is a reason.The lowest may be unsophisticated, uncultured, but he has a purity of heart; he has more love in him. Now you will be able to understand the difference. Buddha’s path is of intelligence. He cannot go to a fisherman and say, “Come to me and I will make you enlightened.” This is not possible for him. His path is that of awareness, intelligence, understanding. The fisherman will not even understand his language; it is too far above him, it is beyond his grasp.The path of Jesus is the path of love, and the poor people have more love than the rich. Maybe that is why they are poor, because when you have much love you cannot accumulate much money – they don’t go together. When you have much love you share. A rich man cannot be a loving man because love will always be dangerous to his riches. If he loves people then he will have to share.I used to live in a family for seven years. The man was very rich, and he was interested in my ideas – that’s why he invited me to stay with him. He had made all the arrangements for me in a beautiful way. He had provided a big bungalow and a big garden. He came to live with me with his family, just to be with me. I was surprised; I had never seen him talking to his wife or to his children. When we had become more and more accustomed to each other, one day I asked him, “I never see you sitting with your wife or with your children. I never see you talking to anybody in your family. What is the matter?”He said, “If I talk to my wife, she immediately starts demanding, ‘There is a beautiful ornament in the shop,’ or, ‘Better saris have come,’ or this and that. Immediately she jumps on my pocket. If I talk to my children, their hands start groping into my pocket. I have learnt that it is better to keep quiet, remain stiff and have a hard face. It protects you. Then nobody asks for anything.”I understood his idea. It is the idea of all the rich people in the world. The person who becomes too obsessed with money is really obsessed with money because he cannot love. Money becomes a substitute love. He starts hoarding money because he thinks there is no other thing to be happy about: “Hoard money, then at least you have the money and you can purchase everything.” He even believes that he can purchase love with his money. He can purchase sex but not love. But then many people think that sex is love.He can purchase bodies, but he cannot have any intimacy with a person. Many people think that to have the body of the other, to possess the body of the other is enough. “What more is needed? Why bother about anything more?” Many people are interested only in casual sex, not in intimacy, not in going into depth, not moving into a deep dialogue. They are afraid of the deep dialogue because then there is commitment, and commitment brings responsibility. Then they have to be very sensitive, alive. “Who bothers? Just casual sex is good, and casual sex can be purchased, it is available in the market-place.” The man who is after money thinks that all can be purchased through the money. “So why bother about anything else? You can have the most beautiful woman, you can have the most beautiful house, you can have this and that…” He thinks that this is going to satisfy him. This never satisfies. Only love satisfies, no substitute can ever satisfy. A substitute is a substitute; it is pseudo.Poor people have more love, because poor people have not grown their heads, so their whole energy revolves around the heart. These are the two centers: either the energy moves into the heart or the energy moves into the head. It is very rare to find a balanced being whose energy moves into both or who is capable of moving energy wherever it is needed – diverting it. When he wants to have intelligence, he moves, channels his energy into the head. When he wants to love, he channels his energy, his whole energy, into his heart. This is the perfect man. But ordinarily people are not so perfect. Either they are hung-up in the head or they are available to the heart.Jesus’ path is of love; hence he worked miracles on poor people, on ordinary people whose intelligence was not yet very developed. But that opportunity could be used; their energy was raw and yet in the heart. They were more like children.Just as the body matures in fourteen years, so the spirit matures in fourteen generations; that is the minimum limit. It depends on you. It may not grow even in one hundred and forty generations – you can be very lazy or you can remain unaware, then you can go on and on for millions of lives and it may not grow. But fourteen generations is a natural time limit; that much is needed.The spirit is not a seasonal flower: it is like a great cedar of Lebanon. It takes time – fourteen generations for the tree to grow, to reach to the sky. It is not a seasonal flower that comes within weeks but is gone within weeks too. The spirit means the eternal; the eternal needs time, patience. These fourteen generations are just a symbolic number. Jesus cannot be born before fourteen generations. This state is possible only after a time – after a few steps have been crossed, and that is so in other dimensions too.For example, the caveman could not have given us the Platonic Dialogues or the symphonies of Beethoven or the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci or the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. It was not possible for the caveman to give these things. The caveman could not have given us an Albert Einstein either, or a Dostoevsky or a Picasso. The caveman could not have given us a Buddha or a Lao Tzu or a Jesus. It needs time and it needs preparation, and it needs a certain milieu in which to grow, only then is Jesus possible. For Jesus to exist many things are needed; he can only exist in these circumstances. For Jesus to say what he wants to say, a certain kind of person is needed who can understand it.What I am saying to you can only be said now. It can only be said now, not before; it was not possible before. And what I will be saying to you tomorrow will only be possible tomorrow, not today. You have to become receptive, you have to grow. If you are not in a certain state to receive it, it cannot be uttered.Jesus is the culmination of the whole Jewish consciousness, and the strange thing is that the Jews rejected him. That has always been happening. Buddha was the culmination of Hindu consciousness, and the Hindus rejected him. Socrates was the culmination of the Greek consciousness, and the Greeks killed him. This is very strange, but this has always been happening. Why can we not accept our own culmination? What goes wrong? Why could the Jews not accept Jesus? They had been waiting for Jesus, they had been waiting for the Messiah, for Christ to come. They are still waiting, and the Messiah has already come and gone too. They helped him to go, and they are still waiting for him.What went wrong? What always goes wrong? Jesus is the culmination of the Jewish consciousness. All the prophets of the Jews that had preceded Jesus were preparing the ground for him to come. That’s what John the Baptist was saying to the people: “I am nothing compared to the person for whom I am preparing the way. I am just a sweeper. I am simply cleaning the path for him to come. The one higher than me is going to come.” John the Baptist and the other prophets were simply preparing the way for this ultimate culmination, for this peak, this Everest. And then the Everest comes, and something goes wrong. What goes wrong? – the other peaks start feeling small.They have all helped. Just think: Everest cannot stand alone if the other peaks of the Himalayas disappear. Everest cannot stand alone; it needs the whole Himalaya to support it, to be there. It cannot rise so high alone – no peak can rise so high alone. It will need the support of thousands of other peaks: smaller, bigger, and all kinds. But once the peak has come up, the other peaks start feeling hurt. Their egos ache; it is very painful. They have supported it – this is the paradox. They have supported the happening of this peak. It could not have happened without them, and now that it has happened, they are feeling very low, depressed. If all the peaks of the Himalayas were to conspire against Everest, it would be very logical. If they crucified Everest, it would be very logical.That’s what happened to Jesus. Once he was there, the Jews, the rabbis, the religious leaders, the priests, started feeling very offended. His very presence was offensive – not that he offended anybody, not that he hurt anybody. How could he hurt them? But his very presence, that Everest-like height, that plenitude, that height… Everybody looked low and small.Now Everest cannot do anything about it. It is not arrogant, it is not egoistic, but it is high – that is certainly so. And every other peak is hurt, feels pained, wants to take revenge. Hence Jesus was crucified. So Buddha was rejected – thrown out of this country completely. He became a foreigner in his own land. This has been so down the ages, it is so, still. It seems this is going to remain so forever because man is, after all, man. In his sleep, in his egoistic attitudes, this is how he functions.Jesus’ Beatitudes are God’s songs through him. Remember, he is just a medium. He is not the author of these Gospels, he is just a messenger. He is simply giving you that which he is receiving.Now, let us go into these Beatitudes:And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him…I would like you to go into each word very silently, very sympathetically. And seeing the multitudes – the crowd, the mass – he went up into a mountain… These are ways of saying certain psychological things. The multitude is the lowest state of consciousness: the mass, the crowd. It is a dense darkness. It is very dark there, and a very deep sleep. When you move in the multitude, if you want to connect and relate with the multitude, you have to come to their level. That is why whenever you go into a crowd, you feel a little bit lost. You start feeling a little bit suffocated. That feeling of suffocation is not only physical – it is not just that people are around you, no. The suffocation is more psychological, because when you are with people who are very low in their consciousness, you cannot remain an Everest; they pull you down. Whenever you go to the masses you lose something. Hence the need arises for aloneness, for meditation. And in Jesus’ life you will find that many times he moves in the multitude – his work was there, that was his field – but again and again, after a few months, he goes to the mountains; he goes away from the multitude, and the crowd, and the crowd-mind, to be with God.When you are alone you are with God. You can be with God only when you are absolutely alone. And when you are with God you start flying in the sky. The very presence of God takes you up and up. And the presence of the crowds takes you down and down. Only with God can you fly into the sky, can you have wings. With the crowds, your wings are cut off. Even your hands and your legs are cut off – what to say about wings? You become a cripple, because they are all cripples. You become paralyzed, because they are all paralyzed. And they will never forgive you if you don’t live according to them when you are with them. If you want to work with them, if you want to help them, you will have to move in their world, according to them. This is tiring and very exhausting.And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain… He was staying in a village doing his magical work of transforming people – blind people were given eyes, and deaf people were given ears. And those who could not walk, who could not grow were made whole, and those who had become dead and dull were again rejuvenated, revitalized. But this whole work… Many more people were coming, and a great crowd was surrounding him; he became exhausted, he became tired, hence the need to go up into a mountain. Going out is going down, going in is going up. In the inner world, up and in mean the same; out and down mean the same. When you have to relate with people you have to go out, and when you have to relate with people who are very low in consciousness you have to bend low. That is very tiring.Jesus, Buddha or Mahavira, all move to the mountains. They go into a lonely place just to regain their height, just to regain their purity, just to regain their own state; just to spread their limbs again, just to be themselves and just to be with God. With God, they start soaring high. With God, you become a seagull, you start soaring high. There is no limit to it. Again you are vital, again you are full of godliness, again you are like a cloud full of rainwater and you would like to shower. You come back to the multitude where people are thirsty.People ask me what I go on doing in my room alone. That is my mountain. That is where I can soar high. I need not think about you, I need not commune with you. I need not function through the body and through the mind. I can forget the body, I can forget the mind. I can forget you; I can forget all. In that moment of utter forgetfulness of all, one is. And that isness is immense. That isness has a splendor to it. It is freshness, it is vitality, because it is the very source of life.But once you are full of that life, you have to share. So every morning I am back with you, every evening I am back with you. I go on from my mountain to the multitude continuously! Going to a mountain does not mean really going to a mountain, it simply means going to inner height. Whether Jesus went to a real mountain or not is irrelevant; it has nothing to do with the Gospel. He may have gone to the mountain, because it was almost impossible in those days to live the way I live. It was impossible.For fifteen years I also lived like Jesus, moving in the multitude, and it was impossible to get even a single moment alone. I had to go back again and again to my place where I used to live in Jabalpur and I kept myself absolutely alone. Jabalpur was very unfortunate… I would go around the country and everywhere I would meet people – but not in Jabalpur. That was my mountain. And when I would come to Mumbai, or to Delhi, or to Pune, people would ask me why I unnecessarily traveled back to Jabalpur again and again. Fifteen, twenty days… I would have to go back to Jabalpur for three or four days, and then I would start again. It was unnecessary. I could have gone from Pune to Mumbai, from Mumbai to Delhi, from Delhi to Amritsar, from Amritsar to Sri Nagar. Why should I go to Jabalpur first, and then again after a few days?Jabalpur was my mountain. There I kept myself absolutely alone. When it became impossible to be alone even there, and the multitude started coming there, then I had to leave that place. Alone in my room I am doing exactly what Jesus did.And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him… To talk to disciples is a different matter. To talk to the multitude is a different matter. That’s why I had to stop talking to the crowds. I had to create a special class of my own sannyasins with whom I could have a communion of the heart.When you are talking to the multitudes, first, they are very indifferent to what you are saying – you have to shout unnecessarily. Second, if they are not indifferent, then they are against – antagonistic, always afraid and protecting their ideas, always resisting, arguing. That is unnecessary work. And these things that I am talking about or Jesus was talking about are not things that can be argued. No proof is possible – only trust. If you can trust me, these things can be explained to you. But trust has to have a very, very basic thing to it. If you don’t trust me, there is no way to prove anything. Then it is simply a waste of my time and your time.To talk to disciples is a different thing. To talk to disciples means that the other side is receptive – not only receptive but immensely welcoming. You are welcome, the other side wants you to come in, the other side wants to become a host to whatsoever you are saying. The doors are open, the windows are open for you to become a breeze, or sunlight, and enter into their beings. They are not afraid, they are not defending, they are not arguing; they are ready to go with you wholeheartedly to any unknown dimension. To talk to disciples is not a kind of discussion or debate; it is a dialogue. It is as much a dialogue as it is when two lovers talk to each other. The disciple is in love with the master, the master is in love with the disciple. There is deep love flowing. That love becomes the bridge, and then great truths can be explained, conveyed, almost materialized.…and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying…He has escaped from the multitude, but not from the disciples. He is available to the disciples. He can fly with existence and the disciples can fly with him. Maybe they are not so expert at flying, but their readiness is there, and that is the only thing that is needed, the most essential. Maybe they cannot go to the very heights alone; but trusting the master they can follow, they can follow to any length, they can go to any extreme. The master flies with God, the disciple flies with the master. The disciple cannot see God yet but he can see the master, and through the master he can feel God. That’s why the master becomes almost a God to the disciple. He is. By and by, the closer the disciple comes to the master, the more and more he will see that the master is an emptiness, or a mirror in which God is reflected. Sooner or later, he himself will become an emptiness, a mirror, and will be able, in his turn, to help others.…he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.This is one of the most fundamental statements ever made. Many other Beatitudes will follow, but nothing to be compared to this. It is exceptional, it is extraordinary. And the beauty is: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of God. In other Beatitudes he will say …they shall inherit the earth. But in this he says …for theirs is the kingdom of God.The …poor in spirit… means exactly what Buddha was saying to Sariputra: nothingness. Ego makes you feel that you are rich, that you are somebody, this and that. When the ego disappears and you are a nobody… That’s what Jesus means by …poor in spirit…Buddha’s word is more sophisticated, philosophical.Therefore, O Sariputra,Form is nothingness,Nothingness is form.Jesus’ words are simple, unsophisticated. And it is natural. Buddha was the son of a great king, Jesus is the son of a carpenter. For many years he was just working in his father’s workshop bringing wood, cutting wood. He knows the ways of the simple people, the woodcutters, the carpenters.He says: Blessed are the poor in spirit… Those who know that they are nothing, those who know that their inside is just empty; there is no self, no ego, no claim, no word, no knowledge, no scripture – just emptiness, pure sky, spaciousness. Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of God. It is theirs right now! It is not said that they will have, there is no postponement, there is no time element involved. If you are nothing, this very moment you are God. If you are nothing, you are God. Between nothingness and God, there is no gap to be crossed – there is no gap. From one side it is nothingness, poverty of spirit, from the other side it is the kingdom of God.A very paradoxical statement: Those who are poor will become kings; and those who think they are kings will remain poor. Lose if you want to gain; gain if you want to lose. Possess if you want to remain a beggar; dispossess if you want to become a king. Don’t possess anything at all – not even yourself. That’s what is meant by …poor in spirit… Theirs is the kingdom of God here and now, right away. It is not a promise for the future, it is a simple statement of truth.The other Beatitudes are not so deep. If this is understood, then there is no need to read ahead. If this is not understood – and this must not have been understood, that’s why Jesus continues – then he makes the truth more diluted, understandable.He says:Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.Now the future comes in. The disciples have missed, otherwise there would have only been one Beatitude because it contains all. There is no need to elaborate on it. Jesus has said everything. This is his ultimate sutra. But he must have looked around into the eyes of the disciples, and he must have seen that they had not been able to understand it – it is too high. He has to come a little lower, he has to bring the future in.The mind can understand the future, the mind cannot understand the present. The mind is absolutely incapable of understanding the present. If I say to you, “Right now you are buddhas and christs.” You listen to me but you say: “What are you saying? I – and a buddha? And just last night I was gambling. And, Osho, you don’t know me, I am a smoker. Or sometimes I even take hashish. You don’t know me, I am a sinner. And what are you talking about? I know myself better. I am not a buddha, I am the worst sinner in the world.” So you can listen to me if I say, “You are a buddha right now. Nothing is missing, nothing is lacking.” You listen out of politeness, but deep down you say, “Nonsense!”Jesus has said the ultimate: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This can be compared to the sutra Buddha gave to Sariputra, when he said, “This is the unique mantra, this is the incomparable mantra. There is no other mantra higher than this: Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha. Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond. What ecstasy! Alleluia!” He says this is all, condensed into one small mantra.This mantra is just like that: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Right now, here-now, this very moment – be a nobody and have all. Be a beggar and become an emperor. Lose and possess.He must have looked around – the arrow had not reached the target. The disciples had saved their hearts. They just went out of the way of the arrow; it passed them by. It went above their heads. Jesus had to come low – he brings in the future.The future means bringing the mind in. The mind can understand means and ends, the mind can understand cause and effect: do this and this will happen. But remember, it will happen – it will be in the future. You put the seed in the soil and one day it will become a tree. “Perfectly true,” the mind says. “I can understand it. There is a process: step by step the tree will come up.” If you say, “Put the seed there, and look, behold, the tree is there!” It will say, “Are you a magician or what? Only magicians can do that.”The first statement is very magical, the mind cannot figure it out; it cannot reckon what it is. The mind can understand division, duality, cause and effect, past and future, this and that, here and there. The mind divides – and then the mind is at ease. It says, “Perfectly okay. Be righteous, and you will get that. But there is going to be a time gap, and you have to prepare, and you have to do many things.” The mind is a doer.Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Jesus says, “Okay, then be like small children who are helpless.” The child just cries and weeps for the mother, and the mother runs to the child. When the child is in misery, the mother comes to comfort. So mourn, let your prayers be cries of helplessness. Remember, the definition of a prayer is meditation through tears, meditation with tears. When the tears are your meditation, it is prayerfulness. When meditation is with love, and you think about yourself as a lost, small child, and existence is a mother or a father… That’s Jesus’ approach. He says, “Then pray, cry out of your helplessness and the help will come and you will be comforted.”Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.And become simple, humble, meek, don’t be arrogant. Now listen to the difference. The first was …poor in spirit… It does not say be humble, because in humbleness a subtle ego remains. You have the idea, “I am humble” – the “I” is there. First you were thinking, “I am very great,” now you think, “I am very meek.” But “I am” is still there; the “I” still continues. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. So, a little barrier, that’s why it is in the future. You cannot be right now. That small barrier of humbleness, meekness will go on surrounding you, and will go on dividing you from the truth.Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.Now do good works, be virtuous and God will come and fill you.Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.Be merciful, be compassionate. Whatsoever you want God to give to you, you give to the world – to God’s world. That’s the law.Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.Even with purity some distance. Poverty is ultimate; in purity, there is still some ego: “I am pure, holy, sacred, holier-than-thou,” and things like that continue. The sinner is one who claims the ego, gross ego. The saint is one who claims the subtle ego: holiness. And the sage is one who claims not. The sage is one who simply says, “I am nobody, a nothingness.” It is not just a saying, he knows it; existentially, he knows it.Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.Ye are the salt of the earth…Jesus says: Rejoice… But this rejoicing is not the ultimate rejoicing, it is a desire, because great will be the result in heaven. There is a desire to attain something, to achieve something. If you don’t have any desire – not even the desire for God, not even the desire for heaven – then right now you are kings, right now the kingdom of God is yours.And Jesus says to his disciples: Ye are the salt of the earth… Now it is very absurd, looks absurd. These are poor people. Somebody has been a carpenter, somebody has been a shoemaker, somebody has been a fisherman – people like that. And Jesus says to them: Ye are the salt of the earth… And he is right, although he looks absurd. They were not kings, great emperors, viceroys, lords, rich people – they were not. But why does he say, Ye are the salt of the earth…? – because whosoever knows a little bit of God is the salt. It is because of these few people that the earth remains meaningful, that there remains some significance, that there is some taste in life and some joy.And the same I say to you: you are the salt of the earth, because whosoever has started moving toward godliness has started moving toward joy. And when you move toward joy, you help the whole world to move toward joy, because you are the world. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad… Because:Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.I say unto you too: you are the salt of the earth. You are the spearhead of the future evolution of man. You sannyasins are carrying the seeds of the future. Rejoice! And become more and more salty, more and more full of godliness.Enough for today.

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I Say Unto You Vol 1 01-10Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 1 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,What am I to do with the Jesus I thought I knew and loved for so long?The question is from Chintana, who has been a nun. She has suffered enough by being a nun, and suffered for sins she has never committed. To be a nun is a kind of masochism, a kind of self-torture inflicted upon oneself in the name of Jesus, in the name of Buddha – only the names differ, the torture is the same. And when you are torturing yourself, your relationship with Jesus or Buddha or Mahavira is going to be pathological.Relationship is healthy only when there is joy, when there is celebration, when there is full acceptance of life and all that it brings.When there is denial, rejection, when you are restricting your vital parts and you are destroying yourself, the relationship is not really a relationship. You are in love with your misery, and you call your misery Jesus. Never be in love with your misery. If you are in love with your misery, then wherever you are, you will be in hell. To be healthy means to be in love with joy. Even if sometimes misery happens, it is unnatural. It has to be lived, but it is accidental, it is not natural. Joy is natural.All kinds of pathological people have gathered together around Christ down the ages. In fact they are not in love with Jesus, they are in love with the cross. That’s why I call Christianity “crossianity.” It has nothing to do with Christ – Christ is just a symbol – the real thing is the cross, the death, the suffering that Jesus went through. You are in love with that. But the mind is very cunning; it can always rationalize its prejudices. It can always find arguments, reasons to support its own prejudices.Now, about poor Chintana… I feel sorry for her; she is in a kind of turmoil here. It is bound to be so. Here, the whole message is “Alleluia”; the whole message is of ecstasy, love, joy; celebration is the key word here. And for many years she has been a nun, so her whole past is against the present. But if she goes on thinking that she has been in love with Jesus, then it will be very difficult for her to drop her misery, because how to drop Jesus? And Jesus is so beautiful, how can one gather courage to drop Jesus?There is no need. I am bringing you a healthy Jesus. I am bringing you the real Jesus. The real Jesus was never on the cross, only the body was on the cross. The real Jesus never died, the real Jesus cannot die. You cannot die, nothing ever dies. That which dies was not really part of you. The nonessential dies, the essential continues. Nobody can kill you – I mean you, not your body. Your body can be killed. But you are so identified with the body that when you see Jesus on the cross, you think Jesus is on the cross.Not for a single moment was Jesus on the cross. He cannot be – he knows himself. There is no way to crucify him. That is the hidden meaning of the phenomenon of resurrection: he resurrects because in the first place he has never died. If he had died, then there would have been no possibility of resurrection. Only the body, the outermost shell, has been killed. But because of this – this cross, this death, this suffering, this martyrdom – Christianity became obsessed with death, became very morbid about death. And people are very afraid of death, frightened, scared. The more afraid they are, the more frightened they are, the more the cross becomes very significant.A Krishna playing his flute does not look real. Who can play the flute in this ugly life, on this miserable earth where people are killing each other, exploiting, oppressing? Where human beings exist only in the dictionary, in language? Just the other day I was reading about Adolf Hitler’s concentration camps. In one concentration camp forty-five lakh people were killed, murdered, gassed. But they made a good profit out of it. That was the real thing with it. The hair was sold, the bones were sold to the glue factories, the eyes were sold, everything was sold. Papers have been found, correspondence has been found in which factories were haggling over the price. The officers were haggling about human beings’ hair – how much they were going to ask. “When they are killed, how much are you ready to pay for their bones?” Hitler was doing business with death, through death. It was a good, going concern. They were giving almost nothing to the prisoners to eat. It was very cheap, and within two weeks the prisoner would be gone. They had to wait just two weeks. So the cost was very low and the price was very good. The hair was going to the wig-makers, the bones were going to the glue factories, and so on and so forth.How can one play the flute here where Adolf Hitlers exist, where Hiroshimas happen? Krishna looks like a dream. Christ looks very real. But let me tell you, Christ was also playing on his flute when he was on the cross. The flute continues – it makes no difference whether in life or in death. The flute is eternal. Let me tell you, Krishna is more real. And the Christ that you have created is more or less a figment of your mind. You don’t know the real Christ. So listening to me is going to be difficult for you, because I will be revealing a totally different Christ that you are not acquainted with. You have a Christ preached to you by the priests. You have a Christ painted by the Vatican. You have the Christ visualized by so many hysterical saints.There has been a long tradition of pathology in Christianity. Christians say Jesus never laughed. Now this is utter nonsense. I say to you that Christ laughed his whole life – only he could laugh, who else? But Christians say he never laughed. They want to depict him as very sad, very burdened. They project their sadness onto Jesus, they project their misery onto Jesus. Jesus becomes a screen, and you go on projecting your mind onto him. Jesus laughed, enjoyed, loved. If you go into the Gospels without your prejudices, you will find it. How can you think otherwise about a man who was having parties, eating well, moving with women, drinking – yes, wine was not unknown to him, he loved it. He was a very, very happy man. It is impossible to conceive that a man who drinks, eats well, loves eating, loves friends, never laughed. But Christians have depicted Jesus according to their own projection. The projection is of their misery. And then Jesus becomes just an excuse to be sad, to be miserable. That’s why in the church there is no laughter, no joy, no celebration.Churches have become graveyards. It is not accidental that the cross has become the symbol. It should not be the symbol. I can understand your difficulty, particularly Chintana’s difficulty. She says, “What am I to do with the Jesus I thought I knew and loved for so long?” You have not known Jesus.Through me there is a possibility to know Jesus. If you are courageous enough, you can know Jesus for the first time. Because you can know Jesus only through a man who has attained to christ consciousness. A Krishna can be known only through a man who has attained to krishna consciousness. And they are the same thing: krishna consciousness, christ consciousness, buddha consciousness – the transcendental.You cannot understand Jesus through a priest. He himself has not known. He has read, he has thought, he has contemplated, he has speculated, philosophized. Yes, he has a very cultivated mind, he knows the scriptures. But to know the scriptures is not to know Jesus. To know Jesus you will have to know your innermost nothingness. Without knowing it you cannot make anybody else acquainted with Jesus. You have an opportunity here to come in contact with the reality that was there two thousand years before. The window is open again and you can enter – you can have a glimpse at least. But if you go on carrying your ideas about Jesus, then it will be difficult. Rather than entering through me and coming to know Jesus, you will start condemning me and you will remain surrounded by your own ideas, and you can always find reasons.It happened in Montreal – it can happen only in Montreal…Two nice looking men were walking down the street, hand in hand. There was a married couple in front of them, arguing. One of the men squeezed the other’s hand and said, “See, dear, I told you mixed marriages don’t work.”You can always find an argument. Now the marriage between a man and a woman is a “mixed marriage.” How can it work? Marriage between a man and man can work; it is homogeneous. The homosexual can find that argument. If you have a certain prejudice in the mind you can always find support. The world is so big that it supports all kinds of things. And what can your idea of God, or Christ, or Krishna be? You don’t even know yourself, Chintana. Not knowing yourself, how can you know Jesus? And whatsoever you know is going to be wrong. It will be more or less guesswork, and guesswork done in immense ignorance.It is like painting a picture of Jesus on a dark night when there is no light. You have never seen him, and you have never touched colors, and you don’t know how to paint, and the night is dark and not even a single candle is there. You go on painting, and you don’t know how to paint, and you don’t know how to keep the brush in your hand, and you don’t know how to mix the colors, and you cannot see which color is which – the night is so dark. You go on painting, and in the morning when you see it, you say, “This is Jesus.”It is all guesswork, in deep ignorance. Whatsoever man has thought of God is just guesswork. If you are honest you will not be interested in any guesswork. God cannot be guessed at – he can be known but not guessed at. How can you guess at God? How can you imagine God? There is no way to do it. Whatsoever you do is going to be wrong. The best way is not to guess but to drop all prejudices that you have been taught and conditioned with. Become a pure nothingness, a mirror, that’s what meditation is all about. In that nothingness your eyes open for the first time. You start seeing that which is.Two goldfish were swimming around and around in a glass bowl. One announced crankily that he had become an atheist.“Fine, fine,” scoffed the other. “Now just explain to me who changed the water in this bowl!”Now, a goldfish in a bowl thinks that God changes the water. Your guesswork about God cannot be more than that. That’s why if you say to people that there is no God, they say, “What are you talking about? Then who created the world? Who changed the water?” Stupid ideas because God is not the cause, and the world is not the effect. God has not created the world. If he has created this world, then that is enough proof that he is absolutely mad; it will prove only that, nothing else.God has not created the world. God is not really a creator. It will be far better to say that God is the world. God is not the creator but the creativity. The flower opening is God. Not that God is standing there and opening it – not separate from the flower and forcing the petals to open. God is the flowering, the star shining in the night. Not that God is pouring oil into it, or some fuel, and running it and managing it somehow; God is that light. Not that God has created you; you are that. The Upanishads say, “Tattvamasi: Thou art that.” They are far closer to the truth. In the East we have always depicted God as a dancer, not as a creator – God as Nataraj, the master dancer. Why? There is something immensely meaningful in that concept.God is not a painter, because when a painter does a painting, the painting becomes separate from the painter. When the painter has finished with the painting, the painting has its own existence. The painter may die, the painting can live. And when the painter has finished the painting, it may be beautiful but it is dead because the painter cannot put his breath into it. It is not possible. He cannot pour his vitality into it, his life into it. The painting may be beautiful but a painting is a painting – it is dead.God is not a painter, God is not a potter; God is a dancer. What is the meaning of it? In dance, the dancer and the dance are one, they can never be separated. That is the beauty of the dancer. The poet is separate from the poetry, the potter is separate from his pottery, the painter is separate from his painting, the sculptor is different, separate, from his creation, and so on and so forth. Only the dancer is not separate. The dancer is the dance. And when the dancer is really in the dance, there is no dancer in him, all disappears. It is just pure, vibrant energy, it is just pure energy dancing. There is no ego in it. The dance comes to perfection when the dancer dissolves into it. But the moment the dance stops, you cannot find the dance anywhere, it is not separate from the dancer.One thing more: the dance cannot exist separate from the dancer, and the dancer too cannot exist separate from the dance. When you say that this is a dancer, if he is not dancing, your description is not right. A dancer is only a dancer while in dance, otherwise he is no longer a dancer. Then it is a linguistic fallacy that you go on calling him a dancer because he was dancing yesterday. Then yesterday he was a dancer. Or tomorrow he will dance again. Then tomorrow he will be a dancer again, but right now if he is not dancing, then he must be somebody else. If he is walking, he is a walker; if he is running, he is a runner; if he is sitting, he is a sitter – but not a dancer.Dancer and dance exist together. In fact, they are not separate. God is not the creator of the world. God is its creativity, its very soul. He is in the trees, and in the rocks, in you, in me – he is everywhere, he is all. But to know this God you will have to drop guessing, because when he is inside you what is the point of guessing? Why don’t you go in? Why don’t you close your eyes and travel inward? Come to a point where no thought exists and you will know what God is. And to know God is to become Christ. And by becoming Christ, you will know what Christ is. By tasting christhood, you will know what Christ is. How can you have any idea of Jesus? That idea will be Catholic, will be Protestant, will be this or that. That will be your idea and your idea is the barrier – beware of it. All your ideas have to disappear. Your mind has to cease for Christ to be.So it will look very paradoxical. I am saying if you are not a Christian, not a Hindu, not a Jaina, not a Buddhist, only then will you know what truth is. By being a Christian, how can you know Christ? Your very Christianity will be a barrier. By being a Buddhist you cannot know Buddha. Your ideology will function as a wall, a Wall of China. Drop all ideologies, and don’t be a nun.She has now become a sannyasin; she is no longer a nun, but deep inside she still is. When she comes to me, I can see two personalities together, split. When she comes to me, a part of her being is with me – she has taken the jump and become a sannyasin – but I can see the Christian is still there and very strong. And there is every fear that when she goes back to Australia, she may again get into the old nonsense. I am not yet certain about her, because the Christian is very strong there. She has devoted her life in a certain way; she has lived in a certain way with very wrong notions. She has been anti-life, and now I am trying to bring her back to life. I am calling to her just as Jesus called to Lazarus, “Come out, Lazarus!” – and he was dead. But Lazarus was a beautiful man – he came out.People always think Jesus did the miracle. My idea is that Lazarus did the miracle. Anybody can call – that is not the point. The point is that Lazarus came out. He had been dead for four days, and nobody believed that it was possible. When Lazarus died, Jesus was not in that town. But Lazarus was a follower, and his two sisters were Jesus’ followers, so the two sisters sent a message: “Come as quickly as possible. Your beloved disciple is dead. You can save him, you can still bring him back.” Jesus came in his own leisurely way – not with the American rush – he came easily, the way he was to come. He took four days. He was not very far, maybe just in the neighborhood, the other village. He came. The sisters had become very, very depressed. And when he came, the body had started stinking. They had put it in a cave, because the message had come that Jesus was coming: “So wait. Don’t bury the body, keep it.”When Jesus came, the two sisters started crying and weeping and they said, “You are late. Too late. Now what can be done? The body has started deteriorating. It is stinking. Nobody can go near the body. Now it is so difficult. How to bury it? – because nobody wants to go into the cave and take the body out. Even from outside it is stinking.”Jesus said, “Don’t be worried. Let me go to the cave.” They went, and the whole town gathered, and the body must have been stinking because Jesus also did not enter.He called from the outside. Is this a way to call? Somebody is dead and from the outside you are calling, “Lazarus, come out?” Lazarus was a miracle man. He came out; he said, “Yes sir, I am here.”This is a parable; it is not a historical fact. This is how the master calls the disciple – out of your death, out of your stinking cave where you are just rotting and rotting and deteriorating, deteriorating every day. He calls you out of your death. So I call to Chintana, “Come out of your mind,” because mind is death, because mind is time. If you live in the mind, you live in death. If you drop the mind, you live in eternity, deathlessness. And that’s what religion is all about. Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism are just names for the same process. A great opportunity is here. Chintana can drop her life-negative attitudes. To be a nun means to be against life. And to be against life means to be against God, because life is God. To be against love is to be against God. To be against your body is to be against God, because it is God’s body. It is his temple, his shrine; he has chosen to reside in it. Don’t destroy it, don’t be against it.My approach is absolutely life-affirmative. And I call this religious approach, yes-saying – saying yes to all. Jesus was able to say yes even to death, and you are not even able to say yes to your life. Learn first to say yes to life, then one day that pinnacle, that consummation, that fulfillment also happens when you can say yes to death too – because you have learned to say yes, and you have enjoyed saying yes, and you have seen how beautiful it is to go on saying yes.Remember, the ego always says no. The no is the way of the ego. That’s why when children start saying no, know well they are starting to become egoistic. At a certain stage the child starts saying no, and starts enjoying saying no. Whatsoever you say, he says, “No!” No-saying comes easily at a certain stage. Why does he say no? – because he has to create the ego. Only through the no is the ego created. Say no more often, and more ego is created. Say yes more, and ego starts dispersing. If you have uttered a deep yes to your total life – with no reservations – then the ego disappears. In that yes is your prayerfulness. But first one has to learn to say yes to life, only then can you say yes to death. How will you be able to say yes to death if you cannot even say yes to life and joy?Never be a nun, and never be a so-called monk. This is an ugly state, pathological, neurotic, hysterical. But why has it been chosen down the ages? There is a certain trick in it, a strategy. The nun is taught to say no to her body, no to her sex, no to her love, no to all relationships, so all doors are closed. She cannot say yes to any life experience. Then, naturally, her yes-saying heart feels very suffocated, prevented from every door and window. In that state of suffocation she starts saying yes to Christ, because one has to say yes. But this is a pathological yes, this is not real. It is coercion, it is violence.Do you follow me? When you don’t say yes to anything, it is as if you are in a desert. You are lost and you cannot see any oasis anywhere, and for days you have been thirsty and thirsty and thirsty, and the thirst becomes absolute. Then you can even drink your own urine. People are known to have done that. They can drink the urine of the camel. They can kill the camel and drink the water that he reserves in his body. Nauseating, but it can be done. When there is no possibility of any other water, and you are thirsty and the thirst goes on becoming fiery, intense, then you can drink anything – the dirtiest water – and you can drink it as if it were the water of life.You need not be a Morarji Desai. You can drink your urine without being a Morarji Desai if you are in a desert. Then you will understand his idea that urine is “the water of life” – but only in a desert, unless you are neurotic. Now he is trying to do two things in India. One he has started: that is prohibition. First the country has to go through prohibition. And the next step – logical step – will be to start forcing people to drink their urine, because that is the water of life. You need not be a Morarji Desai. If you are lost in a desert you will start drinking anything. When you are hungry and you cannot get food, you will eat anything. Then you cannot and will not be very choosy. You cannot say, “Where is the menu?” – those things will look like nonsense. If you are hungry in a desert, you don’t ask for the menu. You will jump on whatsoever is available – whatsoever!That is the trick: say no to sex, so that you are sex-starved – sex goes on accumulating in you. You want to love somebody and that is not possible. Love is not possible. You cannot love any human being – that door is closed. And your love capacity is just like a thirst: it goes on accumulating. You start loving Christ, and then it is pathological. Nuns have been known to report that Christ comes in the night and makes love to them, that he comes and fondles their breasts. Nuns have been known to have become pregnant because Christ made love to them. Of course their pregnancy was nothing but hot air, but the stomach… It was found to be a false pregnancy, but the idea… These are pathological states.When your love is starved, naturally only one direction is left open. It is as if all the doors of the house are closed, only one hole is left open, and the house is on fire. Then you will not think of propriety, you will not think whether it is proper to get out of the house through this hole. You will get out of the house. Any hole will do. This is the situation that has been created for monks and nuns. Starve their love, and their love has to become focused on Jesus. But this is coercion. This is not conversion. This is not transformation. This is a very ugly state of affairs.My own approach is just the opposite. I say: “Make love as much as possible.” Make it a celebration as much as possible. Let Jesus enter from joy. You love a woman, you love a man; you love so deeply that suddenly one day you start feeling the depth of the man or the woman. That depth will be the door of Jesus, or Krishna – or whatsoever name you want to give to it. Love deeply, so deeply that the body of the beloved disappears, that the mind of the beloved disappears, that even the self disappears. Love so deeply, go so deeply into each other, that one day you are just two skies, utterly clean and virgin, interpenetrating each other. In that very moment you will know that your beloved has become the door.Celebrate! Let God come through celebration, and then you will have a health, a wholeness. I call that holy.Nuns and monks are unholy people. They need psychiatric treatment; their minds are not in harmony. They cannot be in harmony because they have taken such an ugly course, unnatural, perverted. So listening to me, this question is going to come to you again and again. Let it be very clear from the beginning. I am bringing to you a totally new Jesus, a far truer Jesus than the Vatican has given to you. And I want Jesus to come to you through life, through love, through light – not through perversion, not through repression.The second question:Osho,The Gospels provide no techniques for developing a loving heart. The Gospels are also too difficult for ordinary people. Perhaps this is why the Christian message has always seemed less practical than, say, Buddha's.The question is from Nirvan.First, love is not based on any techniques. The path of love knows no technique; that’s why in the Gospels no techniques are given for developing your love.The path of intelligence, Gyana Yoga, the path of knowing, of course has many techniques. Meditation is a technique. Intelligence moves though techniques. Intelligence always creates technology. If intelligence goes into science, then it creates technology. If it goes into spirituality, it creates Yoga, Tantra – they are also technologies for the inner being. Intelligence is technological. It always finds ways, shortcuts, how to do things more efficiently. Wherever you apply intelligence you will find better ways to reach the goal – faster, speedier, with less inconvenience, with less cost – that’s what intelligence is.But the path of love, Bhakti Yoga – and Jesus is a bhakta, a devotee – knows no techniques. Love is not a technique. Please remember, love is not a technique and cannot be a technique, and if you bring technique into love, you will destroy it. That’s what is happening in the West. There are many love techniques available in the West. Everybody is learning from books how to make love, and how to make love more efficiently, more skillfully, and how to have greater orgasms, and all that. Now, all these things – many books are available – are making people incapable of being in love.There is a problem to be understood. If you are too interested in technique, you will not achieve orgasm. Impossible! Your whole concern will be the technique – how to do it. If you become too interested in Vatsyayana and his love postures, then you will be doing a kind of gymnastics, exercises. But love will disappear.Love needs no technique. Can’t you see? Animals love, birds love, trees love, and if you have eyes to see, the whole existence is love energy. But there is no technique. It is natural, it is spontaneous. Technique is against spontaneity. Love is spontaneity, not a technique. It needs only that you drop your being into the heart. Through the head there is no way toward love, it is through the heart. And remember that the heart is capable of moving into love from the very beginning. It is just like a roseflower opening. You need not open it, it has the capacity to open. That capacity is built-in, it is intrinsic. The roseflower opens of its own accord – so opens the heart. The heart needs no training. If you give training to it you will destroy it, because through training you will destroy the spontaneity.That’s why in the Gospels no techniques are given. Techniques cannot exist on that path. Buddha appeals to you. Every day Buddha is gaining more and more followers in the West, because the West has become very, very mind-oriented. Intelligence has become predominant in the West. The West has become technological about everything. So, when you read about Buddha or Patanjali or Vatsayana, it has immense appeal; it simply fits with you. Your whole being says, “Yes, it must be so!” You are ready to accept Buddha, Patanjali, Mahavira.The grip of Christ is lessening on the West. The reason is that the West no longer goes through the heart; it bypasses the heart. People are Christian because they are born Christians, but every day the appeal of Christ is becoming less and less and less. Buddha will fit better. Patanjali even more. Immediate appeal will be there because there is logic, there is intelligence, and there is a clear-cut path – what has to be done.Love is not a doing. It is a happening; it is a trust, not a technique. Jesus says, “Love God.” If you can love, then there is no problem. If you cannot love, then Jesus is not the way for you. Then you will have to search for Buddha. On the path of Buddha, love is non-existent; emotion, sentiment, love are non-existent. Buddha says, “Those who are very, very emotional and loving have to find other ways. My way is not their way.”Do you know that for many years Buddha was very resistant to initiating women? He rejected it again and again. Many times appeals were made to him, “Why don’t you initiate women?” And he would say, “No. My path is the path of intelligence, not of love, and if women are allowed to enter it, they will destroy my whole thing.” When too much pressure was put on him – he was a very, very democratic man and he understood that it was not right to deprive women – he finally, but very reluctantly, agreed. The day he initiated women he declared, “My path was going to remain pure for at least five thousand years, but now I can only hope for five hundred years, not more than that.” And that’s exactly how it happened.Through the entry of the woman, Buddhism started changing its character, because the woman brings love. Once Buddha had gone, the whole quality of Buddhism changed; it became absolutely the opposite. If Buddha comes back he will not be able to recognize the Buddhism that is prevalent in China, Burma, Thailand. He will not be able to recognize it, because its whole quality has changed. Now Buddha is thought to be God, and people are praying to him – and his whole life he was saying that prayer is nonsense, only meditation will do. He was utterly on the path of intelligence; prayer was meaningless. And he was saying, “There is no God, so to whom are you praying? It is crazy.” And he was saying, “Nobody can help you except yourself.”The last message on his deathbed was… Ananda, his chief disciple asked, “Bhagwan, give us your last message.” And he said, “Ananda, appa dipo bhava: Become a light unto yourself.” There is no other light, so don’t look into the sky, don’t look at me. There is no other light. Be a light unto yourself. Your own intelligence has to become your light, depend utterly upon yourself – no other dependence, no shelter anywhere, no refuge.He was one of the most intelligent persons born on the earth, but soon, once he had gone, the quality started changing. And it is a surprise of history that Buddhism became the source of Tantra, the source of love techniques. Buddhism became the source of love techniques. It is utterly against Buddha. There is no relationship between them, but it had to be so. Once women entered – they came in great crowds, and they have very loving hearts so they can fall into anything very easily – soon the proportion between men and women was one to four. One man to four women – they predominated. And with them came love, tenderness, softness, femininity, receptivity. With them came everything that Buddha was holding out against. The quality changed: Buddha became a God, was worshipped and prayed to. Temples were erected, images were built, and all that which Buddha had been saying was not possible on his path, entered and bloomed.I am not saying that something went wrong. Nothing went wrong, because so many people attain through love. But Buddha’s purity was lost. His absolute grip on intelligence was lost. The path became more and more the meeting of the opposites.To me, it is very good. Nothing like this has happened on Jesus’ path. Nobody has come on Jesus’ path who would bring intelligence and the path of intelligence into it, no. Nothing has happened like that. Jesus’ path has remained purer in that way. It is the path of prayer, of love: love of the whole existence, love of God – God simply means the whole. You will not find any techniques there. If you are looking for techniques in the Gospels, you are looking in the wrong place. Look for techniques in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, look for techniques in Vigyan Bhairav Tantra: look for techniques somewhere else. Jesus is a lover. If you can love, nothing else is needed. If you cannot love, you cannot be helped on that path. Then forget about it, it is not for you.The problem is arising… Nirvan wants to love and cannot love, so he wants to find some techniques. But love never happens through techniques, so you are asking for the impossible. Follow the path of intelligence. If Buddha appeals to you, there is no problem. Forget about Jesus. Buddha will do.“The Gospels provide no techniques for developing a loving heart” – because there are none. “The Gospels are also too difficult for ordinary people.” There, you are absolutely wrong. The Gospels are difficult only for intellectuals, not for ordinary people. Jesus moved with ordinary people; he was very much against intellectuals. He was all for the ordinary people. His whole disciplehood came from very ordinary people, because the ordinary people have a purer heart, naturally. The intellectuals lose their hearts; they become hung-up in the head. They think about love but they cannot love. Even sometimes when they say that they are in love, they only think that they are in love.Love is not possible through the head. It is as impossible as somebody trying to see through the ears, or to listen through the eyes. You cannot listen through the eyes, and you cannot see through the ears, because they are not meant for it. Intelligence is not meant for love. For that a different faculty exists in you: the heart. The intellectual is trained for the head; the schools, the colleges, the universities all train for the head. The more and more clever, intelligent, calculating you become, the more and more difficult it becomes to love. That’s why Jesus moved with ordinary people, because ordinary people are extraordinarily loving people. The so-called extraordinary intellectuals are very ordinary lovers.So how can it be that you say the Gospels are also too difficult for ordinary people? No, sir, they are not. If they are difficult for you it simply shows that you are difficult for them, that you are too much in the head. The Gospels cannot be approached from the head. Through tears, yes – through logic, no. Through dancing, yes; through singing, yes; through chanting, yes – but through argumentation, no. You must be approaching in the wrong way. You must be bringing your head into the Gospels.They are very simple phenomena – like flowers, like rivers. Jesus lived with ordinary people. He is the past master of how to relate to ordinary people. Buddha lived with extraordinary people: great scholars, great intelligent people, poets, philosophers; his atmosphere was that of intelligence. Jesus walked with the fisherman, with the woodcutter, with the shoemaker. These Gospels are those dialogues. They were between Jesus and very ordinary people. In fact, he himself was very ordinary. He was not the son of a king but a carpenter’s son. He could not say anything that could not be understood by ordinary people.But I understand your problem. It is difficult for you. Then it is not for you. Don’t be unnecessarily worried about it. Look for something that is for you. There are a thousand and one doors; the door is irrelevant. The real question is to get into God; by what door you enter will not make any difference. Enter – that is significant. So let Buddha be your door.“Perhaps this is why the Christian message has always seemed less practical than, say, Buddha’s.” It depends. If you are a very, very intellectual person, Buddha’s approach will look very practical and Jesus’ approach will look impractical. If you are a loving person, Buddha’s will look impractical and Jesus’ will look very practical. It depends. It depends more on you how it looks. If something suits you, it is practical for you. If something does not suit you, it is impractical. And there is no need to remain hooked with the impractical.The third question:Osho,Why is Jesus thought to be born out of a virgin mother?There are a few points to be understood…One: Jesus can be born only out of a virgin woman. But remember, virginity has nothing to do with celibacy – not, at least, for me. Virginity is something immensely different. Don’t reduce it to sex.Sex can be virgin, and celibacy may not be virgin. Things are very complicated. If a man is celibate and thinks constantly of sex, he is not virgin. On the other hand, if a man makes love to a woman, or the woman makes love to a man, and there is no thought of sex – no sexuality in the head, no cerebral sex – it is virgin. Virgin means pure. Virgin means uncontaminated. Virgin means spontaneous. Virgin means simple, innocent.Now, sex is not the problem. Sexuality is the problem. There are people who are continually thinking of sex. And the more you try to enforce some celibacy on yourself – you become a nun or a monk – the more you think of sex. In fact, you don’t think about anything else, you only think of sex because that is your starved part. It takes revenge, it becomes very aggressive. It comes again and again, bubbles up, surfaces in the head. You go on saying prayers to keep it repressed, and you go on doing this and that – a thousand and one things. But whenever there is rest, it is there. You go to sleep and it is there. It becomes your dream, it becomes your fantasy. If you repress it too much, it then starts coming through different symbols. They may not be sexual on the surface but deep down they are sexual.Sexuality means that sex has entered into the head, but why has sex entered into the head in the first place? It enters into the head if you repress it. Anything repressed enters into the head. Try for three days: go on a fast, and the thought of food will enter into the head. For seven days don’t take a bath… I am not talking about hippies. If you are a hippie, then this won’t do. For seven days don’t take a bath, and that will enter into your head. For three, four days don’t sleep, and that will enter in your head. Then you will be continuously thinking of sleep, sleep will be continuously coming and you will be yawning. Whatsoever is starved enters the head, and when something enters the head your whole being becomes polluted with it.By virginity, I mean that Mary must have been in a very, very non-sexual state. She must have been a very innocent woman. She must not have been thinking about sex; she must have made love, but that love was innocent. There was no idea in it; the mind was not interfering. It was completely uncontaminated by the mind, uninterfered with by the mind. That’s what we in Tantra say is real love.Ordinarily what do you do? You see a woman, a beautiful woman, and you start fantasizing. “A beautiful woman… How to take her to bed?” Now you start planning. Now there is great turmoil and calculation inside – how to introduce yourself to her, and how to “make it.” On the surface you don’t show that; it continues inside: calculation, thinking, planning, designing. When you talk to her you don’t show any indication that you are sexually interested in her – because she may feel offended. Things may go wrong from the very beginning. You talk about other things – poetry, literature – and you are not concerned with poetry and literature at all. You are concerned somehow with how to jump into bed. You are planning inside, but on the surface you are showing interest in art, in music, you are praising the music that is on. But deep down, you are waiting for something else. This is non-virginity.You meet a woman, you don’t think about sex at all. Only pathological people think about sex, healthy people don’t think about sex. There is no need. You enjoy the beauty of the woman – her face, her eyes, her proportion – you are simply thrilled by her being. There is no idea to do anything to her, there is no idea to exploit, there is no idea to possess. You are immensely interested, but very innocently. There is no planning in your mind, there is no future, then it is a virgin relationship. One day love can happen. One day listening to music, dancing together, love can possess you both: you can make love to each other. But even while making love, there is no idea – there is no mind in it. It is innocent of mind, then it is a virgin relationship.If you ask me, then this is what I mean by virgin. Jesus cannot be born in the way Christians say – that is absurd, stupid. But why do they say that he was born out of a virgin mother? They are too obsessed with sex, and to them it seems degrading that Jesus should come out of sex, out of an ordinary love relationship. That looks very, very disturbing to them. Their God, their master, their savior coming through the ordinary passage of sex? No, it is not possible. If Jesus can come through sex, then how will they condemn sex? Then how will they tell their nuns and their monks, “Don’t ever go into sex. It is ugly, it is the greatest sin there is”? If Jesus himself enters the world through natural love, it will be difficult to condemn it. Then a nun can say, “Who knows, maybe Jesus wants to come through me?” Or a monk can say, “Who knows? Joseph never knew. Who knows maybe Jesus wants to come through me?”If Jesus can come through love, love is enhanced, enthroned. Then love becomes a great value. If Jesus comes through love, then love will have a splendor to it, and that is difficult for the pathological people. They condemn sex, because through condemning sex they can control people, they can make them feel guilty – that is their strategy. Make people feel guilty, and they become slaves and serfs. Make them feel guilty and they are always crawling. Make them feel guilty and you can exploit them. Make them feel guilty and they will come crawling to the churches and to the mosques and to the temples, and they will never be rebellious. They will be so afraid – they are sinners, they have to be saved. Create the idea in them that they are sinners, then certainly they will start searching and seeking how to be saved. Then you can trap them into the church. You can say to them, “This is the only way to be saved – only those who go through Jesus will be saved.”The more they are trembling, the more they are afraid, the closer death is coming, the more they will start coming to the church, and the more they will believe in any nonsense that you say. This has been used by the priest and the politician to exploit people, to repress people, to oppress people, to dominate people. They cannot say that Jesus comes through ordinary love; they want to make it special. And this tendency exists in all the religions. Somehow they want to make their master special. Jainas say that Mahavira’s perspiration does not smell – in fact, he does not perspire. He does not defecate – he’s not an ordinary human being. Defecation, urinating, are very ordinary things – Mahavira does not do that.Now, that seems to be the longest case in the history of constipation: forty-two years. I have heard about the record; the record is one hundred and twelve days. The greatest record known to medical science is one hundred and twelve days. One man retained that long. But Mahavira: forty-two years. Now you cannot compete with Mahavira. This is absurd, this is foolish, but that’s how things go.Every religion tries to make something special of the master, and the masters are the most ordinary people, because they are non-egos. They are very simple people. But the disciple’s ego is in trouble, the disciple’s ego wants to find something which is special – so special that nobody else can claim it. Christians have found it through this idea of virginity. They say that Jesus was born out of the Virgin Mary through the Holy Ghost. But why can’t the Holy Ghost come in the usual way through Joseph – as he always comes? Why did he get lost? Why did he go astray?I have heard…The problems of the world were weighing heavily on God’s shoulders and he confessed the need for a rest.“Why don’t you take a short vacation, Boss?” suggested the archangel Gabriel.“Yes, but where?”“How about the little place, Earth? You haven’t been there for a good while.”“No, no. It’s a world of busybodies,” shuddered God. “I was there two thousand years ago and that’s enough. I had an affair with a little Jewish girl, and they’re still talking about it.”Christians are obsessed. This is a very ill state of affairs.To me, virginity means innocence. And naturally, Jesus can only come out of innocence. Such a flower can only bloom in innocence. Mary must have been a virgin – virgin in my sense. She must have been pure love. She must have been as innocent as the animals. She must have been a perfect animal – that is the meaning – like a cow. Look into the eyes of a cow. Those eyes must have been the eyes of Mary. Jesus can only come through such simplicity, such innocence.The fourth question:Osho,If somebody kills you… Then?Then somebody kills me. So what?I don’t see any problem in it. Life is good, so is death.All is good; you need not choose. Choice brings conflict. If you choose life against death you are creating a dichotomy in your being. If somebody kills me, he kills me. There is nothing more to it.Life is good, so death is going to be good. And death is going to happen, whether somebody kills or not. Death is the culmination of life, the fulfillment of life. Death is not against life, death is the crescendo, the greatest peak of life. Death is the greatest orgasm. That’s why I say that even on the cross Jesus was laughing. He must have been enjoying the whole joke.The last question:Osho,Why did you end up your talk yesterday abruptly? Hot date? Anyhow I'm caught in the words of this series. Would you explain the Beautitude about those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake.There was nothing esoteric about it. Just my bladder was hurting and it is hurting again. I am not a Mahavira, so I will not be answering it.Enough for today.

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I Say Unto You Vol 1 01-10Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 1 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Matthew 5Jesus said unto his disciples:Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee;Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery already in his heart.And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.Moses brought law to the world; Jesus brings love. Moses is a must before Jesus can be possible. Law is enforced love; love is spontaneous law. Law is from the outside; love is from the inside. Law is without; love is within. Love can happen only when a certain order, a certain discipline, a certain law, exists. Love cannot exist in the jungle. Moses civilizes man; Jesus spiritualizes man. That’s why Jesus says again and again, “I have come not to destroy, but to fulfill.”Moses gives commandments, Jesus gives insight into those commandments. One can follow the commandments on a formal, superficial level. One can become a righteous person, a puritan, a moralist, and deep down nothing changes: all remains the same. The old darkness is still there, the old unconsciousness is still there. Nothing has really changed; you have just painted your surface. Now you are wearing a beautiful mask. Nothing wrong in wearing a beautiful mask – if you have an ugly face it is better not to show it to others. Why be so hard on others? If you have an ugly face, wear a mask – at least it will save others from seeing you. But the mask cannot change your ugly face. Never forget for a single moment that the mask is not your face. You have to transform your face too.Moses gave a very crude discipline to society. He could not have done better – there was no way. Human consciousness existed in a very, very primitive way. A little bit of civilization was more than one could expect. But Moses prepared the way, and Jesus is the fulfillment. What Moses started, Jesus completes. Moses has laid the foundation; Jesus raises the whole temple. Those stones in the foundation have to be crude and ugly. Only on those crude and ugly stones can a beautiful marble temple be built. Always remember this: Jesus is not against Moses. But the Jews misunderstood him, because Moses talks about law and Jesus talks about love.To the Jews, particularly the priests, the politicians, it appeared that the law would be destroyed by Jesus; hence they were angry. And they were right too. The law would be destroyed in a sense, because a higher law would be coming in. The lower law would have to go. The lower has to cease for the higher to come.Law depends on fear, law depends on greed, law punishes you. The central idea of law is justice, but justice is not enough, because justice is crude and hard, violent. Only compassion can allow your being to bloom, can help you come to your highest peak – not justice. Law is better than lawlessness, but compared to love, law itself is lawlessness – compared to love. It is relative, because law depends on the same evils against which it fights.Somebody murders, then the law murders him. Now, it is the same thing you are doing to the person that he has done to somebody else. It is not higher, although it is just. But it is not religious, it has no spirituality in it; it is mathematical. He has killed somebody and the law kills him. But if killing is wrong, then how can the law be right? If killing in itself is wrong, then the law is very much lacking. It depends on the same evil – remember it.When Jesus started talking about love, the people who had been law-abiding became very much afraid. Because they knew that if the law was dropped, then the animal hidden inside them would come up, and would tear down the whole society. They knew that their faces were only beautiful on the surface – deep down, great ugliness. And when Jesus said, “Drop all masks,” they became afraid, they became angry: “This man is dangerous, this man has to be punished and destroyed before he destroys the whole society.”But they misunderstood. Jesus was not saying just to drop the mask. He was saying: “I have brought you an alchemy, so that your real face can be beautiful. Why carry the mask? Why this weight? Why this false plastic thing? I can give you a higher law that needs no fear, that needs no greed, that needs no enforcement from the outside but arises in your being because of understanding, not because of fear.” Remember, that is the difference: out of fear is law; out of understanding is love.Moses is a must, but Moses must go also. Moses has done his work, he has prepared the ground. When Jesus appears, Moses’ work is fulfilled. But the Jews were angry. It is very difficult for people to stop clinging to their past. Moses had become very, very central to the Jewish mind. They thought Jesus was against Moses. And this has been so down the ages: the misunderstanding.Hindus thought that Buddha was against the Vedas – the same problem, exactly the same. Buddha is not against the Vedas – in a sense, yes, but only in a sense. He is bringing something from the depth, and once that depth becomes available to you, the Vedas will not be needed. So he looks like he is against: he makes the Vedas meaningless. And that is the whole purpose of Jesus: to fulfill Moses and still to make Moses meaningless. The new dispensation has come in.Jesus was a man of love, of immense love. He loved this earth, he loved the smell of this earth. He loved the trees, he loved the people. He loved the creatures because that is the only way to love the creator. If you cannot praise the painting, how can you praise the painter? If you cannot praise the poetry, how can you praise the poet?Jesus is very affirmative, yea-saying. And he knows one very significant fact which he brings into his sayings again and again: “God is an abstraction; you cannot stand face to face with God.” God is as much an abstraction as humanity is. Whenever you come across, you come across human beings, never across humanity. You meet this human being, that human being, but never humanity. You always come across the concrete. You will never come across the abstract God, because he will not have any face. He will be facelessness. You will not be able to recognize him. Then where to find him?Look into each eye that you come across, look into each being that you come across. This is God in concrete form, God materialized. Everybody here is an incarnation of God – the rocks and the trees and the people and all. Love these people, love these trees, these stars, and through that love you will start feeling the immensity of being. But you will have to go through the small door of a particular being.Jesus has been very much misunderstood. He was misunderstood by the Jews, and he was the climax of their intelligence for which they had waited for ages. When he came he was rejected. And he has been even more misunderstood by the Christians. A great yea-sayer has been converted into a no-sayer. Christians have depicted Jesus as very sad, with a long face, in great misery as if he is being tortured. This is false; it is not true about Jesus. It cannot be true about Jesus. Otherwise who else will laugh, and who else will love, and who else will celebrate? Jesus is a celebration of being, and the highest celebration possible. Remember it, only then will you be able to understand these sutras.An immensely beautiful anecdote:Jesus was on the cross, and below St. Patrick was praying for his soul, as soon his master would die.Jesus called down to St. Patrick, “Patrick, come up here. There is something I must tell you.”Patrick, not looking up, replied, “Lord, to be sure oi cannot for oi am praying fer yer soul, that oi am.”Jesus then calls – a little louder, with a hint of urgency: “Patrick, for Christ’s sake stop this nonsense and come up, it is very important what I must tell you.”“Lord, oi cannot. Have not oi told you oi’m prayin’ fer yer soul, bejabbers!”Jesus again, almost shouting, “Patrick, for the last time I say, come up here! It is of utmost urgency, you cannot afford to miss.”Patrick reluctantly relents, and says under his breath, “Goddammit! This man is a fool. Asking me to go up there when oi am busy praying for his soul!” – goes off to fetch a ladder. He puts up the ladder against the cross and with slow, deliberate reluctance climbs rung after rung till he reaches the top. “Well, master, here oi am. Now will yer tell me what it is that you brought me all the way up here for?”“Look Patrick,” Jesus says, “over beyond those trees you can see our house.”Jesus is dying on the cross and he says, “Look beyond those trees. Can you see our house?” He was immensely in love with this earth. That is the only way to be in love with God; there is no other way.If you deny existence, you are intrinsically denying God. If you say no to life, you have said no to God, because it is God’s life. Always remember God has no lips of his own; he kisses you through somebody else’s lips. He has no hands of his own; he embraces you through somebody else’s hands. He has no eyes of his own, because all eyes are his; he looks at you through somebody’s eyes. He sees you through somebody’s eyes and he is seen by your eyes, and he goes on seeing through your eyes.Quakers rightly say that God has nothing else but you, only you – that’s what God has. This insight has to penetrate deeply, only then will you be able to understand the sayings of Jesus; otherwise you will miss – as Christians have been missing down the ages. Let this become the very foundation stone: that life is God. And then things will become very, very simple. Then you will have the right perspective. Say yes, and suddenly you feel a kind of prayer arising in you.Have you tried it? Sitting silently, doing nothing, start swaying in a kind of inner dance and start saying, “Yes, yes…” Go into it. Let it come from your very heart. Let it spread over your whole being. Let it throb in your heartbeat, let it pulsate in your blood. Let this yes electrify you and you will be surprised: for the first time you have tasted what prayerfulness is.The English word yes can become a great mantra. It is. The very sound of it is yea-saying; the very sound of it creates an affirmation in the heart. Say no – try the polar opposite sometimes – sitting silently, say “No, no…” Go into it. Let your whole being say no, and you will see the difference. When you say no you will be angry. When you go on saying no you will become enraged. When you go on saying no you will feel that you are cut off from existence, separate, isolated, alienated – the bridge has disappeared. And particularly the modern mind is a no-saying mind. Descartes, the French philosopher, has said: “Cogito ergo sum: I think therefore I am.” The modern mind says: “I say no therefore I am.” It is a no-saying mind, it goes on saying no. No creates the ego. You cannot create the ego without saying no. You can create the ego only by saying no, more and more.Ego separates, ego makes you irreligious, because ego takes you away from the whole, and you start thinking you are a whole unto yourself. You forget that you exist in an immense complexity, that you are part of a vast universe, that you are not an island – “No man is an island…” We are all parts of an infinite continent. Yes-saying bridges you with the continent. Yes-saying bridges you with God. Say yes more and you will become more religious. Let yes be your church, your temple. And Jesus is a yes-sayer.Even dying on the cross, he says, “Look beyond those trees. Can you see our house?” And this is his last moment. But his love for existence, for life is still there, radiantly there. In the last moment he prays to God: “Father, forgive these people because they don’t know what they are doing.”They knew exactly what they were doing. They knew they were killing. But that is not the point. When Jesus says: “They don’t know what they are doing,” he is saying: “They are so asleep, so confined in their egos, they have lost their eyes, Father. They don’t have any consciousness. I can see great darkness in their heart. Forgive them, they are not responsible.” This is the voice of love. He is not condemning them. Ordinarily he would have prayed: “Destroy all these people. They are destroying your only begotten son. Kill them immediately, right now! Come like a thunderbolt! Shower like fire; burn them here and now. Show them what they are doing to your son.” That may have been just, but that was not right for Jesus.Jesus does not exist at the level of justice, he exists at the level of compassion. Compassion forgives, justice punishes, and when you punish you create in the other’s mind great anger. He will watch for his own time to take revenge – and with a vengeance. Only love creates reconciliation because love does not create any chain. Anger, fear, violence, aggression, punishment – all create ugly chains. And one thing leads still into deeper darkness, into deeper gloom.Jesus’ whole message is yes. He says yes to his own death, accepts it, welcomes it because it is the will of his God: “Then let it be so.” He relaxes into it. You are not relaxed even in life, and he relaxes into death too. That was the last test, and he passed through it victoriously.Death is the only criterion, the only touchstone where a man is really known: what he is, of what mettle he is made. It is very easy to talk about love; it is difficult to love, because love is a cross. It is very easy to talk about compassion, but to be committed to compassion one has to lose all.Just the other day I was reading this anecdote:Uncle Si and Aunt Rose were on in years, but they still prayed every night. Their prayer was always, “Lord, when you’re ready for us, take us. We are ready.”A group of playful boys heard their prayers and decided to have a little fun. They got on top of the house and talked down the chimney, in a deep voice, Si, Si…”Aunt Rose asked, “What do you want?”The voice answered, “I want Si.”“Who are you?”“I’m from the Lord and I’ve come for Si.”“Well, he ain’t here, he’s gone.”“Well, I’ll just have to take you, Aunt Rose, instead of Si, if he’s not there.”“Get out from under that bed, Si,” said Aunt Rose sharply. “You know he knows you are there.”When death comes, one forgets everything. For years they have been praying, “Lord, we are ready whenever you are ready.” And now that the Lord is ready, Aunt Rose is not ready to go.I have heard an old Sufi parable:An old man was coming from the forest – he was a woodcutter. He was carrying a big load of wood, and he was really old – seventy, eighty, tired of life. Many times he would say to the sky, “Where is death? Why don’t you come to me? I have nothing left to live for here, I am just dragging on. Do you want me to commit suicide? That will be a sin. Why can’t you come easily?” Again and again he would pray, “Death, come and take me, I am finished.” And, in fact, there was nothing to live for. He was an old man and had nobody to look after him, no money left. Every day he would have to go to the forest, cut wood and sell it, and somehow manage for his bread and butter.That day it happened that death was passing by. Suddenly he asked – he threw down his load of wood – and shouted to the sky, “Death! Where are you? You come to everybody. I have seen so many people dying. Why are you so angry with me? Why don’t you come to me? Come on! I am ready!”And, by chance, death was passing by, so death came. It appeared before him and said, “Okay, so what do you want?”And he started trembling. He said, “Nothing much, it’s just that I am an old man and I am unable to put this load onto my head, and there is nobody else to support me. Please, just help me to put this load on my head. Thank you.”For years he had been praying for death. In fact, he was not praying for death; he was not aware of what he was doing.Jesus is fully aware, and yet for a moment he wavers. So what to say of other people? For a moment he wavers on the cross, and he says to God, “Why have you forsaken me? Why? What wrong have I committed? Why are you so far away? Why is this being done to me?” For a single moment he wavers – even at that stage. So what to say about ordinary human beings? But he saw the point – he was a man of perception, great insight. He relaxed and said, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done. Do whatsoever you want to do.” He effaced himself utterly.In that moment Jesus died and Christ was born. To me, in that moment the resurrection happened, not after the crucifixion. In that moment the discontinuity happened: Jesus disappeared the moment he said, “Thy will be done.” That is the death of Jesus, the death of any sense of self. Jesus ceased at that moment; he became Christ. This is the real resurrection. The other thing may be just a parable – meaningful, but not historical – a myth, pregnant with great significance but not factual. But this is the real fact. Just a moment before he was wavering, afraid, trembling, and a moment later he settled and relaxed. He surrendered. That moment he was no longer separate from God. When your will is separate from God, you are separate from God. When your will has been surrendered to God’s will, you are not separate; then his will is the only will.These sutras:Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee;Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.Jesus says, “If you come to the temple with flowers, with offerings, to pray, to surrender to God, and you remember that somebody is angry at you – you have done something, you have angered somebody – then the first necessity is to go back and be reconciled to your brother. All are brothers here, remember, because the father is one.” The trees are your brothers; that’s how St. Francis used to talk to the trees: “Sisters, brothers.” The fish, the seagulls, the rocks, the mountains – all are your brothers because they all come from one source.Jesus is saying that if you are not reconciled with the world, you cannot come to pray to God. How can you come to the Father if you are not even reconciled with the brother? And the brother is concrete, the Father is abstract. The brother exists, and the Father is hidden. The brother is manifest, and the Father is not manifest. How can you be reconciled with the unmanifest? You have not even been capable of being reconciled with the manifest. This is a meaningful sentence. It does not mean only your brother, it does not mean only human beings; it means the whole existence – wherever you have been offending. If you have been cruel to anybody…A great Zen master, Rinzai, was sitting. A man came. He pushed the door very hard – he must have been angry – he slammed the door. He was not in a good mood. Then he threw his shoes, and came in. Rinzai said: “Wait. Don’t come in. First go and ask forgiveness from the door and from your shoes.”The man said: “What are you talking about? I have heard that these Zen people are mad, but it seems true. I was thinking it was just rumor. What nonsense you are talking! Why should I ask forgiveness from the door? And it looks so embarrassing – those shoes are mine!”Then Rinzai said, “Get out! Never come here again. If you can be angry at the shoes, why can’t you ask their forgiveness? When you were angry, you never thought that it was so foolish to be angry with the shoes. If you can relate with anger, then why not with love? A relationship is a relationship. Anger is a relationship. When you slammed the door with such anger, you related to the door; you behaved wrongly, immorally. And the door has not done anything to you. First go, otherwise don’t come in.”Under the impact of Rinzai’s silence, and the people sitting there, and that presence, like a flash, the man understood. He understood the logic of it, it was so clear: “If you can be angry, then why can’t you be loving? Go!” And he went. Maybe in his whole life that was the first time… He touched the door and tears started flowing from his eyes. He could not hold back those tears. And when he bowed down to his own shoes, a great change happened in him. The moment he turned and came toward Rinzai, Rinzai took him in his arms and embraced him.This is reconciliation. How can you pray if you are unreconciled? How can you come to a master if you are unreconciled with existence?Jesus says: Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee; Leave there thy gift… The altar is secondary, the prayer is secondary, because right now you are not in the mood to pray. One has to earn prayer. By being reconciled with existence, one earns prayer. Prayer is not just that you go into the temple and you do it. It is not a kind of doing, it is an arousal into consciousness of unknown peaks. But that is possible only if you are reconciled, relaxed with existence.Now this is something absolutely different from what Christians have been doing down the ages. They are not reconciled. They are not even reconciled with their own bodies – what to say of others? They are not even reconciled with their own existence. They have great condemnation in them. With that condemnation how can they pray? Their prayer will be just so-so, lukewarm; it will not transform them.Prayer is a magic formula, it is a mantra, it is a spell. But it has to be provoked in the right moment. You cannot pray at any time, in any place. You have to get into the right tuning. That’s why all the religions have chosen particular moments – early morning when the sun is just going to rise, and there is more possibility of getting in tune with existence. The whole night you have slept. For eight hours, at least, you have not been in the world. For eight hours, at least, you have not been in business, you have not been cutting each other’s throats. For eight hours, at least, you have been in a relaxed state, fast asleep.When you rise in the morning, your eyes are clear and there are less clouds in your being. There is a kind of innocence – not only in you – it is all around. The trees are innocent, they have also rested. The dewdrops on the leaves are innocent, the sky is innocent, the birds are innocent, and the sun is rising… Again a new day. With great innocence everything is coming back out of the primordial source, refreshed, rejuvenated. That’s why religions have decided on brahmamuhurt – early morning before the sun rises, – because with the sun, many things start arising in you. The sun is great energy. When it starts pouring into you, it brings all your drives, desires alive, all your quarrels alive. Again you are moving into the world. So the morning has been chosen just as the easiest point from which you can be tuned to existence.Prayer can be done only when you are tuned. And Jesus is saying a very, very psychologically valid thing. If, while before the altar, you remember that you have angered somebody, and somebody is still carrying a wound because of you – somebody is angry somewhere, then go and help the person to heal, bring things to a reconciliation.Henry Thoreau was dying and his old aunt came to see him. And she said, “Henry, are you reconciled to God?”And Henry opened his eyes, and said, “But I don’t remember that I ever had any quarrel with him. I have never quarreled with him.”But very few people can say this. Henry Thoreau was very saintly, very holy. You are quarreling every day. Remember, with whomsoever you are quarreling, you are quarreling with God because nothing else exists. Your life is a continuous quarrel. And then those quarrels go on accumulating; they go on poisoning your system, your being. And then one day you want to pray, and the prayer looks so false on your lips. It does not come, it does not fit. It is not possible for you to pray suddenly; you will have to prepare for it.The first preparation Jesus says is: …be reconciled to your brother. …to your brother… means all human beings, animals, birds. The whole existence is your brother, because we come out of one source, out of one father or one mother. This whole multiplicity comes out of unity.So, remember, God can be loved only through man. You will never meet God, you will always meet man. Once you have started loving God through man, you can go still deeper – you can love God through animals. And then still deeper – you can love God through trees. And still deeper – you can love God through mountains and rocks. And when you have learned how to love God through all his forms, only then is your love changed into prayer. To me, these three words are very significant: sex, love, and prayer. Sex is a reconciliation of your body with other bodies. Let me repeat: sex is a reconciliation between your body and other bodies. That’s why it is so satisfying, that’s why it brings such a thrill to you, such excitement, such relaxation, such calm. But it is the lowest reconciliation. If you don’t know any higher, then it is okay. But you are living in your house, not knowing that your house has many other rooms. You are living only in a dark cell, and you think this is all – and there are many beautiful rooms in your house. But you will remain a beggar, because you remain only in the body. The body is only your porch, the porch of the palace.But sex brings joy because it is a reconciliation between two material bodies. Two bodies vibrate to one tune. There is song, a physical song. A poetry arises between the two energies of the bodies – they dance together hand in hand, they embrace each other, they are lost into each other. For a few moments there is ecstasy, then it disappears because bodies cannot melt into each other – they are too solid for that.Then the second thing is love. Love is reconciliation between two minds, two psychological energies. Love is higher, deeper, greater. If you can love a person, by and by, you will see sex disappearing between you. Western people become very much afraid of that phenomenon.Every day some couple or other comes to me and they say: “What is happening to us? We have become more loving, but why is sex disappearing?” – because they have been taught that sex and love are synonymous. They are not. And they have been taught if you love the person more, then you will be more sexually involved with the person. Just the reverse is the true case. If you love the person more, sex will start disappearing, because you are getting a higher reconciliation. Who bothers with the lower? This is more satisfying, brings greater contentment, more lasting joy.And the third state of love energy is prayer. That is reconciliation between one’s soul and the soul of existence. That is the highest reconciliation; there is none beyond. So when that happens, the so-called love also starts disappearing – just as when love happens sex starts disappearing. I am not condemning sex – there is nothing wrong in it – it is perfectly beautiful, healthy in its own place. But when the higher energy comes, the lower starts disappearing. There is no need for it; its work is finished.It is like a child who has grown in the mother’s womb for nine months; now he is ready to get out of the womb. Those nine months were beautiful. He will be grateful to his mother for his whole life; he cannot repay the debt. But now he is ready to get out of it. That womb cannot contain it any longer; the child has started to become bigger than the womb.It happens exactly like that. If you go really deeply into sex, a moment comes when your love is more than the sex can contain. Then you start overflowing, you start moving higher, and soon you are out of sex. One day, again it happens. When love is too much, you start overflowing into prayerfulness, and then love disappears.There is a very beautiful parable told about Jesus. Meditate over it. This is a very curious episode in which Christ three times asks Peter: “Do you love me?” and Peter affirms with increasing earnestness.What is the significance of this apparently pointless repetition? Why three times? Once is enough. You ask somebody: “Do you love me?” and he says yes or no and it is finished. Why repeat it three times?First, three is the symbol of those three layers: sex, love, prayer. Actually the three questions are not identical in the original, but English is a poor language – poor compared to any ancient language – because English is more scientific, more mathematical. And the old languages were not scientific, were not mathematical – that was their beauty – they were poetical. So there were many meanings for a single word, and there were many words with a single meaning too. It was more fluid, there was more possibility. In the original it cannot be said that the three questions are all identical; they are not.There are two distinct words used for love. Christ’s original question uses the verb agapao, which means a state of love, not a relationship. When Jesus says: “Are you in love with me?” he is saying: “Are you in prayer with me?” He is asking the highest. The difference has to be understood.A relationship is a lower state. The highest state of love is not a relationship at all, it is simply a state of your being. Just as trees are green, a lover is loving. They are not green for particular persons; it is not that when you come they become green. The flower goes on spreading its fragrance whether anybody comes or not, whether anybody appreciates it or not. The flower does not start releasing its fragrance when it sees that a great poet is passing by: “Now this man will appreciate, now this man will be able to understand who I am.” And it does not close its doors when it sees that a stupid, idiotic person is passing there – insensitive, dull – a politician or something like that. It does not close itself: “What is the point? Why cast pearls before the swine?” No, the flower goes on spreading its fragrance. It is a state, not a relationship.When Jesus asks for the first time, “Do you love me, Peter?” he uses the word agapao. It means: “Are you in a state of love with me?” – state of love with me. Jesus means: “Has your love for me become your love for the whole? Have I become the door for the whole, for the divine? Do you love me not only as a person but as a representative of God? Do you see my father in me? Can you see in me God himself?” That is the meaning of agapao: it implies prayer, compassion.Compassion is a beautiful word. It comes from the same root as passion. When does passion become compassion? Passion is a relationship, it is a desire to be related, it is a need; it creates dependence, bondage. And all kinds of misery come in its wake. Compassion is the same energy, but it is no longer a hankering to relate. Not that it does not relate, but that desire has gone. Compassion is a state where you can be alone and perfectly happy, absolutely happy. You can be happy with people, you can be happy alone – then you have attained to the state of compassion. But if you cannot be happy alone and you can only be happy with someone, then it is passion, you are dependent. And, naturally, you will be angry with the person without whom you cannot be happy. You will be angry – that’s why lovers are angry at each other, continuously angry – because nobody can like one’s bondage.Freedom is the ultimate value in the human soul, so anything that degrades you from your freedom, that creates a confinement around you, you hate. That’s why lovers continuously hate each other. And the psychologists have come to see that the love relationship is not a simple love relationship. Now they call it “love-hate relationship,” because the hate is always there. So why call it only love?Between the friend and the enemy there is not much difference. With the friend your relationship is love-hate, and with the enemy, your relationship is hate-love. That’s the only difference – just the difference of emphasis. Love on top and hate hidden behind it – it is friendship. Hate has come on top and love has gone behind it – it is enmity.Watch it. Observe it. Compassion means you have gone beyond the necessity of depending on anybody else. Now you can share because you don’t need. You can share only when you don’t need. You can give only when you don’t need. Beggars can’t be givers. If you are hankering for somebody to give you love, how can you give? You can at most pretend. And the same is the situation from the other side. The other is also pretending that he or she loves you, so that you can love them.Now both are deceiving each other. That’s why honeymoons cannot be very long. How long can you deceive? How long? The more intelligent you are, the shorter will be the honeymoon. If you are really intelligent, the first night will be enough, you will be finished. You will see through and through that you are a beggar and she is a beggar, and both beggars are asking to be fulfilled by each other. And they don’t have anything. They are just pretending, promising. This promising is only in order to get. But nobody has it in the first place, so nobody gets it. And sooner or later one starts seeing through the pretensions. Then the wife is angry because she has been deceived, and the husband is angry because he has been deceived. And nobody really has deceived.Beggars cannot be givers. You can share only when you have. Compassion can be shared because one is overflowing with it – like a cloud full of rainwater, ready to shower.So in the first question when Jesus asks, “Do you love me?” he uses the word agapao. Agapao is compassion, agapao is conscious love, love through understanding, not love through infatuation; love through awareness, not love through an unconscious liking – because you like the shape of the woman, or you like the nose of the man, or you like the hair color, or the eyes. These are all silly things; how can love happen through these things? Love is not a liking, it is an understanding. It is not emotional. When it has immense intelligence, has compassion in it, then in that intensity of compassion, agapao happens.Peter’s reply uses the word philo. Peter says, “Yes, my Lord, I love you!” But he uses another word. He does not use agapao, he uses philo – the word that exists in philosophy or the word that exists in philanthropist. Philo, which has the quality of personal affection, is a relationship, not a state. It is not conscious; it is unconscious. One rises in agapao, and one falls in philo. That’s why we say “falling in love” – you stumble in it, you go down in it, you fall into a dark pit through it. Philo is unconscious, it is not out of alertness, awareness, understanding, observation; it is not out of an integrated soul, it is not out of individuation. It is out of some hidden impulses, instincts, infatuation – it is lust.A second time Christ asks the question, still using the word agapao. The master goes on and on hammering. Peter has missed; it was so simple. But you also go on missing the way, remember. He is not aware that Jesus is using one word and he is answering with another word; it is just an unconscious thing. Jesus has to ask again, a second time. Again he uses the word agapao so that Peter can hear it – maybe now he hears. But Peter’s response is again on the personal level. In fact, he becomes a little angry. He must be thinking, “What does Jesus think of me – stupid or something? I have said ‘I love you,’ and now he is asking me the same question again.” He must have felt a little angry. But he again uses the same word philo. In anger you become even more unconscious. Now he cannot hear what Jesus is saying, he cannot see who Jesus is. The question being asked again has disturbed him. He misses again.The third time, Christ accepts Peter’s lack of understanding, and uses the word philo himself. Why? Because Jesus sees that he will not understand that state – he has never tasted it; it is beyond him. When the master sees you cannot come to him, he has to come to you. When he goes on shouting, calling and you don’t come, then he descends into your darkness to hold your hand and take you from there.The third time, Jesus uses the word philo, and Peter, aggrieved by the insistence, protests his love even more earnestly. He must have become even angrier: “Why is Jesus asking again and again when I have answered it? Is there some kind of suspicion in Jesus’ mind? Has he some doubts about my love?” All these questions must have arisen. He goes on missing. Even philo – Jesus has come very close to his understanding but there also… Now he is so angry, and Jesus is standing just by his side holding his hand but he cannot see. He goes on declaring, “I love you,” but this declaration is his egoistic declaration.Christ says gently: “Go and feed my sheep.” “It is no use,” Jesus says, “I will have to wait for another time. Right now it is not going to happen.” The master sometimes has to wait for years. The disciple on the one hand wants it to happen, and on the other hand goes on creating all kinds of hindrances, obstructions. But that too is natural, because how can you expect more from an unconscious mind, from a mind which has not known what consciousness really means, which lives in a dark dungeon and has never seen any light? You go on talking about love and light… In compassion, Jesus says, “Okay, Peter, so go and feed my sheep. Forget about it. Right now is not the right time. I should not have asked in the first place. I will have to wait.”Maurice Nicoll, one of the disciples of George Gurdjieff and one of the most significant disciples, says: “As we cease to invent ourselves, so we cease to invent other people. We begin to feel a common existence which is without passion, and is simply what it is, without further definition.”When you stop inventing yourself – your ego is your invention – when you stop creating a false pseudo personality around you, when you just start being whatsoever you are, when you start relaxing into existence: “As we cease to invent ourselves, so we cease to invent other people.” Both things go together. If you are inventing yourself, you will be inventing others too. You go on creating a very beautiful image of yourself, and correspondingly you go on creating beautiful images of other people. Neither your image about yourself is true, nor is your image about other people true. So you live in a kind of illusion, and again and again you are frustrated because nothing comes according to your image. It cannot come – your image is just your invention, it is not the truth.Maurice Nicoll is right. He says: “When we stop inventing ourselves, we stop inventing others, and then suddenly there is a common ground, a common existence. Passion disappears, and when passion disappears, compassion appears.” The meaning of the word compassion is to have such intense passion that passion itself burns out in that intensity. It is so intense that it burns itself and disappears into fire – the fire of its own intensity. Then there is a totally different kind of love: compassion. It goes on showering from you, goes on in ripples continuously, day and night, year in, year out. And whosoever is ready to partake of it can partake of it; whoever is ready to receive and digest, can digest and be fulfilled through it. Then it flows for all, for all things.In the very fire of passion, compassion is born. Out of passion, compassion is born. Sex cannot contain love, love cannot contain prayer. But love exists in sex like a child exists in a womb, or a bird exists in an egg – the egg protects for a time, then it hinders. Then the egg has to be broken, then the bird has to come out and fly into the sky.Sex is an egg in which the bird of love grows. Then, the bird itself – love itself – is another egg in which prayerfulness grows. And when prayerfulness has grown to its utmost, only God is, you are not. Then wherever you are, you are in the temple. Then whoever you are, you are utterly blissful. That is the meaning of heaven; that is the meaning of the “kingdom of God.”So Jesus says: “First go and be reconciled with your brother, be reconciled with the creation.”Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.The question is not of committing something; the question is of thinking. This is the difference between crime and sin. Crime is that which you have committed, sin is that crime about which you have been thinking. Crime is that sin which has become actualized into the world of things: you have done it, you have exposed it to the world. Sin is that crime which you are nursing within yourself.Jesus says: “If you think in terms of lust, you have already committed adultery.” The law of Moses says: “Don’t commit adultery.” That is one of the commandments. But it only prevents you from action, it does not say anything about thought. It only says how to relate with people, it does not say anything about what goes on in your dreams.Jesus says: “That is not going to transform you. You can be absolutely moralistic from the outside and deep inside you may contain all the snakes and all the scorpions and all the poisons of the whole world. The real problem has to be there.”What does he mean? Does he mean, “Don’t look at a beautiful woman”? That is not possible. He cannot mean that, because if he says, “Look at the lilies in the field,” how can he say, “Don’t look at a beautiful woman”? If lilies are beautiful, then why not a beautiful woman or a beautiful man? If lilies represent God and his beauty, then man represents God at a higher point, woman represents the most beautiful phenomenon in the world. Jesus cannot say that. Then what is he saying? Try to understand it.You see a beautiful woman. If you enjoy the beauty, the form, the way she walks, the grace around her – you are simply thrilled with great awe, you are thrilled by God’s beauty in her – there is no lust. Lust enters only when you see a beautiful woman and immediately you start thinking, “How to possess her?” Thought is the culprit, desire is the culprit. When the thought comes, “How to possess her? How to have her? How to snatch her away from others?” then you have become ugly. Violence has come in.Do you know where this word violence comes from? It comes from the same root as violation. You have violated a subtle law of God the moment you think of possessing. It is a profanation. The beauty was immense but you have profaned it, you have started thinking how to use it. It is as if you see a flower and you start thinking, “How to take it? How to steal it?” or, “How to take it away and sell it in the market?” This is a violation, this is a profanation – hence, it is violence.When lust arises – the desire to possess and exploit – the beauty is lost. Then you have already made the woman ugly in your heart. It was so pure, it was so beautiful, it was such a splendor to see. Now you have destroyed everything. And rather than enjoying it, rather than being thrilled by it, rather than rejoicing about it, you have become worried: “What to do? – because she belongs to somebody else, somebody’s wife.” Now you will be disturbed. Rather than being enhanced and nourished by her beauty, now you will be disturbed. And you will start thinking, “How to take her away? What to do?” You miss the whole point. A door was opening through her beauty. You missed it; otherwise you have corrupted it. That’s what adultery is.Jesus is not saying to become insensitive to beauty. He cannot say it – I can vouch for it, he cannot say it – notwithstanding what Christians have been teaching to the people. He is a man of immense sensitivity, of great love. How can he be insensitive to beauty? He is simply saying: “Don’t lust. Enjoy.” And there is no need to enjoy anything by possessing it. In fact, how can you enjoy something once you possess it? In the very possession the beauty is destroyed. You have poisoned it, you have corrupted it. That’s what adultery is.And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.This has been misinterpreted by neurotic people down the ages. There have been Christian saints who have cut off their genital organs. There have been people who have taken their eyes out according to this. Man seems to be so stupid. But these people have been revered and respected; they have been sanctified, they have become saints. These were simply neurotic people, hysterical people, and utterly stupid. This is not the meaning. This is just a way of saying that the part has to be sacrificed for the whole. The whole cannot be sacrificed for the part – that’s all. It is just a way of saying that if you find that any part of your being is creating a disturbance between you and the whole, it has to be sacrificed.As far as I know, any part that has any pretensions of being whole is the disturbance. And that is only your mind, nothing else. Only your mind pretends: “I am whole, sufficient unto myself.” The mind is the only pretender. It gives you the idea of separation, of ego.Jesus is saying: “Sacrifice the part. If it is your head, sacrifice the head.” It does not mean cut your head off. It simply means bow down, surrender your head. If it is your mind, your thinking process, that is creating trouble for you, sacrifice it; it is not of any worth. For the whole, everything has to be sacrificed; only then will you become whole.Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.The greatest saying of Jesus: …ye resist not evil… And it has been said of old: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. That is the concept of law, justice. Jesus brings love. He says: …resist not evil… Why? This looks like a very strange statement: …resist not evil… Then evil will grow if nobody resists it. The meaning is very, very different; it is concerned with the inner alchemy. And the same is the meaning in Jesus’ prayer in which he asks, “Give us our daily bread.”Hindus and Mohammedans and others have been laughing about the Christian prayer – it looks so childish: “Give us our daily bread.” Couldn’t Jesus think of anything else than to ask for the daily bread? But these people don’t know what he means by the “daily bread.”Jesus says: “As your body exists through air, food, water, every day your soul also gets a certain nourishment from God. That is your daily bread, daily nourishment.” Every day you get a certain quantity of spiritual energy. Now, with that energy you can destroy or create. If you destroy you will be misusing it; that will be violence – violation, profanation. If you use it in a creative way it will become your path toward godliness. It will grow in you to higher peaks, altitudes. It will bring a plenitude in you, a pleroma.God’s energy that goes on showering on you is what he calls the “daily bread.” If this energy is not properly used, but is squandered in useless and destructive activities, then… God goes on giving, and you go on throwing it away, not knowing what you are throwing away.It happened, a Sufi parable…A man came to the river early in the morning for a morning walk and stumbled upon a bag. He opened the bag; it was full of stones. Sitting on the bank, just playfully he started throwing those stones into the river. He enjoyed the splash of those stones. By and by, it became lighter and then the sun started coming up. The last stone was left. Then he looked, because now there was light, and he started beating his chest and crying and weeping. And some people gathered and they asked, “What is the matter?”He said, “This is a diamond, and I have thrown thousands. Continuously, for one hour I have been throwing, not knowing what I was throwing. I was thinking these are just stones. But only the last is left.”But I say, even he was fortunate – at least he became aware when the last was left. Millions of people are not aware even at that late stage; they simply go on throwing. They live and die, and they don’t ever come to know the daily bread, the diamond that descends in you everyday. It is your energy. You can put it into anger – it is the same energy. You can put it into love – it is the same energy. It is your choice. That’s why Jesus says …resist not evil… If you start resisting evil your whole energy will go into resistance. There is much evil. It is not a moral teaching; it is an alchemical teaching.Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. Don’t waste your energy. If he wants to hit you, he has already hit you. Give him the other cheek too, and thank him. Say, “Thank you, sir, and if some time you need me again, I will be ready.” And go on your way. Don’t waste your energy, because that energy is so precious. Don’t waste it just in retaliation, reaction, fighting, anger – you will be throwing away diamonds.We live in a constant inner atmosphere of objecting, complaining, condemning, no-saying. Saying no, we go on missing what is just in front of our noses. This constant objecting inside: “This is not right! That is not good! Things should be like this! Things should be like that!” Much energy gets involved with this objecting. We start putting things right, and life is short and life is fleeting – and nothing is ever being put right. We simply drown ourselves in our activity.Jesus says: “Be aware. Your energy is precious, and you have only a limited amount of it available.” More will become available if you use this amount. Jesus says: “Those who have will be given more” – his statements are the most beautiful ever made – “and those who have not, even that which they have will be taken away from them.” Very paradoxical but absolutely true.If you save this energy you will get more. The more you save, the more you have, the more will be given to you, because you are proving yourself worthy of it. The less you have of it, the less you will be given. And when you don’t have anything, even that which you have will be taken away. You will remain just an empty shell, a negative emptiness – not the emptiness Buddha talks about. You will just be an empty shell with no meaning: “A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”By this constant wrong use of our energy we create a prison around ourselves. Yet the doors of the prison are always open, because no jailer is there except yourself. You are the prison, and the prisoner, and the jailer too. We have but to sacrifice our stupid, habitual attitudes and the same energy that creates the prison becomes our freedom, salvation.Nicholas of Cusa maintained that right living involved only one thing – what he called “learned ignorance.” Learn to be innocent again. “Learn ignorance” he used to say. Become a child. Don’t resist, don’t fight. Enjoy the energy that is showering on you. Become very, very primal. Learn to be innocent again. Drop your clinging to your dull and dead past, knowledge, mind. “Learned ignorance” means knowing ignorance.There is a kind of ignorance that knows, and there is also a kind of knowledge that is ignorant. The knowledge of the pundit, the knowledge of the priest is just knowledge for its name’s sake; it does not know. And the ignorance of a Jesus or a Buddha… When Bodhidharma was asked by Emperor Wu, “Who are you?” he simply said, “I don’t know.” This ignorance, this innocence knows.Stop creating securities for yourself. Stop fighting people. Stop fighting! Jesus says specifically: …resist not evil… Your mind will say, “But when there is evil then one has to resist. Evil cannot be allowed; evil has to be fought and destroyed.” Nobody has ever destroyed evil. Evil is eternal. You will be destroyed in fighting it. It can’t be destroyed. Beware of that fallacy, that fallacious idea.Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you…The whole message is very clear and loud. Jesus is saying: “Not a single iota of energy has to be wasted for anything. The whole energy has to be conserved. When the energy comes to a certain degree, the transformation happens automatically. That is the science of alchemy.”You heat water, you go on putting heat energy into it. Then the hundred-degree heat comes and the water evaporates. Ninety-nine – it was hot, but still water. Ninety-nine point nine – and it was very, very hot, but still water. Hundred degrees – and the jump! So it happens in the inner world.These sayings are not moral maxims. These sayings are concerned with inner transformation. If you go on preserving your energy and you don’t go on squandering it anywhere… A dog starts barking and you start barking. You say, “I have to resist evil. This dog has to be taught a lesson.” You can teach the dog a lesson. It has never been heard that they have learned any lesson – they go on barking. Many like you have been there, teaching lessons to the dogs. Dogs are very stubborn; they go on barking. You are simply wasted. And barking at dogs, you lose the capacity of praying to God, because the barking and the praying cannot exist together. Fighting, hatred, anger, and love cannot exist together. It is simple inner economics.That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven…If you want to be the children of God, then this has to be done – you have to preserve energy. And he is giving you energy every day. If a man simply goes on preserving, nothing else is needed. Jesus is giving such a key – a great key. It can unlock the ultimate door.…for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.And Jesus says: “Don’t be bothered about the just and the unjust. Look at God! His clouds come and shower on both the just and the unjust. His sun comes and gives light and life to both good and bad. So why are you worried? God goes on giving energy to all.”So, please, don’t become a reformer. Remember, if you want to reform yourself, don’t become a reformer because you can do either one or the other. If you become a reformer, you start changing other people. Don’t become a reformer if you want to be reformed. Preserve your energy. And the miracle is that if you are reformed, if you are transformed, then many will be transformed through you. Your very catalytic presence will be enough: just your being there, and many will be thrilled with the unknown, just your touch, and something will start vibrating in them.Not that you have to do much: it is just, if your light is burning, people will start coming toward you; groping in the dark, they will start moving toward you. And as they come closer and closer and closer, one day the unlit lamp becomes lit through the one who is already lit. The flame jumps from one place to another. Just closeness is needed.Be around a master. Be around somebody who has arrived, and go closer and closer with no resistance, with no fight, with no protection. Be vulnerable, and all else follows of its own accord.That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. So who are you to be worried about good and bad? Who are you to be worried about how the world should be? That is again just an ego trip.For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same?The puritan, the publican, the moralist, the formalist – they also do the same. When people love them, they love them. There is nothing much in it, nothing much that can be said is special. When people love you, you love; when somebody smiles at you, you smile. But that is not the point. When somebody hits you, and you smile, and somebody is full of hatred toward you, and your love goes on flowing – this is the miracle. This is magic, and only this magic can make you the children of God. Nothing else will be of help.Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.This too is one of the most fundamental sayings: Be ye therefore perfect… Remember, you can be perfect only because intrinsically you are perfect. You come from God, how can you be imperfect? You belong to God, how can you be imperfect? Intrinsically, you are God, because God is in you and you are in God. But you have not given an opportunity for yourself to see into it. You are so engaged, occupied outside – doing this, doing that, bringing a little good to the world, justice to the world, making this reform and that. You are so much concerned with the outside, that’s why you have not been able to look into your innermost shrine. And God is there, God is abiding in you.Yes, you can be perfect, because you are perfect. Only the perfect can be perfect. So perfection is not to be created, it has only to be discovered. It is already there, hidden maybe, hidden behind veils maybe, but it is there. Remove the veils, and you will find it. You are not to invent it, you are only to discover it. Or maybe even discovery is not the right word. Let me say, rediscover it.Enough for today.

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I Say Unto You Vol 1 01-10Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 1 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Life seems to be meaningless. Why?Life is, unless you give meaning to it. There is no inbuilt meaning in it; it has to be created. It has to be introduced, it has to be provoked. If you are waiting for some ready-made meaning, you will not get it, and life will seem meaningless. Life is just blank. It is just an opportunity. You can create meaning; you can create meaninglessness too. You can create freedom, you can create an imprisonment too. It all depends on you. Your freedom is total.Man is very afraid of this freedom because with this freedom comes great responsibilities. You would like somebody to give you meaning so that then you are not responsible. Then meaning is given to you. To create meaning means that if you miss, only you are responsible and nobody else. That creates fear. So, man has always been creating gods who give meaning to life. What exactly is the notion of a god? – someone to look to, somebody to look up to, somebody who will give meaning to you, somebody who will give salvation, bliss, moksha. You want to be on the receiving end, that’s why people go to churches, to temples, to mosques – just to pray, “Give us meaning.”This prayer is impotent. The right prayer is to do something to create meaning. Existence cooperates, it cooperates with you – whatsoever you are doing, existence is always there to cooperate. Even if you are going against it, it cooperates with you. That’s the meaning of Jesus’ saying that when the clouds shower, they shower on both the just and the unjust, the good and the bad. When the sunrays fall, they fall on all unconditionally, the sinner and the saint – they don’t make any distinction.If you are simply waiting for some meaning to come into your life, you are waiting like a beggar with a begging bowl. You will never get it, and because you are waiting, you will continuously feel meaninglessness. You have an idea of meaning and you don’t create it, and then you go on comparing your life with that idea and life is always falling short – great anxiety…You are creating both. First, this idea, “I am only to be on the receiving end, I am not to be creative.” And second, carrying this great idea, “Life should be like this, only then is it life, only then is there significance” – and then comparing it with your life. You will not find anywhere that poetry which gives you significance unless you bring it into existence, unless you create it.Sannyas means a creative approach toward God. Your prayer should not be impotent. It should show that you really want it to be that way. You should do all that you can do – no stone should be left unturned – only then does God’s help arise, come, descend, transform. God certainly comes, but only when you have done all that you could do, never before.And the problem has become very, very great – particularly for the modern mind. In the past man has always lived with a “giver-God.” He was there in heaven and everything was right on the earth. People have lived very lethargically, uncreatively, just dependent on God: praying, praising him, and thinking that they have done all that they can do – prayer and praise. Now, after Friedrich Nietzsche, that is no longer possible. That God is dead.Let me tell you this small parable from Nietzsche:Have you not heard of the madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours? – ran to the market place and cried incessantly, “I seek God! I seek God!” As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter.“Why, did he get lost?” asked one.“Is he afraid of us? Is he hiding?” asked another.“Has he lost his way? Or gone on a voyage? Or emigrated?” asked the third. Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his glances.“Whither is God?” he cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed him – you and I. All of us are his murderers. And now we are plunging continuously into nothingness. Do you not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night and more night coming on all the while? Must not lanterns be lit even in the morning? Do we not hear anything of the noise of the grave-diggers who are digging a grave for God and burying him? Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? Gods decompose too. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners. And they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke and went out.“I come too early,” he said to them. “My time has not come yet. The tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering. It has not yet reached the ears of man. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time, even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars – and they have done it themselves.”When Nietzsche’s madman said, “I have come a little too early, maybe my right time has not come,” people could not understand. That time has come now, after one hundred years. The whole world is full of the smell of the decomposing God. But it always happens. This parable is of infinite significance.Each age has to create its own God, others’ gods won’t do. They were created by them for their own purposes, for their own ends. They have become irrelevant. They become irrelevant all the time. And whenever one God becomes irrelevant and dies, decomposes and disappears, in the wake comes great emptiness, great meaninglessness. Because that God was giving a certain meaning to people, that God was their meaning. Now he is no longer there. Suddenly you are left alone – alone on a dark night, alone on a cold night.God was a kind of warmth; heaven was not far away, it was very close. You could have almost touched his feet any time. God was looking after you all the time. He was always observing you. You were a small child and he was your father or mother. Now that God exists no more. Now it has become very difficult to look at the sky and pray like Jesus did.Jesus used to call God “my Father.” His exact word is abba, which is far more loving, affectionate, closer – like daddy. Father is a little cold. He used to call God abba. You cannot say it – have you tried? Sometimes look at the sky, and just say, “Daddy” – how foolish it looks.I have heard…Sherwood Anderson describes his own awakening to this spiritual emptiness. He tells of walking alone late at night along a moonlit road when: “I suddenly had an odd and, to my own seeming, ridiculous desire to abase myself before something not human. And so, stepping into the moonlit road, I knelt in the dust. Having no God – the gods having been taken away from us by the life about us, as a personal God has been taken from all modern men… By a force within, that man himself does not understand, but calls the intellect, I kept smiling at the figure I cut in my own eyes as I knelt on the road.”Visualize a moonlit road, a silent night, a cool breeze, and suddenly Anderson is possessed by a desire to pray. But he says, “…a desire to abase myself…”When there is no God, how can you pray? When there is no God, it seems to be perfectly logical to say an urge “…to abase myself…” To surrender to the nothing, to surrender to the empty sky, just “humiliate myself.” Remember that word abase. Nobody who has prayed has said that it is abasing yourself. They have said it is praising God, raising God high. Now that there is no God and you cannot pray to God, then what are you doing kneeling in a dusty road? Maybe it is beautiful, maybe there is moonlight, maybe it is silent. So what? But you are abasing yourself in the dust.“I kept smiling,” he says, “at the figure I cut in my own eyes as I knelt on the road…” There was nobody else, but in his own eyes he was seeing the ridiculousness of it, the absurdity of it. “There was no God in the sky, no God in myself, no conviction in myself that I had the power to believe in a god. And so I merely knelt in the dust in silence and no words came to my lips.”This is the situation. You cannot call out abba – the word won’t come to your lips. And even if you do bring it, it will be false and you will be laughing at the whole ridiculousness of it. Each age has to create a new God. Not that God dies, but the notions of God die. Now man is left in a vacuum, in an existential vacuum. The old gods have gone, and we have not created new gods. The old temple is a ruin, and we have not built a new temple. Each age has to search again and again, and rediscover God in its own way – that’s why life seems to be meaningless. And now the old God cannot be revived, the old God cannot be given breath alone. That’s what churches, priests are trying to do: trying to breathe into the dead God. It is not possible; man has become more grown-up. Man needs a more grown-up God. Man needs a God who can fulfill his requirements which are now.Krishna fulfilled some people’s requirement then, five thousand years ago. Jesus fulfilled some people’s requirement two thousand years ago. Moses’ God was not relevant to Jesus’ time. Jesus’ God cannot be relevant to yours. Things change, but man cannot live without God.By “God” I mean – meaning. You can forget the word; the word does not matter. Man cannot live without meaning. He needs to feel that what he is doing has relevance, that whatsoever he is doing contributes something to the total joy, the total beauty of existence. Maybe his effort is small, his hands are tiny, but still he is not irrelevant to existence; he is required. He is fulfilling a certain need that brings meaning to life. When you are fulfilling a need, there is meaning, and with meaning there is joy. When you are not fulfilling any need, you can disappear and there will not be any change in the world; you can be replaced easily, thrown away, and somebody else will do the work. You are only a function – anybody else can fulfill it – then there arises an existential vacuum. You start feeling pain in the heart. Why go on living, for what? What is the point of it all? There seems to be no point, and it drives people crazy.I understand your question. You ask: “Life seems to be so meaningless. Why?” It seems to be so meaningless because you have not yet taken hold of life. You have not created anything that can give significance to it.Eliot says that man is hollow. Yes, that is true, man is hollow, but so is a bamboo hollow. But when the bamboo becomes a flute there arises meaning. And so man can become a flute. But you are not flutes, you are simply hollow bamboos.About modern man Eliot says:Shape without form, shade without color.Paralyzed force, gesture without motion…This is his description: “Paralyzed force, gesture without motion…” That’s how Anderson must have looked in his own eyes, kneeling on a dusty road. He must have cut a very ridiculous figure.“Shape without form, shade without color. Paralyzed force, gesture without motion…” Then your life seems to be like a wasteland, a desert where no river flows, no trees grow, no birds sing – nothing happens. It is a nightmare. One goes on and on and nothing happens. And one day one falls down and disappears into the dust – dust to dust…Leo Tolstoy was very interested in the dreams of his friends. Sitting with Maxim Gorky, they were talking of things, gossiping, and suddenly he asked Gorky, “Can you tell me one of your dreams which you have not forgotten, which has remained special to you in all your life’s dreams?”And Gorky said: “Yes, there has been one dream that I cannot forget. And it has not happened once, it has happened many times in the same way again and again. So it goes on being more and more impressed onto my consciousness.”Tolstoy became very interested. He said, “Tell me, tell me immediately.”And Gorky said: “The dream is that I see a vast desert with no trees, no people, no animals, utterly, utterly empty, sands and sands and sands. And the sun is burning so hot, it is fire. And I see myself walking to nowhere in particular. There is nowhere to go, no destination. Not only that, the strange thing is that I see only my feet and my shoes. I cannot see anything else. I try and I try, and it becomes very, very crazy. I cannot see my face, I cannot see my body, I cannot see my hands – just two feet covered in leather shoes. I can hear the noise that they are making, and those two feet go on and on and on in that desert – to nowhere! And it seems to continue for ages.“Nothing happens, just those two legs without the body, without the soul, without the face. Where are they going, and why are they going in the first place? And what is the point of going? Why can’t they stop? All these questions arise, and great fear grips my soul, and I always awake out of it trembling, shaking, perspiring.”The dream is symbolic. That dream is what modern man has become.Unless you create your face you will not find a face. You come faceless into the world. Unless you create your soul, you don’t have any. You can have only that which you create.A Buddha has a soul, a Jesus has a soul, you don’t. Don’t take it for granted. That has been one of the causes of the greatest miseries to humanity: that people think they have souls. How can you have if you have not created it in the first place? You can have only that which you create. You can possess only that which you have created.Religion should be that creativity – creating a soul, creating a face, creating a being out of nothingness. Then there is joy, there is great exaltation. Then life has zest, juice, flow, thrill. Life pulsates, is adventure, is not a monotony, is not a nightmare. Trees start growing in your desert, birds start singing in your wasteland, flowers come, clouds come, and the emptiness is no longer empty; it is full of life.Let me repeat, the meaning has to be created.The second question:Osho,Sometimes I have the feeling that you are not quoting the Bible correctly.That’s possible. I am not a scholar, and if sometimes it is correct, it is a miracle. It must be a coincidence. I am not a Christian either. I am not concerned with what exactly is written in the book, I am more concerned with what happened to Jesus in his innermost core. It has happened to me too, so I know what it is. When I am saying anything, I am not saying it according to the Bible, but according to christ consciousness. And if sometimes you find that I am saying something which is not in the Bible, then at least you can add it to your Bible. And it will be absolutely true.It is possible… I am a drunkard; I speak out of my drunkenness. If you are listening from a scholarly standpoint, you may be worried, puzzled, and you will miss much.You will have to remember again and again that I may not be true to the letter but I am true to the spirit. But you have been taught what is in the Bible, you have been forced to learn it. It is crammed into your heads, and whenever you see something different, naturally you become puzzled.Somebody else has also asked: “It seems that Christ is not the type for you. He seems to be too much of a moralist. And the sutras that you have covered,” he has said, “were very different to the meaning that you have given to them.” That too will be apparent to you many times, but it is only apparent, it is not true. In fact you don’t know Jesus as he was. You know the Jesus that Christianity has depicted for you. You know a Jesus through the Christian interpretation, and you have believed that this is so. Those moralistic interpretations are Christian interpretations. Jesus needs better treatment. He needs to be brought to the world again in his originality.He was one of the most amoral persons. That’s why the Jews were so much against him. The Jews of his day were very moralistic people, very law-abiding. Their anger against Jesus was basically that he was not law-abiding, and he was bringing dangerous intuitions to people. He was bringing a kind of lawlessness.Jews have always been a law-abiding people. That’s why all the great revolutionaries of the world have come from the Jews. It is not accidental. When a society is very law-abiding, as a reaction it creates the revolutionary. Jesus is a great revolutionary. Karl Marx is also a Jew, and a great revolutionary. Sigmund Freud is also a Jew, and a great revolutionary. So is Albert Einstein.These four people have influenced the history of humanity as nobody else has ever done. Why? Jews are so law-abiding, so righteous that sooner or later somebody is born who rebels against it. Only in a law-abiding society can the rebel be born. You will be surprised: here also, more than half the people are Jews, which is strange. It is out of all proportion. Again and again Vivek brings the news, “This sannyasin is also a Jew. That sannyasin is also a Jew.” And sometimes I start suspecting – maybe I am a Jew, or what? If everybody is a Jew, then I must be a Jew.In India, Jews are nonexistent. This may be the only place where you can find Jews, and there are so many that this is almost a Jewish place, a Jerusalem. But why? The society is too law-abiding, too traditional, so anybody who has some intelligence starts rebelling. He starts escaping, he starts finding new ways of being. That’s why so many Jews are here.The Jews were angry because he was amoral – not immoral, but amoral. By amoral I mean his morality was inner, it was not from the outside. His morality was spontaneous. He lived each moment, he had no plan, he had no blueprint for how to live. He was a conscious being, and again and again he would decide each moment. He would not carry any conclusion from the past. He would simply be there in the situation and let the situation decide. His response was always fresh, that’s why there are so many contradictions in the Bible – there are bound to be.A man who lives moment to moment will have many contradictions. He cannot be very consistent; only dead people can be consistent. A man who is really alive each moment goes on changing, because life changes, so he changes. He is never out of tune with life, he is always in tune with life. And life is inconsistent, so he becomes inconsistent. A truly great man is so vast, he contains contradictions.Jesus contains great contradictions. One of the logicians of the French Revolution, Voltaire, has shouted almost madly, “Down with this scoundrel!” – and by “this scoundrel” he means Jesus. Why? Why should Voltaire, a man of very rational grounding, logic, philosophy, call Jesus a scoundrel? “Down with this scoundrel!” – because Jesus is so contradictory. In fact you cannot follow Jesus without going crazy. You cannot follow me without going crazy. That’s why I say: “Don’t follow me. Just understand me.”And so I say about Jesus: “Understand him; there is no need to follow.” If you follow, that will be against Jesus, because he never followed anybody. If you follow Jesus you will be carrying a blueprint in your head, and you will always be looking from that blueprint: what to do, what not to do? He never carried any conclusions; he lived an open life.When I am responding on Jesus’ sayings, many times you will feel that I am not saying that which has been taught to you.My situation is like this:A new priest at his first mass was so scared, he couldn’t even speak. After mass he asked the Monsignor how he had got on, and the Monsignor said fine, only next week it might help if he put vodka or gin in his water glass to help relax him.The next Sunday the priest put vodka in his glass and really talked a storm. After mass he again asked the Monsignor how he had done. The Monsignor said: “Fine, but that there were a few things that should be straightened out. First, there are ten commandments, not twelve. Second, there are twelve disciples, not ten. Third, David slew Goliath with a sling, he didn’t knock his head off with the jawbone of an ass. We do not refer to Jesus Christ as ‘the late J. C.’ And next Sunday there is a taffy-pulling contest at St. Peter’s, not a Peter-pulling contest at St. Taffy’s. And sixth, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are not referred to as: ‘Big Daddy,’ ‘Junior,’ and ‘Spook.’”I am a drunkard, there is too much vodka in me. So sometimes if I go a little astray, forgive me.The third question:Osho,How can my judgmental, self-opinionated, guilt-inducing, fearful mind be mutated? It is giving me the shits. I'm completely fed-up with it.First, it need not be mutated, it has only to be dropped – not mutated. You don’t mutate a disease, you drop it. You don’t mutate something that is wrong inside you, you simply get rid of it. Mind needs no mutation. Just see the point that it is a kind of cancerous growth in you, then drop it. In fact, in understanding that it is a cancerous growth, you will drop it. The very seeing will become the dropping of it.You still want to mutate it? You still want to keep it – a little more painted, polished, a change here and there, a little whitewash and renovation? Then you are not really fed-up with it. You still have some infatuation with it, you want to keep it. You want to keep it, maybe in a little reformed, modified way, but you want to keep the continuity. And that is the whole point, the very crux of the whole problem.You should become discontinuous with the mind – that is mutation, that is revolution – discontinuous. When you become very intensely aware of all the nonsense and nuisance that the mind has done to you, you don’t ask how to transform it, how to reform it, how to make it a little more civilized and tame, how to make it a little more sophisticated, how to make it so one can live with it conveniently, comfortably, how to rub its corners a little bit and make them smooth. Then it will be the same thing. Maybe the disease will be there in a subtle form, and the subtle form is more dangerous than the gross form, because the subtle goes deeper than the gross.You say: “How can my judgmental, self-opinionated, guilt inducing, fearful mind be mutated?” There is no need to go on having your mind. It is not of any worth. Drop it, and then you will have the universal mind functioning in you. Because of your mind the universal cannot function. You go on interfering, you don’t allow the cosmic mind to function in you. You are the barrier, the hindrance, the obstruction. Now, the obstruction is not to be made better, the obstruction has to be removed – utterly removed.And you say: “It is giving me the shits. I’m completely fed-up with it.” Not completely. If you are completely fed-up with it, you will not even ask the question. Who is forcing you to keep this mind? You are not completely fed-up with it. There must be some subtle infatuation still lingering. You are still hoping against hope that maybe something better can come out of it: “It is such a beautiful mind, maybe something is wrong that can be put right. Some nuts and bolts are loose, they can be tightened. Something is missing, it can be brought from the outside. Something is nonfunctioning, it can be cleaned, made to function.” But this will be just a reformation. You will have a better cultured mind. That does not make any difference. The mind will be there, and the mind creates the barrier between you and God, because your mind means the cosmic mind is not allowed to function unhindered. You are standing there, choosing, deciding, concluding – according to your notions, ideologies, ideas, scriptures, experiences. God comes to you, but your mind colors the whole thing so much that you cannot know what is coming to you.Open the window, let there be no hindrance, no curtain. Look directly into existence without your mind coming in. If it happens even for a single moment, you will have such a great insight. It can happen. It has happened to me, it has happened to Jesus, it has happened to Buddha. It can happen to you because you all carry the seed; the essential seed of it is in you. So don’t be in a hurry. If you are not totally fed-up with it, get a little more fed-up with it. But it needs a let-go.A mountain climber was halfway up a steep precipice when suddenly he slipped and began plummeting toward the valley below. After falling several hundred feet, he was luckily able to grab on to a small tree growing out of a crack in the sheer vertical face of the mountain.As he was clinging on for dear life, he looked up into the sky and said, “Lord, please save me.”A booming voice answered back and said, “Let go and have faith!”The man, still hanging on, thought for a moment and then looked up again and said, “Is there anyone else up there?”That is the situation. I am telling you: “Let go of it. In its very dropping is the benediction.” But you are afraid of dropping it. You are so much identified with it – you think it is you! That is the problem. And when you say, “I am fed-up with it,” who is this “I am”? It is again part of the same mind. The mind is very cunning in playing games. It divides itself and goes on playing games. This one who says, “I am fed-up,” is but a part of the mind and this is the game of the mind: it divides and then goes on playing the game of hide-and-seek. The one that you are fed-up with and the one which is fed-up are both the same. The object and subject are both the same. See it! Look into it, and you will be able to see because it is so. I am just stating a fact. Seeing it, you will start laughing. If you listen to this mind which says, “I am fed-up with the mind,” you will again strengthen the mind from another side. They are complementary to each other. They are not enemies, they supplement each other.Just be choiceless. Don’t choose. Choice brings the mind in. Choice is mind. That’s why all the ancient scriptures and all the ancient masters have been talking about only one thing: “Be a witness. Just watch what is happening.”Ask, “Who is fed-up with the mind?” And you will see that it is the mind creating a new game – deceiving you again on a subtler and deeper level. And it can go on and on. Just watch. Don’t decide. Don’t take sides. Go on watching. Watching is a little arduous, because the mind says: “Do something. Either be for this side or that, but do something. Don’t just go on sitting there silently and watching” – because mind becomes very afraid when you simply watch.My suggestion for you is, for three months simply watch without deciding that you have to do anything about the mind. Go on watching. On each subtler level, go on watching. And in those three months some day you will have the first glimpse of no-mind. It may only be for a moment, but that will become the turning-point in your life. From that moment, more and more moments will be coming to you. And soon you will see that without doing anything about the mind, the mind has started receding backward. It is going far away. It still makes a noise, but it is very distant, you remain unperturbed by it. One day, suddenly it has gone; you are left alone. And when you are left alone, you are in godliness.You have always been in godliness, but because of the interference of the mind, it was not possible for you to look into your own self.The fourth question:Osho,This question has been hovering in me for years. A few times you have talked around it, but this has mystified me more, so please enlighten. When and where did enlightenment happen to Jesus? Was he born enlightened? – as it is said some three wise men from the East traveled to have darshan with the baby Jesus. Or did enlightenment happen to Jesus when he was secretly and anonymously traveling in Tibet and India, visiting Buddhist monasteries? Or did enlightenment happen to Jesus when he was initiated by John the Baptist in the river Jordan? Or did enlightenment happen to Jesus when he was on the cross saying, “Lord, thy kingdom come, thy will be done”?There are three stages of enlightenment.The first is when the first glimpse happens. I call it mini-satori: when, for the first time, for a single moment the mind is not functioning, there is a gap – no thought between you and existence. You and existence, you and existence… For a moment… And the meeting, and the merging, and the communion, and the orgasm… But for a moment. From that moment the seed will be in your heart and growing.The second I call satori: that is when you have become capable of retaining this gap as long as you want. For hours together, for days together you can remain in this interval, in this utter aloneness, in godliness, with godliness, as godliness. But a little effort is still needed on your part. If you drop the effort the satori disappears. The first satori, the mini-satori, happened almost by accident – you were not even expecting it. How can you expect? You had not known it before, you had never tasted it. How can you expect it? It came just out of the blue. Yes, you were doing many things – praying, meditating, dancing, singing – but they were all like groping in the dark. You were groping.It will not happen if you are not groping at all. It happens only to “gropers,” real gropers – they go on groping, they never feel tired and exhausted, and they never feel hopeless. Millions of times they are defeated in their effort, and nothing happens, but they go on and on. Their passion for godliness is so tremendous. They can accept all kinds of defeats and frustrations, but their search continues. Unwavering, they go on groping. The darkness is great, it seems to be almost endless, but their hope is greater than the darkness. That is the meaning of faith; they grope through faith.Faith means hoping for that which seems almost impossible. Faith means hoping against all hope. Faith means trying to see that which you have not seen, and you cannot even be certain whether it exists or not. A great passion is needed to have that much faith.So to a groper who lives in faith and goes on and on, nothing ever prevents him. No failure ever settles in him; his journey continues. He is the pilgrim. Then one day it comes just out of the blue. You were not expecting it. Unawares, it comes close to you and surrounds you. For a moment you cannot even believe it. How can you believe it? – for millions of lives a person has been groping, and it has not happened. The first time it looks almost like imagination, dream. But it is there, and it is so real that all that you have known as real before pales before it, becomes very faint. It is so real that it carries its certainty intrinsically. It is self-evident. You cannot suspect it. That is the criterion of whether the mini-satori has happened or not: you cannot doubt it. You can try, but you cannot doubt it. It is so certain that no doubt arises in that moment. It is simply there. It is like the sun has risen – how can you doubt?Then the second becomes a more conscious groping. Now you know it is, now you know it has happened. Now you know it has even happened to you! Now there is a great certainty. Now faith is not needed, now experience is enough. Now belief is not needed. Now its certainty permeates your whole being, you are full of it. Now you grope more consciously, you make an effort in the right direction. Now you know how it happened, when it happened, in what space it became possible. You were dancing? – then what was happening when it happened? In what way did the contact become possible? By and by, it happens again and again, and you can make out, figure out, reckon out how it happens, in what mood. In what mood do you fall in tune with it and it happens? Now things become clearer, now it is not just waiting in the darkness. You can start moving, you can have a direction.Still you falter, still sometimes you fall, still sometimes it disappears for months. But never again can doubt arise in you. The doubt has been killed by the first satori. Then, more and more, it will come. And sooner or later you will become capable of bringing it on order. Whenever you want you can create that milieu in you which brings it. You can relax, if it comes in relaxation; you can dance, if it comes in dance. You can go under the sky if it comes there. You can watch a roseflower if it happens there. You can go and float in a river if it happens there.That’s how all the methods have been discovered. They have been discovered by people when they found out that in a certain situation – when they make certain arrangements – it happens. Those became methods. By and by you become very, very certain that if you desire it, any moment you will be able, because you can move your focus toward it. You can move your whole consciousness, you can direct your being.Now you become able to see that it is always there; just your contact is needed. It is almost like your radio or like your TV, it is always there, sounds are always passing; you just have to tune the radio to a certain station, and the song, and the news… This is the second stage. But still, effort is needed to tune. You are not continuously tuned on your own, you have to work it out. Some days it is easy, some days it is hard. If you are in a negative mood it is hard, if you are angry it is hard. If you are loving it is easier. In the early morning it is easier, in the evening it is more difficult. Alone on a mountain it is easier, in the marketplace it is more difficult. So you start coming closer and closer, but still effort is needed.Then the third thing happens. When you become so capable of finding it that any moment, whenever you want it – not a single moment is lost – you immediately can pinpoint it, then the third thing happens. It becomes a natural quality. That I call samadhi.Satori one, satori two, satori three… The first satori must have happened somewhere in the East – in Tibet or in India. Jesus was with Buddhist masters. The first satori must have happened somewhere here, because to the Jews, samadhi had never been a concern.Jesus brings something very foreign to the Jewish world: he introduces Buddha into the Jewish world. It must have happened somewhere in Nalanda, where he stayed for many years. But he was traveling – he was in Egypt, he was in India, in Tibet – so nobody can be certain of where it happened. But the greater possibility is India: it remains for centuries the country where satori has been more available than anywhere else, because so many people have been meditating here. Their meditation has created very potential spots, very available spots. It must have happened somewhere here, but there is no record, so I’m not saying anything historical.But about the second: it is certain it happened in the River Jordan with John the Baptist when he initiated Jesus into his path – the path of the Essenes. John the Baptist was a great master, a very revolutionary prophet. The second satori must have happened there. It is depicted as a white dove descending on Jesus. The white dove has always been the symbol of peace, silence. That is the symbol for satori: the unknown descending. The second satori must have happened there, and John the Baptist said, “My work is finished. The man has come who will take it over from me. Now I can renounce and go into the mountains. I was waiting for this man.”And the third happened just on the cross – the last effort of the ego – very tiny, but still… Jesus must have desired how things should be in some way. Deep down, in some unconscious nook or corner of his being, he must have been hoping that God would save him. And God never moves according to you. Man proposes and God disposes – that’s how he teaches you to disappear, that’s how he teaches you not to will on your own, not to have a private will. And the last lesson happened on the cross, at the last moment. Jesus shouted, almost in agony: “Why have you forsaken me? Why have you deserted me? What wrong have I done?”But he was a man of great insight – the man of second satori. Immediately he must have become aware that this was wrong: “That means I still have a desire of my own, a will of my own. That means I still am not totally in God. My surrender is still only ninety-nine percent.” And a surrender that is ninety-nine percent is a no-surrender, because surrender is one hundred percent. A circle is a circle only when it is complete. You can’t call half of a circle a half-circle, because circle means complete. There are no half-circles. There is no approximate truth. The approximate truth is still a lie; either it is true or it is not true. There is nothing like approximate truth, and there is nothing like approximate surrender.In that moment he realized. He relaxed, he surrendered. He said: “Let thy kingdom come. Who am I to interfere? Let thy will be done…” and the third satori: samadhi. That moment, Jesus disappeared. And I call that moment his resurrection. That is the moment Buddha says, “Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha – gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond.” What ecstasy! Alleluia! That is the moment of absolute benediction. Jesus became God. The Son became Father in that moment; all distinction disappeared. The last barrier dissolved, Jesus had come home.The fifth question:Osho,What happens in, and with the relationship between two partners if their egos drop?Then relationship happens. Before that it is just an empty name. Relationship cannot happen before the egos are gone.You only believe that it is a relationship. It is a conflict, it is enmity, it is jealousy, it is aggression, it is domination, it is possession, and many things – but not a relationship. How can you relate with two egos there? When there are two egos, then there are four persons.In every bed you will find four persons sleeping together. It is very rare to find a double bed, because then there are four persons overcrowding it. The wife is there and the ego, and the husband is there and the ego – the husband is hidden behind his ego, the wife is hidden behind her ego, and those two egos go on making love. The real contact never happens.The word relationship is beautiful. The original meaning of the root from which the word to relate comes, is exactly the same as to respond. Relationship comes from that word respond. If you have any image of your wife or husband, you cannot respond, and hence relate, to the truth of the person. And we all go on carrying images.First, we have the image that is our ego: who I am. And then we have the image of the other: who she is, or he is. The husband relates not to the woman that is there, he relates to the woman he thinks is there. So now there are not four, there are six, and it goes on become more crowded. Now you are there – that is one thing, and your ego is there – that is another thing. And now you don’t relate to the woman who is there, you relate to the idea of your woman: “My wife is such and such, or should be such and such,” and she is also having these things – so six persons. It is really a miracle how people go on managing. It is very complicated. A relationship is not possible, there are too many people in between. You go on reacting to the image, not to the person, and hence there is no relationship. When there is no image, then there is a relationship.See it! And see it immediately, without the interference of thought. Don’t have any image of the person you love. If you love me, don’t have any image of me. There is no need. Just look into me as I am. The image will not allow you to see who I am. Don’t have any image of the person you love; the person is enough. The truth of the person is enough, whatsoever it is. And don’t have any image of yourself; just be true, authentic, as you are. There will be a relationship. Then there will be a response. Then two realities will respond to each other. And when realities respond there is great harmony, melody, joy. There is great beauty.Don’t have any image of me, don’t have any image of your husband, don’t have any image of your son, don’t have any image of Jesus, and don’t have any image of God. If you can drop all your images, you will enter into a totally different dimension: the separate reality, the other shore. Approach truth imageless, thoughtless, nude, empty, uncovered, and the response will come out of your being of its own accord.You ask me: “What happens in and with the relationship between two partners if their egos drop?” Then love happens, then ecstasy happens. Then that very relationship becomes sacred, it becomes a shrine. And through that door you can reach to God. You have to grow more and more toward the state where the “I” is not present at all. This is the goal of all love, and this is the misery of all lovers. They want this to happen and it doesn’t happen, then there is great misery, then they feel cheated, then they feel frustrated. Then they start thinking of changing the partner.Every day some couple comes to me and says, “We would like to change partners. Enough is enough. We are tired.” But what will you do? You will do the same with another person. It is not going to make much difference. Maybe for a few days, the fantasy, the romance, the honeymoon, and again… And they know it – because they have done it before too. They nod their heads in agreement. And they say, “Yes, that’s true. I have been doing this to many women. But what to do? I am stuck again.”Rather than changing the partner, rather than dropping your woman or man, drop your ego. Dropping that ego, a different quality starts taking shape in your life, a different light, a different vision. And things settle in that vision. With that light coming in, all old miseries and conflicts and anguishes disappear. The same energy that was becoming conflict starts becoming your joy. That’s what Jesus means when he says: “Don’t go on squandering your energies in fighting, anger, objecting.”Veetmoha’s mother has come here, a beautiful old woman. She has heard me – I think only once, yesterday. And she was puzzled about one thing. She said to Veetmoha: “What is the matter? I like what Osho says, but nobody objects. Whatsoever he goes on saying, people listen. Nobody is objecting, what is the matter?” Her question is very natural. She must have seen lectures where somebody speaks, somebody objects – raises a question – and there is a quarrel, and discussion and argument. She must have been hoping for something like that. Here she sees people just sitting silently, utterly in silence, listening. This is the whole approach here. Objecting has to be dropped. Listening has to be evolved. Argument has to be dropped. A no-arguing communion has to be developed. That is the difference between an ordinary meeting and a meeting of the master and the disciples.The disciples are not there with their egos to object or to argue. They are there to dissolve themselves; they are there to fall in tune with the master. What he is saying is not relevant, it is not a question of agreeing or not agreeing. That is irrelevant. What I go on saying to you is just an excuse to allow you to be here with me. It will be difficult for you to be with me if I go on sitting in silence. Your mind has to be kept engaged. Your mind remains engaged, your heart opens. And the real thing is going to happen there in the heart, not in the mind. If the mind starts objecting, the heart closes. Then you become too hung-up in the head.Yes, I go on giving you toys for the head. These are all toys. Your head goes on playing with the toys, and the real work is happening somewhere else. It is happening in the heart. If you are arguing, it will be difficult. Then your heart cannot open. And remember, let me repeat, it is not a question of agreeing with me or not agreeing, that is irrelevant. There is no need to agree and no need to disagree. You can just be here without agreeing, without disagreeing, and something will start growing in you. And that is the real thing.What I say is just an excuse. What I am is the real thing.The last question:Osho,Why did Jesus' parents name him Jesus?I don’t know. I don’t even know why my parents named me Rajneesh. I have never asked them. But I have heard a story. Maybe that will help you a little bit.I have heard…It was in Bethlehem. The child had just been born and the three wise men were paying their respects. Each of them took it in turn to bow and present their gift.The first said, “Truly a savior,” and went out.The second: “He will influence the whole world.”The third, overcome with emotion and awe, silently placed his gift at the babe’s feet and left. As he passed out of the stable door he bashed his head on the low beam and cried out “Jesus!”Mary smiled and said, “That’s nice! – we were going to call him Fred.”Enough for today.

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I Say Unto You Vol 1 01-10Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 1 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Matthew 6Jesus said unto his disciples:And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father in secret.But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.Give us this day our daily bread.And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.Amen.Matthew 7Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.Man is mind. The word man itself comes from the Sanskrit root man, which means mind. If you understand the workings of the mind, you will understand the reality of man and the possibility too. If you understand the inner mechanism of the mind, you will understand the past of man, the present and the future too.Man in himself is not a being but a passage. In himself man is not a being, because man is continuously a becoming. There is no rest in being a man. Rest is below man or above man. Below is nature, above is godliness. Man is just in between: a link, a ladder. You cannot rest on a ladder; you cannot stop on the ladder. The ladder cannot become your abode. Man has to be surpassed, man has to be transcended.Man is a journey between your two infinities. One infinity is your nature; the other infinity is your hidden godliness. And man is just between the two, a ferry boat. Use it, but don’t be confined by it. Use it, but don’t be defined by it. Always remember that you have to go beyond. The whole message of Jesus is how to go beyond man. That’s why he says again and again: “I am the Son of man and the Son of God.” He goes on insisting on this contradiction, because he wants it to be completely clear that man is both: on the one hand part of nature, on the other hand part of God. That is the meaning of the word son; son means a part of the father.And because man belongs to these two realities – two separate realities – there is anxiety in man, there is tension in man, there is constant conflict in man, because these two natures go on fighting. Hence, as man, there is no possibility of peace. Either you have to become absolutely unconscious, like a drunkard when he has taken so much alcohol that he has lost all his consciousness – then there is peace. Or you will have to become so conscious that all the nooks and corners of your being are full of light – you become a buddha or a christ – then there is peace. Either fall below man, or go beyond man. Don’t go on clinging to being a man, because then you are clinging to a disease.That’s exactly what man is: a disease, a constant tension – to be or not to be, to be this or to be that – a constant fight between the soul and the body, the lower and the higher, unconsciousness and consciousness. To understand man as a conflict, to understand man as a constant tension will help immensely, because then you stop clinging to man as such. Rather, on the contrary, you start thinking: “How to go beyond, how to transcend, how to surpass?”Friedrich Nietzsche is right when he says that man is the only animal who tries to surpass himself, the only animal who can surpass himself. It is the greatest miracle in the world: to surpass oneself. But it has happened. It has happened in a christ, in a buddha, in a krishna. It can happen in you. You are a great promise, a project, an adventure. But don’t start thinking about yourself as if you have arrived. Then you cling somewhere in between, and a part of you will be pulled to one side and the other part to another side – you will be torn apart. You will remain in anguish, and your existence will be nothing but a long, long ongoing nightmare.Before we enter the sutras, a few things about the mind – because man is mind. The first state of mind we can call “pre-mind.” It exists in a very small child – very primitive, animal-like. Hence the beauty of children, and the innocence, and the grace, because that anxiety which we call man has not yet evolved. The child is at ease. The child is not yet a traveler, he has not yet left his home in search for some other home. The pilgrimage has not started yet. The child is at rest – perfectly at ease and happy to be whatsoever he is. That’s why his eyes have no anxiety, and the child has a certain grace around him. But this grace is going to be lost.This grace cannot stay forever, because it is unconscious, because it has not been earned, because it is a natural gift, and the child is completely oblivious to it. He cannot hold onto it. How can you hold onto something when you are unconscious of it? It has to be lost. The only way to gain it is to lose it. The child will have to go into corruption, into perversion. The child will have to go into the cunningness of the mind, and then the child will understand that he has lost something – something immensely valuable.One can know it only when it is lost. There is no other way to know it. Then the search starts. Religion is nothing but the search for the lost childhood. Everybody carries the memory of it, the very alive memory of it, somewhere deep down. Maybe not very consciously, but it functions like an unconscious substratum that something has been lost, something has been forgotten, something was there which is no longer there; something is being missed, and one starts searching for it.The first stage is pre-mind. There is no responsibility, because a child knows nothing of duty, the child knows nothing of values, virtues. The child knows nothing of sainthood, so he is not aware of sin either. He exists before the diversion, he exists before those two paths of sin and sainthood diverge, separate and go apart. He is in a kind of primitive unity. This cannot last for long, it is going to go, but it has not gone yet. This is the state of the child nearabout three years of age.Between three and four the child loses his innocence, loses his virginity, loses nature and becomes part of the civilized world – really becomes man.This pre-mind is instinctive. It is very intelligent, but the intelligence is not intellectual, the intelligence is purely instinctive. The child functions very intelligently but not intellectually. The intelligence that a child shows is natural, he has not learned it. It is part of the wisdom of his body, it is inherited. The child has no idea of good and bad, so there is never any conflict. His desires are pure. Whatsoever he desires, he desires passionately, totally. No problem arises in his mind whether this desire is right or wrong. Whenever he is in a certain mood, he is totally in it – but his moods are momentary. He has no identity, he is unpredictable: one moment he is loving, another moment he is angry. And you cannot say to him, “You are contradictory.” He is very inconsistent because he is always true to the moment – not that he does anything consciously, it is just natural.So the innocence is there, but it is not very deep. The innocence is there, but it has no meditativeness in it. It is shallow, momentary, temporary, tentative. The child is more like an animal than like a man. The child is the link between the man and the animal. The child passes through all the stages that man has passed through down the ages. The scientists say that during the nine months in the mother’s womb the child passes through millions of years of evolution. He starts like a fish – as life started on the earth – and then by and by, he goes on growing. Within days he is passing through thousands, millions of years; in nine months he has passed through the whole of evolution. But even when the child is born, he is still not yet man – at least not civilized – he is primitive, the cave-man.The child lives in an inner chaos. He has no idea what he is going to do. He has no future, he carries no past; he lives utterly in the present. But because he lives utterly in the present and unconsciously, his life cannot have a discipline, an order. It is chaotic, it is anarchic. This is the first stage of man, the first stage of mind. And remember that although sooner or later you lose it, it remains like a substratum in you. You can lose it totally only when meditation has gone deep, when meditation has transformed your being. Otherwise it remains there, and you can fall into it at any moment; in any stress, in any strain, you can again become childish.For example, your house is on fire, and you can start crying like a child. And you are not a man who cries ordinarily – nobody may have ever seen you crying – but your house is on fire and suddenly you forget that you are a grown-up man. You become like a small child, you start crying, tears come to your eyes, you are completely lost, helpless. What has happened? That pre-mind has reclaimed you. It was always there. You had grown a second layer upon it, on top of it, but it was there deep down. When the second layer cannot function, in a deep helplessness you fall to the first layer. This happens every day.In anger you become more childish, in love also you become more childish. Listen to the dialogue of two lovers, and you will find it very childish. Remember your own memories when you first fell in love: how you behaved, what you said to your beloved or your lover, and you will find childishness. Or remember when somebody provoked you and you became angry – you started doing things which were very illogical, unintelligent, undisciplined, chaotic. You repent for them later on, because later on, when the second layer comes back, the second layer repents for the first layer. When the civilized mind comes back, takes hold again, it repents. It says, “It was not good of me. It was not good to do.”The first layer never completely goes unless you become a christ or a buddha. It remains there. Watch it. The first layer is very, very chaotic. The second layer is collective. The second mind I call the “collective mind.” Now the group, the family, the society, and the nation become more important than yourself. A child is very, very self-oriented, he thinks only of himself. He does not care for anything else; he is utterly selfish. The second mind starts thinking of others, starts sacrificing its own interests, becomes more collective, becomes more part of society, a clan, a tribe – starts becoming civilized. Civilization means to become part of a society, to become part of many people: to become responsible, not to go on living a selfish existence. Civilization means sacrificing oneself for others.This second mind is very prevalent. Except in very rare cases, the first mind sooner or later disappears. In some imbeciles, idiots, the first layer never disappears; it remains predominant. They never learn how to be social; they remain primitive. Otherwise, normally the second layer evolves: the schooling, the family training, the teachers, the society, the experiences, the observation. And the child starts learning that he is not an island, but a member of an organism: the society, the church, the nation.This second, collective mind has a certain identity. The first mind knows no identity. If you ask a child, “Who are you?” he can’t answer it. He does not know the answer: who he is. But a grown-up person can say, “Yes, I am a Catholic, I am a communist, I am a Hindu, I am an Indian, I am a German, I am an Italian.” What is he saying? He is saying, “I belong to this group called Hindu, or Christian, or Mohammedan. I belong to this nation, to this geography: India, Germany, Italy.” Or, “I belong to this ideology: communism, Catholicism, fascism.” He is saying, “I am to whom I belong.”Now he has an identity. He can say, “I am a doctor, or an engineer, or a businessman,” then too he is saying, “This is what I do. This is my function in society.” When you ask somebody, “Who are you?” he answers by showing you where he belongs, to whom he belongs, what his function is in society. Now this is not much self-knowledge. If this is self-knowledge then everybody knows who he is. But for utilitarian purposes it is enough, and many people stop there.If you stop there you will never know who you are. Then you have taken just a false identity. Just a few labels, and you think, “This is me.” It is not you. You exist on a far higher plane, or in a deeper depth. These labels that you have collected about yourself are good for functioning in the society as a member, but they don’t show anything about your reality. The inward reality remains untouched by them. But this is the second layer where almost everybody stops. The society does not want you to go beyond it. Their effort of the school, the college, the university is that you should not remain childish, you should become civilized, and then their effort ends. Then society’s work is finished.The society has made you a member of the mass, has made you a kind of slave, has given you a certain imprisonment, has taken all that was dangerous in you: the chaos, the freedom, the irresponsibility; has made you dutiful, responsible, given you values – what is good and what is not good – has pigeonholed you, categorized you. Now the society is finished. Now live silently, go to the office, come home, take care of your children, your parents, and so on and so forth. One day, die; your existence is complete. This is a very false completion, a routine existence.Friedrich Nietzsche has called this state “the camel”: the beast of burden. This is the “camel” state. People go on carrying great loads and burdens for no reason at all. And they go on moving in a desert, like the camel moves in a desert. You can see these camels all around: dry, dull, dead, still carrying, carrying great loads. The loads are crushing them, killing them, but they are carrying – maybe just out of habit, because yesterday they were carrying and the day before yesterday they were also carrying. It has become part of their habit, it has become part of their definition. Their load, their anxiety, their sadness, their misery has become part of their definition, their identity. These camels you will find everywhere, and this desert is all over the earth.The child has to come from the first to the second, but nobody should stop there. To be a camel is not the goal. Something more is needed, something more existential is needed. Yes, you will have respectability if you are a good camel and carry great loads. People will respect you, they will all show honor toward you. That’s a kind of mutual understanding. When a person is carrying so much of a load, he has to be given some awards – that’s what respect is.The word respect is beautiful, it means to look again, re-spect. When a person is carrying a great load of responsibility, duty, family, society, people look at him and say, “Look, what a great man!” Re-spect. They look again and again and they say, “Look how much of a burden he is carrying. What sacrifice!” He has sacrificed his whole being.Naturally if you sacrifice yourself for the religion, the religion will sanctify you, will call you a saint. If you sacrifice for the country, the country will give you respect. If you sacrifice for something else, they will give you respect. One can go on collecting this respect, and one can go on dying without living at all. Beware of this situation.In this state, there is a collective responsibility; the collective mind functions, you don’t yet have a personal responsibility. The child has no responsibility. The second stage has a responsibility, but it is collective. You don’t feel personally responsible for anything, you feel responsible only because you are part of a certain collectivity.In an Indian village you can find this camel state very, very pronounced. A brahmin has no responsibility of his own. His whole responsibility is that he is a brahmin, he has to behave like a brahmin. In Indian villages you will not find individualities; you will find only collectivities. The brahmin, the sudra, the kshatriya all function according to their community, according to the rules. Nobody has any responsibility to think, there is no question of thinking. The rules have been given down the ages, they are written in the scriptures. Everything is clear-cut – there is no need to speculate, to philosophize, to ponder, to meditate. All problems have been solved – Manu, the Indian Moses, has solved them.That’s where Jesus found the Jews – at the second stage. Moses had done the first work; he had brought the primitive mind to a civilized state. Now Jesus was needed to bring another revolution, another transformation. People were existing just as cogs in a wheel, parts of a great mechanism. The only question was how to function efficiently.That is not enough to live a joyous life. To be efficient is not enough because the efficiency makes you a good mechanism but does not give you a soul. It does not give you a celebration, it can’t be ecstatic. But there are a few beautiful things about the second mind you have to remember; they will help you to understand the third.The second mind is non-tense, there is no anxiety in it. The Indian villager, or the people of the East are more calm, quiet. They move with a certain ease, dignity. Even if they are starving, hungry, ill, they have patience, deep acceptance. They don’t rebel. Rebellion has no appeal for them; they live in acceptance. They don’t have enough individuality to rebel. Indians feel very good about it, they think America is going mad; they think, “We are fortunate.” But this is not my observation.America is in a difficulty. America is in great anguish, but that anguish is higher than the so-called Indian peace. That anguish can be more creative, that anguish can bring a higher stage of mind and consciousness into the world than this cow-like peace. This peace is not very creative. Yes, it is good in a way – one lives one’s life without much anguish – but nothing comes out of that life. It is just peaceful and peaceful, and that peace is never creative: creative of something out, or creative of something in. That peace seems to be very impotent. But in this second stage the peace is there, obedience is there, patience is there, and there is a feeling of belonging to the community, to the church. Nobody feels alone.In America people are very alone. Even in a crowd they are alone. In India, even if people are alone, they are not alone. They know they belong, they know they have a certain function somewhere; they know they are needed. They know that they need not choose, everything has been chosen beforehand. A brahmin is born a brahmin. He will be respected by the society; he will become the priest. He has not to work for it; it is already decided by fate, by existence.When you don’t have to decide, naturally you don’t feel any anxiety. Decision brings anxiety. If you have to decide, then there is a problem: to go this way or that way? And there are a thousand ways, and so many alternatives – and then one is disturbed and whatsoever you choose you will choose trembling, because who knows whether you are choosing the right or the wrong way? The only way to know is to choose it. But then it will be too late. After ten years, if you come to know that it was a wrong choice, it will be too difficult to go back and choose again, because then those ten years will have gone – gone down the drain.There is a kind of belonging in the second state of mind. You need not choose, everything has been chosen, decided already; there is a kind of fatalism. All that happens has to be accepted because it cannot be otherwise. If it cannot be otherwise then why be worried? That’s why there are fewer psychological breakdowns in India than in America. But remember, it is not a good state. And I am not saying that a psychological breakdown is a great thing, and I am not saying that to be tense and to be anxious is something valuable, but I am saying that just not to be anxious and not to be tense, is not some achievement either. This state, the second state, is a kind of patriarchy. The father remains very important. The father-figures are very important. God is thought to be a father.There is a difference between the mother and the father. The father is very demanding; the mother is non-demanding. The mother’s love is unconditional, the father’s love is conditional. The father says, “Do this, then I will love you, if you don’t do this you will not get my love.” And the father can get very angry.This state is a state of patriarchy: the father remains important, the mother is not important. Unconditional love is not known. Society appreciates you, respects you if you follow the society. If you go a little bit astray, all respect is taken away and the society is ready to destroy you. The Jewish God says, “I am a very jealous God. If you go against me I will destroy you!” And that’s what the state says, the government says, the priest says, the pope says. They are all very jealous. They are very dominating. This state is very repressive; it does not allow anybody to have his own say, it does not allow anybody to have his own being. It is repressive; it does not allow one’s own impulses. It is dictatorial, it teaches you to say yes; no is not accepted, yes is enforced violently, aggressively.Of course this yes cannot be of much value, because if you cannot say no, your yes is going to be impotent. But this is the yes that exists all around. People believe in God because they have been told to believe in God. People go to the church because they have been told to go to the church. People go on doing things formally, ritualistically. Jesus called these people hypocrites.Before we enter into the sutras, these things will be good to understand, then the sutras will be very clear. This state of mind has only a painted exterior, the interior remains untouched, unevolved. A kind of theism – people believe in God, people believe in hell and heaven, and people believe in punishment and reward, but people believe, people don’t know. Yes is there, but it has been forced. It has not been given a chance to evolve and unfold within you. There is a communal solidarity because you are never alone, you are always together with people, and the crowd is all around you and it feels good. The moment you are alone, trembling arises. When the great crowd is all around you, you can trust. So many people can’t be wrong, so you must be right, because so many people are going in the same way, in the same direction, and you are also going with them.The third mind I call “the individual mind”; Nietzsche calls it “the lion.” It is independence, it is assertion, it is rebellion. The ego has evolved. The ego has become very, very crystallized. The man is no longer just a part of a church, country, tribe, clan, family; he is himself. The real culture can only start when you have become an individual. The sense of the self is a must, and this is the third stage of the mind. The identity is no longer of belonging, the identity is no longer that you are a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Christian. The identity is more personal: that you are a painter, that you are a poet. The identity is more creative; it is not of belonging but of contribution – what you have contributed to the world.In the nebulous mind a center arises by and by. In the child’s mind there was no center. In the collective mind there was a false center imposed from the outside. In the individual mind an inner center arises. The first was a kind of chaos – no order. The second was a kind of patriarchy – an imposed order by the father, by the demanding society and the father-figures. The third is a kind of fraternity – a brotherhood arises. You don’t belong to any crowd; nobody can impose anything upon you, nor do you want to impose anything upon anybody. You respect others’ freedom as much as you respect your own freedom. All are brothers.In the first, the basic question was: “Who is the father-figure?” In the second, the question is not, “Who is the father figure” – there is none, God is dead. That is the situation in which Nietzsche declares that God is dead: God, as father, is dead. That is the situation where Buddha says there is no God, and Mahavira says there is no God. And Patanjali says that God is just a hypothesis – needed in certain stages, and then is needed no longer.Responsibility arises, and a very personal responsibility. You start feeling responsible for each of your acts, because now you know what is right and what is wrong. It is not that somebody says, “This is right,” but because you feel, “This is right,” because you feel, “This is good.” A greater understanding, a greater consciousness will be needed. There will be more joy because you will be more crystallized, but there will be more anxiety too, because now if something goes wrong, you go wrong.And you alone are responsible for each step. You cannot look to a father figure, and you cannot throw your responsibility onto somebody else – no fate, no father exists – you are left alone on the road, with thousands of alternatives. You have to choose, and each choice is going to be decisive, because you cannot go back in time. Great anxiety arises. This is the place where people start having psychological breakdowns. This is a higher stage than the second, and the West exists at a higher stage than your so-called East. But of course there are problems. Those problems can be solved, and those problems should be solved rather than slipping back to a lower stage of mind.There is freedom, so there is tension. There is thinking, there is concentration – abstract philosophy is born, science grows, and “no” becomes very important. Doubt becomes very significant. In the collective mind faith was the rule; in the individual mind doubt becomes the rule. No becomes very basic, because rebellion cannot exist without no, and the ego cannot grow and ripen without no. You have to say no to a thousand and one things, so that you can say yes to the one thing you would like to say yes to. Now the yes is significant, because man is capable of saying no. Now the yes has potency, power. The yes of a man who always says yes is not of much worth. But the man who says no ninety-nine times and says yes one time, means it. It has an authenticity.It is a very creative crisis because if you go above it, it will be creative. If you fall from it, you will not fall to the second, you will fall to the first. This has to be understood. If you fall from the third, the individual mind, you will go immediately into madness, because the second is no longer possible. You have learned no-saying, you have learned being rebellious, you have tasted freedom, now you cannot fall back to the second. That door no longer exists for you. If you fall from the third you will fall to the first: you will go mad. That’s exactly what happened to Friedrich Nietzsche himself. He was a lion, but the lion went mad, roaring and roaring and roaring, and could not find a way beyond the third.When a man falls from the third, he falls to the first. This has to be remembered. Then you cannot go to the second – that is finished forever. Once your no has become conscious you cannot go back to faith. A man who has doubted, and who has learned to doubt, cannot go to faith again – that is impossible. Now the faith will be simply cunningness and deception, and you cannot deceive yourself. Once a man has become an atheist then ordinary theism won’t do. Then he will have to find a man like me. Then ordinary theism won’t do – he has gone beyond it.Nietzsche needed a man like Buddha. And because Buddha was not available, and because the Western mind has not yet been able to make it possible for people to go beyond the third, he had to go mad. In the West it is almost a certainty that whenever a person becomes really evolved at the third stage, he starts slipping into madness, because the fourth is not available there yet. If the fourth is available, then the third is very creative. If there is a possibility to surrender the ego, then the ego is of immense value. But the value is in its surrender. If you cannot surrender it, then it will become a load – a great load on you. It will be unbearable. Then the lion will go on roaring and roaring and there will be no other way than to go mad.This is a very critical stage: the third, it is just in the middle. Two minds are below it and two minds are above it. It is exactly the mid-link. If you fall, you go into the abyss of madness; if you rise, you go into the beatitude of being a christ or a buddha.The fourth mind is the “universal” mind. Remember, it looks collective but it is not collective. Collective means belonging to a society, a certain time, a certain period, a certain country. Universal means belonging to the whole existence, to existence as such. The ego, when ripe, can be dropped, in fact, it drops itself if the fourth door is available. And that is the function of religion: to make the fourth door available. That is the problem in the West now: the third mind has developed to its uttermost, and the fourth door is not available. The West urgently needs the fourth door.Carl Gustav Jung has said in his memoirs that through observing thousands of people in his whole life, he has come to a few conclusions. One conclusion is that people who are near about forty to forty-five are always facing a religious crisis. Their problem is not psychological, their problem is religious. Near the age of forty-two, forty-five, a man starts looking for the fourth mind. If he cannot find it, then he goes berserk. Then the hunger is there and the nourishment is not available. If he can find it, great beatitude, great benediction arises.It is almost like at the age of fourteen you become sexually mature. Then you start looking for a partner – for a woman, for a man. Near the age of fourteen, you want a love object. Exactly near the age of forty-two, another thing in you matures and you start looking for samadhi, for meditation, for something that goes higher than love, something that goes higher than sex, something that can lead to a more eternal orgasm, more total orgasm. If you can find it, then life remains smooth. If you cannot find the door – hunger has arisen and the nourishment is not available – what will you do? You start breaking down; your whole structure is shaken. And when a man breaks down, he always breaks down to the first; he falls to the lowest.This fourth I call the universal mind – the ego can be dissolved because the ego has matured. Remember, let me repeat: the ego can be dissolved only when it has become mature. I am not against the ego, I am all for it, but I don’t confine myself to it. One has to go beyond it.Just the other day I was reading Frankl’s book. He says: “We must be willing to discard personality.” Why should we be willing to discard personality? And how can you discard personality if you have not grown it? Only the perfectly ripe can be discarded.What is personality? Personality is a persona, a mask. It is needed. The child has no mask, that’s why he looks so animal-like. The collective mind has a mask, but imposed from the outside; it has no interior definition of its being. The egoist, the individual mind, has an interior definition; he knows who he is, he has a kind of integration. Of course, the integration is not ultimate and will have to be dropped, but it can be dropped only when it has been attained.“We must be willing to discard personality. God is no respecter of persons.” That’s true. God loves individuals, but not persons. And the difference is great. A person is one who has an ego definition. An individual is one who has dropped his ego, and knows who he is. A person is a circle with a center; and the individual is a circle without the center – just pure space. “The personality is only a mask, it is a theatrical creation, a mere stage-prop.” The longing for freedom, salvation or nirvana, simply means the wish to be relieved of your so-called personality and the prison that it creates.“The trouble with the self is that it is derived from others.” Your ego is also derived from others. You depend for your ego on others. If you go to the Himalayas and sit in a cave, what ego will you have? By and by the ego will start disappearing. It needs support. Somebody needs to appreciate it. Somebody needs to say to you that you are a beautiful person. Somebody needs to go on feeding it. The ego can exist only in society. Although it tries to get rid of society, in a subtle, unconscious way it remains dependent on society.“The trouble with the self is that it is derived from others. It is constructed in an attempt to live up to the expectation of others. The others have become installed in our hearts, and we call them ourselves.” The self is not you. It belongs to others who surround you. It exists in you, but it is possessed by others. That’s why it is so easy to manipulate an egoistic person. That’s what flattery is, flattery is a trick to manipulate the egoistic person. You go and say to him that he is the greatest man in the world, and he is ready to fall at your feet; you are manipulating. He knows, you know and everybody else knows that this is just false. He also knows that he is not the greatest man in the world, but he will believe it. He would like to believe it. And he would like to do anything that you want him to do. At least one person in the world believes that he is the greatest person. He cannot afford to lose you.The ego exists in you but is possessed by others. It is the subtlest slavery yet invented by the priests and the politicians. It is like a Delgado electrode inserted in your head and manipulated by remote control. The society is very clever. First, it tries to keep you at the second level. If you go beyond that, then it starts manipulating you through flattery.You will be surprised that in India there has never been a revolution. And the reason? The reason is that the brahmin, the intellectual, was so flattered down the ages that he was never angry enough to revolt against the society. And only intellectuals revolt – only intellectuals, because they are the most egoistic people. They are the most independent people, the intelligentsia. In India the brahmin was the highest; there was no one higher than him, even the king was lower than the brahmin. A beggar brahmin was higher than the emperor, and the emperor used to touch his feet. Now there was no possibility of revolution because who would revolt? These are the people, these intellectuals, who create trouble. Now they are highly respected, they are highly flattered. The revolution could not exist; it was not possible.It has been the same in the Soviet Union. For these fifty years in Soviet society, the intellectual has been praised as much as anything. The academician, the writer, the poet, the professor are the most highly respected persons. Now who is going to revolt? Revolution is not possible, because the revolutionary has so much investment in the conventional mode of the society, in the traditional society. In India revolution didn’t happen, and in the Soviet Union it cannot happen. Revolution is possible only through the egoist, and the egoist can be manipulated very easily. Give him the Nobel Prize, give him a doctorate, and he is ready to do anything.This third state of mind is now prevalent all over the world. If it is satisfied, then you are stuck in it. If it is not satisfied, then you fall back and become mad. Both are not healthy situations.One has to go beyond it, and the fourth state, the universal mind, has to be created. The separation with the cosmos has to disappear. You have to become one with the whole. In fact you are one, you just think that you are not. That barrier of the thought has to be dissolved; then there is relaxation, peace, non-violence. In India we say satyam, shivam, sunderam: there is truth, there is good, and there is beauty. With the universal mind these three things flower: satyam: truth, shivam: good, sunderam: beauty. With the universal mind these three flowers come into bloom, and there is great joy. You have disappeared, and all the energy that was involved in the ego is freed. That energy becomes beauty, good, truth.This is the state of matriarchy. The collective mind is patriarchy; the individual mind is fraternity, and the universal mind is matriarchy. Mother love is non-demanding, so is the love of the universe toward you. It demands nothing, it is unconditional, it is simply showering on you. It is for you to take or not to take, but it is showering on you. If you have an ego then your doors are closed and you don’t take it. If the ego has disappeared, then it goes on and on showering on you, goes on nourishing you, goes on fulfilling you.The first stage was chaotic, the second was intellectual, the third was intelligent. The fourth is emotional: it is of love, of the heart. With the third, intellect comes to its peak; with the fourth, love starts flowing. This state can be called “God as mother.” When God as father has died, God as mother has to arise. This is a higher stage of religion. When the father is important, the religion is more institutional, formal, because the father himself is formal, institutional. The mother is more natural, more biological, more intrinsic. The father is external; the mother is internal. The universal mind brings the matriarchy. The mother becomes more important. God is no longer a he, but becomes a she. Life is thought about not according to logic, but according to love.The poet Schiller has called it “the universal kiss.” If you are available, the universal mother can kiss you, can embrace you, can take you again into her womb. Yes comes again into existence, but it is no longer imposed from the outside, it comes from your innermost core. This is trust. The collective mind lives in faith. The individual mind lives in doubt, the universal mind lives in trust: shraddha. It is not belief, it is not that somebody has forced you to believe; it is your own vision, it is your own experience.This is true religion: when you can become a witness of godliness, of samadhi, of prayer; when you are the witness. When you have not taken it as borrowed – it is no longer knowledge, no longer belief – it has become your own existential experience. Solidarity again enters, but it is solidarity with existence itself, not with society. Creativity again comes, but it is no longer the egoistic creativity. It is not you as doer; you become instrumental – existence is the doer. Then existence flows through you. You may create great poetry. In fact, you cannot create great poetry before it. The ego will create a shadow, the ego can never be transparent. The real creativity is possible only with the universal.You must have read Gopi Krishna’s books on kundalini. He says that when kundalini arises, great creativity arises. That’s true. But whatsoever he gives as examples are not true. He says, “Sri Aurobindo became creative when his kundalini arose.” But Sri Aurobindo has written poetry which is simply mediocre. It is not creative, but at least it is mediocre. Gopi Krishna has written poetry which cannot even be called mediocre – just rubbish, junk.Yes, when you come to the universal, great creativity is born. Your very touch becomes creative.There is an ancient story in Buddhist scriptures…A very rich man accumulated much wealth, accumulated so much gold that there was no place to hoard it any longer. But suddenly something happened. One morning he woke up and saw that all his gold had turned into dust. You can think he must have gone mad.Somebody helped him toward Buddha – Buddha was staying in the town – and the man went there. And Buddha said, “Do one thing. Take all your gold into the marketplace, and if somebody recognizes it as gold, bring that man to me.”But he said, “How is it going to help me?”Buddha said, “It is going to help you. Go.”So he took all his gold – thousands of bullock-carts of dust, because now it was all dust. The whole market was full of his bullock-carts. And people were coming and asking, “What nonsense is this? Why are you carrying so much dust to the marketplace? For what?”But the man kept quiet.Then a woman came. Her name was Kisa Gautami. And she said to this man, “So much gold? From where could you get so much gold?”He asked the woman, “Can you see the gold here?”She said, “Oh yes. These thousand bullock carts are full of gold.”He took hold of the woman and asked her what secret she had. “How can she see? Because nobody, not even I can see that there is any gold; it is all dust.”He took the woman to Buddha, and Buddha said: “You have found the right woman – she will teach you the art. It is only a question of seeing. The world is as you see it. It can be hell; it can be heaven. Gold can be dust, and dust can be gold. It is a question of how you look at it. This is the right woman. Become a disciple of Kisa Gautami. She will teach you. And the day you know how to see rightly, the whole world turns into gold. That is the secret of alchemy.”That Kisa Gautami was a rare woman of those days. And the man learned through her, the art of turning the whole world into gold.When you enter the universal mind you are capable of creativity – not as you, but as existence. You become a hollow bamboo and its song starts descending through you. It turns you into a flute.If from the third, the fourth is not available you will fall into madness. Nietzsche talks only of three minds: the camel, the lion and the child. From the lion he falls back into the child: becomes mad.There is another door too, and that is the universal mind – which is really childhood again, but a second childhood. It is no longer like the first; it is not chaotic, it has self-discipline. It has an inner cosmos, an inner order – not irresponsible like the first, not responsible like the second. A new responsibility, not toward any values, not toward any society, but a second kind of valuation arises because you can see what is right – how can you do otherwise? You see the right and the right has to be done. Knowledge here becomes virtue. You act according to your awareness; your life is transformed. There is innocence, there is intelligence, there is love, but all is coming from your innermost core; your inner fountain is flowing.And then the fifth, the last: when you go beyond even the universal. Even to think that it is the universal mind is to think that you have some ideas of the individual and the universe still left lingering somewhere. You are still conscious that you are one with the whole, but you are, and you are one with the whole. The unity is not yet total, is not utter, is not ultimate. When the unity is really ultimate, there is no individual, no universal. This is the fifth mind: christ-mind, buddha-mind.Now three other characteristics appear: sat-chit-anand. Sat means being, chit means consciousness, anand means bliss. Now these three qualities appear, now these new flowers bloom in your being. You are for the first time a being, there is no more becoming. Man has surpassed himself, there is no longer a bridge. You have come home, you are a being: sat. And you are utterly conscious because there is no darkness left: chit. And you are anand, because there is no anxiety, no tension, no misery. All that has gone; the nightmare is over. You are fully awake. In that wakefulness is buddhahood, or christhood.These are the five stages, and remember, the third is the central. Two are below it, two are above it. If you don’t go above you will fall below. And you cannot go above without passing through the third, remember. These are the complexities. If you try to avoid the third you will remain stuck in the second, and you can think that it is universal. It is not; it is simply collective. If you try to avoid the third, you may even remain in the first, which is idiotic. And sometimes the idiotic looks saintly.In Hindi we have two words from one root for both the stages, that root is budh. The fifth we call buddha, the ultimate stage, and the first we call buddhu, the idiotic stage. Sometimes the idiot looks like the saint – he has some similarities, and sometimes the saint looks like the idiot. But they are far away – the farthest points in existence. Jesus sometimes looks idiotic. And there have been many idiots who looked like Jesus. The similarity is that both are without mind. The idiot is below mind and Christ is above mind, but both are beyond mind. That is the similarity, but that is where it ends too. Beyond that nothing is similar.Remember, the first is not the goal; it is the beginning. The second is very comfortable, but comfort is not the question – creativity… The third is creative but very uncomfortable, very anxious, tense. And how long can you remain creative? There is so much tension. The tension has to be lost; hence, the fourth. In the fourth all is silent. Just the last lingering of the ego has remained, that one feels, “I am one with the whole.”A disciple of Rinzai came to the master and said, “I have become one with the whole! Now, what next?”The master turned him out and told him, “Now you get rid of this idea that you have become one with the whole. Get rid of this idea – this is the last barrier.”Another disciple said to Rinzai, “I have attained to nothing.”And Rinzai said, “Drop it! Drop that too!”With the fourth just a very thin wall remains – almost transparent, you cannot see it. That also has to be dropped. Then arises the fifth.These sutras of Jesus are for the fifth:And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.And Jesus says: “Don’t be a hypocrite. Don’t pray just to show others that you are praying.” That creates the collective mind. You are always looking at others – what they think about you. You are asking for respectability.The hypocrite is one who lives for respectability. Whatsoever gives respect to him, he goes on doing; whether he wants to do it or not is not the point. He may even be against it. He may want to do just the opposite, but he goes on fulfilling the desire of the people because he needs their respect.Jesus says: And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are… At least when you pray, forget the society, the collective mind. At least when you pray, forget formalities. Pray only for God, not for anybody else.Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. And if you pray only to show others that you are great in praying, then that is your reward – the respect that you will get will be all that you get. That is not of any worth.But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father in secret.Jesus says, “Pray in secret, pray in privacy. Pray outside the collective mind. Forget the society and the church and the people – forget all.” When you forget all, only then can you remember God, not otherwise. In secret, in privacy, let your prayer be.But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.And Jesus says, “It is not a question of repeating any formal prayer, the real question is of the heart – not what you say, but what you mean.” It should not be formal; a formal thing becomes dead. It should be alive, authentic, pulsating. It should show your heart, and it should represent this moment where you are. It should be true and real. “And don’t be worried,” Jesus says, “that you have to say much to God.” The only way to talk with him is in silence.Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.There is no need to say anything. Just bowing down in silence will do. Just becoming utterly quiet will do. Silence is the language for prayer. But it may be difficult to go into silence directly, because all that we know is language.So Jesus says, then:After this manner therefore pray ye…If it is very difficult to be silent, to be utterly silent, then start in this manner. Remember, Jesus says: After this manner… not “exactly like this.” Find your own way; create your own prayer. At least create your own prayer if you cannot create anything else.…therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.Give us this day our daily bread.And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.Amen.Jesus says: After this manner… He is just giving you an example, he is not giving you a prayer, remember, he is simply saying: “In this way…” just to show you a way. Then you create your own prayer.The whole point is that you should be surrendered, that you should be full of gratitude, praise, that you should be ready to receive, open, listening, that you should be silent: …in secret… in privacy. Your love has to be poured out at his feet. After this manner… Find your own prayer, create your own prayer. Let it be your own. A borrowed prayer is a false prayer.Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.Jesus says, “You need not pray in the marketplace, you need not pray just to show others that you are praying.” That will be wrong, that will be like giving …that which is holy unto the dogs… If you pray where there are people who don’t understand prayer, you will be misunderstood. …neither cast ye your pearls before swine… These pearls of your heart should not be thrown before the swine. …lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.Ask, and it shall be given you…Just ask your God, just let your prayer be for him, absolutely for him.Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.God is always ready. It is not that only you are searching for him, he is also searching for you …knock, and it shall be opened unto you… He has been waiting there a long time for you. Man’s search is not one-sided. From the other side there is as much longing to meet – that is the meaning of this message:Ask, and it shall be given…seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.Pray in secret. Prayer should be just an address between you and your God, a dialogue. And then your behavior… Jesus has completed the whole sketch of the religious life: with people, do only that which you would like them to do to you. That is all! In short, the whole message of the law and the prophets: “Do unto others what you would like them to do to you.” That should be your behavior, and that is enough preparation for prayer. And then, close your doors, go in secret and pray to your God.If you have not done anything wrong to people, then there is nothing blocking your path. If nobody is angry, if nobody is against you, if you have not been hurting anybody, you are ready. Your prayer is going to be heard. Then let your prayer be your own, authentic, informal.Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.Jesus says: “There are two gates. One is that of the crowd, the collective mind, and another is of the universal mind. They are in one way similar – they are both strait gates.” The difference is: …for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction… Where crowds move, naturally, the gate is wide, and the way is broad. Multitudes move there. But the real gate is narrow, only you alone can move there. They are both gates – the collective and the universal look alike, but in the collective you are just part of the mass, in the universal you are not part of the mass. Before the universal you have attained to a certain freedom, ego, individuality, self definition – you move alone.Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. This thing has to be remembered: you can enter into godliness only in your absolute aloneness. You cannot take even your friend with you, not even your beloved. One has to go alone. The gate is very narrow. You cannot go as a Hindu, you cannot take Hindus with you. You cannot go as a Christian, you cannot go as part of the Christian mob. You will have to go as an individual. And to have individuality you will have to develop the third mind. Only from the third can you enter the fourth. And from the fourth, slowly, slowly, the fifth comes on its own. It grows, it opens like a lotus.These are the five stages of the mind. Watch, observe. The first exists in everybody, the second also in ninety-nine percent of people, the third in very few – three, four, five percent at the most, the fourth not even in one percent, and the fifth is very rare.Only once is a christ or a buddha born. But the fifth is the goal. Keep the goal in your vision, and go on moving, slowly, slowly, from the first to the second, from the second to the third, from the third to the fourth.Man is a becoming. With the fifth mind arising, buddha mind, christ mind, man becomes a being. Then man is no longer man, because man is no longer mind. Then man is godliness. And only that can be fulfilling, nothing else. Never be satisfied by anything less.Enough for today.

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I Say Unto You Vol 1 01-10Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 1 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,I could not follow the relationship between the five minds you talked about and the sayings of Jesus. Will you please enlighten?My God, so I have to go into it again? I was thinking I was finished with those five minds. But it is not a surprise; I was expecting something like that because I had not made it clear. I had only given you a few hints, and those too, very indirectly. If you had meditated over it you would have found the relationship, but you don’t want to work at all. You don’t want to do any homework. Let us try to go into it again.The five minds were: first, the pre-mind – let us call it the primal; second, the collective mind – let us call it the social; third, the individual mind – the ego mind; fourth, the cosmic mind – the universal mind; and the fifth, the no-mind, christ-mind, buddha-mind – let us call it the transcendental.The first thing to be understood is that Jesus’ sayings are addressed to the third mind, the individual, because they can be addressed only to the third mind. All the scriptures are addressed to the third mind, because only at the point of the third is understanding possible – difficult, but possible.Up to the second mind, the social, you don’t have any understanding. You are imitative, you are just a member of a great mechanism called society. You don’t have any identity. You cannot be addressed, you cannot be provoked. Nobody exists in you. You are just an echo – an echo of the society, the church, the state, the country; an echo of many things, but just the echo. You are not yet real. How can you understand before that? That’s why a Jesus or a Buddha is born into a highly evolved society. They are not born into primitive societies.Buddha was born in Bihar, not in Bastar. Bihar was the highest peak of the Indian mind in those days. Never again has the Indian consciousness touched that climax. Jesus was born at the pinnacle of Jewish consciousness – he is the fruit and the flower of the whole of Jewish history; he could not have been born anywhere else. For Jesus to exist a certain milieu is needed, certain people are needed who can understand him. Certain people are needed who can not only understand him, but can be transformed by him.So the first thing is that the sutras of Jesus are addressed to the third mind, the individual mind, the ego mind. The ego has a certain function to fulfill; it is not just useless. It becomes a hindrance if you go higher than the third, but you cannot go higher than that if it is not there. It is a must, it is a necessary step; only the ego can understand the misery of being in an ego. The social mind cannot understand it; the problem has not yet arisen, so the solution is meaningless.If you are suffering from a disease, then the medicine, the remedy becomes significant. If you are not suffering from a disease, the remedy is not a remedy for you. The social mind has not yet suffered from the ego. Hence anything that helps to go beyond the ego is utterly meaningless; it has no point of reference, it has no context. Jesus talks to the third mind, remember. If you are still in the second mind Jesus will remain an enigma to you. If you are just a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu then you will not be able to understand Jesus.Just think, in those days the people who gathered around Jesus must have been very, very individualistic people. Otherwise how was it possible for them to listen to somebody who was so rebellious, who was so radical, who was turning the whole society upside down, who was continuously saying: “It has been told to you in the old days, but I say unto you…”? And was denying all that had been said, was continuously dismantling, destroying – of course, to create something new. But an ordinary Jew would not have been able to come into close quarters with Jesus. It would have been too much. Only a few individuals, rebellious people, must have gathered around him.The social mind gave him crucifixion. The society, the formalist, the Pharisee, the rabbi, the moralist, the puritan, all gathered together to kill him, because he was bringing something of the individual consciousness, he was creating individuality in people. This is the first thing to understand in how the sutras are related to the five minds.First: they are addressed to the third, and they can only be addressed to the third. The first, the primal, will not even be able to listen. The second, the social, can listen, but will not be able to understand. The third, the individual, can understand but will not be able to follow. But once understanding has arisen – intellectual understanding, at least – then the door opens. Only the fourth mind, the universal, can follow when ego has been dropped. When ego has been used and dropped, when the ego’s function is fulfilled – it’s no longer necessary, one has gone beyond it – the boat can be left behind.So remember, the first cannot even listen; the second can listen, but cannot understand; the third can understand, but cannot follow. The fourth can follow, but only follow; the fifth can become the transcendental mind. This is how they are related.The second thing to remember: Jesus says…Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.Visualize the third mind; it is just in the middle, half-way. Two minds are below it, two minds are above it. The social mind is below it and the universal mind is above it. Both look alike. And these are the only two ways open for the individual mind to go, otherwise you will feel stuck.In life, one has to continuously move. It is movement, it is a process. If you feel stuck you will become miserable; one has to go on and on till the goal is reached. Standing in the third mind, the individual ego faces two possibilities: either it can go up and become the universal mind, or it can fall back and can become the social mind.Both look alike, that’s why Jesus says: Enter ye in at the strait gate… Both are gates and they look very alike. What is their similarity? The universal mind has dropped the ego, it is in tune with the whole. The social mind has not created the ego yet, it is in tune with the social. But both have a kind of attunement.The social mind is at ease with the society, it flows rhythmically, smoothly. It has no struggle, conflict. It fits together; it is adjusted – adjusted with the society. But society is a big thing; it almost looks as if you are adjusted with existence. The social mind is very normal. That’s what psychoanalysts go on doing. Whenever somebody becomes too much of an individual, they say he is maladjusted. Then what do they do? They bring you to a gate – the social; they help you to adjust with society. They call that normal health. They call that psychological health. It reduces tensions, it reduces inconveniences; it makes you more comfortable and secure but at a great cost.Religion also helps you to go beyond tensions, but not through the second door. Religion helps you to go through the third door. That is the difference between psychoanalysis and religion. Religion also makes you adjusted, but not with the society; it makes you adjusted with the whole, with the universe, with existence. That is real adjustment, and great joy arises out of it.To be adjusted with society is a very tiny arrangement. You will be less tense but not more joyous, remember it. The fourth mind will give you joy, celebration; the second mind will simply help you to remain more calm and quiet and collected, but there will be no ecstasy.Let ecstasy always be the criterion. Whenever you go high, ecstasy grows. If you go low, your ecstasy is diminished. But they look alike because both are adjustments. In one you drop being the individual, you become a sheep. You start imitating people, you become part of the mob. The mob itself may be wrong – that’s not the question – but you adjust to it. The mob may be neurotic, and in fact is so: mobs are more neurotic than individuals.Friedrich Nietzsche has said – and rightly – that as far as individuals are concerned, neurosis is a rare accident. But as far as mobs are concerned, that is the rule not the exception. Mobs have always been neurotic. Adjust to the mob and you will feel good, because now you are part of the social neurosis, you don’t have a private neurosis. You will never feel it – everybody is just like you – things feel perfectly good. That’s why Jesus says the gates are alike: both are gates. But there is a great difference.The difference is: Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate… If you go backward, the gate is wide: …and broad is the way… If you go upward …narrow is the way… very narrow. In fact, you have to go alone. You cannot take anybody with you. If you go to the fourth you will have to go alone. You will have to go in absolute aloneness. That’s why solitude, meditation, prayer, all have to be done in aloneness. You cannot get into the fourth with all your friends, family, acquaintances, etcetera. You will have to leave everybody behind, you will have to move on a very narrow path. It is so narrow that it cannot even contain two at once. You cannot even take your wife, your husband, your son, your mother – there is no way. You have to go alone. It is solitary. You can help others also to go to it, but they will go in their own solitariness. Remember, the higher you go, the more alone you are. The lower you go, the more you are with people.It is like a pyramid. The lowest part of the pyramid has the biggest base: the base is the biggest. Then, as you go higher, the pyramid becomes smaller and smaller and smaller, and at the apex, it is just a point. You can visualize these minds in this way. The primal is the base of the pyramid; the social is very close to the base – a little smaller than the base. The individual is very close to the apex, to the peak – far away from the base; and the universal is just a point, the apex. When you have jumped beyond even that, the pyramid disappears. The fifth, the transcendental, it is not part of the pyramid at all.The third mind is addressed by Jesus, and is told that these are the two possibilities. If you enter with the collectivity you will be destroying yourself; it will be destructive, it will not be creative. You will not be born out of it, it will be simple suicide. There will be no resurrection in it.Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat… The majority follow this. That is why you don’t see flowering, you don’t see eyes full of splendor, you don’t see people in a dance, you don’t see hearts singing, you don’t see pulsating life energies, you don’t see streaming vitalities. You simply see dull, stale, stagnant, dirty pools – no more flow. And when the flow disappears, the glow also disappears. Then you are slowly, slowly dying and doing nothing. This is destruction.If you follow the higher, the universal mind: …because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way… That “narrow” has to be remembered always. With the social you can be with the mob, with the individual you cannot be with the mob.You can only be with a small group of people. You will always find whenever there are egoistic people that they will create small groups, their own societies, clubs, lodges. They will not move with the mass, they will have their own chosen few, select few; they will move with them. Authors will move with authors. Poets will move with poets. Painters will have their own clubs, their own restaurants where they will meet. They will have their own superior, small groups, and they will be very choosy about who is to be allowed in.With the fourth, you are alone – not even a club of the chosen people; you are alone. With the fifth you are not even alone, even you have disappeared. This is how it goes. Slowly, slowly things go on disappearing. First the mass, then the small societies, groups, clubs; then you, and one day there is only emptiness in your hands. That emptiness is what Jesus calls the kingdom of God, and Buddha calls nirvana.Third: Jesus talks about prayer. Prayer is the way – Jesus’ way – to be alone. Buddha’s way is meditation, Jesus’ way is prayer. But the intrinsic quality has to be the same. Jesus says, “Be silent, language is not needed.”Language is helpful in the social. In the universal, language is not needed. Language is a social phenomenon. Animals don’t have language because they don’t have societies. Man has language because man has society; man is a social animal. When you start moving beyond society, language becomes irrelevant. Language is to relate with the other, and God is not the other, God is your innermost core. There is no need for any language.So Jesus says:And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.Don’t pray for people to see that you are praying, that you are religious. Don’t pray as a show, don’t make it a performance. It is sacrilegious. Prayer should be in solitude, nobody should know about it. There is no need. It is nobody else’s concern.But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet… What does he mean by closet? He means drop all language from your mind, all verbalization from your mind. The moment you drop verbalization from your mind, you have moved into such a private world that nobody else can go there. Language dropped, you have dropped the whole world. Just think of it. If for a moment there is no language inside you, then where are you? You are no longer here, no longer in this world. You are in a world totally different from this. When there is no language in you, you are utterly private. Language makes you public. “No language” makes you private.This is what Jesus means when he says: But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet… – drop all language and verbalization. All communication has to be dropped. You just have to be there silent, present – but utterly non-verbal, not saying a single thing.…and when thou hast shut thy door… When the door on the language, on the verbal, on the linguistic mind has been closed …pray to thy Father in secret. Then just be in deep gratefulness, gratitude. Then bow down to the unknown. Then surrender before the mysterious, just be in awe, in wonder. This is what prayerfulness is. This is the entry from the ego to the universal, from the third to the fourth.Language is the medium to relate with others, and silence is the medium to relate with God – because God is not the other. Only in silence do you commune with your own inner being.Logic is the way in the world, love is the way in God. Prayer is a loving silence – nothing else. If you ask me what prayer is, I will say a loving silence. Silence, but utterly full of love, overflowing with love. If silence is there and love is not there, then it is meditation. If silence is there, and suffused with love, fragrant with love, then it is prayer – that is the only difference. If you can shower your silence with love, it becomes prayer. If you cannot, then it remains meditation. Both lead there, so there is no problem of higher and lower: meditation is not higher, nor is prayer higher.There are two types of people in the world: the man and the woman – the people of intelligence and the people of love. Jesus belongs to the second type; his path is the path of love. Buddha’s path is the path of intelligence. Buddha says: “Just be silent and you will jump from the third to the fourth.” Jesus says: “Be silent and full of love, and you will jump from the third to the fourth.” Both are bridges.If it appeals to you, if you feel that it strikes in your heart – that the idea simply clicks in your being – then prayer is your way. But try both. If you are confused, try both. Whichever feels good is good, because each is as potent as the other.All words belong to the social; silence belongs to the universal. And in the transcendental even silence disappears. First language disappears, then silence too. Then there is absolute silence – when silence has also disappeared. This is the meaning when Jesus says: Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. He surrenders in deep love, in silence.And remember, these are not words to be repeated. Christians have misunderstood Jesus. These are not words to be repeated, these are the emotions to be lived. Not words to be repeated, but emotions to be lived.Thy kingdom come… Now this can be just a word in you, you can repeat it; or this can be a feeling in you: Thy kingdom come… Not a single word is uttered inside but this is your feeling. Your hands are raised to receive the kingdom, you are surrendered, your heart is open. You are ready for godliness to descend in you.Do you see the difference? Don’t repeat the words. Let it be a feeling and then it will go deeper, and then it will really become a prayer.And the fourth thing about the transcendental:Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you…For every one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.What does Jesus mean by saying: Ask, and it shall be given you…? He means that really it is already given to you. You have not been able to see it because you have not asked for it. The door is already open! But because you have not knocked at it, it has remained open and yet closed for you. Is it just for the sake of asking that you will get it? It is possible only if you have already got it, otherwise how can you get anything just by asking?Try. You want to have a big palace – are you going to get it just by asking? You are not going to get it just by asking, otherwise all beggars would be emperors. You don’t have it, and you will have to work hard, and then too there is no certainty that you will have it. You may succeed, you may not succeed. There are a thousand and one competitors too. You will have to go through being aggressive, and you will have to put all that you have at stake. And then too, the possibility is greater that you will be a loser. You want money? – you cannot get it just by asking. You want prestige, power, respectability, fame? – you will not get it just by asking.But Jesus says: “You can have God just for the asking.” What does he mean? It is an incredibly simple statement. He simply means what Buddha means when he says that you have it already there. You are not to achieve it; it is your intrinsic nature. This is Jesus’ way of saying the same thing: you can get only by asking because you are already there. The asking will make you alert, that’s all. If you ask consciously, if you knock consciously, if you start groping consciously, you will become alert to that which has already been there – that which has always been there, which has been the case from the very beginning. God is given to you. You are carrying God within you. But you have not asked. Your desire has not become conscious.So God is there, you are there, but there is no bridge. By asking you will create the bridge. If the asking is immense, tremendous, total, then in a single instant the bridge will be projected. The kingdom of God is within you. That’s why: Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you… This is how these sutras are related with the five minds. But they are basically addressed to the third mind.To those who seek identity, Norman Brown advocates: “Get lost!” and Timothy Leary says: “Drop out!” But I say to you that to get lost, one must have found oneself first, and to drop out one must have been in first. You can drop out if you are, you can get lost if the ego is ready and ripe. That is the difference between a sannyasin and a hippie.A hippie is one who has been trying to drop something which he does not yet have, who is trying to drop something which he has not yet earned, who is trying to renounce something which is not there. A sannyasin is one who has come to feel the ripe ego and, feeling the misery and anguish of it, drops it. They look alike. They look alike, but the hippie is not going from the third to the fourth. The hippie has not been in the third yet, he will fall to the second. That’s why hippies start creating their own clan, their own tribe, their own society. It has almost the same structure as the old society that they have left.If in the old society you cannot have long hair, in a hippie society you cannot have short hair. The structure is the same. If in the old society you cannot go on without taking a bath for months, in the hippie society you are not allowed to take a bath every day. That is too conventional. You will look a little anti-social if you take a bath every day. But it is the same society repeated, the same structure. Even though it is against, it is the same structure. The hippie is not going beyond society; he is going against one society and creating another.The sannyasin is going beyond society. He is moving away from the very need to be part of a society.The sutras are addressed to the egoist. But remember, the egoist can understand them, but cannot follow. To follow them you will have to start dropping your ego. Then you can follow, then the universal mind will arise in you.Prayer or meditation is the way. And when the universal has arrived, don’t stop there. One more step… This very consciousness that you have arrived, this very consciousness that you have realized God, this very consciousness that you have become one with God has to be drowned too. This is the last barrier to be dropped. Once it has gone, you and the whole are one – so much one, that there is nobody even to say, “I am one with the whole.” That is the transcendental. That’s what Jesus calls the kingdom of God.The second question:Osho,Where is the meeting between Christ's love and Buddha's intelligence?In me!The third question:Osho,Do you teach then that one should not plan for the future at all?Psychologically one should not plan for the future at all, but that does not mean that practically you should not plan. The difference is great, and has to be understood.If you are going to travel, if you are going to the Himalayas, you will have to go to the railway station and book your ticket a few days ahead. That’s simply practical. You cannot say, “When the idea arises to go to the Himalayas I will simply go.” It will be difficult: you may not get a ticket on the train or on the plane. Don’t be foolish. But psychologically, yes, don’t plan for the future.What is the meaning of “psychologically”? You are here, and in your mind’s eye you start trekking in the Himalayas, and you start enjoying – just in fantasy. You are already there where you are not. This is psychological. This has to be dropped. But practical things are perfectly okay.Don’t live psychologically in the past or in the future. But practically, sometimes you will have to remember past things. You will have to remember your name, and you will have to remember your wife. You cannot come home every day and ask, “Who are you? Let us introduce ourselves.” You will have to remember the past for practical purposes. But don’t live there; the past has gone. The memory is there, use it whenever it is needed, but don’t start living in those memories. Don’t waste time, because if you live in your memories who is going to live in the present? Then the present is wasted. And living in the memory is just a dream, it is not real life; it is pseudo, it is false.And don’t live in the future. People live in the future: they are always planning to go to Kashmir or to Switzerland. And they are living there already! They dream, they think, they fantasize what they are going to do there, how they will enjoy the life there. And remember, when they reach Switzerland they will not be there because by that time they will start planning how to come back home. And the business, and the family, and everything…They are never where they are; they go on missing. They are always rushing and never arriving. Don’t live in the future, don’t live in the past. But that doesn’t mean don’t think of practical things.A man was on a holiday in Ireland. One day he was driving along a little-used road when he came across a pretty young girl trying to hitch a lift. So he offered her a lift.After a few minutes he asked if he could hold her hand.“To be sure,” came the reply.A little further on, he asked if he could kiss her.“To be sure,” she replied.A few miles later, they passed through a village. The girl asked him to stop at the chemist’s shop.“Why?” asked the man.“To be sure,” replied the girl.This much practicality is allowed. More than that is not needed.The fourth question:Osho,You said that sometimes it is dangerous to push. And you are pushing me very hard. Well, I guess you know what you are doing, but what are you doing?That is none of your business.The fifth question:Osho,Why do I cry whenever something real happens in meditation? Sometimes, even during lecture, when you say something that strikes me as my own truth, tears come to my eyes and I tremble with silent sobs. What is the connection between truth and tears?The question is from Michael Gottlieb.First, it may be that only tears are true in you, everything else has become false. Your smile, your face, your gestures, your words may all have become false. It may be that only your tears are still true. That’s why whenever you hear something of truth, they start surfacing. They are in tune with truth. And this is not only so with you, it is so with many people.Tears have not been corrupted too much, particularly in men. About women it is not so true. Their tears may he just a facade, their tears may be their diplomacies, their tears may be their tricks, strategies. But about men… Men have not been allowed tears at all. People have been told from their very childhood that if you are a man, tears are not available for you. You should never cry. So tears have remained there, uncorrupted by the society, unpolluted by the society – at least it is so with men. So whenever you hear something of truth – something that simply becomes a song in your heart, something that simply penetrates like a ray of light into your darkness – tears come, because the true calls forth the true in you.Michael Gottlieb’s name is beautiful: Gottlieb means God-love. Maybe there is a great desire for God, a great love for God which is getting ready every day, which is going to possess you. Allow those tears, because there is a danger you may be repressing them.Gottlieb is a psychologist – that is the danger. You may start rationalizing, you may start finding explanations. You may stop those tears which are innocent – as innocent as dewdrops – which are uncorrupted by your mind; they come from the beyond. Those tears are coming from your heart. Don’t start explaining them. Psychologists have become very clever at explaining away everything. Live with the mystery of the tears. When they come, allow them. Go into those sobs, those sobs are the beginning of prayer in you. Flow in those tears, totally unashamed. Don’t feel embarrassed. Go wholeheartedly into them, and through them you will be cleansed and purified. Those tears will become your very alchemy. Their very touch will turn you into gold.I have been watching Gottlieb. He has been here for only a few days, and deep down he is afraid of sannyas. First he was only going to stay for ten days, then he extended it for a few days. Now he has extended a little longer, and by and by he is getting trapped. Now the tears have started to come. Now it is dangerous, Gottlieb.But still you are not allowing the tears a total flow. Be swayed by them. Let that throb go to your very cells and the fibers of your being. Let those tears dance in and around you, and through those tears you will be initiated. Through those tears you are coming close to me and I am coming close to you. If you allow it, something is going to happen, something immensely valuable. But it depends on you whether you allow it or whether you escape before it becomes too much.To be here needs courage. To be with me means risk. If you decide to be with me, you are risking finding yourself. The risk is there. And to find oneself, one has to die to one’s whole past, because the new can come only when the old has disappeared. Let those tears take away your past, let them wash you. They are preparing you for me. And you have a heart which can grow in prayer, but only if you allow. Nothing can be done against you. And up to now you have been fighting, you have been protecting, safeguarding yourself. You are keeping a little bit aloof, distant. You are doing it at your own risk. You may miss the opportunity.The sixth question:Osho,In today's lecture you said there are three stages – sex, love and prayer. But if one keeps on changing partners how can one go into depth? How can one reach the highest stage at all?The question is from Mukta.This question arises in many people, and because she is an Indian it has more relevance to her conditioning. People think that if you are in love with one person, only then can love go deep. That is utter nonsense!The depth of love has nothing to do with one person or two persons. The depth of love has certainly something to do with your remaining always in love – that brings depth. Now, for example, you love a man or a woman. For a few days things are really fantastic. Things are going beautifully. And then, naturally, things start becoming dull. There is nothing wrong in it, it is just the very course of nature. You become acquainted with the woman, her ways; she becomes acquainted with you, your ways, your lifestyle, and when everything is known, interest starts dimming. When everything is known and there is nothing surprising any longer, how can the relationship remain fantastic? The wonder starts disappearing, things settle, become mundane, day-to-day, ordinary. This is what ordinarily happens.Now, you can go on living with the man or with the woman with the idea that if you change the man or the woman, love will never go deep. But the love is not going deeply at all; the love is becoming shallower every day. Sooner or later, you will start taking the other for granted. There will be no joy in the other’s presence, you will not be thrilled by the other’s presence. You can go on clinging…Mukta has asked this question because she was trying to cling to a certain sannyasin, trying hard to cling. And because she tried hard, the sannyasin escaped. My people are very intelligent! If you cling too hard, then nobody is going to be with you, because nobody wants an imprisonment, nobody wants you to become a fetter. The more you cling, the more the relationship becomes ugly. First it loses joy, loses all charm, loses all magnetism, and then it starts becoming ill, pathological.I call a relationship pathological when you are clinging only for clinging’s sake, there is nothing else to cling for. You are simply clinging because you are afraid to lose, afraid to change, afraid to move in a new relationship. Because who knows how the new is going to turn out, where it will lead? The new is dangerous because the new is not yet familiar. The old is familiar, settled, there is certain security, comfort, convenience. When you start clinging for clinging’s sake, then it is pathological, it is ugly; it is not going to bring any depth to your relationship. All depth will disappear. You can go and see millions of husbands and wives… What depth, what intimacy is there?Now I am not saying that if you are with a certain person – with a man or a woman, and things are still growing – to change. I am not saying that. Don’t misunderstand me. There are a few people who are so sensitive that they can go on finding something new in the other every day. There are people who are so aesthetic that they never feel that things are ever finished. Their sensitivity, their intensity, their passion goes on bringing new depths. Then it is perfectly good.My criterion is if a relationship is growing toward depth it is perfectly good. Go on! Exhaust it if you can. But if it is not growing, if it is not deepening, if the intimacy is not flowering anymore; all has stopped, and you are simply stuck because you don’t know how to leave and how to say good-bye, then you are destroying your capacity for love. It is better to move, change the partner, than to destroy love – because love is the goal, not the partner. You love a person not for the person’s sake; you love the person for love’s sake.Love is the goal, so if it is not happening with this person, let it happen with somebody else, but let it happen! Allow it continuity. That continuity, that flow of love constantly happening, will take you deeper into it, will bring depth, will bring new dimensions, will bring new realizations.So remember, if it is going well with one person… And by well, I don’t mean what is ordinarily meant when somebody says that they are a good couple or very nice. I don’t mean that; those words just hide facts. A “nice family” means no conflict, no problem, things are going smoothly, the wheels of the mechanism are moving smoothly, that’s all. But a really beautiful relationship is not just nice; it is far out! Never settle for less. Only a far-out relationship can bring depth. If it is not happening, be courageous enough to say good-bye – with no complaint, with no grudge, with no anger. What can you do? If it is not happening, it is not happening.You cannot make the other feel guilty. What can he do? Whatsoever he can do he is doing, whatsoever you can do you are doing. But if somehow it is not happening, you are not fitting with each other, you are not meant for each other, don’t go on forcing it. It is like putting a square plug in a round hole. Go on – it won’t happen. And if you succeed, there is every possibility that you may have destroyed the plug completely. Then it will not be of any worth.But mind functions through conditionings. Now, Mukta’s mind is basically Indian. The Indian conditioning is very long. For thousands of years in India it has been thought that you should be true to one person. I am teaching you a totally different thing. I am teaching you to be true to love, not to persons. Be true to love. Never betray love, that’s all. If sometimes persons have to be changed, they have to be changed, but never betray love. The old Indian tradition is: betray love but never betray the person, go on clinging to one person. And when things have been there for thousands of years, they become part of your blood and bones, part of your marrow, and you start functioning unconsciously.Become a little more conscious. Meditate over this anecdote:The day for the execution arrived and the three prisoners – a Frenchman, an Englishman and a German – were led out of their cells to the guillotine. The Frenchman was the first to be led up the steps and was asked if he preferred to face upward or downward on the guillotine block.He replied: “I have led a full and good life enjoying all the delights of good wine from the finest French vineyards, excellent cheeses, the best cuisine and the wonderful charms of the loveliest mademoiselles of France. I have nothing more to wish for and nothing to fear. Therefore, I will face upward.”He was then positioned on his back looking up so he could watch the blade as it descended. The blade was released and it began falling with full speed until it was only half an inch from his neck, at which point the blade suddenly stopped.Unable to explain this, the authorities who were standing by interpreted it as a sign from God, and proceeded to release the prisoner to become a free man.The Englishman was next to be led to the guillotine and was asked the same question. He replied: “I have served my Queen loyally throughout the empire. In the true tradition of the refined Englishman, I have helped to spread our great English civilization around the world and I have never flinched at danger. Therefore, I am ready to face death and will face upward.”He was positioned on his back and the blade was released and began falling. Again, at the last instant, the blade came to an abrupt stop just half an inch above his throat. This was again interpreted as a sign from God, so the man was freed.Next the German was led to the guillotine and as he was being asked the same question, he immediately interrupted and said: “Before I answer your question, I want you to know that I refuse to be under that machine until you get it fixed!”A German is a German. His conditioning is there: the machine should be fixed first!And that’s how the Indian mind also functions. Down the ages you have been taught to remain true to persons, which is not a very high value. The higher value is to remain true to love. If it is happening with one person, perfectly good, I am not saying to change – what is the point of changing? If it is not happening with this person, then let it happen somewhere else.But let it happen because if you miss love, you will miss all that is beautiful in life. If you miss love, you will miss the possibility of prayer too because only love, when it becomes deep, brings you closer to prayer.The seventh question:Osho,I do not believe in anything, but I do believe in God. Why are you so much against beliefs?Because a belief is a belief, and is not an experience. Belief is a barrier. If you believe in God you will never know God. That’s why I am against belief – because I am for God. Your very belief will never allow you to know that which is, because the belief means that before knowing it you have decided already what it is. Your decisive mind will not relax. Your mind with a conclusion is a prejudiced mind, and to know God an empty mind is needed: unprejudiced, pure, uncontaminated by any belief, by any ideology. I am against all beliefs because I am for God.And you say: “I do not believe in anything…” But if you believe in God, then what more is needed? That is enough. You have made the greatest mistake! Now every other mistake is very small. And if the great mistake has been done, then other mistakes will follow in its wake. If you can believe in God without knowing God – without understanding what it means, without ever experiencing even a little bit of it, without ever seeing a single ray of light; if you can believe in God, if you can be so deceptive, if you can be so cunning – then you can believe in anything. And what else is needed? You think this belief is not a big mistake? It is the biggest mistake.A husband walked into his house unexpectedly one evening, and noticed some men’s clothing at the foot of the bed. He asked his wife, who was in the bed at the time, where the clothes came from. His wife told him that the clothes belonged to him, and she was taking them to the cleaner’s. Going to the closet to hang up his coat, he eyed a man bare as the day he came into the world.The husband: “What are you doing here?”The man: “Did you believe what your wife told you?”The husband: “Yes!”The man: “Well, I’m waiting for a bus.”If you can believe that, then you can believe anything. The naked man standing in the closet, waiting for the bus…If you can believe in God, then you can believe in Adolf Hitler, in Josef Stalin, in Mao Zedong, then you can believe in any nonsense because you have accepted the basic nonsense. Never believe in God. God has to be known, not to be believed. God has to be lived, not to be believed. God has to be experienced, not to be believed.And why do you believe in God? If you have not known, then it must be out of fear, then there can be no other reason. Remember, God can be known only out of love, and beliefs come out of fear. And love and fear never meet; they never cross each other’s path. Love knows no fear. Fear knows no love. If you are afraid of somebody you cannot love that person. That’s why it is very difficult for children to love their parents because parents make them afraid. It is very difficult for husbands to love their wives because their wives make them afraid. It is very difficult for wives to love their husbands because their husbands make them afraid.Wherever fear comes, fear comes from this door, and love escapes from the other. They never live together, they can’t live together. Have you not observed? When you love a person all fear disappears. In that very love there is no fear.God has to be known through love. And belief is based in fear. Belief stinks!A salesman couldn’t make the lady understand the power brakes on the car he was selling her, so he took her for a ride. When he was almost five hundred feet from a brick building, he speeded up and at the last minute he hit the brake.Lady: “What is that smell?”Salesman: “Rubber burning, madam.”She brought the car home to show her husband and took him for a ride. Coming to the same brick wall she slammed on the brakes, missing it by about three inches. Looking at her husband, she said, “Do you smell that, honey?”Husband: “I should. I’m sitting in it.”All beliefs stink. Drop beliefs! Have the courage to know.God is an invitation for the ultimate journey. Let God be a quest, not a belief. Let it be a question mark on your heart, at the deepest core of your being. Let the question trouble you, let the question become a turmoil. Let the question create a chaos in you because only through chaos are stars born. Only when the quest has destroyed all your belief systems, and you are freed of all conclusions given by others, will you be able to open your eyes to the naked truth. And it is facing you. It is always facing you. It is just in front of your nose, but there is a Great Wall of China of beliefs, and you cannot see that which surrounds you from everywhere.The last question:Osho,I and my wife both love you, but we often quarrel about you and your thoughts because we cannot agree in our interpretation of your ideas. What should we do?There is no need to agree. And how can you agree? When you listen to me, you listen through your preoccupation. When your wife listens, she listens through her preoccupation. When you listen, you listen through your own beliefs, ideas, conditioning. When she listens, she has her own mind. Interpretations are going to be different.Just because you are both listening to me does not mean that you will agree. You will interpret, you will give colors, you will give turns to ideas according to your mind. See the fact that with the mind there can be no agreement. There is no need to argue. Rather, try to do what I am saying. Don’t waste your time. I am not here to make you more argumentative. I am not here to make you more logical. I am not here to make you more capable of discussing, analyzing, interpreting things. I am here to help you to see. And seeing comes when you are without the mind.Now this simple fact that you go on quarreling with your wife… And you both love me; it should become a great experience. You are here with a thousand people. I am saying the same thing to you all, but there are going to be a thousand interpretations. You can’t agree with the other. The other has looked from a totally different angle because the other is hooked from a totally different angle. That is the only way he or she can see it. And this is so if you are not related with the person. If you are related with the person, then there are more difficulties – particularly in the relationship of a wife and husband. Their quarrel is eternal. It does not matter about what, but they quarrel. There seems to be only one agreement: to disagree. That is their only agreement; about that they have agreed. That they will disagree is a tacit agreement in every marriage.Mulla Nasruddin goes on fighting with his wife and the wife goes on arguing. One day I told Mulla: “You have been arguing for thirty years, and there seems to be no possible solution. Why don’t you drop it?”He said, “How to drop it?”I said: “Simply agree with your wife! Next time it happens, simply agree and see what happens.”He said, “Okay.”So next time it happened, first, in the heat of it, he forgot. He argued for half an hour. And then he suddenly remembered, so he went out in the garden to cool down. Then he cooled himself, collected himself, decided that he would agree.He went in and he said to his wife, “Okay, you are right. I agree with you.”His wife looked at him with great surprise, and said, “What? But I have changed my mind!”And the argument starts again. They have changed sides, but the argument is the same. When you are related with somebody, relationship brings many complexities. There is a constant struggle to dominate. It is not really argument that you are interested in or your wife is interested in; it is really a question of who dominates whom. Each point becomes a power struggle: who dominates whom? See it, and don’t waste your time.You ask me, “What should we do?” Let her have her opinions, you have your opinions. Rather than wasting time in opinions, start doing something according to your mind and let her do something according to her mind. But do something.If I say meditate – whatsoever you understand by it – start doing something. In the beginning it is always a groping in the dark. But by and by, the gropers reach.Jesus says:Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you…Start groping, and don’t be worried that you may commit some error or some mistake. Errors have to be committed, mistakes are going to happen. Nobody can reach directly; everybody has to stumble. Many times one goes astray, but if one goes on working sincerely, authentically, then sooner or later the door opens.Open your door, let her open her door. Don’t make me an excuse for your power struggle. And remember, always have compassion on other people. They have their minds, they are hooked there just as you are hooked in your own mind. See! If you cannot see without your mind, how can you expect the other to see it? Watch life, and sooner or later you will see an insight arising in you. In that very insight you will become capable of understanding the other’s standpoint. I am not saying that you have to agree with the other, but you can understand. There is no need to agree, but you can see why the other is looking at this point in this way, and you can have compassion for the other.If you have compassion, you will be surprised – the other has started feeling compassion for you. If you argue, the other argues. Argument creates argument. It goes on becoming bitter and bitterer; it poisons relationship. If you can understand the other’s standpoint you will find the other is also more compassionate toward your standpoint. And people have their own standpoints because people are not enlightened.Standpoints are bound to be there up to the third mind, the individual mind. With the fourth mind there is no argument; compassion arises. One can see the other – where the other is hooked – and feel sorry for the other because it is an imprisonment. Only with the fourth comes understanding, compassion. And with the fifth, one forgets about others or about oneself; then there is no division.Listen to a few anecdotes. First:A housewife complains to the psychologist, “Something is wrong with my husband. At night when he comes back from work, he always first kisses our dog and then me.”The psychologist thinks about it for a while, then he suggests thoughtfully, “Would you mind bringing a photograph of your dog the next time you come?”You would not expect it, but this too is a possibility. There are millions of possibilities as to what the response is going to be. Now this psychologist must have been a very logical person – hooked on logic. If the husband kisses the dog first, then the dog must be more beautiful than the wife, so bring a photograph. That is his standpoint. And everybody is closed in his own world.Two Frenchmen are standing on the platform from where the train is pulling out of Paris. One of them waves to a friend at the station, and calls, “Thanks loads! Had a marvelous time! Your wife was a wonderful lay!” Then he turns to the man standing next to him and says, “It’s not true, she’s no good at all. I just wanted the husband to feel good.”There are different visions. Now, whether the husband is going to feel good or bad… But this man has simply appreciated – maybe in France it is possible!In a certain Western city where drivers too often have a way of using only one hand on the steering wheel, devoting the other to the inevitable girl at the side, an ordinance was recently passed requiring two hands on the wheel of a moving car. As a result of this law, a member of the police force stopped an approaching Ford coupe and severely reprimanded the spooning couple in this manner: “Young man, do you know the laws of this city? Why not use both hands?”The derelict at the wheel frankly retorted, “Why, I have to use one hand to drive with!”Different visions, different understanding…The last:Olga was returning to Czechoslovakia after working for a year in Britain. On the plane she began to writhe and moan, clutching her belly at the same time. The stewardess was quickly at her side to find out what was the matter. “Have you had a check-up recently?” she asked Olga.“No, no” wailed Olga, “it wasn’t a Czech, it was a Scotsman.”Enough for today.

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I Say Unto You Vol 1 01-10Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 1 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Matthew 7Jesus said unto his disciples:Not every one that saith unto me,Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven;but he that doeth the will of my Fatherwhich is in heaven.Many will say to me in that day,Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?and in thy name have cast out devils?and in thy name done many wonderful works?And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you:depart from me, ye that work iniquity.Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine,and doeth them,I will liken him unto a wise man,which built his house upon a rock:And the rain descended, and the floods came,and the winds blew, and beat upon that house;and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.And every one that heareth these sayings of mine,and doeth them not,shall be likened unto a foolish man,which built his house upon the sand:And the rain descended, and the floods came,and the winds blew, and beat upon that house;and it fell:and great was the fall of it.Man is not a meaning but an opportunity. The meaning is possible, but is not given. The meaning can be created, but it is not already there. It is a task not a gift. Life is a gift, but life is open opportunity. Meaning is not a gift; meaning is a search. Those who seek will certainly find it. But those who simply wait will go on missing. The meaning, the logos, has to be created by man. Man has to transform himself into that meaning. It cannot be something exterior to man; it can only be something interior.Man’s inner being has to become illumined.Before we enter into these sutras, a few things will be helpful to understand about man, because only then is the work possible. The first thing to be understood is that man is a four-dimensional space-time continuum, just as the whole existence is. Three dimensions are of space; one dimension is of time. They are not separate: the dimension of time is but the fourth dimension of space. The three dimensions of space are static; the fourth dimension of time brings movement, makes life a process. Then existence is not a thing, but becomes an event.And so is man. Man is a miniature universe. If you could understand man in his totality, you would have understood the whole existence. Man contains all – in seed. Man is a condensed universe. And these are the four dimensions of man.The first dimension is what Patanjali calls sushupti, deep sleep, where not even a dream exists. One is utterly silent, not even a thought stirring, no wind blowing. All is absent. That absence, in deep sleep, is the first dimension. It is from that, that we start. We have to understand our sleep, only then can we go through a transformation. Only then can we build our house on a rock, otherwise not. But there are very few people who understand their sleep.You sleep every day, you live one-third of your life in deep sleep, but you don’t understand what it is. You go into it every night, and you also gain much out of it. But it is all unconscious: you don’t know exactly where it leads you. It leads you to the simplest dimension of your life – the first dimension. It is very simple because there is no duality. It is very simple because there is no complexity. It is very simple because there is only oneness. You have not yet arisen as an ego, you have not yet become divided – but the unity is unconscious.If this unity becomes conscious you will have samadhi instead of sushupti. If this unity becomes conscious, illumined, then you will have attained godliness. That’s why Patanjali says, “Deep sleep and samadhi, the ultimate state of consciousness, are very much alike – alike because they are simple, alike because in both there is no duality, alike because in neither does the ego exist.”In the first, the ego has not yet arisen; in the second, the ego has been dissolved – but there is a great difference too. The difference is that in samadhi you know what sleep is. Even while asleep your consciousness is there, your awareness is there. Your awareness goes on burning like a small light inside you.A Zen master was asked… It is a very famous saying in Zen. Thus we are told that before we study Zen the mountains are mountains and the rivers are rivers. While we are studying Zen, however, the mountains are no longer mountains and the rivers are no longer rivers. But then when our study of Zen is completed, the mountains are once again mountains and the rivers are once again rivers.“What is meant by this?” a disciple asked a great master.The master explained this: “It simply means that the first and the last states are alike. Only just in the middle is the disturbance. First the mountains are mountains, and again in the end the mountains are again mountains. But in the middle the mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers – everything is disturbed and confused and clouded. That clouding, that confusion, that chaos, exists only in the middle. In sushupti everything is as it should be; in samadhi again everything is as it should be. Between the two is the problem, is the world, is the mind, is the ego, is the whole complex of misery, hell.”When the master explained this, the disciple exclaimed: “Well, if that’s true, then there is no difference between the ordinary man and the enlightened man.”“That’s true,” replied the master. “There is no difference really. The only thing is – the enlightened man is six inches off the ground.”But those six inches make all the difference. Why is the master six inches off the ground? He lives in the world and is yet not in it – those are the six inches, the difference. He eats, and yet he is not the eater; he remains a witness – those six inches. He is ill, he knows the pain of illness but still he is not in pain – that difference is those six inches. He dies, he knows death is happening, and yet he is not dying – that difference is those six inches. He is asleep and yet he is not asleep, he is alert too.The first state is of sushupti. We will call it the first dimension. It is dreamless undividedness, it is unconscious unity, it is ignorance, but very blissful. The bliss too is unconscious. Only in the morning, when you are again awake, do you start feeling that there has been a good sleep in the night, that you have been in some faraway land, that you are feeling rejuvenated, that you are feeling very fresh, young and alive again – but only in the morning, not exactly at the time when you are in the sleep, only later on. Just some fragrance remains lingering in the memory. It reminds you that you have been to some inner depth, but where? What? You cannot figure it out. You cannot give any account of it – just a vague memory, a faint remembrance that somewhere you have been in a good space. There is no ego yet, so there is no misery possible, because misery is not possible without the ego.This is the state in which the rocks and the mountains and the rivers and the trees exist. That’s why trees look so beautiful; an unconscious bliss surrounds them. That’s why mountains look so silent: they are in sushupti, they are in deep sleep, continuously in deep sleep. That’s why when you go to the Himalayas an eternal silence is felt – virgin silence. Nobody has ever been able to disturb it. Just think of a mountain and suddenly you start feeling silent. Think of trees and you feel life flowing in. The whole of nature exists in the first state, that’s why nature is so simple.The second dimension is that of dream – what Patanjali calls swabha. The first disturbance in the sleep is dream. Now you are not one anymore; the second dimension has arisen. Images have started floating in you: the beginning of the world. Now you are two: the dreamer and the dreamed. Now you are seeing the dream and you are the dream too. Now you are divided. That silence of the deep sleep is no longer there, disturbance has entered because division has entered.Division, duality, disturbance – that is the meaning of the dream. Although the duality is still unconscious it is there, but not very consciously, not that you know about it. The turmoil is there, the world is born, but things are still undefined. They are just coming out of the smoke; things are taking shape. The form is not yet clear, the form has not yet become concrete, but because of the dualism – even though it is unconscious – misery has entered. The nightmare is not very far away. The dream will turn into a nightmare.This is where animals and birds exist. They also have a beauty, because they are very close to sushupti. Birds sitting on a tree are just dreams sitting in sleep. Birds making their nests on a tree are just dreams making their nests in sleep. There is a kind of affinity between the birds and the trees. If trees disappear, birds will disappear; and if birds disappear, trees will not be so beautiful any longer. There is a deep relationship; it is one family. When you see parrots screeching and flying around a tree, it almost looks as if the leaves of the tree have got wings. They are not separate, they are very close. Birds and animals are more silent than man, happier than man. Birds don’t go mad. They don’t need psychiatrists; they don’t need any Freud, any Jung, any Adler. They are utterly healthy.If you go into the forest and see the animals you will be surprised – they are all alike! And all healthy. You will not find a single fat animal in the natural state. I am not talking about the zoo. In the zoo things go wrong, because the zoo is no longer natural. Zoo animals start following man, they even start going mad and committing suicide. Zoo animals even turn into homosexuals. The state of the zoo is not natural; it is man-created. In nature they are very silent, happy, healthy, but that health too is unconscious – they don’t know what is happening.This is the second state: when you are in a dream. This is the second dimension. First: dreamless sleep, sushupti – simple one-dimensional; there is no “other.” Second: dream, swabha – there are two dimensions, the dreamer and the dreamed, the content and the consciousness. The division has arisen: the looker and the looked at, the observer and the observed. Duality has entered. This is the second dimension.In the first dimension there is only the present tense. Sleep knows no past, no future. Of course because it knows no past, no future, it cannot know the present either, because the present exists only in the middle. You have to be aware of the past and the future, only then can you be aware of the present. Because there is no past and no future, sleep exists only in the present. It is pure present, but unconscious.The division enters with dreams. With dreams the past becomes very important. Dreams are past-oriented; all dreams come from the past. They are fragments of the past floating in the mind, dust from the past, which has not settled yet.“It’s her old man I feel sorry for. He was in bed the other night fast asleep. Suddenly she noticed he had a smile on his face. She thought ‘Hello, he’s having one of those dreams again.’ So she put down her crisps and her bottle of stout and woke him up.”He said, “Blimey, you would, wouldn’t you. I was having a lovely dream then. I was at this auction where they were selling mouths. They had small rosebud ones for a quid. Pert little pursed ones for two quid, and little smiling ones for a fiver.”She said, “Ooh! Did they have a mouth my size?”“Yes. They were holding the auction in it.”Whatsoever you dream has something to say about your past. It may be that you see an auction – little smiling rosebud mouths are being sold – but the auction is being held in your wife’s mouth. Maybe you have never said to your wife, “Shut up, and keep your big mouth closed!” Maybe you have not said it so clearly, but you have been thinking it so many times. It is lingering in the mind. It is there. Maybe you have never been as true in your waking state as you are when you are asleep. And you can be, you can afford to be true. All dreams float from the past. With the dream, the past becomes existential. So the present is there, and the past.With the third, the third dimension, the waking state – what Patanjali calls jagrut – multiplicity enters. The first is unity, the second is duality, the third is multiplicity. Great complexity arises. The whole world is born. In sleep you are deep inside yourself; in dream you are no longer that deep inside yourself and yet you are not out either. You are just in the middle, on the threshold. With waking consciousness you are outside yourself, you have gone into the world.You can understand the biblical story of Adam’s expulsion in these three dimensions. When Adam is there in the Garden of Eden and has not yet eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge it is deep sleep, unconscious – it is unconscious bliss. There is no disturbance; everything is simply beautiful. He has not known any misery. Then he eats the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Knowledge arises, images start floating, dreams have started functioning. He is no longer the same. He is still in the Garden of Eden but no longer part of it – alien, a stranger, an outsider. He has not yet been expelled, but in a subtle way he is no longer centered there. He is uprooted. This is the state of the dream – the first taste of knowledge because of the first taste of duality: the distinction of observer and the observed. And then he is being expelled from the Garden of Eden, thrown out – that is the third state, the waking state. Now he cannot go back; there is no way back. He has forgotten that he has an inside too.In deep sleep you are inside. In wakefulness you are outside. In dream you are just in the middle, hanging, not settled yet where to go, still indecisive, in doubt, uncertain. With the waking state, the ego enters. In the dream state there are just rudimentary fragments of the ego arising, but they settle in the third. The ego becomes the most concrete, most solid, most decisive phenomenon; then whatsoever you do, you do because of the ego.The third state brings a little consciousness: just one percent, not much of it, just a flickering consciousness, momentary consciousness. The first was absolutely unconscious, the second was unconsciousness disturbed, the third is the first glimpse of consciousness. And because of this – the momentary glimpse of consciousness – that one percent of consciousness coming in, creates the ego. Now the future also enters.First there is only the present unconscious, then there is the past unconscious, now there is the future. Past, present, future, and the whole complexity of time revolves around you. This is the state where people are stuck, where you are stuck, where everybody is stuck. And if you go on building your house with these three dimensions you will be building it on sand, because your whole effort will be unconscious.To do something in unconsciousness is futile; it is shooting arrows in the dark, not knowing where the target is. It is not going to bring much of a result. First, light is needed. The target has to be looked for, searched for. And enough light is needed so you can move toward the target consciously. That is possible only when the fourth dimension starts functioning. It rarely happens; but whenever it happens, then meaning is really born, logos is born.You will live a meaningless life if you live only with these three. You will live a meaningless life because you will not be able to create yourself. How can you create in such unawareness?The fourth dimension is of awareness, witnessing – what Patanjali calls turiya. And in the Gospels Jesus goes on saying again and again to his disciples: “Awake! Beware! Watch!” All these words indicate turiya. And it is one of the misfortunes of history that Christianity has not been able to bring this message clearly to the world. It has failed utterly.Rarely has a religion failed so utterly as Christianity. Jesus was not very fortunate because the disciples that he found turned out to be very ordinary, and the religion became almost a political organization. The church became not a follower of Jesus but deep down really antagonistic to Jesus. The church has been doing things, in the name of Jesus, against Jesus.Buddha was more fortunate. The followers never became a church, they never became so organized politically and they never became so worldly. They carried little bits of Buddha’s message down the ages.This fourth dimension has to be understood as deeply as possible, because this is the goal. It is again pure consciousness, simplicity. The first was simple but unconscious; the fourth is simple but conscious. Unity again, bliss again – with only one difference: now everything is conscious, the inner light is burning bright. You are fully alert. It is not a dark night inside you but a full-moon night, moonlit. That is the meaning of enlightenment: the inner illumination.Again there is only one time left: the present, but now it is a conscious present. The past is no longer hanging around. A man who is aware cannot move in the past, because it is no more. A man who is aware cannot move in the future, because it is not yet. A man who is aware lives in the present, herenow. Here is his only space and now is his only time. And because he is only herenow, time as such disappears. Eternity is born, timelessness is born. And when one is totally alert, ego cannot exist.Ego is a shadow cast in unawareness. When all is light, the ego cannot exist. You will be able to see the falsity of it, the pseudo-ness of it. And in that very seeing is its disappearance.These are the four dimensions of human consciousness. People live only in the first three. The fourth carries the meaning; hence, the people who live only in three live a meaningless life. They know it. You know it! If you look into your life you will not find any meaning there, just a haphazard, accidental progression of things. One thing is followed by another, but with no particular consistency, with no particular relevance. One thing is followed by another, just accidentally.That’s what Jean-Paul Sartre means when he says, “Man is a useless passion, man is accidental.” Yes, he is right if he is talking about the three dimensions: first, second and third, but it is not true about the fourth. And he cannot say anything about the fourth because he has not experienced anything of it. Only a christ or a buddha can say something about the fourth.Christ consciousness is of the fourth, so is buddha consciousness. To remain confined in the three is to be in the world. To enter into the fourth is to enter into nirvana, or call it the kingdom of God. They are only different expressions for the same thing.A few more things: the second dimension is a shadow of the first: sleep and dream. Dreams cannot exist without sleep; sleep is a must. Sleep can exist without dreams. So sleep is primary, dreams are secondary – just a shadow. And so is the case with the third and the fourth. The third is the shadow of the fourth, because the third can exist only if there is some consciousness. A little bit of consciousness has to be there, only then can the third exist. The third cannot exist without a little bit of consciousness in it, a ray of light. It is not much of a light, but a ray of light is needed. The fourth can exist without the third, but the third cannot exist without the fourth. The fourth is awareness, absolute awareness; and the third is just a small ray of light in the dark night. But it exists because of that small ray of light. If that ray of light disappears it will become the second; it will not be the third any longer. Your life looks like a shadow life because you are living with the third. And the third is the shadow of the fourth. Only with the fourth do you come home. Only with the fourth are you grounded in existence.The first is absolute darkness; the fourth is absolute light. Between these two are their two shadows. Those two shadows have become so important to us that we think that is our whole life. Hindus have been calling the world maya, illusion, because of these two dimensions which have become predominant: the second and the third. We have lost track of the first, and we have not yet searched for the fourth.And one more thing: if you find the fourth you will find the first. Only one who has found the fourth will be able to know about the first, because once you have come to the fourth you can be asleep and remain alert. In the Gita, Krishna defines the yogi as one who is awake while asleep. That’s his definition for the yogi. A strange definition: one who is awake while asleep.Just the reverse is the situation with you. You are asleep while awake. That is the definition of a non-yogi: asleep while awake. You look awake, and you are not. It is just an idea, this awake state. Ninety-nine percent consists of sleep – only one percent of wakefulness. And that one percent also goes on changing. Sometimes it is there and sometimes it is not there at all. It was there; somebody insults you and it is not there. You have become angry, and you have lost even that small awareness. Somebody treads on your foot and it has gone. It is very delicate. Anybody can take it and destroy it, and very easily. You were perfectly okay; a letter comes and something is written in the letter, and suddenly you are no longer okay. All is disturbed. A single word can create such a disturbance! Your awareness is not very much.And you are awake only in rare moments; you are awake in danger, because in danger you have to be awake. But when there is no danger, you start snoring. You can hear people snoring – walking down the road, they are snoring. They are caged in their own unconsciousness.A drunk bumped into a stop sign. Dazed and disoriented, he stepped back and then advanced in the same direction. Once more he hit the sign. He retreated a few steps, waited awhile, and then marched forward.Colliding with the post again, he embraced it in defeat and said, “It is no use. I am fenced in. I am stopped in every direction.”And yet he has not moved in any other direction. He has been moving to the post again and again. And being hit, naturally he concludes that he has been fenced in from every direction. This is the situation of the ordinary human consciousness. You go on moving in the same unconscious way, in the same unconscious direction. Again and again you are hit and you think, “Why is there so much misery? Why? Why did God create such a miserable world in the first place? Is God a kind of sadist? Does he want to torture people? Why has he created a life which is almost like a prison, in which there is no freedom?”Life is absolutely free, but to see that freedom first you will have to free your consciousness. Remember it as a criterion: the more conscious you are, the freer; the less conscious you are, the less free. The more conscious you are, the more blissful; the less conscious you are, the less blissful. It depends on how conscious you are.There are people who will go on looking into the scriptures to find out ways to become freer, to become more blissful, to attain to truth. That is not going to help because it is not a question of the scriptures. If you are unconscious and you go on reading the Bible and the Koran and the Vedas and the Gita, it is not going to help, because your unconsciousness cannot be changed by your studies. In fact the scripture cannot change your consciousness, but your unconsciousness will change the scripture – the meaning of the scriptures. You will find your own meanings there. You will interpret in such a way that the Bible, the Veda, the Koran, will start functioning as imprisonments. That’s how Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans are – all imprisoned.I have heard…After booking into a large hotel, a self-styled evangelist read in his room for an hour or two – and he was reading the Bible – then went down to the bar, and after a couple of drinks, he struck up a conversation with the redheaded barmaid. He stayed up until closing time, and after the girl had cleared up they both went up to the evangelist’s room.When he started to interfere with her clothing, the barmaid seemed to have second thoughts. “Are you sure this is all right?” she said. “After all you are a holy man.”“My dear,” he replied, “it’s written in the Bible.”She took him at his word, and they spent a very pleasant night together. The next morning, however, as the girl was preparing to leave, she said, “You know, I don’t remember the part of the Bible you spoke about last night.”The evangelist picked up the Gideon’s Bible from the bedside table, opened the cover, and showed her the flyleaf, on which was inscribed “The redheaded barmaid screws.”Reading the whole Bible for one hour and this was his finding. Somebody had inscribed on the flyleaf…If you read the Bible, you read it, remember. And the meaning that you give it will be yours; the interpretation will be yours. It cannot help you because it cannot even protect itself from you. How can it help you? The only way to have any change in life is to change consciousness. And to change consciousness you do not have to go into the Bible and the Vedas. You have to go inward, you have to go into meditation. Scholarship won’t help.A blind man was invited to a festivity and there he ate some delicious pudding. He was so enchanted by its taste that he asked someone sitting next him to tell him what it looked like.“White,” the man said.“What is white?” the blind man asked.“White? – like a duck,” came the answer.“How does a duck look?” persisted the blind man.Puzzled for a moment, the man finally said. “Here, feel this,” and took the blind man’s hand in his hand and guided it along his other hand and arm, which he bent at the elbow and wrist to resemble the shape of a duck.At this, the blind man exclaimed, “Oh, the pudding is crooked!”That’s what is going to happen. You cannot help the blind man to know what white is, or what color is, or what light is. All your help is going to give him something wrong. There is no way to help the blind man by definitions, by explanations, by theories, by dogmas, by scriptures. The only way to help him is to heal his eyes.Buddha has said: “I am a physician. I don’t give you definitions of light, I simply heal your eyes.” And that’s what Jesus is. All the miracles that are reported in the Bible are not miracles but parables – that a blind man came to him and he touched his eyes, and the blind man was healed and he could see immediately. If it is just about the physical eye, this is not much. Then Jesus is already out of date, because medical science can do it. Sooner or later, Jesus will have to be completely forgotten. If he was simply curing physical eyes, then it is not going to mean much in the future. This can be done by science. And that which can be done by science should be done by science; religion should not enter into it – there is no need. Religion has far higher things to do. So again and again I insist that these stories are not miracles but parables. People are blind, and the Jesus touch is a magic touch. He helps them to see, he helps them to become aware, he helps them to become more conscious. He brings the fourth.To go into the fourth, work is needed. Work in the sense that Gurdjieff used to use that word. Work means a great effort to transform your being, a great effort to center your being, a great effort to drop all that which creates darkness, and to bring all that which can help a little light come in. If a door has to be opened, then open the door and let the light come in. If a wall has to be broken, then break the wall and let the light come in. Work means a conscious effort to search, to inquire, to explore into the dimension of the fourth – into light, into awareness – and a conscious effort to drop all that which helps you remain unconscious, to drop all that which keeps you mechanical.A man bought a farm and a sow. He asked his wife to watch the sow, explaining that if she saw it eating grass it was ready for mating and could be taken to the next farm. A couple of days later his wife told him that the sow had started to eat grass. So the farmer put it on a barrow and took it to the next farm to be mated. When he came back, he told his wife to watch the sow again. “If the sow eats grass again, it has not taken,” he explained.A few days later, his wife reported that the sow was eating grass again. So it was put on the barrow and taken for mating again. The farmer brought it back and again asked his wife to watch it closely. Two days later he asked his wife if it had been eating grass again.“No,” she said, “but it’s sitting in the barrow.”The mechanical mind, the instinctive mind, the repetitive mind has to be broken and dropped. Work means an alchemical change. Great effort is needed. Hard and arduous is the path. It is an uphill task.Now the sutras:Not every one that saith unto me,Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven;but he that doeth the will of my Fatherwhich is in heaven.Jesus says: prayer is necessary but not enough. It has to be supported by work. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven… Just by praising me, Jesus says, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven – not just by praising God. Flattery won’t help, and people go on flattering God in the hope that flattery will work there too. Only work, only conscious effort, hard effort will help – nothing else can help. Prayer is good, prayer prepares the way, but then you have to walk on it!And a very strange statement it is: …but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Two things to be understood: this sentence is strange because it says: …but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Heaven means the unknown. Heaven means that which you have not entered yet, heaven means that which you have not experienced yet. You can take it on faith, you can trust Jesus. If you love him, you will trust him. But Jesus’ God is not available for you to inspect. You cannot see Jesus’ God. He sees him; it is his experience. But for you it is only a trust. And Jesus says: …but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.First, God is not known to you, not even his whereabouts are known. Heaven means the unknown, the mysterious, the unexplainable. His whereabouts are unknown. You have never encountered God, and the demand is that if you surrender your will to his will, only then…Now in this amazing statement, there are two things: you have to surrender your will and you have to follow God’s will. First, surrender is possible only if you have a will. Ordinarily people think that a man who has a will, will not be able to surrender. People think that weaklings, those whose wills are not very strong, can surrender. That is not right. Only very, very willed people, who have a strong willpower, can surrender – because surrender is the ultimate in willpower. It is the last and there is nothing higher than that. To surrender you will need great will. You will have to put all your willpower into it, only then will the surrender happen. That’s why I say it is an amazing statement. It is very contradictory, but life is like that – paradoxical. And this is one of the fundamental paradoxes: the paradox of will and surrender.Surrender happens only when there is great will. But when surrender happens, the will disappears and not even a trace is left. Surrender is the will committing suicide. And only when your will has committed suicide can God’s will flow into you. These two opposites can meet: your surrender and God’s will.Surrender means receptivity. When you are receptive, utterly receptive, God can descend into you. You cannot say: “First I have to encounter God, only then will I surrender,” because there is no way for you to encounter him. The only way to encounter him is to surrender because when you are surrendered he comes. You can know him only after surrender, not before surrender.Now this is asking the impossible. But religion asks the impossible, and there have been a few people who have been able to do the impossible. Those who have done the impossible have achieved the impossible. That is how it is, and it cannot be otherwise. You cannot have a sample of God’s experience and then decide whether to purchase or not. You cannot have a look at God’s being: he is not available for window-shopping. First you have to surrender, and you have to surrender in darkness and you have to surrender in absolute ignorance. You have no proof, and no argument can help you. Great courage is needed – daredevil courage is needed. That’s why I say the religious man is the most courageous man in the world. Those who walk on the moon are nothing. Yes, they take great risk, but that is nothing compared to religion, because the demand, the very demand is impossible.First you surrender, and then you come to know – but how to first surrender? How to know what is God’s will? The only way to know God’s will is to surrender your will. You efface yourself; you don’t stand in between, you simply disappear. In your disappearance God appears. Your absence becomes his presence. When you are empty as far as your self is concerned, you become full with his presence. He comes only when you are not, then the great transformation happens: the meeting of the drop with the ocean, the meeting of the part with the whole. And then there is great jubilation.Again and again, Jesus says to his disciples, “Rejoice!” What is he talking about? Why does he go on saying, “Rejoice! Celebrate! Be glad!”? He is taking them closer and closer to that ultimate revolution where they will surrender, and God will take over. Each step is a rejoicing, is a celebration, because each step taken toward God is taken toward your fulfillment. You can be fulfilled only when God has become a resident in you, otherwise you are empty, hollow, stuffed with straw and nothing else. Only when he comes will your temple have a deity in it. He can fulfill you by becoming a host in your being.Not every one that saith unto me,Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven;but he that doeth the will of my Fatherwhich is in heaven.Many will say to me in that day,Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?and in thy name have cast out devils?and in thy name done many wonderful works?And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you:depart from me, ye that work iniquity.Jesus says, “In that moment, in that space, many would like to tell me, ‘I have been doing miracles in your name.’” There are many who are healing in the world in the name of Christ, who are serving people in the name of Christ, who are converting people in the name of Christ, and doing a thousand and one good things in the name of Christ. But deep down, if you look, the name of the Christ is just a label; deep down is the ego.A woman came to Jesus and touched his garment and was healed. And the woman was very thankful; she fell at his feet and thanked him from her very heart.Jesus said: “Don’t thank me. I have not done anything. It is your faith that has healed you. And if you want to be grateful, be grateful to God. I am nobody, I am just a passage, I am instrumental. Forget about me. It is your faith and God’s presence that has healed you. If I was there, I was just like a link, a bridge.”When you cross a river you don’t thank the bridge. You don’t even remember, you don’t look at the bridge. Jesus says: “I am just a bridge, a vehicle.”Jesus says: Many will say to me in that day. Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And behind all their works is the ego. They are claiming. The claim comes from the ego – the claimant is always the ego. If you are not there, if there is no ego, you cannot claim; you will be silent in that moment. You will not start bragging that I have done this, and I have done that.Jesus says: And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you… Jesus knows only those who are absolutely silent, who have no claims. Jesus knows only those who have utterly disappeared, who have become just vehicles of God – who cannot claim because they are not. And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Jesus uses the word iniquity. It means unrighteousness, wickedness, gross injustice. It is always God who works through you; whenever you claim, it is gross injustice.Just watch, observe, meditate over it. You saw a man drowning in the river; you rushed and you jumped into the river, and saved the man. By the time you are back on the bank you start bragging “I saved this man.” But is this true? When the man was drowning and you were on the bank, had you thought about it? Had you thought in this way – “This man is drowning, I have to save him. If I don’t save him, who will? Saving is good, and righteous and virtuous” …and all that? No, in that moment, God possessed you. There was no thinking about it. You simply jumped into the water. It was not that you did it; God did it through you. But later on, back on the bank, you start bragging “I saved this man.”This is injustice. This is gross injustice. Jesus says that this is unrighteous. It is something that God has done through you, and you are claiming it as your ego glory, claiming it as an ornament for your ego?Remember, whenever something good happens, it happens through God. Good is that which happens through God. And bad is that which happens through you. This is religious understanding. A religious person cannot claim any virtue. Yes, he can repent for all the sins, but he cannot claim any virtue. He will cry and weep, and he will say, “I have done this wrong and that wrong!” But not for a single moment will the idea arise in him: “Look: this good I have also done.” That is not possible for the religious mind. The religious mind knows that whenever something goes wrong: “I must have come in between me and God. If something goes wrong, I must have misinterpreted it, I must have deviated the energy, I must have distorted it. If something goes right – who am I? That simply shows that I have not distorted, that’s all.”When you are standing before a mirror and the mirror mirrors perfectly, it is not anything special; it is how it should be. But if your face is distorted, then the mirror is at fault, then things are not as they should be. Good is that which happens through God, and bad is that which happens through the ego. So if the ego claims the good, the good also becomes bad. And the claim is wrong.Buddha came back to his home after twelve years, when he became enlightened. His father was very angry, naturally – understandable. He was the only son, the father was old, and the son had become a dropout. His father was really ill, old, and he had to carry the whole load and responsibility of the kingdom. When he was thinking that his son would take charge, he escaped. He escaped without saying anything. One night he simply disappeared. The father was angry.The first meeting of the son and the father was at the great gates of the town, and the father said, “Son, although I am angry I will forgive you. Come back home and forget all this nonsense.”And Buddha said, “Sir, will you look at me unprejudiced? I am not the same man who escaped from your palace. I am not your son!”The father started laughing, and he said, “Who are you kidding? You are not my son? Can’t I recognize you? Can’t I see my own blood? I have given birth to you. And what are you saying – that you are not the same person?”Buddha said, “Sir, don’t feel offended. I came through you, but you have not given birth to me.”That’s what Jesus is saying. He is saying that whenever something comes through you, you are not the originator of it. If good comes through you, God is the originator.Never claim the life of your child; life belongs to God. You cannot produce life; you were just instrumental. While making love to your woman, what exactly were you doing? You were just instrumental. In fact, love has also happened. It was not any doing on your part. Love has happened; you were making love to your woman and something happened. And you don’t know what exactly – the mystery remains mystery. The woman becomes pregnant, and a child is born. And you start claiming, “This is my child.”I lived in Raipur for a year. One day I saw the neighbor beating his small child, so I rushed into his house and said to him, “What are you doing? I will call the police!”He said, “What are you talking about? This is my kid! I can do anything that I want to my kid! And who are you?”I said: “This is not your kid. This is God’s kid. And I can claim as much as you can claim.”He could not believe what nonsense I was saying. He said, “This is my kid. Don’t you know? – you have been living here for a year.”He could not understand because of the claim: “This is my kid, and I can do anything that I want to do.”For centuries parents were allowed to kill their child if they wanted to. They were allowed because the thought that they had given birth was accepted. How can you give birth? You have just been instrumental. Don’t claim; no child belongs to you. All children belong to God, they come from God. You are at most a caretaker. And all good comes from God. If something goes wrong, then certainly you must have distorted it. If evil is born, it is through you.That’s what Jesus means when he says: And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. You are claiming that you did miracles, that you did this and that? This very claim makes you irreligious. And Jesus says, “I will have to say to them that I don’t know you at all.”Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine,and doeth them,I will liken him unto a wise man,which built his house upon a rock…By doing, not just by praying. Prayer is cheap. One can do it because nothing is at stake. That’s why people have become churchgoers, worshippers. They go to the mosque and the gurdwara and the temple. It is very cheap and easy – the Sunday religion. You go to church for one hour: it is a kind of social formality which you fulfill. And you think you have fulfilled your life, you have fulfilled your meditation, you have fulfilled your innermost passion for God?…whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock… Only if you do, if you work hard, if you try to transform yourself. A thousand and one times you may fail, but if you go on and on, then success comes. Certainly it comes because it has come to Jesus, it has come to Buddha; it can come to everybody. It is everybody’s birthright. You can have it, but you cannot have it cheaply. You will have to pay for it and you will have to pay with your whole life. Less than that and you will not attain it.That’s what Gurdjieff means when he says “work.”And the rain descended, and the floods came,and the winds blew, and beat upon that house;and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.And every one that heareth these sayings of mine,and doeth them not,shall be likened unto a foolish man,which built his house upon the sand:And the rain descended, and the floods came,and the winds blew, and beat upon that house;and it fell:and great was the fall of it.I talked about four dimensions. If you make your house unconsciously you will be making it on sand. If you make your house in time, then you will be making it on the sands. Time is the sand. If you make your house in eternity, in timelessness, in the fourth dimension of turiya, of awareness, of witnessing, then you will be making it on a rock. And if you have made it on a rock, nothing can destroy it; it is immortal, it is deathless. If you have made it on the sand, then anything – any wind, any rain – is going to destroy it. And you will be utterly crushed under it, because you live in that house.People are making sand castles – with money, with power, with prestige. Unconscious, asleep, snoring, they go on making their houses, not knowing what they are doing. They will be crushed under those houses. …and it fell: and great was the fall of it. Make your house on a rock. And there is no other rock than consciousness. Jesus called one of his disciples “Peter.” The word Peter means “the rock.” He called that certain disciple Peter because he was the most conscious of them all. He told his disciples that Peter would function as the rock for his church.These are symbolic things. Peter was the most conscious of them all. He called him Peter because he was conscious, because he was like a rock. And he said: “My church will be built on Peter. He will function as the cornerstone, the very foundation of it.” But that church was never made. The church never used Peter as the foundation. The church used Paul as the foundation, and Paul is not christlike at all. Paul is a dangerous fellow.At first he was against Jesus and he was against the message of Jesus. He was going toward Jerusalem to persecute Christians, and then, on the road, something happened.This conversion happens sometimes –– it is very psychological. He was so obsessed by Jesus and how to destroy his message that he was continuously thinking about Jesus, dreaming about Jesus. Jesus was his obsession twenty-four hours a day. Moving on the road toward Jerusalem alone one night, he heard a voice as if Jesus had shouted and said, “Why are you persecuting me? Why?” It may have been just his own unconscious: it may have been just his whole obsession that his whole unconscious started feeling. His conscious was against Jesus, and the unconscious always goes against the conscious – it is just the polar opposite. When the conscious was too much against Jesus, the unconscious must have become by and by interested in Jesus. This voice must have come from his innermost core, “Why? Why are you persecuting me?”Hearing this voice, he fell on the ground in the dust. He was very shocked, and it proved to him that Jesus was powerful. He became converted. His name was Saul; his name now became Paul – he became converted. First he was persecuting Jesus’ disciples… He was not a contemporary of Jesus; Jesus had gone. And now he changed his whole energy. First he was persecuting Christians, now he started converting people to Christianity. This Paul became the foundation of the Vatican church. This Paul had never known Jesus. He had never walked with the master; he was not a contemporary. And this Paul was a dangerous man – obsessed, angry, violent, aggressive. But he converted the world to Christianity, he became the foundation.Peter was lost, and Peter was the rock chosen by Jesus. And why had he chosen Peter, why had he called him “rock”? – because he was the most conscious. Jesus’ whole message is the message of consciousness. But great work is needed, only then can you make your life on a rock; otherwise you will be building on sand.Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them… Doing is the question, because only by doing will you attain to being; not by saying, not by thinking. Doing means to be committed to whatsoever you feel is right.Just the other night a young woman was here and she was saying, “I am already a sannyasin and you are in my heart, but I cannot take sannyas yet.” If I am in your heart, if you think you are already a sannyasin, then why not be committed? Then why not be involved? It is easy to say that you are in my heart – it is very easy. It is very easy to say, “I am already a sannyasin in my heart.” But to become committed, to declare to the world “I am a sannyasin,” is more difficult, takes more courage, needs more guts.Jesus says, “Unless you do what you think is right, nothing is going to happen.” You can go on thinking and thinking. Thinking never transforms anybody; thoughts are impotent. Only acts are potent, only doings ultimately become your being.…I will liken him unto a wise man… who doeth what I am saying: …which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And there are many winds that will come; there are many rains and floods that will descend. They will all try to shatter your house because life is a challenge, and anything that you attain has to be tested against challenges. The higher you grow, the greater the challenges that will be coming.…And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. If you don’t have anything, there will be no challenge. This has to be understood. If you don’t love, there will be no challenge; if you love, there will be great challenge in your life. If you don’t meditate, there will be no challenge; if you meditate, the whole mind will strike against you, will become antagonistic, will try to destroy your meditation. It is a basic law in life that if you try to attain something higher, it has to be tested, it has to pass through many tests and many criteria. Those tests look like winds and floods, and they will strike hard on you. But they are good, because only they will make you strong and crystallized. And only they will show you whether you have built on rock or on the sands.Remember, only if you do what you feel, think is right, is there going to be any change, mutation – otherwise not. Be a wise man, don’t be a fool. Make something in timelessness. Make something out of your consciousness, so death cannot destroy it. There is something which is deathless, and unless you attain it you will live in agony, suffering and fear. Once it is attained all agony, all misery, all hell disappears. And then there is beauty, and then there is benediction.Enough for today.

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I Say Unto You Vol 1 01-10Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 1 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Since I have been with you I have come to know Jesus in a new light. As a Jew I could never accept his teachings. Never before did I think of him as an enlightened being, as I think about the Buddha. When I first came in contact with Buddhist teaching in Nepal, I felt an immediate affinity toward it. Here now in Pune, Jesus' sayings are becoming comprehensible and acceptable. Yet still doubts persist. Why did he say it all in such a roundabout way, especially considering that he was talking to the common people? And look at all the confusion that has now been caused by the manner in which he spoke. It doesn't make any sense to me, and I won't feel completely at ease with Jesus as I do with Buddha until this question is resolved. I have the feeling that if I need to read the New Testament I would still reject it.First, it is very easy to accept something that is absolutely strange to you. To a Jew, Jesus is not a stranger, Buddha is a stranger. It is very easy to accept Buddha, it is very difficult to accept Jesus.First, with Jesus you are acquainted, and acquainted through a certain conditioning: the Jewish conditioning. Jesus is a rebel for the Jew. The same is the case with Buddha for a Hindu: the Hindu finds it very difficult to accept Buddha. It is easier to accept Jesus, because for the Hindu and the Hindu mind nothing is involved with Jesus, no attitudes are involved; the relationship is a new one. But with the Buddha much is involved. Buddha was a rebel who spoke against Hindu orthodoxy, who tried to destroy the Hindu organization. Although he was the highest flowering of Hindu consciousness, still he was against the Hindu past. He was the future, but he was against the past. The future has to be against the past.So was the case with Jesus: he was the crescendo of Jewish consciousness, he was the ultimate flower of the whole Jewish history. But because he was the ultimate flower, he had to reject many things. He had to rebel against Jewish lethargy, the Jewish past, Jewish prophets. And the Jew feels very hurt.It is like… I was born in a Jaina family. Now, the most difficult thing for the Jaina is to accept me. It is not so difficult for a Christian, for a Jew, for a Hindu. The most difficult thing is for the Jaina to accept me because he has involvements with me. He was hoping that I would confirm his past. He was expecting that I would go to the world and spread the message of Mahavira. Then he would have been happy. But now I have my own message, his expectations are destroyed. And not only my own message; I have a thousand and one things to say against the Jaina tradition – that hurts.So here it is very rare to find a Jaina. You can see it. You will not find many Indians here, because to them too I am close, and it hurts. But for the non-Indian it is not a problem. In the first place the Jew has no expectations of me, so there is no involvement. He is not expecting anything from me. He comes to me with an open heart, without any prejudice. He wants to understand me, he does not want to manipulate me. The Jaina wants to manipulate me and because of the expectation, the frustration, there is difficulty.The Jews were waiting for the Messiah for thousands of years. They were hoping the Messiah would come and would fulfill all their desires. The Messiah would come and would prove that they were the chosen people of God. “The Messiah will come, and that will bring a Jewish era in the world.”And then comes Jesus and all the hopes are destroyed forever. After Jesus, the possibility of the world turning into a Jewish world has become impossible. After Jesus, the chosen people are no longer chosen. After Jesus, Christians have become the chosen people of God. The Jews were hoping that Jesus would give them more consolidation, and he started to uproot them. He had to uproot – that is the only way to bring the future in. The past has to be destroyed, the old has to be destroyed to give birth to the new. The known has to be thrown out – that is the only way to invite the unknown.Naturally, Jews were very offended. They were very offended by Jesus. And then, because of Jesus, Jews have been in misery for these two thousand years: Christians have been torturing them, killing them, murdering them. All that the Christians have done in these two thousand years provokes again and again a great enmity toward Jesus.So the first thing to be understood is that is very easy to accept a stranger. Jesus says two things again and again. One: “Love your neighbor,” and another: “Love your enemy.” And my feeling is that both are the same – the neighbor is the enemy. It is the most difficult thing in life to love your neighbor. It is very easy to love a stranger. You meet a certain man or a woman on the train. You don’t know anything about him, he does not know anything about you. And how open you become! Within minutes of being introduced, you are saying things to each other that you have not even said to your beloved. Nothing is involved; the next station will come and he will get down and disappear forever, you will never see him again. You can be open with him, you can be true with him. Have you not observed this? With strangers you start confessing things that you dare not confess to anybody you are related with, because then there is danger. There is no danger with a stranger.So when a Jew comes across Buddha, it is very easy to understand, because there is no prejudice, no presupposition. Your being a Jew does not become a hindrance with Buddha. He is so far away, so unrelated. He was not against Moses, he was not against Abraham, he was not against David; he is not related to Jewish history at all – alien, a foreigner. You can accept him as a guest.But Jesus… Jesus is not alien to you. He was born into your family, and then he started destroying the very house. Then he started to destroy the very temple that you and your ancients had always worshipped in, although he says, “I have come not to destroy, but to fulfill.” But to fulfill, he has to destroy. The old has to be dismantled, the old has to be completely effaced from the earth; only then can the new temple be built.So the name of Jesus hurts. You cannot forgive Jesus yet; it is impossible to forgive unless you drop your Jewish conditioning. Then there will be no problem; then Jesus will be as comprehensible as Buddha or Krishna. The problem is coming from your Jewish conditioning, the problem is not coming from Jesus. The problem is in you, not in the New Testament.You say, “Since I have been with you I have come to know Jesus in a new light.” Yes, through me it will be easier because I am not a Jew. Through me, Jesus becomes non-Jewish. The way I interpret him is the way I would like to interpret Buddha, Patanjali, Shankara. The way I interpret Jesus has nothing to do with the Jewish mind. Then you can start looking at Jesus in a new light because I am throwing a new light on him. In my light he starts changing; he is no longer Jewish. I don’t put him in the context of the Jewish mind – I cannot because I am not a Jew. You will find it easier, far easier, to approach Jesus through me, because through me Jesus is no longer a Jew.“Since I have been with you I have come to know Jesus in a new light. As a Jew I could never accept his teachings.” It is not that you could not accept his teaching, it is the Jew within you. The Jew has to be dropped. And when I say the Jew has to be dropped, I am saying the Hindu has to be dropped, the Buddhist has to be dropped, the Mohammedan has to be dropped. Then your eyes will be open, then you will have a clarity, a transparency to your vision. You will be able to see through and through, and things will come into a totally new context. And then Jesus will look beautiful. He was one of the most beautiful persons to have walked on the earth.But, it is unfortunate: Jews missed him just the way Buddha was missed by the Hindus. It has always been the tragedy. It is very difficult for a Hindu to understand Buddha. The very name and antagonism arises because he said things which are against the Vedas. He said things which are against the brahmins, he said things which are against the code of Manu. He said things – not only said, but he started creating a new society; he created a non-Hindu world. He created a world where there would be no distinction between the sudra, the untouchable, and the brahmin, the high priest. He created a world which would be classless, with nobody inferior, nobody superior. He started putting down foundations for an utterly new society. The Hindus were angry; they destroyed Buddhism.Do you know that Buddhism no longer exists in India? Buddha is almost a foreigner. He is loved in China, in Tibet, in Japan, in Sri Lanka, in Thailand. The whole of Asia is Buddhist except for India; he was born in India and he is no longer here. What happened? The Hindus took revenge: they destroyed… And remember, their destruction was far cleverer than the Jewish destruction of Jesus – because the Jews killed Jesus, and that is where they committed a great mistake. The Hindus didn’t kill Buddha, they are a far cleverer people. They didn’t kill Buddha, but they killed Buddhism.The Jews killed Jesus, but because they killed Jesus, they made Jesus so important, so significant – the very center of human history – because of the crucifixion. If they had neglected Jesus there would have been no Christianity. You cannot conceive of Christianity without the crucifixion, or can you? If Jesus was not killed, was ignored, and people were not worried about what he was saying, he would have disappeared without leaving a mark; not even a trace would have been there. But because he was killed, because he was raised on a cross, he became very, very significant. The death became the seal. When he was killed it proved that he had something very significant to say, otherwise why kill him?The Hindus are cleverer. They didn’t kill Buddha; on the contrary, they accepted Buddha as one of the incarnations of God. I would like you to know the story of how they manipulated the whole thing. They were against Buddha, they were against his ideas, against his revolution, but they accepted Buddha as an incarnation of God. Just as Rama is an incarnation, Krishna is an incarnation, Buddha is also an incarnation. But they played a trick with it.The story is that God made the world, he made heaven and hell. Then millions of years passed and nobody went to hell because nobody was committing sin. People were pious, simple, innocent. Everybody would die and would go directly to heaven. And what about the management which was looking after hell: the Devil, and the Devil’s disciples, the mini-devils, and the whole government? They became very tired, bored. Not a single entry! And they were sitting there in their offices, at their doors with their registers and files, and nobody was coming.The Hindu story is…The Devil’s disciples went to God, and they prayed, “What is the point? Close this thing completely. Nobody has ever come for millions of years. We are tired; we are bored. Either send people, give us work and occupation, or close this thing.”Their problem was real, and God pondered over it. And he said, “Don’t be worried. Soon I will be born as Gautam Buddha, and I will corrupt people’s minds, and they will start going to hell.”You see the point? “I will corrupt people’s minds. I will manage to confuse them, and once they are confused, hell will be overflowing.” And that’s exactly what it has been. Hindus say that since Buddha, hell is overcrowded. God has to come in the form of Buddha just to help the hell management.Now they have done two things. One: they have accepted Buddha as God’s incarnation, and also they have rejected his teaching because the teaching is a corruption; it is to corrupt. “To be a Buddhist is to be corrupted. To be a Buddhist is a guarantee for going to hell. So pay respect to the Buddha because he is an incarnation of God, but never listen to what he says. Never follow him. Be watchful, be alert!” They did the same with Mahavira; they ignored Mahavira. Not even the name of Mahavira is mentioned in any Hindu scripture. Such a potential being, such a powerful being, such a magnetic personality – and not even the name is mentioned. They ignored him; they played another trick: just to ignore him.The Jews crucified Jesus and committed a grave mistake. They made Jesus very important. I am not saying that he was not an important man, he was, he was absolutely important. But if they had ignored him, there would have been no Christianity. Because they killed Jesus, Christianity took revenge – with vengeance! Down the ages, for two thousand years, Christians have been killing Jews in one way or another.And the wound remains open. You cannot forgive Jesus. In fact, you cannot forgive yourself that you crucified this man. It has been the gravest error. Now there is no way to undo it. It is the Jew within you that will not allow you to understand Jesus.You say: “As a Jew I could never accept his teachings.” His teachings are nothing but the flowering of the Jewish tradition. The Jewish tradition has come of age in Jesus. It is the fulfillment of all the Jewish desires, ambitions and longings. It is the fulfillment of Moses.But certainly the root of a tree looks different from the flower of the tree. They don’t look alike. The root is ugly; the root is not beautiful. To be beautiful is not its function. Its function is something totally different: to nourish the tree, to nourish the leaves, the foliage, the fruits, the flower. And it hides underneath the ground, it doesn’t come up, it doesn’t show up. It remains there hidden underneath the ground and goes on working there. If you have seen a roseflower, and then you dig for the roots and put the roots by the side of the flower, you will be surprised. There seems to be no relationship. And yet, I say to you, the flower is the fulfillment of the root. And the root has existed for the flower, and without the flower the root was meaningless. Its existence would have been sheer wastage.So is the case with Moses and Jesus. Moses functions like the root. Of course his statements are not as beautiful as Jesus’ – they cannot be, his function is different: he is the lawgiver. He gives a pattern, a discipline, a code to the society. He makes the primitive society into a civilized society. He changes the primitive mind, the crude mind, into a more sophisticated, cultured mind. Because only in that cultured mind, the egoist mind, can Jesus be possible. The third mind arises out of Moses. Jews have become very egoistic: the chosen people of the world, God’s special people. A special covenant has happened between God and the Jews; they are not ordinary people. They have God’s book, and they are his representatives on the earth.This ego was given by Moses. Only through this ego can the mind evolve. Yes, one day the ego has to be dropped, but you can drop it only when you have it. If you don’t have it, it cannot be dropped. The dropping is utterly beautiful, but the dropping is possible only when you have it. And you have to have it so much that it becomes anguish and you have to drop it. Moses gives the ego, the definition, the identity to the people. And then comes Jesus as a fulfillment and he wants you to surrender, he wants you to drop the ego. He gives you love. Moses gives you law. And they are different, they are really different.In many ways they are opposite. Love is beyond law, and when love is there, no law is needed. So whenever Jesus says, “It has been told to you of old that you take an eye for an eye; and if somebody throws a brick at you, you have to throw a rock at him – this is justice. But I say unto you ‘Love your enemy. Love those who hate you and persecute you. And if somebody hits you on your face, give him the other side too. And if somebody takes your coat, give him the shirt too. And if somebody forces you to carry his load and burden for one mile, go for two miles with him.’”Now, this is different, utterly different, a new vision. But this new vision is possible only because Moses has cleared the ground. Moses has gone underneath as the root, and now Jesus comes as a roseflower. He looks different, he looks opposite. Do you know? Roots go downward and the flowers go upward. They are opposites. Their dimension is different, their direction is different. Roots go downward, deeper into the earth in search of more water. And the flower goes upward in search of light, more sun, more air. They go diametrically opposite. To understand that they are one, needs great clarity. To understand that Moses and Jesus are one, needs meditation. To understand that the Vedas and buddhas are one needs insight, great insight – a radical change in your mind.You say: “As a Jew I could never accept his teachings.” It is your Jew, not you. You can understand, but the Jew cannot understand. The Jew is the one who has killed Jesus – how can he understand? If the Jew understands Jesus, then there will be great repentance, and he will never be able to forgive himself, because he has killed. So the Jew has something like an investment in not understanding Jesus. If the Jew understands Jesus then how will you be able to forgive yourself? You will not be able to forgive yourself and your forefathers. Then your whole tradition will be condemned, your whole heritage will be criminal. This is too much!Just for one man, this fragile-looking Jesus… Just for one man you cannot condemn your whole race and five thousand years of existence. It is better to condemn this man and accept your heritage: a five-thousand-year-old race, rich history, meaningful incidents. That’s how it goes on in the mind. You cannot understand Jesus because there is great investment in not understanding him. And the conditioning goes very deep. The conditioning becomes your blood, your bone, your marrow.The other day I was reading an anecdote…Schwartz and Pincus, complete strangers, were sitting across from each other, nude, in the steam room.“I never met you before,” said Schwartz, “and yet I’ll bet you were born in Brooklyn.”“That’s right!” said Pincus.“In fact,” said Schwartz, to his naked companion, “you’re from my old neighborhood, Bensonhurst, and you went to the Seventy-ninth Street Synagogue, and your rabbi was Nathan Nussbaum.”“Amazing!” said Pincus. “You can tell all that just by looking at me?”“Of course,” said Schwartz, “Rabbi Nussbaum always did cut on the bias.”It goes deep. It goes into the blood, into the bones, into the marrow. You are not brought up as a man. You are brought up as a Jew, as a Hindu, as a Christian. You don’t know who you are. You know only your conditioning, you know only the mind that has been put inside you from the outside. And that mind won’t allow you to understand Jesus. That mind will have to be dropped.“Never before did I think of him as an enlightened being, as I think about the Buddha.” It is easier. You can open yourself for Buddha. He has not uttered a single word against the Jews, so you can open yourself toward him. He does not hurt your ego in any way. In fact, you can enjoy him very much because he is so much against the Hindu scriptures.“When I first came in contact with Buddhist teaching in Nepal, I felt an immediate affinity toward it.” And they are the same. Jesus had come to India and had lived in a Buddhist monastery, Nalanda. In fact, Jesus’ whole teaching is more Buddhist than anything else. The language is different, he talks like a Jew, but the message is the same. But for that you will have to be really unprejudiced. It is good that at least you can understand Buddha and love Buddha. Love Buddha, go deeply into Buddha, and soon you will be surprised that from this understanding you will be able to learn much about Jesus too.If you can love one enlightened person, sooner or later you will understand all the enlightened persons of the world because their taste is the same. Languages differ, their words are different. Buddha speaks a totally different language – naturally, he was talking to a different kind of people. And Jesus was talking to a different kind of people. Jesus had to speak the language of those people. Wherever Buddha says truth, Jesus says kingdom of God, but they mean the same. Wherever Buddha says, “Be a nobody. Drop the ego. Anatta, be a no-self,” Jesus cannot say that because nobody will understand. He says, “Drop your will, surrender your will to God’s will.”Buddha never speaks about God. Jesus brings God in – but the strategy is the same. Whether you drop your will just by looking into it and into the misery of it, or you surrender it to a certain God who is there – Jesus says “My Father in heaven,” and that father in heaven is just an excuse – the whole point is to drop the ego, to drop your will. Once the will is dropped you become one with the whole. Whether God exists or not does not matter. But Jesus had to speak in a Jewish world, in the Jewish way, in the Jewish language, and he had to use the metaphors, the parables of the Jews. Otherwise, he is a buddha.“Here now in Pune, Jesus’ sayings are becoming comprehensible and acceptable. Yet still doubts persist.” They will persist while the Jew persists in you. Just as the Jew cannot understand Jesus, so the Christian cannot understand Moses. Only a man who has no ideas, who is simply like a mirror, can understand everybody and can become very much enriched by it.If you can understand Buddha, and Jesus and Moses and Mohammed and Mahavira and Zarathustra and Lao Tzu, your richness is growing. Lao Tzu will bring a new breeze into your being which only he can bring because he opens a door which nobody else can open. He is a master, a master technician. He knows how to open a certain door, and at that door nobody else is more skillful than him. Zarathustra opens another door into your being. And your being is big, enormous! It is not finished with one door. You can have millions of doors in your being, when you come into each door you have a new taste, a new vision; a new treasure becomes available to you.Now people are unnecessarily poor. When I see a Christian, I see a poor man. When I see a Hindu, I see a poor man. When I see a Jew, I feel great compassion. Why be so poor? Why not claim the whole history of man? Why not claim all the enlightened people as yours? That’s my work here. That’s why one day I speak on Buddha, another day on Jesus, another day on Lao Tzu – I go on changing. My effort here is to make you enriched, to make you available to all the joys possible in the spiritual world, to make you capable of all kinds of ecstasies. Yes, Buddha brings one kind of ecstasy: the ecstasy that comes through intelligence. And Jesus brings another kind of ecstasy: the ecstasy that comes through love. Krishna brings another kind of ecstasy: the ecstasy that comes through action. And Lao Tzu brings another kind of ecstasy: the ecstasy that comes through inaction. These are very different paths, but they all come into you, and they all meet you in your innermost core.Be simply a man, a human being, with no Jewish, Christian, Hindu ideologies hanging around you. Drop all that dust and let your mirror be clear, and you will be in continuous celebration because then the whole existence is yours. Why go on worshipping one flower when all the flowers can be yours? And why go on putting only one flower in your garden, when all the flowers of the world can flower there? Why not be rich? Why have you decided to be poor?“Yet still doubts persist. Why did he say it all in such a roundabout way?” No, he has not said anything in a roundabout way – it is just that in two thousand years the languages have changed. Now, one thing has to be understood: Buddha’s language is still modern for a certain reason, because Buddha was so logical, so rational. His approach is of intelligence. The world can still understand him; the world is still becoming intelligent, still becoming rational. In fact, science and the explosion of science have made people more capable than ever of understanding Buddha. That’s why Buddha has a certain appeal for the modern mind. Buddha is very contemporary. He talks with logic, with rationality, with utter intelligence, the way that intelligence can understand. The world has become more intelligent, so Buddha has a certain affinity.But Jesus has fallen very far back for a certain reason: the world has grown into logic; the world has not grown into love. That is the trouble. That’s why Jesus looks roundabout, because the language of love has disappeared from the world. Love? Yes, it creates a sound in the ear, but no meaning.I have heard…Two hippies were sitting in front of a church, just outside in the garden. And then the ambulance came and the priest was brought out on a stretcher. And those two hippies were sitting there for hours, just sitting there, doing nothing. They suddenly became alive, and one hippie asked the other, “What’s the matter? What happened to this priest?”And the other hippie said, “They say he slipped in his bathtub and has broken his leg.”The first one brooded for a while and then said, “What’s a bathtub?”The second hippie said, “How am I supposed to know? I am not a Catholic.”Now, a hippie is a hippie. He may never have been in a bathtub. That word is meaningless. He says, “How am I supposed to know? I am not a Catholic.” As if a bathtub has something to do with Catholicism.It depends. Jesus’ language is no longer relevant because man has fallen very far away from his heart. He is more in the head, and there, Buddha is the master. Buddha is the supreme master there, the incomparable master there. If you want to argue, then Buddha is the right person to convince you. He will never say a single thing which cannot be proved logically – not that he remains confined to logic, he goes beyond it, but he goes through it. He takes you to the very end of logic and then helps you to jump out of it – but he is never against logic. He goes beyond logic, but he is never against logic. You can walk with him with perfect ease, he will not create any trouble for you. He will not talk about the “Father who is in heaven.” You cannot say to Buddha that this is father-fixation – he never talks about the Father. Freud can walk with him perfectly at ease, so can Marx; there is no trouble. Einstein can have a good conversation with him, and there will be no conflict.But with Jesus it is difficult. He bypasses logic. He is illogical. Love is illogical. Only lovers can understand his language, otherwise it will look very roundabout. Have you listened to lovers talking to each other? It looks very roundabout what they are saying. To a rational person it looks absurd. And they go roundabout and roundabout. And one who is not in love will simply be bored: “What are they doing? Why do they go all ‘gaga’ – why not be pertinent, to the point? If you want to go to bed with the woman why not simply say, ‘I want to go to bed with you’? Why talk about the stars and the moons and the flowers, and poetry, and all that nonsense – and finally you go to bed? So why not jump directly? This looks very roundabout: ‘I love you’ and looking into each other’s eyes – for what? Come to the point! Be direct!” To the logical person that will be the right thing.Yes, Jesus is roundabout, but he is roundabout because you have forgotten the language of love. He speaks in parables, he speaks in stories, he speaks in metaphors. He is metaphoric because he is poetic. In fact, no comparison exists. Jesus’ words are so potent, so full of love, so full of poetry that no comparison exists. I have not come across such potent words. Buddha’s words are very balanced, direct, mathematical; he never exaggerates. Jesus’ words are overflowing; exaggeration is not the exception there, but the rule. Love exaggerates because love has enthusiasm, because love has zest, gusto, and love speaks in metaphors because love is a poetic approach toward reality.“Why did he say it all in such a roundabout way, especially considering that he was talking to the common people?” Yes, that’s why, precisely that’s why – because he was talking to the common people. And common people are the people who can understand love more easily than logic. He knew how to communicate with the common people.The common people have always known the language of love. The common people can understand Shakespeare very easily. They cannot understand Albert Einstein that easily. It is said that while Albert Einstein was alive, only a dozen people in the whole world were capable of understanding him rightly. Of course, he speaks very mathematically, he is very particular, he never goes roundabout. But only a dozen people capable of understanding him? What is the matter?Down the ages love poetry has been understood by everybody; even the primitive person understands love poetry, understands the song, the music. Absolutely unsophisticated, not knowing anything of philosophy, but he can understand tears and laughter, and can understand a dance, a song, can understand the whispering of two lovers.Jesus speaks to the common people. He is not a philosopher. That’s why he speaks in metaphors, in parables. A parable is a beautiful way of saying tremendous truths, because a parable can be understood on many levels. A parable can be understood by a child; he will understand it on his level. The parable can be understood by an ordinary man; he will understand it on his level. The parable can be understood by a philosopher, by a logician, by a poet, by a very cultured person, by a wise man. They will all understand on their own levels. The parable can easily have as many meanings as there are people trying to understand it.Mathematics has one meaning: two plus two is four. There are no other levels in it. It is simple, direct. The metaphoric language has many levels, and that is the beauty of Jesus’ sayings. Read those sayings today, and mark which sayings appeal to you. Then meditate for a few months, and read them again. And you will be surprised: now the meaning has changed. Now you don’t mark and underline the same lines, now you choose something else to mark. Something else has become important. Meditate for a few months more, and then go to the Bible. And you will be surprised again and again. And that is so with the Gita, and that is so with the Koran, because they are all metaphorical treatises. One can go on reading them again and again – they are never exhausted.You cannot read a logical treatise again and again. Once understood it is finished, then there is nothing else in it. If you have understood Albert Einstein’s treatise on the theory of relativity, once understood it is finished. Now you cannot go on reading into it, there is nothing else.But you can go on reading Jesus’ sayings every day – morning, evening – and always there is something new coming up, something new surfacing, because you are changing and your insight is growing deeper. Your life experience is becoming more mature, you will be able to see more every day. Because you grow, the scripture will grow with you: it can go as deep as you can go. And for lives together one can go on and on. It has an eternal quality to it, endlessness, and a depth which knows no bottom. It is abysmal.“It doesn’t make any sense to me, and I won’t feel completely at ease with Jesus as I do with the Buddha, until this question is resolved.” It is not only a question to be resolved, it is an insight to be evolved. You have to see the point that it is the Jew that is disturbing you. Drop the Jew and then look again, and you will find great harmony arising between you and Jesus. And I am not saying become a Christian. If you become a Christian – you drop being a Jew and become a Christian – then you simply change your disease. Then you have fallen from one disease into another, from one prison you have moved into another prison. Maybe while you are changing from one prison to another, for a few moments or a few hours in between you will be under the open sky, that’s all. Sooner or later you will be in another prison, and again the same misery will start.Never be a prisoner to any mind. And all minds are prisons. Beware of the mind and remain always above the mind. Remain always unprejudiced, remain without an ideology, and then the whole world and the whole world’s treasures are yours.The second question:Osho,Does a master's responsibility toward his disciples cease upon the physical death of the master? What did Jesus mean when he said, “And know that I am with you always, until the end of the world”? With this assurance then, how come the infant church received Paul instead of Peter, whom Jesus appointed as the head of the church?The first thing about the question: a master has no responsibility at all – responsibility as you understand the word. He is responsible, but he has no responsibility at all, it is not a duty. Duty becomes a burden, duty becomes a tension, duty creates concern, anxiety. A master has no responsibility, although he is responsible. The difference is great. When I say he is responsible, it simply means he is loving, he is compassionate. If you ask for help, the help will be given. But he has not taken it on his shoulders that he has to redeem you somehow. It has not become a burden on him that you have to be redeemed. It is not his anxiety.He is available. If you ask, it shall be given; if you knock, the door shall be opened unto you; if you seek, you will find. If you are ready to partake, the master will pour his whole being into you. But it is not a kind of responsibility. He is not a missionary. He is not after you. He is not bent upon redeeming you. That’s why I say he has no responsibility. He is responsive. Whenever you are ready to take, you will always find him ready to give.But there is no anxiety in his mind. If you decide to be ignorant it is perfectly your freedom. If you decide to remain in the world, if you decide to remain in the imprisonment, it’s perfectly your choice. It is not his ambition to free you. Nobody can free you against your own will; only you can free yourself. Yes, you can partake of all kinds of help that a master makes available…So the first thing: “Does a master’s responsibility toward his disciples cease upon the physical death of the master?” Even while he was alive he was not burdened by any responsibility. But the disciple’s mind always creates such kinds of bondages. The disciple would like the master to be responsible so that the master becomes answerable, so that the disciple can claim: “If I am not redeemed yet, you are responsible!” This is a trick of the disciple to protect himself and to throw the responsibility on the master’s head. And then you can go on living the way you want to live because what else can you do? You have accepted Jesus as your master, now it is his responsibility.This is not the way to become free. This is not the way toward nirvana or moksha. This is not the way toward liberation. You are playing tricks even with your master. And the disciple would like that the master remain in a kind of contract – even when he is dead he has to look after you. And what have you done? What have you done on your part? You have not done anything. In fact, you are trying to do everything to hinder, to obstruct. You are clinging to the prison, and the responsibility is the master’s. Don’t befool yourself.The question is from Chintana. She has been a nun and that mind goes on lingering around her. Christians have done that. Millions of Christians are thinking in their minds that they can do all kinds of things, whatsoever they want, and finally Jesus is going to redeem them. On the Day of Judgment he will be standing there, and he will call to all his Christians, “These are my children. Come and stand behind me.” And all the Christians will be standing behind Christ and will enter heaven with flying flags. And obviously all others will go to hell. Those who are not with Christ will go to hell.That is everybody’s idea. The Mohammedan thinks the same: only those who are Mohammedans will be saved – the prophet will come and save them. These are stupid ideas. If you go on living the way you are living, nobody can save you – no Jesus, no Mohammed.You will have to change your quality of life, you will have to change your vision, and then you are saved. You can learn the art of changing your vision from Jesus, from Mohammed, from Krishna, from Buddha; from any source you can learn how to change your vision. But you will have to learn the art and you will have to practice the art. Nobody else is going to transform you – nobody can do that. And it is beautiful that nobody can do it. If it were possible for somebody to transform your being, then you would have been a thing, not a person. Then you wouldn’t have any soul.That is the difference: a thing can be made. You can make furniture out of wood, you can make a statue out of stone, but you cannot make a soul out of a man. You cannot create enlightenment out of a man. If somebody from the outside can do it, that will be very insulting; it will be below human dignity. And what kind of freedom will it be which has been created by somebody else? If that somebody else changes his mind, then he can create your slavery again. It won’t be much of a freedom. Freedom is freedom only when you have attained it.So the first thing to be understood is, learn from Jesus, learn from me, learn from any other source that appeals to you. But remember, you are responsible for your life, nobody else is responsible. And don’t go on befooling and kidding yourself. Don’t go on believing in such beautiful dreams and consolations.“Does a master’s responsibility toward his disciples cease upon the physical death of the master?” In the first place there has never been a responsibility. The master was sharing – not out of responsibility but out of compassion. He was sharing because he had so much that he had to share. He was not obliging you; he was sharing just as a flower shares its fragrance to the winds – what else can it do? Just like a rain cloud shares its rains with the earth – what else can it do? When a master has come home, has become full of light and fragrance, he has to share it. But it is not a responsibility. That word responsibility is not a beautiful word; it is not some kind of duty that he is fulfilling, it is his joy to share.Don’t throw your responsibility on anybody. Remain responsible for yourself, otherwise you will become lethargic, lousy, and you will become dull and dead. You will lose your vitality because then you will be simply waiting. The Last Judgment Day will come and Jesus will save you. You have turned your whole life into an ugly affair.Transform yourself. Learn from any source that appeals to you. Learn from all the sources. Become as rich as possible but change your life, transform your life, and don’t wait for the Day of Judgment. There is no Day of Judgment. Each moment is the moment of judgment. Each moment we are facing our God because each moment we are living our lives. Let each moment be decisive. Let it be lived with art, awareness, skill.“What did Jesus mean when he said, ‘And know that I am with you always until the end of the world’?” He was perfectly right. He is with you until the end of the world, but are you with him? That is the point. The sun is there, and it is always there, but if you are sitting with closed eyes, what does it matter whether the sun is there or not? You can sit inside your room with all the windows and doors closed, with a blindfold on your eyes – you will be living in darkness. When Jesus says, “Know that I am with you always until the end of the world,” he is simply saying, “Whenever you want, you can partake of me. I am available.”Once a being has become enlightened he is available forever. Forever! Because he has become part of foreverness, he has become part of eternity, he has become part of existence. Where can he go?Raman Maharshi was dying, and somebody started crying and asked, “Bhagwan, are you really leaving us? Will you leave us?”Raman opened his eyes and he said, “What nonsense you are talking! Where can I go?” And closed his eyes and died.The last words were: “Where can I go? I will be here!” Raman has become part of that foreverness. Where can he go? He is part of eternity – nowness. If you are available you can drink of him. His fountain is flowing there.But don’t think in terms of the law and the courts, don’t think in terms that when you go to God you will make him feel guilty. You will say: “Look at this man Jesus. He has said that he will live forever with us, and we were stumbling in darkness and he never came. We were committing this and that and he never came to stop us. We did many wrong things and he never prevented us.”No, he cannot prevent you, he cannot change you. He is just like the sun, the light. Open your eyes and it is there, close your eyes and it is not there. And when Jesus says: “I will be there forever with you,” he does not mean: “I will be there in opposition to Buddha, I will be there in opposition to Krishna, I will be there in opposition to Moses.” No he simply means: “I will be there as part of Buddha, Krishna, Moses, Zarathustra.” They have all disappeared as persons, they have become oneness.“With this assurance then, how come the infant church received Paul instead of Peter, whom Jesus appointed as the head of the church?” I have never said that he appointed Peter as head of the church. He had simply said, “You will be the foundation,” not the head. He was not creating an organization. He was not making Peter the head, the boss, the chief, the chairman, no. He was simply saying, “Peter, I call you Peter.” Peter means rock. “I call you Peter because you are rock-like, because you have attained to that consciousness which is rock-like. If on that consciousness one makes one’s house, it remains forever. Be the foundation.” He is simply saying in a metaphor: “Let awareness be the foundation of my church.”But, a nun is a nun, Even if she is an ex-nun, even if she has become a sannyasin, that past is there. Head of the church…! Peter was not the head. He was not meant to be the head, he was meant to be the foundation. A foundation disappears into the earth like roots. You cannot see the foundation – the foundation is invisible. So is awareness invisible.And you ask, “Then how did it happen?” The question is a complaint. She is saying: “Christ says, ‘I will be with you, and I will remain responsible,’ then how come he didn’t help his own church, the infant church, and allowed Paul to dominate it, instead of making Peter the head of it? Where is he, and what is he doing?”He has committed a breach. He has betrayed, he has not been true to his word. He has not even helped his own church – and the church was infant. That’s why she makes it clear: “infant church” – helpless. His help was needed!“With this assurance then, how come the infant church received Paul instead of Peter whom Jesus appointed as the head of the church?” Paul was a politician and politicians dominate everything. Paul was a dangerous fellow, murderous. First he was trying to destroy Christianity – he was against Jesus, the arch-enemy – he was going to the Holy Land to persecute Christians. And then, on the road toward the Holy Land, the miracle happened that he heard the voice of Jesus calling him: “Why? Why do you persecute me? What have I done to you?”It came from his own unconscious. Let it be clear. It was not coming from Jesus. Jesus had never asked, even of the real persecutors who were persecuting him when he was alive, “Why do you persecute me?” He wouldn’t come to Paul to say this on that lonely road. It was his own unconscious because his conscious was full of hatred for Jesus, because he was full of enmity, jealousy, anger, rage.The unconscious is always against the conscious; they move like polar opposites. If you love a man through the conscious, you hate the man through the unconscious. That’s why you love and hate the same man, the same woman. In the conscious, he was full of hatred, but in the unconscious there must have been love, because only then could the hatred exist. They exist together. Love never exists alone, and so hate never exists alone; they always exist together. If you ask psychoanalysts, they say, “Love-hate is one relationship.” Lovehate is one word. Even the hyphen that joins them is not needed; they are one word. From one side it is love, from the other side it is hate.So in the conscious there was hate, in the unconscious was love. And when the hate was too much, extreme… The swing of the pendulum to the other side, and his unconscious asked, “Why? Why are you persecuting me?” The unconscious became the voice of Jesus.He fell on the ground; he could not believe it. This was a miracle, and he was converted by this miracle. He turned and became a Christian. But he remained the same person. First he was trying to persecute Christians, then he started putting his energy into converting people to Christianity – but the same energy, the same aggression. First he is there to destroy Christianity, now he is there to create Christianity. It is the same man.And another miracle happened: he became a Christian and destroyed Christianity by becoming a Christian. He created the church – that was the best way to destroy it. If he had been on the same road and if he had remained the same person, hateful against Christ, there would not have been so much harm. Because this aggressive man, this violent man became a Christian and became a missionary, he started converting people and changed the whole quality of Christianity. Christianity is no longer related to Christ. It is Pauline – it is related to Paul!Chintana is asking, “Why didn’t Jesus interfere?” Jesus never interferes. Buddha, Krishna or people like them never interfere. They give you total freedom. They give you as much freedom as God gives you. God never interferes. Even if you are going against God, he does not interfere. He can easily interfere – he can stop your breathing. When you are going to steal, he can stop your breathing: come home and you breathe again. Go to steal and it stops. You are going to murder somebody and you stop breathing. God can do that but he never does it; he never interferes.Freedom is respected. If people wanted to create a church, if people wanted to create a church which goes against Jesus, then let it be so – that is their own decision. If people want a Christianity like this, then let them have it. If they don’t want to choose the right, they have the choice to choose the wrong. Freedom is the ultimate value.The third question:Osho,Why is there so much hurry in the West while the East seems to be so relaxed?Different time orientation! The East thinks in terms of eternity, in terms of many, many lives, incarnation after incarnation, one after another. The time span is very big, so there is no hurry. In the West the time span is very small, so there is hurry – only one life. Only one life? And life is slipping by; it is going down the drain. If you live sixty years, twenty years will be lost in sleep; twenty years will be lost in some stupid job; fifteen years will be lost eating, defecating and things like that – what is left? And whatsoever is left will be lost sitting before a TV – finished! Fear arises, one becomes very frightened. Something has to be done before it disappears: there is a great, hectic hurry! The East thinks in a very, very infinite span: one life after another, the wheel of life goes on moving. If you miss in this life, there is no worry; you can do it in the next life – when you are here next time round. There is no hurry, so the East moves very slowly.I have heard…A surgeon was telling his patient: “Here we believe in getting the patient on his feet as soon as possible after the operation. So, the very first day I want you to get out of bed and walk around your room for five minutes. The second day you’ll walk ten minutes. On the third day you must walk around for a full hour. Okay? Any questions?”“Yes, Doc,” pleaded the patient, “Do you mind if I lie down for the operation?”This must have happened somewhere in America. The East has a different vision, attitude.I have heard…An American was going from Delhi airport to Delhi city. The taxi was moving so slowly and he was getting very worked up; he was becoming very restless: so much time lost. So he asked the cabdriver, “Can’t you go a little faster?”And the cabdriver, the sardarji, said, “Yes, I can, but I am not allowed to leave the cab.”It is different in the East. Nobody is in a hurry. The whole thing depends on the time orientation. The Western religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam are all offshoots of Judaism – they all believe that there is only one life. That has created the trouble. The Eastern religions, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, are all offshoots of Hinduism – they all believe there are many, many lives to live. Many you have lived, many you will be living. There is no hurry; infinite time is available. You can go as slowly as you want. In fact, there are only two religions: Judaism and Hinduism, only two standpoints.Christianity and Islam are offshoots, and so are Jainism and Buddhism. The basic difference is in their time concept. Both concepts have something good about them and something bad too. The West has become very tense. Great anxiety, fear – the anxiety of “Am I am going to make it or not?” because this is the only time. So the West is very ill with anxiety and the East has become very slow, dull, lazy. Nobody seems to be interested in doing anything. “Why worry? Next time… We can wait.”The West has become very rich because something has to be done right now! And they have been doing many things. The East has become very poor because with such a time span you cannot be very rich. Both have their good points and both have their bad points. Something new is needed – something more like a synthesis, something which makes you very much alive to the moment, very active, alive, vital, and yet does not create tension in you. Both the visions have failed because they are half-half. Something better is needed.An earthworm meets a centipede. “How are you?” inquires the earthworm.“Not so good,” sighs the centipede. “My feet won’t do as much as they used to. You are lucky you don’t have any.”“Ah,” sighed the earthworm, “if you had my slipped discs, you wouldn’t talk like that.”And that’s how things are. The West has suffered, the East has suffered – both have suffered. Now that they have come very close there is a possibility of a third attitude. The West lives with the idea of one life; the East lives with the idea of many lives. One has a small time span; another has a big time span. But both are time orientations.My vision is: live in eternity – neither one nor many. Live in eternity. And the only way to live in eternity is to live now because now is part of eternity. Don’t live in the future. If you have a big future you will become lethargic, poor. If you have a small future then you will become very restless – rich, but very anxiety-ridden. Forget it! The future has no meaning; it is eternity, not one life, not many lives. We have always been here and we will always be here, so there is no need to worry about it. Now the only thing is how to live in this moment. We are not going anywhere. Remember Raman: “Where can I go?” We are not going anywhere. We are part of this existence, we will be here. Nothing is ever destroyed, all remains. Only forms change.But to live, there is only one way: to live this moment now and here. And live relaxedly because there is no hurry. Time is never going to be finished. You cannot finish it, so live totally in the now, and live relaxedly, because there is no end to time.The last question:Osho,Why was Jesus not born in America?They could not find three wise men there.Enough for today.

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I Say Unto You Vol 1 01-10Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 1 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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John 4Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar,near to the parcel of groundthat Jacob gave to his son Joseph.Now Jacob’s well was there.Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey,sat thus on the well:and it was about the sixth hour.There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water:Jesus saith unto her, give me to drink.(For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.)Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him,How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me,which am a woman of Samaria?For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.Jesus answered and said unto her,If thou knewest the gift of God,and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink;thou wouldest have asked of him,and would have given thee living water.The woman saith unto him,Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with,and the well is deep:from whence then has thou that living water?Art thou greater than our father Jacob,which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself,and his children, and his cattle?Jesus answered and said unto her,Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give himshall never thirst;but the water that I shall give himshall be in hima well of water springing up into everlasting life.Man’s consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg; otherwise his whole being is drowned in darkness, in unconsciousness. And the little bit of consciousness that man shows is very fragile, very tentative, very accidental. It arises out of the pressure of circumstances; it is not a constantly flowing well in him. If there is danger, man becomes a little bit more conscious. If the danger disappears, he relapses back into his unconsciousness.This unconsciousness is very deep and the consciousness is very shallow. And whenever there is a conflict between the unconscious and the conscious, the unconscious wins. The conscious can win only as a servant of the unconscious. This is the misery of man. All his pretensions of being conscious, alert, aware, are nothing but pretensions. This awareness is not even skin-deep. Scratch the man a little bit, and you will find a dark continent within him. Scratch yourself a little bit, and you will find a dark night of the soul. People don’t go inward because of the fear of this darkness.The masters go on saying: “Know thyself!” The masters go on invoking, challenging: “Enter into your own being. Go inward!” People listen, but they never follow, because of the fear of this inner darkness. Whenever they look in, there is nothing but darkness. Outside there is a little light; inside there seems to be no light.Have you ever closed your eyes and sat in silence looking inward? The moment you are really broken away from the outside, you will fall into darkness, into sleep. And the well of that darkness is very deep. Just on the surface a little consciousness exists, and that too not constantly. There are moments when it is there, and there are moments when it is not there. And it is very rarely there; more often it is not there. It is delicate and fragile.That’s why I say, “Handle it with prayer” – it is very fragile. And unless you grow deep into your consciousness, you will never know anything of truth, of freedom, of godliness, of bliss. Those words will simply remain words; they will never become alive in you, they will never bloom in you. You will never experience what they mean. God is an empty word unless you are conscious. Christ is an empty word unless you are conscious. Buddha is a myth, and all those talks of super-consciousness, nirvana, samadhi, the kingdom of God, are just parables – they don’t mean much. They can’t mean much, because the meaning has to come through your consciousness. The words are empty of content; you have to put the content in them. Only then will they start beating with life, only then will they start moving, dancing with life. Only then will flowers come and fragrance be released.This is one of the most fundamental things to be understood about man: that man is only partially conscious. And that consciousness is more or less dependent on outer circumstances, not on you. It is not even your consciousness; it is not rooted in you, it is not centered in you, it is not coming out of you.This is the whole problem that religion has to face. The whole science of religion is nothing but alchemy, an art for transforming darkness into light. The seers of the Upanishads have been praying down the ages: “Lead me from darkness to light. Lead me from death to deathlessness.” In darkness is death. In darkness you are already dead. In darkness you don’t live, you can’t live. Only in light is there life – and life eternal, and life abundant.Before we enter into this small parable, try to focus yourself on this phenomenon of unconsciousness…A motorist who had broken down on a quiet country road opened the bonnet and inspected the engine.“The trouble’s in the battery,” came a voice from behind him.The motorist turned round, but the only thing in sight was a horse watching him from a field. This completely unnerved the man and he set off down the road.After about ten minutes he came to a garage and told his story to the owner. “You mean to say that there was nobody near the car except a horse?” asked the garage proprietor.“That’s right.”“Was it by any chance a white horse with a black patch on its head?”“Yes, it was!”“Well, ignore him. He doesn’t know a thing about cars.”The unconscious man is never surprised by anything. He takes life for granted. He knows nothing of surprise. He knows nothing of wonder. He knows nothing of the mysterious, the miraculous. And the miraculous is all around and the mystery surrounds you. But because you are unconscious, you go on moving in this mysterious world, dull, dead, fast asleep. You are not surprised by anything. If you are alive, conscious, each and every thing will surprise you. The grass leaf in the morning sun – and you will feel like worshipping. The roseflower in the moonlit night – and you will feel like kneeling down and going into prayer. The stars, and the people, and the children, and the animals and the birds – each and every thing will surprise you, each and every thing will challenge you. When life is a mystery only then are you religious.But why is life not a mystery? – because you are so dull. Such dust has gathered on your consciousness that you go on pulling yourself along somehow, mechanically. You are not living life; you are simply dragging. One thing leads you to another, one thing pushes you toward another, and you go on, stumbling, till you die. If you look at an ordinary man’s life from birth to death, it is nothing but stumbling from one accident to another. One goes on stumbling and finally stumbles into one’s grave.This is not life – not life as Jesus would like to define life, not life as I would like to define it. Life starts only by being conscious. And if you start being conscious you will not take anything for granted. You will not take your wife for granted, or your husband for granted. Small things will reveal their mystery to you. A bird will come and sit by your windowpane, and will start singing a song, and you will be thrilled and excited and ecstatic. Nothing thrills you right now. Nothing gives you excitement, nothing gives you ecstasy. You are insensitive. The insensitivity is always in the proportion that you are unconscious. The sensitivity comes only with consciousness.The windows of the car parked in a lay-by late one dark night were well and truly steamed up, when the couple on the back seat heard the voice of the law outside the car saying, “Hello, hello, hello! What’s going on here then?” The policeman opened the car door, gave the couple a two-minute lecture about the laws of the country, and then shone his torch on them as he informed them that he was going to report them.“But officer,” protested the man. “This lady is my wife. I was driving along the road in the pouring rain when I saw her walking along with a raincoat over her head. So I stopped to pick her up, and after a while we pulled in here to have a rest.”“Then why on earth didn’t you tell me it was your wife instead of letting me lecture you?” the policeman demanded.“Well,” said the man, “I didn’t know it was until you shone your torch on her.”Man is really unconscious. And life goes on, and you go on living – but that living is so lukewarm that nothing really happens. There is no passion in it, no intensity in it, no fire in it. Consciousness is fire. When consciousness is there you will be consumed in that fire, the ego will be consumed in that fire. And when you are not, and there is nothing but pure consciousness left, that is what godliness is, that is what nirvana is.The whole effort of the masters down the ages has been one, singularly one: how to help you to become a little more sensitive, a little more conscious, a little more aware. A little more attention and things start changing, and you start moving in a new dimension.These are the only two dimensions: either you live unconsciously or you live consciously. And to live unconsciously is to waste this great opportunity. It is immensely valuable that you are. It is immensely valuable that existence has given you a gift. It is a great opportunity. Don’t miss it. It can be transformed into a greater opportunity: it can become eternal life.Jesus says again and again, “If you come to me, I will give you life in abundance, life that can never be exhausted, life that goes on, life that knows no death, life that is forever.” But you will have to jerk yourself a little bit out of your unconsciousness. And the unconsciousness is ancient. You have remained unconscious for many lives, for millennia. Yes, on the surface you appear conscious – you go to town, to the market, to the office, to the factory – you do certain things, but those are all habitual, mechanical. You have learned to do them and now you go on repeating them. You need not be conscious about them; you have become automatic, you have become an automaton.Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, “My whole approach is how to de-automatize you, how to bring again a non-mechanical life in you.” Watch yourself how you react. You have reacted that way a thousand and one times; it has become a set habit with you. Now you are not needed for it; it is programmed in your brain. You need not be at home, and it will answer. You can go on sleeping, and it will answer. Somebody insults you; watch what you do. Somebody appreciates you; watch what you say. Are you really saying it? Are you there while you are saying it? Or are you not needed at all – is it a programmed thing in the mind and the mind repeats it?A motorcar manufacturer designed a completely new car of the future, and advertised for a motorist who would drive it for six months and give it a thorough testing.The successful applicant sat in the driving seat of the car, and the designer sat next to him in the passenger’s seat.“You’ll find this car to be completely different from anything that you have ever driven before,” said the designer. “There is no engine, no battery, no gears, no accelerator, no brake. In fact, there’s nothing to go wrong at all. The only mechanism – if you can describe it as such – is a small black box, no bigger than a match box, which is located under the driver’s seat. It is, in fact, an electronic computer which reacts to the sound waves it receives from the driver’s voice. It has the added advantage that it can be set to receive code words of the driver’s own choice, thus making it impossible for anybody to steal the car. Now to make the car go, all you have to say is ‘Flippin’ ‘eck’ because we have set it for that at the factory.”So the driver said, “Flippin’ ‘eck” and the car started to move forward. “How do I make it stop?” he asked.“By the same principle,” answered the designer. “Just say ‘Hocus-pocus.’”So the driver said, “Hocus-pocus” and the car stopped. He tried it a dozen times and it never failed. “Flippin’ ‘eck,” and the car moved forward, “Hocus-pocus,” and it stopped.After driving the car round for several weeks, he took his girlfriend to the coast in it, and she was very impressed. As night was falling, she whispered to him in a romantic voice, “Let’s stop on the edge of that cliff; there’s a lovely view.”Nearing the cliff edge, the driver said, “Hocus-pocus,” but nothing happened. “Hocus-pocus!” he shouted, but the car still moved forward toward the cliff edge and a sheer drop into the sea. “Hocus-pocus!” he screamed, and the car stopped about an inch from the edge of the cliff. Breathing a sigh of relief, the driver said, “Flippin’ ‘eck!”That’s how your mind functions – absolutely unconscious. Yes, it is perfectly capable of doing the ordinary things of life; it is perfectly good for the market place, for day-to-day life. But if you want to grow, if you want to go deeper into being, into existence, if you want to fly into the infinite freedom of divine being, then it is not enough. It is perfectly programmed for the ordinary world; it is not at all capable of the other reality. And the other reality is the real reality. This so-called reality is just so-so, it is a kind of dream that you are seeing with open eyes.And you are lost. Everybody is lost. Have you ever thought about it: you are lost, you don’t know from where you are coming, you don’t know why in the first place you are coming, you don’t know what you are, and why you are there, you don’t know where you are going, and for what.You move round and round like a wheel. Again and again the same thing. Again and again the same repeated experience. Naturally you are tired. Naturally you are bored. Boredom is so heavy in people’s eyes. When I look into somebody’s eyes I see only clouds and clouds of boredom. But this is natural because how can this repetitive, mechanical life give you joy? You know that nothing more is going to happen, and all that has happened was not of worth.Sometimes sit silently and look backward. Can you remember any moment when you really were in joy – really – not pretending, not consoling, but really, authentically in joy? Have you known a single moment of which you can say with your whole heart that it was a blessing, a benediction? No, you have only been hoping that day will come sometime, that moment will come sometime; but it is all hoping. And it cannot come the way you are moving, because that moment comes only to those who are really conscious, deeply conscious, because without consciousness there is no benediction.A Londoner drove up to the Midlands without incident. But once he reached the Birmingham area, he found himself hopelessly confused in the complex of new underpasses, overpasses, and roundabouts, which had been built in connection with the junction of the M1, the M5, and the M6 motorways. Finally, he pulled up alongside a man who had a woman and two children in the car with him.“Can you help me out?” implored the Londoner. “I’ve been trying to get on the Wolverhampton road for two hours, and I always finish up here.”“You’re asking the wrong man,” the other driver replied wearily. “I haven’t even got home from my honeymoon.”And he has two children! But this is the situation: you always end up in the same place again and again. You have never been home for long – for centuries, for millennia you have not been home. And by and by, because you have been lost and wandering so long, you start thinking that this wandering is your life or this is all that there is to life.Now, if this man continues in this way in his car, after a few years he will have many more children, and he will not have reached home. By and by, he will forget the whole idea of ever reaching. He will even forget that he is trying to reach home. He will start thinking that this car is his home – he has always been in it! And what to say about the children who are born in it? They will grow in it, of course. They will fall in love, they will get married, and they will find themselves from the very beginning in the car. That will be their home. That will be their life.That’s the actual reality. Your parents were lost, your parents’ parents were lost – since Adam that has been the case. Since Adam you have not been home. And home is not far away either; the home is just within you. The home is very close by but you go on searching outside. You have lost track of only one thing, and that is your inner core. You rush from one outside thing to another outside thing. Sometimes you are searching for money, sometimes for power, and then sometimes you start becoming religious and you start searching for God – but still outside. Whenever you look at the sky and pray to God, you are still looking outside.The only real prayer looks inside. The real prayer is possible only when the eyes are completely closed to the outside and you are moving inward, sinking in your own being, drowning in your own being – but fully conscious. In sleep you drown, but you are unconscious. In meditation, in prayer you drown into your being, but you remain conscious, you keep alert, you don’t fall asleep on the way.If you can reach to your own inner core alert, aware, then you have arrived. You start laughing at the whole ridiculousness of it: the home was inside, God was inside. And that is the message of Jesus, a continuous repetition from Jesus: “The kingdom of God is within you.”Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar,near to the parcel of groundthat Jacob gave to his son Joseph.Now Jacob’s well was there.Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey,sat thus on the well:and it was about the sixth hour.There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water:Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink.Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him,How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me,which am a woman of Samaria?for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.Jesus answered and said unto her,If thou knewest the gift of God,and who it is that saith to thee,Give me to drink;thou wouldest have asked of him,and he would have given thee living water.The woman saith unto him,Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with,and the well is deep:from whence then hast thou that living water?Art thou greater than our father Jacob,which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself,and his children, and his cattle?Jesus answered and said unto her,Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give himshall never thirst;but the water that I shall give himshall be in hima well of water springing up into everlasting life.A beautiful incident. Move slowly into it, meditatively, comprehending, tasting every single word.Then cometh he to a city of Samaria…Jesus was a wanderer, wandering from one place to another. His life was a short life because he was murdered when he was only thirty-three – very young. And those few years that he lived were devoted to his own inner search. Thirty years of his life were devoted to his own inner work. He was in Egypt, he was in Kashmir, he was in Bihar, and there are stories that he was even in Tibet. Those thirty years he must have been a great wanderer. He wandered almost all over the known earth. He went in search of masters, of teachings, of devices. And he went to all the places where mystery schools existed. Egypt was one of the places; one of the most ancient traditions existed there. They knew many secrets. Jesus was initiated in the mystery schools of Egypt. But that was not the whole thing. Something was missing. He had to come toward the East.In Kashmir he must have come across Buddhists. He learned a little more. He became a little more alert to the meditative techniques of Buddha. He had learned through the Egyptian masters, but those methods were more indirect. They were all toward meditation, but they were more indirect. In Kashmir he must have come across Buddhist teachings, Buddhist masters – he learned more direct methods. And then he became really interested in Buddha’s philosophy and he traveled to the very center of the heart of Buddhist teachings – Nalanda. It is said he stayed there for at least two years. There he became a perfect master of meditation because there is no other school in the whole of human history which is as scientific about meditation as Buddha’s school. It is totally dependent on intelligence.But still Jesus felt that something was missing – the love part was missing. He had learned all about the path of awareness, but it seemed a little bit dry. It seemed like a desert where no trees grow. It is beautiful; the desert also has a beauty of its own. The silence of a desert, the vastness, the expanse of a desert is all is beautiful but it is dry, monotonous. So Buddha’s path is dry, monotonous. One achieves very directly, but there are no juices – juices of love – flowing in it.He traveled to Tibet because in those days Tibet was not yet Buddhist and the ancient religions in Tibet were still alive; they were love religions. Later on they disappeared because Buddha’s religion became too dominant. Jesus traveled to Tibet to learn something of the path of love. Once he had learned both paths, he became one of the most evolved masters of both paths. Thirty years went into traveling, searching, and only three years were given to him for his ministry. Only for three years did he function as a master. That’s why Christians don’t have any stories about Jesus because those thirty years were spent in mystery schools in secrecy. And those thirty years have nothing to do with Christianity. Christianity has no stories about those thirty years, as if Jesus had not existed. And those were the most potential years, the most important years, because whatsoever Jesus said later on was learned in those thirty years.Christianity only has stories about the three years. In those three years he was again a wanderer. First he was seeking the truth for himself, and now he was searching for seekers. Now he was in search of those to whom he could deliver whatsoever he had attained. First he was in search of those from whom he could get, and then he was in search of those to whom he could give.Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar,near to the parcel of groundthat Jacob gave to his son Joseph.Now Jacob’s well was there.Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey,sat thus on the well:and it was about the sixth hour.There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water:Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink.Now this well of Jacob must have been an ancient place in Samaria – very famous. Some ancient, named Jacob, had made that well. It must have been a source of nourishment to the whole surroundings, and people still had great respect for Jacob because it was he who had discovered that well. That is on one plane.On another plane, the meaning is that Jesus is saying: “The well of tradition that comes from the ancients can help you only so far.” The well of tradition, scripture, knowledge – the well that you get through heritage – can help you only so far. It can quench your thirst for the time being, but again the thirst comes back. Unless you find a well in your own being, no outer wells are going to help.Look in the Vedas – that is Jacob’s well. Look in the Old Testament – that is Jacob’s well. And now you look in the New Testament – and that is Jacob’s well. Every well finally becomes Jacob’s well. Look into the scriptures and you are trying to find something through tradition while the living truth is within you, not in tradition. And only the living truth can satisfy you, and satisfy you forever.Beware of Jacob’s wells. Use them, they are perfectly good as far as they go, but don’t become dependent upon them forever. And don’t think that they are going to lead you to the ultimate. Scriptures can give you thirst not truth. Knowledge can help you seek in a better way, but it cannot become the substitute for truth. Beware of all that you gather from others. Don’t become too attached and identified with it, otherwise you will never come to your innermost source, and that is where God resides.There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water… On one level it is a simple story: a woman comes, and it is Jacob’s well… But I would like you to feel the story on another plane also. I say Jacob’s well means the well of tradition that you get through heritage. You are a Christian by birth, or a Hindu by birth, or a Mohammedan by birth – that is you sitting at Jacob’s well.And then there comes a woman of Samaria. Now that too has to be understood on a second plane, on a higher plane. Why a woman, why not a man? A woman is more past-oriented than a man. That’s why you will find your churches, temples, full of women. A man looks to the future, is more future-oriented. A woman looks to the past, is more past-oriented. Why does the woman always look to the past? – because in the past there is more security, more safety, more certainty. About the past, things are clear: all has happened; things are finished. There is no fear of the new. With the future all still has to happen. Whether it will happen according to you or not, nobody can be certain of and there is no guarantee. It is groping in the dark, it is moving in the unknown.A woman always chooses security, safety – that is the feminine mind. It is so for a certain biological reason. She has to become a mother; she has to look for security, safety. If a woman becomes interested in you, she wants to get married to you. She is very interested in marriage – that is a biological necessity. She is afraid. If she gets pregnant – then what? Who is going to take care of the child? For months together she will be incapable of doing anything. And when the child is born, for years together she will have to take care of the child. Somebody has to take care of her too, otherwise life will become unnecessarily difficult, will become a nightmare. She wants safety; her motherhood needs a certain safety.This biological phenomenon has also made a certain pattern in her mind; it has given a certain structure to it. It is very rare for a woman to become an adventurer – she is not interested in that. It is very rare for a woman to move into the unknown. Even if sometimes she is existentially ready for it, it is difficult for her to move into the unknown. The fear of the unknown, the uncertainty of the unknown…So the feminine mind is traditional. But in some other sense also it is significant and is needed. If you go on searching for the new and there is nobody to take care of it, it will be lost. So there is a certain division of labor: man goes on searching for the new, and once it has been sought and found out, the woman becomes the protector. Somebody is needed to protect it too, otherwise what will be the use of searching? Just the search cannot be the meaning of it. You have found a treasure and once you have found it, the man – the male mind – is no longer interested in it. His whole interest is in conquering. He has conquered the treasure, now he is no longer interested in it. He is interested in some faraway land; he wants to go to the moon. Once he has reached there he is no longer interested in the moon either, now he wants to go to Mars.The man goes on searching; somebody is needed to take care of that which has been sought and discovered, somebody has to maintain and protect. The woman has the mother’s instinct to protect, to help, to take care of that which has already happened.So, on a second plane, the story is meaningful. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. The woman is the protector of the tradition, of the past, of all that has happened before – of Jacob’s well. She comes again and again to Jacob’s well. She goes to the church, to the temple, she reads the Bible, she reads the Gita; she teaches her children. She brings water from Jacob’s well for her family, for the future, for the children who are going to grow.The mother is the cradle of all religions. It is through the mother that religion enters you. It is through her religiousness that you become acquainted with that quality called religion. The man, if allowed, will create science but will not create religion. And even if he creates religion, he will not be able to protect it. He will not be able to keep it intact for the ages to come; he has no instinct for it.A woman comes to draw water and …Jesus saith unto her, give me to drink. Now, something very valuable has to be understood. This has been my observation: it is difficult for people to love, but there is one thing which is even more difficult than to love, and that is to receive love. To love is difficult, but to receive love is almost impossible. Why? – because to love is in a way simple, and one can do it because it is not against the ego. When you love somebody you are giving something, and the ego feels enhanced. You have the upper hand: you are the giver and the other is at the receiving end. You feel very good; your ego feels enhanced, puffed up. But when you receive love, you can’t have the upper hand. Receiving, your ego feels hurt. Receiving love is more difficult than giving love. And one has to learn both: to give and to receive.To receive is going to transform you more than giving can do, because in receiving love your ego starts disappearing. Have you watched it in yourself? If not, then observe. When somebody gives love to you, you become a little resistant, you protect. You create a wall – a subtle wall; you look as if you are not interested. You are interested – who is not interested in love? Love is such nourishment but you don’t want to show that you need it. You pretend that it’s okay: “If you are giving, I will oblige you by receiving, otherwise I don’t need. I am enough unto myself.” You may not say so, but that’s what you pretend. That’s what your eyes show, your face shows. You become a little resistant, you withdraw.This always happens to couples. If the woman is very loving, the man starts withdrawing. If the man is very loving, the woman starts withdrawing. Couples come almost every day to me, and it is one of the basic problems that if one is too much in love, the other starts escaping. What is the matter? It is very rare that a couple comes to me who are both in love and nobody is withdrawing. It never happens. It is so rare.Why can’t it happen? – for a certain basic reason. If the woman is too loving the man becomes afraid: “Now she is gaining the upper hand.” And if he shows love then he will become dependent, then he will become a slave. And she is so maternal that she will surround him from every side, she will become a prison to him, and he will not find any escape. He starts escaping before it is too late. He starts managing how to get out of it, or at least to keep a little distance, a little space, so that if the time arises he can escape. And the same happens to the woman. If the man is too loving and surrounds her from everywhere, she feels suffocated. She starts feeling that something is wrong, that she is no longer free, that this man is too much.Both want love, both need love, but the ego does not allow you to receive. And if you become incapable of receiving, you will become incapable of giving – that is a logical corollary. If you become incapable of receiving, if you are so afraid when somebody is giving love to you, a natural consequence will be that you will become afraid of giving, because now you know how people become afraid when somebody gives love. When somebody gives love to you, you become afraid. Now you know that if you give too much love the other will become afraid. You don’t give too much: you become a miser. You become a cripple, a paralyzed person.This story is beautiful. It starts by Jesus asking …give me to drink. This is the beginning of love: Jesus asking …give me to drink. And you will see how the story unfolds and brings subtle messages.(For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.)Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him,How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me,which am a woman of Samaria?For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.In christ consciousness there are no distinctions, no divisions – no distinction of caste, no distinction of creed. Christ consciousness means a sky which has no boundaries. Now there is nobody who is a Jew and nobody a Samaritan. Now there is no question of nationality and all those stupid things which divide people: of color, creed, tradition. In christ consciousness no distinctions exist. It is a unitary consciousness. For a christ, the whole existence is one.But the woman says: …thou, being a Jew, asks drink of me…? First, Jews used to think that they were the highest people, the chosen people of God. Samaritans were poor people, and not the chosen ones. Jews used to treat the Samaritans just as brahmins use sudras in India – untouchable. It is impossible to see a brahmin going to an untouchable woman and asking for water. It is impossible; the woman cannot even be touched. You will be surprised to know that in India this foolishness has gone to its very logical end.In the South, not only is the untouchable, untouchable, but even his shadow. If the shadow of the untouchable falls on your body, you have to take a bath. Shadow! When some untouchable has to pass through a town, he has to shout, “I am passing by here. If a brahmin is around here, please let me pass. Avoid my shadow.” Because he will not touch you – that is impossible – but sometimes in a crowd, in a market-place, his shadow may touch you, and that is enough of a crime. Now foolishness can go to very great extremes.And these are the people who go to the West, to the world, to teach – these brahmins, brahmin sannyasins, these Hindus. They go to the whole world, and they have the idea that they are the greatest religious people in the world, and it is to them that God is looking to transform the whole world.I have heard…Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who was once a president of this country, went to America on a tour. He lectured in many places. In one university he talked the way Hindus talk – that they are the highest people in the world and they exist only to serve the world and to transform the whole world.A young man stood up and asked, “Sir, if you say that Hindus are so great and they can help the whole world, why don’t they help themselves?”And do you know what stupid answer Radhakrishnan gave? He said very arrogantly, “The great Christ was born to help others not to help himself. India was born to help others not to help herself.”This idea is very egoistic, but the same was the attitude of the Jews. Jews and Hindus are very similar. You will be surprised to know that these are the only two religions in the world which don’t convert, which never allow anybody to convert. You can only be born a Jew, or born a Hindu – there is no other way. The only way is to be born a Hindu or to be born a Jew. Hindus and Jews don’t allow any conversion. Why? – because nobody is worthy enough to be converted. How can you be converted to be a Hindu? Your blood, your bones, your marrow, your skin are all non-Hindu. Just by making you go through certain rituals, how can you become a Hindu? Your blood cannot be changed, your bones cannot be changed. So a Hindu can only be a born Hindu. So a Jew can only be a born Jew. Both religions are very egoistic, and that’s why both have suffered. That suffering has come as part of the ego. It has been created by the ego itself.This woman, this poor woman of Samaria, must have been surprised that Jesus, a Jew, was asking for water from a Samaritan – which was unthinkable. But for Christ there are no distinctions. And if you are a religious man there cannot be any distinctions for you either. That’s why I say again and again that a religious man cannot be a Hindu, cannot be a Jew, cannot be a Christian. A religious man can only be just a religious man and that’s enough. He cannot have any adjective to his life – Hindu, Jew, Christian. To be religious is enough. If it is not enough and you need to be a Christian, and a Jew, and a Hindu, then you don’t know what religion is.…How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me,which am a woman of Samaria?For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.Jesus answered and said unto her,If thou knewest the gift of God,and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink;thou wouldest have asked of him,and he would have given thee living water.Now you know. Jesus asks: …Give me to drink… so that he can give something to the woman.If you want to give something, you have to be ready to receive first, particularly with love. First be a receiver, and only then can you give. Because then in your giving there will be no ego. And when there is no ego, only then can love be given; otherwise the ego can destroy even the purity of love and the beauty of love, and can make it ugly.…If thou knewest the gift of God… And Jesus says: “Look at me. I am standing before you. Can’t you see me?” That’s what I mean when I say man lives in unconsciousness. Even if Jesus comes to your home and knocks on your door, you will not recognize him. You will not be able to see who has come to you because you have not even recognized yourself. How can you recognize anybody else? You have not seen your own being, how can you see this divine being who is confronting you?Now, this woman must have been a woman just like you, just like everybody, just an ordinary human being. Jesus is asking for water, and she cannot see the man who is standing there. She cannot feel him. And she is thinking, “He is a Jew.” She has her categories; her mind is full of her prejudices. And a light is standing in front of her – life itself is standing in front of her. But that moment is being missed.Jesus says: …If thou knewest the gift of God… What is the …gift of God? There are only two gifts – love and awareness. If you love, then you will recognize Jesus; or, if you are aware, then you will recognize Jesus. And these two things are God’s gifts. They are already there inside you but you have not used them. Because they have not been used for many lives, they have lost their functionality. That faculty of love has become paralyzed, and that faculty of awareness has become paralyzed because you have not used it.Don’t use your eyes for three years. Go into a dungeon and sit there in darkness for three years. When you come out you will be blind. Don’t speak for three years, and when you would like to speak, it will be difficult. You will have lost the quality, the faculty. You will have to learn from ABC again. Don’t walk for a few years, and you will not be able to walk. And for thousands of lives you have not loved, and you have not been conscious. So it is not something to be surprised about that we have lost those qualities.And Christ can only be recognized either through love or through awareness.Don’t think about the woman that she was ignorant. Don’t think, “That poor woman who did not know who was standing before her.” The same is the case with you. You may have passed Christ, you may have passed a buddha. It is almost impossible that in so many lives you never came across a master. You must have come across one many times, because you have been here. While Buddha was here, you were here. While Krishna was here, you were here. While Zarathustra was here, you were here. You must have come across, but you could not recognize, you could not see. You are blind. You only appear to see, but you are blind. Would you not call this woman blind? Will you not call this woman dead?Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God… Jesus says, “I am a gift of God to you. I have come as a gift. If you accept me, if you allow me a little corner in your heart, it can become a transformation. This little spark can bring a great fire in you, can make you a flame with God.” A gift from God – but the woman is thinking only that he is a Jew. People only see bodies. It is natural because they think about themselves that they are bodies. They never have any vision of themselves as something beyond the body. Jesus is there as the body and as the soul. But how can you see his soul? And that is the gift of God. The body is as human as anybody else’s body, with all the limitations of human bodies, but the soul which is just hovering there, which is just there like an aura, needs eyes to be seen.…If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink… God himself is asking for a little water, and God is asking so that God can give to you. God is on the receiving end so that when he gives to you, you can also accept it; otherwise it will be difficult and resistance will be created.This is a constant problem with masters. They want to give to you, they have immense joy to share, but the problem arises that if they simply go on giving to you and you are not allowed to give anything to them you will not be able to receive. The master has to create devices in which he can make you feel that something which you are giving to the master is immensely valuable too. It is not one-sided. It is a communication; it is a dialogue. The master has to create those situations in which he can make you feel important, in which he can make you feel needed, in which he can give you the feeling of significance, so that when he starts pouring his being into you, you can receive it. You know that you can also give something to him, so there is no problem in receiving; otherwise you will be too obliged, you will be too burdened. So a master has to find small ways in which he can take something from you. It may not be anything meaningful – Jesus just asks for a little water.He says, “I am thirsty, give me a little water to drink.” …and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink… If you had known the gift that is there just ready to be delivered to you… But the woman is blind – as everybody is blind. …thou wouldest have asked of him… Jesus says: “If you had looked at me, if you had seen me – even just a small glimpse of who I am then you would have prayed to me: ‘Give me something from your well. Give me something to drink so that I will never feel thirsty again.’”Jesus was there, those beautiful eyes were there, that vibe was there which could transform the woman, transport the woman from the ordinary reality to the other reality, from this shore to the other shore. But the woman was too concerned about water, the Jew, the Samaritan – about the nonessential.The woman saith unto him,Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with,and the well is deep:from whence then hast thou that living water?Now, the woman seems to be very logical – as everybody is logical. Logic goes perfectly well with stupidity. There is no conflict between logic and stupidity; there is no conflict between logic and ignorance. They go perfectly well – hand in hand, they are great lovers, logic and ignorance are married to each other.Now, the woman is being logical and her logic is perfectly okay. That’s what a scientist will do, a professor will do, a pundit will do. The woman rises to the occasion. She says: “Look sir, what are you talking about? What nonsense are you talking about? You don’t have anything to draw with, and you are thinking to give me water? And the well is very deep.”The well is deep and …thou hast nothing to draw with… Now she is very scientific, logical, rational. …from whence then hast thou that living water? “And what are you talking about? About what living water? From whence? I see you tired, covered with dust, alone, weary, thirsty – I can see it in your eyes. And look at the pretension… And you are saying that you can give me water. From whence?”Art you greater than our father Jacob…? That too has been asked again and again. Whenever a new being is born into christ consciousness, whenever a new being becomes a buddha, this is the question asked again and again. That’s what the Jews were asking Christ: “Are you greater than Abraham? Are you greater than Moses? Are you greater than our own prophets? Are you greater than our past?” That’s what Buddha was asked again and again: “Are you greater than the Vedas and the Upanishads and the rishis of old? Are you greater than all of them put together?”That’s what has always been asked because you know about the past. When Buddha happens, Christ happens, he is so new, he is so fresh. You don’t know anything about him. You know about your past; he looks like a pretender. He looks as if he is distracting you from the path, because he says, “I say unto you… If Moses has said this to you, forget about it. I have brought a higher dispensation; I have brought a new message from God.” If Moses says, “Hate your enemy,” I say to you, “Love your enemy.” If Moses says, “It is just to punish the criminal,” I say to you, “Forgive him. Judge ye not. Don’t become a judge to anybody. Drop all judgments, condemnations. Let God be the only judge. Don’t interfere.”Naturally, the Jews must have said, “What are you talking about? Are you greater than Abraham, Moses?”And the woman says:Art thou greater than our father Jacob,who made this well, gave us this well, and drank thereof himself,and his children, and his cattle?“And where is your well? What well are you talking about? You don’t have anything to draw with, and I don’t see any well.”She is being logical. Remember, when you are being logical, you will miss Jesus, you will miss Buddha, you will miss Krishna, because they cannot be understood through logic, they can be understood only through intuition. You will have to put your reason aside, otherwise their statements will look illogical. If you put your reason aside, only then can you see the truth of their statements. Their statements are not arguments, they are simply declarations of truth.Jesus answered and said unto her,Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again…You can go on drinking from tradition and the well of tradition – Jacob’s and others – but you will thirst again. It is not going to really satisfy you because unless you know, you don’t know. Unless you realize, nothing is going to change. If God becomes your own experience, only then does the thirst disappear. Otherwise the thirst will come again and again. You can postpone it for a few days… You can postpone it, that’s all; you can delay it, that’s all. But it will never be gone, it will come, and it will come with a vengeance.…Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give himshall never thirst…But look, Jesus says to the woman, “Here I am, ready to pour something into you – something of the eternal, something of the timeless, something that once tasted, fulfills and fulfills forever.”…but the water that I shall give himshall be in hima well of water springing up into everlasting life.Once christ consciousness has touched you, the spark has entered you and your own fire has started burning. Then it will be a constant source of light, life. Then there is no end to it.The only question is of the first spark. You are carrying great potential but the spark is needed. That spark jumps from the master to the disciple. It can jump only in deep intimacy and closeness. It can jump only when there is no wall between the two, when their hearts are open to each other, when there is great trust. Then, in a certain moment, in a certain closeness, in a certain attunement, the spark reaches the disciple. And once the spark has reached, there is no need, then the disciple is on his own. Now he himself is a christ.That’s what I mean when I say, “Unless you become a christ, you cannot understand him.” By becoming a Christian you cannot understand. Becoming a Christian is just a poor substitute. Become a buddha not a Buddhist, become a christ not a Christian. And you can become a christ because you are carrying the potential for christ consciousness, that fourth state of consciousness: turiya. It is there, it needs only to be provoked. It needs only to be brought to your consciousness, or your consciousness has to be brought to it. The treasure is there, you are there, but you are not bridged.The master can only show you the way. Once the way has been seen, there is no problem, then you start moving. You cannot do otherwise. Then you have to move. When you have seen that the treasure is within you – the joy of joys and the eternal well, and the well from which you can attain to immortality – you will start moving toward it. In fact, you have been searching for it – searching in wrong directions. Now you will search in the right direction. That right direction comes from the master – that spark…Jesus is talking about that inner experience. The woman is thinking about the outer well, the woman is thinking about outer water. And Jesus is talking about the water of life – the living water. Jesus answered and said unto her, whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst: but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.Let this parable become an insight in you. Meditate over it because I also am here to give you something of the eternal. If you recognize it, only then can it be transferred. If you go on living in your limited logic, then you will miss. And only you will be responsible, nobody else. The spark is here ready to jump into you. Just don’t obstruct. Take the risk. Be a little adventurous.Yes, that water is confronting you again. If you drink of it your thirst will disappear forever. But don’t be like that woman of Samaria – and all are like her.These incidents are tremendously significant if you meditate over them. But don’t think that they happened some time in history, think of them as incidents that always happen. Whenever there is a master, these are the incidents that go on happening. And don’t think of them as past. If you think of them as past you will miss the meaning of them.It may be that they are happening to you. It may be that you are the woman at Jacob’s well, and Christ is standing before you and you are too occupied in your own logic. And remember, the woman’s logic is perfect. There is nothing wrong with it as far as logic is concerned. She is perfectly right; she is being very realistic, pragmatic, empirical. She says, “Where is the well? Whom are you trying to kid? And where is anything that you can draw with from this well? And this well is deep!” The woman has not said – maybe out of politeness, otherwise that would seem to be very logical to say – “If you can give me water, then why are you asking water from me? If you have that water that which quenches the thirst forever, then why are you looking so weary and thirsty? Then why in the first place are you asking me to give you water?” Natural, logical! But then you go on missing. Jesus has only asked you to give something to him so that he can give something to you. He is simply preparing the ground.And that’s what I am doing here. Somebody I put in the garden, and I say, “Work in the garden.” Somebody I have put in the office, and say, “Work in the office.” And somebody I have put in the kitchen, and I say, “Work in the kitchen.” I am simply saying, “Give something to me, so that I can give something to you,” because only when you give will you be ready to receive. If you give me something, the door opens to give, and that is the moment when I can enter into you. Certainly, if you want to give something to me, you will have to open your door to give to me. And when the door is open is the moment that I can sneak in.That’s what Jesus is saying: “Give me water.” When the woman pours water into Jesus’ hands is the moment he can enter the woman, when the spark can jump into her. And this too I would like to remind you of, that only a woman can receive the spark.By woman, I don’t mean just a biological woman. A man… But he will have to be in a state of femininity, only then can he receive, because all receiving is possible only when you are receptive. This woman at Jacob’s well is very symbolic because only a woman can receive. Only the feminine mind can receive because it is non-aggressive. And only a woman can come in deep trust and intimacy; a man remains afraid. And remember, I am not saying that men will not be able to receive, but they will be able to receive only when they also become feminine.The disciple has to be feminine – whether man or woman doesn’t matter. The disciple has to be feminine because the disciple has to receive the spark, the disciple has to become pregnant with the spark. That’s why the woman at the well has been chosen. Whether it happened historically or not is irrelevant, but it has always been happening. It has happened with Buddha, it has happened with Zarathustra, with Lao Tzu, with Christ. It is happening right now, here! Meditate over it.Enough for today.

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I Say Unto You Vol 1 01-10Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 1 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Your last words at this morning's talk were: “Meditate on this.” What do you mean? How does one who only knows how to think about things learn to meditate on things?Knowing what thinking is, is the beginning of knowing what meditation is. Thinking is the negative part; meditation is the positive part. Thinking means mind in turmoil; meditation means mind in silence. But the turmoil is the beginning of silence, and only after the storm is there silence.If you can think, you are capable of meditation. If a man can be ill, he can be healthy. Health becomes impossible only when you cannot even be ill. Then you are dead. Only a corpse cannot fall ill. If you can fall ill, then there is still hope. Then you are still alive. And so is the case with thinking and meditation. Thinking is the mind which is ill: not at ease, not reconciled with itself, disturbed, fragmented, divided. Meditation means the division no longer exists, the fragments have disappeared into oneness – you are at ease, at home.It is the same mind: divided, it becomes thinking; undivided, it becomes meditation. If you can think, you are capable of meditation although meditation is not thinking. Thinking is an ill state of affairs, pathological. But one can transcend it, and the transcendence is easy; it is not as difficult as you think. The difficulty comes because you don’t really want to go into meditation. In meditation not only is thinking going to disappear; you are also going to disappear. Only an ill man is, a healthy man disappears. In health you are not; you exist only in illness, you exist only in pain, in suffering, in hell. You can’t exist in heaven because to feel one’s existence means to feel pain.Have you not observed it? When you have a headache, then you have a head. When the headache disappears, the head disappears too. If your body is perfectly healthy and everything is running smoothly, humming smoothly, you don’t feel the body at all; you become bodiless. In the ancient Indian scriptures, health is described and defined as bodiless-ness: you don’t feel your body. How can you feel your body if it is not ill? Only illness creates knowledge; self-consciousness is created by it, self is created by it.So meditation is not difficult if you really want to go into it. It is the simplest thing possible, the most simple, the most primal. In your mother’s womb you were in meditation. There were no distracting thoughts; you were not thinking about anything, you simply were. To regain that state of in the womb is what meditation is all about. When you see a person meditating, what do you see? He has disappeared into the womb again, he has made his whole body like a womb, and he has disappeared into it. Buddha sitting under the bodhi tree… What is he doing? He has moved back to the source. He is not there. There is nobody sitting under the bodhi tree. That’s what a buddha means: there is nobody sitting under the bodhi tree.When Jesus goes to the mountains away from the multitude, where is he going? He is going inward, he is trying to make contact again with the original source, because from that original source is rejuvenation. From that original source there is again freshness, vitality, and the waters of life are flowing again – one is bathed, one is resurrected.In the world, thinking is needed. In your inner being, thinking is not needed. When you are communicating with somebody, thought is a must. When you are just communing with yourself, what is the need of thought? Thought will be a disturbance.Try to understand why thinking is needed and what thinking is. When there is a problem, thinking is needed to solve it. You have to go round about, look from every angle of the problem, think of all possible solutions. There are many alternatives, so one has to choose which one is the right one. And there is always the possibility of error, and there is always fear and anxiety – that is natural – and still there is no guarantee that you are going to succeed in finding the solution. One gropes in the darkness, one tries to find a way out of it. Thinking is the confronting of a problem. In life there are millions of problems and thinking is needed.I am not saying thinking is not needed. When you relate to the outside it is needed. But when you are facing your own being, it is not a problem; it is a mystery. And let it be very clear what a mystery is. A problem is something that can be solved; a mystery, by its very nature, is something that cannot be solved. There is no way out of it, so there is no question of finding the way.You are a mystery. It is never going to be solved, because you cannot go behind yourself. How can you solve it? You cannot stand outside yourself and tackle yourself as a problem, so how can you solve it? Who is going to solve whom? You are the solver, and you are the problem, and you are the solution. There is no division at all. The knower and the known and the knowledge are one – this is mystery.When the knower is different from the known there is a problem. Then there is something objective; you can think of a way out, you can find out something which becomes knowledge. But inside yourself you are facing the eternal – the beginningless, the endless – you are facing the ultimate. You cannot think. If you think you will miss. Only through non-thinking will you not miss. You can see into it – with awe, with great wonder. You can go into it deeper and deeper, you can dive into it. You can go on digging, and the more you dig, the more you will understand that this is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved. So thinking is irrelevant. And when thinking is irrelevant, meditation arises. The failure of thinking is the arousal of meditation.Science is thinking; religion is meditation. If you think about God it is philosophy; it is not religion. If you live godliness, then it is religion.If you are looking at a lotus flower and thinking about it, then it is science, philosophy, aesthetics. But if you are simply looking at the lotus flower… The look is pure, uncontaminated by any thought, and the lotus flower is not thought to be a problem but just a beauty to be experienced… You are there, the lotus flower is there, and there is nothing in between, just emptiness, nobody is standing between you and the flower – it is meditation. Then the flower is not outside you because there is nothing to divide as the in and the out. Then the lotus flower is somehow within you and you are somehow within the lotus flower. You melt into each other; divisions are lost, boundaries become blurred. The lotus starts touching your heart, and your heart starts touching the lotus. There is communion. It is meditation.Whenever thought is not functioning it is meditation. Listening to me sometimes becomes meditation to you. I say “sometimes” because sometimes you start thinking and then you lose track. When you are just listening, not thinking at all about what is being said – neither for, nor against, not comparing with your past knowledge, not being greedy to accumulate it for your future use, not trying to justify, rationalize, not doing anything at all… I am here, you are there, and there is a meeting. In that meeting is meditation, and then there is great beauty.You ask me: “Your last words at this morning’s talk were: ‘Meditate on this.’” Yes. Whether I say it or not, that is my message every day – in the beginning, in the middle, in the end. That’s what I am saying: meditate on this. Meditate.The English word meditation is not adequate for what we in the East mean by dhyana. Meditation again carries some idea of thinking. In English, meditation means to think about, to meditate upon something. Dhyana does not mean to meditate upon something. Dhyana simply means to be in the presence of something, just to be in the presence. If you are in the presence of a tree it is meditation on the tree. If you are in the presence of the stars then it is meditation on the stars. If you are here in the presence of me then it is a meditation. And when you are alone and you just feel your own presence, it is meditation.From dhyana came the Chinese word ch’an; from ch’an came the Japanese word zen. They are all derivations of dhyana. Dhyana is a beautiful word. It is not translatable into English, because English has words like meditation, contemplation, concentration – they all miss the point.Concentration means concentrating on one thing. Meditation is not a concentration, it is an absolutely de-concentrated state of consciousness – it is just the opposite. When you concentrate there is a tension, you start focusing, there is effort. And when you concentrate on one thing other things are denied, then you are closed for other things. If you concentrate on me, then what will you do with this plane passing by, and the noise? Then you will close your mind to it, you will focus on me, you will become strained because you have to deny this roaring airplane. You have to close your mind to it; then your mind is not open. A bird starts singing – what will you do? You will have to close yourself. That’s what is being taught in the schools and the colleges and the universities. It is concentration.Meditation is not concentration; it is just openness, alertness, presence. You are listening to me, but you are not listening to me exclusively. You are simply listening. And the airplane goes roaring by – you listen to that too. And the bird starts singing and you listen to that too. There is no division; you don’t choose. All that happens in the surroundings is accepted: it becomes part of your listening to me. Your listening is not exclusive; it is inclusive of all.So concentration is not meditation. Then the word meditation itself is not meditation, because in meditation somebody meditates on Jesus, somebody meditates on the Bible, somebody meditates on God. Again it is not meditation. If there is a God as an object and Jesus as an object, then there is a distinction between the knower and the known; there is duality. And in duality there is conflict, and in conflict there is misery. In non-duality conflict disappears, and when conflict disappears, hell disappears. Then there is joy.So meditation is not meditating upon something, meditation simply means a different quality of your inner being. In thinking your mind goes on weaving, spinning thoughts. In meditation your mind is simply silent, utterly silent, not doing anything at all – not even meditating! Not doing anything at all. Sitting silently, doing nothing and the grass grows by itself. The spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. Meditation is a natural state of silence. It is not contemplation either.In contemplation you think about “high thoughts,” spiritual things – not about mundane things, not about the market, not about the family, but high values, truth, beauty, bliss. But you contemplate on these. You try to think about these high values of life – then it is contemplation.But meditation is not even that. Meditation is a state of stillness. And this state of stillness has not to be forced because it cannot be forced. If you force it, it will not be the right stillness. If you force it, you will be there forcing it; it will not be natural, it will not be spontaneous. So what has to be done?One has to understand the ways of thinking. One has to understand the stupidity of thinking. One has to understand that thinking creates conflict, division, struggle; that thinking fragments you, that in thinking you start falling apart. One has to see what thinking does to you. In that very seeing arises meditation. In that very understanding, suddenly you feel breezes of silence coming to you. For a moment everything becomes still, utterly still, a standstill. And the taste of it will bring more of it. By and by you will know the knack of it. Meditation is a knack. It is not science, it is not even art – it is a knack. You have to learn it slowly, slowly, through your own experience. So when I say: “Meditate on this,” I mean don’t think upon it. Just close your eyes, be in silence. Let it be there.For example, Jesus’ story: Jesus and the woman of Samaria are standing at that well, Jacob’s well, and Jesus is asking, “Give me some water to drink” – the dialogue that ensues, just let it be there.Be utterly silent in front of this parable. Let this parable be like a lotus flower – it is! Just let it be there, throbbing, pulsating with a beating heart. Let it become alive in front of you, and then become silent. What can you do? You can only be silent. Let this drama be enacted in front of you. In deep silence you see it, and that will reveal to you the meaning of it. And that will reveal to you all the dialogues that have happened between any enlightened person and the disciple. And it will become not only Jesus’ parable, it will become a parable between you and me too. It is happening every day. That’s what I mean when I say: “Meditate upon this.”The second question:Osho,When you speak of the need for trust in order to let go of the ego, I feel that's where I'm stuck, for my distrust is a tangible thing. It feels painful, but I can't let go of it. Early this year, for a brief period, I felt high energy and with it, open, loving and trusting. But now that energy has gone, and with it, the openness.Always remember that when I am saying something, I am not giving you an order to do it. If you take it that way you have already missed the point. I am simply making it clear to you. Don’t be in a hurry to practice it. Whatsoever I am saying has nothing to do with practicing it. You just have to understand it. Around me, the only thing that is going to help you is clarity, transparency.When I am talking about the ego, don’t jump ahead. Don’t start thinking, “How to drop this ego? Yes, Osho is right. This ego is creating the trouble, so how to drop it?” You have not attained to clarity; you have gone into greed. You have become ambitious. Rather than understanding what was being said to you, you made it a desire. And now you will be in trouble. While I am talking about the ego, listen meditatively and totally. Just see the point of what is being said. There is no hurry; there is nothing to be done, nothing to be practiced. Don’t bring tomorrow in, don’t even bring the next moment. Don’t bring in the future because with the future comes the desire, and with the desire all hell is let loose. While listening to me, if you start thinking how to do it: “Yes, it looks beautiful. And if I can do it there will be great joy in me. How to do it?”… And while you are thinking how to do it, I am talking about the ego, and you are not listening any longer.The ego can be dropped only when your clarity is complete, entire. You cannot drop it. You are it! How can you drop it? But while listening totally, silently, meditatively, you are not – there is clarity. In that clarity something will click. You will see it so one hundred percent that the very seeing will become a transformation. Not that tomorrow you will have to drop it. No, tomorrow you will not find it there. Not that the next moment you have to go home and practice how to drop the ego…I am not teaching you yoga exercises. These are not yoga postures that you have to prepare and rehearse and practice and discipline yourself with. What I am doing here is sharing my enlightenment with you, my clarity with you. I have a clarity, I am inviting you to come and share in my clarity. In that very sharing something will change in you, that sharing is alchemical. Next moment you will be surprised: the ego is not there. Not that you have to drop it. You understood the point, you understood the foolishness of it, the ridiculousness of it, the absurdity of it; now, what is there to leave and what is there to renounce? Ego is not some entity in you that you have to drop. It is not something like cancer that you have to operate on or be operated for. It is just an illusion.It is as if you see a rope on a dark night and you think it is a snake. And you become very frightened and you start running, and you are breathless and perspiring. Then I come across you, and I say to you, “I know perfectly well it is not a snake; it is a rope. Come along with me.” And you go on asking or thinking, “How to kill that snake?” I am saying, “It is not a snake. Come along with me and see. Here is the light and the lamp; we will go together and have another look. And I know, I have been there; I have known that rope. Once I also used to know it as a snake, and I also used to get very frightened just like you, so I understand. I am not laughing at your misery, I feel compassion because I know; I was in the same situation myself. But come along with me.”You are asking, “Osho, how to kill that snake? Should we take a gun with us, or will just a stick do? Or – there are rocks around – can we use the rocks and kill the snake?” I am constantly saying there is no snake, there is only a rope. But you are not listening, and you ask, “When we have reached there, what are we to do?” Even if you are not saying it in so many words, deep inside you are thinking it. You are still afraid, and you are not walking courageously; you are hiding behind me. You say, “Who knows? It may be a snake after all. How can I trust this man? Maybe he is mad, because I have seen it with my own eyes. It is a snake and a very dangerous one.” This is the situation when I say the ego is a shadow. You have certainly seen it, but it is not an entity. You have certainly suffered from it, yet it is an illusion.I can understand your problem. You say, “How can one suffer from something which is not?” It looks very logical: how can one suffer from something which is not? If one suffers, then the logical mind says the cause of suffering must be there because the effect is there. But can’t you suffer from a rope, thinking it a snake? Have you not suffered in your dreams? Have you not suffered through your own delusions, projections? You have suffered. Many a time you have suffered from a cause which doesn’t exist, but which can create the effect.You can fall ill if somebody says that the water you have drunk just now is poisonous – you can start vomiting. And if so many people say that yes, it is poisonous, if the whole town says it is poisonous, if the whole world says it is poisonous, then… Then your illusion is supported, nourished more and more.This is what is happening! You are suffering from an illusion called the ego. The whole world says, “Yes, it is there.” And not only the world – your so-called religious people, mahatmas, saints also say, “It is very dangerous, this ego. It has to be dropped, it has to be crushed and killed. It is the enemy.” And they devise techniques, strategies to kill it. The whole world believes in it. The people who are worldly believe in it and the people who are called spiritual believe in it. Somebody follows it, somebody fights with it, but they both believe in it. As far as the belief is concerned, they both agree.What I am doing is a totally different thing. I am saying: “The ego exists not.” I am not saying that you drop it. How can you drop it? It is not there in the first place. And if you start dropping a thing which is not, you will be in trouble. You will not be able to drop it, and so you will become very miserable. And you will make hard efforts to drop it, and you will again and again find that you have not dropped it. Then, more and more frightened, more and more miserable, you will start feeling very inferior: you cannot do a simple thing – dropping the ego?Nobody has ever been able to drop the ego. Let it be remembered: nobody has ever been able to drop the ego. What do I mean by it? Has Buddha not dropped it? Has Jesus not dropped it? No, not at all! They have only understood that it is not. They have seen through and through and they laughed. They were simply running from something which is not there. In that understanding it disappears. Many times it disappears in your life too – in spite of you. Sometimes in deep love it is not. Hence, the joy of love. It is not really the joy of love, it is the joy of the disappearance of the ego. Sometimes in prayer, sometimes in meditation, sometimes seeing nature – watching the sea or sometimes just looking at the stars – it happens, and there is great benediction. One is showered.But it comes only for moments because you don’t understand even then what is happening. Again it is lost. When it is lost you become very miserable, and you start thinking how to get it again, how to go into that space again. It was not that you had gone into that space. It was simply that, because you became so enchanted with the stars, for a moment you forgot your old obsession: the obsession of the ego. You became so enchanted with the stars that you forgot the rope and the snake. It was just forgetfulness. But how long can you remain enchanted with the stars? Sooner or later you will have to come back, and the rope is there – waiting as a snake! Again you are frightened.Sometimes in love with a woman or a man, looking into the eyes of a beloved, it disappears. But for how long? The honeymoon cannot be very long. Sooner or later… You know those eyes, you know that woman, you know that man, and then by and by you start settling back into your old so-called reality – and the rope, which looks like a snake to you, is there. This is the situation.You say – the question is from Bodhiprem – “When you speak of the need for trust in order to let go of ego…” You misunderstand me. You are saying: “When you speak of the need for trust in order to let go of the ego…” You are saying that I say to you: “Trust so that you can drop the ego!” I am not saying that. I am saying that if you trust, the ego is dropped. It is not like cause and effect – that your trust will be the cause, and the ego will be dropped as an effect. I am saying that the moment you trust, the ego is not there. In trust the ego is not found.But you are so concerned with the ego that you say, “Okay. If you say in trust it is not found, I will trust in order that the ego is not found.” You are bringing in that “in order.” Please be very careful, because what is being said to you is immensely significant. Don’t change it. Don’t interpret it. Let it be as it is said to you. I am not saying: “Trust in order – so that – the ego can be dropped”; otherwise your trust will be a means and the dropping of the ego will be an end. Naturally the end will be in the future, and the means has to be practiced. You will have to practice for years or for lives, and when you really have come to gain trust, then you will be able to drop the ego. No!I am saying that this very moment, if trust is there, the ego is not there! They don’t exist together. It is as if the room is dark and I tell you, “Take this lamp.” And you say, “If I take this lamp into the room, how long will it take for the darkness to disappear? If I go into the room and practice light there, how long will it take for the darkness to disappear?” You need not practice anything. Simply take the light there and you will not find darkness. They don’t exist together.What is trust? It is the highest kind of love. It is the purest love. It is uncontaminated love – uncontaminated by any desire. If you trust me with a desire, it is not trust. Then you are using me. If you think by trusting in me you will attain to nirvana, moksha, the kingdom of God, then you don’t trust me. You are using me; you have made me a means. That is not very respectful. If you trust me, this is your kingdom of God – this trust. There is nothing else, there is nowhere to go. This is your nirvana. In this very trust, darkness has disappeared, and the light is burning bright.Bodhiprem says: “When you speak of the need for trust in order to let go of ego…” Now he is creating a great problem. “…I feel that’s where I’m stuck.” You are stuck because of your misunderstanding, unclarity. It is not the ego that is obstructing you; it is the unclarity. It is because you have not been present to me; it is because you have not been listening to me without desire. It is not the ego that you are stuck with, it is your unintelligence.Now that will hurt you because it is okay to be stuck with ego, but to be stuck with unintelligence? That will hurt very much: “Am I unintelligent?” You can accept the idea that you are an egoist, but to accept the idea that you are unintelligent is very difficult. Your ego will say, “You – and unintelligent, Bodhiprem? You are the most intelligent person in the world!” That’s what Bodhiprem must be saying right now.But be patient; try to understand. We are stuck because of our unintelligence. Call it sleep, call it ignorance, call it whatsoever you want to call it, but basically it is unintelligence. An intelligent person… And I don’t mean that there are intelligent persons and there are unintelligent persons. Every unintelligent person carries the potential of being an intelligent person. Unintelligence is just the seed which has not broken its shell yet. Once the shell is broken and the seed starts sprouting, it becomes intelligence. So unintelligence is not against intelligence; it is the very womb that intelligence arises out of. But let me tell you that a spade is a spade. Even if it hurts, one has to understand it. It is unintelligence which hinders us. Intelligence becomes freedom. You have not understood me. Out of your unintelligence you are creating desires.“…for my distrust is a tangible thing.” It is not distrust because you have not even known trust, how can you distrust? Let it be very clear to you. Distrust is possible only when you have known trust. You have not known trust, so distrust is impossible. So what is it then? It is untrust, not distrust – and that is a different thing. It is untrust. What is the difference?Untrust simply means you have never tried trust so you are afraid, frightened. Everybody is frightened when there is something new one is going to do, when one enters an uncharted sea, or goes into a jungle where there are no longer any maps available, no milestones. And there is every possibility that you will never come across any other human being that you can ask where to go and how to find the way.I have heard, it happened in a jungle…A man, an explorer, was lost for three days – hungry, almost going crazy, running from this place to that and reaching nowhere. Early in the morning on the fourth day he saw another man sitting under a tree. He was overjoyed; he forgot all those three days of suffering, when in the night he could not sleep because of the wild animals. And in the day searching and searching and there was no way to find out how to get out of this jungle. It had appeared endless.Naturally, if you were that explorer you also would have been overjoyed, you would have become full of joy at seeing another human being. Now…He rushed, hugged the man, and said, “I am so happy!”And the man who was sitting under the tree said, “For what?”And this explorer said, “Just seeing you because for three days I have been lost.”And the man said, “So what? I have been lost for seven days!”Now, even if you can find a human being – who is himself lost – what is the point of finding him? Now you will both be lost together, that’s all. Maybe even more lost because now there will be two persons continuously conflicting. Up to now you were alone, at least free to move on your own. Now you have a marriage partner, now there are going to be more problems because he would like to go north and you would like to go south – each will create fear in the other: “Maybe the other is right and I am going wrong?” And each may create guilt in each other.It is a natural fear of the unknown that creates untrust; it is not distrust. Distrust means that you trusted and you were cheated; you trusted, and because of your trust you were deceived, then distrust comes. But trust has never cheated anybody, it cannot. And I am not saying that through trust people cannot cheat you. Remember, I am saying trust never cheats anybody. Sometimes it has happened that a disciple has become enlightened because he trusted the master, and the master himself was not enlightened. This strange thing has been happening down the ages many times.It happened in a Tibetan mystic’s life…The mystic went to a master who was a fraud – and frauds exist in the world of spirituality more than anywhere else, because there it is very easy to cheat since they deal in invisible things you cannot see. They say, “Here is God. Look into my hand.” If you don’t see, they say you don’t trust. If you see, they say, “Then, perfectly okay.” Can’t you see? And you say, “Yes, sir,” and you are not seeing. When you deal in invisible goods it is very simple to cheat. In the marketplace there are frauds, but not so many. There cannot be so many because they deal in visible goods. There is some way, some criterion to judge whether the thing is right or wrong. But in religion there is no way to judge. So out of one hundred, ninety-nine percent are frauds. It is the best way to cheat people, nothing like it.This mystic went to the master, and the master was a cheat. But this young man trusted – trusted utterly. He thought his master was enlightened, and whatsoever the master said, he followed one hundred percent. It was rumored around the place that the master was such a great man that even if you repeated his name and walked on the water, you could walk. Nobody had tried it before. And even if somebody had tried, he must have sunk. Then there is always the rationalization that your trust is not total, so you cannot catch hold of the master: “Your trust is not entire, that’s why you sank.”This young man walked on water – and he really walked. It became his usual thing. When you can walk on the water, who bothers to go to the bridge, or things like that? People started coming to see him and the other disciples – particularly the senior ones – became very disturbed. They tried in secret but they all sank. So, even the master was puzzled. One day, in secret, the master himself tried, thinking: “When my disciples can walk on the water just by trusting in me, then what can’t I do? I can do anything! I am the greatest master in the world, my disciples are walking on water. Jesus used to walk on water and my disciples are walking on water, so I must be greater than Jesus!”So he went – in secret of course because he was afraid. He had never tried: “Who knows?” And he knew perfectly well that he was a fraud. The disciple had deep trust in him but he had no trust in himself. How could he have any trust? He knew perfectly well that he went on deceiving people. He walked and sank.Then he called the young man and said, “How do you do it?”He said, “I simply say your name – ‘Master, I want to go to the other side’ and you take me. And recently I have started flying from one peak of the mountain to the other because I said, ‘When it is possible on water, why not in air?’ So one day I tried and said, ‘Master, take me from this side to the other side,’ and you took me. Now I can do anything. Just your name…”The master had to fall at his feet. He said, “Initiate me; you know the secret. I am an ordinary man, and last night I tried walking and I sank.”It has happened many times, because it is not really a question of whether the man you trust is cheating you or not, the question is that trust never cheats. You cannot be cheated because of your trust. If the trust is infinite you are impossible to cheat. Nobody can cheat you. Your trust will protect you. Your trust will become your very experience. Your trust will become your boat. Your trust will take you to the other shore, but remember, what you have is not distrust. You can’t have distrust; you have never trusted. Distrust can come only as an experience that trust failed. But trust never fails, so distrust is just a word; untrust is true.You have never tried, so only just a little courage is needed to try. Give it a try. Be a little courageous. Slowly, slowly go beyond the limitations that you have created around yourself – step by step. And the more you go beyond the barriers that you have created around yourself, the bigger you become, the more expansion comes to your consciousness. Then you will see that you can go as far as you want because every move beyond the limitation brings more joy, more freedom, more being.“…for my distrust is a tangible thing.” It is not distrust; it is only fear which is tangible. “It feels painful, but I can’t let go of it.” There is no need to let go of it. Meditate on it; see exactly what it is. We go on giving names to things, which we have not even watched correctly, and once you give a wrong name you will be in a trap. The wrong name will never allow you to see the thing as it is. Don’t be in a hurry to name a thing and categorize a thing and pigeonhole a thing. There is no need. Just watch what it is. If you watch, you will find it is untrust, not distrust. If you watch, you will find it is simply a lack of courage – fear, not distrust and tangible, no.Then things will be different. When you know it is fear, when the disease is known rightly, a right medicine is possible. When you go on calling your TB cancer, then you go on treating cancer and the TB is never treated. Diagnosis is far more important than medication. And this is the problem: people don’t worry about diagnosis and they are simply ready to jump upon any medicine. They are ready to take any medicine without bothering at all what exactly their disease is. That is ninety percent of the problem; medicine is only ten percent. Diagnosis is needed and that’s why a master can be helpful: to diagnose things.I would like to remind you that it is untrust not distrust, that it is fear and, in a way, natural. It exists in everybody. So don’t start feeling yourself a coward; it is natural. The fear of the unknown exists in everybody. And one has to go slowly, slowly beyond the known – just a few steps, so that if it becomes too much you can come back. But once you have started going…It is the same fear as that of a new bird which is ready to go into the sky and is afraid, sitting just on the edge of the nest. The wings are there, he can fly, but he has never flown before. So an untrust – not distrust, untrust: “Maybe I cannot make it, maybe I will fall; can I really go into this beautiful sky?” He flutters his wings, tries to gather courage, and still remains there, hanging. And the mother pushes him. The mother goes on flying around the nest to show him: “Look, I can fly, why can’t you? You come from me, you are just like me. Look at my wings – you have far more beautiful wings. My wings are old, yet I can fly. Your wings are young. You can go far away, farther than me. You just see!” And the mother goes on flying, comes back to the nest, looks into the eyes of the child, pushes him, nags him.That’s what I go on doing – nagging. Sometimes, if it is really needed, she really, physically, pushes him, throws him out of the nest. And he starts, in a haphazard way of course because he has never done it before, not in a very skillful way, not very aesthetic, not very artistic – it is natural. Just a few seconds fluttering around and he comes back to the nest. Still the fear is there, but now trust has started to come. Now he knows that he is not very skillful but he has wings; then skill can be learned. Now, next time he will not need the mother’s push. Next time he will tell the mother, “Just sit here and watch, I am going to take a trip!” And he takes off, first around the nest, then around the tree, then he starts going to other trees, and then one day he has gone.This is the way a disciple moves. It is fear and is natural. I understand it. Don’t be worried about it, and don’t misname it otherwise things will be difficult. You will go on fighting with distrust and the problem is fear, not distrust. And you will go on fighting with ego, and the problem is unintelligence, not ego.“Early this year, for a brief period, I felt high energy and with it, open, loving and trusting. But now that energy has gone, and with it the openness.” Now, understand something. It has happened to you that you have been out of the nest; you have been on a small trip. Maybe it was very small, but you have tasted it! Now, watch how it happened that time and why it is not happening now.There are a few things. First: when it happened for the first time you were taken unawares; you were not waiting for it, and it happened. Now because it has happened, you are waiting and desiring. That desire may be one of the barriers. These things come on their own; they are happenings. Happiness is a happening. You cannot bring them by force, by coercion, by violence; you cannot bring them into your life. They come on their own. You just have to be open for them to come. Your door should remain open; when the breeze comes, enjoy it. But you cannot go out and force the breeze to come in.The first time it happened. It is always easy the first time and the second time it is difficult. It is not only so with you, it is so with everybody. When people come here come for the first time they are not expecting. They don’t know what is going to happen, they are simply open. They only know that something may happen: “So keep the doors open.” When for the first time they come and fall in love with me, there is a kind of honeymoon. They are utterly in tune with me, shocked into a new kind of awareness, feeling a new hope; again feeling alive – dullness has disappeared – again a door opens. Otherwise they were thinking that there is nothing in life, there is no meaning. The poetry has disappeared long ago. Again they start pulsating, again there is hope, again they can feel that there is still some possibility. They become expectant.Without any expectation, just expectant, something is possible. What, they don’t know. And with the first impact their mind is not able to cope with it, so the mind becomes silent. The thing is so new that they cannot control it: meditation, listening to me, and the whole family around here dressed in orange… The whole vibe simply turns them on and things start happening. The moment things start happening, the problem arises. They start desiring more, and the moment you desire, things stop. When the “more” comes, the mind has come back; the greed has come back. You are no longer in the present, you have moved into the future. And when you ask that the same thing should be repeated again and again, you are hanging with the past. Now you are no longer here.Listening to me, by and by their mind becomes knowledgeable; they become great knowers. That too becomes a barrier. Listening to me, become more and more unknowing. That is the whole effort here. I want to take all your knowledge away from you. I want to destroy it. I want you to be ignorant, innocent, because in innocence all is possible. With knowledge, nothing is possible. But listening to me again and again and again, you become knowledgeable – even about these things: that one has to be ignorant. It becomes your knowledge. Not that you become ignorant, you start teaching others to become ignorant. “One has to be innocent”– this becomes your knowledge. You don’t become innocent; you become knowledgeable about innocence. You start talking about innocence, what innocence is and how it should be brought about. You become experts. But you miss the point. And then things close. The honeymoon is over and the dark night of the soul starts.Bodhiprem is in the dark night of the soul. But try to understand it, and in the very understanding it will start disappearing. The morning is not far away. Next time when it happens… And it will happen, it will happen only when you are tired of your desire and you forget about it. It will happen only when the past is so far away and distant that you start thinking: “Maybe it had never happened in the first place. Maybe I was dreaming. I was in a kind of hallucination.” Or, “I had read it in a book, or maybe I got deceived by Osho, or something. I was hypnotized.” When it becomes so distant that you cannot really think it had happened to you, you will lose the grip on the past.If it had not happened, what is the point of desiring more of it? How can you desire more of something which has not happened to you? Then the future will disappear. This dark night of the soul becomes darker, darker, darker… A moment will come when all hope disappears. And with that disappearance of hope, and of the past and of the desire for the future, all that you have gathered around here – the knowledge – will look meaningless. You will think, “So it doesn’t work. It is meaningless.” You will start dropping that knowledge too.Then – the morning! Then, suddenly, one day you see it is there again. The sun has risen and the fragrance is coming from many, many unknown flowers. You are full of it again. And the second time it will be deeper than the first. Now, I would like you to remember, when it happens the second time don’t make the same mistake that you made the first time. Next time when it comes, enjoy it, feel thankful and grateful, and when it goes, say “Good-bye” and don’t be bothered by it. It will come and go many times before it settles permanently. It will come and go many times. So it is not going to be solved within two or three times; it may come many times. And if you go on making the same mistake again and again, then it may go on coming and going for many lives. Next time, be a little more alert – don’t desire, don’t expect. When it comes feel thankful because you have not earned it; it is a gift.A gift cannot be desired; a gift cannot be earned. It comes to you as a gift. But it happens with gifts too. If somebody gives you a gift every birthday and now your birthday is coming, you are thinking, “Now what is he going to give me?” And naturally you desire more than the last time. The last time he had given you a bicycle, now you want a car. And if the car does not come, you will be very angry. In fact, if a bicycle comes, then too you will be very angry: “What to do with the bicycle? One is enough. Now again a bicycle?” And if even the bicycle does not come, you will be in a rage. You don’t understand the point that it was a gift. You cannot expect it – it was a gift. When it comes you have to be thankful, when it does not come you cannot demand it. Gifts cannot be demanded.Godliness comes as a gift. Light comes as a gift. Love comes as a gift. Life itself is a gift! You cannot demand it. That’s what you did, Bodhiprem; deep down you started demanding it. And hence you missed it. Next time it comes… This dark night of the soul will not be forever; the morning is coming closer. But when the morning comes closer, the night becomes darker and darker. And one has to pass through it. When it comes this time, just enjoy it. And if you just enjoy it, it will become long. It may never go. If you have learned the secret of enjoying a gift it may never go. I am not saying that it will never go. I am simply saying that if you have learned the art of not desiring, not clinging, not demanding, it may never go. But if it goes, then don’t ask, then accept. Then relax into the dark night of the soul again.It happens many times because man goes on committing the same mistake again and again. But slowly, slowly the understanding dawns, and one day one sees the point that God is available if you don’t desire. God is available in desirelessness. If you desire, you lose.The third question:Osho,Why are there so many religions?Because there are so many people, because there are so many languages, because there are so many types of people – and because there are so many ways to approach God. It is a rich world. It would have been a very poor world if there was only one religion. Just think of a world where only the Bible exists, and no Vedas and no Gita and no Koran. Think of a world where only the Koran exists.Now, one friend goes on asking every day why I don’t speak on the Koran. I don’t speak for a certain reason. The Koran is a beautiful song, the music of it is ultimate, but there is nothing in it to discuss. In that way it is poor. You cannot sing Buddha’s message, but you can discuss it. In that way it is rich. Buddha’s message can be discussed. You can go on, layer upon layer, deeper and deeper and deeper, and there is no end to it. But you cannot sing it. In that way it is dry. You cannot put it to music, you cannot make a melody of it, but it has great philosophical insight. The Koran is beautiful as a song. It has to be sung to be known. But as far as insight is concerned, it is poor; there is no insight in it. That’s why I don’t discuss it, because there is nothing to discuss in it.If I have to discuss it, I will have to say many things against it, because the Koran is not a pure religious book. It has politics, it has sociology, society, law, marriage. It is the whole code. Only five percent of it is religious; ninety-five percent is about other things because it is the only book of the Arab people.It is just like the Vedas. Only a few sentences here and there reach to the peak, other sentences are ordinary because it was the only book the Aryans had, it was their all. Their science was in it – whatsoever of science existed in those days – their religion was in it, their philosophy was in it, their poetry was in it, their business was in it, their economics was in it, their agriculture was in it. There was everything – it was their Encyclopedia Britannica. And so is the Koran. It is the only book. The Arab people had no other book, so the Koran functioned as their all. It talks about marriage – how many wives a husband should have; it talks about food – what you should eat, what you should not eat, it talks about prayer, the ritual – how you should do it.Now you will not find things like that in Buddha’s sutras. That will look so absurd: Buddha talking about how many wives you should have. What has Buddha to do with it? You can have as many as you want, and a wife can have as many husbands as she wants. What is the point of talking about it? Buddha is not giving a social code; he is giving the science of spiritual evolution. So when you talk about Buddha, there is so much to talk about and go into. Each word can become a deep well and you can draw infinite water out of it. But the Koran is rich in another sense. It is a poor man’s book for uneducated people – not philosophic, not theological – but people who loved life, who loved the small things of life. It has great song in it.If some day I decide to share the Koran with you, then the only way is that somebody will have to sing the Koran, and you will listen and I will also listen, because there is nothing to speak about. If one has to speak about something, then there are far more beautiful things. The Koran should be sung and listened to. It is music, it is pure music. It should not be discussed logically, it should not be analyzed logically. Then it looks very poor.You don’t analyze music. If you analyze music it loses its beauty. You don’t analyze poetry. If you analyze poetry it becomes prose – something has disappeared from it, then there are ordinary words. You can have all the words that are in Shakespeare, you can have all the words in a box, but not in the same order as they are in Shakespeare, then you will not have poetry. The whole art of poetry is that those words are put in a certain order, and because of that certain order something transcendental descends. Those words simply create a net to catch hold of the transcendental. You need not look at the net at all. If you start analyzing the net – if you cut the net and you see what the net is made of, you will not catch the transcendental in it. The fish of the transcendental will escape. You need not cut and dissect the net; the net has only to be used.So is the Koran: it is music, it is poetry. And it is good, I say, that Buddha exists – that is a different approach; that poetry and the Koran exist – that is another approach; and that the Bible exists. And there are Moses and Zarathustra and Jesus; different people bring different angles into the world, they open different windows into godliness. It is perfectly good that there are so many religions; nothing is wrong with it. If something is wrong, then it comes from arrogance, not from so many religions. Then it comes from the arrogance of a Hindu when he says, “Only my religion is right,” or when a Jew says, “Only my religion is right,” or when a Christian says, “Only those who go through Jesus will reach, nobody else.” This is arrogance, this is stupidity; this should be dropped. There are many languages and different ways of expressing things.Two patients at an asylum passed the swimming pool early in the morning. A nurse, thinking she was unobserved at that hour, was bathing in the nude. As she climbed out, one inmate said to the other, “Boy! Wouldn’t she look good in a bathing suit!”There are different visions.“Hey man,” one hippie said to another, “Turn on the radio.”“Okay,” the second hippie answered. And leaning over very close to the radio, he whispered, “I love you.”Now that is a hippie’s way of turning things on. Beware! Don’t say this to Pankaja. If you say this to her in her ear, whisper, “I love you,” you will turn her off, not on. She is very afraid of somebody saying to her, “I love you.” She is afraid of love. She is afraid of being turned on: the fear that if you are turned on, then you don’t know where you are going and what is going to happen.Just few days ago she came to me to tell me about her fear, and I told her and the people who had gathered for that evening’s darshan to spread the rumor, that whosoever comes around Pankaja should just come close to her and say in her ear, “I love you.” She simply gets shocked when you say, “I love you.” Even when I said to her, “I love you,” she was shaken. Just the very idea of love, the very word… What to say about the experience? The very word pierces her heart.Now, there are people who are waiting for somebody to come and say “I love you,” and there are people who are afraid – different people, different approaches, and each has its own validity.Now she cannot move on the path of prayer because there God comes and whispers in your ear, “I love you.” Now that is not for her. She has to go through meditation. Buddha will be her way, not Christ, because Christ says: “Love is God.” That will be difficult for her. It is just an example of what I am talking about. Everybody has different visions, different dreams, different pasts, different experiences. God cannot come alike to everybody, and it is very good that there are so many religions. That means that everybody can have his own way, everybody can choose. This is a rich world. It is not monotonous.The problem is not that there are many religions, the problem is that people are arrogant, stupid. A really religious person is one who loves his way toward God, and who loves your way toward God too, howsoever opposite to his it may be. And remember, I am not saying that he tolerates your way. Toleration is a very intolerant word! When you say, “I tolerate Mohammedans” – toleration? Mahatma Gandhi used to teach toleration in India. Toleration is very intolerant. It gives you a feeling of superiority; that you are a man of tolerance, as if the other is not worthy. But still you tolerate: that the other is very low, but still you tolerate because you are such a liberal man. Such compassion is in your heart, you tolerate. Of course, you know that the other is not as right as you are, but still you tolerate because you believe in democracy. You believe that if somebody wants to go wrong, he has to be given freedom: “Okay, go.”Toleration is not a good word and I don’t want you to become tolerant. I want you to become lovers. You love your way, you are moving on your way; love those who are moving on their ways, and their ways too because all ways are moving toward God. Tolerance is not a right thing. Love! Don’t have any notions that you are higher than and superior to others. That’s what is happening in the world.There are people who cannot bear the presence of the other: Christians who cannot bear the presence of the Jews, Jews who cannot bear the presence of the Christians. These people are thought to be very orthodox, conventional, out of date. The modern mind says, “This is not right.” The modern mind says, “We tolerate.” Christians say: “Yes. Hindus are also right – not as right as we are, but still right, better than nothing, better than not being religious.”Mahatma Gandhi used to write books, articles proving that the Koran is also right, that the Bible is also right. But the way in which he proves it is very cunning. The way he proves it is through the “right thing”: the criterion is the Gita. Now whatsoever corresponds with the Gita in the Koran is also right. Whatsoever corresponds in the Bible with the Gita is also right. And what about that which is against the Gita? He never talks about it. The real problem arises there. There is no problem if the Gita says one thing and the same thing is being repeated in the Koran; then it is only a question of a language difference. You can simply say that the Koran is also right; it is saying the same thing as the Gita. It has been decided that the Gita is right; now, whatsoever corresponds with the Gita is right. This is a cunning approach.What about the things in which the Koran is against the Gita? I say then too the Koran is right! And what to say about the Bible where it is against the Gita? Then too, I say, the Bible is right. The Gita has no monopoly; the Gita is a path. And whatsoever the Gita says is right on that path. It is as if you are going in a bullock cart. Somebody else is moving in a car. Now what do you say about these two vehicles? Something is right in the bullock cart: the wheels of the bullock cart are right on the bullock cart. The bullock cart will not move without those wheels. But those same wheels are wrong on a car. If you put those wheels on a car, the car will not move at all. Those wheels are right on the bullock cart; the bullock cart has its own unity. And the mechanism that is in the car is right in the car – it has its own organic unity.Each religion is an organism. My hand is right on my body, it may not be right on your body – it may be too short, or too long. Lenin had very small legs. It was very difficult for him to sit on chairs because they would never reach the ground, so special chairs had to be made for him. Somebody asked him, “What do you think about your legs?”He said, “I am not in any trouble. They are perfectly okay for me. I can move, I can walk. They are perfectly right in my organism – small or big is not the point – but on somebody else’s body they may create trouble. Your head is perfectly right on you, on somebody else’s body it may not fit. It may be ugly, they may not go together.”Each religion is an organic unity. You need not tolerate it. You have to love it; somebody is moving on that way. Somebody is going by bullock cart and you are going in your car. Can’t you just say, “Hello”? Do you have to tolerate the bullock cart? Can’t you say, “Hello! I am also going”? Somebody enjoys the bullock cart, and the bullock cart has its own joys which no car can have. The bullock cart moves more naturally, in tune with nature. The car goes too fast to appreciate nature. The airplane goes so fast that it is not a journey at all. From one point to another you jump so fast that you have missed the whole journey. And somebody is walking – not even in the bullock cart – he wants to enjoy walking. That too is perfectly good.To me, all religions are perfectly good because every religion is an organic unity. Its goodness is in itself; it is not comparable to anything else.The fourth question:Osho,Can't a religious man be a politician?Never heard of it! It is impossible because religion is love, intelligence, awareness, meditation, desirelessness, non-ambition. And politics is just the opposite: ugly ambition, violence, aggression.Politics is the desire to rule over others, and religion is the desire to free oneself from others and to free others from oneself. Religion is freedom. Politics is a kind of slavery. When you seek power, what in fact are you seeking? You are seeking power over others; you want to reduce them to nobodies. You want to reduce them to slaves, serfs. When you are searching for religion, what are you searching for? You are simply searching for a way out of your imprisonment into freedom. Those who love freedom, make others free also, and those who love slavery and want others to make others slaves, become slaves to their own slaves.Politics is cunningness; religion is innocence. They can’t go together. Yes, politicians pretend to be religious, because that helps; that is part of their strategy. But don’t be deceived by it.Three politicians – one English, one German and one Indian – all died and went to heaven at the same time. On their arrival, St. Peter asked the Englishman how many lies he had told during his professional career. The Englishman admitted to twelve lies and was told that he had to run round heaven twelve times. When asked the same question, the German politician said that he could remember telling twenty lies, and he was told to run round heaven twenty times.St. Peter then turned to the Indian, Gandhian, politician, only to find that he had disappeared. “Where’s he got to?” he asked an angel standing nearby.“Oh, he’s gone back to get his bicycle,” said the angel.Now the Gandhian politician is trying to be religious in politics, and they have proved to be the most mischievous people in the whole history of world politics – the ugliest. Because of the mask of being religious, they can go on playing all sorts of nonsense behind the mask. Remember that the very desire for power is an ugly desire. It makes you ugly. In a religious consciousness there is no desire to have any power over anybody. That brings beauty; it brings freedom not only to you, but freedom for others too.The politician is interested in the ordinary world; the religious person is interested not in the ordinary world, but the extraordinary that is hidden in the ordinary. The religious person is searching for the invisible in the visible, for the soul in the body, for godliness in matter. Their searches are different, utterly different.A poet can be religious. A religious person can be a poet. But a religious person cannot be political, and a political person cannot be religious – they exclude each other. And if by chance somebody is really religious and is in politics, he will never succeed. He will be a failure, an utter failure; you will never hear of him. Only people who are cunning succeed in politics. People who can cheat, and can cheat with smiles on their faces, people who can kill, and kill “for your own sake.” People who can kill, exploit and still can manage to prove that they are serving their people – they succeed.The last question:Osho,What is presence of mind?This story…A woman was driving her car at about sixty miles an hour in a built-up area when she noticed in her rear-view mirror that a motor-cycle policeman was following her. Instead of slowing down, she thought that she could shake him off by increasing her speed to seventy miles an hour.Looking through her mirror again, she saw that there were now two motor-cycle policemen following her. She stepped up her speed to eighty miles an hour and, when she looked again, there were three policemen on her tail.Suddenly she saw a garage up ahead and, pulling into it, she got out and dashed into the ladies’ toilet. Ten minutes later she ventured out, and there were the three policemen waiting for her. Without batting an eyelash, she said coyly, “I’ll bet you thought I wouldn’t make it.”Enough for today.

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I Say Unto You Vol 2 01-09Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 2 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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John 8Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him, and he sat down and taught them.And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery, and when they had set her in the midst,They said unto him: Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned. What sayest thou?This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them: He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her: Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her: Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more.Religion always deteriorates into morality. Morality is dead religion and religion is alive morality; they never meet, they cannot meet because life and death never meet, light and darkness never meet. But the problem is that they look very alike – the corpse looks very similar to the living man. Everything is similar to when the man was alive: the same face, the same eyes, the same nose, hair, and body. Just one thing is missing, and that one thing is invisible. Life is missing, but life is not tangible and not visible. So when a man is dead, he looks as if he is still alive. And with the problem of morality, it becomes more complex.Morality looks exactly like religion, but it is not. It is a corpse; it stinks of death. Religion is youth, religion is freshness – the freshness of flowers and the freshness of the morning dew. Religion is splendor – the splendor of the stars, of life, of existence itself. When there is religion, there is no morality at all and yet the person is moral. But there is no morality; there is no idea of what morality is. It is just natural; it follows you as your shadow follows you. You need not carry your shadow, you need not think about your shadow. You need not look back again and again and see whether the shadow is still following you or not. It follows. Just like that, morality follows a religious person. He never considers it, he never deliberately thinks about it; it is his natural flavor. But when religion is dead, when life has disappeared, then one starts thinking continuously about morality. Consciousness has disappeared, and conscience becomes the only shelter.Conscience is a pseudo phenomenon. Consciousness is yours, conscience is borrowed. Conscience is of the society, of the collective mind; it does not arise in your own being. When you are conscious, you act rightly because your act is conscious, and the conscious act can never go wrong. When your eyes are fully open and there is light, you don’t try to go through the wall, you go through the door. When there is no light and your eyes are not functioning well, naturally you will grope in the dark. You will have to think a thousand and one times where the door is: “To the left, to the right? Am I moving in the right direction?” You stumble on the furniture, and you try to get out through the wall.A religious person is one who has eyes to see, who has awareness. In that awareness, actions are naturally good. Let me repeat: naturally good. Not that you make them good. Managed goodness is not goodness at all. It is pseudo, it is pretentious, it is hypocrisy. When goodness is natural, spontaneous, just as trees are green and the sky is blue, so is the religious man moral – completely unaware of his morality. Aware of himself, but unaware of his morality. He has no idea that he is moral, that he is good, that what he is doing is right. Out of his awareness comes innocence, out of his awareness comes the right act – of its own accord. It has not to be brought, it has not to be cultivated, it has not to be practiced. Then morality has a beauty, but it is no longer morality; it is simply moral. In fact, it is just a religious way of living. But when religion has disappeared, then you have to manage it. Then you have to constantly think about what is right and what is wrong. How are you going to decide what is right and what is wrong? You don’t have your own eyes to see, you don’t have your own heart to feel. You are dead and dull. You don’t have your own intelligence to go into things; you have to depend on the collective mind that surrounds you.Religiousness has one flavor – whether you are Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan does not make any difference. A religious person is simply religious. He is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian. But a moral person is not just moral. Either he is Hindu or Christian or Mohammedan or Buddhist, because morality has to be learned from the outside. If you are born in a Buddhist country, in a Buddhist society, you will learn the Buddhist morality. If you are born in a Christian world, you will learn the Christian morality. You will learn from others, and you have to learn from others because you don’t have your own insight. So morality is borrowed; it is social, it is mob – it comes from the masses. It comes to the masses from where? – from tradition. They have heard what is right and what is wrong, and they have carried it down the ages. It is being given from one generation to another. Nobody bothers whether it is a corpse, nobody bothers whether the heart still beats; it goes on being given from one generation to another. It is dull, dead, heavy; it kills joy, it is a killjoy. It kills celebration, it kills laughter, it makes people ugly, it makes people heavy, monotonous, boring. But it has a long tradition.Another thing to be remembered: religion is always born anew. In Jesus, religion is born again. It is not the same religion that was with Moses. It has not come from Moses. It has no continuity with the past; it is utterly discontinuous with the past. It arises again and again just like a flower comes on the rosebush. It has nothing to do with the flowers that have come before; it is discontinuous. It comes on its own; it has no past, no history, no biography. For the moment it is there, and for the moment it is so beautifully there, so authentically there. For the moment it is so strong, so alive, and yet so fragile. In the morning sun it was so young… By the evening it will be gone, the petals will start falling onto the earth from which they had come in the first place. It will not leave any trace behind; if you come the next day, it is no longer there. It has not left any marks; it has simply disappeared. As it has come out of nothingness, so it has gone back to nothingness, to the original source.Religion is just like that. When it happens in a Buddha, it is fresh, young, like a roseflower; it disappears, it leaves no traces. Buddha has said: “Religion is like a bird flying in the sky, it leaves no footprints.” It happens in a Moses – it is fresh, young again, then in Jesus – it is fresh and young again. When it happens to you, it will not have any continuity, it will not come from somebody else – Christ, Buddha, me; it will not come from anybody else. It will arise in you, it will bloom in you. It will be a flowering of your being and then it will be gone. You cannot give it to anybody; it is not transferable. It cannot be given, cannot be borrowed; it is not a thing. Yes, if somebody wants to learn, it can be learned. If somebody wants to imbibe it, it can be imbibed. When a disciple learns from being around a master, absorbs the vibes of the master, then too it is something that is happening within him. Maybe he gets the challenge, the provocation, the call from the outside, but that which arises, arises in him, utterly in him. It does not come from the outside.It is as if you are not aware that you can sing; you have never tried, you have never thought about the possibility. One day you see a singer, and suddenly his song starts pulsating around you. In a moment of awakening, you become aware that you have also got a throat and a heart. Now, suddenly, for the first time, you become aware that there has been a song hidden in you, and you release it. But the song comes from your innermost core; it arises from your being. Maybe the provocation, the call came from the outside, but not the song. So the master is a catalytic agent. His presence provokes something in you, his presence does not function as a cause.C. G. Jung is right in bringing a new concept to the Western world. It has existed in the East for centuries – the concept of synchronicity. There are things which happen as cause and effect, and there are things which don’t happen as cause and effect, but just by synchronicity. This idea has to be understood because it will help you to understand the difference between morality and religion. Morality is cause and effect. Your father, your mother, have taught you something; they function as the cause, and then the effect continues in you. You will teach your children; you will become the cause, and the effect will continue in your children. But listening to a singer, suddenly you start humming a tune. There is no cause-and-effect relationship. The singer is not the cause and you are not the effect. You have caused the effect yourself – you are both the cause and the effect. The singer functioned only as a remembrance, the singer functioned only as a catalytic agent.What has happened to me I cannot give to you. Not that I don’t want to give it to you, no – because it cannot be given, its very nature is such that it cannot be given – but I can present it to you, I can make it available to you. Seeing that it is possible, seeing that it has happened to another man, “Why not to me?” Suddenly something clicks inside you, you become alert to a possibility, alert to a door that is in you but you were never looking at, you had forgotten it. Something starts sprouting in you.I function as a catalytic agent, not as a cause. The concept of synchronicity simply says that one thing can start something somewhere without it being a cause. It says that if somebody plays a sitar in a room where another sitar has been placed in the corner, and if the player is really a master, a maestro, the sitar that is just sitting there in the corner will start throbbing – because of the other sitar being played in the room, the vibe, the whole milieu. The sitar that is just sitting there in the corner – nobody is playing it, nobody is touching it – you can see its strings vibrating, whispering. Something that was hidden is surfacing, something that was not manifest is manifesting.Religion is synchronicity; morality is causal. Morality comes from the outside, religion arises in you. When religion disappears, there is only morality and morality is very dangerous. First, you don’t know what is right yourself, but you start pretending; the hypocrite is created. You start pretending, you start showing that whatsoever you are doing is right. You don’t know what right is, and naturally, because you don’t know you can only pretend. You will continue doing the same as you were from the back door – that you know is right. From the back door you will have one life, from the front door, another. From the front door you may be smiling, and from the back door you may be crying and weeping. From the front door you will pretend to be a saint, and from the back door you will be as much of a sinner as anybody else. Your life will become split. This is what is creating schizophrenia in the whole human consciousness. You become two, or many. Naturally when you are two, there is constant conflict. Naturally when you are many, there is a crowd, and a lot of noise, and you can never settle in silence, you can never rest in silence. Silence is possible only when you are one, when there is nobody else within you, when you are one piece – not fragmented.Morality creates schizophrenia, split personalities, divisions. A moral person is not an individual because he is divided. Only a religious person is an individual. The moral person has a personality, but no individuality. Personality means a persona, a mask. He has many personalities, not just one, because he has to have many personalities around him. In different situations, different personalities are needed. With different people, different personalities are needed. To one he shows one face, to another he shows another face. One goes on changing faces. Watch, and you will see how you go on changing faces every moment. Alone you have one face. In your bathroom you have one face, in the office you have another. Have you observed the fact that in your bathroom you become more childish? Sometimes you can stick out your tongue in front of the mirror, or you can make faces, or you can hum a tune, sing a song, or you can even have a little dance in the bathroom. But if you become aware that your child is looking through the keyhole while you are dancing or sticking out your tongue in front of the mirror, you change – immediate change! The old face comes back – the father personality. “This cannot be done in front of the child, otherwise what will he think?” – that you are also like him? So what about that seriousness that you always show him? You immediately put on another face; you become serious. The song disappears, the dance disappears, the tongue disappears. You are back into your so-called front-door personality. Morality creates conflict in you because it creates many faces. The problem is that when you have many faces, you tend to forget which is your original one. With so many faces, how can you remember which is your original one?The Zen masters say that the first thing for a seeker to know is his original face because only then can something start. Only the original face can grow, a mask cannot grow. A false face can have no growth. Growth is possible only for the original face because only the original has life. So the first thing to know is: “What is my original face?” And it is arduous because there is a long queue of false faces, and you are lost in your false faces. Sometimes you may think, “This is my original face.” If you go deeply into it, you will find that again this is a false face, maybe it is more ancient than the others, so it looks more original.The Zen masters say that if you really want to see your original face, you will have to go back before birth; you will have to conceive of what your face was before you were born, or what your face will be when you are dead. Between birth and death you have all kinds of false faces. Even a small child starts learning the pseudo tricks, diplomacies. Just a small child – maybe one day old, just out of the womb – starts learning, because he sees that if he smiles, his mother feels very good. If he smiles, his mother immediately gives him her breast. If he smiles, his mother comes close, hugs him, pats him. He has learned a trick, that if he wants to be close to his mother, if he wants to be hugged and kissed and talked to, he has to smile. Now the diplomat is born, the politician is born. Whenever he wants his mother to pull him close… He cannot call, he cannot talk, but he can wait until she looks at him then he can smile. The moment he smiles, his mother comes running. Now whether he feels like smiling in this moment or not is not the point, he wants his mother, he wants to manipulate his mother. He has a trick, a strategy, a technique which he has learned: smile and mother will come. He will go on smiling, and whenever he wants somebody to come close to him, he will smile. This face will not be the true face. Your smiles are not true. Your tears are also not true. Your whole personality is synthetic, plastic. The moral person, the so-called moralist, has many personalities, but no individuality. The religious person has individuality, but no personality. He is one. His taste is always one.Buddha is reported to have said: “Taste me from anywhere and you will find the same taste as when you taste the sea. From this side, from that side, from this shore, from that shore – taste the sea from anywhere and it is salty.” Buddha says: “So is my taste. Taste me while I am asleep, taste me while I am awake, taste me when somebody is insulting me, taste me when somebody is praising me – you will always find the same taste, the taste of a buddha.”The religious person is an individual.The second thing to be remembered: for many reasons the moralist is always making efforts to impose his morality on others. First he uses his morality to manipulate himself. And then naturally, he does the same to others; he starts using his morality to manipulate others. He uses morality for his own strategies, diplomacies. Naturally, he learns a trick, that if he can enforce his morality on others, things will be easier. For example, if the moralist speaks the truth, his truth is not very deep. Deep down there are only lies and lies. But at least he pretends to speak the truth in society. He will also try to impose his truth on others. He would like everybody to speak the truth because he will be very afraid in case somebody lies and tricks him, deceives him – and he knows that he himself is lying and deceiving people in subtle ways, but on the surface he keeps the truth. He goes on shouting that everybody should be true. He is very afraid. He knows that just as he is deceiving others, others may be deceiving him.Bertrand Russell has said that thieves are always against stealing. A thief has to be against stealing, otherwise somebody will steal things from him. He has been making so much effort to steal things from others that if others steal things from him, then what will be the point? A thief will always shout, “Stealing is bad. Never steal. You will be thrown into hell!” So nobody steals, and the thief is free to steal.If nobody speaks untruths, then you can speak untruths and exploit people easily. If everybody speaks untruths, how can you exploit them? Just imagine a society where everybody speaks untruths, and it is an accepted phenomenon that everybody tells lies. You will be at a loss; you will not be able to cheat people. Whatsoever you say, people will think you are a liar: “Everybody tells lies here”; nobody can be deceived. So, in his own interest, the liar has to go on preaching morality. “Speak the truth, never steal, do this, do that” – and from the back door he goes on doing just the opposite. This has to be understood. If somebody’s pocket is picked right now – somebody steals – many will be there shouting, “Catch the thief! Kill the thief! Who is there?” And many will shout. Remember, the shouters are just showing one thing: that they are also thieves. By shouting they are showing many things. One thing is: “Remember, I am not the thief because I am so much against it. Nobody could ever think or suspect me because I am against all these kind of things. I am a moral person.” Those who are pickpockets will shout more, and if the real pickpocket is caught, the pickpockets will beat him to show everybody that they are very much against it.This is a very, very complex phenomenon. A religious person is a totally different person. He will be able to forgive, he will be able to understand. He will be able to see the limitations of man and the problems of man. He will not be so hard and so cruel – he cannot be. His compassion will be infinite.Before we enter these sutras, a few things have to be understood. First: the concept of sin; the concept of the immoral act. What is immoral? How should we define immorality? What is the criterion? One thing is immoral in India, another thing is immoral in China. That which is immoral in India may be moral in Iran, and that which is moral in Russia may be immoral in India. There are a thousand and one moralities. How to decide? – because now that the world has become a global village, there is a lot of confusion. What is right? To eat meat is right? Is it moral or immoral? The vegetarian says it is immoral. Many Jainas have come to me and said, “What about Jesus eating meat? How can Jesus be an enlightened person – and you say that he is enlightened. How can he be an enlightened person? He eats meat.” For a Jaina it is impossible to conceive that Jesus can be enlightened because he eats meat. Jainas have come to me and asked, “How can Ramakrishna be enlightened? He eats fish. He cannot be.” Now they have a very definite criterion with them – vegetarianism.A Jaina monk was talking to me and he said, “I cannot believe that Jesus or Ramakrishna are enlightened. They eat meat.”I said to him, “Do you know that there are people in the world who think that to drink milk is almost like eating meat? – because it is an animal food. Blood consists of two kinds of particles, two kinds of cells – red and white. Those red particles are separated from the white ones in the mother’s breast; the white particles become milk. Now, milk is fifty percent blood. There are people in the world, real fanatics, who take things to the very extreme. They say that milk, cheese, and butter are all animal foods – they have to be avoided.”I said to the Jaina monk, “Mahavira used to drink milk. What do you say – he was drinking blood? Was he enlightened or not? Now Indian scriptures say milk is the purest food – sattvika – the purest food is milk. It is not. It is blood!”The Jaina monk started perspiring when he heard me say that milk is blood. He said, “What are you talking about? Milk is the sattvik food, the purest food!”But I said, “This is the analysis, the scientific analysis. Prove it wrong. That’s why when you drink too much milk, blood comes to your face and it becomes red. That’s why milk is so vital. Milk is a hundred percent food, that’s why children only live on milk. It supplies everything; it supplies the blood. It becomes your flesh, it becomes your skin, your bone, your marrow; it becomes everything. It is pure blood. Now, how to decide who is right?”There are a thousand and one moralities. If you go on trying to decide, you will be in difficulty; it will be impossible for you. You will go mad, you will not be able to eat, you will not be able to sleep, you will not be able to do anything. Now, there is a Jaina sect which is afraid of breathing. To breathe is immoral because with each breath you will kill many small cells living in the air around you. They are right. That’s why the doctor has to use a mask, so that he does not go on inhaling things which are moving around – infections. That Jaina sect is afraid to breathe. Breathing becomes immoral. Walking becomes immoral – there are Jainas who don’t walk in the night because they may kill something in the darkness, an ant or something else. Mahavira never moved at night time, and never moved in the rainy season because there are many more insects around then. Movement becomes difficult, breathing becomes difficult. If you go on looking around at all the moralities, you will simply go crazy or you will have to commit suicide. But to commit suicide is immoral!If you listen to all kinds of moralities, that seems to be the logical thing – just commit suicide. That seems to be the least immoral thing. One act and you are finished, there will be no immorality. But that too is immoral. When you commit suicide you are not dying alone, remember. It is not killing one person. You have millions of cells in the body which are alive, millions of lives inside you, which will die with you. So you have killed millions of people. When you fast, is it moral or immoral? There are people who say to fast is moral, and there are people who say to fast is immoral. Why? – because when you fast, you kill many cells inside yourself; they die of starvation. If you fast, a kilo of weight disappears every day. You are killing many things inside you. Every day a kilo of weight disappears. Within a month you will be just a structure of bones. All those people who used to live inside you – small people – have all died. You have killed all of them. Or there are people who say to fast is like eating meat. Now, very strange. And that is true, there is a logic to it. When a kilo of weight disappears, where has it gone? You have eaten it! Your body needs that kind of food every day. You go on replacing it with food from the outside. If you don’t replace it with food from the outside… The body goes on eating because the body needs food every twenty-four hours; the body has to live. It needs a certain fuel; it starts eating its own flesh. To be on a fast is to be a cannibal.These moralities can drive you mad. There is no way to choose. What is moral to me? – to be aware is moral. What you are doing is not the question. If you are doing it in full awareness, whatsoever it is – it is irrelevant what it is – irrespective of the fact of what it is, if you are doing it in full awareness, it is moral. If you are doing it in unawareness, in unconsciousness, then it is immoral.To me, morality means awareness.The French language seems to be the only language which has only one word for two words: conscience and consciousness. That seems to be very, very beautiful. Consciousness is conscience. Ordinarily, consciousness is one thing and conscience is another thing. Consciousness is yours. Conscience is given to you by others; it is a conditioning. Live by consciousness, become more and more conscious, and you will become more and more moral – you will not become a moralist. You will become moral and you will not become a moralist. The moralist is an ugly phenomenon.Now the sutras:Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.He always used to go to the mountains whenever he felt that his consciousness was becoming dusty; his mirror was covered with dust. He would go to the mountains in aloneness to cleanse his being, to cleanse his consciousness. It is like when you take a bath, and after the bath you feel your body is fresh, young.Meditation is like an inner bath.To be alone for a few moments every day is a must; otherwise you will gather too much dust, and because of that dust your mirror will not reflect any more, or will not reflect rightly. It may start distorting things. Haven’t you noticed? – a single particle of dust enters your eye, and your vision becomes distorted. The same is true about the inner vision – the inner eye – so much dust goes on collecting there, and the dust comes from relationship. Just like when you travel on a dusty road, you collect dust; when you move with people who are dusty, you collect dust. They are all throwing their dust around, they are all throwing the wrong vibes – and they cannot do anything, they are helpless. I am not saying that you condemn them. What can they do?If you go to a hospital and everybody is ill, and if they are throwing their infections all around… They can’t help it. They breathe out and the infection is released. Haven’t you noticed when you go to a hospital to visit somebody? – after just one hour in the hospital, you start feeling a kind of sickness and you were perfectly healthy when you entered. Just the smell of the hospital, just the faces of the nurses and the doctors, and the medical instruments, and that particular hospital smell, and all the people who are ill, and the whole vibe of illness and death always there… Somebody is always dying. Just being there for one hour and you feel very low; a kind of nausea arises in you.Coming out of the hospital, you feel a great relief. The same is the situation in the world. You don’t know because you live in the world. The nurse who goes on working in the hospital, and the doctor who goes on working in the hospital – they have to become insensitive, otherwise they would die. They would not be able to live there. They have become insensitive; they go on moving. That’s why you often see doctors looking very, very insensitive – that is their protection. The patient goes on saying that this is wrong and that is wrong, and the doctor stands there almost not listening. The relatives of the patient go on running after the doctor and go on telling him that this is going wrong and that is… And he says, “Everything will be okay. I will come tomorrow morning. I will see when I come on my rounds.” Now you are feeling so concerned, and he seems to be absolutely unconcerned. This is just to protect himself. If he becomes too sensitive, he will not be able to survive. He has to become hard, he has to create a kind of stoniness around himself. That stoniness will protect him – will protect him from the hospital and the patients and the whole atmosphere. Doctors become hard, insensitive; nurses become hard, insensitive. The same is happening in the world at large. It is a kind of big hospital because everybody is ill here and everybody is on his deathbed. Everybody is full of anger and violence, aggression, jealousy, possessiveness; everybody is false, pseudo, and everybody is a hypocrite – this is the world. You don’t feel it, but when a Jesus moves among you, he feels it because he comes from the heights. He descends from the mountains.If you go to the Himalayas and then after living in the Himalayan freshness for a few days you come back to the plains, you feel how dusty, how ugly, how heavy the vibe is. Now you have a comparison. You have seen the fresh waters of the Himalayas – those fresh fountains running forever, and the crystal-clear water – and then the municipal tap water! You have the comparison. Only a meditator knows that the world is ill, only a meditator feels that everything is wrong here. When a meditator moves among you, naturally he feels much more dust collecting on him than you can feel – because you have lost all sensitivity. You have forgotten that you are a mirror. You know that you are just a dust collector. Only a meditator knows that he is a mirror.So Jesus goes again and again to the mountains.Jesus went, unto the mountains, unto the Mount of Olives.And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him, and he sat down, and taught them.And early in the morning he came…into the temple… Only when you have been to the mountains – and that does not mean that you really have to go to the mountains. It is not an outer phenomenon. The mount is within you. If you can be alone, if you can forget the whole world for a few seconds, you will regain your freshness; only then can you go to the temple because only then you are a temple. Only then will your presence in the temple be a real presence; there will be a harmony between you and the temple. Remember, unless you bring your temple to the temple, there is no temple. If you simply go to the temple and don’t bring your temple there within you, it is just a house. When Jesus goes into a house, it becomes a temple. When you go into a temple, it becomes a house – because we carry our own temples inside. Wherever Jesus goes it becomes a temple, his presence creates that sacred quality. Only when you bring the temple and the freshness of the mountains, and the virginity of the mountains, only then can you teach. You can teach only then, when you have it.And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him, and he sat down, and taught them.And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery, and when they had set her in the midst,They said unto him: Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned, but what sayest thou?This is one of the most important parables in Jesus’ life. Go into it slowly, delicately, carefully.And the scribes and Pharisees… Now for that you can read “the moralists and the puritans.” In those days those were the names of the moralists, the pundits, the scholars: …the scribes and the Pharisees… The Pharisees were the people who were very respectable. On the surface, very moral, pretentious, with great egos. “We are moral and everybody else is immoral” – and always searching and looking into people’s faults. Their whole life was concerned with how to exaggerate their own qualities and how to reduce others’ qualities to nil.The puritans, the moralists …brought unto him a woman taken in adultery… Now when you come to a man like Jesus, you have to come there in humbleness, you have to come there to learn something, you have to come there to imbibe something; it is a rare opportunity. And now here come these fools and they bring a woman. They bring their ordinary mind, their mediocre mind, their stupidities with them.And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery… They have not even learned the simple lesson that when you go to a man like Jesus or Buddha, you go to partake, to participate in his consciousness; you go to become intimate with him. You don’t bring the ordinary problems of life there, they are irrelevant. That will be wasting a great opportunity, that will be wasting Jesus’ time, and he didn’t have much time, as I told you before – only three years of ministry. These fools were wasting time like this… But they had a certain strategy in it; it was a trap. They were not really concerned about the woman. They were creating a trap for Jesus. It was a very diplomatic act.And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery, and when they had set her in the midst, they said unto him, master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now what is adultery? A conscious mind will say that if you don’t love a man – maybe the man is your own husband. If you don’t love the man and you sleep with the man, it is adultery. If you don’t love the woman – and she may be your own wife… If you don’t love her and you sleep with her, you are exploiting her, you are deceiving her. It is adultery. But that is not the definition of the Pharisees and the puritans, the scribes and the pundits. Their definition is legal, their definition does not arise out of consciousness or love. Their definition arises out of the court. If the woman is not your wife and you have been found sleeping with her, it is adultery. It is just a legal matter, technical. The heart is not taken into account, only the law. You may be deeply in love with the man or with the woman, but that is not to be taken into account. The unconscious mind cannot take higher things into account. It can only take the lowest into account.The problem is always legal. Is it your woman? Your wife? Are you legally wed to her? Then it is good, it is no longer a sin. If she is not your woman, you are not legally wed to her… You may be deeply in love and you may have immense respect for the woman – you may almost be a worshipper of her – but it is a sin, it is adultery. Those people brought this woman to Jesus, and… They said unto him: Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.Just the other day I was reading the memoirs of an English Christian missionary who went to Japan in the early days of this century. He was taken around Tokyo. His host had taken him around to show him the city. In one public bath there were men and women bathing in the nude. The missionary was very shocked.He stood there for five minutes, watched everything, and then said to his host, “Isn’t it immoral – women and men bathing naked in a public place?”The host said, “Sir, this is not immoral in our country, but sorry to say, to stand here and watch is immoral. I am feeling very guilty standing with you because it is their business if they want to take a bath naked. That is their freedom. But why are you standing here? This is ugly, immoral.”Now the missionary’s standpoint is very ordinary, and the host’s standpoint is extraordinary.These people say: …Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. And what were you doing there? Were they Peeping Toms or… What type of people were they? What were you doing there? Why should you be concerned? This woman’s life is her life. How she wants to spend her life is her concern. Who are you to interfere? But the puritan and the moralist have always interfered in other people’s lives. They are not democratic, they are very dictatorial. They want to manipulate people, condemn people. Now, what were those people doing there?And they say: …Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. They have caught the woman while she was making love.One more thing: where is the man? Was she committing adultery alone…? Nobody has ever asked this question about this parable. I have read many Christian books, but nobody has ever asked, “Where is the man?”But it is a man’s society. It is always the woman who is wrong, not the man. The man will just go free. He may be a Pharisee himself, he may be a respectable man – but the woman has to be condemned. Haven’t you observed? – prostitutes are condemned, but where are the prostituters? Where are those people? They may be the same people who condemn.Now Morarji Desai wants to bring prohibition to the country. In his own ministry, out of seventeen, twelve are drunkards. Twelve! And he does not drink himself, that is true, but he drinks his own urine. That is a far worse case! But he wants to bring prohibition to the country. He wants to force it through. Maybe because he has not been drinking… He wants to take revenge on others, or what? Puritans are always ugly people. They don’t live and they don’t allow anybody else to live. Their only joy is how to kill other people’s joy, how to kill everybody’s celebration.Now, what were those people doing there? Didn’t they have anything else to do? Didn’t they have their own women to love? What kind of people were they? They must have been a little perverted to go out searching and seeking someone who was committing adultery. Where was the man? The woman just always has to be condemned. Why does the woman have to be condemned? – because the woman is a woman and the man is the dominant one, and all the legal codes have been made by men. They are very prejudicial, biased. All the legal courts say what should be done to a woman if she is found committing adultery, but they don’t say anything about what should be done to the man. No, they say, “Boys are boys. And boys will be boys.” It is always a question about the woman. Even if a man rapes a woman, the woman is condemned; she loses respect, not the rapist. This is an ugly state of affairs. This can’t be called religious, it is very political – basically in men’s favor and against women. All your so-called moralities have been that way.In India, when a husband died, the wife had to go with him to the funeral pyre, only then was she thought to be virtuous. She had to become a sati, she had to die with her husband. If she did not die, that meant she was not virtuous. That simply meant she wanted to live without the husband, or maybe she wanted the husband to die. Now she wanted freedom, now she could fall in love with somebody else. In India, it has been thought that there is no life for the woman once the husband has died. Her husband has been her whole life. If the husband goes, she has to go. But nothing is said about the man if his woman dies – no prescription for him that he should die with the woman. No, that isn’t a problem. Immediately after the woman has died… In India it happens every day, the people burn the woman and coming back home, they start thinking about a new marriage – where and how can the man find a new woman? Not a single day is to be lost.For the man there is one morality, for the woman it is different. It is a very unconscious morality and a very immoral one. My definition of morality is that of consciousness, and consciousness is neither man nor woman. Consciousness is just consciousness. Only when something is decided by your being conscious will it be classless, will it be beyond the distinctions of body, caste, creed. Only then is it moral.Master, they say, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned. But what sayest thou?This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.This was the trap. They wanted to trap Jesus: “Moses has said that such a woman should be stoned.” Nothing is said about the man. Such a woman should be stoned to death; Moses has said this. Now they are creating a problem for Jesus. If Jesus says, “Yes, do as Moses says,” they can accuse him because he has always been talking about love, compassion, kindness, forgiveness. They can say, “What about your compassion? What about your forgiveness? What about your love? You say this woman has to be killed by stoning? This is hard and cruel and violent.”Tricky fellows. If Jesus says, “This is not right. Moses is not right,” they can say, “So you have come to destroy Moses? So you have come to destroy and corrupt our religion? And you have been saying to people, ‘I have not come to destroy but to fulfill.’ What about that? If you have come to fulfill, then follow Moses’ law.” Now they are creating a dilemma. This is the trap. They are not concerned about the woman, remember, their real target is Jesus; the woman is just an excuse. And they have brought such a case… That’s why they say …in the very act, red-handed. So it is not a question of deciding whether the woman has really committed adultery. Otherwise, Jesus would have an excuse to get out. He would say, “First, try to find out whether it really has happened. Bring the witnesses. Let it first be decided.” It would take years. So they say, “Red-handed! We have caught her in the very act. We are all witnesses, so there is no question of deciding anything else. The law is clear; Moses has said that such a woman should be stoned.”…what sayest thou? “Do you agree with Moses? If you agree, then what about your love and compassion – your whole message? If you don’t agree, what do you mean when you say ‘I have come to fulfill’? Then you have come to destroy the law of Moses. So do you think you are higher than Moses? Do you think that you know more than Moses?”…what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. Why? Why did Jesus stoop down? Why did he start writing on the ground? They were just on the bank of a river. Jesus was sitting on the sand. Why did he start writing in the sand? What had happened?There is one thing to be understood; it is always a delicate problem. For example, if I see that something stated by Buddha as wrong, there is a great hesitation to say that he is wrong. He cannot be wrong. Tradition must have misinterpreted him. Something must have been wrongly put into his mouth. Buddha cannot be wrong. But now there is no way to decide because the scriptures say this clearly… Jesus hesitating… Jesus is concerned. He does not want to say a single word against Moses, but he has to, hence the hesitation. He does not want to say anything against Moses because Moses could not have said it that way. It is his inner feeling that Moses could not have said it that way. But the inner feeling cannot be decisive. These people will say, “Who are you? Why should we care about your inner feeling? We have the written code with us, given by our forefathers. It is there written clearly!”Jesus does not want to say anything against Moses because he really has come to fulfill Moses. Anybody who becomes enlightened in the world is always fulfilling all the enlightened ones that have preceded him. Even if sometimes he says something against them, then, too, he is fulfilling them, because he cannot say anything against them. If you feel that he is saying something against them, then he is saying something against the tradition, against the scripture. But that looks as if he is saying something against Moses, against Buddha, against Abraham. Hence, he stoops down. He starts looking at the sand and starts writing. He is puzzled as what to do. He has to find a way out. He has to find a way out, in such a way that he does not say anything against Moses and yet he cancels the whole law. He really comes with a very miraculous answer, a magical answer.So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them: He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.It is really incredible, it is beautiful – that was his hesitation. He has found a golden mean. He has not said a single word against Moses and he has not supported Moses either. This is the delicate point to understand. Jesus was really utterly intelligent – uneducated, but utterly intelligent, a man of immense awareness. That’s why he could find the way out.He says: …He that is without sin among you… He says, “Perfectly right” – does not say directly that Moses is right, but he says, “Perfectly right. If Moses says so, then it must be so. But then, who should start throwing stones at this woman?”…He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. “So start, but only those who are without sin…” Now this is something new that Jesus brings in. You can judge only if you are without sin. You can punish only if you are without sin. If you are also in the same boat, what is the point? Who is going to punish whom?And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.Why did he stoop down again? – because he must have been afraid that there is always the possibility of some foolish person… He knows that everybody has committed one sin or another. If they have not committed one, they have been thinking to commit one – which is almost the same. Whether you think or you act makes no difference. Remember, the difference between sin and crime is this: crime has to be acted out, only then is it crime. You can go on thinking, but if you don’t commit it to action, no court can punish you because it never becomes a crime. Only crime is within the jurisdiction of the court, not sin. Then what is sin? Sin is if you think, “I would like to murder this man.” No court can do anything. You can say, “Yes, I have been thinking about it my whole life.” But thinking is beyond the court’s jurisdiction. You are allowed to think. No court can punish you because you dreamt that you killed somebody. You can dream every day and go on killing as many people as you want. No court can hold you unless it comes to actuality, unless thought becomes deed, unless thought is translated into reality. If it comes out of you and affects society, it becomes a crime. But it is sin because God can go on reading your thoughts. There is no need for him to read your acts. The magistrate has to read your acts, he cannot read your thoughts; he is not a thought reader or a mind reader. But for God there is no difference; whether you think or you do, it is all the same. The moment you think, you have done it.So Jesus says: …He that is without sin among you… not without crime. He says: …He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. That distinction was known down the ages – that if you think it, you have committed a sin already.And again he stooped down… Why this time? – because if he goes on looking at the people, his very look may be provocative. If he goes on looking at the people – somebody, just from his look, and out of offense, may throw a stone at the poor woman. He does not want to offend; he withdraws. He simply stoops down, starts writing in the sand – again as if he is not there. He becomes absent because his presence can be dangerous. If they have come just to trap him, and he is there and they feel his presence, it will be difficult for them to feel their own consciences, their own consciousnesses. He withdraws into himself, he allows them total freedom to think about it. He does not interfere. His presence can be an interference; if he goes on looking at them, that will offend their egos. It will also be difficult for them to escape, because it will feel bad to them that somebody was standing just in front of the mayor of the town or somebody else – the respectable people… How can the mayor escape when Jesus is looking at him? If he escapes and does not throw the stone at the woman, it will be proof that he is a sinner.He stoops down again, starts writing in the sand, gives them a chance – if they want to escape, they can.And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience…Jesus leaves them alone. That is the beauty of the man. He does not even interfere by his presence; he is simply no longer there. Their own consciences start pricking. They know. Maybe they have lusted after this woman many times, or maybe in the past they themselves have participated with this woman. Maybe the woman is a prostitute and all these respectable people in their turn have made love to her. Because one prostitute means that almost the whole town can become involved.In India, in the ancient days, prostitutes were called nagarvadhu, the wife of the town. That is the right name. All of those people must have been involved in some way or other with this woman or with other women – if not in acts, then in thoughts. My feeling is, it must have been evening and the sun was setting; it was becoming dark and Jesus was stooping down writing in the sand, and as it became dark, by and by the people started disappearing.And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest – the mayor – even unto the last…First the eldest disappeared, because of course, they have lived the longest, so they have sinned the longest. The young people may not have been such great sinners; they haven’t had enough time yet. But the eldest disappeared first. Those who were standing in front must have moved slowly to the back and escaped – because this man had really created a great problem; he had changed the whole situation. They had come to trap him and now they were trapped! You cannot trap a Jesus or a Buddha; it is impossible – you will be trapped. You exist at a lower state of mind. How can you trap a higher state of mind? That is just foolish. The higher state can trap you immediately because from that higher state your whole being is available.Now, Jesus must have looked into those people’s consciences – that was possible for him – he must have seen all kinds of sins raising their heads. In fact, even standing there, they were thinking about the woman: how to catch her. Maybe they were angry because somebody else had committed the sin and they were not given the opportunity. Maybe they were only jealous; maybe they wanted to be there instead of the man who had not been brought. Jesus must have looked from his height into their hearts. He had trapped them. They had forgotten their trap completely, they had forgotten about Moses and the law etcetera. In fact, they were never worried about Moses and the law. This also has to be understood. They were really more interested in stoning the woman, enjoying this murder. Not that they were interested in punishing somebody who had committed a sin – that was just an excuse. They could not leave this opportunity of murdering her. Now, Moses can be used…There are a thousand and one things said by Moses. They are not worried about them. They are not interested in all those sayings and all those statements. They are interested in this: “Moses says you can stone a woman if you catch her committing adultery.” They can’t miss this great opportunity of murder, of violence. When violence can be committed according to the law, who would like to miss it? Not only will they enjoy the violence, they will enjoy that they are very, very legal people, virtuous followers of Moses. But they have forgotten all about it. Just a little turning by Jesus and they have forgotten about Moses… He has changed the whole point. He has changed their minds from the woman to themselves. He has converted them, he has turned them backward – a one hundred and eighty degree turn. They were thinking about the woman and Moses and Jesus, and he has changed their whole attitude. He has made them their own target. He has turned their consciousness.Now he says, “Look into yourself. If you have never committed a sin, then… Then you are allowed, then you can kill this woman.”When Jesus had lifted up himself…he saw that they had all gone…even unto the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.…and he saw none but the woman, he said unto her: Woman, where are those thine accusers?Now he is not saying, “I am accusing you.” …where are those thine accusers? He is not for a single moment a participant in it. He has not judged, he has not condemned. He has not said a single thing to the woman. He simply says:Woman where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?Have they all gone? Has any man thrown a stone at you?She said, No man, Lord.She must have felt a deep respect, reverence, for this man who has not only saved her physically, but who has not even accused her in any way. Spiritually he has also saved her. She must have looked into those eyes which have only love and compassion and nothing else. This is the religious man. The moralist is always condemning, accusing; the religious man, always accepting, forgiving.She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her: Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more.Jesus says, “There is nothing to be worried about – the past. The past is past, gone is gone. Forget about it. But take some lessons from this situation. Don’t go on making the same mistakes in the future – if you think they are mistakes. I am not accusing you.”…Neither do I condemn thee… “But if you feel that you have done something wrong, then it is up to you. Don’t do it again. Forget the past, and don’t go on repeating it.”That is the whole message of all the buddhas and all the christs and all the krishnas: forget the past and if you understand, don’t do it again. That’s enough. There is no punishment, there is no judgment. If you have been doing something, you were helpless. You are unconscious, you have your limitations. You have your desires, unfulfilled desires. Whatsoever you have been doing was the only thing you could have done. So what is the point of accusing and condemning you? The only thing that can be done is that your consciousness can be raised high.That woman must have moved into a higher consciousness. She must have been afraid that she was going to be killed. This man, by a single statement, saved her from death. Not only that, the accusers disappeared. This man did a miracle. Not only did they not kill her, they simply became ashamed and escaped like thieves into the darkness of the night. This man is a magician.Now, he is saying, “I don’t condemn you. If you feel you have been doing something wrong, don’t do it again. That’s enough.” He has converted her.This is what people on acid call a “contact high.” Jesus is high; if you come in close affinity with him, you will start moving higher. This is synchronicity – non-causal. The woman must have come there almost condemning herself, ashamed of herself, thinking of committing suicide. He has raised that woman, transformed that woman.She said, No man, Lord… Jesus becomes Lord, Jesus becomes God to her. She has never seen such a godly man before. With no condemnation, a man becomes a god. With no judgment a man becomes a god. Just his presence, a single statement, and those people disappeared and she was saved. Not only saved physically, but spiritually intact. Jesus has not interfered at all. He has not condemned, he has not said a single word. He simply said, “Don’t repeat your past” – not a single word more. “Let the past be past and the gone, gone. You become new. All is good, and you are forgiven.”Jesus transformed many people by forgiving them. That was one of the accusations against him: “He forgives people. Who is he to forgive? Somebody has committed a sin – the society has to punish him! If society cannot punish him and he escapes, then society has prepared a punishment through God – he should be thrown into hell.”Hindus are also very much against the idea that Jesus can forgive you. The Christian idea is immense, tremendous, very great and full of potential. Hindus say that you will have to suffer for your past karmas; whatsoever you have done, you will have to undo. If you have done a bad thing, you will have to do something good. The bad thing and its result are going to come; you will have to suffer the consequence. Hindus will not agree with Jesus. Neither the Buddhists, nor the Jainas will agree, nor were the Jews agreeing with Jesus. How can he forgive?But I say to you – a man of that understanding can forgive. Not that by his forgiveness you are forgiven, but just that consciousness, that great consciousness can give you a feeling of well-being: “Nothing is wrong, don’t be worried; you can just shake off the past like dust and get out of it.” That very thing will give you such courage, such enthusiasm, will open new possibilities and new doors. You are freed from it. You immediately move beyond it. From this came the idea of the Christian confession. It does not work that way because the man you go to confess to is an ordinary man just like you. When you are confessing, the priest is not really forgiving you, deep down he may be condemning you. His forgiveness is just a show. He is an ordinary man, his consciousness is no higher than yours.Only from the higher can forgiveness flow. Only from the high mountains can the rivers flow toward the plains. Only from a Jesus or a Buddha, can forgiveness flow. And when there is a man like Jesus or Buddha, just his touch, just his look is enough to forgive you your whole past and all your karmas.I totally agree with Jesus. He brings a new vision to humanity – to attain to freedom. The Hindu, Jaina, and Buddhist concept is very ordinary and mathematical. It has no magic in it. It is very logical but it has no love in it. Jesus brings love to the world.Enough for today.

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I Say Unto You Vol 2 01-09Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 2 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,I was brought up as a Catholic, so how come Jesus is a stranger to me?Jesus is always a stranger. It does not matter whether you were brought up as a Catholic or a Protestant, a Hindu or a Mohammedan. The very being of Jesus is that of a stranger because he is an outsider. He lives on a different plane, he lives in a different dimension. He lives in godliness, you live in the world. He talks a different language; he talks about things that you have not even dreamt of. You cannot trust him. You cannot even understand him; he is incomprehensible. You may have been brought up as a Catholic and that means from your childhood you have been taught things about Jesus. Those are simply words; you have not been introduced to Jesus because that introduction is possible only through meditation – not through any kind of teaching, not through the Catholic catechism. It is all rubbish. In fact, rather than helping you to become acquainted with Jesus, it becomes a barrier: you become knowledgeable. You know many things about Jesus without knowing Jesus. The more you know about him, the less you think that you need to know him. By and by you become satisfied; you start feeling that you already know him without knowing him at all. That’s what the Christian teachings do – the more you have been taught, the more you become familiar, the more it breeds contempt.So, sometimes it happens that one who has not been brought up as a Christian may have fresher eyes to see Jesus because his mind will be uncluttered. He will not know anything, he will look through innocence. He will not be conditioned, he will look empty. He will approach Jesus without any prejudice for or against. And you can know Jesus only when you are nude, naked – naked of all beliefs, naked of all prejudices, when you approach him without any preoccupation, when your mind is utterly silent. In fact the Catholic upbringing has done just the opposite. All religions are doing that, it is nothing special to the Catholic Church. Hindus destroy the possibility of knowing Krishna, Buddhists destroy the possibility of knowing Buddha – because knowledge becomes more important than knowing, and knowledge is secondhand. Only knowing can help. And remember, let me repeat it again: Jesus is a stranger. He may be standing by your side, but he is not there, he is somewhere else. You may be standing in front of Jesus, but you are not there, you are somewhere else. You and Jesus never meet because the planes are so different. You never crisscross – you cannot. Unless you become something like Jesus, there is no possibility. To become like Jesus needs great meditation, needs great intelligence – not a Catholic upbringing, not a Sunday religion, not foolish dogmas and creeds. Great intelligence, sensitivity, awareness…People are fast asleep. Somebody is asleep as a Christian and somebody is asleep as a Hindu. That doesn’t matter – sleep is sleep. A Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan – if all the three get drunk, will there be any distinction, differentiation between their drunkenness? The Hindu will behave as foolishly as the Mohammedan; the Mohammedan will behave as stupidly as the Christian. Once they are drunk, they are drunk. People are asleep. It makes no difference what kind of theology you have used as a pillow for your sleep. Whether the pillow is white, green, blue or red does not matter. Once you fall asleep, you fall asleep; the pillow becomes immaterial. Whether you are sleeping on the Bible, on the Gita, on the Koran does not make any difference; you are using a pillow. Somebody is using the Bible as the pillow, somebody else is using the Koran as the pillow. You are snoring over your scriptures. Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, and Krishna remain strangers. They do not belong to this world, that’s why Hindus call them avatars. Avatar means one who has come from beyond, descended from the beyond, like a ray of light descends into darkness. It comes from the transcendental world, from the world of turiya – the fourth.Jesus looks like you, but he is not like you. Don’t be deceived by the appearance. He is here on earth and not of it. He moves in the same world, the same marketplace, the same people; he rubs shoulders with you, holds your hand, looks into your eyes, but he does not belong to this world. He belongs to the other shore. He has risen, he has risen in God. You can also rise and only by rising will you be able to understand him, befriend him; otherwise he will remain an outsider. Jesus is a lotus. You are still the mud. There cannot be any dialogue between the lotus and the mud – although the lotus is born out of the mud, although the mud is carrying many more lotuses than have become manifest. Many unmanifested lotuses are there in the mud, but the mud and the lotus are so different – strangers to each other. That is the situation. If you want to understand the lotus you will have to become a lotus. Only a lotus can have a dialogue with a lotus.Never become a Christian. If you want to become something, become a christ. Never become a Buddhist. If you want to become something, become a buddha; otherwise you will remain unaware of the reality of Jesus. And because people feel uneasy – uneasy because they cannot comprehend Jesus – they create theories. Rather than transforming themselves, they load Jesus with theories, theories which can help them make him comprehensible. No theory can make him comprehensible. All theology is false. But there are only two ways: either you wrap theories around Jesus which you can understand… In that way you feel that you have understood him, but you have understood only the theories that you have wrapped around him. He remains there, absolutely far away, distant. He is not even touched by your theories. You can weave and spin beautiful philosophies around him. You will be able to understand that philosophy – it is woven by you – it is your creation, rather, it is your invention. But Jesus, who is just standing there hidden behind your philosophies, is still an outsider. In fact your philosophies, your theories, have made him more of an outsider than he was. With those theories, a Wall of China has come between you and him.If you are a Christian, you will never understand Jesus. Your very Christianity will be an obstruction, a hindrance. How can you understand Jesus when you are a Christian? Impossible! What does it mean to be a Christian? – it means that you have certain ideas about Christ. You are clinging to certain theories; those theories become more important than Christ himself. Naturally, because you can understand those theories and you cannot understand Christ. So those theories become more and more important. You can discard Jesus, but you cannot discard your theories. That’s why there are so many Christianities – the Christianity of the Catholic, the Christianity of the Protestant, and the Christianity of many other sects. They all go on fighting, they are always at each other’s throats – and they are all followers of Jesus. So where is the conflict?The conflict is not between their Jesuses, because Jesus is one. The conflict is between their theories, and they cling to the theory. They can discard Jesus very easily – Jesus is discarded, but they cannot discard their theory. Their theory is more important; it is their invention. Jesus has become secondary. No, you cannot understand Christ if you are a Christian or a Catholic. You can understand Christ only if you are a nobody. I am not saying that you can understand Christ if you are a Hindu. When you are a nobody, when you drop all the curtains and you start moving in that reality called christ without any preoccupied mind – empty, clean, clear, no smoke around you; just a clarity and the freshness that clarity brings, and the vitality that clarity brings – and you start approaching Jesus, with no idea of who he is, there will be a meeting. Only if you are a nobody can you meet with Christ or Buddha or Krishna. These are different names for the same state of consciousness. It is the fourth state of consciousness. Theories belong to the third state of consciousness and Jesus, Buddha, belong to the fourth state. You will have to drop many things before you can feel Jesus.The second question:Osho,India is such a sacred country – the heart of spiritualism. I don't understand all the crude remarks that they write about you in magazines. Why is India so ignorant in recognizing you?If they recognize me, then I will not be of much worth. They don’t recognize me because I have something important to deliver to you. The recognition is not possible; it has never been possible. Christ was not recognized by the Jews, Buddha was not recognized by the Hindus – how can they recognize me? Recognition comes from the past, and I am herenow. Recognition means that I should behave in a pattern that they recognize. If I walk naked, then Digamber Jainas will recognize me because they have the idea that an enlightened person walks naked. They cannot recognize me with clothes on – those clothes are a barrier. Buddhists will recognize me only if I look like Buddha. I don’t look like Buddha and I am not sorry that I don’t. I am happy that I look only like me and I don’t look like anybody else. If you look like somebody else, you are a carbon copy. Carbon copies can be recognized because they tally with some original. I cannot be recognized because I myself am an original; it does not tally with anybody. The Christian will come and he will start thinking in terms of Christ. He will start looking for Christ in me and he will not find him. That is obvious. The Buddhist starts looking for the Buddha and he cannot find him. Because I am me – and the recognition of me, if you are searching for it in some past pattern, structure, is impossible. You can recognize me only as me. To see me as me, you will need to become unprejudiced. To be a Hindu is to be prejudiced. To be an Indian is to be prejudiced.So you ask: “India is such a sacred country…” First, never be befooled by such slogans. No country is sacred, no country has ever been sacred. It is only rarely that one individual in millions becomes sacred – countries are not sacred. Just because Buddha was in India, has India become sacred? Does that mean because Albert Einstein was born in Germany, Germany has become mathematical? Does that mean that if some country has produced a great painter, the country has become artistic? It does not mean anything. No country can be artistic because it has given birth to a Picasso, and no country can be a musical country because a Wagner or a Mozart was born there. No country can be sacred because a Buddha or a Mahavira was born there. Jesus was not born in India. Mohammed was not born in India. Zarathustra was not born in India. Lao Tzu was not born in India. Sacred people have been coming to the world in different places. Places have nothing to do with it – places are just places. Buddha was born in India, but only one in a million. And what about the million fools? If you judge by numbers, then every country is a foolish country because it produces millions of fools and rarely a buddha.No country is sacred. No geography is sacred. No history is sacred. That quality of sacredness happens only to individuals, because a country has no soul to become holy. A country has no individuality, only individuals have souls. Meditation happens in a soul, not in a country. Meditation happens in an individuality, not in a collectivity, not in a society. Remember it. Although every country tries to prove itself the best in some way or other, it is part of the game of the ego. Every country thinks: “I am incomparable.” You can go to any country and every country thinks deep inside that it is higher than others, holier than others, more moral than others, this and that. This is part of our egoistic mind which is being projected in the name of the country – sometimes in the name of religion. Every religion thinks, “This is the highest religion there is – my religion. My religion has to be the highest because it is my religion. I am the greatest person in the world – how can it be otherwise?”I have heard about a professor of philosophy who was head of the department of philosophy at the University of Paris. One day he declared: “I am the greatest man in the world.”His disciples, his students, were a little puzzled because he was a poor professor. First, he was a professor, and a professor of philosophy – the poorest. They could not believe it, but they had always thought that he was a little eccentric, otherwise why should one go and study philosophy? He was a little crazy, but that day they thought he had gone completely out of his mind. What was he saying – that he was the greatest man in the world?One student, just jokingly, stood up and said, “Sir, can you prove it? We need proof and we can expect proof from a man like you – a logician, a professor. Have you got any proof for your statement?”The professor said, “Yes, I have brought it.” He had brought a map of the world. He fixed the map of the world on the blackboard. They could not understand what he was going to do with the map. By and by they came to understand.First he said, “I will ask one question: which is the greatest country in the world?”They were all French, so naturally they said, “France.”He said, “So now, the whole world can be dropped; we can concentrate on France. If I can prove that I am the greatest Frenchman, I will be proving that I am the greatest man in the world.”Still they were not certain what he was going to do.Then he asked, “Which is the greatest city in France?” Naturally, it is Paris, they were all Parisians. Now they started suspecting that there was something in it.He said, “Paris! I am the greatest man in Paris. If I can prove this, then my first statement will be proved.” Then he asked, “Which is the greatest place in the city of Paris?”Naturally, it is the university – the seat of learning, the seat of wisdom, knowledge. Now it was clear to everybody that they were trapped.He asked, “Which is the greatest department and the greatest subject in the university? It is philosophy. You are all students of philosophy, so naturally it is philosophy.”He asked, “Who is head of the department of philosophy? – I am the greatest man in the world.”That’s how we go on vicariously, indirectly, proving that we are the greatest. So our country is the most sacred, our country is the bravest, our country is the most intelligent, our country is the most aesthetic, and all kind of things are being claimed. Everybody else is a barbarian, uncivilized. Everybody else is the link between monkey and man. We are men and everybody else is a link. It is not only Adolf Hitler’s logic, it is the logic of everybody. Unless this logic is thrown to the dogs, Adolf Hitlers will go on coming. They use this logic. They say that our race is the Nordic race, the Aryans, the purest blood… These statements are all nonsense. What do you mean by pure blood? Everybody’s blood is pure – unless you mix something in it, everybody’s blood is pure. What do you mean by pure blood? What do you mean by a pure race? All races have been mixing and man has grown by the races mixing together. The crossbreed is the stronger breed because it has more complexity. Growth is from the simple to the complex. What do you mean by calling a race “pure”? But these are just egoistic ideas. It appeals, it appeals to people. It gives them great nourishment; it becomes food for their egos. No country is sacred. Yes, there have been individuals, but only few and far between – a Buddha, a Christ, a Zarathustra, a Mohammed – they can be counted on one’s fingers. These are sacred people. But they have been coming to every part and place of the world, they have been coming to every place in geography. Never be trapped by such slogans. These slogans are dangerous, poisonous.You say: “India is such a sacred country…” It is not, because no country is. And you say: “…the heart of spiritualism.” All nonsense! You cannot find a more materialistic country in the world than India. But you will have to look with open eyes. You will be surprised how this idea that India is the heart of spiritualism is not allowing you to see the reality.Another sannyasin has written, “Osho, I am freaking out that the move to Gujarat is postponed.” Why is she freaking out? – because she says: “In Pune it is so difficult to walk on the streets. People look at you with such lustful eyes. One feels embarrassed. They come on bikes and motorbikes and hit you. They will not lose an opportunity to touch a woman’s body. They are crude and ugly.” I can understand the sannyasin’s letter to me.You call these people: “…the heart of spiritualism”? They are the most sexually obsessed people in the world. Of course, they are against sex, but that does not make them non-sexual, that makes them sex-obsessed. Their whole mind is sex-obsessed. They are thinking of sex continuously – and they are against it. Because they are against it, they cannot fulfill it; because they cannot fulfill it, it goes on accumulating and it drives them crazy and perverted. Now, this is ugly. If you love a woman, to hold her hand has a beauty, to caress her body has a beauty. But a woman just walking on the road and you hit her…? It is perversion! It is… Love has gone into a very poisoned and ill state of affairs. It is pathological. It is uncivilized, uncultured. But this goes on happening.These people are against materialism. But don’t just listen to their words, watch their lives and you will find them more materialistic than anybody else. Indians are so obsessed with money; money seems to be their god. No other country worships money, but in India it is worshipped. They have a special day in the year when they worship notes and rupees – that day is coming closer – Diwali. No country in the world has ever worshipped rupees and money, yet they worship it. This is not just symbolic, this is very indicative. They cling to money like anything. It is very difficult for them to be non-greedy, to leave a single paise is impossible. That’s why, if somebody renounces a little bit of money, he is thought to be a great man. That too is materialism.Why? If somebody has renounced money, what is the point in it? Why should he be praised? But he is praised like anything, the whole country will talk about him. He will be thought to be a great man – he has renounced money. Money must be the greatest value. One becomes great if one renounces money. If people were really spiritual, renouncing money would just mean that somebody has renounced his mistake, that’s all. There is nothing great in it. Somebody has found that money is valueless, so he has renounced it. But there is nothing to be praised in it; he has corrected his error. He was thinking that two and two are five, now he has come to understand that two and two are four. You don’t go declaring that he has become a buddha because now he knows two and two are four. Before, he was stupid; now he is normal. But in India, if you renounce money, it is worshipped because people know how much they are clinging to money. And you call India the heart of spiritualism? This is what Indians have been teaching the whole world. Don’t be deceived – this is just advertising. They go on claiming all over the world that they are the heart, that they have the greatest secrets of spirituality. They go on exploiting in the name of spirituality. They can deceive people, and they can deceive only because people are no longer materialistic, particularly in the West.Let me explain it. In the West there is material affluence. People have much more money, better houses, bigger cars, better bank balances, that is true – but people are not materialistic. They have a lot of material wealth, but that does not mean that they are materialistic. In the East, people are poor, but that does not mean that they are spiritual. Poverty has nothing to do with spirituality. In fact, you can become aware that material wealth has nothing in it only when you have it, not before.Psychologists talk about three layers or planes of desires and needs – they call it the hierarchy of needs. The first they call physiological needs, the second psychological needs, the third spiritual needs. This idea of the hierarchy of needs is very important. The first and basic needs are physiological – food, sex, shelter. If food is not available, you cannot think of poetry. If food is not available, you cannot think of music – a higher need. If sex is not available, you cannot think of love. Love is a higher need; it comes only when sex has become very satisfied, not before it. When you have food, the right shelter, clothes, warmth, and you are not constantly starving yourself and not constantly afraid of tomorrow – tomorrow is coming and you may again be hungry and you may not get bread and butter – then you start thinking of something else: music, poetry, literature, painting. When sexual needs are fulfilled, love arises; it cannot arise if sexual needs are not fulfilled. In India, sexual needs are not fulfilled, that’s why people are not loving – notwithstanding what they pretend. People are not loving because their basic need is not fulfilled; they are sexually starved.Because the need for food is not fulfilled – thousands of people die every year because of starvation, and those who are not dying are undernourished – they cannot have higher needs, they cannot think of beauty and they cannot think of the stars. They cannot see dewdrops on the grass in the morning and they cannot see the sun rising – that is not possible. The body needs to be completely satisfied. When the body is satisfied, it starts moving into new dimensions; it thinks of higher things, it dreams of higher things.The second stage is of psychological needs: love, music, art, painting, poetry, sculpture. If your need for love is not fulfilled, prayer never arises. That is the third, the highest need. Sex fulfilled – love arises; love fulfilled – prayer arises. When physiological needs are fulfilled, you start singing and dancing. When the need to dance is fulfilled, the need to meditate arises. When you have heard the outer music, you want to hear the inner music. When you have known the poetry that is created by words, then you want to know the poetry that is wordless, the poetry that arises in silence. Those are spiritual needs. There is no way to jump over them. What I am talking about here is the highest need. So it is not accidental that people from the West are coming to me and the people of India go on condemning me; it is just natural. I don’t take any offense from it; it is natural, it is how it should be. I am talking of the third need – the spiritual need – and people in India are not even fulfilling their first need. There is no meeting between me and them. I am a stranger here, an outsider. They need food first, they don’t need God at all. God does not make sense. They can’t be interested in music. How can they be interested in music? How can they see the beauty of a solitary tree standing all alone in the field? It is impossible. They are preoccupied with the needs of their bodies. So whatsoever I say is completely incomprehensible to them. They take revenge. They go on criticizing. In criticizing me, they think they have solved the problem; they are deceiving themselves. They don’t want to see the problem. They don’t want to see that a country can be spiritual only when it is settled as far as materialism is concerned.Spirituality is a higher stage of materialism.It is the same search. First you have to seek in matter, and then you have to seek in the mind. When you don’t find it in matter, you start seeking in the mind, but matter has to be searched completely, only then can you rise to the mind. When you search in the mind and you don’t find it – and you have searched the whole realm of the mind – you start searching in the soul. That’s how it is. Because I call a spade a spade, people don’t like it. How can they like it? If I say that India is sexually obsessed – how can they like it? They like Vivekananda because he says, “You are the greatest country in the world. You are the most spiritual country in the world. You are the source of all spirituality. You are the source of all wisdom. You are the source which is going to lead the whole world.” They feel very good. They can’t feel good with me. With Vivekananda they feel good. Vivekananda becomes a hero because he satisfies their egos. Just because he satisfies their egos, I declare that he is not enlightened because no enlightened man will ever satisfy anybody’s ego. To satisfy anybody’s ego, is really inimical, it is poisoning him. I say things as they are. I say it is one of the most barbarous countries – ugly, materialistic, money-oriented, sex-obsessed. I don’t deny that Buddha has been here, Mahavira has been here. They were spiritual people, but they don’t make the whole country spiritual.If I am here – remember – some day, after a few centuries, Pune will claim that Pune is spiritual because of me. I have nothing to do with Pune and Pune has nothing to do with me. Just the same was the case with Buddha. India had nothing to do with him. He was alone and solitary, and people were criticizing him as cruelly as they are criticizing me. They have always done that. They were throwing stones at Mahavira, they are throwing stones at me. They have always done that. Not only here, they have done that everywhere in the world. Whenever somebody brings light into the darkness, people feel offended because his presence becomes a very embarrassing phenomenon – he reminds you of your darkness, he reminds you of your ugliness.Haven’t you heard about the woman who was against mirrors? Whenever she would come across a mirror, she would immediately throw a stone at it and break it. Why was she so very much against mirrors? This was her logic: mirrors are against me and whenever I come before a mirror, the mirror shows that I am ugly. She was ugly, but she was very much offended by the mirror because the mirror showed her as ugly. She was throwing the responsibility onto the mirror. That has always been so. Buddha is a mirror; he reflects whatsoever you are. If you are ugly, he reflects you as ugly. If you are materialistic, he reflects you as materialistic. He simply reflects without changing, without coloring – he simply reflects that which is. Naturally people feel offended because their ugliness and all kinds of darknesses, snakes and scorpions which are moving inside their beings, are reflected. They want to throw a stone at the mirror. If the mirror is not there, they will be at ease again. Hence, they crucified Jesus and they killed Socrates. This has been their attitude everywhere and always.You ask me: “India is such a sacred country – the heart of spiritualism. I don’t understand all the crude remarks that they write about you in magazines.” They are very understandable. There is nothing special about them. If they didn’t write those crude remarks about me, that would not be right.Lao Tzu has said: “When I talk about Tao, there are very few who understand it. Those who understand become silent. There are many who feel offended – they become angry. And there are more of the angry people.” Lao Tzu says: “If people don’t become angry, what I am saying is not the truth.”A mystic used to stay with me. He was a really beautiful old man, very strange, very eccentric, but always to the point. He used to deliver talks all over the country. He had something to give. Whenever people applauded, he would become very angry. He would say: “Stop! Don’t applaud because whenever you applaud, I think I must have said something wrong. If you can understand it, it must be wrong. When you don’t understand, only then is there a possibility that some truth has been said. If you become angry, then certainly some truth has been said, some stone has been thrown into your sleep and you have become disturbed. Your dreams are disturbed. You are ready to take revenge.”Because I am saying the truth, because I am being the truth, it is very natural.“I don’t understand all the crude remarks that they write in magazines about you.” They should be writing more and more. The more people will be coming to me, the angrier they will become, because the more dangerous I will be to them. More and more people will be coming; they are on the way. There will be thousands, many thousands of sannyasins around here. They will become very angry because they will become afraid, more afraid that what I am saying is becoming powerful. They will try everything to destroy what I am saying. They will try in every way to destroy me. That is natural, there is nothing unexpected in it. You have to be ready for it; you have to be ready to accept all this. You need not feel offended, this is the way they are showing their respect toward me. When they threw stones at Buddha, they were showing their respect. That was their way of recognizing that someone dangerous was present. When they crucified Jesus, that was their respect – their way of respecting a man who had brought truth to them. When they poisoned Socrates, that was their humble homage. So this is going to happen and it is going to happen more and more. You have to accept it without any anger.“Why is India so ignorant in recognizing you?” Because India is very knowledgeable; India thinks it knows already. Every pan wallah, every chai wallah knows what truth is. They can quote the Gita and the Vedas, they are like parrots. India is a country of pundits, parrots. They go on repeating mechanically. If they think they know, how can they recognize me? I am saying things which go against their parrot-like knowledge. I go on saying things which are against their so-called knowledge. I am trying to give truth new words because the old words have become rotten, because the old words have been used so long that they have lost their intensity. They have lost their life, they have become like a dirty currency note. When a note comes from the mint it is fresh, clean; when it moves through hands – from one hand to another – it starts becoming dirty. Words are also currency. Currency means they go on moving, they are like a current – from one mouth to another mouth, the word goes on moving down the centuries. It becomes very dirty. The Vedas have become dirty, so has the Bible.I am trying to renew; I am trying to give new words to old truths, new bottles for the old wine. They cannot recognize the bottle, they don’t know anything about the wine – they have never tasted it. They only know about the old bottle. When they see the new bottle they become angry: “This can’t be the truth.” The truth has to be in the old bottle. The old bottle is rotten, maybe broken, and the wine has flowed out. It may be just an empty bottle, and they don’t know anything about the wine, they only know about the bottle. So if I give a new bottle, they cannot recognize it. Only those who have tasted wine will recognize me, not otherwise.You will recognize me because you are tasting with me. You are a part of the feast that I am, you are celebrating with me. The more you taste, the more you will know that what I am saying is exactly what Jesus, or Buddha, or Krishna said. But first you will have to taste me, then that recognition will come. They are too occupied with Krishna’s words and Buddha’s words. Those words are like bottles. Those people cannot come here, they are very, very scared, frightened. Maybe they have somewhere, deep down a suspicion: “Maybe there is truth…?” And if they come close, they may be converted. That fear, that unconscious fear is there. They go on talking against me and they don’t know anything about me. They go on writing against me and they have never come here. They never listen, they never look into my eyes, never come close. They go on circulating rumors and they feed upon each other’s rumors. It is a mutual arrangement. Somebody writes one article in a magazine, somebody else reads it, writes another – basing himself on that article. It goes on and on in this way. And of course, they have much material; they have been reflecting each other. Nobody comes to me. But that’s how they have always done it. They are afraid to come. In fact, they criticize me just to protect themselves. That criticism helps them because then they think, “Now there is no need.”But more and more people will be coming to me. Thirsty people, seekers who have nothing to do with Christianity or Hinduism or Mohammedanism, will be coming to me. I am here only for the seekers not for the mob. What the mob says is irrelevant. I am here for those who are ready to be transformed and transfigured. I only want to be for them. I don’t want to waste a single minute on anybody else. Those people are there around the world – many at this moment because this moment is critical in the history of man, in the history of human consciousness. A great jump! Either man dies or man becomes new – that is the only choice. The old man cannot continue. The old man has arranged his suicide; he is ready to commit global suicide. Either the old mind wins and there will be a global suicide and humanity will disappear from the earth, or the new mind will be born – that’s what the effort here is – and humanity will take a new direction. The new man will be born. The new man will not be Indian, not be German, not be Chinese. The new man will not be Christian, not be Hindu, not be Mohammedan. The new man will not be black, will not be white. The new man will not be man, will not be woman. The new man will be a totally different kind of being, with no adjectives around him. A purity, a primal innocence. My work is to give birth to that new man.If only a few can be transformed, they will become the heralds. Only a few seeds… If they can grow into the new man, they will create the new humanity. My whole interest is with them and in them. I want to invest my whole energy into those few people who are ready to slip out of the old skin and become new. The Indians cannot recognize me, the Christians cannot recognize me, the Hindus cannot recognize me. To recognize me they will have to come out of their preoccupations.Two keen football fans, up in London for a big match, decided to spend the evening at a Soho strip club. The first act was a very voluptuous blonde who went through her whole routine while the whole audience stared open-mouthed. As the curtain came down and the applause rang out, one of the two fans said, “Phooey!”His companion was surprised, but said nothing. The second act was even more breathtaking but again, when the curtain came down, the first man said, “Phooey!”This went on all through the show – however beautiful and exotic the girls were, after each act the first man said, “Phooey!”Finally the second man could stand it no longer.“What’s the matter with you?” he said. “These are some of the most attractive and sexy girls I’ve ever seen – and all you can say is ‘Phooey?’”“I’m not thinking about the girls,” replied the friend. “I’m thinking about my wife!”Now this is his preoccupation. He is not looking at those girls, he is thinking of his wife. He is not saying “Phooey!” to these girls. He is saying again and again “Phooey!” to his wife. A preoccupied mind never sees that which it is confronting, never sees that which is. It goes on comparing. When an Indian comes, he is not listening to what I am saying, he is comparing in his head – whether it corresponds with the Vedas, whether it follows the Gita, is in harmony with this or that. He is continuously working inside his mind, comparing, judging, condemning, criticizing – and he goes on missing. He looks as if he is here, he is not. It is not only a question of Indians. Anybody who has come with a fixed mind will have the same difficulty.Ramanandas’s old mother is here. Just the other day, somebody said that she went to mass at the church. Here, Jesus is being made alive. Here, we are living Jesus again, moving with Jesus again; here, Jesus is again not a history but a presence. But Ramanandas’s mother had to go to church, to mass, to listen to some stupid priest there. The preoccupied mind! My Christ is not her Christ. My Christ is alien. She wants the Christ who is sold in the church, she wants the old bottle. She must have felt good there because this must be a strange world to her. These orange people – what are they doing here? There, with the same kind of people, with the same kind of mind, she must have felt good; she must have felt relaxed, at home. This is how it happens with the preoccupied mind.The Christian visitor to Jerusalem asked his Israeli host to show him the Wailing Wall. Arriving at the sacred spot, the visitor put on his hat, stood close to the wall, and said, “Thank you, Lord, for all the blessings you have bestowed upon me during my life.” Then he turned to his Israeli friend and said, “Is that nice?”“That’s nice,” said the Israeli smiling.The Christian then turned back to the wall and said, “Please, Lord, keep my family and friends in health and prosperity. Is that nice?”“That’s nice.”“And persuade the Israelis to see the error of their ways and to hand back to the Arab nations the land taken from them in the recent conflicts, so that there may be peace in the Middle East. Is that nice?”The Israeli said, “You’re talking to a wall.”The third question:Osho,I am very interested in the “miracles” of Jesus, especially his healings and his resurrection. He has also said that others could do the same. Is this possible? If so, how? And is it necessary for the physical body to die before one learns how to manifest and demanifest at will?I have rebirther friends who have developed some “powers”: teleportation, astral double, transforming one's body form and functions. Is it dangerous for them to be developing these “powers” before being fully realized? They say it's easy. You just have to believe you can do it.How does one protect oneself from negative group thought forms? For example: “Don't drink the water or you'll get amoebas” or “Everyone gets sick in Pune.” It seems to be true. I had not been sick for two years before coming here, and had learned to heal myself. Yet here I feel the group conscious or unconscious negativity weighing me down. I too am sick and I don't like it very much.What I don't like is feeling the effect of the group mind and unable to maintain my space. Please discuss. It has always seemed to me that beliefs are more contagious than “germs” or “infections.”The question is from Mantra. A few things… First: Mantra must be very, very afraid of death – that’s why the interest in resurrection. It has nothing to do with Jesus and his resurrection, it has something to do with your deep fear of death. The interest “…in the ‘miracles’ of Jesus, especially his healings and his resurrection”… Mantra must be very afraid of death and illness. This interest arises because of that fear, otherwise who bothers? If you are not afraid of death, who bothers about resurrection? It is fear. In fact, if it is absolutely proved that there had been no resurrection in Jesus’ life, ninety-nine percent of Christians will drop being Christian because what is the point? They have been hanging around this person with the idea that he knows the secret of resurrecting himself, and he will somehow impart his secrets and keys to them. Or maybe, if he does not show the art, at least he can do the miracles for them; he can save them. It is fear of death.If it is absolutely proved that Jesus never did any healing miracles, you will not find many Christians in the world; they will disappear. They are not interested in Jesus at all. Their whole interest is in how to protect themselves from illness, and finally, from death. Rather than thinking of resurrection and healing miracles, go deep inside yourself and look into your fear of death. There is no resurrection, but if you go deep into your fear of death, it disappears – and with the fear of death, death too disappears. Then you know you are eternal life. There is no resurrection. Resurrection is possible only if first you die! You never die. Nobody has ever died. Death is a myth. The word myth comes from a Sanskrit root, mithya. Mithya means false. Death is a falsity. Death has never happened – is never going to happen. It cannot happen: life is eternal, only forms change. You die here, your flame disappears in this body and it becomes embodied in some other body, you are born in some other womb. And so on and so forth. Even when there is no longer any birth, you disappear into existence. But life lives. When I am saying life lives, I don’t mean Mantra lives, no. Mantra is a form. You are a form. The form is not eternal. The form is going down the drain. Even while you are alive you will change your form a thousand and one times. If somebody brings a picture of you – of the first day when you were born – will you be able to recognize that this is your picture? One day that was your form. Now you are seventy years old, you cannot recognize it. But maybe the first day’s picture can have some resemblance.But what about when you were in your mother’s womb? If a picture could have been taken on the first day you entered your mother’s womb, would you be able to recognize that small cell? It will not have your face, it will not have your nose, it will not have any visible mark; it will just be a small life cell. It was you. During those nine months your form goes on changing, changing, changing; your whole life form goes on changing. Form is a flux. You never die. Form dies every day. But the problem arises because you have become too identified with the form. You think, “I am the form.” You think, “I am this body.” The fear of death arises. You need not learn the art of resurrection. You have simply to learn that death does not exist; there is no need to resurrect because you cannot die in the first place. Rather than being intrigued by Jesus’ miracles, perform a miracle; go into yourself. That is the only miracle. Go into your fear of death, go deeper into it and see where it is, what it is. Watch it. Don’t rationalize and don’t bring theories borrowed from the outside to console yourself. Don’t say that the soul is eternal, no; you don’t know yet. I am saying it is eternal, but that is not your knowledge. Don’t make it your consolation.You have to go trembling, you have to go with fear, you have to descend the staircase of death. You have to go to the very end. You have to see the whole possibility of death – what it is. In that very seeing, you will be surprised that you are not it. You are not the body, you are not even the mind. You are just pure life energy, you are a witness. In that witnessing is the real miracle.You say: “I am very interested in the ‘miracles’ of Jesus, especially his healings and his resurrection.” You are not interested in Jesus at all. If you are interested in his miracles of healing and resurrection; it is a wrong kind of interest. And because of that, Jesus’ religion died very early. It really was a miscarriage. Buddha still lives far more penetratingly in human consciousness because he never did anything like miracles. So only the people who were really interested in inquiry came to him. Jesus attracted the wrong people; the wrong people came around him and Christianity made its base on his miracles. I don’t think that he ever did any miracles. He did miracles which were far-penetrating, but they were totally different from what you have heard. Yes, he healed the eyes, but not the physical eyes; he healed the inner eyes. Yes, he made people listen who were deaf, but that has nothing to do with your physical deafness. All are deaf, and all are blind. He touched people’s eyes and their ears, and opened them. And all are dead! – because you are identified with the body, which is death. You are identified with the form, which is death. Yes, he helped many people to come out of death. That is the meaning of the story of Lazarus. He called forth Lazarus, “Come out!” On the ordinary plane it seems that he called him from his grave. On the higher plane it means that he called him from his body – the body is your grave. He made him aware that he is consciousness, not the body. That is the real miracle. But somehow the followers of Jesus got mixed up. That’s why I say again and again he was not as fortunate as Buddha because he didn’t have the right kind of following – and much depends on followers. A single wrong follower and he can destroy, can change the whole story; he can interpret the whole story in a wrong way.When Buddha died, his disciples gathered together to write down whatsoever he had said. Now there were millions of stories because everybody was relating in his own way. How to decide? All these people were eye witnesses, and they were very cultured and sophisticated. They were saying different things, contradicting each other. It was decided that only those few disciples who had become enlightened in Buddha’s days should be listened to. Even one of his most intimate followers, Ananda, was not allowed because he had not yet become enlightened. He was Buddha’s most intimate disciple. He lived with him for forty years, day in, day out, year in, year out. Not for a single day was he away from Buddha. For forty years, he slept in Buddha’s room. He took every care of Buddha. He should be relied upon. Whatsoever he has said should be the most authentic because he had listened to everything that Buddha said in those forty years after his enlightenment. Not a single word had he missed, and he was very sophisticated, cultured – had a beautiful memory, one of the most miraculous memories. He could repeat things word by word. But even he was not allowed. He cried, he wept, he said, “What are you doing? I was the most intimate. You people have lived for a few days with Buddha – somebody for a few months; I have lived for forty years. Not only during the day, but at night too. We had many conversations which nobody has ever heard. I know much more than anybody else!”They said: “That’s true, but you are not enlightened yet. You can be dangerous. Your unenlightened mind can pollute the whole message. You may put something into it, you may delete something from it and it would be unconscious. It is not that you would be doing it; it would happen automatically because of your unconsciousness. And because of your unconsciousness you may emphasize something that looks more important. You may forget something, or may not emphasize something which was more important, or would have been more important if you were enlightened. The emphasis will be different. You will underline different things than an enlightened person would. You cannot be allowed.”Five hundred disciples who had become enlightened in Buddha’s days – whose enlightenment was declared by Buddha himself – only they were allowed. Buddhist scriptures are the most authentic. Ananda was sitting outside the door crying. After twenty-four hours, he was allowed. What happened? In those twenty-four hours, for the first time, the last barrier that had remained in him was broken. That was a barrier that had persisted for forty-two years. He was a cousin-brother of Buddha, and an elder cousin-brother. When he had come to be initiated by Buddha – he was the elder and, in India, traditionally the elder brother can command the younger brother – he said to Buddha, “Before I am initiated by you, let me command you three things. I am your elder brother. Once I am initiated, I will be a disciple, then whatsoever you say I will have to follow. But I am not yet your disciple, I am your elder brother. Promise me these three things, then initiate me.”Buddha said, “What are those three things?”He said, “First: I will live with you twenty-four hours a day for ever. You will not be able to say ‘Ananda, go somewhere, or do something.’ I will follow you like a shadow. Promise?”Buddha promised. Of course when an elder brother asks such a thing, how could he deny him? He said, “Okay. What is your second?”He said, “If I bring somebody inside, even in the middle of night, you will have to give them an appointment – you cannot say no to me. I will have the sole right. Anybody, if I feel that he needs you, and needs you immediately… I will have the sole right. I will make the decision.”Buddha said, “Okay. What is your third?”He said, “My third is that whatsoever I ask, you will have to answer. You cannot postpone it, you cannot say, ‘Later on’ or ‘After some days.’ You will have to answer immediately.”Buddha promised these three things. Ananda became his disciple, but that ego remained: “I am the elder brother, I am the closest, I am the only one who sleeps in Buddha’s room. I am the only one who can ask any question and Buddha has to answer.” That ego remained; otherwise he was surrendered, but that ego remained.When the conference of monks did not allow him in, it was so painful to him, it was so wounding… It hurt, and he cried and wept outside. He became aware that because of this small ego, subtle ego, many more had come to Buddha and become enlightened, and he hadn’t. In that awareness, that ego melted. And you will be surprised that when Ananda became enlightened, the whole conference inside – five hundred monks – immediately felt it. It had opened the door: “Ananda is no longer the same person. Bring him in.”Jesus was not so fortunate. His disciples were in a sense ordinary. Not a single one was enlightened, so whatsoever they wrote was from the unenlightened standpoint. So the real meanings got lost and unreal meanings got imposed. The miracle of giving eyes to a spiritually blind man became a miracle of giving eyes to a blind man. Healing a person from the illness called “this world” became an ordinary healing of a person from tuberculosis or something like that. Making a person really alive for the first time – and he was dead up to now – became an ordinary miracle of giving life to a dead man. Don’t be interested wrongly. Your interest is wrong.Second: “He has also said that others could do the same. Is this possible? If so, how? And is it necessary for the physical body to die before one learns how to manifest and de-manifest at will?” Will is the source of the ego. Let it be understood deeply. All is possible if the will is dissolved into God’s will. All is possible – with no conditions. But if you want to do it at will, you will become more and more egoistic. That’s what happens… People who can do a few things of no significance become very egoistic because they can do them. All these so-called siddhis and their miraculous powers just enhance your ego and are against spiritual growth. Beware of them. These things can be done. The mind has great powers, but to use the powers of the mind is to prevent yourself from going higher than the mind. You will get stuck there. A few people are stuck in the world – there are also many powers in the world. A politician has great power, a man who has money has great power. A few people are lost in worldly powers; those powers belong to the body level. A few people are lost in mental powers. You can have clairvoyance, telepathy, mind reading – things like that. But you will be lost, you will never move beyond it. Get out of the world and get out of the mind too.Whenever you develop something, it becomes difficult to drop it. Yes! When you become spiritual, all the powers become available to you – of the body, of the mind. But then who uses them? It is so stupid to use them. It is so meaningless, it is so childish. These mind powers can be developed. There are two ways: you develop imagination or you develop will, then you can develop these powers. These are the two ways – both are dangerous. If you develop the power of imagination, it is a double-edged sword. For example, that’s what has happened to Mantra. She says she was not ill for two years, as she was powerful enough. Then what happened? She came here and she heard these things. Imagination can work both ways; it can make you healthy, it can make you ill. If your imagination gets the idea “I am healthy,” you will feel healthy. If the imagination gets the idea “I am ill,” you will become ill. Beware of imagination, it is dangerous because it carries the opposite in it. Or, there is some possibility to develop will – that is developing your ego. That is far more dangerous than imagination because the more the ego becomes crystallized, the less is the possibility to go beyond it. You will be confined.Imagination is like this:The team that wins the Football League Cup usually has quite a celebration afterward. The morning after such a night, one member of the winning team woke to find himself in a hospital bed, heavily bandaged, with one of his team mates sitting beside him.“What happened?” he asked groggily.“Well, it was at the reception last night – don’t you remember?” said his mate. “After your seventeenth or eighteenth pint, you went over to the window and said you were going to fly round the hotel and land on the roof.”“Why on earth didn’t you try and stop me?” said the man in the bed.“Last night I thought you could do it!” replied his friend.He must have drunk at least sixteen pints himself. Imagination can create many things. You can live in the imagination and in your imagination you will feel that it is happening. And it happens too! If there is no doubt inside you, imagination is a great force. It can create a dream almost as real as is possible. That’s what is happening to people on LSD.Karl Marx has said, “Religion is the opiate of the people.” Timothy Leary says, “Opium is the religion of the people.” I say to you that religion is religion, opium is opium! Neither religion is opium, nor is opium religion. That’s what you are enjoying when you are on an acid trip. You are full of imagination – there is no bondage to your imagination. You live in a totally separate reality, the reality that Castaneda talks about; it is out of drugs. In the East people have done it for a long time. In the Vedas they talk about soma – it was their LSD. Down the ages in the East, people have tried all kinds of things – marijuana, opium, mushrooms and others. Now in the West, the idea is catching hold of people’s imagination. Beware of imagination. Imagination cannot help, it can only give you beautiful dreams, but they are dreams. When they are there, they look very real. When they are gone, you are lost in darkness. You can create those imaginings without drugs, too. You can create them through certain breathing exercises because breathing can change your inner chemistry. Through certain yoga exercises, you can change your inner chemistry. Through fasting, you can change your chemistry. But by changing your chemistry, you are not changing your soul. Or you can create great friction. Through friction, ego is created, will is created. You can start fighting with something.For example, a man decides that he will not sleep for one year. Now there is going to be great friction. Every night he will have to fight hard. After a few nights, even in the day it will be difficult for him – there will be a continuous fight. If he goes on and on fighting, it is a friction, a struggle. If he goes on keeping himself alert, a moment comes when the body surrenders. He can be awake and sleep will no longer come. With this, he will become very willful. Now he can do many things. He can say to somebody, “You will die tomorrow!” Just his assertion will have so much will, it will go like a dagger and kill the man. Or, he can be helpful also. Somebody is ill, and he can say, “You are cured!” When he is saying that you are cured, he is total; there is no doubt in him. Because there is no doubt in him, he creates a pulsation in the other person of trust, of no doubt that he will be cured. This man can be helpful, can be dangerous – to others. But to himself he is always dangerous. To others it is possibly helpful or dangerous. But to himself he is always dangerous because now he is caught in the will. The will has become very strong – now he cannot get out of it, now he cannot surrender it. Now there is much investment in it too. He has worked for it for so long, how can he surrender it? There is always a possibility when you have power to misuse it.Power corrupts, not only political power, but the so-called psychic power also corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. So this is my suggestion to you: rather than thinking of resurrection, powers, miracles, will – think, meditate more about what this life is. Go into it, otherwise you will be moving in a wrong direction. You will be gathering junk and you will be throwing away real diamonds.Meditate on this small anecdote:A young American entered a railway compartment on a British Rail train, to discover that all the seats were occupied, including one on which was seated a small Pekinese dog. To its owner, a middle-aged lady wearing a large flowered hat, he said politely, “Excuse me, Ma’am, but may I sit down?” She said nothing, but merely sniffed and turned over the pages of her Illustrated London News.Again he asked, “Excuse me, Ma’am, but may I have this seat please?” And again she ignored him.For a third time, the young American said, “Ma’am, would you please remove your dog so that I may sit down?”And for the third time the snooty matron utterly ignored him, so he opened a window, picked up the dog, hurled it out and then sat down on the empty seat.There was a stunned silence, and then an Englishman sitting opposite said, “You know, you Yanks are the strangest people. You drive on the wrong side of the road, you eat with your fork in the wrong hand, and now you have just thrown the wrong bitch out of the window.”Enough for today.

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I Say Unto You Vol 2 01-09Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 2 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Mark 9And he came to Capernaum. And being in the house he asked them, What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way?But they held their peace, for by the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest.And he sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all.And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them, and when he had taken him in his arms, he said unto them,Whosoever shall receive one of these children in my name, receiveth me. And whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me.John 8Then said the Jews unto him,Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? And the prophets are dead. Whom makest thou thyself?Jesus answered,Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day. And he saw it, and was glad.Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.The ego is subtle; its ways are subtle and its working is very complex. It is a puzzle, and a puzzle that cannot be solved – that can only be seen through and through, but cannot be solved. There is no solution for it because the puzzle is not anything accidental to the ego. Ego itself is the puzzle. If it were accidental, there would be a way to solve it. Ego itself is the puzzle, it is its nature to be puzzling. So all the efforts that are made to solve it, make it more complex, make it more difficult. If you fight with it, you are fighting with yourself. There can never be any victory; you cannot defeat it by fighting because by fighting you will be dividing yourself into two – the fighter and the fought. From where will you bring the fought? It will just be ego dividing into two parts, playing the game of the fight. Sometimes one part can pretend to win, sometimes the other part can pretend to win; nobody ever wins. The struggle becomes infinite and meanwhile energy is dissipated, meanwhile life is wasted. Remember, you cannot fight the ego.Can you repress it? People have done that too, and it has not helped. If you repress the ego, it goes deeper into your being. Rather than getting rid of it, you will become more and more poisoned by it, because what will you do when you repress it? You will force it into the unconscious; it will start going underground. But the unconscious is far more powerful than the conscious. Ego in the conscious has not much power. Once it enters into the unconscious, it becomes nine times more powerful than it was before. Rather than getting rid of it, you will be more and more in its control. One more thing: once the ego has become unconscious, you don’t know anything about it. It has gone behind you. Now you cannot even watch it. Now you are completely a victim. Now you cannot protect yourself against it. Now you cannot make any arrangements to save yourself from it. It is there pulling your strings from behind; you will become a puppet and you will be in the hands of the ego. You were thinking that you had repressed it. Fighting does not help, repression does not help.The third thing that has been tried down the ages is sublimation. Sublimate it – let it be identified with higher goals. Then it becomes decorated, it becomes enthroned. Naturally it again becomes very powerful. Identify it with your church, identify it with your country, identify it with your color, identify it with ideology – socialism, communism, fascism, Christianity, Hinduism. Identify it with some higher value, some utopian value, or you can even identify it with God. It then rules supreme-most; it rules in the name of God. God is just an excuse. The real sovereign becomes the ego. These are the three available ways: fight, repress or sublimate. And nothing helps. Nothing can help because by its very nature the ego is such that solutions are not possible.I have heard…A mother is standing in a toy shop and she says, “Isn’t this a rather complicated toy for a small child?”The toy salesman says, “This, Madam, is an educational toy, specially designed to adjust a child to live in the world of today – no matter which way he puts it together, it’s always wrong.”That’s how the ego is. No way will ever bring you out of it. There is no remedy. To see it is to be on the right path. To see the complexity, the riddling nature of the ego, the puzzling nature of the ego, to comprehend it in its totality, is the beginning of wisdom. Otherwise it will come, it will come in more subtle forms and you will be deceived far more deeply. The religious, the so-called religious person, is deceived by it because it comes hiding behind religious curtains. Sometimes it becomes humbleness, sometimes it becomes humility. Sometimes it can even pretend egolessness. It can say, “I am absolutely egoless.” It is there, and now it has protected itself perfectly. You will not even suspect its existence. Watch the so-called religious people and you will see a great game of the ego. The ego is there. It has become pious. But when the ego becomes pious, it becomes more poisonous. It is pious poison; it corrupts you deeply. The ordinary gross ego is not such a big problem. You can see it, it is there. Even the person who is its victim knows it is there – the disease is known. But when it becomes pious, takes a religious garb, even the victim is unaware. He lives in its imprisonment and thinks that he is free.Start trying to find a remedy and you will be in more and more trouble. Why? – because most remedies are imposed. Why most? All remedies are imposed. You find them from somewhere outside, you find the clues from somebody else. You see a buddha. He looks so humble – he is. His humbleness is there. You see his face, his simplicity, his utter innocence, and a clue is found – maybe this is the way to get rid of the ego. This is not the way. It is a consequence, something has happened in him which has made him egoless. You cannot copy his behavior and become egoless. Copying his behavior will simply make you a carbon copy. The ego will not disappear. You can eat the same food that Buddha takes, you can walk the same way Buddha walks, you can imitate him perfectly. You can become very skillful at imitation, and still the ego will be there because there is no way to see what has happened in Buddha’s innermost core. All that you can watch is behavior. That’s why a certain school of psychologists, the behaviorists, go on saying that there is no soul in man; man is only behavior. They are following a certain logic. The logic is that only the behavior can be watched, observed. The soul has never been watched, has never been observed, nobody has seen it. How to accept that it exists? Anything that exists must be seen. Only that which is seen exists. Have you ever seen anybody’s soul? All that you see is his behavior, and yet you know that your behavior is not you.But that is inner, an introspection. Inside you know, “My inner behavior is not me,” because many times the behavior is there and you are totally different from the behavior. You see a man coming to your house and you smile, and you know that you are not smiling. That smile is false, just polite, just part of the etiquette. You have to smile, so you smile – but deep down there is no smile. Now, you are smiling from the outside: that is your behavior; the behaviorist is finished there. But you are not smiling at all from the inner: that is your soul, that is you, the more real you, not just a show, but authentically you. You go on doing a thousand and one things on the outside, and the inside may be different, may be very different, may even be the polar opposite to your behavior. But this is introspection, it cannot be an objective observation.You look at Buddha, you watch his behavior. From his behavior you start taking cues. You see Jesus, you watch, you start taking notes in your mind – this is the way to sit, this is the way to stand, this is the way to walk, this is the way to sleep and eat… These are the things to eat… This is how Jesus prays – on his knees – so you kneel down. These are the words that Jesus speaks when he prays. He looks at the sky and says, “Father, Abba. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done…” And you say, “So I know how to pray.” You can kneel down… Millions of people kneel down every morning, every night all around the globe, and they repeat the same words that Jesus said, “Abba, give us our daily bread.” They go on repeating it and nothing happens. Millions of people who pray are simply wasting their time because it is pretension, it is not prayer. They have learned a behavior, but their soul is not in prayer. The question is not how to pray, the question is not what to pray.Just the other night Gramya was telling me that since she has become a sannyasin, she does not know whom she is praying to, but the prayer is there. Now, she was a little puzzled. She asked me, “…whether I am praying to God, or am I praying to you, Osho, or to whom? I don’t know anything about God now.” I said to her, “This is a far better prayer – vague, cloudy, but more alive.”Now the prayer is not addressed to anybody in particular. It is not even addressed to God, so how can it be addressed to the Christian God? It is unaddressed. It is simply an overflow of joy, thankfulness, gratitude – gratitude to the whole, to the total. It is a kind of thankfulness. Now it will not matter much what words you use, or whether you use words at all. Silence will do, sometimes gibberish will do – what Christians call “talking in tongues” – that will do. That will be far better. Sometimes just enjoying sounds like a small child – “Ga ga” – that will do. The whole question is of the prayerful attitude, the inner quality of prayer, that you are surrendered, that you are no longer separate from the whole. Now this remedy cannot be imposed from the outside, otherwise you will be simply doing empty postures, empty gestures – perfect from the outside and not breathing at all from the inside, not at all vital and alive.Prayer is a state, not a ritual.Prayer is a state of inner silence, humbleness, love, gratitude, surrender, let-go. It has nothing to do with the outer formulations of it. But all remedies come from the outside. People go on changing remedies. One fails, they immediately jump to another; that fails, they go on – from one guru to another guru; from one remedy to another remedy; from one scripture to another scripture; from one temple to another temple – they go on and on. They are not seeing the real fact, that no remedy is possible, that no remedy exists, that to search for the remedy is to search in vain. And why? – because remedies are imposed from the outside either by somebody else or by yourself. Whatsoever is imposed from the outside is an intrusion, interference to your natural being – an intrusion on your natural self. They are manipulations. That creates three selves where previously there was only one self. Previously there was only one ego. If you use a remedy, there will be three egos. You have multiplied the problem; you have made it more difficult. Now it will be even more impossible for you to get out of it. If you bring another remedy, you will have nine egos instead of three. Each remedy will bring three egos instead of one.People have used many remedies, and they have become many egos. Mahavira has used the right word for it. He calls man bahuchittavan –polypsychic; man is not one mind but many minds. That is also the research of the modern psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, psychologist. Man is polypsychic. It is not one ego that you are carrying inside, you are carrying many egos. Egos upon egos – they are standing in a queue, they are surrounding you from every side, they are like a crowd. You are lost in the crowd; you don’t know who you are because there are so many pretenders around you who say, “This is you. I am you. Where are you looking? I am your self.” Every desire, every fragment of your mind claims to be the master, and that’s how your slavery is created. Each remedy brings three egos into your being instead of one. How does it happen? – in accepting a remedy, you become the one who you are, plus the one who is helping you become other than the one who you are, plus the one who you hope to become. The one that you were; the goal that you want to become – egoless; and the remedy, the help that you are using to try and pull yourself toward the goal. You are divided in three. This division is not going to help, it will confuse you; it will make you more and more dull, insensitive, insane, neurotic, schizophrenic. The remedy proves far more dangerous than the disease itself.So the first thing to be understood: is that the ego is the basic problem that anybody who is searching for his real self has to face. Now, it cannot be countered by anything outside. No remedy is going to help, no medicine is going to help, no method is going to help. Isn’t there any way to get out of it? – there is a way, but it cannot be imposed from the outside. The way is not like a remedy, the way is clarity, transparency, to look through and through, to watch how the ego functions, to see its subtle games. You throw it out from the front door and it has come back in from the back door. You throw it from one side, it starts imposing itself from another side. You think you have got rid of it, suddenly you find it is there sitting inside. So without any condemnation, the ego has to be looked into through and through, with no idea that you want to drop it. That conclusion will be a hindrance. That conclusion means that you have decided before you have looked into it. So go into the ego with no conclusion, with no idea of what you want to do; with just one idea – that you would like to understand this mystery of the ego, what it is. All the religions say that it is the hindrance, all the great masters say it has to be got rid of, all the mystics say nothing is barring your path except your ego. But you don’t know what this ego is.So, the first thing, go innocently into it. Just watch its ways; its ways are very mechanical. The first thing that you will come across is its mechanicalness. The ego is not an organic whole, it is mechanical because it consists of the dead past. Your ego consists of your past. If sometimes your ego thinks of the future, that too is nothing but the projection of the past, and from the past. It is maybe a little modified, sophisticated, decorated, but it is the same thing. You desire the same pleasures that you have had in the past. Of course you hope to make them a little better. Your past goes on projecting itself into the future, and the past is dead; the past is just memory – and that’s all that ego consists of.So the first experience, if you go into the ego without any conclusion, will be this: that you will be able to see that it is mechanical. You are an organic unity. You are an alive phenomenon and the ego is dead. And the dead is ruling the alive. That’s why people look so heavy, dragging. Their lives seem to be nothing but a long story of boredom, monotony. It is not the quality of life – boredom is not a quality of life – boredom is there because life is too burdened by death; life is too burdened by the dead. The grave goes on becoming bigger and bigger, and life is encroached from every side.The first experience, and a great revealing experience it is, is to see that the ego is your past, it is not your present. The ego is never found in the present. If you go into it, you will be surprised. Right at this moment, if you go into yourself, you will not find any ego. If you do find any, it will just be fragments from the past floating in the present consciousness. The present consciousness is always egoless and that is your reality. But the past consciousness, which is not consciousness at all, but memory, is dead – and that’s what your ego consists of. Your nation, your family, your education, your experiences, your certificates – all that is no longer there. It has gone down the drain, it doesn’t exist, but it goes on influencing your mind. It can destroy your whole life.I have heard a future story:Male Robot: “Hello I64259.”Female Robot: “You can call me I64 if you like. I’m sorry I’m a bit late but I was screwing on a new face.”Male Robot: “That’s OK, I was a bit late too. I blew a sprocket.”Female Robot: “How nasty!”Male Robot: “Might have been worse… I thought my big end had gone. My own fault, though. I went out last night and got oiled.”Female Robot: “Still you’d better go down to the garage for a check-up. You might have a dirty sparking plug. I’ve some trouble too… My employers programmed me to do the wages but I gave out the horse racing results! I’ve got a new operator now.”Male Robot: “Was the other one sacked?”Female Robot: “No, retired on his winnings. Hope it doesn’t happen again.”Male Robot: “I expect one of your woggles worked loose. And talking about woggles, what’s this about your sister?”Female Robot: “We don’t talk about her. She’s eloped with a petrol pump.”Male Robot: “That’s the spirit. Not as bad as my brother, though. He fell in love with a robot with three eyes. We didn’t have the heart to tell him it was a traffic light. Eventually she blew a fuse, and he did not know whether to stop or to go. Actually now we’re alone, I’ve got a present for you.”Female Robot: “It’s wonderful; what is it?”Male Robot: “I bought it at the geiger counter.”Female Robot: “But what is it?”Male Robot: “A geiger counter. It comes in useful if you go geiger hunting. They say it’s made especially for girls. It’s a girl geiger!”Female Robot: “Oh you’re so wonderful, so magnetic.”Male Robot: “You’re only saying that because you’re attracted to me! Let’s run away and get married.”Female Robot: “But I’ve had my heart broken before. Look, you can see where it’s been soldered.”Male Robot: “But this time it will be different.”Female Robot: “How do you know?”Male Robot: “I can feel it in my transistors.”So they were joined together in welded bliss and lived mechanically ever after.This is a future story, but also the past and the present too. This is your story. This is the story of the ego, the mechanical robot-like thing that has overpowered you. You are not alive, or only alive so-so, in a lukewarm way, because the ego does not allow you to be alive. It goes on pulling you toward the past. And remember, the past is growing bigger every day because every moment that passes becomes the past. So the ego goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. The child has a smaller ego, the old man has a bigger ego, and that’s the difference between a child and an old man. The child is closer to godliness, the old man is far away. If he wants to be closer to godliness, he will have to become a child again.Why does Jesus say again and again, “Unless you are like a child, you will not enter into my Kingdom of God.” Why? He is saying that unless you become alive again like a child, which has no past… A “child” means one who has no past; an “old man” means one who has nothing but the past. The older you become, the more the past goes on becoming bigger and bigger and the future starts disappearing. The child has the future, the old man has the past; the child thinks of the future, the old man simply remembers his past, goes into the nostalgia of the past. He always remembers how things were in “the good old days,” and always goes on fantasizing that his past was tremendously beautiful. It is more or less imagination, consolation.As you become older you will become more and more burdened by the past and even before death happens, you are dead. Those who know say that people die at about thirty years old, and then they are buried at about seventy years old. For forty years they live a dead life. The hippies are right when they say, “Don’t trust a man above thirty.” There is some truth in it because the man who is above thirty is less and less alive. His investment is longer in the dead past. He is no longer a rebel, he is no longer free, he is no longer responding to the present. His spontaneity has gone; everything has become fixed. He has become very knowledgeable. He goes on repeating his knowledge, and he goes on behaving in the old ways of his past which are not in context at all, which are not relevant. But he goes on. Nothing works in his life, because nothing can work.Life is new each moment and you have to respond from your inner newness, you have to be available to the new as the new. You have to respond, not out of your knowledge, but out of your present awareness. Only then does life work, otherwise it stops working. If your life is not working, remember, it is the ego that is hindering it; the mechanical has encroached upon the organic. To be free from the mechanical is to be in godliness, because it is to be in the organic unity of existence.What has to be done? – you have to watch, you have to learn the ways of the ego. Walking on the road, watch how the ego comes in. Somebody insults you, watch – don’t miss that opportunity – how the ego raises its head, how the ego swells up suddenly. Somebody praises you, see how you become like a balloon and you go on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. Just go on watching – in different situations, in different moments – what happens to your ego. And there is no hurry to conclude. It is a complicated matter, it is one of the greatest problems – the greatest in fact because if it is solved, existence is available immediately. That very moment you are in existence and existence is in you. So it is a serious problem, and you cannot be in a hurry. You have to go very slowly, very carefully, so that nothing is missed. Just for a few months, watch your ego and you will be surprised. You will be surprised that the ego can control you only if you are not aware of it. The moment you become aware of a certain functioning of the ego, that function disappears. That functioning disappears just by sheer awareness. Wherever you put your light of consciousness, the ego disappears. Then you have the real key. Now go on bringing more and more light to your ego-functioning, and one day you will see it has disappeared from everywhere. You have not repressed it, so it cannot bubble up again. You have not been fighting with it, not at all, so you are not giving any energy to it. In fighting, you give energy to it. You have not been sublimating it; you were not making a divine ego. You have not done anything with it, you were simply watching. Watching is not a doing. And the miracle is that by non-doing, the ego disappears.In fact, to say that it disappears is not right. I have to use language, so many times I have to use incorrect expressions because they are prevalent and there is no other language. When I say it “disappears” I mean it is not found. It was never there, it was invented. It was just our ignorance, it was just our unawareness that had allowed it to exist.Now the sutras:And he came to Capernaum. And being in the house he asked them, What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way?This is an ugly story – an ugly story about Jesus’ disciples, or maybe it’s the story of all kinds of disciples that have existed in the world. The disciples of Jesus were continuously arguing about who was the greatest among them, who was the topmost, who was the closest to Jesus. Not only that, but when Jesus would die and go to his Father who is in heaven… “When we die, who will be there with Jesus – the closest? Of course, he will be standing at the right side of God and he will be the right hand of God. Who will be at the right hand of Jesus? Who among us?”Those twelve were continuously arguing. This is a subtle ego game. Even when you are around a man like Jesus, you go on thinking about your ego. How are you going to meet this man Jesus? It is impossible. Your ego will function like an iron curtain. These disciples are not enjoying the presence of Jesus. Their whole worry is who is the top of them all. The same old ambitious mind, the same old games of the ego, the same old politics. Nothing has changed it seems. They are the same people. If they were in politics, they would have been thinking, “Who is going to become the president of the country?” It is the same old game. Now they are thinking, “Who is to become the first? Who is the closest to Jesus? Who is his chief disciple?” The same ambition, the same cut-throat competition, the same fight, the same violence – of course, now in the name of religion, in the name of disciplehood, in the name of spirituality. But nothing has changed; the ego has entered from the back door.Jesus has said many times to them… But they do not listen, even on the last night when Jesus is taking his leave forever and it is the last time that they will see him. Tomorrow morning he will be crucified. The last supper… But still they are arguing. They are going to lose Jesus forever. They may not be able to find such a man again for millions of lives, but they are not worried about that. They are not worried about Jesus’ death; they are worried about their positions in heaven. “Jesus is leaving, now what about us? What will be our position?” The last thing they ask Jesus is this! That’s why I say it is an ugly story. But the ego is ugly; it is a monster. If you are under its impact, you become ugly, you become a monster.I have heard…One day a man dashed into the Space Police Station, threw himself onto the counter and gasped, “Officer! Officer! We’ve just been attacked by a creature from outer space!”Officer: “Now, sir. Can you describe what happened?”Man: “Well, it was like this, Officer. I was out for a walk on the common with my mother-in-law when he…it…the creature suddenly appeared in front of us and made a grab for my mother-in-law.”Officer: “Could I have a description, sir?”Man: “Well, er… That is… Green, glaring eyes, two big yellow-fang teeth, hair like knotted barbed wire… And an ambling, fat, ugly, sloth-like body.”Officer: “How terrible!”Man: “Yes, and wait until I tell you about the monster!”Just now he was talking about his mother-in-law. That monster of the ego is making you ugly. That monster of the ego possesses you from everywhere. Your life is not beautiful because of it. It goes on and on in new ways, in new shapes, in new sizes. Remember, the ego comes in all shapes and sizes – to everybody’s requirement. Whatsoever fits you, the ego is ready to fit with you. It is very adjustable. If you become religious, it becomes religious and adjusts with you. If you become humble, it becomes humble and adjusts with you. If you become a disciple, it becomes a disciple and adjusts with you; it is very cooperative. It never creates any difficulty for you in that way. Wherever you go, it simply follows you. It does not create any sound, it is very silent – not even its footsteps are heard. It goes on working very silently, but goes on poisoning you.Now think of these disciples: And he came to Capernaum. And being in the house he asked them… On the road he must have thought that it was not right to ask his disciples in front of other people; it looks so ugly. My disciples – and thinking about who is the greatest, and who is the top and who is the real disciple and the chief disciple… “Who is next to Jesus?” Remember, the person who wants to be next to Jesus, if he is put next to Jesus, will try to become even more important than Jesus. That’s what really happened. Judas was the most knowledgeable disciple. Judas was the only sophisticated and educated disciple of Jesus. All the others were very common and ordinary men. Only Judas was of any worth. Naturally, many times in life he tried to correct Jesus. Many times he argued with Jesus, many times he advised Jesus, “Do this, don’t do that.” He was deep down, the competitor.This has always happened. One of Buddha’s brothers was initiated by Buddha. Devadatta was his name; he is the Judas of Buddha’s story. He was very educated – as educated as Buddha. He came from the same family – royal blood, great heritage, noble family. He was as educated as Buddha and as cultured, sophisticated, philosophical – maybe even more than Buddha. Now it was very difficult for him to think of himself as second to Buddha. He created the rift. He started making his own group, he started initiating people himself; he betrayed. He tried to kill Buddha so that he could dominate Buddha’s community – the disciples of Buddha. He wanted to become the leader. Buddha was once poisoned by him. Once a rock was thrown from a mountain, underneath which Buddha was meditating – he was saved just by inches. Then a mad elephant was brought to Buddha and left alone with him. The elephant was so mad, he had killed many people. But even elephants are more loving, more compassionate than the Devadattas and the Judases. The elephant looked at this silent man; something happened in him. He bowed down and touched the feet of Buddha. Even the mad elephant was not as mad as the ego.Judas was always feeling that he could be the leader, and do it in a far better way – he “…knows better than Jesus.” Maybe that rivalry, that ego conflict, created the desire in his mind to destroy Jesus. Once Jesus was removed, he would be the top man. But the others are not very different. Of course, they don’t say, “We are bigger than Jesus,” but they certainly want him to say and let it be decided before Jesus leaves, “Who is the greatest among them.”This is our whole life’s struggle: who is the greatest?And we waste our life in this struggle. This is politics, this is not religion. Wherever the ego is, there is politics. Once the ego goes, there is no politics; you don’t compare yourself with anybody because each individual is incomparable. Each individual is unique, so unique that comparison is not possible. You don’t put yourself higher and you don’t put yourself lower. You are simply different. There is no question of putting yourself higher or lower. You are you and somebody else is somebody else; there is no question of comparison. Remember, when the ego disappears, comparison disappears. When comparison disappears, competitiveness disappears, and there arises great peace.What is your anxiety? What is it that creates anguish, competition, comparison, conflict in you? – the effort to be the greatest, to be the first. Everybody is trying to be the first, hence the war-like quality that surrounds society. Everybody is your enemy. Even those who are your friends are your enemies because they are fighting as you are fighting, for the first place. How can you be friendly? There is no possibility of friendship with the ego. Then friendship is just a mask. The real nature of life is that of the jungle; the big fish goes on eating the small fish. Even if you pretend to be friendly, that is just show, strategy, diplomacy. Nobody can be a friend here unless the ego disappears. Once the ego disappears, your whole life has a quality of friendship, of love. You are friendly, simply friendly – and to everybody, because there is no problem. You are not trying to be the first, so you are no longer a competitor. This is real dropping out. You can drop out from school, from college, from university. That is not going to help. In your hippie community you will try to be the first – to be the hippiest among the hippies. But it is the same, it makes no difference. You have created another society and have started playing the same games again – the same comparison, the same competition.Just see… Jesus’ disciples were so fortunate to be allowed to live with Jesus so closely, yet the old mind continued. That’s why I say the ego is very subtle. And he came to Capernaum. And being in the house he asked them… It would have looked ugly for him to mention the subject that they were discussing on the way. They must have discussed it the whole way. That was their basic problem: they were not interested in the Kingdom of God, they were not interested in meditation, they were not interested in prayer, they were not interested in Christ and christ consciousness; their whole interest was: “Who am I? Where do I stand? Am I the first or not?”What was it – Jesus asks – that ye disputed among yourselves by the way? He must have asked this many times. This story is a condensed story, representative of many stories. It must have been a daily thing. It was so with Buddha, it was so with Mahavira. Mahavira’s chief disciple betrayed him. First he tried to become the chief – his name was Gosala. Once he started feeling that he was the chief, and then the problem was how to topple Mahavira. This is how the ego goes. He went against Mahavira. The ego is dangerous; to be against a man like Mahavira seems inconceivable. If you cannot even be with a man like Mahavira, Buddha, Jesus, you cannot be anywhere. You cannot ever be in love. What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way? Jesus asked.But they held their peace…They remained silent. Not that they were silent – how can the egoistic mind be silent? They were full of turmoil; there was no peace in their minds – their minds were in pieces, there was no peace. They were not together at all. But why did they keep silent? – because it has happened many times before and each time they were caught, Jesus had said something which hurt. But again and again they fell back into the trap; the ego comes back in subtle ways. It is so subtle that you may not even be aware that it has come. You have to be very careful, only then will you know, because it comes like a whisper, it does not shout. It raises its head so silently that nothing stirs. Once it has taken possession of you, it is very difficult. Those disciples must have felt embarrassed again and again. But they would forget about Jesus again and again. Jesus was walking with them on the road… Maybe he was a little ahead and they were following at the back, or maybe they were a little ahead and he was following – but there must have been a little gap, and that gap helped them to discuss their basic problem again: “Who is the greatest?” Jesus must have seen it, must have seen it on their faces. And when they kept silent, when they remained quiet, Jesus spoke:…for by the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest.Jesus knew what they were discussing. It was not necessary for him to listen to what they were discussing, he knew it. That was continuously their basic problem. And as the days came closer to Jesus’ death, they were becoming more and more agitated: “Who will be the head when Jesus is gone?” As if deep down they wanted Jesus to go, so that someone among them could be the head. The mind is very cunning, the mind is very violent.But they held their peace for by the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest.And he sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all.This he was saying again and again – but who listens? This he was repeating every day, but people are deaf. They have seen this man Jesus who has become the first because he has become the last. He has come to the top because he has become capable of remaining the last. He was saying again and again: “The first will be the last in my Kingdom of God and the last shall be the first.”But the mind has its own calculations. Sometimes the mind says, “Okay. If the first should be the last in your Kingdom of God, and the last shall be the first, then I will try to be the last so I can be the first.” But this is the same game. You have missed the point. Logically you have understood, but spiritually you have missed. Now, a person can even try to be the last, can make all kinds of endeavors to be the last, can torture himself to be the last in order to be the first. He is not the last because it is the same desire and the same ambition. When Jesus says that those who are the last shall be the first, he is not giving you a strategy, he is not giving you a technique how to be the first; he is simply stating a fact. This has to be understood. Sometimes people come to me and they want to go into meditation, they really want to go into meditation. But they have motives. They say, “If we go into meditation, shall we see God?” I say to them that if they have a motivation like that, meditation will not happen because a motivated mind can never be meditative. Motivation is desire, desire is disturbance. How can you meditate with disturbance? Meditation is possible only when you are unmotivated, when you don’t have any desire. When there is no desire, there is meditation.Meditation is a state of desirelessness.They understand logically and they say, “Okay. So we will drop the motive. Now if we drop the motive, will it be possible for us to see God?” They are ready to drop the motive, but the motive is still there. It has slipped deep down into the unconscious. They say, “Okay, if you say so, if this is the condition to be fulfilled, we will fulfill it. But are you certain that then we will see God?” So where has the motive gone? It is still there; it has gone underground.Jesus was saying again and again that those who are the last will be the first. This is simply a statement, a simple statement. It is not a question of cause and effect. He is not saying that if you want to be the first, be the last. He is saying that if you are the last, you will be the first. There is a great difference between these two. Linguistically, not much; logically, not much. You will say, “What is the difference whether you say it this way or that?” But existentially there is such a big difference. Be the last. Enjoy being the last and not because by being the last you will be the first. By being last with such joy, you are already the first! Now where else can you be? What higher state can you be in? Standing last, enjoying it… Because to stand last is a very beautiful space because nobody competes for it, nobody comes to struggle with you. You are the last already.Lao Tzu used to say, “I am the last, that’s why I am the most peaceful. Nobody comes to fight with me.” Who is ready to fight with the last? Everybody has compassion for the last; everybody feels “Poor man.” Who is ambitious to be the last? Nobody comes and throws him off his place. If you are the last, you are left alone, you are never disturbed by anybody, you can simply be yourself. When you are ready to be the last, you can be in the present – never otherwise. If you want to be the first, you will have to remain in the future because you will have to think, “How to be the first? How to drag people who are already there out of their place, so I can make a place for myself? How to fight? How to arrange this? What to do? What not to do?” You will be in the future. To try to be the first is to be in the future; if you want to be the first, you will have to project, worry about the future. And from where will you get your ideas? – from the past. So you will remain in the past and in the future, and you will go on missing the present. The present is the only thing that really is. Now is the only real time.A man who is ready to stand last – not as a strategy to go first, but just as an understanding that it is foolish and stupid to compete… What is the point of it all? Why not enjoy life? You can only do one thing. You can compete, or you can celebrate. If you compete, you cannot celebrate; if you celebrate, you cannot compete. It is the same energy. Either you can enjoy or you can fight. You can either love or you can struggle; both together are not possible. So the person who stands last – not as a desire to be first, but as an understanding that to be first is just the stupidity of the mind, the mediocre mind, the foolish mind… Seeing the foolishness of it, seeing the uselessness of it, seeing the people who are standing first and looking like hell – in that very understanding, one has become the first. Can you see it? Do you understand it? In understanding that, one has become the first. This is the meaning of Jesus. And he sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all… Now, the language creates trouble. You can misinterpret Jesus’ language. If any man desire to be first – he says– the same shall be last of all… then he has to become the last.But the language can be dangerous. He uses the word desire: if any man desire to be first… And all of those twelve desire to be the first. They can again get a clue from it. They can say, “Okay, so I will be the last because I want to be the first. Jesus says ‘one who wants to be the first’ so this is the way to be the first. I will do all that I can do. I will do all that I can do to be the first, even if it is needed to stand last, I will stand. I will suffer that, but I have to be the first.” The message is missed. To be the last means no desire for being first. That is the meaning. To be the last means that all comparison has been dropped, all competition has been dropped, all aggression, arrogance has been dropped. One starts enjoying this moment – the peace, the bliss of it, the benediction of it. One is in sheer delight because one can breathe, because one can see the flowers, because one can watch the birds; one can listen to the song of the birds or the rain falling on the roof, or the smell of the wet earth – small things.Jesus says, “Look at the lilies in the field. They toil not, they think not of the morrow – and how beautiful, how incredibly beautiful they are. Even Solomon was not so beautiful attired in all his precious robes, sitting on his golden throne studded with diamonds.” And those poor lily flowers – just standing alone in the field… Look how beautiful they are – how silent, how blissful, how meditative, how prayerful.What is the beauty of the flowers? – they are noncompetitive. What is the beauty of the stars? – they are noncompetitive. What is the beauty of existence? – it is not competing. It is not going anywhere, it is not trying to be something that it is not. That is where man has gone wrong, has gone insane. To exist with the ego is to exist in a kind of neurosis. It is a state of madness. It is the original fall. To be in the ego is to be a sinner. Not to be in the ego is to become a saint. But remember again, I am not saying become a saint. Otherwise the ego will come back and say, “Look, I am such a great saint. Look! I don’t think of the morrow. Look! I am no longer worried about any competition.” The ego has arisen again; there can be a competition. If somebody else is trying to be the last, you will fight with him: “What are you doing? I am the last. You cannot be the last. You can be second to me, but you cannot go ahead of me.”I have heard in a synagogue…A great king was praying early in the morning. The rabbi was there to accompany the king. It was dark and a beggar had also entered.The king prayed and said, “God, I am nobody. I am just a nothingness.”The rabbi also prayed. He also said, “God I am nobody. I am just a nothingness.”Then they heard the beggar who was just standing there. He also prayed and he said, “God, I am nobody. I am just a nothingness.”The king said to the rabbi, “Look who is trying to be nobody. Look who is pretending to be a nothingness! – a beggar? How dare you… Before a king? When I am saying I am nothing, a nobody – and a beggar dares to pretend that he is also nothing, a nobody? This is offensive.”This can happen and you can start fighting about who is the last. It is the same game, only the names have changed. Be very careful when you listen to Buddha or Jesus; be very careful because they have to use your language. It is a necessary evil. But try to be very careful so that you don’t misunderstand them.Jesus says: If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all. And Christians missed it; they started becoming servants of all. Service became the key word and the Christian missionary has become a servant. He runs the hospital, the school, the orphanage; he goes on serving the people. But look into his eyes, look, and there on his nose is sitting the ego. “I am the servant of the people. Nobody is serving the people as I am serving.”A story I have heard – a very beautiful story…In China, in a village, there was a great fair. A man fell into a well because there was no protective wall surrounding it, so he shouted, “Save me!”There came a Buddhist monk. He looked down and the man was crying. The man said, “What are you looking at? Do something! I am dying.”The Buddhist monk said, “Listen to me. Buddha has said, ‘Birth is suffering, life is suffering, death is suffering. All is suffering.’ So what is the difference whether you are suffering in a well or somewhere else? Accept it. Buddha has said, ‘Tathata – accept. In acceptance there is deliverance.’”But the man prayed and said, “I will listen to your sermon, but first please take me out, then you can bore me as much as you want. But this is not the moment right now – I am not in a state to listen to your great philosophy.”But the Buddhist monk said, “Buddha has said, ‘Don’t interfere in anybody’s life.’ I cannot interfere. You must be suffering because of your past karmas. It is not a question of you falling in because there is no wall – there are many people and nobody else has fallen in. It is because of your past karmas. You must have thrown somebody in a well in some life. You are suffering for that, and I don’t want to interfere because if I take you out, you will have to fall in again somewhere, some time. Buddha has said ‘Never interfere in anybody’s life.’”And he went on his way perfectly calm and quiet. He thinks he has understood Buddha’s message; he is quoting rightly. All the words are Buddha’s. It can also be the interpretation. It is not just a story…In India there is a Jaina sect – Terapanth. They say that if you find somebody dying by the side of the road, thirsty, go on your way, don’t interfere. Even if he is dying of thirst and you have a thermos flask and you could give him a little water, don’t give it because he is suffering from his past karmas. Let him finish it, let him go through it, otherwise he will have to go into it again. And you will be responsible; you will be prolonging his suffering.Look at the logic – you will be prolonging his suffering. This time, he would have been finished with the karma in perhaps two hours. You give him water. Now those two hours have remained; he will have to account for them. On some other day, in some other life, maybe again he will have to fall by the side of the road, thirsty. You have disturbed his life pattern, and not only that, because you have disturbed his life pattern, you have accumulated a wrong karma for yourself: you will have to suffer. So you have not helped. That’s why you will not find a Jaina monk running a hospital or a school, no. That is impossible. “People are suffering from disease because of their past karmas. They have to suffer. Help them to accept it.” The Jaina monk will say, “Please be silent and meditate.” He has the thermos and he could give the water, but he will not. So this is not just a story; it has happened in the East.Another man comes, a Confucian monk. He looks into the well and the man says, “Take me out! Take me out, sir, otherwise I will not survive. A few minutes more and I will be gone!” He is shivering and he is cold.The Confucian says, “Don’t be worried. We will create a revolution in the world. We will not leave a single stone unturned. We will force the government to make protective walls around every well!”He says, “But what is the point of that? That will take years and I will die!”The Confucian says, “You are not the question – the society! Individuals come and go, society remains. Social reform is needed. Every well should have a wall!”This is what the communist says. He says, “If you are dying, there is nothing to be worried about. If you are poor, there is nothing to be worried about. Wait. When the revolution comes and communism comes, everything will be okay.”You will say, “I will die” – that is not the point. You are not the question, the question is of society. The society has to be changed first. Only when the society is changed, the economic structure is changed, the state and the law is changed, only then will people be happy. Nothing can be done about you.The Confucian goes, stands on a high stage and gathers people around him, saying to them, “A revolution is needed! Every well should have a wall!” And the man is dying…Then there comes a Christian missionary, as if he was in search of somebody who has fallen into the well. He looks and says, “My God! Good. I was in search… I wanted to serve somebody. You did well!” He pulls a rope from his back. He is carrying it ready-made – he is in search because it is through service… Jesus has said that you have to be the servant of all. He throws the rope in, takes the man out. The man is very happy. He touches his feet and says, “You are the really religious person. The Buddhist monk came and he started preaching, the Confucian came and he has gone… And look! There he has gathered a big crowd around him and he is teaching people about reform and how society and the law have to be changed. You are the only religious person. If you had not come, I would have died. But tell me one thing: Why were you carrying the rope? That is strange.”The Christian missionary is very happy because he has done a good work. He says, “I always carry a rope. I carry many things because I am always ready. I am a servant.”The man says, “How should I thank you? I would like to do something for you – you have saved me.”The Christian says, “Do just one thing. Teach your children also to go on falling into wells because that is the only way to go to God. If people stop falling into wells, if this Confucian fool succeeds, there will be no opportunity to serve. If this Buddhist monk succeeds in teaching people to accept everything, there will be no need to serve them. They will not accept service. So do just one thing: go on falling into wells. Teach your children too.”You will be surprised. You will think that this seems to be a little far-fetched. No, it is not. In India, there is a Hindu mahatma – Karpatriji Maharaj. He has written a book against communism. The basic, the most fundamental question he has raised is – if nobody is poor, religion will disappear. The poor are needed because only if there are poor can you donate and open hospitals and dharmshalas and things like that. If all the poor people disappear, if communism succeeds, what will happen to religion? Because Hinduism says that to donate is the greatest of religions, to share your riches is the greatest thing. But if everybody is rich, nobody would like to share your riches, and you won’t have riches to share if everybody is equal. If society becomes communist, religion will disappear. And this man thinks that he is a religious man. It is not far-fetched; that’s how people have understood things. He quotes the Vedas, the Gita and the Upanishads, where to serve the poor is praised because “that is the only way”; “If you serve the poor, you serve God.” But if nobody is poor, how will you serve the poor and how will you serve God? The bridge will be broken. So the logical conclusion is to keep poverty, keep people starving. They are needed, otherwise what will mahatmas do? They won’t have anything to do.Down the ages, the words of Buddha, Jesus, Mahavira have been misunderstood because they have to use your language. When they use your language, it is always inadequate – but they have no other language. Even if they have another language, they cannot speak it to you because you won’t understand.Jesus says: If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all. He is simply stating a fact: that the man who has understood the ugliness of the ego, the ugliness, violence, poisonousness of ambition – in that very understanding will not compete, will be happy wherever he is. In that happiness, he will see that God is everywhere. In that very experience, that God is everywhere; he will become a servant. Not that he will have to practice, not that he will have to search where to go and how to serve. Wherever he is, all is God and the part is the servant of the whole. There is no deliberate effort to serve. Service comes when you are silent.Service flows from your being when you are happy, when you are so full of energy that, wherever need arises, you serve. A dog is dying and you serve. A tree is drying out, nobody has given it water and you give water. You don’t go on pretending and posing that you have served. You don’t go on shouting to everybody, “Look how great a servant I am! I have helped this tree to become green again.” That is not the point. In helping the tree to be green, you have made your life green. It is already the reward, there is no other reward. In helping the dying dog, you have helped yourself – because it is all one.When you hit somebody, you are hitting yourself. When you kill somebody, you are killing yourself – because we are all one. When you serve, you serve yourself, so there is no need to brag about it. You don’t become a great missionary, a great servant of the people, and things like that. You don’t become anybody, it all comes naturally. When a person is happy, his compassion is natural. Out of happiness he is compassionate.And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them, and when he had taken him in his arms, he said unto them,Whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name, receiveth me, and whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me.Jesus takes hold of a small child. A child is a symbol of helplessness and of innocence. He says: Whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name… Wherever you find somebody helpless, help. Wherever you find something innocent, embrace it, love it. Whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name, receiveth me… Jesus says, “He has received me, he has opened his heart to me.” In love, you become close to Christ. Jesus is saying that not through competition, not by being the first, but in receiving, helping innocence, in receiving the life energies that surround you, and in pouring yourself wherever the need arises, you come close to him. …and whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me. Jesus said, “You don’t know about God, you have known me. You don’t know this child, that the innocence of this child is my innocence. In his innocence, my innocence is hidden. If you go into my innocence, you will find in my innocence that God’s innocence is hidden.”Look into a flower, penetrate deep into the heart of the flower and you will touch Christ. When Christ is touched, go still a little deeper, and you will touch godliness. You can touch godliness in every leaf and in every drop of water and in every pebble, in every stone – godliness is everywhere. Just a penetration… And it is not a question of being first, it is a question of being last, it is a question of being egoless. Only then can you respect a child, otherwise you will respect a king, not a child. You will respect a rich man, not a helpless child. Have you ever respected a child? If you have not respected a child, you don’t know how to respect Christ. You will say, “For what?”We respect people because they have some capacity. He is a great painter, you respect him. He is Picasso, you respect him. Why, because he is world famous? Because he has a very famous ego? Because he is somebody and you would like to be associated with Picasso? This man is a great musician, this man is a great poet, this man is a great philosopher; this man is a great man of God – a christ, a buddha. You would like to respect them because you would like to come closer to them. By coming closer, your ego will feel satisfied; you are so close to Christ, you stand by his side. This is not real respect. Real respect is not for fame, for a name; real respect is a totally different thing. You respect a flower because God is there, fully alive. You respect a bird because God is on the wing. You respect a child because in those eyes is innocence, those eyes are exactly like Christ’s. You respect animals, trees, stones, because God is hidden everywhere; his signature is everywhere.Then said the Jews unto him,Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? And the prophets are dead. Whom makest thou thyself?Listening to such words: “If you love a child, respect a child, you have loved me and respected me. If you have loved me and respected me, you have loved God,” the Jews that were standing there must have felt offended: “So what is this man claiming? Is he claiming that he is God? Who is this man…? The son of the carpenter Joseph or the son of Mary? And one is not even certain whether he is a legal son, legitimate or illegitimate – because people say he was born out of the Virgin Mary. Maybe he is illegitimate. This illegitimate son of a woman, of an ordinary carpenter is saying, ‘If you come close to me you come close to God.’” He must have looked like a pretender, a deceiver. The Jews must have felt offended. Art thou greater than our father Abraham… Even Abraham had not said that. Even Abraham said, “I am just a servant of God.” And Jesus says, “I am the Son of God, not the servant.” Jesus really says, “I am God; I am in God and God is in me. If you have seen me, you have seen my Father who is in heaven.”Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? And the prophets are dead… Are you greater than our prophets? Whom makest thou thyself? Who do you think you are?Jesus answered,Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day…Now again there will be difficulty with the language. He is saying exactly what the truth is, but the language becomes very inadequate.He says:Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad.Just think. If I say to you that Jesus rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad… Now anybody here who is a Christian will feel offended. So who do I think I am? Naturally the question will arise that Jesus’ days have past two thousand years ago. How could he see “my day” and how could he rejoice? There is something very symbolic in it. Whenever anybody becomes enlightened, all the enlightened persons, all that energy which has become enlightened before, rejoices because one more person has come back home, one more person has bloomed, one more person has entered existence.In India there are beautiful stories…When Buddha became enlightened, all the gods showered flowers from the sky, all the enlightened people sang songs around him. That day was a day of great rejoicing. The whole forest bloomed; trees bloomed out of season, dead trees sprouted again. There was music and song, and the gods sang and danced because one more had become enlightened. Enlightenment is such a great phenomenon that this should be so, the whole existence should rejoice. But Jesus is saying something which the Jews cannot understand.Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?Now, two different planes are talking to each other… Dialogue seems to be impossible. The Jews are talking about time and Jesus is talking about eternity. The Jews are talking about the past and Jesus is talking about the present.He says:…Before Abraham was, I am.Now, he is not talking about Jesus, he is talking about christ consciousness. The Jews are talking about time, he is talking about eternity. The Jews are talking about Jesus and he is talking about Christ. That’s the whole difference: two different planes. Christ consciousness is eternal, timeless. It knows no beginning, no end; it is not confined to time or to periods. Christ consciousness has always been there. Jesus has participated in it now, but once you participate in it you disappear.It is like a drop of water entering the ocean. The moment the drop enters the ocean it is no longer there. Now the drop can say, “I have been always,” because now it is the ocean saying it, not the drop. The river has fallen into the ocean. Jesus has fallen into christ consciousness, that oceanic feeling. Now he is no longer there, now he is not the son of Mary or Joseph, he is not the carpenter of the village; he is not young; he is not the body, he is not the mind. Now he is the transcendental, the fourth state of consciousness: turiya. He is Christ, he is Buddha. That’s why he uses two different tenses.He says:Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.He does not say, “Before Abraham was, I was” – that would be wrong. That’s why this statement is really great. He says Before Abraham was… Abraham, he uses as a past tense. Before Abraham was, I am. Before Jesus was, I am.Abraham participated in christ consciousness and disappeared. So Jesus participated in christ consciousness and disappeared. Now there is no question of time, now time exists not. Now there is no longer any time and no longer any space. This state is what Buddha calls nirvana and Jesus calls the Kingdom of God.Meditate on these sutras. They are incredible. Go into them and you will be immensely benefited. Great will be your grace if you can understand them.Enough for today.

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I Say Unto You Vol 2 01-09Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 2 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,What is the difference between great sexual suppression and freedom from sex? On the surface, neither have an interest in sex. How does suppressed sex bubble up?First, suppressed sex has more interest than expressed sex can ever have. The interest is not direct – it is indirect, it is vicarious, it is cunning; the interest is there, immensely there. If your sex life is normal, unrepressed, uninhibited, the interest cannot be so much because you will have a kind of satisfaction, a contentment. It is just as when you have eaten your food, you forget about food. But if you fast, you continuously think about food. Fast one day and then go to the market, and you will see only hotels, restaurants, food stores, and you will smell only the smell of food coming from everywhere. You had been to this place many times before and it had never happened like that.Repression cannot free you from interest. The repressed person becomes more interested in sex than anybody else. Maybe he shows antagonism, that’s possible, but antagonism is interest. That’s why your so-called religious scriptures are full of antagonism toward sex, condemnation. Your so-called mahatmas go on cursing sex. That simply shows their interest, nothing else. They are still haunted by it. They may be sitting in their caves in the Himalayas, but they are condemning sex. Why? – it is deep inside them, in their very guts, they are fighting with it. Their condemnation is their way of fighting with it; they condemn it so that they can remain on top of it. If they don’t condemn it even for a single day, they start feeling afraid that what is really inside may surface, and their control and their saintlihood and their holiness may be thrown away. The more you repress, the more it accumulates. It becomes more and more powerful.So the first thing to understand is that it is impossible for a repressed person not to show an interest. He will show disinterest – but that is interest upside down; if you watch, you will see it coming everywhere. A normal sexual life has sex in a normal way. Sometimes it takes possession of you, and it is beautiful to be possessed by it because to be possessed by any life energy is to be possessed by God. That is the only natural way for ordinary people who are not trying to attain some higher consciousness, who are not going into meditation, to have a taste of meditation. When sex possesses you, it is God possessing you – on the lowest rung, of course. Samadhi is the highest rung of being possessed by God and sex is the lowest, but in both you are possessed by God. In sex, God has to function through your body, in samadhi he functions through your soul. In music, in art, in poetry, in dance, he functions through your mind. But whenever you are in a state of let-go, whenever you are not… That is the joy of sex: you disappear for a moment. That moment is very small, but its impact is immense. For one moment you are no longer the ego, you don’t think in terms of “I.” For one moment you dissolve into the unity of the all, you become one with the whole, you pulsate with the whole. You are no longer an individual, you are no longer confined to your body. You don’t know any limitations, for a moment you are unlimited, infinite.That is the meaning of sexual orgasm: that your frozen energy melts and becomes one with this universe, with the trees and the stars, and the woman and the man, and the rocks – for a single moment, of course. But in that moment you have a kind of consciousness that is religious, that is holy, because it comes from the whole. The attraction for sex is the attraction for God. The attraction for sex is the attraction to let-go. There is nothing wrong in it; it is the beginning of the search for God. And of course, the beginning can begin where you are. You are in the body, so only in the body can the search start. It should not remain there, that’s true, but it cannot start anywhere else. You have to go rung by rung, step by step. The higher you move, the more meaningless the lower starts becoming. Not that you are against it, but because you are gaining higher ecstasies – who bothers about the lower?The man who is against sex is below sex. He has fallen below sex, he is obsessed with sex. Twenty-four hours a day he will be full of sexual thoughts, fantasies. You can watch it – everywhere he will show his fantasy, his repression. You can see him walking on the road – he will not be able to walk naturally. A beautiful woman passes by, what do you do if you are carrying great repression? – trembling starts coming up inside him. He starts looking the other way, or he escapes into a small street to avoid her. He cannot look at the woman. By looking he is showing where his interest is. But by not looking he is also showing his interest. The man who is above sex, the man who has become free of sex avoids nothing. He has no antagonism toward sex. He will have compassion for all those who are still in the world of sex. The man who has gone beyond sex will look at the beautiful woman and she will not remind him of sex, but of God – because all reminds him of God. A beautiful flower reminds him of God, a beautiful face reminds him of God. In fact, all reminds him of God.A man went to his psychiatrist and the psychiatrist was trying to find out what his problem was. And psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts have stumbled upon one great fact about humanity – ninety-nine problems out of a hundred arise out of sex. Not because of sex, but because of your religious conditioning against sex.So the doctor was trying to find out from where the problem was arising. He asked the man, “When you see a tree, what does it remind you of?”The man said, “Of sex.”A tree? Of sex? To be more certain, the doctor asked, “When you see stars, what do they remind you of?”The man said, “Of sex, of course.”The doctor, to be still more certain, asked, “When you see a camel walking by, what does it remind you of?”The man said, “Of sex.”The doctor said, “Camel? – reminding you of sex?”The man said, “Yes, everything reminds me of sex. It is not a question of the camel or the tree or the elephant or the dog – everything reminds me of sex!”If you are obsessed, repressed, everything will remind you of sex – everything, because you are carrying such a load, you will go on projecting. There is no need for a real woman to be there, just a sari, hanging, will do. There is no need for a real woman to be there, just one of my long-haired sannyasins passing by… And from the back you see… And the long hair – and it is there. You cannot get beyond sex by repressing it. The way beyond is through; the way beyond is through understanding.I have heard…Several men who had been involved in a serious road accident were brought to hospital on stretchers and the dead were separated from the living. One of those believed to be dead had been accompanied by his wife, who was mainly interested in the insurance money to which his death would entitle her. As soon as she arrived therefore, she approached one of the harassed doctors dealing with the emergency, and pointing to her husband on his stretcher, said, “He’s dead, isn’t he, doctor?”“I’m afraid so, madam,” said the doctor, incautiously assuming that the judgment of the stretcher-bearers as to who was dead and who was not had been correct.At this moment, the woman’s supposedly dead husband, who was in fact alive and had overheard the conversation, suddenly sat up on his stretcher, and said, “I’m not dead, doctor!”“Lie down,” snapped his wife. “The doctor knows!”Now, her interest is in the insurance money. It shows; you cannot hide it. It will show in some way or other. It will empty out of you.You must have heard about great rishis and mahatmas doing their meditations in the forest. And then apsaras, beautiful damsels from heaven, come to distract them. But why should these beautiful women be interested in distracting those poor people, who are not doing any harm to anybody? They are just sitting under their trees doing their japa, their meditation. Why should anybody be interested in distracting them? Indian scriptures are full of these stories. But nobody asks, “Why in the first place…?” Why should God have a portfolio, a special department to distract these poor, fasting, meditating people? But they come.Those beautiful women dance around naked, and they hug the mahatmas, and they try to distract them from their meditations. These women are not coming from heaven. Heaven has no interest in them. Heaven really should rejoice that another man is coming higher, reaching to heaven. It is not very populated. Heaven is not very crowded, almost a desert, because people go to hell. God should rejoice, the angels should dance and sing that a new guest is coming. There should be a sensation in heaven. Why should they send beautiful women to distract them? In the first place, where will they find the beautiful women? They all go to hell. What are they doing with beautiful women in heaven? But they come. They don’t come from heaven, they come from the unconscious repressed sexuality.If you fast, if you torture your body, if you go on repressing your natural desires, a moment comes when you are so full of it that the fantasy looks almost real. Then you cannot make any distinction between the fantasy and reality. The imagination looks objective. You are in a kind of hallucination; these are hallucinations.No. You ask: “What is the difference between great sexual suppression and freedom from sex?” The difference is great. The difference is that the man who has repressed his sex will still continuously give signals about his sexuality and obsession. He will continuously talk against it, he will condemn it. He will never be able to forgive anybody for being sexual. Just the word is enough to trigger his anger and hatred. If he sees two persons in a loving state, he will go off his rocker.Just a few days ago, it happened. A shankaracharya came to see me. Now, this is the last place for shankaracharyas to come to. He was staying with a doctor in Pune; the doctor was interested in me and he must have persuaded the poor old man to come. Somehow the doctor managed it and brought him to the gate. He was sitting in the car and the doctor had gone to the office to arrange the meeting.When he went back to the car, the shankaracharya was very angry. He said, “Take me away from this place immediately!”The doctor asked, “What happened?”He said, “Look! Sannyasins – men and women – holding hands! I cannot remain here a single moment more. This is not a holy place! This is against religion and against culture.” He really got very irritated.The doctor wrote a letter to me: “I have never seen him so angry. He was in a rage, a murderous rage.” Now, where is it coming from? Why should you be worried if a man and a woman are holding hands? This is none of your business. They are not forcing you to do anything, they are just going on their way. They have not even looked at you. They are not enraged about you. Why should you be enraged about them? But the question is not about the sannyasins. The repressed sexuality is provoked. Seeing a beautiful woman holding somebody’s hand, jealousy arises. To repress that jealousy, sex starts bubbling up. To repress that sex, one has to be very angry. Only through anger can you repress sex. People who repress sex become angry. Have you noticed it? They become irritated – small things irritate them. They are never at ease, always angry. Have you seen people who have repressed sex? They become aggressive and they start finding ways and means to express their aggression. They become politicians, they become money-oriented. They have to find some way out for their aggression. It may be politics, it may be money, it may be some other kind of ambition, but they become very aggressive.Have you known this too – or not – that if you want to earn money you will have to repress sex? If you don’t repress sex, you will not have enough aggression left to fight in the market, to compete with people. If you want to become a great politician, you will have to repress sex; otherwise, from where will you find this stupid energy to be a politician? You have to repress sexuality so that energy starts becoming more and more accumulated in you. Finding no natural way, it is ready to go into any way, any channel where you want it to go.A man who is sexually repressed is not uninterested in sex – no, not at all. He is more interested than the ordinary man. His whole interest is centered there. He is continuously afraid of sex, afraid of beauty, afraid of bodies, afraid of his dreams. He cannot sleep well, he cannot communicate well, because everything reminds him of sex. It is not only that women… If you repress sex with women long enough you will start turning to homosexuality. Even men will remind you of sex and nothing else. If camels can remind you of sex, why not men? People who repress sex are going to have great difficulties, are going to be perverted. Men will remind you… Everything by and by will start having a sexual tinge and color. Beware of it.Do you know that Alexander the Great was a homosexual, Julius Caesar was a homosexual? And many other great kings and generals have been homosexuals. The reason? – continuously fighting, continuously on the move; battling on the front where women are not available – sex starts turning toward homosexuality. Soldiers, people in the army, navy, air force, start turning to homosexuality. Monks, nuns, start becoming homosexual or lesbian. Monks have not allowed any women in the monastery. Now, there are monasteries in Europe where not a single woman has entered for a thousand years – not even a small baby of seven days old, no. What will happen there? A thousand monks in the monastery… And once you enter, you are not allowed to leave; you enter forever. Mount Athos is such a monastery. You enter once, forever – it is like the grave – and you never come out of it. Sometimes people come out of their graves, but nobody comes out of Mount Athos. No woman has ever crossed the threshold – not even a small baby. The limit is seven days – a small baby more than seven days old is dangerous? What kind of people are living there? Just think of an eight- day-old girl… These people must be great mahatmas – the same mahatmas scriptures talk about – to whom damsels and beautiful apsaras come to distract. Now not even an eight-day-old baby is allowed in. It is against the code of the monastery.When these thousand people live in a complete “boys’ club,” naturally their repressed sexuality starts turning into homosexuality; nuns start turning into lesbians. This goes on. This has been so down the ages. That’s why I don’t like my ashram to be mono-sexual – only men or only women. I want men and women to mix and meet. I want this place to be very natural, healthy, whole; only then can you go beyond it, otherwise not. The man who has gone beyond sex is free from sex. To say that he has no interest in sex is also wrong. His interest is not personal any longer. He has no involvement, that is true, but he is interested in everything – in flowers, in birds, in animals, in people; he is interested in everything. His interest is not personal. No involvement of his own being, but he is interested in everything. If such a man sees a couple looking into each other’s eyes, he will be happy. He will thank God that he has seen love energy moving. He will bless this couple. He will say, “Go ahead. This is the way. Enjoy these moments.” He will not show any obsession this way or that. He will not start thinking of possessing this woman and he will not start thinking of how to escape from this situation, because he has no fear. He can bless the couple.It happens every day. Couples come to me… Sometimes Indians are also there. They become very puzzled because Indians cannot think that a sage will also give advice about sex. They cannot conceive of it. They think a sage only talks about God, only about God. When I advise people on their ordinary life problems, Indians who have never heard of Buddha advising anybody, or Mahavira advising anybody about their sexual problems, feel very uneasy, embarrassed. They cannot understand what is happening. They expect only advice about God from me, meditation and things like that. I should not help a couple with their problems. But how is a couple which is involved, entangled, in sexuality going to become meditative, if not helped to go beyond it? How is it possible some day for them to become meditative? I have to take their whole life and I take great interest in every kind of problem. I get completely lost in their problems, I become completely absorbed. I forget the whole world when somebody is facing me with his problem; that problem is my whole world – whatsoever the problem. Whether it is sex, whether it is money, whether it is over-eating, whether it is body health, meditation, God, prayer, does not matter – whatsoever it is, the person has a problem which has to be solved. I have to bring all my energy to solve it. I am utterly interested in everything because I am not afraid of anything. Why shouldn’t I be interested?But remember, the interest has a totally different meaning. I am interested in a flower, I am interested in beauty, I am interested in poetry, in music, in dance; I am interested in all kinds of possibilities. God is also interested, otherwise sex would have disappeared long before now. Why should sex continue? If mahatmas are right, God is wrong.George Gurdjieff used to say that your so-called mahatmas are all against God, and your so-called religions are all against God. He is right; he has something very significant to say there. They are, because God goes on creating the world and God goes on creating the world in such variety, in such richness, in all directions, dimensions. Mahatmas are monotonous. They just simply do the japa, and repeat, “Ram, Ram, Ram…” And go on repeating.The life of a mahatma is a very poor life – no richness, no inner variety, no dimensions to his being. He is linear, one-dimensional. The man who is free of sex has no personal involvement in it, he has no desire for it. Not that he is against it, just his desires have moved higher. It is like a child. Once you were a child and you used to play with colored stones, used to collect shells and stones on the sea beach. One day you became a grown-up, now you no longer collect them. But if your child is collecting sea shells and colored stones, won’t you be able to understand him? Won’t you show an interest? Won’t you say to the child, “Good. This stone is beautiful. Where did you find it? Even I didn’t find such stones when I was young, and like you I was searching and exploring the sea beaches. You are fortunate.” You will not condemn the child. You will not say, “This is nonsense, rubbish. Throw those stones away! I know they mean nothing.” You will show your interest. That is real grown-upness. If you start shouting at the child and say: “This is nonsense and rubbish. Throw all those stones away. Don’t carry them, they will dirty your clothes, your pockets. Your pockets will lose shape, this and that, and your mother will be very angry. Throw them away! I have known through my own experience that they are meaningless.” That simply shows you are not yet mature enough.Maturity is mature enough only when it can accept the immature. Maturity is real when it can not only accept the immature but can bless you, with all the hopes that you will grow out of it. Everybody grows, just time is needed. You had a teddy bear or a toy that you loved so much, that there were days when you could not sleep without it. You had to carry it to bed, you had to carry it on journeys. Your parents were feeling a little embarrassed that you had carried this big teddy bear with you, this big toy: “You have become a big boy now, or a big girl. Stop it.” But you had to carry it everywhere. And then one day suddenly something changed; the teddy bear got lost. It remained for a few days in the corner of your room and then you threw it out onto the rubbish heap. What happened? How did you get rid of it? – you became mature. You have not repressed the desire, you have not repressed your love affair with the teddy bear. You have simply grown up; you have gone beyond it.Freedom from sex is not repression of sex, it is the understanding of sex. Through understanding one goes beyond it. But that does not mean that you will be angry, antagonistic and against it. You will be blissful, you will have a blessing for everybody. You will bless with the hope that some day they will also go beyond it.Real religion has to be rooted in the earth. Yes, real religion also has to rise toward the sun. It is like a lotus flower – rooted in the mud and rising toward the sun. The lotus has to be freed from the mud, but the mud has not to be condemned at all because it is the nourishment. Your sex energy is the nourishment for your samadhi. It is out of the mud of sex that the lotus of samadhi is going to bloom. Never repress it! Never be against it; rather, go deeply into it with great clarity, with great love. Go like an explorer. Search all the nooks and corners of your sexuality and you will be surprised and enriched and benefited.Knowing your sexuality, one day you will stumble upon your spirituality. You become free. Your energy has risen high. Now sex is just like a toy. But you are not angry with other people who are still playing with the toy. You will understand them, you will have compassion for them too. You would like to help them go beyond, but you will not condemn them and you will not want to throw them into hell to be punished. They are not doing anything wrong. Sex is not a sin. Nobody is ever punished for sex. Nobody ever goes to hell for sex, otherwise God would be responsible, not you. He has given it to you, you are born with it; you have not created it. It is nothing like your invention, it is not like an atom bomb, it is not like a bayonet, it is not like a sword, it is not like money, it is not like politics – these are inventions of man, of the ugly human mind. These people will go to hell, certainly. But sex is a God-given gift and is a great seed. In the seed is hidden samadhi. Once it starts sprouting and finds the right soil, it will become a big tree. Millions of flowers will blossom on it.It is not only a child that is born out of sex, it is out of sex that you will be reborn too. Sex is the generating force, sex is the very source of creativity. It is out of sex that new life is born. You give birth to a child – this is a new life; God coming in another garb, another manifestation, another incarnation of God in your child, but it comes through sex. Just watch it. Sex must be immensely valuable – God has chosen it to be the passage for life. What is more valuable than life? What can be more valuable than life? God has chosen sex as the vehicle for life. Life comes through sex, in sex, out of sex. Those who know, those who have gone beyond, say that another life, spiritual life, also comes through it. Not only your child is born through it, you will be reborn through it; you will become twice-born through it, you will resurrect out of it. It is life-giving energy. Sex has to be respected. Sex is sacred. Sex is the very temple of God.So I cannot say the man who is free from sex has no interest in it because sex is life. And sex is potential spirituality. How can he be disinterested in it? Yes, he has no personal interest in it; he has gone beyond it, but he is immensely interested. In fact, the interests of a man who is free from sex become very great. Now he is interested in everything. When you are obsessed with sex, you are not interested in anything. You are not interested in poetry, you are not interested in music, you are not interested in beauty; you are only interested in sex. If sometimes you show an interest in music, poetry, beauty, art, you show interest only because some sexuality is there. You become interested in poetry if it is sexual. You become interested in a picture, in a painting if it is a nude, pornographic. You become interested in the music if it excites you sexually, otherwise you are not interested. This is not interest in music and painting, this is interest in sex. That’s why ninety-nine percent of poetry, music, painting and sculpture are sex-based; ninety-nine percent of people don’t want anything other than sex. Your films, your novels, your books – even your so-called religious books – are all full of sexuality. Sometimes it is in the name of condemnation, but they go on talking about the physical, the sexual. Sometimes they are obscene. The interest of the man who is free of sex is also free of sex. His interest spreads to the whole of life.Just the other day I was reading…In a school, the teacher asked the children – small children, “How many stars do you see at night?”One child said, “Thousands.”Another child said, “Millions.”The third child said, “Trillions.”The smallest boy in the class stood up and said, “Three.”The teacher asked, “Three? And these, your friends, are seeing thousands, millions and trillions, and you see only three?”He said, “What to do? We’ve got a very small window.”Now the small window becomes the frame. Only three stars… You have a very small window through which to look at life. That window is called sex – only three stars. When you are free of sex, you jump out of the window. The whole sky becomes available to you. Those three stars are also still there, but no longer prominent. Lost, in so many stars… Your interest becomes bigger, infinite. The whole sky becomes your limit; that means there is no limit anymore. A man who has attained to freedom from sex is immensely interested in everything. Everything thrills him, everything excites him to ecstasy, and everything reminds him of God.The second question:Osho,What is hypertension?Hypertension is a state of mind where you have become focused too much on rationality and have forgotten your feelings. Hypertension comes out of an imbalance; too much trust in reason is the basis of all hypertension. People who live in their heads become hypertensive. Relaxation comes through the heart. One should be capable of moving easily from the head to the heart, just as you move out of your house and inside your house. One should be fluid between the head and the heart. These are the two shores of the river that you are. You should not cling to one shore, otherwise life becomes lopsided. The West suffers very much from hypertension because it has forgotten the language of the heart, and only the heart knows how to relax because only the heart knows how to love. Only the heart knows how to enjoy, celebrate. Only the heart knows how to dance and sing. The head knows nothing of dance; the head condemns dance as stupid. The head knows nothing of poetry, the head condemns poetry.Do you know that one of the greatest philosophers, Plato, thinking about his ultimate utopian republic, said that no poet should be allowed there? In his republic, in his ultimate state of society, poets should not be allowed. Why? – because he is afraid of poets. He says that poets bring fantasies, poets bring dreams, poets bring confusion and mysticism, and he doesn’t want any of it: we want a very clear-cut, logical, prosaic society. That society will be hypertensive; everybody will be neurotic. In Plato’s republic – if it ever happens… And there is every fear that it can happen – everybody will be neurotic and always carrying his psychoanalyst with him. Wherever he moves, he will have to carry his psychoanalyst. That is already coming in the West.I have heard…In a New York street, two small boys were talking – as they have always talked down the centuries, but what they said was very new.One boy said to the other, “My psychoanalyst can lick your psychoanalyst any time.”Small boys have always talked that way: “My father can lick your father” or “My house is bigger than your house” or “My dog is stronger than your dog” – a small child’s beginning of the ego. But, “My psychoanalyst can lick your psychoanalyst any time” – this is something new.Three women were talking about their children. One was saying, “He is the top in the class. He always comes first.”The second said, “That’s nothing. My child is only seven but he can play music like a Mozart, like a Wagner.”The third said, “That’s nothing. My child is only five and he goes to his psychoanalyst all alone.”Hypertension is a state where you have lost balance. You cannot bring your heart to function in your life; logic has become all – and logic remains superficial. Logic, when it becomes all, only creates anxiety; it never gives any peace, it goes on bringing new problems. It never solves any problem – it cannot solve it, it is not in its power. It only pretends, it only promises. It goes on saying, “I will deliver the goods,” but it never delivers. And then problems go on accumulating and you don’t know how to get out of them because you don’t know how to get out of the head.You don’t know how to play with children, how to love your woman, how to go and have a talk with the trees, and sometimes have a dialogue with the stars. You have forgotten all, you are no longer a poet, you are no longer an alive heart. Whenever any part of the body is repressed, that part takes revenge. If another part of the mind is repressed, that part takes revenge. The heart is the most vital part, the most fundamental part. One can live without the head, but one cannot live without the heart. The head is a little superficial, it is a kind of luxury, but the heart is very essential.The head exists only in man, so it cannot be very essential. Animals live without it and live perfectly well in a far more silent and blissful way than man. Trees live without the head, and so do the birds and the children and the mystics. The head is superficial. It has a certain function – use it, but don’t be used by it. Once you are being used by it, you will become anxious; anxiety will come and life will become nauseous. It will just be a long stretched-out pain, and you will not find any oasis anywhere in it, it will be a desert thing. Remember, the essential has not to be repressed. The non-essential has to follow the essential – has to become its shadow. You cannot deny anything without getting into trouble.Listen to this anecdote…One day, a flying saucer landed in Elsie Gumtree’s garden, right in the middle of her summer bloomers, which could have been quite painful if she had been wearing them. There was a whirring sound, and a strange purple man appeared through the hatch in the side of the saucer. Straight away he headed for Elsie’s back door and knocked politely.Elsie opened the door, and quickly taking in the situation said, “Are you from the flying saucer?”“Mm,” replied the man, as though in pain.“Are you from Mars?” Elsie asked.“Mm,” went the man again, his face..“How long did it take you to get here? Ten years?” asked Elsie.“Mm,”“Twenty years?”“Mm,” said the man, an agonized look on his face.“Twenty years? You’ve been in your flying saucer all that time?”“Mm,” nodded the man, furiously.“What can I do for you?” asked Elsie.The little man opened his mouth and with great difficulty said, “Can I use your toilet, please?”Deny anything and it becomes overpowering. Now, for twenty years he has not been able to find a toilet and you are asking such nonsense questions: “Where are you coming from?” and “Who are you?” and “How many…?” How can he answer all these things? His denied part is there with a vengeance.Your heart has been denied for so many lives that when it erupts it is going to create great chaos in your life. First you suffer from the mind, its tensions, anxieties, and then you can suffer from an explosion of the heart. That’s what happens when a man breaks down. First he suffers from the tense state of his mind, and one day the heart takes its revenge, erupts, and the man goes mad, goes berserk. Both situations are bad. First the sanity was too much – that created the insanity. A really sane person is one who can live between sanity and insanity in absolute balance. A really sane person always has some insanity in him – he accepts it. A really rational person is one who respects irrationality too, because life is such. If you cannot laugh because of your reason – because “Laughter is ridiculous” – you are bound for trouble, you are destined for trouble. Yes, logic is good, laughter is good too – and laughter brings balance. It is good to be serious, it is good to be non-serious too, and there should be a constant balancing.Have you seen a tightrope walker? He continuously balances himself. Sometimes he leans to the left with his staff, and he comes to a point where if he leans a single moment more, he will fall. He immediately changes his balance, goes to the other side – to the right – leans to the right. Again a moment comes when one single moment more and he will be gone; he again starts leaning to the left. That’s how he proceeds – leaning to the left, to the right, he keeps in between. That’s the beauty – leaning to the left and to the right, leaning toward both extremes, he keeps in between. If you want to keep yourself in between you will have to lean toward both sides again and again. You are not to choose. If you choose, you will fall. If you have chosen the head, you will fall, you will be hypertensive. If you choose the heart and forget the head completely, you will become mad. If you want to choose anyhow, if you want to choose, choose being mad. Choose the heart because it is more essential. But I am not saying that you should choose. If you insist and you say, “I have to choose,” be mad rather than just dry and sane. Be of the heart. Love, love madly; sing, sing madly; dance, dance madly. That is far better than just becoming calculating, logical, rational, and just suffering nightmares.But I am not saying… It is not my suggestion that you do that. My suggestion is to remain choiceless. Choiceless awareness are the key words. Remain choiceless, aware, and whenever you see that something is going off-balance, lean to the other side. Bring the balance again, this is how one moves. Life is like tightrope walking.The third question:Osho,What did Jesus really do with Mary Magdalene?No personal questions, please.The fourth question:Osho,How can I stop wanting to be special?Because you are special; there is no need to be special. You are special, you are unique – God never creates anything less than that. Everyone is unique, utterly unique. There hasn’t been a person like you before, and there will never be a person like you again. God has taken this form for the first time and the last time, so there is no need to try to become special, you already are. If you are trying to be special, you will become ordinary. Your very effort is rooted in misunderstanding. It will create confusion because when you try to become special, you have taken one thing for granted – that you are not. You have become ordinary already. You have missed the point.Now, once you have taken it for granted that you are ordinary, how can you become special? You will try this way and that, and you will remain ordinary because your base, your foundation is wrong. Yes, you can go to the dressmaker and can find more sophisticated clothes. You can have your hair style done again, you can use cosmetics, you can learn a few things and become more knowledgeable, you can paint and start thinking that you are a painter; you can do a few things, you can become famous or notorious, but deep down you will know that you are ordinary. All these things are on the outside. How can you transform your ordinary soul into an extraordinary soul? – there is no way. God has not given you an ordinary soul anyway because he never makes ordinary souls, so he could not think about your problem. He has given you a special, extraordinary soul. He has never given it to anybody else. This is just made for you.What I would like to say to you is: recognize your specialness. There is no need to get it, it is already there – recognize it. Go into your self and feel it. Nobody’s thumb print is like yours – not even the thumb print. Nobody’s eyes are like yours, nobody’s sound is like yours, nobody’s flavor is like yours. You are absolutely exceptional. There is no double of you anywhere. Even twins are different – howsoever alike they look, they are different. They go different ways, they grow different ways; they attain to different kinds of individualities. This recognition is needed.You ask: “How can I stop wanting to be special?” Just listen to the fact. Just go into your being and see, and the effort to be special will disappear. When you know that you are special, the effort will disappear. If you want me to give you a technique so that you can stop being special, that technique will be a disturbance. Again you are trying to do something; again you are trying to become something. First you were trying to become special, now you are trying not to become special. But trying… Trying… Improving in some way or other, but never accepting the you that you are. My whole message is to accept the you that you are, because God accepts it. God respects it and you have not respected your being yet. Be immensely happy that God has chosen you to be, that God has chosen you to exist, to see his world, to listen to his music, to see his stars, to see his people – love and be loved – what more do you want? Rejoice! I say again and again rejoice in it. In that very rejoicing, by and by, it will explode in you like lightning that you are special. But remember, it will not come as an ego that you are special as compared to others. No, in that moment you will know that everybody is special. The ordinary doesn’t exist.So this is the criterion. If you think, “I am special” – more special than that man, more special than that woman – you have not understood yet. It is the ego game. Special, not comparatively; special, not in comparison with anybody – special just as you are.A professor went to see a Zen master and asked, “Why am I not like you? This is my desire. Why am I not like you? Why am I not silent like you? Why am I not wise like you?”The master said, “Wait. Sit silently. Watch. Watch me, and watch yourself. When everybody else has gone, if the question still remains, I will answer.”The whole day people were coming and going, and disciples were asking, and the professor was getting very restless – time was being wasted. And this man said, “When everybody is gone…”Evening came and there was nobody left. The professor said, “Now enough is enough. I have been waiting the whole day. What about my question?”The moon was rising – it was a full-moon night. The master said, “Haven’t you got the answer yet?”The professor said, “But you never answered me.”The master laughed. He said, “I have been answering many people the whole day. If you had watched, you would have understood. But come out. Let us go into the garden, the full moon is there in the garden and it is a beautiful night.” The master said to him, “Look at this cypress tree” – a big cypress tree, standing high, almost touching the moon. The moon was intertwined in its branches – “and look at this small bush.”But the professor said, “What are you talking about? Have you forgotten my question?”The master said, “I am answering your question. This bush and this cypress tree have lived for years in my garden. I have never heard the bush asking the cypress tree, ‘Why am I not like you?’ I have not heard the cypress tree ask the bush, ‘Why am I not like you?’ The cypress tree is the cypress tree and the bush is the bush; they are both happy in being themselves.”I am myself, you are you. Comparison brings conflict, comparison brings ambition, and comparison brings imitation. If you ask, “Why am I not like you?” you will start trying to be like me and that will be the undoing of your whole life; you will become an imitator, a carbon copy. When you are an imitator, you lose all respect for yourself. It is very rare to find a person who respects himself. Why is it so rare? Why isn’t there reverence for life – your own life? If it is not there for your own life, how can it be there for others? If you don’t respect your own being, how can you respect the rosebush and the cypress tree and the moon and the people? How can you respect your master, your father, your mother, your friend, your wife, your husband? How can you respect your children if you have not respected yourself?It is very rare to find a person who respects himself. Why is it so rare? – because you have been taught to imitate. From childhood you have been told, “Become like Christ” or “Become like Buddha.” But why? Why should you become like Buddha? Buddha never became you. Buddha was Buddha. Christ was Christ. Krishna was Krishna. Why should you become like Krishna? What wrong have you committed, what sin have you committed that you should become like Krishna? God never created another Krishna. He never created another Buddha, another Christ – never! He does not like to create the same things again and again. He is a creator, he is not an assembly line – one Ford comes, another Ford, another Ford – Ford cars go on coming, all alike, on the assembly line. God is not an assembly line. He is an original creator; he never creates the same. The same will not be valuable.Just think, a Krishna walking again – the same type of man. He will look like a joker. He will only get a place in a circus, nowhere else, because he will be repetitive. He will say the Gita again – whether Arjuna is available or not, whether the Mahabharata, that great war, is happening or not – but he will have to repeat his Gita. He will walk in his clothes and they will look very odd. Just think of Jesus amidst you again. He will not fit. He will be out of date, he will be antique, he will be useful only in a museum, nowhere else.God never repeats. But you have always been taught to become somebody else. “Become somebody else – the neighbor’s son… Become like the neighbor’s son. Look how intelligent he is.” “Look at that girl, how gracefully she walks. Be like that!” You have always been taught to be like somebody else. Nobody has told you to be yourself and to be respectful to your being; it is God’s gift. Never imitate – that’s what I say to you. Never imitate. Be yourself – that much you owe to God. Be yourself. Be authentically yourself and you will know that you are special. God has loved you so much, that’s why you are. That’s why you are in the first place, otherwise you would not have been. It is indicative of his tremendous love for you. But your specialness is not in comparison with anybody else, it is not that you are special in comparison to your neighbors, friends, wife, husband. You are simply special because you are alone. You are the only person just like you. In that respect, in that understanding, efforts to become special will disappear.All your efforts to become special are like putting legs on a snake. You will kill the snake. Just think… Because of compassion you are putting legs on the snake: “Poor snake, how will he walk without legs?” Just as if the snake has fallen into the hands of a centipede. And the centipede has great compassion for the snake, he thinks, “Poor snake. I have one hundred legs and he has none. How will he walk? He needs at least a few legs.” If he operates and puts a few legs on the snake, he will kill it. The snake is perfectly okay as he is, he need not have any legs. You are perfectly okay as you are. This is what I call respect toward one’s own being. To respect oneself has nothing to do with the ego, remember. To respect oneself is not self-respect. To respect oneself is God’s respect. It is to respect the creator because you are just a painting – his painting. Respecting the painting, you respect the painter. Respect, accept, recognize, and all those foolish efforts to be special will disappear.The fifth question:Osho,What is the difference between the mind the and ego? Osho uses the mind without the ego, so they can't be the same. Is the mind only dangerous when it is working on the past or future? I would be happy to find no ego, but I don't want to drop my mind like a banana peel on the road for other people to slip on – and/or for buffaloes to eat.Buffaloes are not so foolish. If you throw away your mind like a banana peel, no buffalo is going to eat it. Yes, there is a possibility that some man may swallow it – that much stupidity exists only in man. Buffaloes are not interested in minds at all; they are perfectly okay mindless. But the mind and the ego are not synonymous. The ego is an illness of the mind. The ego means an ill mind, non-ego means a healthy mind. The ego is a constriction, a limitation on the mind. When the ego disappears, mind becomes Mind with a capital M.In Buddhist literature, they use mind in two ways: mind with a small, lower case m, and Mind with a capital M. The capital M Mind is the cosmic mind; the ego has disappeared the whole has taken possession of you, you have surrendered. You are no more, God is. The lower case m mind is you, the ego. It is against God, it separates you. It is like an earthen pot… You take the earthen pot to the river, you fill it with water, and hold the pot underneath the water. The water inside the pot is the same, and that outside of the pot is the same, but there is a wall – an earthen wall, dividing. The wall disappears… Again the inside of the pot and the outside of the pot is one. The ego is like a wall, an earthen wall that surrounds you and divides you from God. The question is not of the mind, the question is of the ego. But you don’t know any other mind, you only know this ego-mind. So when I am talking to you and I say to you, “Drop the mind,” I mean drop the ego. When you have dropped this mind, the ego-mind, then the cosmic mind arises in you. Then you start functioning not from your own, you start functioning from the original source. God functions through you. Beware of the ego. Sometimes even the idea of God can be used by the ego…A man came to me. He had a big suitcase with him. He opened the suitcase and there were many files. He said, “Now, look. God comes to me every night and he gives me messages. In the middle of the night I have to write the messages.” He was a Mohammedan, and the Mohammedans were very angry because he was saying, “The next Koran is descending on me, just as it descended one thousand years ago on Mohammed. A higher dispensation is coming to me.”I looked in his files. They were all rubbish. There was not a single word of any significance. But that man had come to me, he wanted me to recognize that he was a prophet, that God had spoken through him, that here was the proof.He said, “I know nobody else will recognize me, but you will.”Now, he had come with great hope and I felt great compassion for him. He was in a very ill state, he was almost schizophrenic. One part of his mind was befooling another part of the mind. One part was saying things to the other part, and the other part was writing. No, he was not deceiving anybody, he was himself deceived. But the ego was feeling very good – that God had chosen him to be a special messenger. The ego can even play with the idea of God. It can claim to be God, it can claim God’s realization. One has to watch very carefully because the ego and its games are very subtle.It is related that Bernard Shaw once opened his front door to find himself face to face with two earnest young men, one of whom had some pamphlets in his hand.“Who are you and what do you want?” asked Shaw.“We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses,” said one of them.“Really?” replied Shaw. “I’m Jehovah. How are we doing?”Now he is simply joking, but this is how the ego functions.It happened in Baghdad that a man was caught because he declared himself a prophet of God. He was thrown in jail. After seven days the Caliph went to see him. For seven days he had been kept starving, had been beaten continuously and was tied to a pole, swollen, scratched all over the body, very badly beaten, starving, dirty.The Caliph asked him, “Now what do you think? Do you still think that you are the prophet of God? Because there is only one God and there is only one prophet, Mohammed. So take your statement back, otherwise you will be killed.”The man started laughing and he said, “But when I was coming from God, when he appointed me as the prophet, he said to me, ‘You will be tortured, people will beat you, just as they have done with other prophets in the old days. They will insult you, they will kill you, as they have done with Jesus.’ So your beating, this jail, and all this torture simply prove that I am a prophet. It does not disprove a thing. So I was right! In fact I was thinking that so many days had passed and nobody was beating me, and nobody was torturing me – am I a prophet or not? You have proved that I am a prophet!”Just then, a man who was tied to another pole started laughing very loudly.The Caliph asked, “Why are you laughing? What is the matter with you?”The man said, “This man is a liar. I myself am God and I never sent him!” He had been caught a month ago because he had declared himself to be God.I am not saying that there have not been people who have become God. Mansoor was right when he declared: “Ana’l haq. I am God.” The seers of the Upanishads were right when they declared: “Aham brahmasmi. I am God.” Jesus is right when he says: “My Father in heaven and I are one and the same. If you have seen me, you have seen my Father.”But it is a very delicate matter because there are pretenders, there are egoists, there are ego-maniacs. You have to be very careful. You have to watch, you have to look into yourself to see that no ego starts making claims. When the ego has disappeared, when you have become just an emptiness, a nothingness, the voice of God starts floating through you. That is the cosmic mind. The ego and the mind are not synonymous. In you, they are. Right now, they are. But if the ego is dropped, a totally new quality of mind arises in you which has nothing to do with you, which has existed before you, which is eternity.That’s what Jesus means when he says, “Before Abraham was, I am.” He is saying “Abraham” as the ego, as the personality. When he says, “Before Abraham was, I am,” he is using the words I am as cosmic mind. I can say to you, “Before Jesus was, I am.” The “I” is no longer used in the sense of the ego, it is just a linguistic way of saying that the eternal precedes the temporal, that the formless precedes the form, that the nameless precedes the name, that the egoless precedes the ego. You are right, the mind and the ego are not the same. But don’t get deceived by the idea. It can be dangerous, it can prove fatal. In you, they are the same. Drop the ego – just peel it like a banana skin and throw it away. Don’t throw it on the road because, it’s true, somebody can slip on it. You have been slipping on it for so many lives. Don’t throw it on the road. As far as I know, no buffalo will eat it, but who knows? Some buffalo may have become stupid through living with men too long, and may eat it and get into trouble.The sixth question:Osho,Are we not punished for our sins?No, we are punished by our sins, not for our sins. Sin itself is its punishment. You overeat, you suffer; you over indulge, you suffer. It is not that the suffering will come later on, that suffering will come as a result, no. Suffering comes in the act itself. So let me tell it in this way: we are punished by our sins, not for our sins. That for has created great difficulties for man because for means: “in the future,” maybe in another life. “Who bothers about the future? We will see when it comes, if some ways and means can be found to avoid it. Or we can always go to the priest and confess, or we can go to the Ganges and take a bath and be relieved of the sin. Or we can go to a saint and be blessed by him.” Some strategy can be found.But I tell you, you are not punished for sin, you are punished by sin. So there is no way to get rid of it. If you eat too much, you go against nature, and immediately – the punishment. The punishment is instantaneous, it is not afterward; it is then and there, it is immediate. So nobody can avoid it. If you want to avoid it, you have to be very, very conscious not to commit any sin. Sin is a kind of unconsciousness. You become angry and in that very anger you suffer, not that you will suffer afterward. Anger is fire, anger is poison. It poisons your whole system – it disturbs your health, it disturbs your mind, it disturbs your tranquility, it disturbs your soul; it hangs around you for days together. The disturbance has to settle and before it settles, you become angry again; it becomes chronic. It hangs around you. My approach is that the punishment is in the very act, and the reward is in the very act, obviously. When you are loving, there is heaven; when you are hateful, there is hell.The seventh question:Osho,I want to serve people. Isn't that right?It depends; it depends on you. If you have come home, if you have become that which is your destiny, if your own problems have disappeared, if you don’t have any more anxiety, any more desires, any more unconsciousness, there is no need to ask the question; service will flow from you, it will overflow. It will be a constant sharing – not deliberate; it will be very natural, spontaneous. Wherever the need arises you will be in service. If somebody is drowning in the river, you will jump in. If somebody’s house is on fire, you will rush with water. If somebody has fallen on the road, you will help him to get back up. But all these things will not be deliberate. Not that you will plan, not that you will seek out these situations, not that you will go out of your house thinking, “Where to serve? How to serve people?”You will live your life and if a situation arises, you will respond to it, with no plan. You will never become a servant. You will always be of service, but you will never become a servant. These public servants are mischievous people. Never become a public servant. They are the people who have been creating trouble for man. Sometimes when you are a public servant, you go on serving whether the other person likes it or not.I have heard…A school in Manchester had a canal running alongside the playground. One day, two little boys came running into the headmaster’s office in a state of great agitation.“Sir, sir,” said the first one, “Bobby Armstrong fell in the canal!”“Good heavens!” said the headmaster. “Did you get him out?”“Yes, sir.”“Did you give him artificial respiration?”“We tried to, sir, but he kept getting up and running away!”I have heard about a missionary who told his children in Sunday school to help people.One child asked, “How? What should we do?”So just as an example he said, “If some old woman wants to cross the street, help her.”He asked the next Sunday, “Did you help anybody?”Three hands were raised. He asked the first, “What did you do?”He said, “I helped an old woman to cross the street.”The priest was very happy and said, “God will bless you. This is very good.” He asked the other, “What did you do?”He said, “I also helped an old woman to cross the street.”A little suspicion arose in the priest’s mind whether they had each got an old woman. But old women are there, they can get them – it is not such a big thing. He asked the third and he also said, “I helped an old woman to cross the street.”Then it was too much. He said, “The three of you got three old women?”They said, “Who is saying three? It was only one woman.”The priest was more puzzled, he said, “Then…? Three boys were needed to help the woman to cross?”He said, “Even with three it was difficult because she didn’t want to cross. It was so difficult, sir, but we did it anyhow! We carried her to the other side.”Never become a deliberate public servant. Service should come as a natural growth of your meditation, otherwise you can be dangerous.A man asked Buddha, “I would like to serve people.” Buddha looked at him and became very sad.He said, “But why are you looking so sad? Why did you suddenly become so sad?”Buddha said, “You are not. How can you serve people? First be. Otherwise, in the name of service, you will do some harm. You are not yet beyond harm, you are carrying much poison inside yourself. If you start serving people your poison will spread.”It happened…The chaplain of a large London hospital was doing his rounds of the wards when he came across a Chinese man, desperately ill, in a side ward. He was in an oxygen tent and looked close to death’s door. The chaplain learned over him and asked, “How are you feeling, old chap?”The reply was necessarily muffled; however, it sounded so frantic and urgent that the chaplain asked him to repeat it. But he could not understand what the unfortunate man was trying to tell him. And then to his distress the Chinese man, obviously suffering acutely, expired before his very eyes. He was haunted by this last word from a poor, lonely man in a foreign land, friendless and unable to communicate, so he sought out a professor of Oriental languages and repeated the man’s last phrase as exactly as he could remember it.“Now,” pleaded the chaplain, “what was he trying to tell me? What did he say?”“He said,” the professor answered, “You are standing on my oxygen pipe!”The eighth question:Osho,They say that when drunk the Englishman tends to boast, the Irishman to fight, and the Scotsman to go to sleep in case he's asked to buy a round of drinks. Now I want to know what do you say about an Indian?There is no difficulty. The question is very simple. When an Indian is drunk, he delivers a little spiritual discourse – minimum time limit, ninety minutes.Enough for today.

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I Say Unto You Vol 2 01-09Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 2 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Luke 7And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to meat.And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment.And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him; for she is a sinner.And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And he saith, Master, say on.There was a certain creditor which had two debtors; the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty.And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged.Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much, but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven.And they that sat at meat with him began to say within themselves, Who is this that forgiveth sins also?And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.Who is Jesus Christ? The question has been asked down the centuries again and again, and it has been answered too. But the questioners were wrong, and so were those who have answered it, because the question was out of a certain prejudice and so was the answer. They were not essentially different; their source was one and the same. The question was asked by those who were suspicious of Jesus’ godhood. And the question was answered by those who were not ready to believe Jesus’ manhood. They were only ready to believe half of him. The Jews were ready to believe that he was a man. The Christians were ready to believe that he was God. The Jews were denying half of him – the Christ part. And the Christians were denying the other half – the Jesus part.Who is Jesus Christ? Christians don’t want to see him as Jesus, son of man – man of flesh, blood and bones, man as other men are. The Jews did not want to believe him as God, as divine – made of pure consciousness, not of flesh, blood and bones. Nobody has been ready to believe Jesus in his totality. That is not only the case with Jesus, that is the case with all the masters – Buddha, Krishna, Zarathustra. Unless you allow Jesus in his totality to penetrate you, you will not be transformed. Unless you allow him as he is, you will not be in contact with him. Jesus is both Jesus and Christ, and he is not ashamed of it. In the Bible many times he says, “I am the son of man,” and as many times he also says, “I am the Son of God.” He seems to have no idea that there is any contradiction between the two. There is none. The contradiction exists in our minds. It doesn’t exist in Jesus’ being. His being is bridged. His being is bridged between time and eternity, body and soul, this world and that. His being is bridged between the visible and the invisible, the known and the unknown. He is utterly bridged; he is at ease with both because he is both. Jesus and Christ are like two shores, and the river is only possible if there are two shores. Jesus is the river that flows between these two shores; both shores are his. He exists between them, he is a river.Who is Jesus Christ – God or man? I say that all the questions that have been asked were wrong, and so were the answers. Why? – because the questions came either from Judaic knowledge or from Muslim knowledge or from Hindu knowledge. The answers came from Christian knowledge and knowledge cannot answer it. Knowledge cannot even ask it. Knowledge is impotent. Such questions of such importance can be asked only out of innocence, not out of knowledge. The distinction has to be understood. When you ask a question out of knowledge, you are not really asking, because you already know. Your question is false, inauthentic. Your heart is not there. You are asking for asking’s sake – maybe for a discussion, a debate, an argument. But you know the question beforehand – the answer is there a priori. So you cannot receive the answer, you are not open for it, you are not available for it. You are not ready to move, to explore; you already have the answer. The question is arising out of that answer.The Jews had the answer. They knew that he was not the Messiah, that he was not God. Why? – because they had the idea that when the Messiah would come, everybody would recognize him. Everybody – without exception. Their idea of the Messiah was that everybody would recognize him. If Jesus was not recognized by everybody, how could he be the Messiah? They had a definition. They had also believed – that had also been their knowledge – that when Jesus, the real Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah came, everybody would be immediately liberated. All past sins, all present sins would disappear in that light, and it had not happened. “Christ is there, but people are not liberated yet. They are still living in sin, they are still living in misery. So this man cannot be the Messiah, cannot be Christ.” This was not the man they were waiting for.These are prejudices. They had never seen any Messiah. How could they define what would happen when the Messiah came? For example, if in the dark night of your soul you have an idea that when the morning comes, money will shower from the sky… When the sun rises, everybody will become rich. In the morning, when the sun rises, how can you accept that it is the sun because money is not falling from the sky and everybody has not become rich, people are still poor. You go on looking at the sky and money isn’t coming. Because you are too concerned with the money, you don’t see what is coming from the sun – the light, the life, the ecstasy. You cannot see it because your eyes are completely covered with your prejudice, with your idea.You ask, “Who is this Jesus Christ?” You already know how the Messiah should be. That is the hindrance, that is an obstruction. That’s why the Jews missed. It was for this man that they had been waiting for centuries, and when he came and knocked on their doors, they missed. They denied him. How could they have denied him? Were they bad people? No, they were people as good as you are, they were as good as the Hindus, Mohammedans and Buddhists; there was nothing wrong with them. Then what was the problem? The problem was their knowledge. They had a prejudice. When Christians answer that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, again it is knowledge.What I want to say to you is that the questions and the answers are coming from the same source; they are not different, they are not even a little different. Christians say he is the only begotten Son of God. Now this is stupid because all comes from God, so how can Jesus be the Son of God exclusively? Everybody is the Son of God, we all partake of sonhood. Jesus goes on saying again and again that God is our father.But Christians don’t listen. They have an idea that God has sent his only son. Why “only”? – too afraid that he may have another son to send, and the other son may come and there will be conflict: “Who is right?” So make it sure, certain, that he has only one son so that you are finished. Once more the Bible has come, now there will be no more Bibles coming again. Mohammedans say that Mohammed is the only prophet – the last prophet. Now there will be no more prophets coming. He has brought the ultimate. So nobody can improve upon the Koran, nobody can improve upon the Bible because nobody has the right to improve on it. Why “the only begotten son”? Are not the trees, the rivers, the mountains, the stars, the animals, the birds and man created by God? Doesn’t this whole existence come from God? Is it not flowing from his being? God is the totality of all. Rocks and rivers and mountains are as much his creations as you are, as Jesus is. There is no distinction. All beings participate in God. In fact, to be is to participate in God. Otherwise you cannot be – there is no other way to be.To be is to be God.What is the difference between you and Jesus? The difference is not of your being, the difference is only of your knowing, recognition, awareness. Jesus knows that he is the Son of God and you have not yet recognized it. That’s the difference. You can recognize it any moment. In that very recognition, the transformation; what Jesus calls metanoia. It is only a question of recognition. You have become oblivious of your reality, he is aware – but there is no difference between the beings. You are as rich as he is; he knows it, you don’t know. Because you don’t know you remain poor, not because you are poor. You are not poor. How can you be poor when God is showering on you every moment? When he is beating in your heart, and circulating in your blood, and flowing into your consciousness, how can you be poor? You are not beggars. Everybody is an emperor, but you are not aware of the fact. You don’t look inside yourself where God goes on making contact with you. You don’t look into your source.The word that Jesus uses for looking into your source is return. That word return has been translated as repent. Repent also means return, but it has fallen into wrong associations. It has become repentance. It has nothing to do with repentance. Return – turn into your own being, a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, and suddenly you see the light that you have always been. You see the light that you are. You see God. For the first time you recognize that you have never lost track of him; he was just behind your back. You were not looking at him. It is as if the sun has risen and you are standing in the full morning with closed eyes. Just open your eyes. Jesus is standing just by your side with open eyes and you are standing with closed eyes. That’s the only difference, there is no other difference.Jesus is man because you are God. Let me tell you what I mean: Jesus is as much man as you are man, and you are as much God as Jesus is God. God and man are not two separate entities. Man is one of the forms of God’s expression in the world. Jesus is man and God, so are you. To understand Jesus is to understand your own situation. To love Jesus is to love your own being. To meditate on Jesus is to meditate upon your own division, the gap that has come in your being between you and your own real self. To understand Jesus is to bridge that gap. Jesus has no privilege over you, neither has Buddha. Nobody is privileged, otherwise God would be unjust. Everybody has the same powers. In the eyes of God, we are all equal. Inequality is our creation. In God’s eyes, everyone is equal to everything else. The Jews were very disturbed because Jesus was claiming that he was God, or God’s son. For two thousand years Christians have been defending Jesus – that he was God, that he is God.They have been trying to efface all the possibilities with which it can be proved that he is a man. That’s why they say he was born out of a virgin mother – that is the beginning. So they deny his manhood, so he is not just like you; he is special. Even in his birth he is special. They try to make his life in such a way that no indications are left that he was human. He was very human, utterly human. He was a total man. He was not a perfectionist. When it was needed to be angry, he became really angry. He threw the money changers out of the temple and he said to them, “What are you doing here in my Father’s home, in my Father’s temple? Get out of here!” He was in such a rage, that alone, singlehanded, he threw many people outside.He loved people. He had friends, he mixed with people. He ate with people, drank with people, he moved with people. He lived like an ordinary man. He had no pretensions of being anything extraordinary. Even if something extraordinary happens, he always says, “It is your faith that has performed the miracle. It is God’s mercy on you. It is something between you and your God.” He does not even expect gratitude. Somebody is very grateful because a miracle has happened and he has been cured, and he wants to touch his feet and thank him, and he says, “No.” The man says, “You are a great man, you are so good!” Jesus says, “Nobody is good except God. Thank him. Forget about me. It is your faith that has cured you, not I. If you have to be thankful, you have to be thankful to God. Forget about me. Don’t allow me to be between you and your God.”That’s exactly what Buddha is reported to have said to his disciples: “If you meet me on the way, kill me immediately.” Never allow me to stand between you and the reality. Hold my hand as far as you are not capable of walking alone and on your own. The moment you are capable of walking alone and on your own, just forget about me. Go ahead. Don’t cling to me. Don’t try to remain a shadow of me. “If you meet me on the way, kill me immediately!” he says. That’s what Jesus goes on saying again and again, “Forget about me. Let your thanks go directly to God. Who am I?”Christians have been trying to efface all traces of his humanity; so he is born out of the Virgin Mary, a virgin mother, which is absolutely absurd. He lives a life in which all human traits are removed. Christians only talk about his miracles, not about his ordinary life. They are afraid. Christians say that Jesus never laughed. Now this seems to be the ultimate in stupidity. Jesus… And never laughed? Then who else can laugh? But laughter seems too human, too mundane; they cannot allow Jesus to laugh. Jesus’ life is such that he must have been laughing. He must have been really laughing. He must have been a man of laughter because he says again and again, “Rejoice! Be merry! Celebrate!” These words cannot come from a man who has never laughed. Why should a man who has never laughed go to parties? Why should he drink with people? Why should he be mixing with people? He was a mixer.Every day, every night, Jesus was moving with people. He was not secluded. He must have been really laughing, enjoying. But Christians say that he never laughed. They have made his picture very sad-looking, long-faced, burdened. This is not possible. This is utterly wrong because it goes against the basic realization of a christ, of a buddha. A man who has attained ultimate consciousness will be completely blissful, cheerful. His life will be a song and a dance. It will have the quality of flowers and stars. It can’t be sad. Why should he be sad? It is his Father’s world, it is his God’s world. Why should he be sad? He has come home. When is he going to be happy? If you are not happy by knowing God, there is no possibility of happiness.Jesus looks so sad. He has been painted sad. He has been painted as “the Savior.” He has been painted as if he is carrying the burdens of everybody and the sins of everybody. He forgives you. He does not carry your burden, he simply forgives you. It is a wrong standpoint that he takes your burden upon himself. If it is not of any worth, why should he take it upon himself? If it is so valuable, why should he take it from you? He will put some more on you. No, he is not taking anybody’s burden; he is simply helping everybody to drop it. Because it is you who are holding and clinging to it, it is valueless. When he says you are forgiven, he says, “Forget all about your sadness and forget all about hell. It is your Father’s world; he is compassion and he is love. How can love punish you? How can love throw you in hell? How can love torture you? God is not a sadist!”Christians say, “Resurrection.” Their whole Jesus depends on three things. First: a virgin birth; second: a non-laughing, non-enjoying, monotonous, sad life of miracles; third: resurrection. These are the three things that seem to be important to them, and they are all useless because they miss the whole point. The real Jesus is missed. This is a myth that Christians have created around him, and because of this myth the real Jesus is lost. I would like to tell you, he is a real man, an authentic man. He lived like a man and he loved living like a man. He lived in all the dimensions of manhood and yet he is God.Now there are people, strange people… Just the other night I was reading about a Christian theologian, T. L. J. Altizer. He holds that God has ceased to be God in becoming a man, Jesus. The incarnation is the death of God in his divine being. In short, God is dead and Jesus is his son. Altizer says that God died because he became Jesus. There are people who are against Jesus being the incarnation of God. They look like enemies because they say, “How can God incarnate himself in such a small body? How can the infinite come into the finite? How can the eternal enter time?” They have their logic. How can the infinite be contained in a small body? It is not possible because God is so great and Jesus is so small; they say it is not possible. Now look at the other side: this is a Christian theologian and he says, “Forget about God, God died the day Jesus was born. He became Jesus. God no longer exists, now Jesus is God.” This is another extreme. First, the enemy does not allow God to incarnate because how can he? His logic is also the same; he denies Jesus’ godhood. To oppose this man, people like Altizer are there. They are ready to kill God to make Jesus a perfect God. Now God has disappeared into Jesus, he no longer lives. These are not the right ways to bridge. Either “God has to die” or “Jesus has not to be a God.”My understanding, my vision is totally different. God descends, not only in Jesus but in everybody. This incarnation is not only for once, it is an everyday incarnation. When a child is born to you, God is incarnated. When a seed sprouts, God is incarnated. When a sun is born, God is incarnated. When a flower blooms, God blooms. It is only God, there is nothing else. Existence is synonymous with God. God can go on incarnating in millions and millions of forms. He remains inexhaustible, that’s what the Upanishads say. They say: “You can take out of the perfect as much as you want, but the perfect remains the perfect.” You can take it completely out of itself, and yet the whole remains behind intact. That is the meaning of the infinite. If you take something from the infinite and the infinite becomes a little less, it was not infinite in the first place. The definition of the infinite is: you can take as much as you want, but you cannot exhaust it. God goes on being born and remains unexhausted. There are poor thinkers like Altizer, who think God was exhausted with Jesus. That too is a very cunning device, so nobody can be born any longer as Christ. So no more Buddha, no more Mahavira – with Jesus, God is finished, the doors are closed. God is dead because Jesus is there. God has become Jesus, so God cannot remain as God. To put the whole philosophy of Altizer in short, I would like to say that he is saying, “God is dead and Jesus is his son.” The father need not die in the son, the father can give birth to many sons.You will be surprised, an ordinary father, a human father… How many sons can a human father give birth to, do you know? – millions. One single couple, if allowed time, can populate the whole world. That’s how it has happened… Adam and Eve, one single couple, and they have populated the whole world. One single seed, and the whole earth will become green, just time is needed. An ordinary man will have intercourse at least four thousand times in his life – ordinary, very ordinary. Those who go more into love can make love more – eight thousand, ten thousand or even more. But the average for intercourse is four thousand times. In each single intercourse, do you know how many cells are released? – millions. Each single cell can become a human being. Multiply four thousand by millions… A single human father can give birth to the whole earth. What to say about the ultimate father?Altizer’s God seems to be very poor. A single incarnation and he dies, disappears. But there is a cunning trick in it so that Jesus becomes God and nobody else can become God again; so Jesus remains the only begotten son. I would like to say to you that Jesus is beautiful, he is divine, because everybody else is also beautiful and everybody else is also divine. The difference is of recognition, not of existence. The difference is only of knowledge, not of ontology. Jesus Christ is both Jesus and Christ. He is Christ in Jesus and he is Jesus in Christ. He is the meeting point where two worlds meet, where two utterly polar worlds meet; hence the beauty, and hence the ecstasy of Jesus.Ecstasy always arises when two polarities meet. The bigger the polarities, the bigger the distance between the polarities – the bigger the ecstasy. That’s why there is great joy while you are making love to a woman, because two polarities meet. Not very big polarities – because a man and a woman are not very far away – not very distant, but still distant. When a man and a woman meet and are lost in love, there is great ecstasy, there is great joy because they are dissolved, the egos are lost. Boundaries are no longer valid – they are overlapping, overflowing into each other. Their ordinary mundane worries don’t make any sense in this moment of joy. This orgasmic moment, how does it arise? – it is the meeting of the polarities. What to say about Jesus meeting Christ, Gautama meeting buddhahood, man meeting God – those are the ultimate polarities as far away as possible – finite meeting infinite. The very meeting is the ultimate in celebration.Jesus must have been ecstatic. Because of the Christian painting, the Christian ideology, he looks very sad. He must have been a man of great joy, overflowing with delight. What else is possible when the light has happened inside? Delight has to happen outside. They go together. When the house is lit – even with closed windows, travelers can see the light falling outside, from the curtains, from the doors. That is delight. When light has happened inside, from the outside people can see something immensely valuable flowing.That is the definition of ecstasy: polarities meeting.Ordinarily, man is like a person living in sleep: not aware of who he is. When God’s energy touches him, when he is available to God’s energy, when he is receptive to God’s energy, when that stirring energy comes dancing into him, there is ecstasy. There is no ecstasy unless we join the mundane with the supramundane, the mud with the sun, the earth with the sky, the body with the soul, matter with the mind – only then, when the sun and the mud meet, is the lotus born, the lotus of ecstasy. Unless reality is as miraculous as the supposedly miraculous, we are frozen in ice. Man as man is a frozen thing. Let me say to you that God as God is also a frozen thing. So it is not only that you are seeking God, God is also seeking you. It is not that without God you are sad, God is also sad without you. When you meet God, and God meets you, it will not only be your ecstasy, it will be his ecstasy too. The whole existence will feel ecstatic. Whenever a single human being becomes a christ or a buddha, the whole existence dances, the whole existence is overjoyed, goes mad with ecstasy!Meeting is the melting of the divisions. Thinking of yourself as man is creating a division. If you don’t drop this division, this category that you have created around you, “I am a man,” you will not allow God to enter you. You have to be completely free from boundaries, from all boundaries – the boundary of the Hindu, the boundary of the Christian, the boundary of man, the boundary of richness, poorness, education, uneducation; the boundary of white and black, the boundary of the brahmin and the sudra – all the boundaries have to be dropped. In that very dropping the eternal enters your time world. Into your dark night of the soul comes that light; that light floods. Suddenly, you are no longer the same. And let me repeat that God is also no longer the same. God was never as rich as he became after Christ. He was never as rich as he became after Buddha. He is not as rich as he will become when you meet him because you will pour into him. I know you only have a small energy, but an ocean is created by small drops falling, falling, falling… Small rivers flow into the ocean and create the ocean. No single river can create the ocean, but each single river goes on creating it, goes on helping it. God is bigger than ever every day because water, a river again flows into him, again brings a new life, a new thrill. God is evolving; God is not a static thing. God is evolving every moment. Meeting is the melting of the boundaries, blurring of the divisions, overlapping, overflowing. This is what is called trust or faith or surrender. At absolute zero, absolute surrender, life takes over once more and we are returned to God or to Tao or to dharma, to free-flowing totality. God is the free-flowing totality, God is not a person. We return to our pure being only when we become a free-floating totality. In this state everything is okay, right.A rusting tin can fill us with radical awe as the sunlight catches it… In Yoga they call it a certain state of nadam, a certain state of harmony, accord. When man disappears into God and man’s conflict with God disappears, there is nadam, there is harmony – what Heraclitus calls “the hidden harmony.” Nadam is homeostasis – harmony, rhythm. You are out of rhythm, out of tune with God and that is your misery. Jesus is in tune with God and that is his joy. If he is also miserable, if he is also sad, what is the difference between you and him? The difference is that he feels for you, that he feels all compassion for you, but he himself is in utter joy. In fact, because he is in utter joy, he feels sorry for you, he feels compassion for you. He wants to bring you also to this utter joy, and he knows it is yours just for the asking. Hence he says, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”The sutras:And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to meat.Jesus was always ready to go anywhere to anybody. He wanted as many people to come in contact with him as possible. He never missed a single opportunity of contacting people. Before we go further into the sutras, a few things about Jesus’ way, his work, have to be understood. How did he transform so many people? What was his secret? What was his alchemy? Remember these seven words… To me, Christ means these seven words and this is his whole alchemy. First: catalytic; second: catalepsy; third: catharsis; fourth: catastrophe; fifth: cross; sixth: conversion; seventh: christ consciousness. This is his whole alchemy, how he used to transform people. His work is different from Buddha’s, his methodology is different; different from Krishna’s, different from Mohammed’s. He is a unique master.First: catalytic. Jesus’ work is that of a catalytic agent. He wants people to be in contact with him, what Hindus call satsang. To be in contact with the master, to be in the presence of the master – the very presence functions. Jesus does not give methods to people, that is not his way. Patanjali’s way is to create devices, methods; that is the way of Gurdjieff too – to create methods and devices so people can start growing. Jesus’ way is that of satsang. He transforms people just by his touch. He overpowers people, he surrounds them. His energy starts dancing around them. He starts pulsating his being and in his pulse – that powerful pulse of Jesus – the other person also starts pulsating. In the beginning, hesitant, afraid, not knowing where he is going, but slowly, slowly, he gains momentum. It is like a dancer.Haven’t you noticed that when a dancer is dancing and the music is on, something of the dancer starts happening in you? Your feet start moving, you start tapping the chair with your hand, your head starts nodding. You are filled with it. Some pulsation has reached you. Jesus’ methodology is to pulsate people through his pulse, to magnetize people through his magnetism; to be with them. The best way to be with them is when they are very, very relaxed. Hence Jesus was always ready to go to people, to drink with them, to eat with them, because that is the most relaxing moment in people’s lives. Buddha has never done that – that was not his way. When people are eating, they are relaxed.Haven’t you noticed? Even businessmen like to take you for lunch because then things are easier. You are more positive, you are more relaxed, you say yes more easily. So if the salesman wants to sell you a car he takes you for lunch. When your belly is feeling good and you are feeling very contented – and the aroma of the food and the joy of the food, and you are feeling really satisfied – it is very difficult to say no. It is easier for the salesman to sell you something. Jesus is the greatest salesman. It is not just accidental that his religion has become the greatest religion as far as numbers are concerned. The greatest salesman ever! He would go to people to eat or to drink with them, and that was the moment when he would try to infiltrate their being with his presence. That was his catalytic, magnetic power. When people are drinking… You have drunk a little bit – you become more relaxed. Things are easier, you are less defensive.Gurdjieff used to do that – that was his everyday work. Just as every day I go on talking to you, every day he used to invite his disciples to eat. That was the greatest thing – every day, every night. It was not an ordinary dinner. It used to continue for five hours, six hours, seven hours, almost half the night. And drinking… He would force you to eat and drink, and he himself would serve and it would be difficult to say no; eating, drinking, laughing, you would be less defensive. He would be telling jokes and people would become very, very relaxed. The atmosphere would become very homely – utterly homely. They would forget who Gurdjieff was and who they were. They would relax into his being and his work would start. That’s exactly what I am doing when I go on talking to you. That is a kind of feast, a feast of words. You become involved in the words; you become utterly involved with the words and my work, the real work starts. That is indirect.So the first thing, the first word to be understood about Christ is: catalytic. He is not a great philosopher like Buddha. He is not a great scientist like Patanjali. He is not a singer like Krishna. But he has his own method and that method is of the catalytic agent. In the East, there have been many masters like that, but Jesus is the ultimate in satsang: just being with people. The catalytic agent means that nothing is done to you, but something happens to you. The catalytic agent does not go into you, and does not do anything in you. But just the presence, just the very presence provokes you, inspires you, and something starts growing in you. It is just as scientists say that if you want to make water, hydrogen and oxygen are needed and they cannot meet unless electricity is present as a catalytic agent. It does not enter them, it remains aloof, but its very presence helps them to meet. That is miraculous. Science does not yet know how the catalytic agent works because nothing goes out of it, it is simply there. But you can understand it. Sometimes I am simply here and something becomes silent in you. This can happen even when you are far away, if you remember me. If you remember totally, immediately you will find something has changed. The vibe around you is no longer the same, something has fallen quiet, silent. The turmoil of the mind is a little far away, not so close by. You are settled and centered.Just the other day somebody asked the question: “While I am here listening to you and to your words, much is happening to me. But when I go back, will it continue to happen when I listen to your tapes or read your books?” It depends on you. It can’t depend on books, or on tapes, but it depends on you. If in those moments of listening to the tapes or reading the books you can feel my presence, you can visualize my presence, you can think of me and remember me, it will go on happening. There will be no problem. Distance does not make much difference. For the first time, it is needed to be close. Once the contact has happened, you can call me anywhere. When I say you can call me anywhere, I mean you can simply fall into my presence anywhere, you can just remember me. Calm and quiet, remember me, be full of my presence, and suddenly it will be there and it will function as a catalytic agent.A catalytic agent is a miraculous thing. This is Jesus’ real miracle. Tao has a word for it, they call it wei-wu-wei, action without action. The master does not do anything to you, he does not interfere in your being, he is simply there. But he is pulsating and his pulsation is strong; his pulsation is vital. He is like a great wind which goes on blowing, surrounding you. You are like a fragile tree; you start swaying in the wind and something starts happening to you – the dance. The wind is invisible and in fact it is not doing anything to you, it is simply blowing in its own way. But it can give you the thrill, it can wake you up. This is what acid people call a “contact high.”Sometimes it happens when somebody has taken LSD and is really deeply into it, gone, and you are just taking care of the person… You have not taken LSD, you are just taking care of him because it is dangerous to leave him, and suddenly you start feeling that something is turning on in you. This is now a universal experience because so many people in this generation have taken LSD, marijuana, psilocybin and things like that. It is now a universal experience that sometimes just by being in the presence of somebody who has gone deeply into his LSD trip, you start feeling high. Something starts moving in you. Wings grow and you start flying. And you have not taken anything. What is happening? That man’s pulsation is so powerful in this moment, he is blowing like a great wind and takes you with him; you are caught unawares. You are pulled by him, you are taken by his stream of consciousness. This is a new experience in the West, but in the East it is very ancient. This is nothing, because LSD is LSD – you take such a small quantity. But a Jesus is pure LSD – just LSD and nothing else! He is made of the stuff called LSD. A buddha is absolute marijuana. Each single cell of his body is marijuana. It is not chemical, it is spiritual. It is such a vital force that there is no other force more vital. The only question is if you become available to it – then it turns you on.The second word is catalepsy – the suspension of your old being. When you are in contact with a christ or a buddha, your old being is immediately suspended out of the very shock; you cannot function as you used to function before. The very presence of the christ is such a shock that everything is suspended. For a moment, all thoughts stop, all feelings disappear. For a moment, you may miss a heartbeat. That’s why it happens that around great masters you will see many people who look like zombies. They are in a kind of suspension.Just the other day, Divyananda came to me. He works in my garden. He said, “What is happening to me? I have become almost like a zombie and I am afraid. Should I go and do something else?” I said to him, “Be a zombie. Be a perfect zombie, that’s all. Continue your work.” Something immensely valuable is happening, but he cannot understand it yet. What is happening is catalepsy. He is open to me, and working in my garden he has become even more open. He is in shock, he is forgetting who he is. He is losing his old identity, he is paralyzed. Why paralyzed? – because the old cannot function and the new has yet to be born. So he is in the interval. This is going to happen to many. Don’t be afraid when it happens. It will go; it is not going to remain, but it is on the way. It happens. This is a state of not knowing; you don’t know what is what, all your knowledge is lost, all your cleverness is gone. You become idiotic. You look like an idiot. People will say that you have become hypnotized or something, that you are no longer your old self. That is true. But it is a kind of shock, and good because it will destroy the past, it will make you discontinuous with the past and it will bring the fresh, the new. It will allow something original to happen. But before the original happens, the past has to go.You are like a pot in which there has been poison for a long time, for many years, for many lives. Now, before something can be poured into it, the poison has to be thrown out and the pot has to be cleaned, utterly cleaned. If even a little bit of poison remains hanging around, it will destroy the new that is coming, it will kill it. That is the whole meaning of sannyas and disciplehood: your past has to be completely washed away; your memory, your ego, your identity, all has to go. When you are just an empty pot, something more is possible. That is the third state: catharsis. When your head is in shock, your heart becomes free. The head is not allowing the heart to be free, it is keeping the heart as a prisoner. When the head has stopped in shock… And each master beheads you, cuts off your head mercilessly; destroys your reason, destroys your logic; brings you down from the head. The only way is to cut the head off completely. This is the third state: catharsis.When the head is no longer functioning, its control is lost and the prisoner is free, the heart starts throbbing again – maybe after many, many lives. For many lives you have repressed your emotions, feelings, tears, love – they all flood you. That’s what catharsis is: the appearance of the heart. The repressed explodes and the emotional bursts out – a kind of earthquake or a heartquake, a volcanic situation. You are flooded by the unconscious and the irrational. That’s why a real disciple always passes through a kind of insanity around a master.The fourth state is: catastrophe. When reason is gone and the heart goes mad, it is catastrophe. The ego starts falling into pieces because the ego is nothing but control. The control of the head over the heart creates the ego. When the head is no longer functioning, it is in shock, catalepsy, and the heart is in catharsis. The ego disappears because the ego is no longer there. It cannot be there, the control is gone. When the ego falls, it looks like catastrophe. All is lost, chaos arises and now one feels that one has really gone mad. It is not just a temporary madness. It looks now as if it is going to remain there forever. One cannot look beyond it. This is what Christian mystics call “the dark night of the soul”; a kind of hopelessness arises. One is utterly lost and there seems no possibility of getting out of it. One is drowned and drowning. The powers that are drowning you are so vast that there seems to be no hope that you can overcome them. The shores are no longer visible; you are in the middle of the ocean.Then comes the fifth: the cross. The ego dies on the cross. In the fourth state it simply disintegrates, but goes on lingering in fragments, clinging here and there. In the fifth, it dies, the ego completely dies – no more identification with the body or the mind, a state of negation, death, emptiness. Great trembling, fear… One is on the verge of the abyss called God. That’s where Jesus found him – on the cross. That cross has to come to everybody. Jesus says everybody has to carry his cross on his shoulders.And then comes the sixth: conversion. Only when you are dead, does God become alive in you. Only when the seed dies, does it become a tree; only when the river disappears into the ocean, does it become one with the ocean: conversion. Conversion is a beautiful word, very badly used by Christians. They think that if somebody is a Hindu and becomes a Christian, it is conversion. It is not conversion. A Hindu becoming a Christian is nothing. He has simply changed one prison for another, one priest for another, one book for another. But there has been no real change, no transformation. A Christian can become a Hindu; Hindus think this is conversion. This is not conversion. Conversion happens only when the ego dies and God is born in you. Conversion is when the human becomes divine, not when a Hindu becomes Christian or a Christian becomes a Hindu. But when the human becomes divine, when Jesus becomes Christ, there is conversion; when Gautama becomes Buddha, there is conversion.In the fifth, the cross, the ego dies. In the sixth, the self is born – the supreme self, the atman, your real self. For the first time, you know who you are. Mountains are again mountains, rivers are again rivers. All confusion gone and clarity arises. Your eyes become transparent, you can see things. Now there are no longer any prejudices, no longer any ideologies. One is neither Hindu, nor Mohammedan, nor communist, nor fascist. One simply is a purity of isness. This is where, what Hindus call satyam, shivam, sunderam is felt. Satyam means truth, shivam means good and sunderam means beauty. Not before that. Before that, what you call beauty, is nothing but lust. What you call good, is nothing but conditioned morality. What you call truth, is nothing but correspondence between you, your statement and things. It is as if you say, “In the room there are three chairs” and somebody goes and finds three chairs, so it corresponds, it is “true.” This has nothing to do with truth, it is just correspondence, a true statement. But what about truth? What is truth? – three chairs? If there are two chairs, it is untrue. This is only linguistic and logical truth. Truth means that which is hidden behind the trees and the mountains, hidden behind people, hidden behind everything. That “hidden” becomes unhidden; you come to truth.Truth… And then you come to shivam; your life becomes good. Not in the sense of being a moral person, a Pharisee, a puritan, no; your life becomes spontaneously good. Not that you try to do good, but whatsoever you do is good. You cannot do anything bad. To do anything bad is impossible because you cannot think of yourself as separate from others. How can you do anything bad? You cannot hurt anybody because now hurting anybody is hurting yourself. Your ego is gone. You hurt somebody and you are hurt. You kill somebody and you are killing yourself. You steal from somebody and you are stealing from your own pocket. Now goodness is just natural – not imposed – spontaneous.And sunderam; only then, when you have known what is and you have become spontaneous, can you know what beauty is. Beauty is not only poetry, it is the vision of truth; it is the vision of God, but one step more. It is like you are one thousand miles away from the Himalayas in the early morning and you see no clouds in the clear sky, and the Himalayan peaks are standing there. Those virgin snows are shining like gold in the morning sun, but you are a thousand miles away. It is beautiful, it fills you with awe, but you are still distant. So in conversion: satyam, shivam, sunderam.The seventh state is: christ consciousness. You are no longer apart from the peaks, you have become the peaks. You are no longer apart from those virgin snows, you are those snows. You are not seeing sun rays reflected on the snow, you are those sun rays. Christ consciousness is born; one becomes one with the whole. One becomes that which one really is. One becomes one with God. Buddha calls it nirvana, Christ calls it the Kingdom of God, Hindus call it satchitananda. Now again another trinity arises.First in the sixth: satyam, shivam, sunderam – truth, good, beauty. In the seventh: sat – being, chit – consciousness, ananda – bliss. Remember these seven words and meditate on them. You will then be able to easily understand these immensely significant sayings of Jesus.And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to meat.And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house brought an alabaster box of ointment.This woman is Mary Magdalene.And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.Just the presence of Jesus… He walked on that street, went into this Pharisee’s house and this woman Mary Magdalene had heard about it. This was his first meeting with her. She was a prostitute; something had welled up in her heart. Sometimes it happens that saints miss and sinners achieve, because saints are very proud of their sainthood. The ego is strong. Now a saint has not come to see Jesus, but a prostitute. Hearing that Jesus is so close by, knowing that he has come… Maybe she had always dreamt and always wanted to see him, but was afraid whether she would be allowed to or not. She may have felt embarrassed, may have felt shy. What would he say? How would she stand before him? But she must have dreamt, she must have desired… Now the opportunity has come.And stood at his feet behind him weeping… Now she is standing behind him, weeping. This is the way to meet Christ. How can you encounter him from the front? It will be difficult to encounter him from the front – you will be dazzled. Encountering him from the front will be a kind of egoism. No, one can only meet Jesus weeping because the meeting with Jesus is not of the head, but of the heart. One can only come from behind – hesitant, knowing perfectly well: “I am not worthy.” The more you feel that you are not worthy, the more worthy you become. The more you feel that you are worthy, the less worthy you are because it is basically pride that hinders, nothing else. Rabbis won’t go to Jesus, saints won’t go to Jesus. I have never heard a single story that any saint went to see Jesus. How could they go? It would be impossible. They would like Jesus to go to them. They could not go, their pride would not allow them. If some respected people had sometimes gone to Jesus, they had gone in secret.A professor went in the dark one night when everybody had left, because he was very respected. His name was Nicodemus. He was also a rabbi and a professor, a member of the board of the great temple. He was afraid to go in the daylight – people would come to know. If people were to see that he had gone to see Jesus, they would suspect his knowledge. “So he is also following this madman? So he has also fallen into his trap?” He went in the darkness of the night when nobody was there. But this woman, this woman of the street, went to see Jesus. She stood behind, weeping …and began to wash his feet with tears… When she comes in front of him, what does she do? She washes his feet with her tears. How else can the feet of a christ or a buddha be washed? You have to pour out your heart. Those tears are nothing but her heart. She is crying, weeping – she is utterly happy too. She is sad about her past, she is repentant about her past, but she is utterly overjoyed because she has been able to come to Jesus, she has been able to touch his feet. She must have been afraid because no saint would allow himself to be touched by a woman of the street. She must have been afraid Jesus would say, “Woman, keep away!” But he had not said anything. He was there utterly showering compassion on her.…and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him; for she is a sinner.Now, this woman is being transformed and this Pharisee – this respectable man – is missing. He has invited Jesus, but he is not pulsating with him. Now his mind, his knowledge, his prejudice is coming in the way. …he spake within himself… This man, if he were a prophet… Now he knows the definition of a prophet. Everybody thinks he knows the definition of God, prophet, Messiah, Christ, Buddha. You haven’t ever looked into the eyes of a buddha, you have never tasted of it.Just the other night, a sannyasin was saying to me that here in Vrindavan, things like garlic and onions are used in the food, and that they are harmful to meditation – as if he knows what meditation is. He has heard it. He runs a restaurant, so he knows about food – that is true, but he does not know anything about meditation. Who has told you that onions and garlic are against meditation? Have you meditated without onion and garlic and then with onion and garlic? Have you experimented? Just foolish ideas, fads, go on being given from one to another. One generation gives its foolishness to another generation. The longer it has been transferred, the more powerful it becomes, because it has a history. The onion is so innocent. If you want to avoid anything, avoid apples not onions because it is the apple which created the whole trouble. But that story also seems to be wrong because I eat three apples every day just to see when God is going to expel me – he has not expelled me yet. My doctor had told me when I was young that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. So I started eating three to keep everybody away! But God has not expelled me yet, and he seems to be very overjoyed with me. But the onion? It was not even forbidden to Adam. And if garlic is the problem, Maitriji will never enter the Kingdom of God – impossible. He wouldn’t like to either, if he has to enter without garlic.Fads! You don’t know anything about meditation. You don’t know anything about Christ, you don’t know anything about Buddha. But you have ideas, and you are not even hesitant. He was so certain about it that even I felt it would be very shocking to say anything to him. So I said, “Come back and start improving things here.”…he spake within himself saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him; for she is a sinner. He must have been waiting: “Now this is a good situation to judge whether this man is a Messiah, a prophet, or just an ordinary pretender. He is a pretender. He doesn’t even know that this woman is a sinner. He should have shouted, ‘Keep away, you ugly woman! Do you want to pollute me? Poison my being? Keep your ugly and impure hands away! Get out of here!’” Then the Pharisee would have been very happy. He would have recognized, “Yes, this is how a prophet should be.” He would have touched his feet – but only if it fitted with his knowledge, only then. He is not ready to fit with Jesus; Jesus has to fit with him. That has to be always remembered.Many of you try, with me too – I have to somehow fit with your inner arrangement, with your ideas. I have to behave according to you; if I don’t behave, I am wrong. But you are not hesitant about your ideas. If your ideas were right, you would have arrived long ago. You have not arrived, you are still searching and stumbling. And still you think your ideas are right? This Pharisee knows nothing, otherwise he would have become a christ by now. But knowledge is very stupid, very pretentious. It goes on believing in itself. And Jesus answering said unto him… Jesus must have watched what had happened, must have seen this man’s face changing, must have seen that he was feeling a little ashamed that he had called him into his house. Maybe he would have to clean his house, and whitewash it again. “And not only this man has entered, a prostitute has come… And he doesn’t know a thing about anything; he seems to be completely ignorant of the scriptures.”And Jesus answering said unto him… And he has not said anything. Many times you don’t ask me things and I answer because I feel the question is there. You are not gathering enough courage to ask it.And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And he saith, master, say on.Now things have changed. Inside he was just saying, “This man” and outside he says, “Master.” How man lives in hypocrisy. How man goes on living in two worlds – split, schizophrenic. These people think they can even deceive Jesus. Inside he says, “This man is not a prophet at all.” Outside he says, “Yes, master, say on.”There was a certain creditor which had two debtors; the one owed five hundred pence and the other fifty.And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, asked Jesus, which of them will love him most?Jesus always talks in parables, small parables, but greatly indicative, symbolic. There was a certain creditor which had two debtors; the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged.But just see the point. This man says, “I suppose…” When he was thinking about whether Jesus was a prophet or not, he had not thought in the words: “I guess, I suppose, I think.” No, he was certain. Now he says “I suppose… I guess that the one who has been forgiven most will love more.”Jesus says:…Thou hast rightly judged.Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much, but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.Two things: first, if you are forgiven your many sins, you will love more, naturally. If you love more, more of your many sins will be forgiven, naturally. It works both ways. It is not just that you love only because your sins have been forgiven. If you love, your sins will be forgiven. If your sins are forgiven, you will love. They go together. Jesus is giving one of the greatest criterions ever given. It is not a question of how many sins you have committed in your lives – millions! The question is: can you bow down to God and ask for his forgiveness? Can you surrender? Can you say to him, “I alone am not able to pay your debts, I am helpless. I am lost. If you save me, only then can I be saved; otherwise, there is no hope.” If you can say this from the very core of your being, that is prayer.In that way, Christianity is far more religious than Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism. Because Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism depend more on man’s acts: karma. They don’t depend on God’s compassion, on God’s forgiveness. That dimension is missing, utterly missing in Jainism. That’s why Jainism is very dry, mathematical, calculating. Sometimes I suspect that the reason all Jainas have become businessmen is because Jainism is so calculating. There must be some relationship between the two. Very calculating. You have done one wrong thing, you have to do one good thing to cancel it. It is a question of mathematics. It is not religion. It is more of a science because love never enters into it. Forgiveness… the very word is not known in Jaina scripture. There is nobody to forgive and forgiveness is not possible because it would be favoring a few people. There is no question of favoring anybody. Everybody has to suffer for his sins and everybody has to pay for them. It appeals to the logical mind, but it has no religious quality; it is dry. Without love, no religion can be religion.Christianity has one beautiful thing and that is: God’s compassion is our shelter. It is impossible to think that man will be able to get out of the mire of his actions on his own, all alone. He will get more and more into the mire. Man is helpless, unconscious, blind. To ask that he can get out of this long history of sins is almost to ask for the impossible. It is to ask for a miracle. But there is a way; there is a way if you can surrender: if you can cry for God in utter helplessness and say, “Save me! I am defeated. I accept my defeat, and I don’t carry any more pride that will ever succeed. My failure is utter. I fall at your feet.”Compassion is always there because we come from this source. This source is our mother, God is our mother. If God cannot forgive you, who will forgive? If this existence cannot forgive you, who will forgive? Forgiveness is possible; that is the great message that Christ brings to the world. Every Messiah brings a special message, a unique message. This is Christ’s special message.Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much, but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven.This is a miraculous statement. Just see the point of it. In his compassion, in his love, he simply says, Thy sins are forgiven. He is not miserly about it. Thy sins are forgiven. Unconditionally. There is no condition attached to it. He is not saying do this and do that and your sins will be forgiven. No, he says that they are forgiven. You loved much. Your tears have shown your helplessness. I have seen into your heart. You may have sinned on the outside, you may be a prostitute, but deep inside you are one of the purest souls that I have ever come across. Jesus has penetrated her being. The prostitute is no longer a prostitute, the body is no longer a body. The visible is no longer relevant, he has looked into the invisible, into that pure source – the fountain of consciousness. This woman is really fortunate that she could cry, that she could wash his feet with her tears, that she poured ointment – valuable ointment – on his feet. These are just symbolic of her heart. She is pouring her heart.And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven.And they that sat at meat with him began to say within themselves…Now, those Pharisees, those respectable people of the town, started thinking and asked, “Who is this man? How can he forgive anybody? What does he think of himself?” And yes, I say to you that Christ can forgive – because he is not, only God is. He can forgive because he is not! He has disappeared, his ego no longer functions. It is God forgiving through him. Just as God is a rose in a rose, God is a christ in a christ.…Who is this that forgiveth sins also?And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee…These people were thinking again. To answer them, Jesus says to Mary Magdalene, Thy faith hath saved thee… He is not saying, “I have saved you.” He is saying, “How can I? I exist not, it is thy trust, thy faith.”…Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.Now there is no problem for you. Go in trust. Keep this trust alive. You are pacified. Those who had invited him, missed him; this woman of the street penetrated his deepest core and allowed him to penetrate her deepest core. When Jesus was on the cross, all his male disciples left him. They were hiding. Only this woman was near the cross, unafraid. It was dangerous. When he was caught in the night, Jesus said to one disciple, “Don’t follow me.” He said, “I will follow you, master.” Jesus said, “Don’t be foolish. I know you – before the sun rises, you will have denied me thrice.” And it happened like that. When he was being taken by the enemies as a prisoner in the dark night, the disciple followed, hiding in the crowd. But the crowd became suspicious: “This man seems to be new.” In the light of the torches they saw that he seemed to be new, they were not acquainted with him. They asked him, “Who are you? Are you a follower of Jesus?” He said, “No, I don’t know who Jesus is.” This happened thrice. When it happened thrice, the sun had not risen yet. Jesus looked back and said loudly, “So you see, you have denied me thrice!”The only person who was close to Jesus at the moment of death was Mary Magdalene; she loved him deeply. She was utterly sacrificed, dedicated to Jesus. When he was taken down from the cross, she was the first woman to help. There were two other women – his mother was there and Mary Magdalene’s sister – but not a single male disciple. Not a single one. Those who had been discussing all along, “Who is the greatest?” and “Who will be next to Jesus in heaven?” were not there. They had escaped, afraid that they might be caught and suspected of being followers of Jesus, might be crucified too. Only love can remain to the very end. Only love can defy death.Read these sutras very silently and try to feel Christ through them. His message of forgiveness is one of the most significant. I also say to you that if you are ready, if you pour out your heart, your sins are forgiven. They are forgiven in your very surrender. Not that I forgive them, they are forgiven in your very trust; you are free, you are saved.Enough for today.

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I Say Unto You Vol 2 01-09Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 2 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Is God overhead in the sky, in heaven?God is everywhere; God is everywhere-ness. God is not a person and you cannot locate him. He is the totality of all beings, of all things. Down the ages, man has looked for God in the sky overhead. The reason for this is not that God is overhead, but rather that to search for God, we have to go above our heads. We have to transcend ourselves, we have to look upward. Not that God is there, God is everywhere – below you, beside you, behind you, in front of you.We look up because we are low. We are living in a dark valley and we look up. This is a kind of inner search. Just as the tree grows upward, man grows upward. Man is a kind of tree. But always remember, when the tree grows upward, its roots meanwhile are growing downward. If the tree only grows upward it will fall, it will not be able to remain rooted in the soil. The bigger the tree, the deeper, the lower, it has to go. The roots grow into the soil and the branches grow into the sky; there is a great balance. It is almost in proportion: the bigger tree will have bigger roots and the proportion of the two is almost the same. There is a balance.If a tree only grows downward, it will be meaningless; if a tree only grows upward, it will not be able to exist. That’s what has happened to humanity. A few people live only downward – in sexuality, in food, in the body – in the lower centers. They go on spreading their roots. Their life becomes meaningless because meaning arises only when you start rising upward.The higher you go, the more meaning, the more significance there is because there is more light. Clouds become available to you and the sun and the moon and the stars; life starts taking the shape of poetry. Life starts becoming a song. You can sway and dance in the sky; you can whisper with the stars; you can love the wind and the rain; you can have a dialogue with the sun – with the source of life and light. Roots remain dismal, sad, dark, lost in the soil. If a tree has only roots and no branches, no foliage, no leaves, no flowers, no fruits, how can it be meaningful? It cannot have fulfillment. Fulfillment comes only from fruition, flowering.If a tree simply grows upward and forgets to grow its roots, it will fall down; it cannot grow very far. It will be at the most, seasonal. Flowers will come and within a few weeks they will be gone. It will be very tentative. There cannot be any eternal significance in it. It will be seasonal. To be really in existence and in God, one needs this proportion. I bring this proportion to you. That’s why I am not against the body because the body is your soil. I am not against sexuality because that is where your roots have to grow and become strong. It is there that your roots have to get nourishment, the waters of life. But to stop there is to commit suicide.Take the nourishment from the soil, take the vitality from the body, from sexuality and use it for higher purposes, for higher rhythms, for higher harmony. Then bloom. Bloom in meditation, in love, in ecstasy. Let there be a great rejoicing and a dance. Only then are you a total man. A total man is a balanced man; he is not an extremist. So to look for God upward does not mean that God is overhead, it simply means that if we grow upward we will have a closer contact with God. Not that God is upward, God is downward too. But unless you are fulfilled, you will not have a closer contact with God. In your fulfillment is the experience of God.Don’t seek God. Seek fulfillment and you will find God. If you seek God and forget fulfillment, you will not find God. God does not come as an accident, God comes as an inner growth. It is something that happens in your innermost core. But in the old days, this metaphor of looking overhead, praying to the sky became very rigid. People took it literally. They started thinking God is overhead. That is a natural fallacy. But times have changed; man has come of age. Man is more alert, man is no longer childish. Humanity has come a long way since the Vedas and the Talmud; humanity has passed through many stages. It is no longer needed to take God and the metaphors associated with him literally. Take them metaphorically. They are metaphors.If you ask me, “Where is God – overhead?” I would like to tell you that the metaphor has become a little bit rotten. It has been used too much, misused – the associations have gone wrong. They have to be dropped. Instead of saying that God is overhead, it would be better to say that God is alongside. Let God become your “alongsided-ness.” Rather than thinking of God as a father figure, think of him as a beloved, as a friend and you will find the approach easier, you will find yourself more open.Yes, one day it was so – to call God “the father” was to bring him very close. When Jesus called him abba he was speaking the language of his day. The father was immensely respected, the father was very deeply rooted in the child, in the psyche of the child. To call God “father” was valuable; it had much meaning. Now things have changed, utterly changed. Father is not a respectable word anymore. It smells of authority, authoritarianism. It smells of institutionalism. It smells of a power structure. The moment you say, “God is the father,” you fall apart rather than being joined by it. Father is no longer a hyphen between you and God. The word has fallen because the institution of fatherhood has deteriorated. You will have to find new words and new metaphors – a new language to relate. Let God be your beloved, let God be your friend.If you are a woman, think of God as your lover. If you are a man, think of God as your beloved. This has also to be understood. There have been religions – for example, the Sufis – who call God “the Beloved.” But that is man-oriented. What is a Sufi woman going to call God? If God is taken to be a woman, what is a Sufi woman going to call her? It will be difficult. In the East the bhaktas have called God “the Lover.” But if the man has to call God “the Lover,” it becomes difficult; it does not sound right. Something seems to be missing.There is no need for God to be a man or a woman. If you are a man, God is a woman; if you are a woman, God is a man. There is no need to have a fixed idea of God. Let the idea of God arise within your soul – whatsoever your need, let God be that. So I don’t say who God is – he or she, it depends on you. If you are a he, he is a she; if you are a she, she is a he. Let God become meaningful to you – personally meaningful, intimate – so that you can hug him, so that you can embrace him, so you can have a love affair with him. Without the love affair, you will never find him. So don’t say that God is overhead, it is no longer relevant. God is to be understood more as “alongsided-ness.”Martin Buber calls the relationship between man and God an I-Thou relationship. It seems a little stiff. It is stuffy and churchy: I-Thou. Thou is no longer used in ordinary conversation. You don’t call your woman “thou,” you don’t call your lover “thou.” It is out of use. His understanding is right – man and God’s relationship is an I-Thou relationship; that’s how prayer arises.But I would like to say to you, that let it be an I-You relationship rather than an I-Thou one. Let God come close. “Thou” keeps him far away. It is too respectful and respect is always less than love. When love is possible, forget about respect. When love is not possible, it is the second best. Let it be an I-You relationship, only then is a dialogue possible. Man and God can move hand in hand. Remember, words become useless after a certain time. They do not only become useless but sometimes dangerous, harmful. The same words which used to have much meaning become meaningless. The same words which were very significant become out-of-date after a time; they lose meaning. Words are also born and they die. The word, the metaphor: “God the Father” has died. “God the Beloved” can still ring bells in your heart.Victor Hugo has said, “All the forces in the world are not as powerful as an idea whose time has come.” The time has come for God to become your beloved, your lover. We have tried all other relationships with God. There have been religions which have called him “Mother”; there have been religions which have called him “Father”; there have been religions which have thought of God as their child. But man now knows that there is only one relationship that goes to the very core; all other relationships are secondary.A child is born to you because you loved a woman or a man. The relationship of the mother or the father with the child is a secondary relationship. Somebody becomes your father because he loved a woman and somebody becomes your mother because she loved a man. All relationships revolve around the single relationship of love.Love is the shrine, the innermost shrine of the whole temple of relationship.Man has tried all other relationships. They did well for a time, but now only one relationship can be of any help. All other relationships look a little faint and dull. As man grows in understanding, in maturity, many things will happen that will go on changing his own world vision. For example, after Freud, it is very difficult to call God “the Mother,” because ninety-nine percent of mental problems exist because of the mother. Now, Freud has to be reckoned with, he has to be included. You cannot neglect him; he has happened.Before Freud, “mother” was an absolutely pure concept. Nobody had ever thought that the world was neurotic because of the mother; nobody had ever gone into it. It was taken for granted that the relationship of the mother and the child was the most divine, spiritual relationship. “There is nothing like it. It is the purest love.” That was the thinking before Freud. After Freud, things became totally different. You cannot go on neglecting Freud because his work contains some truth; it is not just fiction. Man’s problems – almost ninety-nine percent – exist because of the mother. Now the mother has become the source of all neurosis, schizophrenia, psychosis, madness, suicide, murder. How can you call God “Mother” anymore? It will be difficult.After Marx, Engels and others, “father” is no longer a natural relationship; it is institutional. The concept of “father” has come because of private property. It is economical, it has nothing to do with love. Once the economic structure of society changes, once there is no longer private property in the world, the father is going to disappear. You will be surprised to know that uncle is an older word than father. Uncle existed first, then father. And sooner or later uncle will exist again and father will disappear.People will live in communes. The child will never know who his father is, but he will know that all the people who are of his father’s age are uncles. Haven’t you noticed? The relationship with an uncle is always lovely. It is never so lovely with the father. With the uncle, the child has a friendship. It is always beautiful. It is very difficult to find a bad relationship between the child and the uncle; it is always a happy relationship. What is the problem? In the relationship with the father, there is possessiveness and with the uncle, there is no possessiveness. The uncle cares, just like the father, but without possessing. He is not authoritative, friendship is possible. If the word father disappears, God will be called uncle for the first time. Nobody as yet has called him uncle, but things change.To me, father is institutional because in nature he doesn’t exist. Mother exists, mother is more natural. So religions who call God “Mother,” are more natural religions. But that too is not possible because of Freud. Freud has looked deep into the mother and has found that all those fictions of the “spiritual relationship” and “pure love” etcetera are all nonsense. “Mother” has to be transformed and changed, otherwise the world will remain neurotic forever.The mother goes on doing whatsoever she feels is right, but the question is: “Is what she feels to be right, right?” The mother cares about the child, but is the care unconditional, really unconditional, or are there hidden conditions in it? The mother brings up the child and sacrifices much for him, but that sacrifice takes its revenge on the child. It goes on taking revenge on him. The mother starts proving herself to be a kind of martyr – she has sacrificed for you, now you sacrifice for her. That demand is constantly there – deliberately made or not, but it is always there. “I have sacrificed my life for you.” Consciously, unconsciously, that is always the message. “I have destroyed my life, I have sacrificed my life for you – now what about you? I am getting old, now you sacrifice your life for me!”And she really has done a lot, so the child feels guilty. Every child feels guilty. When a man falls in love with a woman he feels guilty. He feels he is doing something against his mother because he is moving toward another woman, he is betraying her. Mothers are never happy with the wives of their sons – never! There is a competition, conflict, continuous conflict – those other women have taken away their sons. If a son wants to live his life he has to go away, otherwise his mother will suffocate him. He feels grateful but that gratefulness does not mean that he has to remain hanging around her apron strings for his whole life. He has to go.Every mother makes her child feel guilty. These things have to be transformed. God cannot be called “Mother”; God cannot be called “Father.” The father has always been the disciplinarian. It was perfectly okay for Moses to call God “Father” because the whole concept was legal. God was the super-disciplinarian. He was disciplining everybody – punishing those who were wrong, rewarding those who were following him. It was a kind of court. It was a continuous judgment. You cannot love your judge. You are afraid of the judge and you are always trembling before your judge.It is not just accidental that this century has declared, “God is dead.” God as the judge is dead, certainly dead. I agree with it. God as the Father is dead. God as the authority is dead. Now God can be revived only as love – not the love of the mother toward the child, or the father toward the child, or the love of the child toward the mother or the father. There is only one natural love and that is between a couple. It is the only love that descends – one never knows from where. It is the only one that arises spontaneously.Your love for your mother is not spontaneous, it is a conditional love. If you had been taken away the day you were born, and brought up by another woman who told you that she was your mother, you would have loved her. If you had met your real mother one day, after twenty years, you would not have recognized her at all. It’s a conditioning. It arises because you live in close contact with your mother, it is a kind of imprinting, continuous imprinting. She gives you milk, she gives you warmth, she gives you care. When you are ill, she serves you… She does so many things for you. She surrounds you from everywhere. Love arises, but this love is a liking rather than love; it has no madness in it. It is a liking. So is the case with the father. He protects you, he finances you – he sends you to school, to college and to university – he prepares you for your life. You feel obliged to him. You have a respect for him.The only spontaneous love is between a man and a woman. Suddenly, out of nowhere, you come across a woman and something clicks. You come across a man and your heart starts beating in the same rhythm. You are possessed by something called love. It is very mysterious. There is no reason for it – the woman has never done anything for you, the man has never done anything for you. There is no past between you and there is no future. You don’t know this woman – what she will do to you in the future. You don’t know this man – how he will prove himself to you in the future. There is no past – you have met for the first time and there is no guarantee for the future.Yet, the thing is so tremendous that you forget the past, you forget the future and you start moving in the present. This moment is so valuable in itself that for no other reason you are ready to sacrifice all and everything for it. It is foolish, it is mad – that’s why down the ages the so-called wise people have called love, mad. It is mad because it has no reason in it. But that is the beauty of it, that is the depth of it. It comes from somewhere beyond reason, beyond the mind. It has the same quality as God. That’s why Jesus says, “Love is God.” Now love is going to be the metaphor for the future. Let God be your boy-friend or your girl-friend. It will depend on you who he is, not on him. God has no fixed entity, he becomes what you need him to be. He is liquid.The day for that idea has come. When the day for an idea comes, nothing is more powerful than that. And vice versa it is also true. When the day of an idea has gone, nothing is more impotent than that. God as Father is impotent, God as Mother is impotent. Those ideas will linger because a few people live in the past. You can’t help it. A few people always live backward; they only look in the rear-view mirror, they never look ahead. A few people have fixed minds about the past. They are so very afraid of the new that they don’t look ahead, they look backward.All people are not contemporaries. For anybody who lived two thousand years ago, Jesus’ idea: “God is Father” would have been appealing. Anybody who lived beyond two thousand years ago, some other idea would have been appealing. But those who are contemporaries and those who are ahead of their time, for them a new metaphor is needed: the metaphor of love.God as overhead is out-of-date.A customs officer at Heathrow opened up the suitcase belonging to an attractive Frenchwoman and found six pairs of saucy panties. “What are these for?” he demanded.“I tell you,” she replied. “Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.”“What about Saturday?” he asked.“Saturday – oh, la, la.”He chalked her case and off she went. Next in line was a stout, motherly party from Yorkshire. One of the party had twelve pairs of red flannel drawers in her case.“What’s all this, Ma?” he asked.She answered, “January, February, March, April…”There are people who are not contemporaries. But remember to be a contemporary because life belongs to those who are contemporaries. The past is no more – don’t cling to it.The second question:Osho,Have I come here to enjoy myself or get enlightened? Does one need to suffer to become enlightened? I seem to fluctuate between the two. I'm very confused.It is very simple. There is no need to be confused about it. If you are searching for enlightenment here, you will never find it. If you search for enjoyment here, you will find enjoyment and enlightenment comes in its wake. Enlightenment happens only to a person who lives in immense enjoyment of life. Only he is worthy of it because enlightenment is a greater joy – the greatest, the highest. You have to train for it. You have to train for it by being happy, joyous, by being in tune with life, by being a celebrator.Forget about enlightenment. You need not worry about it. It is useless to think about it. Just enjoy yourself. Get lost in enjoyment. It is the easiest and shortest way to lose your ego. Once the ego is lost and you are really enjoying life, you are delighted with it. A great gratitude arises of its own accord. Suddenly you start feeling that you are grateful to God; whosoever God may be, whatsoever it means – that doesn’t matter anymore. Your life is such a joy, how can you feel ungrateful? Your life is such a joy that it is not possible to complain.The complaining mind is the root cause of the atheist’s mind. When you complain, when everything is wrong, you cannot believe in God. Even if you try to believe, that belief will just be pseudo. It won’t have any depth in you, it will be superficial. It maybe out of fear or it maybe just out of conditioning, but there is no reality in it for you.When you are joyous, when you are enjoying your life – the ordinary life, because there is no other life, only this life; when you start enjoying it – your food, your sleep, your bath, your walk early in the morning, the song, the birds, the trees, the people; when you start enjoying all this, gratefulness arises. You start feeling very calm and quiet. You start feeling a kind of contentment descending on you, slowly, slowly. The contentment becomes part of your being. You become suffused with it, immersed in it. Every cell of your body starts falling into a harmony. In that harmony you will have the first glimpses of enlightenment, not otherwise.So if you ask me, I will say: “Forget about enlightenment, otherwise the idea of enlightenment will make you more miserable.” You are already miserable. Everything is wrong, nothing is ever right. You are suffering. Now, you bring another misery – enlightenment; this is very difficult. The misery of not having enough money is not very big. Make a little effort and you can have it, if not legally then illegally – but you can have it and there are ways. You are not famous and you are suffering; you can become notorious – that too is a kind of fame. If people don’t know you as a mahatma, they can know you as a devil, but you can make yourself known.There is not much difference between the mahatma and a devil and there is not much difference between the saint and the sinner. Both are after fame; the basic urge is the same. The saint is one who has made it legally. The sinner is one who could not make it legally – was not so clever, was not so intelligent – and had to find some illegal ways, some criminal ways. But the reason is the same. These things are easily possible, so there will not be much suffering. Now, enlightenment… You cannot make it legally, you cannot make it illegally; you cannot make it. You as you cannot make it because you are the problem. So there is no illegal way to enlightenment; there is not even a legal way to enlightenment. In fact, those who know say there is no path to it. It is a pathless path. There is no gate; it is a gateless gate. There is no method to it. When all methods disappear, it happens.So once a person becomes interested in enlightenment, he will be getting into eternal trouble. Now, whatsoever he does is going to fail – whatsoever. His failure is predetermined, it is built-in. In the very effort is the failure. So you do this and you do that, and you go on failing. The more you fail, the more desperate, the more anguish you will feel and the more hopeless you will become.You will feel more and more lost – more lost than ever before and you will feel that this idea of enlightenment has been a curse. It has taken your ordinary life from you. It won’t allow you any other life, it takes possession of you totally, utterly. The old life has gone and the new one hasn’t happened. You start hanging in limbo. You are neither here nor there; you become a question mark. Your whole life becomes split. So remember, never become desirous of enlightenment; it will give you a great hell.This is my basic approach: that you should learn how to enjoy life. Enjoy it more and more, and as deeply as possible. Go into it. Small moments can be transformed into eternities of joy. Small things can become celebrations – very small things. Just an unknown flower – and if you sit by the side of it and you look at it and you are open to it, it will give you great ecstasy. You will start swaying and dancing, you will feel drunk. Any small thing is full of godliness. This ordinary reality is not just ordinary, it is carrying the extraordinary, the superb, the supreme-most.So love this life and don’t think of enlightenment. It always brings misery because it brings conflict. Let it come through this – you love a woman, you love a man… Let God come through that love, let God center you when you are in a state of orgasm. Eat, enjoy food and let God come to you as a taste. Listen to music, get lost in it and let God come to you as sound, as harmony. Let God descend on you slowly, slowly, without any hankering to grasp him, without any effort to possess him in your hands.Just open yourself as much as possible – to the trees, to the birds, to the rains, to the sun, to the sands. Open yourself wherever you are, absorb and gratitude will arise and that gratitude will become your prayer. You will not know toward whom this gratitude is arising. When you don’t know toward whom this gratitude is arising, it is toward God. When you know that it is toward God, you don’t know anything. Is it the Christian God, the Hindu God, or the Mohammedan God? All these are not God. God is basically hidden. Nobody knows his name.The Jews were right never to spell his name. The name of Yahweh was not allowed to be pronounced: “How can we pronounce his name? We don’t know his name.” His whereabouts are unknown. Nobody has ever seen him. Whosoever has seen him, has gone into him and disappeared forever; nobody has come back. Nobody knows where he is, who he is. But still, when life is flowing, when life has a flow to it and a dance to it, one feels gratitude. Gratitude comes first and God comes second, not otherwise.People are trying to put God first. First they create God and that is their created God, man-made, home-made, manufactured. They bow down to their own manufactured statues. This is utterly stupid – a man bowing down to a statue he has made himself, or has purchased from the market. God is not for sale anywhere. Nobody has seen his face and nobody can make his statue. Nobody knows where he is: overhead, behind, in front, right, left – nobody knows. But gratitude arises… Just as fragrance arises out of a flower and disperses, not knowing where, unaddressed; in the same way, gratitude arises unaddressed. It is prayer, real prayer and you start feeling God in your heart. Because of this gratitude and because of this prayerfulness and thankfulness, enlightenment is not far away. First, become joyous. Jesus goes on saying it, but nobody listens. He says again and again: “Rejoice! Rejoice! I say again rejoice!”You have asked: “Have I come here to enjoy myself or get enlightened?” You have come here to get enlightened, as far as you are concerned. As far as I am concerned, you have come here to enjoy yourself. Through enjoyment comes enlightenment and through enlightenment comes just suffering. They are all ego trips. You have found beautiful names, that’s all, but they are all ego trips. Now, you want to become enlightened. Why? What for? Where did you get this idea of enlightenment? Now, you will be searching and this will create so much suffering for you. What to do? Stand on your head to become enlightened? Fast, to become enlightened? Go to the mountains and live in a cave? Become a masochist – torture yourself? Practice a thousand and one things – which will be of the mind and will not lead you beyond the mind?Just go and look at the people. The East has been on this trip for a very long time. The West is new and unaware of the pitfalls. The East has been in it far too long. Just go and watch Eastern seekers going after enlightenment and you will find all kinds of pathologies. Someone has been fasting for months. His body has become just bones, with sunken eyes and all his energy gone. Torturing himself in the hope that this is the way – as if God were a sadist, and would like you to torture yourself. “The more you torture yourself the more valuable you will become.” This is something that has gone deep into the psychology of man.The child learns this from his parents. Whenever the child is happy, the parents are not happy. Whenever the parents are happy, the child is not happy. The child learns one basic fundamental of life: “Parents can only be happy when I am not happy.” For example, the child is ready to go out. It is raining and the rains are calling him. It is so beautiful outside… And the sound of the rain… And it is so cool. He wants to go out and stand in the rain. But his mother is not prepared to let him to go, the father is not prepared to let him to go. They shout at him. He remains in the house. He looks out of the window with greedy eyes. It looks so beautiful out there and the trees look so happy and the trees are so moved by the rains.He would like to go out into this world and he would like to stand like a tree, but he is not allowed to. The parents are happy if he doesn’t go, if he suffers. If he does go out, the parents suffer. When he comes back, he has been a nuisance, he will be punished. The parents will be angry for many days. Now, one thing the child goes on learning every day: “Whatsoever I feel as joyous is wrong and whatsoever I feel as painful, boring, is right.”He is so full of energy that he wants to play with the dog outside, or he wants to go and run around the house – but the parents say, “Do your homework.” Now, he doesn’t like homework. He hates it. But the parents are only happy when he is in some kind of sad situation. So he has learned one thing: “God is father.” So the logic reaches easily to the conclusion that if you are enjoying food, God will be very angry with you, he will throw you into hell – God the father. If you are fasting and suffering, God will be very happy and he will send you to heaven.If you love a woman and you’re feeling immensely happy, guilt arises. God must be watching. God seems to be continuously watching! That’s what people have been told, that he is a kind of Peeping Tom – whatsoever you are doing, wherever you are, he is watching. Just think of him – he must get tired of all this nonsense. Watching and watching and watching… He must have gone mad by now. Millions and millions of people have been doing things… How many things are people doing? And he is watching! He has nothing else to do, he is just a “watcher.”You have been taught that he is watching you everywhere. Wherever you go he is there, following you – those two eyes, or, if you are a Hindu, three eyes, watching you. And continuous fear… You are happy and he is watching. You will suffer for it. Haven’t you noticed that whenever you are happy, you feel a certain kind of guilt arising in you? Every day someone or other comes to me and says, “Osho I am feeling very happy. But guilt arises in me – why?” It arises because of a wrong association. You have been taught a wrong philosophy of life. You have not been taught the grammar of joy, you have been taught the grammar of suffering. So you ask: “Does one need to suffer to become enlightened? I fluctuate between the two. I’m very confused.”Naturally, you will be confused. You will have to drop one, otherwise you will continuously fluctuate. There is no enlightenment without enjoyment. Let this become your rule, the golden rule: God comes through joy; God comes only when you are happy, immensely happy; God flows only toward those hearts which are glad; God comes only to those who are dancing; God comes to you only when he hears your laughter, not your prayer but your laughter. Let your laughter be your only prayer. Let your joy be your only offering. Love life. Love small things. Don’t miss a single moment. Go on becoming more and more joyful and you will find God is coming to you more and more.Hindus are right when they say that God is anand, bliss. It is true, it is his ultimate definition. So he can be attained only through bliss, not through suffering. The suffering will help your ego to become stronger, and the stronger the ego, the farther away you are from God. Only when you melt in happiness, you become liquid in happiness, you start flowing in happiness, you are no longer frozen… And when you are not frozen, where can you flow? There is only God all around you. Once you melt, you flow into him, when you flow, he flows into you. It is reciprocal.God comes to you only in that proportion in which you go into him. A man who is trying to achieve God, enlightenment, nirvana, becomes more and more egoistic, becomes more and more self-centered. His whole effort is how to attain and possess God. But how can you possess God? You can only be possessed by him, you cannot possess him. He is not smaller than you, he is bigger. How can the river possess the ocean? The river can only disappear into the ocean. The ocean will possess the river and that is the only way for the river to possess the ocean. The man who is seeking enlightenment is trying to do the impossible. It is not possible in the very nature of things.Here, being close to me, learn one thing, that is joy. Rejoice! Forget all about enlightenment, otherwise it will create a continuous suffering and anxiety in you. Naturally, enlightenment happens only in the future, so the future comes in. You start planning for it and you go on missing the present. Live the moment as if it is all and enlightenment will find you. You need not find it.The third question:Osho,You said that love is more important than the person. Well, what about you? I love you!If you think of me as a person, you have not seen me yet, you are missing. I am not a person. You can love me; I am love. There is nobody here. Or, only nobody is here. Look on me as love, not as a person. If you look at me as a person, you will become attached and attachment brings misery. If you look at me as love, you cannot be attached and if you look at me as love you can dissolve with me. You cannot dissolve with a person. You can only dissolve with an energy, not with a person. People collide, that is the misery of all the lovers in the world. People collide, because people are two egos. When two egos come close, sooner or later, the clash, the conflict comes because each of them wants to possess the other and the other doesn’t like it.Nobody wants to be possessed. So the natural calamity of love arises because you have not understood love as energy. Don’t think of me as a person, otherwise you will start possessing me and there will be inner conflict. Think of me as love, as energy, as space: you can dissolve in me and you can allow me to dissolve in you. There will be no clash. That is the real relationship between a disciple and a master – a non-clashing relationship. There is no conflict, there is only harmony, attunement. They move on the same wave length. I am not a person. If you really love me, you will also become a non-person. And when you have also become a non-person there will be a meeting, not before it.The fourth question:Osho,Did Jesus father any children?I don’t think so because he would not go into that tedium. But there is a man… Just the other day I was reading about him, he lives in Srinagar, Kashmir and his name is Sahib Zadda Basarat Salim. He claims that he is the direct descendant of Jesus Christ. He has in his possession even today, a complete genealogical table which traces his direct ancestry from Jesus Christ. People go for nonessential things. Now this genealogy must be fictitious. It is true that Jesus lived in Kashmir for many years, but there is not any possibility of him fathering children because once a master starts creating disciples, they are his children. Giving birth to children will simply be a conflict. It will create problems, it will not help anybody.The master is no longer interested in his physical persistence through children, his whole interest has moved to a higher plane. Now he would like to persist as a spiritual force through his disciples. They are his children, they are his real children – spiritual children. And when you can have spiritual children, who bothers having physical children? The disciple is the real child. Only the disciple can take the message of the master to the future. So I don’t think that Jesus fathered any children. My feeling is that the Bible is correct because it stops at Jesus, the son of Mariam. It starts from the very beginning: fourteen generations – it gives the chart and it stops at Jesus. It seems to be perfectly as it should be.With Jesus, things have come to a climax. In Jesus, the revolution has happened; the body has disappeared into the soul. Now Jesus no longer functions like a body. To have children means that he still functions like a body. He functions as a spiritual force, as a spiritual magnetism. He functions as a soul, not as a body. The body is there but it is just the abode. The identity is no longer there and he does not think of himself as the body.So, don’t get involved in such unnecessary things. They are unnecessary, they don’t lead you to any understanding.The fifth question:Osho,Why does the Bible talk about man's state with metaphors such as: lameness, deafness, blindness, drunkenness, sleep and death?You ask why? Just observe yourself and you will find all these things. Lameness… A man is lame if he has not yet reached God. What use are your legs if they have not led you to God? What use are they? – you are lame. A man is deaf if he has not yet heard the song, the music of God. It is all around and you have not heard it yet? Jesus had to say again and again, “If you have ears, listen! If you have eyes, see!” Whom is he talking to? To you! Don’t think that he is visiting some institution where only blind people live, or only deaf people live. He is talking to people just like you who have eyes and ears, but who have not seen the real and who have not heard the real. Who go on seeing dreams and who go on hearing whatsoever they want to hear, not that which is. Man is deaf, man is blind.What have you seen? You have not seen the real, you have not seen the miraculous, the mysterious. The irony is that the mysterious surrounds you from everywhere – day in, day out, year in, year out. You live in the mysterious like a fish lives in the ocean and the fish has not seen the ocean yet!Kabir says: “I wonder and I laugh why the fish is thirsty living in the ocean.”There is an old Hindu parable that a fish became philosophic and started inquiring, “Where is the ocean?” And she swam in the ocean all the time. She went from one place to another in search of enlightenment. She wanted to know where the ocean was – because she had heard that we are born in the ocean and we disappear into the ocean and that the ocean is our source and our goal; that the ocean is God. So she started searching for the ocean and she asked many people and they said, “We have heard about it, but we also don’t know.” They were all living in the ocean, those philosophers, those professors – they were all fish. How do you know the ocean if you have never been out if it? To know, a little distance is needed.Sometimes a fish comes to know, when she is thrown out of the ocean. When somebody catches her in a net and takes her onto the hot sands, then she knows what the ocean is. That is possible for a fish, but what about man? Man cannot be taken out of God. There is no place which is outside of God. We are born in him, we breathe in him. We breathe him, we eat him, we love him, we are loved by him; we fight with him, we quarrel with him; we are young in him and we become old in him. One day we die in him, as one day we were born in him. You must be blind because you don’t see him and you go on asking, “Where is God?”You have asked: “Why does the Bible talk about man’s state with metaphors, such as: lameness, deafness, blindness, drunkenness, sleep and death?” This life is not life. It cannot be called life yet because joy hasn’t happened. What kind of life is this? – maybe just a preparation, a rehearsal for the real life. The real has not happened because it does not show in the glow of your being. That splendor is not there, present within you; that aura does not surround you. Yes, you go on dragging yourself, hoping that some day life will happen, but it has not happened yet. So Jesus is right, the Bible is right – you are dead, you are asleep.Jesus goes on saying again and again, “Awake! Be wakeful because one never knows when the Beloved will come. Don’t fall asleep. He may come and you may be asleep.” But there is no need for you to fall asleep – people are asleep. Only with conscious meditation, only with awareness, living moment to moment with absolute alertness, does one come out of sleep.You are drunk – drunk with money, drunk with the ego, drunk with power and prestige. There are a thousand kinds of alcoholic beverages available: money is alcohol, power is alcohol, politics is alcohol. Beware of these things. People are so clever that they can turn anything into alcohol. Work becomes alcohol. There are workaholics, who cannot remain without work. They have to do something. They feel good when they are involved in doing something. When they have a little gap and they don’t know what to do, they start going crazy. They have to do. They read the same newspaper that they have already read. They rush to the TV or the radio and listen to the same news that they have listened to before. Or they may go to see the same movie again. Or they start talking about the things that they have talked about a thousand and one times; nobody listens and they know it. They are bored, others are bored – but what to do? Workaholics…A great organization is needed, greater than Alcoholics Anonymous: “Workaholics Anonymous.” Politicians will come, scientists will come, artists will come, millionaires will come – all kinds of people will come. Anything that possesses you so much that you cannot be without it is alcohol.The mind is very cunning. Your mantra may become your alcohol, your TM may become your alcohol. Every morning you have to do your mantra for twenty minutes, you have to repeat it in a stupid way, “Ram, Ram, Ram.” If you repeat it, you don’t get anything; if you don’t repeat it, you feel lost. If you repeat it you know nothing is happening, but if you don’t repeat it you feel you are missing something. A great urge arises to repeat the mantra – the same kind of urge that a smoker experiences.He knows that by smoking cigarettes he doesn’t get anything – there is no need to say that he doesn’t get anything. If he does get something, it is bad – maybe tuberculosis, asthma. He could get great things like that, otherwise he doesn’t get anything. He knows it also. But the problem is that if he doesn’t smoke, he starts feeling a great urge. That urge becomes more and more powerful; it possesses him. He has to smoke. He knows it isn’t good, he has decided not to smoke, he has taken a vow, but it doesn’t help. He has to go and smoke, otherwise he feels very nervous, tense. Smoking helps him. Just an old habit… Habits are very relaxing. You feel comfortable, cozy in them. Your mantra can become your alcohol. Beware. One has to be very conscious, otherwise anything can become your alcohol. And man is drunk.Man is ordinarily like a person living in a trance induced by post-hypnotic suggestions. Jesus says that there is only one cure: metanoia – turning backward, turning into yourself, turning your consciousness toward your inner being. Unless you start looking into your being and become very alert… And you can. You know there are moments when you are more alert and there are moments when you are less alert. There is the key.Why are you more alert in a certain moment? A beautiful woman passes by and you become more alert. What has happened? You really wanted to see her, you didn’t want to miss the opportunity – that’s why you became more alert. If you look at a tree in the same way… An opportunity may be missed – you may never come across this rosebush again. Who knows? The rosebush may not be there tomorrow, you may not be there tomorrow. Who knows? This may be your last meeting – the first and the last. Have a look, a total look at the rose and you will be alert. A bird is singing. This may be the last time. You may never listen to the song of a bird again, you may be lying down in your grave tomorrow. It is not worth missing. It is so precious. How can you not be alert? Be alert. A friend has come to your home. Be alert.Each moment has to be taken as if it were the last. There is every possibility that this may be the last moment. So use it totally. Squeeze the juice out of it, totally. In that very totality, you will be alert and the drunkenness will be gone. This is what Jesus calls metanoia.A drunk staggered up to a policeman, and said, “Officer, Officer, where am I?”“You are in front of the Osho Ashram,” said the policeman. “It is Koregaon Park.”“Never mind the details,” said the drunk. “What town am I in?”A drunk is a drunk. He is not interested in details. He is not even aware what town he is in. Are you aware of where you are? Are you aware of what planet you are on? Are you aware of the life you have, which is slipping through your hands without being used at all? Are you aware of the opportunity? Are you aware of who you are? So if Jesus says that you are drunk, he is perfectly right. Don’t feel offended.A fire engine, with its siren screaming, tore up St. Martin’s Lane toward New Oxford Street. At the same moment, a drunk staggered out of the Salisbury and immediately set off in hot pursuit. He was soon outdistanced and collapsed, panting on the pavement. As the fire engine receded into the distance, he shook his fist at it and shouted, “All right then! Keep your rotten old ice-cream!”What are you running after? Please, first take a look, then start running. Your desire is not enough proof that things exist to satisfy your desires. They may not exist and your whole life will prove a futile effort, in vain. That’s how it proves to millions of people. Rarely does a man come to his fulfillment. You can also be that rare man. You can be a Jesus or a buddha, but that is possible only if you drop your drunkenness.During the match, the batsman heard a cry from the crowd, “Smith! Smith! Your house is on fire!”He dropped his bat and ran off the field, through the crowd and into the road. Breathlessly he pounded along and then stopped. “Why am I running?” he said. “My name is not Smith.”Have a look again at who you are and why you are running. Is your house really on fire? Where are you going so fast? And people are going very fast. If they don’t reach their destination, they think they have not been fast enough. So they develop, invent faster ways, without knowing exactly where it is they want to reach to. Man uses more and more power to reach without knowing where he is going, without knowing where he really wants to reach.Three drunks rushed onto the platform at Cannon Street Station just as the last train to Greenwich was pulling out. With great difficulty and with a lot pushing and shoving, two of them managed to get a door open and tumble in before the train picked up speed and disappeared. The man who was left behind collapsed on the platform and roared with laughter.“Your friends just managed to catch the train, sir,” said a porter who was watching.“Yes, they did,” said the drunk, still laughing. “And the funny thing is they came to see me off!”And you ask why the Bible calls you drunk and asleep? You are, that’s why.The sixth question:Osho,I have a question to the lecture on November 2nd. What did Jesus write in the sand?In one of the ancient monastery papers, the following footnote is recorded just opposite the passage where Jesus said: “Let he among you who is without sin throw the first stone.” His mother, Mary, was also there in the crowd and he was afraid that she, being the Virgin, may throw the first stone. He actually saw the thought cross his mother’s mind. So he was writing again and again on the sand: “I really wish you wouldn’t do that, Mother!”The seventh question:Osho,How do you always manage to find the appropriate jokes for your talks?It is just the other way round.Little Tom and his dad went to the circus. After the show, on the way home the father said to little Tom, “Wasn’t that clever to time the horses so finely with the music?”“Yes indeed,” answered little Tom, yet not totally convinced.Suddenly a few steps further, little Tom stops and facing his father, said in a confident voice, “What about timing the music with the horses?”It can be the other way around, too. It seems natural for you, as it looked to the father, “Wasn’t that clever to time the horses so finely with the music?” But to little Tom, the horses were more important than the musicians. Little children live in a different world, their perspective is different. He was not totally convinced of it. He said, “What about timing the music with the horses?” Rather than the horses being timed with the music, it can be otherwise.I love jokes. When I find a joke, I try to find a question for it. When I love a joke, sooner or later somebody or other is going to ask the question to which the joke is going to fit.The eighth question:Osho,What is meditation?Now this is strange. It reminds me of a story…A cricket fan took his girlfriend out on a date – it was a full-moon night and the beach was silent. They were sitting on the beach and it was beautiful. They were holding hands and hugging each other. The cricket fan continued to talk about cricket for three hours. Suddenly he became aware that he must be boring the girl. Three hours is too long! So he said, “Sorry, forgive me. I have been talking for three hours about my hobby. I am a fan, I am mad about cricket. I must have bored you utterly?”The girl said, “Not at all, not at all. But do tell me, what is cricket?”Now you ask, “What is meditation?” And my whole life I have been talking about meditation. But still, I understand why the question has arisen. You listen, but you don’t get it. You understand intellectually what meditation is, but still it remains elusive. You cannot catch hold of it. And you cannot catch hold of it! It is not that something is wrong with you. Meditation cannot be caught hold of. You have to allow it to happen so that it can catch hold of you!Meditation is not something that you have to do; meditation is something for which you have to wait. It is something that comes and comes on its own. It is like a breeze. It is not that you can pull in, manage and order. You cannot order anything that is valuable. Ordered things are ordered things. You cannot order God. So, meditation, satori, samadhi, enlightenment, nirvana and God cannot be ordered. The very idea is silly. You cannot order. You can receive. Certainly you can receive. You can invite, you can wait patiently. So whenever you are feeling happy, whenever you are feeling joyous, whenever you are feeling harmonious, in tune, just sit silently. Wait for it. Just wait for it. Nothing else is needed to be done.Meditation is not an action. Just wait. Relax and wait. Lie down, sit or stand – as you feel good – and wait for it. Wait, alert and soon you will hear the whisperings, the silent steps of something which is coming closer to you. Soon you will see something entering into your heart, into your being. You cannot see it, but it is there. You can feel it. It is like a fragrance that fills your nostrils. It is like light. Keep the window open. That’s all you need to do: just keep the window open. So when the light arises and the clouds are gone and the sun is high, the rays can enter in you.About meditation you can only do negative things. Keep the door open, keep your eyes open, keep yourself alert and it comes. It will certainly come. It will immediately start flowing in you. It is a benediction. You cannot pull it, you cannot manipulate it. A manipulated meditation will not be of any value. That’s what people are doing: someone is doing TM, someone is doing something else – trying to manipulate.Here, when you are doing the Dynamic, the Kundalini or the Nadabrahma Meditations – they are not really meditations, you are just getting in tune. It is like Indian classical musicians playing. If you have seen them… For half an hour, or sometimes even longer, they simply go on tuning their instruments. They will move the knobs, they will tighten or loosen the strings. The drummer will go on checking his drum – whether it is perfect enough. For half an hour they go on doing this. This is not music, this is just a preparation. Kundalini is not really a meditation, it is just a preparation. You prepare your instrument. When it is ready, you stand in silence – meditation begins. You are utterly there. You have woken yourself up by jumping, by dancing, by breathing, by shouting – these are all devices to make you a little more alert than you ordinarily are. Once you are alert, then the waiting.Waiting is meditation – waiting with full awareness.And then it comes, it descends on you, it surrounds you, it plays around you, it dances around you, it cleanses you, it purifies you – it transforms you.The ninth question:Osho,Why do you sometimes use big and difficult words?I don’t know very much English. I somehow go on expressing myself. I am not at home with English. The problem is: first, I am not at home with any language at all – the basic problem – because what I want to say is beyond language. The English language is unacquainted with me, so I have to create my own English. I know the English language through books, so sometimes big words may filter in because I don’t know the smaller words for them. Otherwise, I would have used the smaller ones because smaller words are more expressive. The bigger the word, the less expressive; the bigger the word, the more scholastic.Listen to this anecdote:An African diplomat, paying his first visit to England, was met at the airport by the usual gaggle of media men.“Did you have a good flight, Sir?” asked one reporter.“Wowie, ssssh! Yes, yes, very comfortable, thank you,” replied the African.“And how long will you be here?” asked another.“Wowie, ssssh! About three weeks.”“And will you be going straight to see the Prime Minister today?”“Wowie, ssssh! Yes, I am going as soon as I have answered your questions.”“How did you learn such a distinctive style of speaking?” asked another journalist, intrigued by the strange noises which preceded each of the African’s replies.“Wowie, ssssh! The English on the Radio service of the BBC.”Enough for today.

https://oshoworld.com/osho-audio-discourse-english-i/

I Say Unto You Vol 2 01-09Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 2 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Matthew 24And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple, and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple.And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.Verily I say unto you,Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.Watch therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.Therefore be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not the son of man cometh.Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season?Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods.But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming.And shall begin to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken.The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of.And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.Man’s evolution passes through three stages: reform, revolution and rebellion. Reform is the most superficial. It only touches the surface, it never goes more than skin-deep. It changes nothing but the outer dressing of man; it changes man’s formalities. It gives man etiquette, manners – a kind of civilization – without changing anything essential in his being. It paints man, it polishes him and yet deep down he remains the same. It is delusional. It is fictitious. It gives respectability and makes everybody a hypocrite. It gives good manners, but it is against the inner core of man. The inner core has not yet been understood.But for society it creates smoothness. Reform functions like a lubricant. It keeps the status quo going, it helps things remain the same – which will look paradoxical because the reformist claims that he is changing society. In fact all that he is doing is painting the old society in new colors. It is easier for the old society to exist in new colors than it could ever have done in the old ones. The old ones were becoming rotten. Reform is a kind of renovation: the house is falling down, the supports are giving way, the foundations are shaking and you go on giving it new props. By doing this you can keep the house from falling down a little longer. Reform is in the service of the status quo – it serves the past not the future.The second thing is revolution: it goes a little deeper. Reform only changes ideas, it does not change policies. Revolution touches the structure, but only the outer not the inner. Man has two structures; he lives on two planes. One is the physical, the other is the spiritual. Revolution only goes to the physical structure – to the economic, to the political and they all belong to the physical. It goes deeper than reform. It destroys many old things, it creates many new things, but the being, the innermost being of man still remains unchanged. It creates morality, it creates character.Reform creates manners, etiquette, civilization. The formal behavior of man is changed. Revolution changes man’s outer structure – really changes; it brings a new structure. But the inner blueprint remains the same, the inner consciousness is not touched. It creates a split.The first, reform, creates hypocrisy. The second, revolution, creates schizophrenia. It makes man unbridgeable. Man starts falling into two beings. The bridge is broken. That’s why revolutionaries go on denying the soul. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao all denied the soul. They had to deny it, they couldn’t accept it because if they had accepted it their whole revolution would have seemed to be very superficial. Their revolution was not total.The reformist does not deny the soul, remember; he accepts it because it creates no problems for him – he never reaches that point. That point is not a problem. Gandhi accepted the soul, Manu accepted the soul – they were reformists. They never said no to anything, they were people who went on saying yes; they were polite people. They didn’t deny anything, unless it became absolutely necessary, then they would accept it. But revolutionaries deny the soul. They have to deny it, otherwise their revolution looks partial.The third thing is rebellion. Rebellion is from the very essential core. It changes consciousness – it is radical; it transmutes – it is alchemical. It gives you a new being, not only a new body, not only a new dress, but a new being. A new man is born. In the history of consciousness there have been three types of thinkers: the reformer, the revolutionary and the rebel. Manu, Moses, Gandhi – they were reformers, the most superficial. John the Baptist, Marx, Freud – they were the revolutionaries. Jesus, Buddha, Krishnamurti – they are the rebels.To understand rebellion is to understand the heart of religion. Religion is rebellion. Religion is utter change. Religion is discontinuity with the past, the beginning of the new, the total dropping of the old. Nothing has to be continued because if something continues it will keep the old alive.Reform paints. Revolution destroys the old outer structure but the inner structure remains the same. In Soviet Russia or in China the inner man is the same, there is no difference, not a bit. The same mind – the same greedy, ambitious, egoistic mind. The same mind that is found in America or in any capitalist country; there is no difference in the mind. But the outer structure of the society has been changed. The outer structure of laws, state, economics, politics have been changed. Once the police force and the governmental power have been taken away, man will fall back to his old patterns again.Russian society can only be managed by force. It cannot become democratic because to allow people to be independent will be allowing them to bring their inner being into their lives again. It is there inside them, but they have been prevented and they have been obstructed; they cannot live it. They have to live by the rules of the government, they cannot live according to their own being. So communism is basically dictatorial. It remains dictatorial: the fear is that if man is given freedom and because his consciousness is there – his greed is there, his ambition is there and it has always been there – it will start working again. People will become rich, poor, powerful, powerless. People will start exploiting each other; people will start fighting for their ambitions.Those who are powerful in Russia now are still doing the same thing. Khrushchev had many cars and used to brag about them. Nobody else in Russia can have them, but everybody wants them. It is just enforcement, not real revolution. Real revolution is spontaneous. That revolution is called rebellion.A few more distinctions between these three words, then you will be able to understand Jesus’ approach. Reform does not require much from you. It says: “Just make your front door beautiful and let the rest of your house be dirty. Live in dirt, but don’t allow your neighbors to see it. Just the front porch and the door should be beautiful because your neighbors are not interested in your inner being, in your inner house.” They pass the outside and see only the front door. “Do whatsoever you want, but do it from the back door.” So the front door becomes a facade, a window, a showcase for the neighbors to see.You really live from the back door, you don’t live from the front door. The front door is just there, artificial. You never enter through it, you never go out from it – it is there just to be seen by others. Watch your front doors! Everybody has them. They are called faces, masks, personalities because they are a persona: lipstick, powder and cosmetics – they give you a persona. You are not that. It is make-up.Revolution goes a little deeper, but only a little deeper. It changes your drawing room so you can invite people to sit there. In India it happens often… In India the drawing room is beautiful, but don’t go beyond it. People’s kitchens are so dirty and ugly, their bathrooms are almost impossible. But in India nobody takes care of the bathroom or the kitchen. Only the drawing room is taken care of; it is there where you meet your guests. This is false, it does not touch your real being, but it keeps your prestige. That’s what morality is: it is a beautiful drawing room. If you can afford it, you can also have a painting by Picasso in your drawing room. It depends on how much you can afford.Just the other day I was reading a small story:Charlie was taking his out-of-town pal, George, for a stroll through the city. They were admiring the scenery when George said, “Say, will you look at that good looking girl over there. She’s smiling at us. Know her?”“Yes, Betty – twenty dollars.”“And who is that brunette with her? Man, she’s really stacked!”“Dolores – forty dollars.”“Ah, but look what’s coming! That’s what I call really first-class.”“Gloria – eighty dollars.”“My God!” cried George. “Aren’t there any nice respectable girls in this town?”“Of course,” Charlie answered. “But you couldn’t afford their rates.”Morality goes only so far, beyond that it stumbles and disappears. Everyone has his price. The moral man has a price. Watch yourself: if you are walking on the street and you find one thousand rupees, maybe you won’t take them, but if you find ten thousand… You hesitate – to take or not to take? But if you find one hundred thousand rupees, there is no question, you take them. It shows how deep your morality is – one thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand; everybody has a price. One can only afford that much, beyond that, it is too much. Morality is not worth it. You would like to choose the immoral. The moral man is not totally moral. Only a few layers of him are moral, beyond that the immorality awaits. So you can drive any moral man into immorality very easily. The only question is that you have to find his price.I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin was traveling with a woman in a first-class compartment. They were alone. He introduced himself and said, “Would you like to sleep with me tonight?”The woman, who was really angry, replied, “What do you think I am? Are you mad? What do you think of me? I’m not a prostitute!”Mulla said, “I will give you ten thousand rupees.”The woman started smiling, she came close and held Mulla’s hand.Mulla said, “What about ten rupees?”The woman replied, “What do you think of me!”Mulla said, “I know who you are. Now we are haggling over the price.”It is always a question of “the price.” Ten rupees – and the woman is angry. Ten thousand rupees – the woman is willing. And don’t laugh at her, this is everybody’s situation. Morality does not transform you. It goes deeper than reform, it has a bigger price, but still, at the very core of your being, you remain the same.Reform is partial revolution. Revolution is outer revolution. Rebellion is inner revolution. Only when the inner has happened, is it dependable; otherwise it is not. Reform makes you hypocritical, revolution makes you schizophrenic. Only rebellion gives you your fullness of being, spontaneity, health, wholeness. Reform makes you respectable. If you are after respect, reform is enough. It gives you a plastic personality. From the outside you start looking beautiful. From the inside you are rotten and stinking, but nobody can smell your stinking being – the plastic protects you. Inside you go on becoming dirtier and dirtier, but on the outside you keep a good face.Revolution creates a split in you. It makes you a saint, but the sinner is repressed. The sinner has not been absorbed into the saint, the sinner has been cut off. Revolution makes you two people; it creates two worlds in you. The natural is repressed and the moral is on top of it. The top dog, the moral, tries to control the lower dog, the natural. Of course, the natural is very powerful because it is natural, so it takes revenge. It goes on sneaking into your life from the weaker points. It disrupts your morality, it creates guilt and you are in constant conflict because nobody is victorious.Your support, your intellectual support, is for the moral, but your whole being’s support is for the natural. The moral is in the conscious and the natural is in the unconscious. The conscious is very small and the unconscious is nine times stronger, nine times bigger than the conscious. But you only know the conscious, so in the conscious the morality goes on singing its song, and in the unconscious, which is nine times more powerful, all kinds of immoralities go on creating deeper roots in you. It makes you a saint and a sinner – the sinner is repressed and the sinner waits for his time, for the right time to erupt, for the right time to take revenge.That’s why people look so sad and so dissipated because all their energy is going down the drain in the conflict. There is continuous tension. The saint is very tense. He is always in anguish and always afraid – afraid of his own being that he has denied. And the denial is there. Sooner or later it throws the moralist, the egoist, the conscious pretender. It throws them – it throws the pretender. Hence, the saint is always on the verge of a kind of insanity. And you know… If you try to be a saint, you know that you are always on the verge. A small thing can change your whole balance, you can lose your sanity. Neurosis breeds and grows, if you are split.Rebellion is inner revolution.Rebellion starts from the “in”; reform starts from the “out.” Never start from the outside. Start from the innermost core. Start from your very being. Reform will tell you what to do. Revolution will tell you how to be – more saintly, of better character, of good qualities. Revolution will create a hard crust around you, an armor which protects you from the outside and from the inside too. A hard, steel armor – that’s what called “character.” A real man has no character. Jesus has no character. That was the problem, otherwise the Jews would not have been so against him. He was liquid; he had no character, he had no armor. He was open, vulnerable, defenseless because he was not a moralist. He was not a saint, he was a sage.Reform makes you a gentleman. Revolution makes you a saint. Rebellion makes you a sage. He was a sage. Whatsoever he did was not done because of a certain morality, but because of a certain understanding. Not because of rules given from the past, but because of a spontaneous awareness.Rebellion depends on awareness, revolution on character, reform on formalities. Start by being more aware, start from the innermost. Let the light spread from there, so your whole being can be full of light. There is no way to go from the outside. The only way is to come from the inside – just like a seed grows from the inside, sprouts from the inside and becomes a big tree. Let that be your inner work too – like a seed, grow.Reform is patchwork, a kind of whitewash – a little bit here, a little bit there, but the basic structure is not even touched. Reform can be for revolution or against revolution; it depends on you. There are two types of reformists: those who are preparing the ground for revolution or those who are trying to prevent the revolution. Reform gives you the feeling that things are getting better, so what is the need of creating a revolution? Why go to so much trouble? Reform gives hope and people stop. So it depends on you.A man of right understanding can also use reform, but a man who is not conscious will not be able to use reform as a process for revolution. On the contrary, reform will become a hindrance for revolution. So is the case with revolution.Revolution can be a door to rebellion, but only with awareness; otherwise it becomes a hindrance. One thinks, “Now that the revolution has happened, what is the need to go any deeper? It is already too much.” So reform can either be a hindrance or a help. So is the case with revolution. It all depends on your awareness, it all depends on your understanding – how much you understand life.So let this become one of the most fundamental rules of life and work: that everything ultimately depends on understanding – how you understand. Even something which is going to become a great help can become a hindrance, if understanding is missing. Sometimes even that which was poisonous can be changed into something medicinal with understanding. All medicines are made of poisons. They don’t kill, they help people to remain healthy. In the right hands even poison becomes medicine; in the wrong hands even medicine may prove to be a poison. Revolution is a change of the structure – bodily, social, outer, economic, political – and man is not disturbed at all. It can be against rebellion or for rebellion. Out of one hundred, ninety-nine cases are against rebellion. That’s why communism is so very much against religion, it is not accidental.Communism feels that religion is the real enemy. Why? – because religion goes far deeper than communism can ever go. That is the jealousy and that is the problem. If there is no religion, communism seems to be the ultimate revolution. Then there is nothing higher. But if there is religion, communism seems to be just so-so, lukewarm – it is not much to brag about. Communism wants to kill religion utterly, destroy all religions from the earth. They have done it in Russia, they are doing it in China. They are even doing it in Tibet, which was one of the most religious countries. It had one of the longest living religions – the most alive, the purest – the spring had not yet become dirty and polluted. Now they are destroying that too. Communism is very much afraid of religion because communism can see the point: religion goes deeper and it changes man from his very inner core. Only when the new man is born, is a new society really born.We have tried all sorts of things. We have created ladies and gentlemen and they didn’t prove to be much. We have changed societies, we have tried utopias – they have all failed. Reform has failed, revolution has failed. Rebellion has never been tried on a large scale. Whenever it has been tried on a small scale, it has always succeeded. With Buddha it succeeded and thousands of people went through a rebellion and became new. With Jesus it succeeded, with Lao Tzu it succeeded, with Krishna it succeeded. There has always been success with rebellion, but very few people… It has never been on a large scale. It has never gripped the soul of humanity. And that is where work is needed now.The greater part of humanity has to be given the vision of awareness, rebellion. Only then can man really become human. Man is only human for the name’s sake. He is not yet human because those humane qualities which make a man human are missing, are lacking. They are not there. There is no compassion, there is no love, there is no meditation. There is no prayer, no gratitude and no celebration. In short, God is not present. Man is an empty temple: God is missing. God will continue to be missing unless your seed dissolves and you start sprouting into God. God is your growth.Remember, God cannot be found somewhere outside – not in the Himalayas, not in Jerusalem, not in a monastery. God has to be evolved in you, God has to be your growth. It is not an object outside that you are going to meet some day. Unless you become it, you will never meet it. Only by becoming it, will you meet it. That is Jesus’ whole message.Reform brings new ideas, revolution brings a new structure to support those new ideas. Rebellion brings a new consciousness, a new man, a new being to support those structures. Start from the very foundation. Let rebellion be the foundation and then make the structure of revolution. On top of that, let there be a dome of reform – not otherwise or the whole process will be topsy-turvy.The basic thing is to understand the whole situation – how has man been doing up to now? What has gone wrong? Why is there so much suffering? Why do we always start from the wrong end and never reach the real core of the problem? Understanding is missing, awareness is missing. You are living in a kind of unconsciousness – Jesus calls it sleep. Bring more awareness to yourself.It will be difficult because everyone else around you is fast asleep. If you start awakening, you will find difficulties arising because those people who are asleep will not like it. It is a disturbance for them. They are having sweet dreams and you suddenly become awake. You create a kind of disturbance. Not only that – once you are awake, you start shaking people to wake them up because you feel: “These poor people are missing the real joy of life. The sun is rising and the flowers are dancing in the breeze and the birds are singing.” You start waking up and shaking people around you – particularly people you love, you feel for, you care for.You would like them to share this joy, this morning that is all around. They are deep in sleep, in a slumber, snoring, not aware of what is happening all around them. But they are having their dreams. Maybe someone is earning great amounts of money, or someone is almost reaching to the highest position – one promotion more. Or someone is fighting for the presidential election and you wake them up? They will feel angry. Naturally, because they don’t know any other reality than their dreams. Their dreams are their reality and things were going well and here you come and disturb everything. Nobody will like you.Nobody likes a man who is alert and aware. That’s why Jesus was crucified. He would have been crucified anywhere. Don’t blame the Jews. He was such a rebellious man that he himself is responsible for being crucified, not the Jews. He would have been crucified by someone else. Wherever he was he would have been crucified.Nobody is ready to accept that much awareness. That much awareness is disturbing. That much awareness hurts. The man of awareness stands there and makes you feel guilty because in comparison to him you are just a dark night. You hate him because without him everything was good and there was no comparison. You were thinking that you were full of life – now here he comes… In his presence you are reduced to being just a dark night and nothing else. In his presence you are a beggar. Here comes the emperor, the Son of God. In his presence you feel ugly.The natural logic is that it is him who is making you ugly. When he wasn’t there, you had never thought about your ugliness. Now he haunts you. Now he creates trouble for you. Now you have to search for this beauty. You will have to go into many things. “Now, this is unnecessary.” It looks unnecessary. “Better destroy this man, better destroy this criterion.” Once the criterion is no longer there, nobody can prove that you are empty, impotent, a beggar; nobody can prove that you are ugly; nobody can prove that you have anything missing. Destroy Jesus and relapse back into your sleep. That’s what the Jews did. But I would like to tell you again: that’s what would have happened anywhere. Jesus was too much. Yes, I say that even in India Jesus would have been crucified.A question may arise in you: Buddha was not crucified, Mahavira was not crucified, so why Jesus? Yes, I say that still Jesus would have been crucified. Jesus brings a new message. Buddha is silent: his message is only for those who come to him, those who come to seek and search. He does not go to the masses, he is not active. His rebellion is a presence. Jesus goes to the masses, Jesus is very active.Buddha’s rebellion is inactive, passive. Jesus’ rebellion is very active and that is the problem. Mahavira’s rebellion is also very passive, so is Lao Tzu’s. These are people who are utterly at ease, silent in themselves, happy with themselves. If somebody comes and partakes of their being, good and if nobody comes, they are not going to invite them. Jesus drags you into awareness, he hits you hard. He comes searching for you whether you are ready or not. He says to his disciples: “Go and stand on the tops of the houses and shout because people are deaf. You will have to shout. Give the good message, the good news, that I have come. Shout it from the housetops!”Buddha cannot say that. Lao Tzu – not at all. It was even difficult to find where Lao Tzu was, people had to search for him for months at a time. Once he came to know that somebody was searching for him, he would escape, he would remove himself from one village and go to another. He would create all kinds of problems. He would allow only those who were really seekers, who were ready to sacrifice their all.With Jesus it is just the opposite – he haunts you, he goes searching for you. He says that he is like a shepherd who comes home in the night, counts his sheep, finds that one is missing, leaves the ninety-nine there in the dark night and in danger. And goes with a lamp to search for the one which is lost in the jungle, in the dark night – shouting, calling, searching. Yes, Jesus is like that. He is a revolutionary rebel.Buddha is rebellion, pure rebellion. His message is silent. Those who understand, they will understand. Those who don’t understand, they need not worry, they can ignore him. He allows people to ignore him. Jesus does not allow people to ignore him. He shouts. He pokes his fingers into people’s eyes. His compassion is great. He is a surgeon. With Buddha you may have a little bit of medicine. Jesus is a surgeon, he operates and of course the operation hurts.The Jews are not responsible, they should be forgiven. Anybody – Hindus, Chinese, Tibetans – would have killed this man. This man was asking for it. He brings a new breeze into religion: active, action. Rebellion also becomes revolution.I was reading a parable, a beautiful parable. Meditate over it; it’s a parable of G. William Jones: The Innovator.It had been a long, long time since such a crime had been committed and, as punishment, the Innovator would receive a sentence which had not been heard of for a long, long time – not since the days of the great-great-greats. It was a sentence at once so terrible and horrifying in its aspect that the High Court and the C.D.’s felt that it justly fit the nauseous and perverse crime of innovation. The punishment was to be expulsion from the Dome!The citizens lined both sides of the street, their expression a mixture of hatred and awe as their eyes followed the progress of the Innovator, escorted by a cordon of C.D.’s toward the Lox. Gamblers in the crowd were busily making book on how long it would take the Innovator to die once he was outside the Dome, and on whether it would be death from Fallout, Poison gas, or perhaps even from a Wild beast. There was no doubt that he would soon die (for imbedded deep in the mind of each citizen was the truism that no human life could possibly exist outside the protection of the Dome – that beloved plastic canopy erected by their great-great-great-grandfathers, which stretched over the city from limit to limit, cuddling it in a benevolent, airtight grip). The only question was how long would death take to come and in what form.Some of the sadists in the crowd had scraped through the thick crust of dirt on the Dome wall near the Lox so that they could see the Outside, and were selling places at these peepholes for a nice sum.The C.D.’s and their prisoner had arrived at the Lox. The crowd retreated now in a minor panic for fear that some poisonous fume might enter the Dome when the Lox was opened. The mechanism was still good, although it had been unused for all these generations. At the press of a button from the Chief, the thick transparent door of the Lox swung jerkily open. The Innovator, with a last mournful look over his shoulder, was pushed rather roughly into the small compartment. The door was then shut, and the citizens held their collective breath as the Chief touched the next button. The outer door swung open with a great hissing into that unhealthy green Outside.At his first breath of the Outside’s air, the Innovator fell headlong, coughing, doubled up with a giant convulsion. The C.D.’s nodded their heads, pleased, and there was a clamor almost like a cheer that arose from those at the peepholes as they watched him and their wristwatches to determine the exact second of his last gasp.But then the terrible thing happened. The Innovator slowly raised his head from the dust and, with the beginnings of a smile of great joy upon his face, filled his lungs deeply. His eyes grew wide. He sat up, and they could see his chest bulging with gulp after gulp of that alien air. The people were so startled that they cried aloud when he suddenly jumped from a sitting position straight up, coming down in the first steps of a wild dance.“It must have hit his brain first,” said one spectator, his nose flattened against the Dome wall.The Innovator stopped his dance abruptly as he turned to see the faces peering out at him. He smiled at them – a broad, toothy smile with no malice in it at all. He even opened his arms wide to them, making a beckoning gesture!At this point, many of those watching him could take no more, and turned away to go back to their homes, shuddering with a nausea of fear.After making many gestures of well-being to those amazed and still uncomprehending faces, the Innovator snapped his fingers and stooped to pick up a stick. With it, he wrote in large letters upon the ground: “Come on out – the air is fine!”One after another shocked faces left the peepholes, not to return.Again he wrote in the dirt, this time with more urgency: “It is fresh air – not poison.”Still more left.This time, almost frantic to make himself understood, he wrote: “You don’t need the Dome anymore. You can live Outside! It is better out here!”With this, every face disappeared from the clear places in the grimy walls, and the Innovator was left alone in the Outside with his brilliant sun, its fresh and moving air, its trees and plants three times the size of those inside the Dome, and its birds and animals.The newspapers the next morning carried grisly stories of the Innovator’s immediate death outside the Lox. The city fathers decided in an emergency session that the interior of the Dome should be painted opaquely to a height of twenty feet all around. And those watchers who could not be scared into abject secrecy were interned in the asylum, where talk of living outside the Dome could be taken for what it was – the raving of a lunatic.A beautiful parable. This is the situation of humanity. Down the ages this has been so: man has lived in a man-created dome of beliefs, ideas, dogmas. Your churches, your temples, your scriptures are just plastic domes. They are protecting you from nature. They are not helping you to go to God, they are preventing you from going. When a man like Jesus comes, he is The Innovator. He starts talking about strange things which exist outside the domes. He talks about fresh air and green trees, the birds and their songs and the sun and the clouds – he talks about a thousand and one things. You have lived in a plastic dome and you have never been out of it. You have never been out of a church, out of a temple. You have never been out of the trap of the priests and the politicians. He comes and starts saying things which are wild – things which appeal and have a great appeal. Things which are magnetic, things which provoke and challenge. But they are things that you have not heard for ages. You become angry. You become angry because this man thinks you are all fools.That’s why people go on asking Jesus again and again, “Do you think you are far wiser than our father Abraham? Do you think you are more knowing than our old prophets? Do you think that you have brought truth for the first time?” People believe they have always had truth and that it is in their possession. They have nothing in their possession. So whenever a man of truth comes, a rebellion comes into the world, innovation comes into the world. And the people crush such a man.We have to create a world where innovators can be more easily accepted, where innovators are not only accepted but welcomed – because it is these innovators who help you to go higher and higher in your consciousness. They are the steps toward godliness.Now the sutras:And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple…He was visiting the Great Temple of the Jews. Whenever he went to the temple he was always sad and angry because things were always wrong there. The temple had become a trading place. The temple was no longer a temple, it was dominated by businessmen. God was sold there and of course God cannot be sold. So only a false god can be sold. The temple was no longer a shrine for prayer, it was no longer a place to meditate. It was no longer a place where one connected with God. It was dominated by the priests and they were dominated by their vested interests. Whenever Jesus went to the temple, he would always leave angry and sad. Once he became so angry that he threw all the money-changers out of the temple. He shouted at them and said, “What have you done to my Father’s house? It has become a den of robbers!”This story also starts:And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple, and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple.But he was not interested in seeing the buildings because the God that at some time used to live there had departed. It was a ruin. The soul had left the body, it was a corpse.And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things?“And you still call this a temple? Don’t you see all the things that are happening here?” It is politics, it is no longer religion. It is reformist, it is no longer rebellious. It does not transform people, it consoles them. It does not hit people awake, it goes on singing lullabies so they can fall asleep easier. Remember this: many times you go to a religious person not to be awakened but to be helped, consoled. You go begging for a lullaby, you go begging for a tranquilizer. A tranquilizer cannot help you to awaken. Yes, it may help you to be less uncomfortable in this uncomfortable world; to be less insecure in this insecure world; to be less anxious, less tense. Yes, it can help you relax a little bit, but that is not going to change you or transform you. In fact, the transformation comes only when you become utterly tense, when anxiety comes to its peak – only then, and then only is there a revolution, a radical change.The priest goes on consoling you and the priests are very cunning, very inventive in creating consoling theories. For centuries in India they have been consoling the poor. “You are poor because you did wrong things in your past lives.” This is a consolation. People are not poor because they have done wrong in their past lives. People are poor because they are being exploited. Now the priests are in the hands of the exploiters – naturally, because they have the power, they are the power-holders.The priests live on the crusts that are thrown from the rich people’s tables. They have to help the masters. Down the ages they have been teaching poor people: “You are in a bad shape because of your bad karma and people are rich because of their good karma. Rich people are rich because they have been saintly in their past lives; poor people are poor because they have been sinners.” Now this is a very tricky thing – great strategy, great politics in it. If you look at the rich people, they seem to be the sinners. They are! Exploiting, cheating, deceiving.The poor people, who are innocent in a way, are not doing any harm to anybody. They are “the sinners of the past.” This does not seem logical, because if a man has been a sinner for so many lives, he will be a sinner in this life too. More is the possibility of him being a sinner than being an ordinary, innocent, poor person. If people have been great saints in their past lives, they cannot be black marketeers – that will not be logical. They cannot go on exploiting people; their sainthood will not allow it.The situation is just the reverse, but the ideology helps console. The poor person no longer feels the wounds. The priest has poured ointment on the wounds. He has said, “There is nothing to be worried about. Nobody else is responsible. You have done something wrong in your past lives.” He gives the explanation and the explanation helps the poor person. He can find an explanation, he can find the cause – and he himself is responsible. Now nothing can be done, one has to go through it silently.That’s why there has never been a revolution in India. It is because of the priests. How can there be a revolution if you are responsible? The only thing is to go on doing good things – whatsoever you can do. The poor man cannot afford much, but whatsoever he can do he should go on doing. He can go to the Ganges once in his life to take a bath or he can contribute a little something to the temple of the village. Once in his lifetime, he can have some ritual arranged. That’s all that he can do. He can wait for the next life. In the next life he will be happy, he will live in a palace and he will enjoy all kinds of good things. So it is only a question of a little patience. The priest has been teaching patience to people, consolation, giving explanations so that they know why they are poor – and hiding the real facts.The temple has become the citadel of all that is wrong and Jesus always felt it whenever he went there. He would see the things that were going on there. He could not believe why people were not aware, why they could not see.See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another…“This temple has to be destroyed! This so-called religion has to be destroyed. This religion of the priests and the politicians has to be utterly effaced from the earth.”Verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.He is angry. You will not find such anger in Buddha. That’s why Buddha was saved from crucifixion. Even when he talks, he talks in a great philosophical way. When he says things, he does not say them in a raging voice, in anger; he is very polite. Buddha’s message is like classical music – silent, beautiful, but it has no revolution in it. Jesus’ message is a slogan. It is not a coincidence and it is not an accident that all the great revolutionaries come from Jesus’ tradition. They come from the West not the East. Revolutionaries are missing in the East. The East has known great sages, but not revolutionaries. All the great revolutions and all the great revolutionary ideas have come from the West. The foundation of the West is Jesus’ ideology, his approach toward reality.You will be surprised to know that even communism comes from Christianity, not from Hinduism, not from Jainism, not from Buddhism. Communism is an off-shoot of Christianity. However much they are against it – it doesn’t matter. A son can go against his father, that does not make him no longer a son and does not make him less of a son. He remains the son. Marx, Freud and Kropotkin, Tolstoy, Ruskin and Thoreau all come from the same seed, from the same approach toward life – it is Jesus’ approach. Jesus is an off-shoot of the Jewish approach. That also has to be understood.In India or China, nothing like the Jewish prophets have ever existed – no, never. You cannot find a man like John the Baptist in India. The great prophets of the Jews were all full of revolution, they were all hot, burning fires. Prophets have never existed in India; saints, yes, sages, yes – but not prophets. When somebody calls Mahavira a prophet, he is not right. When somebody calls Buddha a prophet, it looks simply absurd. Buddha is not a prophet. He has no prophecy for the future, he does not bring revolution. He brings a new consciousness, his own consciousness. He makes it available, but he does not shout. He does not say that the temple should be burned or that the temple should fall, or even that not one single stone shall remain upon another. Jesus has the quality of a Jewish prophet. He was a disciple of John the Baptist. John the Baptist was killed just like Jesus, he was beheaded.The Judaic tradition has also given birth to other revolutionaries. Marx was a Jew, so was Sigmund Freud. Whether it is sociology, economics, psychology or even physics, the revolution comes from the Jews. Albert Einstein was a Jew. There is some element in the Jewish consciousness that makes them revolutionary. Just think of human history without three Jews – Jesus, Marx and Freud – and there will be no revolution. People will be patient, people will suffer, people will accept everything. People will go on dragging and finding explanations from the priests. This has to be noted, because this is specific to Jesus.And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.Verily I say unto you,Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.Because his words are not his words, that’s why they …shall not pass away. His words are God’s words. He is just a vehicle, a medium. He is simply saying what God wants to say. But God has no mouth to speak with – he uses our mouths. God has no eyes to see with – he uses our eyes. God has no legs to walk with – he uses our legs. God uses Jesus as a medium. That’s why Jesus says: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. “This temple is going to be destroyed and is going to be demolished to the very ground because it has gone against the very spirit of being a temple. It is no longer a temple, it is no longer religious.”This happens again and again. Now the Vatican and the Pope are no longer religious. They are in the same situation as this temple which Jesus left. Again the same thing has happened. It has always happened. The temple sooner or later becomes a robbers’ den because the temple attracts innocent people. There is a logical necessity to why it happens. The temple attracts innocent people. Once the innocent people start coming, the clever and cunning people also start coming. Because wherever the innocent are, there is a possibility to exploit them. Jesus attracts the innocent.Once the innocent are there, all the cunning people around will see the point. When Jesus was alive they couldn’t come – his presence was the prevention. Once Jesus was gone, the cunning people started infiltrating. They came and started mixing with the sheep – but they are wolves, although they may have been hiding under sheepskins. Sooner or later they will come out on top because they are cunning. Innocent people are not interested in being on top. Only those who are cunning come for that. Once they are on top, they become priests, rabbis, shankaracharyas, popes. Then they start dominating the whole thing and the quality changes.A temple is a temple only while Jesus was alive. Once Jesus was gone, it was very difficult for the temple to remain a temple. Because Jesus would gather the innocent people, he would gather so many sheep. While he was there he would protect them, once he was gone, the wolves started coming. Wolves only come when they see that there are many sheep and the shepherd is missing. This was their chance – their life’s chance. Now the same thing has happened in the Vatican, the same thing has happened in Puri, the same thing has happened at the Kaaba. The same thing has been happening down the ages. Remember it, because the same thing could happen here. You will have to be very, very mindful.So I don’t want you just to be innocent. Be innocent, but don’t be foolish. Be innocent, but don’t be childish. Be innocent, but let your innocence be illuminated by awareness. Then this cannot happen. Your awareness will make you aware if something goes wrong, otherwise this will happen. Anyone who is cunning enough will start manipulating you. Keep alert. The temple has been made again and again and has been polluted again and again. But man has changed very much down the ages. Maybe now it is possible. Maybe now the time has come – the time for the idea to become a reality.Verily I say unto you,Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.Watch therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.Jesus says that there is no point in going to the temple – the rituals, the rabbi and the scripture. The only thing that you need to enter is watchfulness. Watch therefore… “This temple is going to fall. Don’t go in, otherwise you will also be crushed. Escape from it, it is already falling. I can see what is going to happen to it. Its soul has already left it. It is no longer glued together. They are just stones upon stones without any glue holding them together. The religion is not there. It is a miracle how this temple is still standing. It is going to fall any moment. A small wind and it may fall; a little rain and it may fall. Any excuse is needed and it may fall. Escape from it and let watchfulness be your temple.”Watch therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. The watchfulness has to be for twenty-four hours. You cannot afford to be watchful for just a few minutes, once a day – in the morning you meditate and then you forget. That won’t help because nobody knows when God will knock at your door. And if you are not watchful, you will not recognize him and you will miss. Only in immense awareness can God be recognized.But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.The watchfulness has two purposes. One is: if you are not watchful, you will not recognize God when he comes and knocks on your door; you will miss him. The second purpose is: if you are not watchful, you won’t know when and how the thieves will enter and rob you. To make it clear, Jesus is saying, “Be watchful so that the priest cannot enter inside you – he is the thief. When a christ knocks on your door, you recognize him.”For one real master in the world there are ninety-nine false ones. If you are not watchful, those ninety-nine are going to rob you. One never knows when the real one is coming. You may encounter him, but if you are not very alert you will miss him because only alertness can become a bridge between you and the real master.Therefore be ye also ready…So the purposes are double. First: you should be ready so that no thief can rob you, nobody can exploit you. Second: you should be ready so that when the real one comes you can welcome him and he can become a guest and you can be the host. The moment you become a host to God, you have become the real temple. Jesus is saying, “That is the real temple, not these buildings.”Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season?Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.God has given you a purpose, God has given you a certain destiny. He has given you a certain work to do here on earth. If you are not aware, you will be found unworthy. God has given you a purpose. You may not be aware of the purpose at all. He wants something to be fulfilled through you. Maybe he wants you to sing a song that nobody else can sing except you. Maybe he wants you to have a dance that is possible only through you. Only through you can he give that dance to existence. Only through you can God have that dance – there is no other way. Maybe something else… But everybody comes here with a seed. It is just a seed and in the seed, you cannot see what flowers are going to blossom. But the seed is there and the flowers are waiting. Unless you have blossomed, you will not be able to show your face to your God, to your master.Only fulfilled, blossomed, can you offer yourself to him, can you bow down at his feet. Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Otherwise people are doing other things. God will come and find you doing something else for which you were not sent and not doing that for which you were sent. This is the only sin – not to do that which is intrinsic to you and to go on doing things which others have put upon you.There are many people who are putting their trips on you – avoid them. Your father wants to put a trip on you. He wants you to become the prime minister of the country. Your mother wants to put her trip on you. She wants you to become a great doctor and this or that. Your teachers are putting their trips on you and your friends and your society. Everybody is interested in you because they are interested in putting a trip on you.Nobody seems to be interested in you as yourself. If you can find a man who is interested in you as yourself – that is your master. That is the criterion, the definition of a master: one who is not putting any trip on you, who is simply interested in helping you to be whatsoever you can be. He is not driving you in any direction, but simply nurturing you, nourishing you, so that you can go in any direction that comes naturally to you. One who is not pruning you, who is simply putting fertilizers onto your roots, so if you want to grow to the north or to the south, or if you want to go high in the sky, or want to become a thick bush, you can become whatsoever you want to become. A master is just a benevolent presence, a nourishment. He does not guide you to be this or that, he simply helps you to be that which is hidden inside you.Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods.If you have fulfilled God’s desire that he has put in you – you, your being, will be transformed. You will no longer be a servant, you will become a master. You will no longer be a beggar, you will become an emperor. But you have to prove that you are capable of doing things. A target has been given to you, but that target has been put deep in your unconscious. You have to search for it, you have to dig for it, you have to discover it. It is not available there, it is invisible. It is beautiful that it is invisible. It makes you a seeker and a searcher, a discoverer. It gives you the challenge to explore, otherwise life would be very dull. Hence, God has put the purpose deep in your unconscious.You will have to dig like one digs a well. Layers and layers of mud… And for days and days you don’t see any sign of water. Many times you become tired, exhausted, desperate. Many times you are so frustrated you stop digging and you say, “It seems useless, futile. It seems there is no water here!” Many times in your spiritual journey this will come, but if you go on digging, one day you will see the first signs of water. The mud is no longer dry, it is wet – that wetness is called love.When you go on digging in your inner being and the mud becomes wet, you are receiving love. Love starts flowing. It is muddy in the beginning, it is full of many other things. But one goes on digging… The mud becomes less and less and more water will start flowing. One goes on digging… The mud disappears and fresh water will start flowing. One goes on digging, and one comes to the source, to the springs. Now you can take as much water as you want and your well will never be empty. You can go on sharing and the more you share the more you will be receiving.Jesus says, “Those who have will be given more and those who have not, even that which they have will be taken away from them.” So go on digging so that you can have more. The more you have, the more springs will be pouring water into you. The less you have, even that which you have will be taken away.Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods.But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming.And shall begin to smite his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken.The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of.But if you think there is no hurry… That’s what everybody in the world is thinking, “There’s no hurry, we’ll see about it later. Right now let us have more money, more sex, more houses, more cars. Right now let us indulge in the world. We will think about God tomorrow or the day after and then we will think about meditation and prayer. What is the hurry?”Sometimes, very old people come to me and say, “Yes, we would like to go into meditation, but the time hasn’t come yet.” Because even old people think that they are not old enough. Nobody ever thinks that he is going to die. That is one of the strange things of the human mind – the strangest because death is absolutely certain. Everybody is going to die; death makes no exceptions. So it is only a question of time – today or tomorrow or the day after – but everybody is going to die. Still people go on thinking that their death is far away, very far away. They have enough time yet to fool around. When they have fooled around and finished with their fooling, then they will meditate. But that day never comes. Even on their death bed, they continue with their old habits.A Jew was dying, and he opened his eyes and said, “Where is my eldest son?”The wife was sitting by his side and said, “Don’t be worried, he is just sitting on the left. Be quiet, relax and remember God because the doctors say you won’t survive the night.”He said, “Forget the doctors! Where is my other son?”“He is sitting,” the wife said, “near your feet.”“And where is my third son?”“He is also sitting on this side.”And the man started to get up and said, “Then who is looking after the shop?”Now the man is dying and asks, “Are all my three sons here?” His mind is still in the shop.About this man I have heard another story too:He was small and attending school. The teacher asked a question, she said, “One percent interest on one thousand pounds given for five years – how much will the interest be?”All the others started working, but this Manny Cohen, he was sitting there not doing anything. The teacher asked, “Why, Manny! Why are you not working on the question?”He said, “I am not interested in one percent.”Now this is the beginning and that is the end. In between the same thing will be there. People start foolishly – that’s okay, that’s understandable. How can one start wisely? But people end foolishly – that’s not easy to understand. The basic trick of the mind is: …My lord delayeth his coming. “That God is coming is true – but not today, so today we can enjoy ourselves. He’ll come tomorrow and then we’ll see.” The day after tomorrow – one goes on postponing. Postponement is the basic trick of the mind to avoid God, to avoid the essential, to avoid rebellion.Never postpone. If you want to postpone, postpone that which is wrong. Postpone anger for tomorrow, but not meditation. Postpone hatred for tomorrow, but not love. Postpone money for tomorrow, but not God. People go on doing just the opposite. Becoming angry, they can do right now. If somebody insults you, you don’t say, “Okay, I will think it over and you can come by at the end of the week. I will tell you what I think about the things you have said to me.” You immediately jump on him, you pounce on him – you don’t give him a single minute’s space.If someone loves you and opens his arms to welcome you, you shrink. You say, “I will think about it. Let me think it over.” You will brood over it, you will find a thousand and one reasons why not to fall into this trap. “What is this person’s motive? Why does he want to hug me? Maybe he is a pickpocket or something? Who loves anyone without a motive? There must be some motive. He must want to use me for something or other.” When love comes, you withdraw; when anger comes, you stick there stubbornly. Change this whole attitude. Don’t delay that which is good because good belongs to God. Delay that which is bad because the bad keeps you away from God. But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; And shall begin to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him…God always comes when you are unaware and he always comes as a surprise. God always comes suddenly, abruptly. He does not come as a chain of cause and effect, he comes out of the blue. Suddenly he is there and he surrounds you and drowns you completely. So unless you are alert – moment-to-moment alert – you will miss him. It may have been that God has come to you many times and you have missed because you were not aware. In fact, this is how it is. I know that God comes to you many times.I have seen him surrounding many of you, but you are completely unaware. He is just by your side, ready to accept you, but you are not there, you are absent. He surrounds you like a cloud, but you are not there. There is just emptiness, so no meeting is possible. You are never at home because you are never aware. You are somewhere else. Your body is in one place, your mind is somewhere else. Let your body and mind be together, let your whole being be in the moment. That’s what awareness is all about – the presence of now and here.The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of.And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.But there is misery and there will be more misery. You live in misery and you continue to live in it because God is bliss and there is no other bliss. Unless you live in God, you live in misery. Yes …there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And facing God, your whole being will be that of a hypocrite; you will be false, pseudo. You have become accustomed, so accustomed to your personality that you will carry your personality in front of God too. God can be met only when you are nude – utterly nude, nothing to hide, no secrets to keep – when you are just an openness. God can be met only when in that openness there is nothing but one taste – the taste of awareness and presence. Jesus’ whole message is that of awareness.Enough for today.

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I Say Unto You Vol 2 01-09Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 2 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Are there different levels of hedonism? I suspect: “Eat, drink and be merry” means different things to different people.Yes, there are two levels of hedonism and they are almost polar opposites of each other. Because of it, much misunderstanding has prevailed down the ages. The lower hedonism is of the body and the higher hedonism is of the soul. They both speak the same language: eat, drink and be merry. They both propound the same philosophy of life: live in the moment, don’t think of the morrow. They both want that one should not be worried about the past and should not be concerned about the future. This moment is enough unto itself.Their language is the same, their proposal is the same, yet they are diametrically opposite. To the first level of hedonism – the material, the physical, the outer hedonism – belong the philosophies of Charvaka in India and Epicurus in Greece. To the second philosophy, the spiritual hedonism, belong all the great masters: Buddha, Krishna, Christ, Zarathustra.Where do they differ? Where do they become diametrically opposite? If you live only as a physical being, you will remain unaware of the non-physical dimension that is continuously penetrating you. You will only know the visible and the invisible will remain unknown to you. The invisible is far bigger, far more essential. The visible is just a covering, it is just a shell around the invisible. It is there to protect the invisible. The body is the shrine of the soul.If you live only in the body and you only take care of the body and let the physical sensations dominate you, you will never become aware of the non-physical dimension, the divine dimension. If you are utterly lost in the body – as you would be if you think “Eat, drink and be merry” is the goal – you would be living at a very superficial level. It is as if you have been given the Bible and you go on looking at the cover. You start worshipping the cover and you never open the book and go inside, so you never see what is there. The cover could be beautiful; it could be leather bound, printed in gold, maybe the top is diamond studded. It could be beautiful and it could be very precious, but still it is nothing compared to that which is inside the book.Your body is only a cover. It is beautiful, it is precious, but it is carrying something far more precious inside it. The man who thinks of “Eat, drink and be merry” in the physical sense, is a man who receives a letter and worships the envelope and forgets the message. The message is important. What a message you are carrying inside you! What a destiny you are carrying inside you!The second level of hedonism is not against the body, it is for the soul. It also lives in the moment, but when the first hedonist is eating, he is only concerned with the food. When the second hedonist is eating, he is more concerned with the awareness of the taste of the food. That is where they differ. When the first hedonist goes for a walk, he looks around – the trees, the birds, the people, the dewdrops, the morning sun – but he does not look at who is looking at all these things. When the second hedonist goes for a morning walk, he enjoys the birds, the trees, the people, the sun, the sky, but he also goes on enjoying the one who is enjoying it all. He remains aware.The first hedonist lives an unconscious life, the second hedonist lives a very conscious life. The second hedonist gets all that the first is getting, plus… The first hedonist gets only the bodily sensations and he goes on missing the real life because he lives in the body. There are people who are against the first hedonist and who think they are spiritual. They are not. That’s a logical fallacy.Because the first goes on living in the body, there are people who logically think, “We have to be against the body, only then can we enter into the second realm of our being. Only then can we attain to happiness, to heaven, to bliss.” Because the first is missing – and the first is missing because he is overly obsessed with the body – the second, this so-called spiritualist, becomes obsessed at being against the body. This is not a real spiritualist. The real spiritualist is a hedonist. Let me repeat it: “He is not against the body, he is for the soul.”So now there are three kinds of people: the ordinary hedonist who lives in the body, the real hedonist who lives in the soul and naturally lives in the body too. Between these two is the spiritualist, the so-called spiritualist – the ascetic who fights with the body, who destroys the body, who is against the body and who tortures it. He thinks that in torturing his body he will attain to the soul; he cannot. The first goes on missing, but the second – the false spiritualist – misses even more. So if you have a choice, I would say it is better to be a physical hedonist than to be an anti-physical spiritualist because at least you will be enjoying the body and the physical part of God will remain available to you.To the spiritualist, even that is not available. He is completely blind. But if you really want to enjoy life, you have to choose the second kind of hedonism, the spiritual hedonism, the divine hedonism. The second is already available to the first if he starts becoming a little alert. It is not available to the false spiritualist. He is closed to both kinds of hedonism. The physical hedonist can rise to the higher hedonism because he has to grow in the same way but deeper. He has to dig a little deeper into his being. So if you have to choose between Epicurus and Mahatma Gandhi, choose Epicurus. But if you have to choose between Epicurus, Buddha or Jesus, choose Jesus or Buddha.Never become a so-called saint. He will fall from grace. He misses the body, how can he attain to the soul? The body has to be used as a stepping-stone. The body has to become a staircase. It has to become a boat to the other shore. Use the body.I am a hedonist. My whole teaching is to love the body, use the body, go into the body as deeply as you can. Be sensitive to its feelings, be available to its wisdom, its joys, but don’t be confined there. There is much more in your life. That is just a beginning. Use the body as a springboard. The secret is the same. So the secret can be used on the second, higher, level too. Be in the present. Live moment to moment. Don’t allow the past to interfere and don’t allow the future to cloud your vision. Let the present moment be crystal clear. Enter into it with the body, with the soul. Enter into it as a unity of the body and the soul. Enter into it not as body or as soul, but as a unity. There are these two kinds of hedonism. The higher contains the lower. The lower cannot contain the higher. I teach you the higher hedonism.The second question:Osho,What does one do about unrequited love? What does one do about unrequited love that seems to live on and on like a wound that never heals? How is it that a man can go on loving one woman year after year believing, in spite of the pain, that one day she will find a place for him in her heart? Am I a fool to believe? I think that I am a fool and yet I continue to believe. Am I creating this situation? Or is this situation creating me?First, you are not really in love with love. That’s why you have become stuck on a particular woman. A real lover never gets stuck anywhere. His offering is to love, not to persons. He loves beauty, not the roseflower, not the lotus flower. He loves beauty wherever it is. He does not get confused, he does not think that the container is the content. You have got confused. You are not a real lover. You have not really loved. In fact, you are avoiding love in the name of that woman. This is a beautiful trick to escape from love.What can you do? You loved a woman and she never responded to you, so what can you do? Now you can only go on playing with your wound. You are a masochist. I will not say that you are a fool, you are not. You are a masochist, a clever masochist, an intelligent masochist. You are arranging your torture through the name of love, in the name of love. You are playing the game of being a martyr. You are enjoying this crucifixion.You loved a woman; there is no necessity for the woman to love you. Your love is not enough to make it a surety. Love is a two-way street, it is not one-way. But down the ages, poets, novelists, people who go on playing with imagination, have been talking about love as if when you love a person, that person has to love you. The only condition that you have to fulfill is that you should really love. Even then, there is no need for the other to love you. The other has freedom, the other is a living soul. If the other has to love you just because you love, where is his freedom? Where is his soul or her soul? You are not leaving the other any freedom. If the other does not want you, does not like you, if the other is not turned on by you, you can go on loving and nothing is going to happen.Your love is not enough. In fact, the more you try, the more the other will back away from you because the other will become more and more afraid of you. You are dangerous. Even before love has happened between you, you are not allowing any freedom. What will you do when love starts happening? – you will suffocate the woman or the man. You will surround her in such a way that it will become a prison. Even right now she has not responded, but you are waiting. You are thinking and hoping that because you love her, she will love you. Why? There is no must in it, there is no inevitability in it. Just the reverse will be the case.The more you chase her, the more you will make her afraid of you and the more she will escape from you. You are dangerous. The paradox is that the more she distances herself from you, the more you will fantasize about her.A real woman very soon loses all her charm. So is the case with a real man because with reality the fiction cannot be continued for long. All relationships settle down by and by – the honeymoon is only short. If you really get the woman, within seven days, fifteen days, three weeks, things will start settling. The fiction, the poetry and the fantasy will start disappearing. The real woman and the real man will come back to earth.You cannot go on moving in the clouds for long. With gravitation, the other’s reality will pull you back. So when you respond to love, it is soon finished. When love remains unrequited, it can continue for your whole life because there is no way for it to be finished. You can go on playing in your imagination – games, fantasies, dreams…The person who has asked the question is an author, Musin. He must be imaginative, poetic. He must be able to create fictions. He cannot lose this woman because she is giving him great fictions. And she will go on giving them to him. The only condition is that she should not respond to your love, then the love can continue forever. In that way Majnu was fortunate because he could never get Laila. The really unfortunate people are those who can get their Lailas. Once you get your Laila or your Majnu, things are finished.A man went to visit a madhouse. In one room a man was beating his head, crying. Large tears were flowing down his cheeks and he was holding a small picture very lovingly to his chest.The visitor asked the superintendent, “What has happened to this man?”The superintendent said: “You see the picture that he is holding? He holds it day and night. That is the woman he wanted, he had loved, but could not get. Hence, he went mad. He cries and sings songs to her and goes on thinking of her. It’s his whole life. The whole world has disappeared, only the woman… He talks – he talks from his side and the woman’s side and the dialogue continues.”They went to another room and another man was beating his head and throwing himself against the wall.The visitor asked, “What has happened to this man?”The superintendent said, “This is the man who got that woman. Since he got her, he has gone mad.”You can go on living in your dreams and you will think that you are a great lover, think about how much you are sacrificing. But you are simply a masochist. This can be done only by a masochist who wants to torture himself. Now you have found a good excuse to torture yourself. I cannot appreciate this. I have no appreciation for any pathology, whatsoever the excuse. This is pathological. You offered yourself, the woman rejected you – it is finished. There are millions of women in the world. Why are you wasting your life? If you want to waste it that’s another thing, but then don’t befool yourself that it is because of love. Love is just an excuse, you really want to waste your life. You are afraid of love. You are depending on that woman. You don’t want to approach another. One woman or one man does not mean anything.If you are hungry, you will eat anything even if the food that you want is not available – won’t you? If you are thirsty, you will drink even if Coca-Cola is not available – plain Pune water will do! If you are thirsty, you will drink, you will not say, “I will die because I only drink Coca-Cola. I love Coca-Cola!” No, you will drink because you are thirsty. You are hungry so you will eat. If you are really hungry for love, what does it matter if one woman has rejected you? There is no need to feel lost because there are millions of women. But one woman has rejected you.There are a few things involved in this. First, your ego is hurt – as if you have some power over people. Just because you love, it doesn’t mean that somebody else has to love you. You can offer yourself, but the other has to decide. You can take the initiative, but if the woman does not like you, it does not mean that you are a nobody. It simply means something didn’t fit between the two of you. It is good that the woman rejected you.If she had agreed to be with you out of politeness, or respect, or out of compassion, you would have been in far more trouble. Because compassion can never become love and politeness is hypocrisy. If she had not liked you and decided to be with you for some other motive, you would have been in far more trouble and anguish. There would never have been that harmony that happens between two people who are in love with each other. She would always have been the compassionate one, the sympathizer; she would have felt for your misery.That’s what you are doing; that’s what people go on doing. They go on crying when a woman or a man refuses them. They go on making themselves miserable in the hope that their misery will create compassion in the other. Misery can create compassion and that is dangerous because compassion is never love. You cannot be fulfilled by compassion because the one who is showing compassion remains the higher one. You remain a beggar. The woman gives to you, but there will be no passion in it. When compassion comes, passion disappears. There will be no thrill in the woman’s heart, she will never feel ecstatic. She will always feel obliged and she will remain insensitive because her heart will not open to you. She will pretend, she will do whatsoever is needed. She will fulfill the duty, but duty is not love.Love is ecstasy, duty is dull.She will not dance – because of you. She may become a good housekeeper, she may take care of your children. She may look after you and she may be a good caretaker, but these things won’t fulfill her. It is good that the woman wasn’t compassionate toward you. You are asking for compassion, that’s why you won’t allow the wound to heal. Once the wound is healed, nobody will be compassionate toward you. You won’t get down from your cross. You hang there and you go on shouting, “Look how much I am suffering! Come!” You are trying to create a situation so that in her heart she starts feeling guilty, feeling that it is she who is responsible for all your suffering. That’s why you cannot allow the wound to heal. This is not love.First – this is the ego. Second – this is the fear of love. You are afraid to knock at another door because you have been rejected once and you are afraid that you may be rejected again. You are hesitant, so you knock on the same door and your knocking will only create the feeling of nausea in the woman. You will be a nuisance. She doesn’t love you, so you will become more and more of a nuisance.Forget about her and forgive her. This is your life – don’t waste it. This life is precious – don’t let it go down the drain. Love can still flower. If it has not happened with A, it can happen with B, it can happen with C. The real thing is the flowering of love. With whom it happens is irrelevant. But people become too obsessed with small things. “It should happen only with this woman who has black hair.” What is wrong with blonde or brunette? “It should happen only with this woman who has such a long nose.” These are obsessions. Foolish! You get too involved with the details and you go on missing the real point.The real point is that love should happen. Once it starts happening and your heart starts flowing, it is even possible that the woman may become interested in you. Because people only become interested in other people who are happy, who are flowing, who are blossoming. If you start blossoming, there is a possibility… I only say a possibility, I am not saying with certainty, otherwise you can even try to make that happen. If you start blossoming, the woman may start thinking about you again. She may start feeling that she missed an opportunity, she may start feeling that there is still time. She may start thinking, “How to make it possible again?” She may start knocking on your door.It is possible only when you are happy. Now you are a wound. Nobody loves a wound. Remember, if somebody loves a wound, beware of them – they are neurotic. Escape, because if the person loves the wound, he will never allow the wound to heal. He will create bigger wounds in you because he loves wounds. There are people who love wounds because when somebody is wounded, they are always above, higher, greater, better.A man – he was one of my students at University – told me that he would like to marry a widow. In India that is a problem. Nobody wants to marry a widow. So there are people who think that to marry a widow is a great sacrifice.I said, “You can marry her, but once you have married her, she will not be a widow. Then what will you do? The whole charm will disappear because the charm is in her being a widow.”He laughed – he thought I was joking. He got married. After six months he said: “You were right. I’m no longer interested in her. My interest was basically in her widowhood. I wanted to show to the public that I am a great servant of the people and that I am serving people even through my love. I am sacrificing my love for a widow. I am going against society, I am going against the tradition. I am doing something great. But now the marriage has happened and the widow has come here; now there is no point.”I said, “Do one thing. Commit suicide. She will be a widow again and somebody else will have a chance to serve her again. If you are really a public servant, do this.” Since then I have not seen him.Don’t go on playing with your wound. This continuous fingering of a wound will not allow it to heal. I think the woman you were in love with has some sense. She will not look at you. Who wants to look at a wound? Be happy, become a flower – blossom. Let her feel jealous. Let her feel that she missed an opportunity of finding such a beautiful man. Let your song burst forth, then there is a possibility she may come to you. Whether she comes or not is not the point. You are not here only to love that woman. This is a vast world, with millions of beautiful people all around. Why get so obsessed with one person?A real lover is never obsessed with individuals, his devotion is toward love itself. He worships the god of love. People come and go, people change; the god of love remains the same.You have asked: “What does one do about unrequited love?” One forgets about it and forgives the person. One does not make much fuss about it. “What does one do about unrequited love that seems to live on and on like a wound that never heals?” You are not allowing it to heal. The only way for it to heal is for you to fall in love with somebody else. Only love heals because only love is a healing energy. Love is therapy.Fall in love and it will be healed. But you have a lot of investment in the wound. You don’t want it to heal, that’s why you won’t fall in love with somebody else. This wound has become your prestige. This is your ego trip. You think it is love; it is nothing, it is an ego trip. You are feeling offended. You have to show this woman, even if you have to die, but you will show this woman. You will die crying for her and then she will be miserable for you and she will feel guilty about you. These are your hopes.You don’t love this woman at all, otherwise you wouldn’t think of making her guilty. If you really love her, you would like her to be happy. You would simply disappear from her world and you would help her to forget you. You would become non-existent – at least for her – so that she can live her life without any interference from you. But that would heal your wound and you would no longer be a martyr, you would not be such a “great lover.”You are not interested in love, you are interested in being a “great lover” – that is the ego trip. “What does one do about unrequited love that seems to live on and on like a wound that never heals?” It is simple. You like a certain food and you haven’t had that food today, but if you haven’t eaten anything else, naturally you would become ill. Hunger would grow. Tomorrow you would be hungrier, the day after tomorrow you would be starving. You go on asking, “What is one to do? When one cannot get the food of one’s own choice, what is one to do?” The second choice, the third choice – whatsoever is available.One never knows because each person is carrying such divinity in him or in her, that one never knows. If you fall in love with another woman, you may start thanking God. “It was good that the first woman had rejected me. If she had not rejected me then I would not have been able to find this woman.”This is my observation of thousands of people. Once you look backward you will be surprised, everything fits perfectly. The first woman denied you and the second woman accepted you and you can feel happy. If the first had accepted, the second would not have been possible. The second deserted you and the third became possible and you are happier. Otherwise the third would not have been possible.Just a few days ago, a sannyasin said to me, “I have lived with this woman for three months and they were so beautiful. I have never known such moments. Now she is deserting me. What should I do?” I said to him, “Help her to desert you because three months ago you were clinging to another woman. I remember it perfectly well. At that time you were saying, ‘If this woman leaves me I will commit suicide. I cannot live without her.’ After just three months you had forgotten about that woman. You have not committed suicide. On the contrary, you are saying that this woman has been your greatest experience in life! Now she is deserting you, help her.” Why get so obsessed with personalities? Remain in love. Let your love be fluid. Don’t let your love become stale and solid and dead. Millions of flowers will blossom in your being. Don’t go on weeping for just one flower that didn’t bloom.“How is it that a man can go on loving one woman year after year…?” Yes, if you don’t get the woman, you can go on year after year, life after life. You are living in fiction, you are living in fantasy, you are living in your dreams. You go on creating the woman – who is not the real woman. The beauty that you give to the woman is given by you. That woman is just a fiction. You can go on living with your fiction. Real women are difficult, as real men are. You are alone and it is your fiction; you can paint it any way you want. Your woman will never become old, the real woman becomes old.Now, Musin’s woman will never become old. He will become old, but his woman will always remain young. She will never become ugly, he will become ugly. He will become old, ill, death will come and she will always remain fresh, like dewdrops in the morning, always fresh, always young, always beautiful.Your woman will never stink, she will not perspire either. She will not throw her panties around the bathroom. It is your woman, a fiction. She will not nag you, she will not fight with you, she will not be jealous. You can do whatsoever you want, she will not hinder you. She will never get in your way and she will always allow you total freedom. Now, no real woman can do that, so one gets fed up with a real woman, one gets fed up with a real man. With the unreal, there is no problem. So you are in a non-problematic relationship. You can enjoy it forever.But this is not a relationship, this is neurosis. It is like a madman who is talking with somebody who is not there. You will go on talking to your woman and you will go on doing things for her and you will go on hoping. Your life will be slipping through your hands. Be a little more alert. It is your life. You owe yourself some joy, some celebration. The real celebration is always in reality. It cannot be only in dreams.“How is it that a man can go on loving one woman year after year believing, in spite of the pain, that one day she will find a place for him in her heart?” You can believe it. If you remain hungry and don’t eat anything, you will have to believe that the food that you demand will descend from heaven. “One day it is going to happen, I am sacrificing so much. A little more, a little more – I will sacrifice myself completely and then it will happen. How can my sacrifice be in vain?” This is your logic. But you can go on starving – the food is not going to come from heaven. If you want to seek food, you will have to accept the food that is available. Nourish yourself. Start moving and maybe the food that you want may become available to you. But starving, dying in a coma, no energy to move and just hoping that something will happen is a deception. You are deceiving yourself.Deceptions can be very beautiful, artistic, aesthetic, but still they are deceptions. Love the real. It is through reality that one grows. Beware of dreams and their power over you. They can take away the whole opportunity, they can destroy the whole opportunity.“Am I a fool to believe? I think that I am a fool and yet I continue to believe. Am I creating this situation?” Certainly, you are creating this situation. The woman may have forgotten about you. The woman may not be a part in it at all. She may not remember you at all. It is you who is creating the whole situation for yourself. And naturally… “Or is this situation creating me?” It works both ways. First you create the situation and then the situation creates you. You create the situation and the situation creates you. It is a vicious circle. You get more and more into the mire of it, entrapped, entangled and it becomes very difficult to get out of. You will need great courage to get out of it. You will need to jump out of it. It will not be gradual, you will just have to escape out of it. Fall into anybody’s arms just to get out of it.Every person is beautiful, you just have to love the person and the beauty starts flowing. Ordinarily, people think that they have fallen in love because the person is beautiful. Just the contrary is the case: you see the person as beautiful because you have fallen in love. If somebody asks, “Why have you fallen in love with this man, or this woman?” You say, “She is beautiful, that’s why.” That is not true. The truth is just the opposite. You have fallen in love; hence, she looks beautiful. Love creates beauty.Start falling in love again. I don’t think that you are a fool. You are too clever, too wise. If you are a fool, you will fall in love easily because only fools fall in love. Wise people never do such things. You are wise – you tried once and now you are finished for your whole life. Be a little more foolish. Try it once again. I don’t see that one has to go on being a failure forever. Remember, if you succeed in love, only then will you be able to go beyond love.One has to go beyond love. But one can only go beyond when one has gone through it. You are struggling below love. It is far better to move into love and struggle there. One grows out of authentic, real experiences of love. One goes beyond and a totally different kind of awareness arises. It is not that it is unloving, but it is no longer a longing for love. It is a state of love; one shares one’s being. It is no longer relationship, it is your state. You are love, not loving.So these are the three things. Firstly, you are in the dark night of the soul, you are in a very unloving space. The second thing is – be in a loving space. A loving space creates anxiety; it is conflict, it is struggle because a real person enters your life. There is a clash and an overlapping of the boundaries. All kinds of diplomacies and politics enter and strategies to dominate, to possess. There is a great war.Lovers are intimate enemies. Only out of that experience does one grow to the third state: one becomes absolutely independent. Now there is no need for love. One can live alone and one can live alone as happily as one can live in relationship. Now there is no difference. There is no hankering. A different quality of love arises in your being. You start sharing it.Musin, you are struggling at the lowest point. Try to get out of it. Don’t wait for a miracle. Miracles don’t happen.The third question:Osho,Why are you so against logic?Because it is logical to be against logic. Logic proves nothing, that’s why I am against it. It only pretends to prove; it proves nothing. It is an empty game, verbal. But the pretension is such that millions of people are befooled by it and down the ages we have been trained for logic, so it has an appeal. But logic has never proved anything. Proof comes only through experience, never through logic. Logic can help to explain your experience. No experience is ever derived out of logic. Yes, logic can be a servant. When you have attained to a certain experience, logic can help to explain it, logic can help to make it clear. Logic is secondary. So, the first thing – logic proves nothing.Reporter: “They say the moon is made of green cheese. Is this correct?”Spaceman: “We didn’t find any cheese on the moon.”Reporter – laughing: “Perhaps all the moon mice have eaten it.”Spaceman: “We didn’t find any mice on the moon either.”Reporter: “What do you expect with all the cheese gone?”Now this is how logic goes on moving; it is circular.A famous Sufi story:Mulla Nasruddin was seen by some people in the marketplace throwing seeds around. From his bag he would take a fistful of seeds and throw them. So a crowd gathered, and they asked, “What are you doing, Mulla?”He replied, “These seeds are miraculous. If you throw them, no lion, no tiger, no elephant, no snakes or no wild animals will ever come around.”They laughed and they said, “Mulla, there are no wild animals, no elephants, no tigers, no lions, no snakes here!”Mulla said, “See! They work! They are a miracle, they have miraculous powers. They are not here because of the seeds.”Logic is only a good game for small children to play. But a few people remain childish even when they have become old. They may be university professors, but they go on playing the game. It is a good game, an intelligent game like chess, but a game all the same.Firstly, logic never proves anything. Secondly, logic can prove anything – this way or that way, for or against. Logic is a whore! It has no grounds of its own. You can bribe logic and it will be with you. Your enemy can bribe logic and it will be with the enemy.A certain French general named Guillard, who lived in the time of King Louis XV and was renowned for his gallantry toward women, said on one occasion that there was no such thing as an ugly woman. His remark was overheard by a lady whose face was disfigured by a squashed nose and who thereupon accosted him with the words, “Confess, General, you are now face-to-face with a really ugly woman.”“Not at all, madame,” replied the general. “You are like all women, an angel fallen from heaven. You merely had the misfortune to fall on your nose.”Logic cannot prove anything, that’s why it can prove anything. Logic has no truth in it. Logic is empty of truth. Truth is attained only by existential experience. I am against logic because logic is impotent. I would like you to go beyond logic. That is the whole meaning of the word that Jesus uses: faith. It does not mean belief. It means trust in existence not belief in dogmas. Faith simply means that you are finished with logic. The day you are finished with logic, you are finished with doubt too because logic is a support to doubt. Doubt and logic are in a mutual conspiracy: a doubter becomes a logician, a logician remains a doubter. They go together. Once logic is dropped, all the props for the doubt disappear and doubt falls to the ground. When you are free of doubt, you are in faith. Faith transforms. Trust transfigures. The sooner you can get out of logic and doubt, the better. A man is religious only when he has known the game of logic and is finished with it.The fourth question:Osho,How many religions are there in India?It is difficult to say. There are as many religions in India as there are Indians. Everybody has his own religion here. Religion is basically individual, it is not organizational. So when you talk about Christianity, it is one thing. When you talk about Hinduism, it is quite another. Christianity is a church, an organized religion. Hinduism is a chaos. It has nothing like the Vatican’s Pope, it has nothing like an authority. It is very chaotic, it has freedom. People are allowed to live their own way, people are allowed to worship in their own way. There is nobody to dominate, it is a democracy.Christianity is dictatorial, so is Islam. Hinduism is basically democratic. You can go and worship in the temple of Shiva, it is there for you. You can go and worship in the temple of Rama, it is there for you. You can go and worship in the temple of Krishna, it is there for you. The man who worships in the temple of Krishna is a Hindu and the man who worships in the temple of Rama is also a Hindu. Both are as opposed to each other as Christians are opposed to Muslims – or even more. But that does not make any difference, they are both Hindus.Hinduism has a kind of freedom. It does not decide what your prayer should be. It has no official prayer like Christianity. It has no hierarchy – the bishop and the archbishop, etcetera; it knows nothing of that. It is an individual phenomenon. So it is very difficult to say how many religions there are in India. Each one is free to worship in its own way. In that way, it is difficult because it is almost chaotic. If you want to find a system it will be difficult. Thousands of philosophies are available for people to choose from, millions of alternatives. All kinds of ideas are in the market. You can choose any or you can make your own. Choosing something from here, something from there, you can make your own mixture. Hinduism is not one-dimensional, it is multi-dimensional. In one way it gives freedom, in another way it creates indiscipline. In one way it is democratic and beautiful, in another way it has no order, no system. Everything seems to be confused and unclear and vague.I have heard…When Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister, she went to Israel. She was talking with Golda Meir – Golda Meir was Prime Minister of Israel in those days. The women were talking and chit-chatting about their countries.Indira Gandhi said, “You don’t know my troubles. Six hundred million people! You don’t know Indians. It is a chaos!”Golda Meir laughed and said, “That’s nothing! You don’t know my people. Although the number is very small – only three million people – it is far more difficult to rule three million Jews.”Indira looked surprised. She said, “What are you saying? Six hundred million people… You have only three million people and you say it is difficult to rule over three million people?”Golda Meir said, “Yes, because they are no ordinary people. They are three million prime ministers!”It may be so in politics, but in religion, in India, you have six hundred million masters – enlightened masters – six hundred million! Everybody knows! Everybody has his own creed, everybody has his own ideas and philosophy. For ten thousand years India has done nothing but philosophize. It has gone into the blood and the bones. It is not so easy, as it is about other countries, to say how many religions there are in India.I have heard…A Pakistani went home to visit his family and his old father said to him, “Are they good people in Britain, my son? Do they have religion in Britain?”“Oh, yes, indeed, father mine,” said the Pakistani. “They have three religions: the Church of England, the Church of Rome, and Bingo.”“What is this Bingo?” asked the old man.“Well, father mine, the people go to the Bingo church every evening. The high priest stands before them calling out the holy numbers which the congregation mark off their prayer-cards. Then one of the faithful rushes to his feet and calls out ‘Bingo!’ and all the people say, ‘Jesus Christ!’”Now it is simple if you are talking about Britain – they have three religions!The fifth question:Osho,Of what value are the cathartic therapies – the reliving of one's traumatic moments or acting out of fears etc.? Isn't insight enough? Or bliss methods, such as Sufi Dance?Insight is enough, but how to get the insight? It is hidden in a lot of rubbish. The diamond is there, but it is hidden under a lot of debris, dirt. The dirt has to be removed, only then will the diamond be available and the insight become available. The therapies do the spade work. If insight were available directly, it would be very easy. You could become blissful at any moment. But you are layers upon layers of repression.You have repressed your fear and you have repressed your anger. You have repressed your love and you have repressed your sex. You have repressed so many things. The insight is there, but the layers of repression have to be thrown out. The cathartic therapies help, but they will not produce your insight, they will only clear the way. They will only make the insight available to you. The insight is there. Everybody has brought it with them, that’s why we call it insight.Have you observed these words: insight, intuition, instinct, intelligence? They all carry the word in. It is there, built-in, but so much has gathered around it. The rosebush is there, but hidden behind the weeds. The weeds have to be uprooted. They have to be uprooted very skillfully because there is every danger that you may uproot the rosebush. There are many weeds and the rosebush is just one. You need to be helped.The therapy group is a situation in which you can be helped to sort out what is a weed and what is a rosebush. Slowly, slowly, the rosebushes have to be protected and the weeds have to be uprooted. It has to be done very skillfully because the roots of the weeds are entangled with the roots of the rose. If you are not careful you may destroy the rose itself. The insight is there; it has to be uncovered.You ask: “Of what value are the cathartic therapies…?” Catharsis simply means throwing out that which should be thrown out, throwing out that which should not be kept in. Now, in ordinary life it is difficult. You cannot throw your anger anywhere and everywhere. You will get into so many difficulties. It will be very costly and dangerous too. You need a special situation where you can throw your anger out, where anger is accepted. A group is an artificial situation where everything is accepted.If you become angry, the group will not be repressive. On the contrary, the group will help you, will provoke you to be angry. It will bring out all your violence and aggression. It will accept it – welcomes it even. That gives you an opportunity and confidence that here you are not rejected, that here there are no expectations. Nobody expects that you should not be angry or this and that. Whatsoever you are, you are given total freedom to be that. A group is an artificial situation. Society cannot allow that.Once your anger has started bubbling up, you will be surprised how much you have been carrying. How much poison has been in your system. Only when this poison has gone and the smoke has disappeared, will you be able to find methods of insight and bliss like Sufi Dancing. If a man who is angry participates in Sufi Dancing, his dance will have anger in it. You can watch – you can watch people and you can see their dances have different qualities.Somebody’s dance is a kind of rage: anger is filtering through his dance, through his gestures. Somebody’s dance has grace to it, love is flowing, a kind of elegance. Somebody else’s dance has compassion in it. Somebody else’s dance has ecstasy in it. Somebody else’s dance is just stale and dull. He is just making empty gestures, there is nobody behind them – it is mechanical. Watch. Why these differences? – because they are carrying different layers of repression. When you dance, your anger will dance if it is there. Where can it go? The more you dance, the more it will dance. If you are full of love, when you start dancing your love will start overflowing – it will dance all around you, all over the space. Your dance is going to be your dance, it will contain all that you contain. If you are sexually repressed, your dance will contain that.Many Indians have written to me because it has become a problem for them to participate in Sufi Dancing. One Indian sannyasin, a very honest man, has written a letter. He was participating in the dance. Three days later, he wrote, “I am feeling very guilty because I became sexually aroused. Whenever I have gone to Sufi Dancing, I have become sexually aroused. I feel very guilty.” He was asking for forgiveness. “Osho, forgive me.” He became so afraid that he stopped dancing.Now a whole life of repression… He may never have been able to hold the hands of any woman except his wife, and that too only in the night when everybody is fast asleep. He may not have been able to move with such a dancing energy of women or men. It is very natural; there is no need to feel any guilt. It is just a whole life of repression. This man who became sexually aroused in Sufi Dancing – is he going to feel any insight in it? He will feel great guilt and he will not feel spiritual at all. He will feel sexual and he will be in a turmoil. He will be very confused. His whole being will be like a volcano. He may start trembling and he may become afraid that he may do something. That’s what he has written to me: “I cannot participate in Sufi Dancing any more because I may do something. I may not be able to control myself. I become so aroused.”This is bound to happen. If you are sexually repressed, then sex will bubble up when you dance. So you cannot go directly, you have to go through catharsis. Only then can blissful methods be of help.Cathartic methods are modern inventions. In Buddha’s time they were not as necessary as they are now because people were not so repressed. People were natural, people lived primitive lives – uncivilized, spontaneous lives. So vipassana – vipassana means insight – was given by Buddha directly to the people. But now you cannot go to vipassana directly. The teachers who go on teaching vipassana directly don’t belong to this century; they are two thousand years behind. Yes, sometimes they may help one or two people out of one hundred, but that can’t do very much. I am introducing cathartic methods so that first, what civilization has done to you can be undone, so you can become primitive again. From that primitiveness, from that primal innocence, insight can become easily available. Then bliss methods work – never before that.The sixth question:Osho,Why are the Jews hated everywhere in the world?The Jews are hated everywhere because they are clever, intelligent. Nobody likes clever, intelligent people. One feels inferior, hence, the hatred.Adolf Hitler must have felt very inferior to the Jews. He was. He was almost idiotic, imbecilic. But he must have felt this inferiority tremendously. Jews have a certain intelligence and because of that intelligence they have become rich fast. Put them in any situation and sooner or later they will be on top. How can you avoid hating them? They simply go directly to the top; they don’t wait. Particularly about money, they are the cleverest people in the world. For a certain reason… After Jesus’ crucifixion, they lost all power, all political power. Christianity became politically powerful. There was no way for the Jews to be politically powerful, so their whole mind turned to the second power – money. They became focused on money.These are the only two worldly powers: politics or money. Because they were not in the majority, they could not be politically powerful, so naturally their whole intelligence was channeled toward money. It was the only way for them to become powerful. With money, many things follow. With money comes more education, with money comes more literature, more music, more drama, more art. With money comes more intelligence. So down the ages they have been hoarding money and money on its own creates more possibilities to be intelligent, to be clever.When you are more intelligent, you earn more money and it goes so on and so forth. People who have money are hated because ninety-nine percent of people don’t have any money; they are very jealous. Poor people hate the rich and if they could get an opportunity they would kill them. Whenever they would have the opportunity, they would kill – they would find any excuse.Jews are hated because they have immense power over money and money gives them power over other things – even power over politicians. Money is such a strange power… It goes on creating more power, so they are hated. They have turned the whole world into a market. They reduce everything to a commodity, they reduce everything to a certain market value. That too creates a little hatred because if everything is reduced to money, if everything is reduced to the market and everything becomes a commodity, it creates an ugly world. Then there is no higher value. Then there is nothing more important than money. Everything is reduced to money. That, too, creates hatred.So poor people hate them and rich people also hate them. Money has a very low value – powerful, immensely powerful – but a lower value and Jews think that nothing more valuable exists. They have learned through experience that if they have money, only then can they survive. So wherever they are they are hated. They are hated because they are clever. Of course, their cleverness turned in a wrong direction, it became money-oriented. The whole Judaic tradition fell slowly, slowly and became very worldly. It lost the spiritual dimension. So the very word Jew has a wrong association. Jews can only be free from this hatred of the world if they start looking for higher values than money.I have heard…The local synagogue was holding a raffle. The winner of the third prize stood delightedly as the curtain was raised to show a gleaming Cadillac. The winner of the second prize held his breath as the curtain was raised – to reveal a sponge cake.“A sponge cake?” he said angrily. “The third prize was a Cadillac. How can the second prize be a stupid sponge cake?”“But this sponge cake is special,” said the master of ceremonies. “You see, it was baked by the rabbi’s wife with her own lily-white hands.”“Fuck the rabbi’s wife!” yelled the man.“Shut up!” said the M.C. “That’s the first prize.”Now the mind, which reduces everything to a commodity, is bound to be hated. But Jews are intelligent people. There is no doubt about it – one of the most intelligent races on the earth, otherwise they would not have survived. They have survived with no political power and with enemies all around and everywhere. They have been on the cross for two thousand years since Jesus’ death. They have suffered too much. For one man’s crucifixion it is enough punishment – more than enough. They have lived in a Christian world, hated from every side. But because they were hated and they were always in danger and they were always helpless, that too has helped them to have a higher intelligence.Always remember – if your life is in danger, you have to be intelligent. You cannot afford non-intelligence, otherwise you will be gone. So in a way, the very challenge, the very danger, has helped them and they have been continuously polishing their intelligence. It is not just an accident that more Nobel Prizes go to the Jews than to anyone else. And their number is small; it is out of all proportion. This century’s greatest thinkers are three: Marx, Freud and Einstein – they all belong to the Jews. The greatest revolutionaries have come from them. They are small in number, but the situation has helped them. They had to fight, struggle, survive and they could not fall asleep, they could not rust away. Their intelligence has been going higher and if it released toward God it will bring a great revolution in the world.I am very happy that fifty percent – more than fifty percent – of my sannyasins are Jews. What I am saying appeals only to very intelligent people. Stupid people won’t be attracted to me – only very intelligent people can understand what I am saying. But they have been hated, that is true. That hatred can be dropped only when the Jews start changing. There are a few things that they can do. One is that they accept Jesus back home. If they can welcome Jesus back home, almost ninety percent of the hatred will disappear. Jesus is theirs – more theirs than the Christians. Jesus was born a Jew, died a Jew. He was the greatest Jew ever born. He was not a Christian.If the Jews can accept Jesus back home, that will change the whole climate in the world. If the Jews can put their energies – as they have put them into money – if they can put their energies into meditation, they will become the greatest meditators on the earth. They can herald a new era.The seventh question:Osho,I met a man ten years ago on a train in Japan. Then I met the same man in Afghanistan on a bus. And two days ago I met the same man again on a plane coming to Pune. Is it just coincidence, or is there some hidden significance in it?It is because our lives are so meaningless, that we go on finding any excuse for any kind of significance. Our lives have no significance, so we go on hoping that there must be some significance in anything. Man cannot live without significance. Significance is inner nourishment. Because we don’t create any significance in our lives – because we are not creative – we don’t create God in our being, we remain empty. To be empty hurts, hurts like hell. One goes to an astrologer or a palmist and one shows the hand, maybe there is some significance in the stars, or in the lines of the hand or in the birth chart. And one starts desperately seeking and searching everywhere. Anything that can give you a feeling that yes, you are significant, that something special is happening to you, you pounce upon. That’s why astrology lives, palmistry lives, the I Ching lives. People go on looking into these things. That’s why psychoanalysis has become so significant.Your life has no meaning, maybe your dreams have meaning? Go to the psychoanalyst, he will show you great meanings in your stupid dreams. You cannot find them, but he will find them. He will manage it; he will show you what your dreams mean. You will feel very, very grateful and you will feel very happy that your dreams have significance. People go on hankering for significance.One thing to be remembered: this hankering is not bad, but let it become creative. Don’t search for any meaning in accidental things. There is none. It is just accidental that you met somebody on the train and again on the plane, and again on the bus – it is just accidental. This world is a small world and becoming smaller and smaller every day. It is nothing to brag about or to brood about, but it shows something: life is empty, utterly empty. You would like to find some indication from somewhere – anything.Just the other day a sannyasin has written that she saw Teertha in her dream. “Now what is the significance? There must be some significance,” she thinks. Ninety-nine percent of dreams are just rubbish, just fragments of thoughts that you go on gathering during the whole day. In the dream those fragments go on moving in your mind. In the morning when you remember those fragments, you start looking for significance. You have to find some significance. Now the woman thinks it is a message that she should do the Encounter group because she has seen Teertha. Or is there some other meaning hidden in it? Life has no hidden meaning, life has obvious meaning, unhidden. From the very beginning there is nothing hidden. Just that you are not aware, so you cannot see it. When you are not aware, you still hanker for it, so you go on imagining.Each and every thing can become precious because you want something to be precious in your life. There is nothing much in it. This world is becoming a small village. Now here you can find people from all over the world. It is no longer the old world; the distances have gone. You can go around the world within twenty-four hours. You can reach any place within a day, within hours. But what I see in it is a great desire for significance. That is good, but you are looking in the wrong direction.Create some meaning. Dance the dance that you were born to dance. Sing the song that you are carrying in your heart. Be yourself and there will be significance. You will not need to go to any astrologer or palmist or tarot reader, or things like that. There will be no need – you will have significance. But significance never comes passively. It comes only when you are creative. Do something.I am not saying that significance is only there when you are very famous – when you become a Picasso then there is significance, no. You can paint a small picture for your child and if your child is happy there is significance. You can paint a picture for your husband. If he likes it, that’s enough. Or you can even paint a picture just for your own joy, and if you like it, or you like it while you are painting it – you have become absorbed in it – there is significance. Significance comes when you create beauty, whenever you create truth, whenever you create good: satyam, shivam, sunderam. These three things create significance: beauty, good, truth. Be true and there will be significance.But you remain untrue and you go to the astrologer to find significance. Become beautiful. Beautify your being, let grace surround you and there will be no need to go to any tarot reader. You will know that you are significant. You will find a blissfulness continuously surrounding you and you will not feel that you are here unnecessarily. You will not think for a single moment that you are accidental. You will know that God’s hand is behind you because he is breathing life in you.The English words is and am come from a Sanskrit root asmi. Asmi means: breath-life. Your isness, your amness, your being is nothing but God’s breath in you. But we have not recognized it, so we search desperately in every nook and corner for meaning. Stop this search. This happened only as a coincidence. Don’t be worried about it. Meditate over this story. This will show you that the world is really very small.A flea phoned up a rental agency asking for accommodation and the agent said, “Oh, yes, we have a very nice vacancy available, just come in.” But it turned out to be a Pole’s armpit and after a few days the flea phoned the agency again and said, “I really can’t stand it – the noise, the smell, the crowded conditions – could you give me something nicer? Something really posh?”So the agent said, “Well, yes, we do have something – just come in – it’s Omar Sharif’s mustache.”“Lovely,” said the flea. “I’ll take it.” But after a week he phoned the agency again and said, “Sorry, but I really must find some other place. All the oysters and champagne are really getting to be too much, not to mention the incessant pulling, stroking and scratching. It’s really not livable.”“Very well,” said the agent. “I do have one vacancy now – very exclusive, very cozy and very expensive – it’s Raquel Welch’s pubes.”“I’ll take it,” said the flea. The agent heard no more until a month later when the phone rang and it was the flea.“What’s the matter?” asked the agent. “Don’t tell me you don’t like Raquel Welch’s pubes either?”“Oh, yes, I liked it fine,” said the flea. “But I’m back in Omar Sharif’s mustache!”Enough for today.

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I Say Unto You Vol 2 01-09Category: JESUS

I Say Unto You Vol 2 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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John 14Jesus said unto his disciples: Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me.In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; how can we know the way?Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also; from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you.Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more, but ye see me, because I live, ye shall live also.At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father; for my Father is greater than I.Man’s evolution is from innocence to innocence. The first innocence is ignorant, the second innocence is luminous. The first innocence is a kind of sleep and the second innocence is an awakening. The first innocence is a gift of God. The second innocence is man’s own effort, his earning, his work upon himself. The first can be lost, the second cannot be lost. The first has to go – in the very nature of it, it cannot be eternal. The second, once it comes, remains forever – it is eternal. Remember, whatsoever you attain consciously, only that can you possess, only that. Whatsoever is given to you, and you receive unconsciously, will be taken away. Only that which you work hard for really happens to you. Only that which you create in your being belongs to you. You become master of it.The first innocence in Christian terms is called Adam, and the second is called Christ. Jesus is just in between the two. Jesus is the bridge between the first innocence and the second innocence. Hindus call the second innocence “rebirth”: one becomes twice-born, dwij. And that’s what Jesus said to one of the famous professors and theologians of his time, Nicodemus: “Unless you are born again, you will not attain to the Kingdom of God.” Unless you are born again… The first birth has happened, the second birth has to happen. The first has happened without cooperation, the second cannot happen without your cooperation. The first birth was almost like an accident – it happened to you unawares. The second birth can only happen in immense consciousness; it cannot happen unawares, it can happen only in deep meditation.Jesus is a bridge between Adam and Christ. That’s why the story of the virgin birth has a metaphoric meaning. Jesus is born innocent. Everybody is born innocent – there is no other way to be born. Every child is born in innocence. But that innocence is lost sooner or later and the more intelligent the child, the sooner it will be lost. If the child is stupid, imbecilic, idiotic, it may go on lingering for a long time; it may not be lost. If you are intelligent, you will start moving away from it. You will start exploring the world. You will start adventuring into the world, into the unknown; you will become a wanderer.The more intelligent you are, the greater is the possibility that you will not follow the crowd, you will find your own way – you would like to do your “own thing.” You will not move on the superhighway, you will move on small footpaths into the jungle. Because intelligence wants to take risks. Intelligence wants to dare, intelligence wants to go into the unknown and the dangerous because it is only in danger that intelligence comes to its peak. It is only when you dare that your intelligence becomes a crystallization. It is only when you risk that you are. The more you risk, the more you are. Risk brings being. A man who never risks remains without a being.George Gurdjieff used to say that not everyone has a soul. Because you have never dared, how can you get a soul? The soul comes only through daring. The only right way to attain a soul is to go into dangers, to risk all, to be a gambler, to go into the dark unknown.The first innocence is going to go, has to go. It is good that it has to go. If it continued, you wouldn’t really be a man; you would be a vegetable or a cow or a buffalo, but you would not be a man. That is where man is different from the whole of nature. Nature lives in the first innocence and only man is capable of losing it. It is a great dignity, it is glory – only man is capable of sin, no other animal commits sin. You cannot call a dog a sinner, you cannot call a lion a sinner and you cannot call a tree a sinner. Only man can sin and because man can sin, only he can go beyond sin. Only man can go astray – that means only man can come back home.Except for man, all the animals, birds and trees still exist in the Garden of Eden – they never left it. That’s why nature has such beauty, such peace, such silence. The Himalayas still exist in the Garden of Eden. So does the rosebush in your garden and so do the birds that come in the morning and sing songs around you. Nature is still there – it never left home, it never went astray, it never committed anything against God, it never disobeyed. It never dared and it is completely satisfied with the first birth. To be satisfied with the first birth is to remain unconscious. It is only through sin that you become conscious. It is only by going wrong that consciousness arises. This has to be understood.So going wrong is not really going wrong because only through it does consciousness arise. All has to be lost. One has to come to the point where all is lost, God is lost, heaven is lost – one cannot believe in paradise and one cannot believe that innocence is possible. Only from that peak of frustration, anguish and anxiety is there a possibility of a one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn.Adam is perfectly at ease, so is Christ. The problem is with Jesus. Jesus is troubled. Zen people are right when they say that for a man who has never heard of meditation, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. He is happy, he is in a kind of natural state. He has no anxiety because God has not yet become a challenge to him. He has no future goals, he has no destination. He eats, drinks and is happy – the first hedonism I was talking about the other day: “Eat, drink and be merry.” He lives in the body, he is the body; he knows nothing more than that. With the body there is a kind of peace and health that surrounds him.You can always see that happiness around a child. The child is the first kind of hedonist. He believes only in eating, drinking and being merry. He simply lives the moment. He is completely abandoned in the moment: no anxiety, no clouds yet – his sky is clear.For the people who have not heard of meditation and enlightenment, of nirvana and God, who have never pondered over these great problems, things are clean; they are not confused. “Mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.” But once a man has become interested in meditation, in growth, in spirituality, in the other shore and in the other reality, problems will bubble up in their thousands. Problems will crowd in on him. Mountains are no longer mountains now and rivers are no longer rivers. Everything will become confused, everything will become topsy-turvy. Man will go into chaos. The old cosmos, the old innocence, simply falls to pieces; not even a trace is left. This is the meaning of the Christian parable of Adam’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden. He became interested in higher things, he became interested in knowing things.He ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, he started becoming more conscious. He started trying to understand what this reality is. He moved into knowing and suddenly the doors of the garden were closed to him. Suddenly he found himself outside the garden and he didn’t know how to get back inside. He had to go farther and farther away. This is what people of Zen say: “Mountains are no longer mountains, rivers are no longer rivers. One has to go on a long journey. Tedious is the journey, full of miseries and nightmares. It is a wandering in a desert where oases are only dreams; they exist not. And then after a long, long journey – it may continue for many, many lives – one can come back. This time, coming back has a totally different meaning. Now one comes as a knowing consciousness. One is again innocent, but this innocence is no longer ignorant, it is luminous, it is full of light.” This is Jesus turning into Christ.Adam found himself outside the garden. Jesus wandered in the world. One day, Christ suddenly found himself back in the garden. Adam, Jesus, and Christ – these are the three stages of human consciousness. Adam is absolutely unconscious. Jesus is half-conscious, half-unconscious – hence the conflict, the confusion, the division, the tension. Christ is absolute consciousness.Before we enter into the sutras, this has to be understood because these sutras belong to the last night of Jesus’ earthly life – the departing message to his disciples. He is leaving them. He is going out of the world into God. He is going to die to the world and be reborn in God. He is going to become twice-born: the resurrection after the crucifixion. The resurrection can only be after the crucifixion. Adam dies to God and is born to the world. Christ dies to the world and is born into God again. Jesus remains in limbo – half-half, divided, split. Something he knows and something he does not know; something he understands and something he does not understand. There is a kind of cloudiness in the Jesus-consciousness.Adam is clear but fast asleep. Jesus is half awake; his eyes are full of dreams. Yes, he can see a little bit because he is half awake. Just like in the morning when you are half awake and half asleep and you can hear the milkman knocking on the door. You can hear children getting ready for school and you can hear the neighbor’s radio. But you are not yet fully alert. Yes, these things are like ripples, they enter you – you kind of hear and yet you don’t hear them. You go on swinging between sleep and wakefulness. Sometimes you hear something and then you are drowned in sleep again. You cannot figure out what is happening. Then you are fully awake.Adam dies to God and is born into the world. Jesus lives in the world. Christ dies to the world and is born into God again. These sutras belong to his last night, the departing message to his disciples. Before we enter into these sutras, a few things will be of great help.Teilhard de Chardin believes that the evolution of consciousness depends on three steps. Chardin is one of the most important Christian thinkers of this century. But still he remains confined to Christianity; he cannot soar higher than Christian boundaries. These are the three steps that he talks about.Ordinarily, consciousness is simple, innocent. After that there are three steps. First he talks about complexity. He says, “Consciousness grows through complexity.” That is true. The original mind is absolutely simple, its taste is one, it has no duality. Because there is no duality there is no possibility of dialogue, argument. And because there is no possibility of argument and dialogue, there is no possibility of understanding. With conflict, with friction, one evolves. So from one, man becomes dual – from unity, duplicity; from duplicity, triplicity; from triplicity, multiplicity. That’s how man goes on growing – complication.Man’s consciousness is one in the original state and then it becomes many. Through the many – the growth. That is the Hegelian concept of growth and the Marxian too. Hegel calls it “the dialectical process”: thesis creates its antithesis; antithesis and thesis join into a synthesis. The synthesis becomes a thesis and creates its antithesis. This is how it goes on. You cannot grow if your consciousness is unitary. It has to create a conflict in itself. With the conflict, energy is created. Conflict creates energy, friction creates energy. You strike two stones and fire is born. You strike two dry pieces of wood and fire is possible. You rub your hands together and electricity is born. All energy is created through friction.So the original human consciousness has to become divided, has to become split, has to become dual. The more evolved a mind man has, the more fragments he will have. So a thinker is almost a crowd. He is not one, he is not two, he is not three – he is many.The second state Chardin calls “concentration.” Because once the unity is lost and man has become many, there arises chaos and one loses one’s identity. One does not know who one is. An identity is needed, a self is needed and an ego is needed to hold all the fragments together. Otherwise they will start falling apart and you will not be able to survive – hence the ego. The ego is an effort to create a kind of unity inside yourself. The natural unity is lost. Now you have to create an unnatural, synthetic unity. The ego is a synthetic self, a created self, a managed self. One part of your being becomes the master and forces the other parts to be slaves. A kind of government arises inside you.Complexity creates energy. Concentration creates a possibility to use that energy; otherwise there will be no use for it. The energy will be there and it will kill you. It will be too much for you and it will be in many directions. All those directions have to be focused in one direction. The whole energy has to be channeled into one. This is what Chardin calls “concentration”: unification around a center – a self is born, the ego is born, discipline is born.The third he calls “direction.” Once there is ego, once you have a kind of self, a kind of unity – although managed, but still a unity – the goal is possible. You can become an arrow, you can have a target in the future. These three steps Chardin thinks are enough to explain human consciousness. They are not. They are important but not complete. The Hindu vision of life is far more complete. Chardin’s vision is linear: unity, complexity, concentration and then direction. The direction goes on and on, the arrow goes on and on and on and there is no end to it. It is linear. The arrow goes on into infinity, it never comes back. This is not true. This is logical, but not natural.The Hindu vision is circular. Hindus say everything moves in a circle not in a line. Nature moves in a circle, seasons move in a circle, stars move in a circle, man’s life moves in a circle. Everything natural moves in a circle. The circle is the way of nature. The linear is just a concept of the mind. The line does not exist in nature.If you are aware of non-Euclidean geometry you will know this. Euclid believes in the line. Non-Euclidean geometry says that there is nothing like the line in existence. The line also is part of a bigger circle, that’s all. No line is straight and no line can be straight – you cannot draw a straight line. If you draw a straight line, that simply means you are sitting on a circular earth and drawing a straight line. Go on drawing the line from both ends. Go on drawing it and you will find one day that the line has become a circle around the earth. So that small straight line was just a part of a big circle. Hindus say it is circular.To me, the Hindu concept is far truer than the Christian concept of linear progress. But still, my own suggestion is a little different to both. My suggestion is: spiral – neither linear nor circular; evolution is a spiral. In that way, both are joined together. In a spiral the progress moves as if it is moving in a line because it never comes to exactly the same point again.Christ never becomes Adam again because Adam was ignorant and innocent and Christ is innocent and fully aware. He never comes back to Adam, exactly to Adam. So the Hindu concept misses something. But in another sense he becomes Adam again because the innocence is the same, just that now it is fully aware. Then it was not aware, it was asleep, now it is alert. In a sense, Christ becomes Adam again because it is the same innocence. So Hindus are right. In a sense, Christ never becomes Adam again because it is luminous innocence. In that sense Christians are right. But they are only half right.To have the vision of the full truth, I would like to call evolution a spiral. It comes back to the original point but never on the same plane – on a higher plane. It comes again and again but always on a higher plane. If you have been trekking in the mountains you know what I mean. You walk on a path and the path moves around the mountain. You come to the same point again – the same rocks, the same valley, the same trees, but a little higher. It is a spiral.To make it a spiral, I would like to add three more steps to it. Chardin says: “Complexity, concentration, direction.” Three more steps have to be added. The first is: awareness, meditation. Concentration is just the beginning. Concentration is not relaxed, it is tense. One cannot concentrate twenty-four hours a day; one will go mad. So concentration can never become natural, but one can meditate twenty-four hours a day. One can live in meditation. It can become natural, it can become like breathing. It can be relaxed.Concentration is focused consciousness. Meditation is just aware consciousness. For example, if you are listening to me, you can listen in a concentrated way. It will tire you, it will exhaust you. If you are tense while listening because you don’t want to miss a single word, it will be tiring. But you can listen in a meditative way. That means you are relaxed open and vulnerable, that’s all. You will not be tired. Listening, for one and a half hours, rather than being tired, you will be enriched, rejuvenated. You will feel more energy afterward and you will feel more flowing in your being. So the fourth has to be awareness, meditativeness, openness.Concentration is directional, meditation is non-directional. Concentration has an object, a content. Meditation has no object, no content; it is just an opening. You are listening to me, a bird starts singing – you listen to that too; a train passes by – you listen to that too. You are not listening to me exclusively. All is included. You are open from all sides, not only open to me. This is a higher stage of evolution than concentration is; it is de-concentration.The fifth I call playfulness. Christianity has no idea of playfulness and Chardin has no idea of playfulness. “Direction, goal, purpose” – that is very businesslike, tiring and makes man sad and serious. Something like playfulness has to be added, because a really grown-up person is capable of play. A really grown-up person is sincere but not serious. Seriousness is a kind of illness because seriousness will create tension in you and it will never allow you to celebrate. Only playfulness can become celebration and joy.There seems to be no space for joy in Chardin’s chart – nothing of playfulness. “Complexity, concentration, direction” – good as far as they go, but they don’t go far enough. And they don’t go into creating a happy, celebrating human being. Without celebration what is the purpose? All purpose leads to a purposeless play. You work, but you work finally to relax. You work hard, just so that you are able to play. You work five days, so that at the weekend you can rest on the beach. All purpose leads to purposeless play. So the fifth I call playfulness, non-seriousness, nonpurposiveness, celebration, joy.The sixth I call egolessness. The ego is needed – because one falls into chaos and a synthetic self is needed. But that self is synthetic, plastic, it is not real. One day it has to be dropped. Use it, go beyond it and throw it away. One has to come to egolessness, one has to forget that one exists separately from existence. In that forgetfulness, in that dropping of the ego, one becomes Adam again in a totally new way. One becomes christ – again unity, again simplicity, again innocence, but luminous this time. You are twice-born. This way, one comes back again to the original simplicity, the original face. But it is higher than the first originality, hence I call it spiral. It is primal innocence, but not just primal innocence. It has immense light in it, it is not dark. It is not primitive, it is the highest point of consciousness. It is divine innocence. What Plotinus calls “the One” – this is the One. First the One was not aware of itself, now the One is aware of itself. God is born in you.In Adam, God was a seed; in Christ, God has become a flowering. The seed has come to its full manifestation. This is the difference between the child and the sage. Adam is the child, Christ is the sage. They are both alike and yet not alike at all. Something similar and something absolutely different; similarity in innocence, dissimilarity in awareness, luminosity. Or you can call the first state “nature,” and the second state “God.” When nature realizes itself, it becomes God. When nature recognizes itself, it becomes God. The beginning and the end have to be the same in some way and yet not the same in some other way. The alpha has to be the omega and the omega has to be the alpha. And yet they have to exist on totally different planes. Adam is body, Christ is soul; Jesus is mind – a bridge just in between the two polarities.This is the last night. Jesus is ready to depart. The scene of his departure is one of the most beautiful scenes in the whole history of human growth – the Last Supper. Jesus has gathered his disciples, the twelve. Among those twelve is Judas Iscariot, the one who is going to betray him. Jesus washes the feet of his disciples for the first time. They are very embarrassed. They ask again and again, “Why? Why are you washing our feet? You are our master, our Lord!”But he says, “Because I want to give you my last commandment. The last commandment is the commandment to love.” Jesus is giving it in a very existential way, not verbally.Just the other night a new sannyasin, Lola, was here. A few days ago, she took sannyas. I gave her the name Deva Lola. It means: “moved by God, possessed by God.” She was so thrilled on the day of her initiation that although I explained the meaning of her name to her, she could not follow it. She was so thrilled, she was so ecstatic – she was here and not here. She was flying high, she was drunk. She heard it and yet she could not remember anything. Last night she was here again, going back to the West and she asked, “Please tell me the meaning of my name again because I could not remember what you said on the first day.”She has great potential. So I said to her, “Rather than giving you the meaning verbally, I will give you the meaning existentially.” I told her to raise her hands and be possessed by God and whatsoever happens, let it happen. Within a few moments she started swaying – swaying like a flower on the stem in the breeze. Faster and faster movements… And her hands started moving, her whole body started moving. She was possessed by the divine. Now this is an existential meaning, not a verbal one.Jesus touched the feet of his disciples because he wanted to give them an existential meaning of love. In love, nobody is higher and nobody is lower; love knows no hierarchy. Jesus touched the feet of his disciples – the master touching the feet of his disciples. Jesus declared, “You are exactly like me, there is no difference. You and I are absolutely the same. I have known it, you have not known it, that is the only difference. There is no difference in our beings.” Those disciples were not yet twice-born, those disciples were yet seeds, they had not blossomed; Jesus had blossomed.Only one who has blossomed can see that the seeds are going to blossom too. The seeds cannot recognize the flower because they have never known themselves as blossom, but the flower can recognize the seeds because he has known both the states. He has known himself as the seed and he has known himself as the flower; he can recognize both.The same story happened in Buddha’s life. Buddha says: “Once, many, many lives ago, when I was not enlightened and I was as ignorant as anybody, I went to see a buddha – a man who had become enlightened. His name was Dipankara. When I touched the feet of Dipankara I was surprised because he touched my feet too. I felt very embarrassed because there was a great crowd around and everybody started looking: ‘What is the matter?’ I was very shy. I started feeling a little guilty too and I said to Dipankara, ‘Sir, what have you done? You have touched my feet. I am an ignorant man, a sinner. You are enlightened, you are a great master, thousands follow you. I have come just for your blessings and you have touched my feet! What have you done?’”Dipankara laughed and said, “You don’t know it yet, but soon you are going to become enlightened. I can recognize it. You are in the state which I was once in and you will be in the state in which I am now. You cannot see, that I understand, but I can see.” The higher can see the lower, the lower cannot see the higher.Jesus touched the feet of his disciples. That is a rare phenomenon, a great message – that there is no higher, no lower; that all hierarchies are of the mind, are political; that in spirituality there is no hierarchy. It is all one, it is all the same. It is one being all over the place. It is one heart beating in millions of hearts. It is one consciousness in every consciousness. It is one moon reflected in millions of pools, oceans, rivers, tanks, reservoirs – but it is one moon.Jesus says, “This is to give you my last commandment – the commandment of love.” Then they ate and they drank. Jesus never divided the ordinary life from the spiritual life – his second message and what I was saying the other day, that the first hedonism has to be transformed into the second hedonism. Jesus is not an ascetic, Jesus is not in any way a masochist; he enjoyed life. There is no reason why one should not enjoy life. Enjoying life you will become capable of enjoying God. If you don’t enjoy life, you will become incapable of enjoying God too. Life has to be a training ground for enjoyment. God is going to be such a big blessing that if you don’t taste life’s small blessings you will not be ready for it. It will drown you, it will kill you. It will be too much. So increase your capacity.Even on the last night Jesus was breaking bread, filling cups with wine for his disciples. They were enjoying themselves, they were eating and they were in a merry mood. Death was coming close, but celebration had not to be stopped for it because Jesus knew that this death was going to be the greatest celebration. He wanted to leave his disciples in celebration. He wanted it to be imprinted on their consciousnesses that he was a celebrant, that he was a man of feasting not of fasting; that he was a man who was thrilled by the small joys of life – the flowers, the birds, the rivers; that he liked the lilies in the field; that he liked people and that he was immensely thrilled – always immensely thrilled when looking into people’s eyes; that he loved and was not against life.But still it happened – Christianity went against life. Christianity became monkish. Monasteries were created, masochists gathered there, self-torturers became dominant and the feasts of Jesus disappeared, or they remained only as rituals. Yes, still they are repeated.Just the other evening, Musin took sannyas – the author that I talked about in the morning. Now he is Pramod, his name is Pramod – joy. He said to me that the ten days that he has been here have been the happiest in his whole life. He has never known such happiness. Now he is worried because he had promised his daughter that he would be back home at Christmas. I said to him, “Here is Christmas. Where are you going?”Christians have completely forgotten what Christmas is or should be. It has become a ritual. It has to be a kind of inner glow, it has to be a love for life. It has to be a search into the ordinary for the extraordinary, into the mundane for the supramundane. It has to be the search for the spirit in the body. It has to be the search for God in nature, for the invisible in the visible.Jesus’ last message is of love and joy. He left his disciples in a feasting mood, not crying, not making them sad. He hugged them all, he hugged even his betrayer. He kissed Judas because for a man of that consciousness there is no friend, there is no enemy. But the disciples were feeling a little bit scared. Rumors were going around and when Jesus said, “Only a little while longer and I will be gone – gone to my Father.” They became very frightened, afraid, sad. To comfort them, to give them hope, to give them courage, these sutras were spoken. These are of immense value. Meditate on them.Jesus said unto his disciples:Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me.Their hearts were troubled. Their master was going to die, their master was going to be tortured to death. They would be lost in this dark night of existence, their light would no longer be with them. The one who had been guiding them, the one who had been taking them out of the wilderness, the one who was their path, their guide, their friend, would not be any longer. They had become so dependent on him that they couldn’t think of life without him. Their hearts were troubled. It was natural, it was human.Jesus says: Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me. He says, “You know what belief is…” Belief is not the right translation for the Hebrew word. The right translation would be trust. “You know what trust is…” Trust means that God takes care and that we need not worry because someone is behind the scenes caring for us, that existence is mothering us, fathering us – that we are not orphans. That’s what trust means: that we are not orphans, that we are not strangers in this world. This is our home because this is our God’s home – it belongs to us. Jesus said: …ye believe in God… He says: “You know what trust is. If you know what trust is then you can trust in me too because it is not a question of whom you trust. Once you know the quality of trust, you simply trust.”It is not a question of whether you trust in God or in Jesus or in Buddha – remember it. If you trust, you simply trust. If a Christian says, “I only trust in Jesus not in Buddha,” he has not known what trust is, because trust knows no distinctions. If you have trust in Christ you will have trust in Buddha too because you will not see any difference. Maybe the languages are different, maybe their ways of expression are different, but trust will be able to go directly to the heart of the matter, to the very core and will see that Christ and Buddha exist on the same plane. It is the same consciousness, the same awareness, the same enlightenment.If you trust Buddha, you will trust Krishna and Mohammed. If you trust me, you will trust Christ, you will trust Zarathustra. Trust knows no address. It is not addressed. Trust is an inner quality. If it is there, it is there. It is like bringing a light, a lamp, into a room. The light will not only fall on the table, it will fall on the chair too. It will not only fall on the chair, it will fall on the walls and on the paintings hanging on the walls. It will not only fall on the walls, it will fall on the floor and on the roof too. When you bring light into a room, it simply falls on everything that is there. So it is with trust. It is a light. If trust is kindled in your heart, it makes no difference. You trust God, you trust Christ; you trust your wife, you trust your husband; you trust your son, you trust your friend and you trust your enemy. You trust nature, you trust death and you trust insecurity. In short, you simply trust.Jesus says: Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God… I know you trust in God.…believe also in me.In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.Now, again and again, these disciples were discussing who was the greatest out of them all. Even on that last night they were discussing who was going to take the second place to Jesus in the Kingdom of God.Jesus says, “Don’t be worried…” In my Father’s house are many mansions… “There is space for everybody. Nobody will be rejected, all will be welcomed and accepted. God is spacious.” Don’t be worried about who will be next to God and who will be next to me. In God’s eyes everybody’s value is the same and he is spacious. His love is such that he can love all alike. He has so much to give that it can’t be exhausted. So you need not be worried because there is no question of scarcity. It is not that he has only so much love and that if I take it, you will not be able to get much. Or that a few people have taken his love, so a few people will miss because there will be no more love left. In my Father’s house are many mansions…“He is spacious, his love is spacious. It is infinite. You can take as much as you want and still it remains infinite. You cannot exhaust it.”…if it were not so, I would have told you. “Don’t be troubled. Don’t become anxious. Don’t be worried.”I go to prepare a place for you. Jesus says, “I am going so that I can prepare a place for you.” He is consoling them, he is giving them courage and hope. They will need it. Dark days are going to come. They are going to pass through great difficulties – they will be haunted, they will be tortured, they will be persecuted; they will be among wolves. Their master is going and he will no longer be with them. He has been their protection, their solace. He has been their security. He was like an armor around them. They were secure with him, they were sheltered. Now the shelter is going to disappear. The rains will come and the hot days will come and there will be summer and winter. They don’t know what they are going to do. They will be very alone and feel very strange in the world.Before any master leaves his disciples he has to put down foundations, so that in the days that will come… And those days are going to be difficult for them because the people who are going to kill Jesus are not going to leave his disciples in peace. If they are going to kill Christ himself, there will be many more difficulties for the disciples to face. He says: I go to prepare a place for you. “You trust in God. Trust in me too. I am going just for you, to make things ready there – in that other reality, on the other shore.”And I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself…“And don’t be worried. If you trust in me, I will be coming to welcome you unto myself.”Yes, if you trust a master, if you love a master, he will remain available to you forever. He is forever. The real question is: “Do you trust? Do you love?” Have you really fallen into that relationship where your ego has disappeared, where you are surrendered? Where you are not and only the fragrance of the master fills your being? Then he is forever. Then the relationship between a master and a disciple is not a temporal relationship, it is not tentative; it is eternal. It has the quality of deathlessness, the quality of timelessness.And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.They are still wandering in the world. They are no longer Adams, they are not yet Christs. They are in great turmoil, in great confusion. Christ has to pull them out of that confusion. Christ has to become the presence through which they can come out of the darkness. He has to become the catalytic agent. He has to become a symbol, a light, a star so they can look up to it and start moving out of their dark night. …and receive you unto myself; that where I am, where ye may be also. That is the whole effort of a master. The master wants to destroy the disciple so that the disciple also becomes a master.The master’s work is complex. First he persuades you to become a disciple. He “coos” to you, seduces you to become a disciple. Once you are a disciple, he starts killing and destroying you because unless you are destroyed as a disciple you will never become a master. The real master is one who wants you all to become masters. That is the goal. Everybody should become an emperor, a king, a queen. The slavery – visible, invisible – has to be completely destroyed. All kinds of imprisonments that are around you have to be burned down. Your freedom has to be utter, ultimate.And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; how can we know the way?Thomas was one of the most-loved disciples of Christ, one of the most innocent. The others were a little bit knowledgeable. When Jesus says, And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know, nobody else said anything. They must have kept quiet. Nobody knew where he was going, nobody knew which way to follow, but only the most innocent of them was ready to ask.Thomas said: Lord, we know not whither thou goest; how can we know the way? We have never been there. Thomas was one of Jesus’ most intimate and closest disciples. When Jesus came to India, Thomas followed him. Indian Christianity is older than any other Christianity in the world. The Indian Church is the oldest Church in the world because Thomas was the first apostle to come to India. Indian Christianity was started by Thomas.Thomas asked, “We know not where you are going and which way you are going. And how can we know? – we are ignorant.” The real disciple never pretends to be knowledgeable. If he does not know, he is ready to say he does not know because that is the only way to learn from the master. The knowledgeable disciples never learn a thing.I have a few here too. When they ask questions, their questions have a different quality – as if they are asking for the others’ sake. They have no problems of their own. Sometimes they write in their questions: “This is not my question – just for the others’ sake…people will be enlightened. Many people have this question on their minds and it will be good if you discuss it. But it is not a personal question!” This is their question, but they cannot even confess that this is their question. “It will help others.” Tricky people.Once a man came to me and he said, “One of my friends has become impotent. Can you suggest some meditation that would be helpful for him?”I looked at the man and I continued looking at him. He started trembling and perspiring. He said, “Why are you looking at me so hard?”I said, “Can’t you send your friend? He can say that one of his friends has become impotent. Can’t you even say that? Have you become so impotent that you cannot even say that a problem has arisen in your being?” Now, he wants to know what can be done, but he does not want to show that the problem is his. Some friend… He is being diplomatic. Many questions that come are diplomatic; the questioner knows already, there is no problem for him.All the other disciples had kept quiet, only Thomas asked a question. And because of these small gestures, Thomas became closer and more intimate with Jesus.…Lord, we know not whither thou goest; how can we know the way?Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.This statement is of immense importance and has been tremendously misunderstood and misinterpreted by Christians. This statement has become a protection for the priest, for the dogmatist, for the demagogue. Christians have taken it to mean that nobody ever comes to God unless he comes through Christ – that means Jesus, son of Mariam. Nobody comes to God unless he comes through Jesus. They have meant, or they have interpreted it in such a way, that Christianity has become the only right religion. All other religions have become wrong. All other religions are against God – only Christianity.Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. What did he mean? The priests, missionaries and Christians who go on converting the whole world to Christianity, are they right? Is their interpretation right? Or did Jesus have something else? He had something utterly else.In the Bhagavad Gita there is also a statement which Hindus go on misinterpreting. Krishna said to Arjuna… Almost the same quality of closeness existed between Arjuna and Krishna as between Jesus and Thomas – the same relationship. The same flowering had happened and the same statement had bubbled up out of that relationship. Krishna said to Arjuna: “Sarva dharman parityajya mamekam sharanam vraja. Drop all religions, forget all religions and come to my feet because it is only through me that one reaches to God.” Now, Hindus are happy with this statement. Krishna had said it so clearly: “Forget all religions. Drop all kinds of other religions and hold unto me. Hold to my feet – mamekam sharanam vraja. Come to my feet; they are the bridges to God – the only bridges.”Both statements happened in the same kind of situation. Arjuna must have been very close when Krishna said this. So is the case with Thomas – he must have been very close. Christ must have been showering like flowers on Thomas when he said this. You will need that loving understanding of a Thomas, only then will you be able to understand the meaning of this. You will need that loving intimacy of an Arjuna, only then will you be able to understand the statement of Krishna. Both are the same, both mean the same – and both have been misinterpreted.The misinterpretation comes from the priest and the politician – those who try to convert religion into organizational, political strategies. Jesus saith unto him, I am the way… “I am…” That has to be understood. It does not mean Jesus, it simply means the inner consciousness: “I am” – the inner life. This consciousness inside you, which you call “I am,” this “I am” is the only way. If you can understand this “I am”: what it is, what this consciousness is, you have found the way. It has nothing to do with Jesus, it has nothing to do with Krishna. When I say to you “I am the gate,” it has nothing to do with me. That “I am” is the gate. The gate is within you, the way is within you, the truth is within you. You have to understand who this is calling himself “I am” within you, what this consciousness is, what it consists of.If you can go into your consciousness, if you can feel, see, realize the nature of your consciousness, it is the way. Meditation is the way – not Christ, not Krishna, nor Mohammed. Who am I? This question will become the way.Raman Maharshi is right when he says that only one question is relevant: “Who am I?” Go on asking this question, let this question become a fire in you. Be aflame with it. Let every cell of your body and your being and every fiber of your existence pulsate, vibrate with it. Let this question arise from the deepest core: “Who am I?” Go on asking and don’t accept any answer that is given by the mind. You have been reading the Upanishads and in the Upanishads they say, “You are God.” Your mind will say, “Why are you asking again and again? I know the answer: You are God. Keep quiet!” Or if you are a Christian and have been reading the Bible again and again, you know that the Kingdom of God is within you. So, “Who am I?” – “The Kingdom of God. Now keep quiet!”No answer from the head has to be accepted. No answer from the memory has to be accepted. No answer from knowledge has to be accepted. All answers have to be thrown in the whirlwind of the question “Who am I?” A moment comes when all answers have gone and only the question remains, alone like a pillar of fire. You are afire with it. You are just a thirst, a passionate quest: “Who am I?” When the question has burned all the answers, the question burns itself too, it consumes itself. Once the question has disappeared, there is silence. That silence is the answer. It is the door, the gate, the way, the truth.Please be careful. When Jesus says, I am the way… he means the one who calls himself “I am” within you, is the way. It has nothing to do with Jesus. Just by holding the feet of Jesus you are not going to go anywhere. Just by praying to Jesus you are not going to go anywhere. Listen to what he is saying. Each master throws you back to yourself because ultimately God is hidden in you as much as in the master. You are carrying your light within yourself. You just have to turn back, you have to look inward. I am the way, the truth… Yes. In your very consciousness is the truth. When you become fully conscious you become the full truth. When you are absolutely conscious, it is not that you face truth as an object, you are the truth, it is your subjectivity, it is you. That’s what the Upanishads say: “Tattvamasi. Thou art that.”…and the life… Jesus says three things: “It is the life – I am… consciousness, awareness.” This is life – the life that you know, the ordinary life. The second: I am the way – the way that joins the ordinary life with the extraordinary life, the way that joins Adam with Christ, the way that joins body with soul. The third thing: I am the truth… Jesus has said all the three things.You are that right now because: “I am the life.” You have the way too, hidden behind you, within you: “I am the way.” You are the ultimate goal too, the destiny. You are the beginning and the middle and the end. You are Adam, Jesus and Christ. …no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. No man has ever entered into God unless he has entered into his consciousness, until he has entered into his “I am-ness.” This is the meaning. This is the meaning of Krishna and this is the meaning of Christ. This is the meaning of all the masters.If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also; from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.A tremendously important statement. Within the single statement there comes a revolution. Meditate very, very silently over it. If ye had known me… Jesus was saying to Thomas: If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also… Because I and my Father are one. While Jesus was saying: If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also, something changed in Thomas’ being. While Jesus was saying this… And you know, when I say some things to you, something goes on changing in you. Sometimes you are very close to the truth. Sometimes a single word hits you deeply, shatters something; something changes. A radical change can happen sometimes. It happens all the time.That is the whole purpose of being in the presence of a master. When Jesus was saying – he had not even completed the statement… The statement was half said, but Thomas had changed, so he had to change his statement. This is why I say this is such a beautiful statement. If ye had known me… There was an “if” in it because Thomas was hesitant. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also. When he made this statement, there was a radical transformation in Thomas’ consciousness; he turned inward, he was converted – metanoia. Jesus had to change his statement. He said: …and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. The “if” had disappeared, because the “if” had disappeared in Thomas.You know the phrase: “Doubting Thomas”? That comes from Jesus’ disciple Thomas. He used to doubt. But he was very innocent. If doubt was there, it was there; he would not hide it. But in that moment “Doubting Thomas” was no longer “Doubting Thomas”; doubt had disappeared.Jesus had started with “if” because doubt was there. Thomas had been hesitant, Thomas did not agree. He was saying, “Okay, but it doesn’t appeal to me. You say that you are the truth? Maybe, but I am not convinced. You say that you are the way? I hope that it is true, but it has yet no validity in my being.” Maybe not in so many words – that is not the question – but there was a lurking doubt. Jesus had to use “if.” Once he saw that lurking doubt had disappeared under the impact of his great statement…In India we call such statements mahavakyas – great statements. There are very few in the whole history of human consciousness. This is one of the great statements, a mahavakya. Jesus must have seen that the doubt had suddenly disappeared. The shadow of doubt was not there. Thomas had become trust. Something had transformed in him. Thomas was no longer the old Thomas; a new being was born, a new man was born. He had to change his statement in the middle of it because a master responds to the disciple. A master is a response. A master is a mirror. …from henceforth ye know him… Now there is no “if.” Jesus said: …from henceforth… From now onward you know him, you have seen him because you have seen me, because I and my Father are not two. I represent him; I am just a reflection of him, an echo.I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you.Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more…Listen. Jesus says: Yet a little while… Only a few hours are left …and the world seeth me no more… And the world will not be able to see me.…but ye see me, because I live, ye shall live also.Jesus said: “Just a few more hours and I will disappear from the world, but for you Thomas, never. For you, never – because you have seen my reality which cannot be crucified. You have seen my truth which is immortal. The body will be crucified – a little while longer and the body will disappear. The world will not be able to see me any longer because the world recognizes me only as the body. But you will still see me because you have seen my luminosity, you have seen my eternity, you have seen the nontemporal being, you have seen my truth. Thomas you will go on seeing me. For you, I will never disappear.”Love has eyes, trust has eyes to see the invisible. Only trust can penetrate deep enough to see the deathless. Only love can give you a glimpse of that which is beyond time. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more… “Be happy Thomas, you are blessed, you will continue to see me.” …but ye see me, because I live, ye shall live also. In this moment let this seed be sown in you that when I am going to live – even after the crucifixion, even when my body is destroyed – if I am going to live, you will also live. Let this trust be born in you too. It is not that only I will live. It is nothing special to me: everybody’s soul is immortal. If you can see my body disappearing and yet you can go on seeing me, let that become a new understanding in you, that you will also live even when you have died.Death is only of the garments, death is only of the covering. The innermost core goes on living. It is life itself. How can it die? How can life die? Life goes on changing its abodes, true: one house becomes rotten, old, dilapidated, a ruin and you have to leave it to find another home. Your house is just a nest, an overnight stay. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more, but ye see me, because I live, ye shall live also. That is where the secret of resurrection is. There is proof – no proof as far as the world is concerned, but there is proof as far as the disciples are concerned. Jesus died as the body but remained as the soul for those who had trust in him, who had seen his true reality, who had seen his true being.At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.Jesus says, “We are all intertwined because we are all one.” …I am my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He is saying, “Thomas, you don’t know God, but you know me. I know God, you know me. I know that I am in my God and you know that you are in me because your love has made you part of me. I tell you that I am in you. Hence, we are all in God and God is in us all. We are all intertwined.”The disciple only knows the master, the master knows God. The disciple loves the master and by and by gets dissolved into the master. The master is dissolved into God. Through the master the disciple is also joined with God. The master goes on pouring himself into the disciple, and because the master has become one with God, so God goes on pouring into the disciple in a very indirect way. This is the real trinity: the disciple, the master and God. They go on pouring into each other. The disciple is not aware of what is happening.When I touch you, do you think I touch you? God has touched you. If I am in God, when I touch you, God has touched you. But to you it remains the master’s touch. The deeper your understanding goes, the deeper you will be able to see that the master is just instrumental – a flute through which God’s song goes on flowing. At that day ye shall know… Jesus is saying, “At the ultimate day of meeting when you will become enlightened, when you will also become a christ…” At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you…“…because I am pouring my peace into you and I am pouring it unconditionally, not as the world does.” In the world nobody gives you anything unconditionally; in the world everything is a bargain. Even if people give love to you, they give only to get; it is a bargain. Peace I leave with you… Jesus says, “Don’t be worried. I will be gone, but my peace will linger around you, will surround you. Whenever you remember me you will find peace showering on you. My peace will remain available to you.” To the trusting heart it is always available. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you… Not like in the world where everything is given to get something.Jesus is simply giving. There is no bargain. The master only gives – but not to get anything. What can the disciple give to the master? It is one-way traffic. The master goes on pouring. But that does not mean that he obliges you; he knows God is pouring into him. What can he do with it? All that comes through God he has to share. With God there is no bargaining, it is a pure gift.Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it he afraid.Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father; for my Father is greater than I.Jesus says: If ye loved me, ye would rejoice… Love knows no death. Love never comes across death. For love death does not exist.So Jesus says, “If you trust, if you love…” This statement must have been made to all the disciples, not to Thomas alone because the “if” has entered again. These are subtle points to be understood. Nothing is mentioned in the Bible about who he is speaking to now, but the “if” has entered again. To Thomas he had said, “From henceforth you have seen God because you have seen me.” Now he says: If ye loved me, ye would rejoice… He must have turned to the other disciples, he must have been saying to them all, “If you love me, then there is no death. I will be crucified and you will still see me resurrected in the divine body. You will see me going into God, disappearing into God. I am going to meet the ultimate. Your master is going to meet the ultimate, you should rejoice. Let this be a celebration, a festival, a rejoicing.”Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you… “But I will come again and again, whenever you call, whenever you are in need. Whenever your heart will be in prayer, without doubt you will find me close by.” If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father… “So there is no question of being miserable, sad. I am not going to die, I am going to the divine.” To the ignorant, death is the death of life. To the knower, death is the beginning of real life. To the knower, death is a door into the divine.This, his parting message is of immense value. Let it sink deep within you. Let it become your heartbeat. That is the only way to meditate upon it. That is the only way to come to its meaning. Forget all that Christians have been saying. Those dogmatic assertions are all chauvinistic. Forget what the theologians have put on top of Jesus’ pure statements. Put aside all that has been taught and go directly into these sayings and meditate. Immense will be the benefit. You will be blessed. This is one of the greatest stories of human transformation in human history – how Adam becomes Christ, how the unconscious becomes luminous, how the ordinary is transformed into the extraordinary, how the worldly becomes suffused with the other-worldly, how matter is transmuted into consciousness.Enough for today.

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Just Like That 01-10Category: SUFISM

Just Like That 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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A man came to Libnani, a Sufi teacher, and this interchange took place.Man: I wish to learn. Will you teach me?Libnani: I do not feel that you know how to learn.Man: Can you teach me how to learn?Libnani: Can you learn how to let me teach?Truth cannot be taught…but it can be learned. And between these two sentences is the key of all understanding. So let me repeat: truth cannot be taught, but it can be learned – because truth is not a teaching, not a doctrine, not a theory, a philosophy, or something like that. Truth is existence. Truth is being. Nothing can be said about it.If you start saying something about it you will go round and round. You will beat around the bush, but you will never reach the center of it. Once you ask a question about you are already on the path of missing it. It can be encountered directly, but not through about. There is no via media. Truth is here and now. Only truth is. Nothing else exists. So the moment you raise a question about it the mind has already moved away. You are somewhere else, not here and now.Truth cannot be taught because words cannot convey it. Words are impotent. Truth is vast, tremendously vast, infinite. Words are very very narrow. You cannot force truth into words, it is impossible. And how is one going to teach without words?Silence can be a message. It can convey, it can become the vehicle. But then the question is not of the master’s concern to teach it. The question is of the disciple’s to learn it.If it was a question of teaching, then the master would do something.But words are useless – nothing can be done with them. The master can remain silent and can give the message from every pore of his being – but now the disciple has to understand it. Unaided, without any help from the master, the disciple has to receive it.That’s why in the world of religion teachers don’t exist, only masters. A teacher is one who teaches, a master is one who IS. A teacher is one who talks about the truth, a master is truth himself. You can learn, but he cannot teach.He can be there, open, available – you have to drink him, and you have to eat him. You have to imbibe him. You have to become pregnant with him. You have to absorb.A master is one who has become the truth and is available for all those who are ready to absorb him; hence Jesus says to his disciples: Eat me. Truth can be eaten; it cannot be taught. You can allow it to reach you, but it cannot be forced on you.Truth is absolutely nonviolent, it will not even knock at your door – even that much will be too much aggression.If you allow, if you are receptive, it is all there. If you are closed, if you are not receptive, for millions of lives you may search for it and you will go on missing it. And it has always been there, it has always been the case. Not even a single step was needed. Not even the opening of the eyes was needed. Not even a single movement toward it was needed. It was already there: you had to be receptive.Truth cannot be taught, but still, you can learn it. So the whole art depends on how to become a disciple.Humanity is divided in three parts. One part, the major part, almost ninety-nine percent, never bothers about truth. It remains oblivious. It is completely asleep. It has no inquiry. It lives a somnambulistic life. The question of, What is truth? never arises. This is the greater part of humanity.They live in ignorance, completely unaware that they are ignorant, not only unaware that they are ignorant – they may be thinking and dreaming that they know.In fact this is part of their sleep, that they think they know. And what is the need to learn? To destroy the need to learn, this is the best thing to do: to go on feeling that you already know. Then there is no question of learning, no need to become a disciple. You are satisfied, in your grave. You are dead.This is the greater part of humanity. Even if you approach people of this fragment and tell them about truth, they will laugh. They will say you are talking nonsense. Not only that, they will deny that there is anything like truth or God or nirvana. If you give them the message of an enlightened being they will say there never existed such a being, and he cannot exist: “We are the whole of humanity.”Somebody asked Voltaire about the origin of religion, and Voltaire is reported to have said, “Religion was born when the first charlatan met the first fool on the earth.” In the encounter of the charlatan and the fool, religion was born. This has an element of truth in it. It is true in a sense, but it is true not about religion, but about pseudo-religion.Religion is born, not between a charlatan and a fool – pseudo-religions are born that way – religion is born between a master and a disciple. Religion is born between a being who has attained and a being who is authentically in search to attain it. Religion is born between truth and a disciple.But the first part of humanity remains completely unaware, blissfully unaware, because when there is no inquiry, no search, they live a comfortable life of no effort. They go on falling down. They never rise high, they never reach the peaks. And they don’t know. They not only don’t know, they never dream that there are peaks of experience, heights of ecstasies.They remain almost like animals: eating, sleeping – and confined to such things. A life of routine, moving like a wheel; they are born, they live, they give birth to others, and they die. And the wheel goes on moving: they are born again, the same thing is repeated again and again, ad nauseam.Then there is the second part of humanity: a few, who inquire. But they don’t know how to learn. They search, but they don’t understand that this search needs an inner transformation, only then it becomes possible. An inner mutation is needed.In this dimension, learning is not like other learnings. You can learn chemistry, physics, mathematics, without any change in your consciousness. There is no need to change your consciousness; as you are, you can learn. But religion is a learning in which a basic requirement is: First change your consciousness.Even before the learning starts you have to be prepared for it. A long preparation is needed, otherwise learning cannot start.The second part inquires, but is not ready, so it goes on round and round in theories, hypotheses, human mental projections, inventions of articulate people, verbalizations, philosophies, metaphysics – there are thousands of theories available for this type of person.He can choose – the market is vast, and he can go on changing from one theory to another, because no theory can give you the right thing. Theories can’t give, so you get fed up with one theory, then you choose another; you get fed up with one teacher, then you move to another teacher – and people go on, they become wanderers.I come across the second type of people every day. They have been to this ashram, they have been to that, they have been to this teacher and to that, and they have been moving from one to another: nothing satisfies. But they are not aware that it is not a question of the teacher, it is the basic preparation that they are lacking. They are not yet ready to be disciples, and if you are not ready to be a disciple, how can you find the master? Tradition has it that when the disciple is ready the master appears on his own accord. You need not even search for him, he will come. Whenever a disciple is ready, the master will appear immediately. You go on searching for him, and he never appears. Something is wrong within you. Something within you frustrates the whole effort. You are not ready.You cannot meet a master on your conditions, you have to fulfill his conditions. And they are eternal, they have never changed, they remain the same. One has to learn how to be a disciple.This second part of humanity becomes a wandering mass of inquirers. They never gain much. They become rolling stones, which never gather any moss. They move on…rolling.Then there is a third part – very rare human beings, exceptions, the cream of humanity.That third part is those who seek, who inquire; but the inquiry is not intellectual, the inquiry is total. The inquiry is not like learning any other subject; the inquiry is so total that they are ready to die for it, they are ready to change their whole being for it. They are ready to fulfill all conditions. Even if death is a condition, they are ready to die. But they want to learn what truth is, they want to be in the world of truth; they don’t want to live in the world of lies and illusions and dreams and projections.This third type can become a disciple. And only this third type, when they have attained, can become masters.That’s why I say truth cannot be taught but it can be learned. But then the whole thing depends on you.A master exists – you have to be in the presence of the master completely empty of yourself. That is the meaning of death. A disciple comes and dies before the master. That’s what surrender means.He comes and leaves himself outside the door. Where he leaves his shoes, he leaves himself there also. He comes to the master completely empty. In that very emptiness, truth is possible. In that very emptiness the master starts flowing. The master becomes like a tremendous waterfall, falling into the valley of the disciple. From his peaks of being he reaches to the bottommost depth of the being of the disciple. And remember, he is not doing anything, it simply happens. When the valley is ready the waterfall happens of its own accord. The being of the master starts flowing toward the disciple.It is not something that the master is doing, it is not something the disciple is doing – nobody is doing anything. The master is present to the disciple, and the disciple is present to the master, and the phenomenon happens of its own accord. It is a jump of the flame of the master into the heart of the disciple. But that needs to remain open, and the disciple needs to remain empty – just the receiving end.That’s why I say again and again that the art of disciplehood is the art of being a feminine consciousness: receptive, allowing, not creating barriers, not closing doors, not trying to be safe and secure. Trusting.Trust is the word. And in trust, truth happens. To trust is to be ready to learn. Yes, trust is the word. To trust is to be a disciple.If you are still thinking, then you are still in control. You have not surrendered. If you are still saying this is right and that is not right, then your mind is there, then you belong to the second part of humanity, not to the third.Now, let me divide these three parts again from a different direction. The first part of humanity has doubt as its soul, and the doubt is so strong that it is almost like a trust in doubt, believing in disbelief. It is so strong because the first part of humanity – the greater part – the major part, never doubts its own doubt. It trusts doubt.If you are so much in doubt, so certain in doubt, you will be completely closed. Not even a single window will be open. To be a disciple is very very far away; even to become a student is difficult then. Even the idea that somebody knows more than you is impossible for you to entertain.This part remains foolish, stupid. It is a stonelike part, dead, with no life, because unless energy is moving continuously into the unknown, you can’t have life.When every day you move into the unknown, only then you are alive, throbbing. Your heart is beating. You are growing. Growth is always from the known into the unknown.The second part of humanity inquires; its doubt is shaken. But its trust is not yet grounded. No more is it part of the greater humanity, it has moved away from them a little bit – even that little bit is too much to allow them to go back – but it is still in limbo, just hanging in the middle. It has no trust.The first part trusts too much in doubt, the second part has come to doubt its doubt, but a trust is not born. The third part is trusting in trust. The trust is absolute. The people of the second part will call you blind. Your shraddha, your trust in trust, will appear to them as blindness. The first part of humanity will call you mad. Your trust will look just like madness. How can a person who thinks believe so totally? It is impossible. But to the third part, to whom trust has happened, the blindness will be the only capacity to see. And madness will be the only sanity.These three different humanities have different languages. They don’t communicate with each other – it is almost impossible. It is just like when you are talking to somebody who does not know your language, and you don’t know his language – at the most through gestures a little communication is possible, but not much.Sufis say that only the third part of humanity can learn. Sufi masters are very choosy. It is very difficult to be accepted by a Sufi master, very very difficult. They create all sorts of obstacles around them.First, they live in such an ordinary way that you cannot suspect that here is a master. They live in absolutely ordinary ways. For example, the master may be a blacksmith or a shoemaker or a carpet maker or a butcher or a carpenter – just the very ordinary world. You cannot suspect that the man who makes your shoes and repairs your shoes is a master. He won’t allow any suspicion; that is the way he protects himself from those who are not ready but think themselves ready. From intruders he protects himself in this way.You will never see a Sufi master going to the mosque or the temple – to any public place – to pray. No, he prays when everybody is fast asleep, in the midnight. Even his wife may not suspect that this man has attained. No, this is part of the Sufi method – not to allow anybody to know.Jesus must have lived with some Sufis in Egypt. He carries a few of their teachings in The Bible. One of them is: Whatsoever you do with your right hand, don’t allow your left hand to know about it. This is a Sufi tradition: Live completely in the dark, so nobody knows and intruders don’t come, pseudo-seekers don’t knock, and foolish people don’t trespass on your time and your energy.Then second, if somehow you come to know about a Sufi master, years you will have to wait with him – as an apprentice, not for meditation. If he is a shoemaker, you will have to learn shoemaking for years. And they are hard taskmasters. Sometimes ten, twelve years will pass and you will be simply working on shoes and preparing shoes, and the question should never be raised, unless the master himself asks, “What have you come for? What do you want?”He will watch you. He will be with you. In that togetherness something will grow, by and by, through very indirect methodology – for example, shoemaking. It is a meditation because the disciple is told to do only the thing that is given to be done; no thinking is allowed.And remember this, if you work with your hands there is much possibility for the mind to remain vacant. If you work with the mind, then there is less possibility of course because the mind will have to think.Sufis work with their hands – carpet making, shoemaking, carpentry, or anything whatsoever, but with their hands. Hand and head are the two poles, and if your energy is moving through the hands, the head by and by subsides. And if for years, twelve years – such a long time! – you are simply working with the hands, you completely forget the head. There is no need of it. The head becomes nonfunctioning, and that is what is needed for a disciple: the head must be in a nonfunctioning state. Thinking should stop. The mind should become like a no-mind. Not filled with thoughts, dreams, ideas. Completely empty.While the disciple is an apprentice, working on shoemaking, the master goes on watching what is happening in his head. Is the energy completely moving into the hands?Now physiologists agree that if you work with the hands, the same energy moves from the head. The energy is the same. Your right hand is joined with your left brain, your left hand is joined with your right brain. Try this: whenever you feel that there is too much thinking, and you cannot stop it, rub both your hands fast, make them hot by rubbing, and suddenly you will feel the head has stopped, the energy is moving in the hands.People who cannot sleep – this is the best medicine for them yet known, better than any tranquilizer. Just close your eyes and rub your hands, and feel them getting warmer and warmer and warmer – and through rubbing they will get warmer – and you put into your imagination also that they are getting warmer. When the hands are warm, the head becomes cool. These are the two polarities.Hands should be warm, and the head should be cool. But when there is too much thinking, the head will be warm and the hands will be cool. That is unhealthy. You are going toward madness. A moment will come when the head starts functioning on its own, unconnected with the whole body. That is what madness means: a part has become autonomous, a part has become dictatorial.Zen masters in Japan always go on working with the hands. Sufi masters in Mohammedan countries always go on working with the hands. Doing something with the hands is always beautiful. It brings your head energy down into the body.If you continue for years to work with the hands you become headless. The physical part of the head remains, but the energy part, the thinking part, disappears; you become headless.For years a disciple has to be with the master. Difficult unless you trust, because who knows whether this man is a master or not? Who knows whether he has attained or not? How to judge? But if you trust, by and by an inner affinity with the master happens, an inner affinity, just as it happens sometimes with lovers, but rarely, because lovers never surrender. They talk about it, they say they have surrendered, but they never surrender. In fact through surrender they may be trying to manipulate the other, the surrender may be just a trick. The fight continues in lovers.Rarely, but sometimes it happens, if two lovers are really in love, an affinity happens. Somewhere they become one. A bridge comes into existence. The bodies remain two, but their inner flames come so close that they become one. Rarely it happens in love; and only for moments – again the flames go apart, come again together, go apart. It continues to be so. But between a disciple and a master, when this closeness happens it goes on growing closer and closer and closer, and a moment comes when only two bodies exist: somewhere in the inner world the beings are no more two. The jump, the leap of the flame has happened.To learn from a master is to learn how to be with him. To learn from a master is to learn how not to be with yourself.Religious learning is a totally different dimension than other learnings, other disciplines. In other disciplines you remain the same. And you start accumulating information. You want to learn about geography – you go to a teacher and you learn. You remain the same, only information goes on increasing. You become more and more knowledgeable, but your being, your quality of being, your state of being remains the same.When you come to learn religion, or truth, then it is different: it is not accumulation of information, it is not an increase in your knowledge; it is a growth in your being. Not that you will know more, but that you will be more. Not that your memory will be more disciplined, no, but your being, your very being will become more still and silent, blissful.Religion is the learning of being. And all other learnings are just training for memories. All other disciplines give you knowledge. Religion gives you knowing, not knowledge; knowing, the capacity to see, the tremendous energy to be. This difference has to be understood, then you will be able to understand this small dialogue – but very potent.A man came to Libnani, a Sufi teacher, and this interchange took place.Man: I wish to learn. Will you teach me?The man emphasizes his wish. That is necessary, but not enough. You may wish, that doesn’t show that you are ready. Your wish may be just a dream, your wish may be founded on wrong reasons, your wish may have no willpower behind it, it may be impotent. Your wish may be the wish of a beggar – and truth is not possible for a beggar. Your wish may be just childish. By accident you may have come upon the idea that one needs truth, that one needs to know God.A wish is very feeble unless it becomes a burning desire – what Sri Aurobindo calls abheepsa. Abheepsa means such an intense burning desire that you are completely absorbed by it. Nothing of you is left behind. It is not a part of you that desires, it is the whole of you that desires. The desire has become your being. Then it is abheepsa. It is a total desire in which everything is surrendered.A wish is just a ripple on the surface of the mind. You are passing on the road and a beautiful Rolls Royce passes by: a wish comes in the mind that you also would like to have a Rolls Royce. You see a beautiful woman – and a wish arises. A wish is just a ripple on the surface – and truth is not open for those who come to it in such a feeble way. Truth demands you in your totality.Truth is like a woman: it wants to possess you totally. Truth won’t tolerate any competitor, it is jealous. If you think that you have a hundred wishes, and one wish is for truth, then you are not ready for truth. When the hundred wishes disappear and only one wish remains, when all the wishes disappear in one wish, it becomes abheepsa.It becomes a burning desire, a total desire – your whole being aflame, afire – and you are ready to risk anything and everything.The man said: I wish to learn.Learning is not possible if you simply wish. It happens every day that people come to me, they talk about God and meditation and this and that, and if I don’t answer them immediately they ask something, if I go on talking about something else, within seconds they have forgotten that they had come to ask about God. It is just a wish, a whim in the mind, not rooted. Otherwise, if you are thirsty and you come and you ask about water, and I talk about other things, those other things won’t quench your thirst; rather, on the contrary, your thirst will grow while I am talking about other things. Whenever I start you will say again, “Give me a glass of water, I am thirsty.” And if I go on talking about other things your thirst will grow meanwhile. When I stop again you will say, “I will die! Give me a glass of water!”But you come and you talk about God, and you say you would like to know about God, and I ask about your health and how is your wife, and how are your children? – and you have forgotten about God. Then you remain with me for one hour and you never mention anything about God again.It was not a thirst, just a vagrant wish, just a vagabond wish with no roots in you. Just a ripple on the surface, a breeze passed. You were passing on the road and you saw a sannyasin. The orange robe – and a wish came into the mind: you would also like to know what this sannyas is. You had never thought about it before, never dreamed about it before, it has never been a desire – just, you saw a sannyasin and suddenly the orange robe created a wish in you. A breeze passed and created a ripple, and you would also like what these mad orange people are doing.And what is meditation? You come to me, and you ask about meditation. But you don’t mean it. You ask and you don’t mean it. You think it is as if I can give you meditation and you will carry it home just like any other commodity from the market.Meditation will need long preparation. Meditation will change you completely.One woman came to me – she belongs to one of the richest families in India – and she said she would like to meditate, but she wants to know, if she meditates, is it going to create some trouble in her life?I asked, “What type of trouble do you mean?”She said she had a husband and children and a big family. If she meditated, would it create a rift? – because the husband was not interested in meditation at all. Not only not interested, he was against it: “And I have come to you without his knowledge. I can secretly meditate, but I want to be certain that it will not disturb my family life in any way.”Another woman was with her who had followed her. She said, “What are you saying…because meditation will make you better! You will be more silent, more happy – how is that going to disturb your life? Your life will become better!”I listened. Then the woman said, “Yes, if this is going to be so, I am ready.”I told her, “This is not going to be so, because whether you become good or bad it makes no difference: you change, and the relationship will be in disturbance.”Sometimes I have watched: if you become bad it doesn’t affect your relationship so much as when you become good, because when you become better the other ego is hurt more.If a husband starts meditating the wife’s ego is hurt more – her husband is going beyond her, and he is moving away from her. He may become more silent, so that when his wife is angry he may not react – but that will create more anger. The wife will think, “What does he think about himself? Has he become a saint?”She will try to bring you down, back where you were before. Your anger is known to her but your silence is unfamiliar, you look strange. You don’t look like her husband. You are a totally different man, and if you go on rising higher in meditation, you become more and more independent – the wife feels she is being left behind. That cannot be tolerated.If a husband becomes a drunkard it is okay, nothing much is wrong. On the contrary, deep down the wife may feel good because she appears better than the husband, and she can teach and preach and moralize, and whenever the husband comes she can create guilt in him, that he is a drunkard – “and you are killing me and the children and the whole family! What are you doing?” She feels good if you are bad, because it is always a comparative feeling. A drunkard can be tolerated. If a husband starts going to prostitutes, that can be tolerated. But if the husband starts meditating, becomes religious, that is intolerable, that is impossible to tolerate. It hurts, it hurts deeply.I told the woman, “As far as I know, if you meditate it is going to create trouble. You will become silent, you will become happy, more blissful, more contented, but your husband will feel left behind. A gap will arise between you. The planes will become different. You will move farther away.”Then the wife said, “Then wait. Then I don’t want any meditation, any silence, any prayer, no. I am happy in my life, I don’t want to disturb it.”This is a wish. You would like to have something without disturbing your life in any way. You cannot have anything valuable without disturbing your life in any way, that is impossible. In fact, the greater the phenomenon, the more is going to be the disturbance, the more is the risk. If you want God you will be ready to lose all. If you want to become a disciple you will have to surrender all that you have. In that surrender is the only possibility, the possibility of a transfer of being.I have been telling you again and again the story of Buddha and Mahakashyapa, but it has multidimensional meanings. It is said Buddha sat one morning under the tree, with a flower in his hand. He was going to give a sermon, and the monks waited – ten thousand bhikkhus waiting and waiting, and it was getting hotter, and the sun had risen high, and Buddha was silent and looking at the flower. Then suddenly one disciple by the name of Mahakashyapa started laughing loudly, a good belly laugh.Everybody looked at Mahakashyapa: Has he gone mad? This morning seems to be strange; Buddha has never done this – he has always come and talked. Today he has come with a flower and he is sitting and looking at the flower as if he has forgotten all the ten thousand disciples who are there.And then, look! Now this Mahakashyapa was laughing – and nobody had ever heard him laugh, he was such a silent man. In fact nobody had ever known him. This was the first time that he had done something publicly. He was so silent, unassuming; he lived like a shadow. Nobody ever felt his presence even. He was absolutely nonaggressive, because when you try to let your presence be felt, that is violence. You are trying to attract attention. This man nobody knew. What has happened to him? He has gone mad!Buddha looked, called Mahakashyapa near him, gave him the flower, and told him, “Whatsoever I could give through words I have given to others, and that which cannot be given through words – I give it to you, Mahakashyapa.”In Zen they call it a transfer beyond scriptures, a transfer beyond words.What was given to Mahakashyapa? Still they go on asking in Zen monasteries, still Buddhists go on pondering over it. Twenty-five centuries have passed since that morning, and great philosophers have pondered over it: What happened that morning? What was transferred? It was not a transfer of a flower, a flower is just a symbol. It was a transfer of the whole being of Buddha to Mahakashyapa. Not that Buddha entered into Mahakashyapa; he remained himself. It is just – you bring one lighted lamp near another which is not lighted; suddenly the flame jumps from the lighted lamp to the unlighted lamp. The lighted lamp remains the same, nothing has been lost, not even a bit, but a new light has come into being. It is a leap, a jump of truth – that had happened that morning.Buddha gave the flower as a symbol. The flower has remained a symbol in India of the absolute flowering of consciousness. A lotus flower means when the consciousness has flowered absolutely, and the fragrance has been released into the cosmos. That morning Buddha jumped, the flame of Buddha jumped into Mahakashyapa. This is how truth is transferred.Just wishing for it cannot be of much help. You have to desire it, you have to desire it so deeply that you become the desire, just a fire, a desire, a burning flame of desire. Be near a master and be a burning flame of desire to know, and suddenly one day it happens: a transfer beyond scriptures, a transfer beyond words, a transfer from being to being, not from mind to mind. That’s what Buddha said: “Whatsoever can be said through words, I have given it to others, a transfer from mind to mind, and that which cannot be said, I give it to you, Mahakashyapa” – a transfer from being to being. Others were students, Mahakashyapa was a disciple. Mahakashyapa became the second buddha.The man said: I wish to learn…This is a very feeble thing. You can learn geography, chemistry, and other such nonsense, by wishing to learn. People learn even without wishing, people learn even against their wish. Look at the children; they are forced to go to school against their wish, they never wish to go, they have been forced – even they can learn. They come out of the universities with PhD’s and they never had any wish to learn. Now they have become doctors, PhD’s, DLitt’s, they will become professors and they will teach others who have no wish to learn.As far as worldly knowledge is concerned even without a wish it can be learned, but as far as religious knowing is concerned even with wishing it is not possible. The wish has to become a burning desire, abheepsa.In English there is no word like abheepsa. It means when only the desire is left, nothing else. Even the one who desires is no more there, he is also part of the desire. When the desire is not part of you but you have become part of the desire, then it is abheepsa.I wish to learn, said the man. Will you teach me?A master cannot be asked in this way. It is not a question of the master’s will to teach; he is always ready to teach. It is not a question of his willing or not willing; he is the teaching. Even while he is sitting silently, he is teaching. He is breathing silently – he is teaching. He is moving – he is teaching. He is eating his food – he is teaching. He is asleep – he is teaching. A master is a continuum of message. He is teaching.Once it happened: A man came to a Zen master and asked to be taught. The master said, “Okay. You be here, and I will teach you.” The man remained for one, two, three hours, then his patience came to an end.Many people were coming and going. Many people were asking many questions – the master had many disciples, a great monastery, and he was talking to people, teaching people, giving them methods, solving their problems – and the man was sitting in the corner. He became very impatient, almost feverish.When he could get a time he said, “Wait. I have been here for three hours and you have not taught me anything!”The master looked at him and said, “What have I been doing the whole time? People came, they asked me questions, I answered. There was teaching in it – not in the answer but in the answering. You should have watched how I answered. People came, they greeted me, I responded. There was teaching. And sometimes people came and they simply sat by my side in silence, and I was silent, they were silent – there was teaching for you. What have I been doing for these three hours, you fool! I have been teaching you.” But the man was at a loss. He couldn’t understand what type of teaching this was.A master does not teach, he is the teaching. His whole being is a message, a continuous message. The way he moves his eyes, the way he gestures, the way he looks at you – something is there continuously being conveyed. And if you cannot see you are blind.It is not a question to ask a master: Will you teach me? That is what he exists for. His own work is fulfilled, his own work done. As far as he himself is concerned now there is no need to breathe anymore, everything is finished. If he lingers a little while on the shore, it is for you; otherwise his ship has arrived. In fact, the ship has been waiting long. If he lingers a little while more on the shore it is for you. It is to teach. It is to share that which he has attained. It is not a question of asking a master, “Will you teach me?” Rather, on the contrary, one has to ask, “Am I ready to be taught?”Libnani said:I do not feel that you know how to learn.When you come to a master it is not a question of what you say. He does not bother to listen to you, what you say. He feels what you are. You may say, “I wish to learn,” or you may say, “I desire to learn,” or you may say, “I am burning with desire and I am ready to surrender….”This happens. People come to me and they say, “Accept us, we are totally at your disposal. Whatsoever you want to make of us, make. We are surrendered.” They touch my feet. And if I say to them, “Then become a sannyasin, be initiated,” they say, “That is difficult. It will be very very difficult to move in orange robes in the market.” And just a moment before the man was saying, “I am at your disposal, surrendered, and whatsoever you want to make of me you can.” He is not ready even to change his dress, and he was saying that he allows me to change his being!He is not aware of what he has said just a moment before. People are talking in their sleep, drunk. They don’t know what they are saying. They may be touching my feet, but they don’t know what they are doing – because if it is just a gesture, a polite gesture, it is meaningless. If it is just a mannerism, it carries no significance. But if it is real, authentic, then it can become a transforming force.But if immediately I say, “Change your clothes,” they are afraid. And if I say, “Change your being,” how will it be possible for them?…because if just changing the clothes creates trouble in the market, when you change your being you will be constantly in trouble. Wherever you go you will be constantly in trouble because you will be an outsider. You will belong to a different world, and nobody will feel familiar to you. Even your own people will become separate and fall apart, they will not be able to understand you, you will become a foreigner in your own home. You will be an outsider and people will avoid you, they will not come near you. They will be afraid, because your disease can be infectious.One need not ask a master; one has to be just in the presence of the master. In India we use the word darshan. That means just to be in the presence of the master. Don’t say anything – he can know without your saying, and whatsoever you say may not be true about you because you are so fragmentary. One fragment says something, another fragment says something else – you are a crowd, you are not one. This moment you say something, the next moment you change. You are a confusion, a chaos.When you are near a master, you just put yourself in his presence and leave it to him to decide what type of man you are and what is possible for you. Let the master decide – don’t say anything.Libnani said: I do not feel…You say that you wish but I can feel you – I do not feel that you know how to learn. You are incapable. You don’t have the receptivity. You don’t have that feminine being which can learn. You are not open. I can see – you are closed from everywhere, not even a keyhole from where something can enter…all windows closed, all doors closed.When you are closed you have different vibrations around you. Even from miles a master can feel whether the man who is coming is closed or open. An open being has a different quality: weightlessness, as if he doesn’t walk; he flies, as if gravitation has no effect on him. He is no more part of the earth.An open being is totally different. When you come to a master, and if you are open, you are ready to learn.This man must have been closed. He had come to learn but he was not ready to open. How can you learn if you are not open? A mind filled with prejudices, concepts, theories, scriptures, knowledge, is not capable of learning. To learn one has to unlearn first. Unlearning is the way of learning.Whatsoever you know, you have to drop it; a clean slate is needed. You are filled too much; too much knowledge you carry already in your head. This man must have been a scholar or something, a pundit. He may have known the Koran, may have crammed it completely, could have repeated it by memory.The master said, “I feel that you don’t know how to learn. You have come to me but you have not come to me. You have carried all your luggage – rubbish, rot, inside the mind. Throw it out!” Only then is there the possibility that you can learn something.A man came to Ramana Maharshi and said, “I have come from very far, somewhere in Germany, and I have come to learn from you.” Ramana said, “Then you go elsewhere, because here we teach unlearning. Learning is not our way. You go elsewhere.”He may have been a German scholar, he may have known the Vedas, Upanishads, it may have been because of his learning that he became interested in Ramana. Reading the Upanishads, the desire arises to find a man who knows. Moving through the pages of the Vedas one becomes enchanted, charmed, magnetized, hypnotized. One starts seeking a man who is a seer of whom the Vedas talk, a man of the caliber of the seers of the Upanishads – a man who knows. He may have come because of the scriptures.But you don’t know the man who knows. He is always against scriptures. Scriptures may lead to him, but he will tell you to drop all scriptures. The ladder through which you have come – he will say, “Throw it! Now that you have reached me there is no need for Vedas and Upanishads and Korans; you drop them! Now I am here, alive.”Jesus says: I am truth, no need to bring scriptures here. Ramana said, “Then you go elsewhere, because here we teach unlearning. If you are ready to unlearn, be here. If you have come to learn more, then this is not the right place. Then go somewhere else – universities exist for learning. When you come to me, come to unlearn. This is a university for unlearning, a university to create no-mind, a university where whatsoever you know will be taken away.”All your knowledge has to be dropped so that you become knowing, so you get a perfection, a clarity, so that your eyes are not filled with theses, or theories, with prejudices, concepts; so your eyes have a clarity, an absolute clarity and transparency, so that you can see. The truth is already there. It has always been there.Said Libnani: I do not feel that you know how to learn.Man: Can you teach me how to learn?Must have been a very logical man. He reacts logically. He says, “Okay, if you think I am not ready to learn, then teach me how to learn.” Can you teach me how to learn?With logic this is the problem: the problem remains the same. Libnani says: I do not feel that you know how to learn. The man gives a logical reply. If he had been a man of understanding, not of logic, he would have closed his eyes. He would have looked within, he would have watched around his own being and self: “What does Libnani say? He says he feels that I do not know how to learn” – he should have observed his own being.If he was a man of understanding then he would have meditated on it. He would have said to Libnani, “I will go and meditate over it, what you have said. You have said a great truth. Already you have started teaching me. I have already learned something – that I don’t know how to learn! I already know at least this much. This can become a good beginning. I will go and I will meditate over it. It is such a potent truth that you have said to me. You have felt rightly. Let me now watch myself to understand whatsoever you have said to me.”But no, the man must have been a logical man; not a man of understanding but a man who knows, knowledgeable. He argues the point like a lawyer. He says, “This is an argument.” He says, “Okay, if you feel that I don’t know how to learn, can you teach me how to learn?” Again the emphasis is on the master: “Can you teach me?” The emphasis has not shifted a single bit.He goes on thinking that truth is something to be taught, and Libnani is emphasizing the fact that truth is something to be learned. And that is their polarity. Very subtle. He has missed the point. He again says the same thing: Can you teach me how to learn?Libnani: Can you learn how to let me teach?The emphasis remains the same on both sides. Again Libnani says: Can you learn how to let me teach?Truth cannot be taught. But it can be learned. And if you think that it can be taught you will go on wandering and wandering and wandering. You may meet many teachers and masters, but you will not meet truth because from the very beginning you have taken a wrong step. The emphasis should be that truth can be learned. The emphasis is on the disciple, and if the disciple is ready, the master appears.And what is disciplehood? It is openness. It is receptivity. It is a welcoming attitude. It is trust.Have you ever watched a roseflower? In the evening when the sun is setting and the day is over and the roseflower has had its day and now it is time to dissolve, the petals of the roseflower start falling, slowly, toward the ground, with no hesitation. A rose petal, so delicate, but so strong, doesn’t hesitate about where it is falling, where it is going, whether there is any earth to find, to rest, to go to sleep, to die – or is it falling in a bottomless abyss? Who knows? But no hesitation. So soft, so delicate, but so strong, not any uncertainty, not any clinging to the flower anymore. The time has come. It simply leaves the flower and falls to the ground.A Sufi master used to say to his disciples: Simply trust. Do not the petals flutter down just like that?When you come to a master be like a rose petal. Fall into the master, fall unto the master just like that – as a rose petal falls toward the earth unhesitating, absolutely in trust that the earth must be there – to rest, to die, with no effort of its own. The very gravitation of the earth does the work – it has just to trust. If it trusts, it doesn’t cling to the plant, it just trusts and flutters down.Simply trust! That is what disciplehood is. Do not the petals flutter down just like that?Enough for today.

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Just Like That 01-10Category: SUFISM

Just Like That 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Bahauddin El-Shah was sitting with a number of disciples when a number of followers came into the meeting hall. El-Shah asked each of them, one by one, to say why he was there.The first said: You are the greatest man on earth.I gave him a potion when he was ill, so he thinks I am the greatest man on earth, said El-Shah.The second said: My spiritual life has opened up since I have been allowed to visit you.He was uncertain and ill at ease and none would listen to him. I sat with him, and the resultant serenity is called by him his spiritual life, said El-Shah.The third said: You understand me, and all I ask is that you allow me to hear your discourses for the good of my soul.He needs attention and wished to have notice paid to him even if it is criticism, said El-Shah. This he calls the good of his soul.The fourth said: I went from one to another practicing what they taught. It was not until you gave me a wazifa exercise that I truly felt the illumination of contact with you.The exercise I gave this man was a concocted one not related to his spiritual life at all, said El-Shah. I had to demonstrate his illusion of spirituality before I could arrive at the part of this man which is really spiritual, not sentimental.The search depends on the seeker. Masters can only show the way. The search depends on the seeker – what quality of being, what quality of inquiry the seeker brings to the search. Everything will depend on it, on why he is in search, what the reason is, because the reason of the search will become the cause of his growth. If the reason is wrong, from the very beginning he has taken a wrong step, and the right end cannot follow a wrong beginning. The first step is the last step also, because the first step implies in it, has in it already, the last step as a potentiality.The seed is the tree because the seed will become the tree. The end will come out of the growth of the seeker, and if from the very beginning a wrong reason exists to seek and search, then everything is going to be in vain.The masters can only show the way, they can only indicate. Everything else has to be done by you, by the disciple. The discipline is not going to be imposed; no master ever imposes a discipline on anybody. He helps you to find your discipline – that is the difference between a pseudo-master and a real master.A pseudo-master is one who has already a ready-made formula, a pattern. He imposes that pattern on each and everybody, whosoever comes to him. The man who comes is irrelevant to a pseudo-master. The man who comes is just a number, not a person, just something on which he can project, impose his discipline – which is a ready-made phenomenon. He has already the blueprint in his mind. A pseudo-master kills many people, destroys many people, because everybody has his own blueprint of growth within him. No outer discipline is needed.A real master, a master like Bahauddin, does not impose anything on you. He simply helps you to find your discipline, he helps you to seek your way. He helps you to grow, not according to him but according to your own being – because you are the seed and the tree is going to come out of you. The master can at the most be a loving gardener, a compassion which goes on showering on you. But it nurses you, it does not impose anything upon you.With a real master also you will die. But there will be a resurrection. With a pseudo-master you are simply destroyed with no possibility of any creation out of it.This has to be remembered by you all. You are here with me. I am not giving you any forced discipline. That doesn’t mean that I am against discipline. No, I am all for it. But the discipline should come out of you. Your discipline will be your discipline, nobody else’s. Your flower will be your flower, nobody else’s, and that is going to be unique. That is the beauty – that whenever truth is attained it is always unique because everybody attains in his own way. Everybody flowers into it as an individual. You become more and more authentically individual.This is the meaning of resurrection – the false within you will die. But you carry the real. You are already pregnant with it, it has to be helped.A real master is what Socrates used to say about himself – that he is a midwife. A real master is a midwife. He does not give you anything, he simply helps you, your own being, to be brought to light, to be brought to birth. But if you have come with a wrong reason then the master cannot help you because you will frustrate all his efforts.Just a few days ago a man came to see me from South America. He traveled long just to see me, but then could not see me. He himself frustrated his own effort.He is a sort of guru in his own right. He has many followers in Latin America. And that created the trouble. He thinks himself somebody special so he wanted a special interview with me, not with anybody else present. He was not ready to come at seven in the evening when I usually see people. With others, it was hurtful to his ego. He wanted a special interview, only for him. I could have given it, but that would have been wrong. There was no trouble in it, he could have been given a separate time, but that would have been very very dangerous to his own growth, because then I am yielding to a wrong reason.He thinks himself special; hence he needs a special interview. This egoistic standpoint will not be of any use. From the very beginning something is wrong. The very first step is going to be wrong. So I didn’t give him a special interview. I insisted: You come at seven o’clock tomorrow evening. He must have felt frustrated. He wrote a letter, and he wrote, “I will be waiting for you at Hotel Amir tomorrow at four o’clock in the afternoon.” He wrote it in such a way that it can either mean that he wants me physically to go to the Hotel Amir, or it may mean that he simply wants my spiritual presence to be there. That too is tricky, clever and cunning.At four o’clock I really tried. I really tried to make contact with him because the man has potential. The man has a potentiality, and can be helped tremendously. He can grow and become a beautiful flower. But the ego is also very great.I made an attempt to be there spiritually at four o’clock but he was not even waiting for me. When I reached his room it was filled with tobacco smoke, and he was smoking, surrounded by smoke, not even waiting for me, because this is no way to wait. He should have been in meditation. He should have closed his room and become silent, as silent as possible, because physical contact is possible without any special preparation by you, but spiritual contact needs preparation. It needs a receptivity. It needs a subtle awareness, because the phenomenon is very very subtle. It is like such a small breeze coming in that if you are not aware you will not be able to feel it. It is not like a storm that, even if you are fast asleep, you will be awakened by.I reached, I stood by his side. On the outside he was surrounded by the smoke of his cigarette, and inside, even a deeper smoke of the ego. And in his mind were racing many thoughts, and not even a single thought of me.Of course, at seven o’clock he didn’t turn up to see me. Again a message: “Because you didn’t contact me at four o’clock I am not going to come to see you.”And then he had to go back. He had come a long way, but something in him frustrates his whole effort: the ego. He must have come for some wrong reason. He must have come to be recognized by me, that he is something special. And I tell you, he is special, but the very effort that he wanted recognition frustrates the whole journey from the very beginning. The first step goes wrong.I could have yielded if he was an ordinary man. I could have even gone to the Amir Hotel. There was no trouble. Physically I could have gone because then there would be nothing much at stake. This man has potential, a great possibility lies deep in him, but he himself is frustrating it. He needs to be humble, only then can he rightly begin. But he is already a guru. That creates trouble. He has followers. You can always find followers, the world is so stupid and you can always find more stupid people than you. They become your followers. There is nothing difficult in it.When you come to me, why you have come is going to play a great part in the whole drama that is going to follow. And I have to watch that I do not help a wrong beginning, because once started it will be more and more difficult to change it. It will become stronger and stronger. It has to be stopped from the very beginning. The seed has to be burned if it is wrong. Once I start and the sprouts come out of the earth, the seed is already gaining roots, becoming stronger. And once the tree has become very big, then it will be difficult…very very difficult.A seed can be burned very easily, but to cut a tree and burn a tree is going to be very difficult. And you are the tree! So when you have many branches, many leaves, many fruits – maybe wrong, bitter, poisonous, but still then you will resist: nothing should be cut. When you resist even when the tree is not there, just the seed is there, you can imagine how much resistance you will create, how much you will fight when the tree is there and you feel you have grown – and you can grow wrongly. Remember this, growth in itself does not mean much. One can grow in a wrong way.Growth in itself is not the goal. There is a right growth and there is a wrong growth. In the West now there is much work going on around the concept of growth, but I have not come across anybody in the growth movement who is aware that growth in itself is not the goal and cannot be the goal. You can grow wrongly, you can grow rightly.So growth in itself is not the goal – but right growth. And once you grow wrongly it becomes more and more difficult on each step, on each level of growth…. The further you have gone the more difficult it is to move back, because growth becomes a rigid pattern. Right growth is a totally different thing. From the very beginning one has to be aware; hence the need of a master, because from the very beginning how can you be aware? You will be aware at the end. From the very beginning, how can you be aware? You can only grope in the dark.So if you move on your own, ninety-nine possibilities are there out of a hundred that you will grow wrongly, because who will say that this is not the way to grow? And every growth in the beginning feels good because you expand, you become bigger. Every growth, even wrong growth, feels good. And wrong growth does not need much effort. It is like weeds in the garden – they don’t need much care, just a little water now and then and they will grow. But if you are trying to grow roses, they need care, they need a gardener. Weeds don’t need a gardener, but roses do need one.In the West the growth movement is moving in many dimensions, but completely oblivious of the fact that you can help people to grow wrongly – and then there will be difficulty. Then you have created something which will be more and more difficult every day to destroy. A master is needed, who can see the seed from the very beginning, and can help you to destroy it, so that the right seed can be found within you. You carry the right seed also.You are a confusion of right and wrong. You are a confusion of good and bad. You are a confusion of weeds and roses. Somebody has to be there to sort it out for you, because you cannot do this at this moment of your consciousness. Your whole being is a confusion.When a disciple comes to a master the first thing that arises in the master is: Why has he come to me? He starts looking into the disciple: Why? for what reason? what has brought him to me?I must have watched thousands of people coming to me. Rarely it happens that a person has come for a right reason – rarely. Humanity seems to be in such a bad shape; rarely it happens that a man comes with a right reason. He may think he has come for a right reason. That is not the point. His thinking is not of much value because the reason is hidden deeper in the unconscious, not on the surface. He cannot think about it.The first thing that comes to a master is: Why? – why has this man come to me? And he cannot listen and believe in you. Whatsoever you say is not of much worth because next moment you will change it. Tomorrow you will change it, you are a flux. You don’t have a crystallized center in you which can reply. The master has to go deeper into your unconscious, to the very roots of your being, and see why you have come here. He cannot listen and believe in you, you are not yet believable. You are so deceptive that you don’t know, you may be deceiving yourself. Once your why is known then something can be done. Then it has to be brought to your consciousness. And only on the right reason can your future growth be founded and based.This small incident in Bahauddin El-Shah’s life is very beautiful and will help you to understand many things.Bahauddin El-Shah was sitting with a number of disciples when a number of followers came into the meeting hall.There is a distinction between disciples and followers. A follower is one who is not yet a disciple, attracted but not yet fallen into the trap of the master. He cannot leave him, but also cannot trust him. A follower is somebody who hangs around undecided whether to go away from the master or to come closer. He is afraid to come close because a master is a death; he is also afraid to go away because a master is a resurrection.A follower is just either on the way to become a disciple or on the way to become an enemy. Either a follower will come closer and will become a disciple, or he will have to find excuses to go away and will become an enemy. Whenever a follower goes away he has to become an enemy; otherwise what rationalization does he have to go away? How will he satisfy himself as to why he has come away from such a great man as Bahauddin, such a pure soul that he is known as the emperor of masters? Hence El-Shah: Bahauddin is his name. El-Shah his disciples call him, the master of masters, the emperor of all masters – and he was…one of the greatest magnetic forces in the history of the Sufis.When you come nearer to a man like Bahauddin you have to decide either to be a friend or to be an enemy. You cannot remain indifferent. You cannot afford to be indifferent. A decision has to be taken because such a man as Bahauddin creates decisiveness even in you, who are absolutely indecisive, who live in indecision, who are born in indecision.You live in indecision and die in indecision, never knowing what you are doing, why you are doing it, whether you really wanted to do it or not to do it…just drifting with the crowd.When you come near a master you have to decide, because it is no ordinary affair. It is a great risk, your whole life is at risk. So if you move around in India you will find either my friends or my enemies, those who are madly in love with me or those who are madly in hate with me. That is bound to happen. The reason is simple. Those who are madly in love with me and those who are madly in hate with me – they both had to decide.A firm decision is needed. You have to decide that you are the enemy and you have to go on talking about me and against me because that is your only protection; otherwise you will be pulled in, you will be trapped. You can protect yourself only if you are constantly talking against me – not that you are spreading hatred against me, that may be a byproduct, but in fact you are simply protecting yourself by your attitude of hatred, continuously feeding it. You are afraid that if you stop feeding hatred you may come closer. And the fear is there that if you come closer death happens.A follower is one who is just in the middle, on the fence, not yet decided whether to jump inside the house or jump outside the house and run away. On the fence is the follower. A disciple is one who has decided to jump into the house, who has become a part of the house of the master.There are many who live on the fence their whole lives. They are the most foolish people in the world because sitting on the fence is not a comfortable position, and sitting on the fence gives nothing. It is wasting your life and time. Either come in or go out. Don’t sit on the fence too long because it may become a habit, and then nothing will be the only outcome of it.Bahauddin El-Shah was sitting with a number of disciples when a number of followers came into the meeting hall.Followers, still thinking, trying to decide what to do, what not to do, still afraid of the commitment and yet not decided to leave….El-Shah asked each of them, one by one, to say why he was there.He asked the followers, not the disciples. When you have become an initiate it is not only that you have chosen the master. In fact just the reverse is the case: the master has chosen you.You may be given the impression that you are free to choose. That has to be given because you are so egoistic, you feel good that you are free to choose. But the real thing is that before you choose a master, the master has already chosen you. You choose him because he has chosen you already; otherwise you cannot choose him, he will create situations in which he will not allow you to choose. He may even force you to go away.Always remember, when a master has chosen you, only then can you choose him. His very acceptance of you creates a desire in you to choose him. If he is not accepting you the desire to choose him will not arise in you, or it may be just a feeble wish and soon it will disappear like a small ripple on the surface of an ocean. It cannot persist.As you are, nothing persists in you for long. When I ask you, “Would you like to be initiated into sannyas?” I have already initiated you. Now it is just a game. You can play around and fool around a little. You can say, “I will think about it.” You can say, “Wait, as yet the right moment has not come for me, as yet I cannot be wholeheartedly in it, as yet I am just fifty-fifty, divided.”And I tell you, “Yes, decide, meditate, think about it, and when you decide, come to me.” But I have already come to you. And the decision will sooner or later erupt into your consciousness. You can delay a little, that is all. You postpone it a little, that’s all.And it has to be so. How can a disciple choose a master? By what criterion? How to judge? A disciple is not in any position to penetrate the master. He can judge from the outside, but a master is not on the outside. The master is the inside of all things. The master is the very inside.On the outside he may be playing tricks. He has to, because he has to avoid a few people, in fact many – the first part of humanity, the major part, which is not in any inquiry. They also come to a master, not to seek God or truth, just curious, with childish curiosity. A master has to avoid them. He has to create some situation around him so that they are not attracted. He may spread rumors about himself. He may show different faces to different people. He may be very hard, cruel, to certain groups. He may try to prove himself a madman to certain people so that once and for all they decide that this man is not for them, and forget the man and leave him.On the outside there is no possibility to decide what type of man is inside. And you have not been to the inside of your own existence; how can you penetrate into the inside of a master, which is like a vast abyss? One goes on falling and falling and falling into it. That’s why a master creates fear. You start trembling as if he is the brink of a deep abyss. If you look into him you will feel dizzy. Fear may take you over, you may start trembling and perspiring. No, there is no way for a disciple to decide.For a disciple, to trust a master is just like falling in love. It happens. But for a master it is not a happening. For a master it is a very very alert, conscious phenomenon. Once he sees that the right man is there he opens his door. Once he sees that the right man is there for the right reason, he accepts him, and that very acceptance creates something in you, a decision, a will, a burning desire, abheepsa, to be closer and closer to this man. Even if it means death, you are not afraid. And it means death, because the resurrection is possible only when death has happened.The master was sitting with the disciples; there came a few followers into the meeting hall.El-Shah asked each of them, one by one, to say why he was there.It was a demonstration for the disciples. He was showing something to the disciples, and Sufi masters always do this – they demonstrate things. They don’t believe in teaching directly, they create a situation and they demonstrate.The disciples watched. He asked the followers one by one, why they were there, what has led them to be there, what reason, what urge, what search.The first said: You are the greatest man on earth.That’s why I am here.How can you know that this man Bahauddin is the greatest man on earth? What criterion do you have? What touchstone? Who is great? And who is the greatest? And how do you come to the conclusion?Said El-Shah,I gave him a potion when he was ill, so he thinks I am the greatest man on earth.That is the reason, the criterion, the touchstone: he was ill and I gave him some medicine that helped, so I am the greatest man on earth. And if the potion had failed he would not have looked at me again. Then he would have found some other man who was the greatest on earth, whose potion works.How you judge! By such small things! Illness and a medicine. Even if you are cured it is not much of a point to be near Bahauddin. It would have been better if you had gone to a doctor or a physician.Many people come to me because of illnesses. They have tried doctors, physicians, this and that “pathy”; they have tried many things and nothing happens. Then they come, then they talk about God. And I can see they are not interested in God at all; they are ill, physically, mentally, and they are in search of a miracle, some miracle medicine. They are talking about meditation, they are talking about God, they are even ready to take sannyas, but their search is wrong. They should not be near me, they should go to a physician, because they are not even aware of the spiritual urge in them. It is something physical, or something mental – which is the same, because your mind and body are not two things. They are two poles of the same phenomenon.And even if you are cured, nothing is cured in you. Even if you have a healthy body it makes no difference to your inner growth. Maybe, as you are health may not prove a blessing. It may even prove a curse to you.I remember one anecdote in Jesus’ life. It is not related in Christian books, it is not in The Bible, but Sufis have that story about Jesus.The story is that once Jesus entered a small town. He saw a man running after a prostitute, completely magnetized, hypnotized. He stopped the man and asked, “What are you doing? Why are you wasting your life in such foolish things?”The man looked at Jesus and said, “You don’t recognize me, my lord, but I recognize you – how can I forget you? I was blind and you touched my eyes, and now I can see. But what better can I do with my eyes than be charmed by a beautiful body? What more can I do with my eyes than cherish the beauty of form! What else is there to see? And I was blind, my lord, and you are so great, you blessed me. Now I can see and enjoy.”Jesus felt very sad because he had never thought that eyes could become a curse. But as man is, as you are, you will turn all blessings into curses.He entered the town, he saw another man completely drunk, lying in the gutter, crying and weeping and shouting and screaming. He went near the man and asked, “What are you doing? Why are you wasting your life like a drunkard? This life is a great opportunity to know and realize the divine. There is only one life – and once missed, missed forever! And time never returns, you cannot reclaim it again. Be awake!”Listening to this man the drunkard opened his eyes and said, “My lord, have you forgotten me? I was ill and I was bedridden for ten years, then you touched me and you cured me. Now I am healthy. But what else can one do with the body? I am enjoying! Eat, drink and be merry! I am following that rule. And now I am healthy because of you. You are so great!”Jesus became very sad. He had never imagined that health could be turned into a curse. He turned back. He was so sad that he didn’t want to go into the town.When he was coming out of the town he saw a man who was trying to hang himself from a tree, to commit suicide. Jesus reached him in time, stopped the man and said, “What are you doing? Life is precious, every single moment of it – and God has given you such a gift, and you are destroying it! What are you doing?”The man looked at Jesus and said, “If I have not forgotten, you are the same man who created the trouble. I was dead. You touched me and you revived me. Now what can I do? Life is meaningless. And I must tell you – don’t touch me again. Enough is enough. I was dead and you revived me, but don’t do this again to anybody else! I am fed up with life and death was a blessing, and you revived me, and for three years continuously I had to suffer again. Now I am going to commit suicide – you please go away from here! Who knows, you may touch me again.”No, health, life, strength, youth – everything you turn into a curse, because everything depends on your consciousness. There are people who have turned their illness into a blessing, who have turned their blindness into an inner insight, who have turned their death into a new life. It depends.Said Bahauddin: I gave him a potion when he was ill, so he thinks I am the greatest man on earth.And that’s why he is here. Not because of me, not because of any inner search, but because of the potion that I gave him. In fact, I am not great, the potion was great. And he is hanging around me just in case he becomes ill again – I can give him a potion, a medicine. I am not more than a physician to him.And what a waste! A Bahauddin, and you waste him. And the opportunity that he gives you – you waste that opportunity, and you take him as a physician.But many people in the world go to the saints and sages thinking that they can do miracles. These are the wrong people. That’s why I say if you want to see the wrong humanity, the third category, the major part of humanity, you should go to Satya Sai Baba. There you will find all sorts of wrong people around him. Whenever there is somebody doing a miracle – it may not be a miracle, it may be just a magical trick, but if somebody is doing a “miracle” wrong people are immediately attracted. The vast mob comes running. And they all think that they are spiritual seekers. They are going for health, for money, for something worldly.If you are here for something worldly you are near a wrong person, because I am not going to do any miracle, because that is the way to attract wrong people. I am not going to heal you. I am not going to do anything for any wrong reason.The second said: My spiritual life has opened up since I have been allowed to visit you.Said El-Shah:He was uncertain and ill at ease and none would listen to him. I sat with him, and the resultant serenity is called by him his spiritual life.This is what the whole of psychoanalysis in the West is all about. A psychoanalyst is not doing anything at all, particularly the Freudian psychoanalyst, the orthodox. He simply listens. The patient lies down on a couch, comfortably, and the psychoanalyst sits and listens, and the patient is allowed to say whatsoever he feels like, to move in free association. Whatsoever thoughts come he is allowed to express them. After a one-hour session one feels a certain serenity.It is just the serenity that comes by talking. And then if you go on and on for three or four or five years of psychoanalysis, it costs a lot of money. That too helps, that too makes you calm down. Whenever a costly medicine is given to you it works better than a cheap medicine. The cheaper may have been better, but that doesn’t matter. Cost matters. When you pay something you have to feel good; otherwise you will look foolish to yourself. Five years of psychoanalysis, thousands of dollars paid – of course one has to feel good! Otherwise you will look stupid. People will laugh: “Then what were you doing there?” So one becomes very elated.But talking helps. It is a catharsis, the mind goes on saying things. When you go on saying them again and again and again, they are released, they evaporate from the mind. And somebody listens, that is the whole trick, the whole business secret of psychoanalysis: somebody listens. In the world, in life, who listens to whom? Nobody pays any attention to what you are saying. In fact, the other is waiting for you to stop so he can say something.I have heard, once it happened: There was a meeting in the town hall, and the speaker went on and on – an old politician – and he would not stop. People by and by left the hall. Only Mulla Nasruddin remained, the only one. The speaker was very happy and he thanked Nasruddin: “I never thought that you loved me so much, or you loved my thoughts so much, or you so appreciated my philosophy.”Nasruddin said, “You don’t understand me. I am the next speaker – I was waiting for you to stop!”But this happens every day. Whenever you are talking to somebody you are interested in your talking. It is a catharsis. It helps; it helps you to calm down a little from your tensions and anxieties. You have talked about them, you become a little aware about them, they are not so much of a burden. You can accept them.But the other is not listening because he is in the same boat. He has his own anxieties, enough of his own. How can he listen to yours? Because if he really listens to yours he is gathering your anxieties also. So he listens with a closed mind. From one ear your talk enters, and from the other it goes out. It has to be so; otherwise your anxieties will be accumulating in his mind. And he is waiting for the opportunity, for when you stop, so that he can start.I have heard that once it happened in a madhouse: A psychoanalyst was watching two madmen through the keyhole. He didn’t want to disturb them and they were in such a great conversation. Both were professors of a university. Professors are more prone to become mad. Their very profession is a mad profession. They deal in thoughts, they deal in thinking, and when thinking and thoughts become too much, madness happens.Those two professors were talking and the psychoanalyst was looking from the keyhole. He was surprised about only one thing. They were talking nonsense; nothing was relevant, consistent, not even one sentence was related to another. One was talking about something and the other was talking about something completely different, their talking was not related. That was not surprising, that’s how mad people are. The surprising fact was this: when one would talk the other would listen. When he stopped the other would start, but the other would start not in any way related to the first; he would start from somewhere of his own, out of the blue.This continued. Then the psychoanalyst knocked on the door. They opened the door. He said, “I am very surprised about one thing, and have become very curious to know: why, when one talks does the other stop? And you are talking about such irrelevant things – one talks about the earth, the other talks about the sky, they are not related at all – then why do you stop when the other is talking?”They both laughed and they said, “Do you think we don’t know the law of conversation?” This is the law of conversation: simply that you talk, then the other stops; when the other starts, you stop. This is a polite mannerism. But you are related to your inner talk, the other is related to his inner talk. You come nearer, but you remain parallel. Dialogue is not possible. Dialogue happens only when you really listen to the other, and while the other is talking, you are completely silent. Then only is dialogue possible. When the other is talking and you are talking within yourself, your inner talk continues, how is a dialogue possible? These are two parallel lines, like a railway track, parallel lines running for thousands of years, meeting nowhere.People need catharses of their minds to throw things out. But now in a busy world, particularly in the West, nobody is there to listen; hence psychoanalysis. A professional listener – you pay for him just to listen to you. It helps. Psychoanalysis is nothing but a professional listening.You pay attention because you are paid. Howsoever boring you listen with a smiling face, you show interest, you pay attention. The ego of the patient is consoled. Somebody listens and not an ordinary somebody – a Freud, a Jung, a very exceptional, extraordinary person – famous, great, known all over the world. The greater the psychoanalyst – I mean greater in the sense of more known – the more he helps the patients, because the patient feels so gratified. Somebody pays so much attention – he is so important! Even a Freud listens so attentively.I have heard that one young psychoanalyst asked his teacher, an old man, “This is really amazing. I get bored and tired after two or three patients because they talk such nonsense, and I have to listen and I cannot do anything, I cannot escape. I have to be attentive, I have to show interest.I get so bored and tired after the third patient – but you are wonderful. You do it the whole day from morning to evening, and I never see you tired.”The old man laughed and said, “Who listens? That is just a face. Now I have become expert in showing attention without paying it, smiling without smiling, giving an ear but not listening at all. Who listens?”But that is not the point, whether the other is listening or not. If he shows interest, that’s enough. The patient feels good. He goes on talking rubbish, rot, but even to his rotten mind somebody is paying such keen attention, as if something very precious is being said. Ego feels gratified.I see it happening every day. There are people who come to me, not to know anything from me, they come to me just to tell me something, and once they get warmed up through talking they forget what they are saying and why they are talking. They go on and on and on; it is difficult to stop them. And they feel very good….Once a man came to me, and he was asking for many days, saying he would like to come because he has certain problems and he feels only I can solve those problems – nobody else can solve them so he has to come and I have to give him time.I gave him time; he came. For one hour he didn’t say anything about his problems. And I had given him one solid hour. He talked and talked about meaningless things, about his wife and children, and this and that, and about his business. After one hour – and I had no way to say anything, he wouldn’t give even a small gap for me to say yes or no, I simply nodded…after one hour he thanked me, he was very grateful. He touched my feet and said, “You are such a wonderful man, you told me so many beautiful things” – and I had not said a single word! – “and you solved all my problems.” He had not talked about any problem and I had not solved any!But that is not the point. I listened, I nodded, I showed interest, and he felt completely satisfied. That was the problem. He needed somebody, somebody he thinks is very great, who pays attention to him.Bahauddin said:He was uncertain and ill at ease and none would listen to him. I sat with him, and the resultant serenity is called by him his spiritual life.It is nothing. It is just a gratification of the ego. And the man was saying, My spiritual life has opened up since I have been allowed to visit you.The third said: You understand me, and all I ask is that you allow me to hear your discourses for the good of my soul.He needs attention and wishes to have notice paid to him even if it is criticism, said El-Shah. This he calls the good of his soul.Ego is so hungry. Attention is food for the ego. If somebody appreciates you – good, beautiful. If nobody pays attention to you and everybody is indifferent, that is hell. It will be better if they criticize you, but pay attention.Three attitudes are possible: one, somebody pays attention to you; you feel groovy. One would think that criticism is not liked by people. You are wrong. That is the second alternative.If you are not appreciated then the second alternative is, people should criticize you. You will act in such a way that people are forced to criticize you, because again, they have to pay attention.The third is indifference. Nobody likes it. And unless you like indifference your ego will never die. In indifference, ego dies. Live in such a way that you don’t ask anybody to pay attention; the ego will disappear. Indifference is poison for the ego.So either appreciation – people should pay compliments to you; if not, then you will try at least for criticism. But indifference…indifference – the very word gives you fear. If nobody pays attention to you where will you be? who will you be? Your identity will be broken.There are two types of people in the world. Those who succeed in getting attention: politicians, artists, musicians, talented people in some dimension; they attract attention. If that is not possible – because success needs talents; if you want to be a musician just a hankering for attention won’t help much, you have to be talented, and you have to work for it; it is a long discipline, a whole life has to be devoted to music. Success is a long-term affair. It is not easy, and everybody cannot be a musician, and only very rare people can rise to the height where attention is paid to them.Then, if that is not possible – and it is not possible for millions of people – what should they do? They start the other way. They start becoming criminals, sinners, drunkards. No talent is needed for that. You can get drunk without any training; in fact training will not allow you to get drunk so soon. Untrained, even a small dose and you are drunk, and the whole town becomes aware of you. You walk on the streets shouting, screaming, doing things which you cannot do when you are in your saner moments. The whole town has to pay attention. You are lying in a gutter screaming and everybody who passes has to pay attention. You can become a criminal. The whole world has to pay attention.I was just reading about one man who killed seven men in one day for no reason. He didn’t know those people at all. They were strangers, not in any way related with him. One of them he killed from behind – he had not even seen the face, who the man is he was going to kill. And in the court he said, “I wanted to see my picture in the newspaper.” Of course his picture was there. He made the headlines, front-page coverage. He wanted attention. People become criminals, people become antisocials, people become rebels, but it is attention that is needed.As I have been observing, ninety percent of hippies are not really in rebellion. Now this is a new way to attract attention: the way you grow your hair, the dirt and dirtiness that you collect on the body, the smell that people can feel from far away – you have an aroma, a bad smell around you. Wherever you go people have to become alert; a hippie has come, tinkling his bells – what is he doing?An easy way to attract attention. Very easy, simple; no talent, no training, no discipline is needed. You can become a hippie right now, immediately. Throw some dirt on the hair, find some dirty rags, a bell, smoke charas, and you are a hippie; wherever you go people will look at you as if you are the shah of Iran. Even if a hippie and the shah of Iran are standing together on the street, a hippie will be paid more attention.Ninety percent of the young generation are trying to find easier ways, because in the West success has become more and more difficult an affair. Too much competition there! If you want a PhD it is a competition, a long affair – and then too there are thousands of PhD’s in the West, so it is not much of an attainment.If in India you become a PhD it is something. Indians will always ask you what degree you have got. In the West degrees have become useless; in India they are still very very important because only a few are educated and millions are uneducated. To become a PhD is still precious. Somebody becomes a PhD – he has attained the very last, the ultimate of life. But in the West thousands of PhD’s are moving all around. Now it doesn’t seem to matter much.I was reading about the first Indian who became a matriculate, in Allahabad, somewhere in the beginning of this century. A great procession was arranged for him. He sat on an elephant like a king and eleven elephants followed him, and a great procession…the whole of Allahabad participated. It was a tremendous phenomenon, something miraculous had happened – a man had become a matriculate.But now it is absolutely useless. You don’t attain any attention through it. Nobody will bring an elephant, not even a donkey will be brought to you! If you try to sit on a donkey they will ask: Are you a PhD? Or just a matriculate trying to sit on a donkey? Get off it! Only a doctor, a man who holds a doctorate, will be allowed on the donkey.No attention is paid. In the West education now is universal; hence the dropping out of education, because there seems to be no fulfillment of the ego in it at all. And people have become so rich – Rockefellers, Rothschilds and Fords you cannot imagine how to compete, and you cannot dream how to surpass them. It is almost impossible.Then what to do? Purchase a bell, grow the hair, move in a way which is unorthodox, unconventional, and you simply get attention. But the whole search is for attention, whether through PhD’s or through a hippie style of life, whether by being a politician or by being a criminal, whether by being the president of a country, a Nixon, or a murderer, it makes no difference. The ego’s ways are the same.And I tell you, unless the ego is dropped, whatsoever you are you are a criminal. Your politics will be a politics of crime; your talent will be a talent for crime. Ego is the root cause of all crime, and if ego is there your success is also going to be criminal because you will succeed on the failures of many. You will succeed by destroying many. The competition will be cut-throat, it will be a murderous competition.Wherever you move, if ego is there, whatsoever you do is going to be a crime. To me, ego is the criminal.Don’t ask for attention. Live in such a way that nobody becomes aware of you. Live in such a way that it is as if you never existed. Move in such a way that nobody comes to hear your movement, nobody even knows that you were here. Then only will you attain to the explosion which is spirituality. Otherwise the ego will be there, always like a hard rock on the possibility of the explosion. It will be destroying you within.Why do you ask for attention? – because you are not certain about yourself, who you are. But by attention how are you going to know who you are? You cannot know yourself by looking in the mirror, and you cannot know yourself by looking in the eyes of others – whether they appreciate or criticize, those eyes are not more than mirrors: friends, enemies – all are mirrors.You have to know yourself directly, immediately.You have to go withinward.Ego lives on attention. It is a false phenomenon. Understand it, and come out of it. Once you are out of it a different quality of serenity, a silence which surpasses understanding, a stillness – natural, spontaneous – and a bliss start bubbling within you, an inner dance. And that is the only dance there is, the only ecstasy there is. Unless you attain to that you are living a false, pseudo life, you are deceiving nobody but yourself.The third said: You understand me and all I ask is that you allow me to hear your discourses for the good of my soul.He needs attention and wished to have notice paid to him even if it is criticism, said El-Shah. This he calls the good of his soul.Please, don’t call this the good of your soul.The fourth said: I went from one to another practicing what they taught. It was not until you gave me a wazifa exercise that I truly felt the illumination of contact with you.The exercise I gave this man was a concocted one not related to his spiritual life at all, said El-Shah. I had to demonstrate his illusion of spirituality before I could arrive at the part of this man which is really spiritual, not sentimental.The fourth said, “You gave me a Sufi exercise, a wazifa exercise, and since then much has happened to me. I am growing.”And El-Shah said to his disciples, “I have given him a false exercise through which nobody can grow. It is not a technique at all. But he says he is growing. He is not even true to me. He is not only deceiving himself, he is trying to deceive me that he is growing – and that exercise cannot help. At the most that exercise can make him more sentimental, not spiritual.”But many people think that sentimentality is spirituality. Emotions are as much mental as thoughts. And what you call your heart is as much in your head as your head. You can become emotional very easily. You can cry and weep with tears falling down, big pearl-like tears – but nothing spiritual. Tears are as physical as anything else.The eyes are part of the body, and emotions are a disturbance in the physical energy. You cry and weep – of course you will feel relieved, you will feel relaxed after you have had a good cry. You will feel relieved. All over the world women know it. They know it well, that it helps. They cry and they weep and then they are relieved. It is a catharsis, but there is nothing spiritual in it. But people go on mistaking things – things which are not spiritual they go on thinking they are spiritual.People come to me; they say that since they have come their kundalini is arising. They have jerks in the body and they think they have become very very spiritual. There is nothing spiritual in kundalini; it is a physical force. Don’t be befooled by it.Then people come – they are seeing light. When they close their eyes they are seeing light…nothing but imagination. Good, you will have a good sleep if you can see light, because your mind is getting more concentrated. But it is mind still. Good as far as it goes, but nothing spiritual.Then people come – they are seeing visions: Krishna playing on his flute, Jesus crucified, Buddha sitting under the bodhi tree. And they come to me so that I can certify, I can say, “Yes, you have attained, you have realized, this is what spirituality is.” What more can you expect? Krishna playing flute, what more? Such an extraordinary experience.But it is nothing spiritual. Good dreams, beautiful dreams. Enjoy! But don’t be befooled. Really a good dream – and after so many nightmares that you have lived through, Krishna playing flute – nothing bad to enjoy for a while. You can also play the flute with him and dance around him, but don’t be befooled. It is nothing spiritual.Then what is spiritual? Spirituality is not an experience. You cannot experience it. If you experience it, it is something of the mind, something of the body – because how can you experience yourself? Your being cannot be reduced to an object. You remain the subject. You are subjectivity. Everything else that you can see will not be you. You are the seer.Spirituality is not an experience. It is not an object; you cannot watch and see it. You are it, the watcher, the seer. So then all experiences disappear. When there is nothing to be seen, when there is no object to be observed, but only awareness, vast, unobstructed awareness not obstructed by any experience, then you have become spiritual. You become spiritual; spirituality is not an experience.Kundalini, lights, visions…all disappear. They are good indications that you are growing, but nothing of the spiritual. And the real master is not interested in the experiences on the way, he is interested only in the goal. The way has to be passed, transcended. He is interested only in you, in your absolute subjectivity, with no object, no experience, nothing; when your awareness burns like a flame in an empty sky – not even a breeze, nothing, no God….In spirituality there is no God, that’s why Buddhists, Jainas, never think of Christianity, Mohammedanism, the Jewish tradition as the last word in religion – because they go on talking about experiences: God, angels…they go on. Happiness, bliss – they go on talking about experiences. And spirituality is beyond all. It is the very beyondness. Only you remain, aware, fully aware, awakened, and all else has disappeared. In this total emptiness burns the flame of subjectivity, of absolute aloneness, awareness. Remember that.I am not satisfied with your kundalini. I am not satisfied with your lights. I am not satisfied with your krishnas playing on the flute. All gods that you can see are your creations. Drop them all! Come to the point where nothing remains, nothing remains. Then only are you left in your total aloneness – and that has a beauty of its own. That is the hidden splendor. That is the spiritual.Before that, everything is a game. There are games of the body – sex is the game of the body. There are games of the mind – love is the game of the mind. Spirituality is not a game. Everything finished, all games dropped, one comes back home, alone…sits in the home, no experience. All experiences are disturbances.When only consciousness remains, only then a man like Bahauddin is satisfied with the disciple. Masters demand so much. They will not leave you with some foolish imagination, they will go on destroying all imaginations. When everything is destroyed, only that remains which cannot be destroyed – the deathless. You, in your fully awakened state.Everything is a dream. There are layers and layers of dreams: beautiful dreams, ugly dreams, spiritual dreams, non-spiritual dreams. But spirituality is not a dream. Spirituality is the dreamer who has awakened out of all dreams. Then only the hidden splendor is revealed. The secret of all secrets becomes known.Enough for today.

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Just Like That 01-10Category: SUFISM

Just Like That 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Salih of Gazwin taught his disciples:Whoever knocks at the door continually, it will be opened to him.Rabiya, hearing him one day, said: “How long will you say, ‘It will be opened’? The door has never been shut.”Nature, the whole of it, is a continuous ceremony – a marriage, a feast. Guests go on changing, but the feast continues; the feast never stops for a single moment. Singers change, but the song remains.Except for man, nature is always in ecstasy. Man is a special case. If you look just at the present situation of man you will feel depressed, as if something has gone wrong. But if you can understand the future possibility of man then you will be happy, thankful. Nothing has gone wrong; only, with man, nature is trying to reach a higher ceremony.Man has been sent on a journey. He looks to be without a home – because he has to attain a home in his being. He looks uprooted – because he has to find a richer soil for his roots. Man is nothing but a reaching of nature toward a higher harmony, a higher ceremony, a greater ecstasy.But that is so if you look at the whole journey, and you can see the destiny. If you can’t see the destiny, then man simply looks like a child gone astray. Then man looks like a disease. That’s why for Sartre, or Camus, or Jaspers, man looks meaningless, a tale told by an idiot, full of fury and noise, signifying nothing.The whole of human consciousness seems to be ill, ill at ease. But buddhas see deeper. They don’t see just this moment. Hidden in this moment is the whole destiny of man. Man is the greatest experiment nature has yet made; but it is not yet a complete experiment, that is the trouble.Man has lost the home that trees have, and he has not yet reached the end of his journey. Man has lost the moorings that birds have, and the stars and the sea have. He seems to be homeless, a stranger, an outsider. That is right! But a greater home, a better ecstasy, and a higher plenitude of being is waiting. You have to complete the journey.Religion is nothing but the effort to make the journey complete. Nature has thrown you into a vast world, full of millions of possibilities, and you don’t know who you are, where you are going. Nature has pushed you, and religion is to complete the journey, religion is to fill the gap; otherwise you will feel meaningless. You will feel depressed, you will live in anguish.If you don’t know the destiny, if you can’t look into the seed – if you can look into the seed you can see the tree, the flowering, the possibility, the potentiality – but if you just look at the seed from the outside, it is nothing. No colors, just a dead thing, not even alive. Looks like a pebble.What is the difference between a pebble and a seed? The pebble is just a pebble, with no future in it. The seed also looks like a pebble, but with a vast future in it, with life waiting to be released, flowers waiting to flower, fragrance waiting to be spread to the winds. A vast possibility, a potentiality.If you think man now is the end product, then you will feel, like the existentialists, that man is meaningless, a tale told by an idiot. But if you can look into the potentiality, then suddenly, man is not diseased; rather, on the contrary, nature is trying to reach a higher point, a growth, the greatest yet attained – evolution working in man.So this has to be understood: why nature is so harmonious, and man is in such a disharmony. Listen to the birds, constantly singing, humming, constantly enjoying; there seems to be no worry, no anxiety. Not that problems are not there, not that death doesn’t exist for them – it exists, but it doesn’t disturb their song. Birds, trees, oceans, rocks – they are unconscious, their ceremony is an unconscious ceremony…as if a man is singing while he is asleep, a man smiling while he is asleep. You can see the smile, but the man himself is not aware of what is happening – as if in a dream, drunk.Nature is blissful, but absolutely unaware of it. And without awareness, what is bliss? It is meaningless. It has no significance, because the bird who is singing is not at all aware of what is happening. The song is just happening. There is nobody to listen to it, nobody to taste it, nobody to smell it, nobody to enjoy it. The song is just happening, part of an unconscious nature. Howsoever beautiful, it lacks something, something very essential.It is you who listens to the sound of the bird. It is you who feels: How beautiful! The bird is completely unaware: the song is neither beautiful nor ugly – as if the song doesn’t exist. If you are unaware, how can the song exist? It doesn’t exist for you. It may exist for others, those who are aware.Trees have flowers. Look at this gulmohar tree – complete, with flowers, more flowers than leaves…red, like a bride. But not aware, not knowing what is happening! Nature is asleep, unconscious. Man has become a little conscious; hence the anxiety. A part of you has become conscious, a very small fragment of your being has become conscious, and the remaining whole remains unconscious. A division has happened, a conflict has arisen. You are no more one – you have become two. A split has happened, a gap between you and yourself, a duality. You are no more one. Something of you is different from the remaining whole. This creates anxiety. You cannot be as happy as the bird, and you cannot be as blissful as the sky. No, you cannot be, because you are aware. Awareness creates anxiety.When you are happy you know it is not going to stay. You are aware that this happiness is just going to pass like everything else. This too will pass. A sadness settles. Even while you are in your happiest mood you cannot be absolutely happy. The awareness that this will pass makes you sad. Even in the happiest moment, misery enters – it has to be so, because now you are two, and whatsoever you do and whatsoever you are, you will always be dual, divided. The happiest moment will always carry the saddest possibility in it, and you will be aware of it. Alive, young, full of life and zest – but death is there, following you like a shadow.The bird will go on singing, and die, and will not be aware even for a single moment that death is coming. But if you are not aware of death, how can you be aware of life? Awareness of life is at a cost; the cost has to be paid. That cost is the fear of death. If you are aware of life, you are bound to be aware of death. And how can you be at ease? Alive, something is dying, continuously. Alive, you are moving toward the grave. How can you celebrate and dance? How can one go dancing toward the grave?With awareness humanity enters into the world. But with awareness enters anxiety and anguish. And this will be so unless you again become one. Duality is the anxiety. Hence Sufis, Vedantists, Zen people, all the mystics of all the ages, insist only on one thing, and that is: transcend duality, become advait, become non-dual. Become one again.You were one, because you have been a tree, and you have been a river, and you have been a rock in the Himalayas, and you have been a million types of birds and animals, and you have lived all kinds of lives – vegetable lives, mineral lives, animal lives. You have passed through existence many many times, in many many forms. You have been one, but unconsciously one. Now, the duality has arisen. You have to be one again, this time consciously one.Many times you will think: To become consciously one seems almost impossible. Rarely does a buddha happen. To a buddha, again the song comes, then again he is singing like a bird, he is flowering like a tree, he is open like the sky, he is rich like the earth, he is wild, like the wild ocean. Again he is one, but now this unity is a higher unity – the highest. He is consciously one. Oneness has been attained through consciousness. He is again nature, but in a totally different way. The quality of his being has changed. He is again back to nature, but he is no more the same. Consciousness has been attained.But this happens rarely, so your mind will say: That seems to be impossible. It seems more possible to fall back into unconsciousness; hence the appeal of drugs, alcohol. Always, governments have been against drugs. Always, religions have been against drugs. Always, moralities have been against drugs. But still, for man they have a deep appeal. No law has been able to prohibit them from man.What is the appeal? The appeal is this: alcohol and other drugs – now there are many in the market: marijuana, LSD, psilocybin…and many more will be coming – the appeal of drugs is that they give you the feeling of oneness without the effort of becoming a buddha. You fall back into nature. Through chemicals you force yourself back into unity with nature, where birds are singing and trees are flowering. You force yourself back.This is a violence on the whole system of your being, and this is destroying the effort of nature to reach a higher harmony through you. This is against nature. For a few moments you can attain a forced oneness with nature, through drugs. But it cannot be a permanent achievement. It cannot become an integral part of your inner being. It can never become an integral part because to go back is not possible. You can only force yourself back.It is like…. You cannot become a child again. You cannot step back. You cannot enter the womb of the mother again. There is no way back. Time doesn’t move that way. It moves forward, it never moves backward. So you cannot go backward. The only way, the only going, is to go forward; there is no other going.So drugs are a deception. They give you a feeling which is imaginary, hallucinatory, they give you a feeling that you are back, part of nature. People come to me; they say, “I have been on a drug trip, and it was beautiful, and so many things happened.” Nothing happened! – because after it you are again the same, even worse. It only releases dreams in you, but you become so unconscious that you take the dreams to be real. You are not aware, so you cannot see whether this is a dream or a reality.Under drugs you can think yourself a bird singing in the trees, flying in the sky, but you remain all the time on the earth. You have not moved a single inch. And when the trip is over and you open your eyes, you are where you were. But in the meanwhile a dream was created, a vivid dream, a very real-looking dream, not even a suspicion that this was just a hallucination of the mind. You have done something with the cells of the mind, and they have started revolving, and they have created something – sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes hell, sometimes heaven. It depends on your mood, the physical condition of your body, the situation around, the whole milieu.So sometimes you can visit hell, and sometimes you can visit heaven through chemicals, but you are not going anywhere, you remain where you are. But man is in such anguish that if even for moments he can escape from duality it feels like freedom.All religions have been against drugs. The reason is this: if you become an addict then the whole possibility of your higher dimension, of your higher unity, of achieving buddhahood, of becoming a christ, is lost. They are not against drugs, in fact. They are not concerned with drugs, they are concerned with your higher unity. If you start falling backward in your mind, and if you become attuned with the lower unity of nature, then who will evolve? Then you have frustrated the very effort of nature through you. It was going to achieve God – and you are satisfied with a drug.It is a poor substitute, very very poor – but the appeal indicates something; it indicates that man can be at home in only two ways. Either he falls back into nature through chemicals, through sex, or through other means, or he rises above himself, and reaches a point where his whole consciousness has become conscious; nothing remains unconscious in him. The dark continent of unconsciousness is there no more. All corners of his being are lighted up. This is the meaning of becoming a buddha. A buddha means he who has no unconscious. A buddha means he whose whole being is transformed into light, awareness. Again – the celebration, the marriage, the feast, but on a totally different plane.Jesus used to tell a parable – and his parables are multidimensional – the parable of the prodigal son. One man had two sons – the two brothers wanted to separate from each other. The father divided the property in two, and the elder son remained with the father; the younger left with all the riches that he had now got. The younger left, gambled, indulged, destroyed the whole property, became a beggar, went completely astray.Then one day while he was begging, suddenly a thought arose: If I go to my father, he will forgive me. I know him – he has the heart of a father. Even though I have destroyed half of his property, his life’s labor – I have not been good to him and I have not served him – still I know he loves me, and if I go back he will accept me.He came back. The news reached the father that the son was coming back, so he arranged a great feast. The fattest lamb was killed, the oldest wine was brought up from the cellar. He asked friends to come and celebrate the coming of the son: “My son is coming back home!”The elder son was in the gardens, working in the field. When he was coming back a few people met him on the road and they said, “Look – look at the injustice! You have been serving your father for all these years. You have been an absolutely obedient son, you never went against any of his wishes. But he never celebrated for you, a feast was never given, and now comes your younger brother, who has gone astray, gambled, indulged, indulged in sins, became a beggar. He was disobedient, a rebel. Now he comes and your father is giving a feast. This is injustice!”Of course, the elder brother also felt very angry, in a rage. He came running home and he asked his father, “What is this? What is going on? and for what? and for whom? This is injustice! I have been an obedient servant to you, and you never, never celebrated for me. And now comes your younger son, who has destroyed everything, your whole life’s labor, and you are arranging a feast! I cannot believe my eyes! Don’t you love me? It seems you only love your younger son.”The father said, “That is not the point. You misunderstand me. He has gone astray, and now he is coming back. You have never gone astray, you have always been with me: there was no point in celebrating.”This parable is meaningful here, in the context of what I have said to you. Man is the prodigal son. Trees have always remained with the father, the birds always remain with the father. The rocks and the skies always remain with the father. They have never left home, they never went astray.Man is the prodigal son. He went astray, he indulged, he destroyed much. But whenever a man comes back, there is a feast, because when somebody goes astray, becomes rebellious, he attains much experience. Whenever someone goes rebellious he is enriched. Whenever someone goes off singing, he knows life more than those saints who have never left home. He is enriched. Going astray is a way of knowing. Going wrong is a way of becoming more aware. Man is the prodigal son.Whenever a prodigal son comes back, a Buddha, a Jesus, a Mahavira, the whole existence – the father – celebrates. The fattest lamb is to be killed then, and the oldest wine brought up from the cellar. There is going to be much dancing, singing, drinking. The whole existence celebrates a buddha: the son has come back. And the son has not come back the same, but enriched – enriched with a higher consciousness, enriched with a higher unity. He has attained to something which nature was seeking through him.But if you remain in the rebellion, if you remain on the road constantly going astray and astray and astray and never come back home, then there is going to be no celebration for you. Going astray is good, then so is coming back. One has to leave home to come back to it. In fact unless you leave it you will never be able to know what it is. You have to go astray in the wider world, only then when you come back will you realize what a home is. A buddha is nothing but a man come home.You are buddhas still astray, still wandering here and there. Still you have not gathered the courage to come back to the father and ask his forgiveness. You don’t trust. You don’t trust the father that he will accept you. You don’t accept yourself; how can you think that the father is going to accept you? You condemn yourself; how can you think that the whole is going to take you into its bosom, into its very heart?Trust. Come back home. You have traveled enough, suffered enough – it was necessary, but don’t prolong it too much. The problem is: if one remains in suffering too long one becomes attuned to it, it becomes a habit. One starts enjoying it, one starts clinging to it.Religion is nothing but an effort to help you come back home. Nature has thrown you into the wider world. It has been the greatest experiment ever. A part of nature has been uprooted, has been made homeless. This is a great opportunity to learn, a great opportunity to grow, a great opportunity to become aware, and come back home. Become more and more aware, and you are coming back home. When you are perfectly aware, suddenly you are in, at home.You know the Christian parable that Adam was thrown out of the garden of Eden. But my feeling is: Where can he be thrown out to? – because the whole is the garden of Eden. There is no outside to it. Existence has no outside. Existence is only inside, because the whole is implied in it, so where can the outside be? No, Adam has not been thrown out of the garden of Eden, only, his eyes are closed. He has always lived inside the garden, but he cannot see it because he is not aware.Once you start seeing, suddenly you find you are in the garden – you have always been in the garden. In fact, you have never left home, it was only a dream. But it was needed to become aware. It was a hallucination, but it was needed. It was a nightmare, but it was needed. There was a need to be anxious, in anxiety, in anguish.I would like to add one beatitude to Jesus’ other beatitudes: Blessed are those who are in anguish, because they will attain to perfect consciousness.Through anguish is the way. It passes through many hells, because without suffering nobody can become aware. That’s why birds are not aware – they are not in suffering. Trees are not aware, they are not in suffering. Only man suffers; man is a special case. You should be proud of it. Man is an extraordinary phenomenon, man is not ordinary nature. Man is something new happening in nature, but it is so new that not even man is aware of what is happening to him. You have been thrown astray so that you have to seek and find where your home is. You have to make an effort to come back.Now, this small anecdote:Salih of Gazwin taught his disciples:Whoever knocks at the door continually, it will be opened to him.Rabiya, hearing him one day, said: “How long will you say, ‘It will be opened’? The door has never been shut.”It is something rare in the history of Sufis, this small anecdote. It is rare because both are enlightened: Salih, a master in his own right, and Rabiya, a rare woman, very rare, because very few women have become enlightened. Rabiya is one of them. Both are enlightened masters. Neither can be wrong, both have to be true, but they contradict each other.Listen again. Salih taught his disciples: Whoever knocks at the door continually, it will be opened to him. He says, “Go on knocking at the door. And be continuous – don’t rest!” The door has to be knocked at continually. Just like Jesus says: Knock and it shall be opened unto you; ask and it shall be given, Salih used to say continuously: Knock and go on knocking! Don’t rest. Don’t go on holiday, because nobody knows when the doors will open – you go on knocking! And nobody knows how much knocking is needed – so go on knocking. At a certain point, at a certain degree, the door opens.Salih can’t be wrong. But Rabiya, hearing him one day, said: “How long will you say, ‘It will be opened’?” Your whole life you have been saying: It will be opened, it will be opened. Go on knocking. And I say unto you, Rabiya said: “The door has never been shut.” What foolishness to say: Knock! The door is already open – enter!The problem is that both have to be right. Had Salih been a man of scholarship, knowledgeable, there would be no problem. The anecdote would be simple. He didn’t know, he is not aware of what he is saying. He must have read in the scriptures, must have come across the saying of Jesus: Knock, and the door shall be opened to you. If he was a knowledgeable man, a pundit, there would be no problem: of course, Rabiya has to be right. But the problem is, Salih himself is a buddha! This man Salih is as enlightened as Rabiya – he cannot be wrong. And of course there is no possibility of Rabiya being wrong. Rabiya has to be right, and Salih has to be right. That is the puzzle.Sufis have been thinking about this, how to solve it. It is always easy if one person has not attained; you can decide – he is wrong. The same type of problem has existed in the whole history of man. Mahavira contradicts Buddha, Buddha contradicts Mahavira, and the problem is, both have to be right. And people who cannot go so deep decide that only one can be right. A few have decided that Mahavira is right – they have become Jainas. A few have decided that only Buddha can be right, Mahavira has to be wrong – they have become Buddhists. And I tell you, those two persons, those two guys, Mahavira and Buddha, they are both right; otherwise is not possible.Then we have to go deeper. The matter cannot be settled so easily and on the surface. When Salih says, Whoever knocks at the door continually, it will be opened to him, he is not saying anything about the door, whether it is shut or open. He is not saying anything about the door, he is saying something to the seeker: Knock continuously. The question is not about the door; the door is not referred to at all, the door is not the context. The gestalt is different, the emphasis is different. The emphasis is on the seeker.Salih is concerned with the disciple. He says, “Go on knocking. Make every effort, knock continually.” When he is saying to the disciple, “Make an effort, knock continually,” it is not a question of the door opening to him; by knocking continually the disciple will open. The door is not the point of reference. Salih is not concerned with that. He is saying, “You go on knocking!” – because if you continually knock, you will open; otherwise you will remain closed. Salih also knows the door has never been shut. It is open, but you are shut.And had the door been shut, even, Salih would have opened it for you. It would be easy! Salih would have opened the door and stood in the doorway, and allowed everybody who wanted to enter. The question is not of the door, the question is of your being. Your eyes are closed, your consciousness is closed, your being is closed, and unless you knock continually you are not going to open the door. And the door is not something outside; you are the door, and you are the one who has to enter it.Of course, Salih is right. But his statement is not about the door, his statement is about the disciple, the seeker, one who is on the path.This is how Patanjali talks. Patanjali is like Salih, thinking continuously of the disciple, of the seeker, thinking continuously of those who are closed, blind. They don’t understand the language of the final attainment. Salih has more compassion, and he knows that the door is open, it has never been shut.You have always been in the garden of Eden; Adam has never been expelled. He may be hypnotized, and a suggestion may have been given to him that he is expelled, so that he thinks that he is expelled; but he has never been expelled. Where can he be expelled to? The whole is the garden of Eden. Wherever he is, he is in the garden.You cannot be out of God, wherever you are. You may be a thief, a murderer, a robber, it makes no difference, you are in God. When you rob, God robs through you. When you rob, God is robbed by you. When you murder, God is murdered. And when you murder, God is murdering. You cannot be outside. You may think so, that may be your idea, but that idea closes your eyes, not the door.Each individual has to open his own heart. That’s why Salih says, “Go on knocking continually; no holiday allowed, no rest. Don’t be lazy, because if you work for a few days and then you stop, the whole work is undone; again you have to start from abc. If you stop again, then again the same will be repeated.” It is just like heating water: you heat the water up to fifty degrees, or eighty degrees, and then you take it off the fire, or you put the fire off and again the water cools down; it comes down to room temperature. Next day, again you heat it; again you put the fire off…. Unless the water reaches to a hundred-degree temperature it is not going to evaporate.So go on knocking. A hundred-degree knocking is needed. Only then, suddenly, the door opens. Not that the door opens, suddenly you open. Your eyes open; suddenly you are closed no more. Your consciousness has become total. Unconsciousness has dissolved in it. No corner of your being is dark; everything is lighted up.Salih is right, and Salih is more helpful. He thinks of those who have not yet reached. He has more compassion. He is not bothered about the right statement about truth. If even lies can help the travelers, he will use lies.Buddha has defined truth as that which works. If a lie works, it is true. And if a truth cannot work, of what use is it? Throw it into the garbage can, it is of no use. Buddha’s definition is really wonderful. He was the first pragmatist in the world. Now scientists agree with Buddha. But science took twenty-five centuries to learn the secret. Now, science doesn’t talk about truth; it says everything is just a hypothesis. And what is a hypothesis? – something that works. We don’t know whether it is true or not, but it works. Next day, if we can find a better theory which works better than the old, that becomes the truth. Science goes on changing every day.Truth cannot change, but you can always find a better working hypothesis. If it is more workable, it is more true. Nobody knows what truth is. All that we can decide is, if something works it is true, and if something doesn’t work it is not true. The criterion can only be the working.Salih must be agreeing with Buddha. He is not bothered about the door, whether it is such or not such. He is bothered about those who are seeking, on the path, groping in the dark. He is talking to them. He says, “Knock, knock continually.”Whoever knocks at the door continually, it will be opened to him. And remember, it will be opened to him, not for all. If it is a question of the door being opened or closed, then one man can open it, and then it is open for all. Once opened it is opened, then all can enter into it. But it is not a question of the door at all. Everybody has to open it for himself, and nobody can open it for somebody else.Buddhas only show the way. You have to travel, you have to work it out. They can only give you indications. They can only give you indications of the maps of higher consciousness, workable hypotheses. You have to work them out, because deep down it is not a question of doing something, it is a question of being different from you as you are. A different quality of being is needed. That is the door! Salih is absolutely right.This is the distinction between Patanjali and Tilopa. Salih is like Patanjali; Rabiya is like Tilopa.Rabiya, hearing him one day, said: “How long will you say, ‘it will be opened’? The door has never been shut.”This is the statement of one who has attained. It is meaningful only to those who have attained. It is truer than Salih; that’s why Salih did not contradict it, he simply listened. And nothing is said about what he said, how he reacted. He would not react because he knows Rabiya is right, but uselessly right…uselessly right. Absolutely right, but of no use.You cannot eat the absolute truth. You cannot drink the absolute truth. The absolute truth is like the water of the ocean – beautiful, but if you are there thirsty, of no use. For a thirsty man, sitting by the shore of the ocean, with tremendous waves coming, there is an infinity of ocean, but it is useless. Absolute truth is like the water of the ocean. When you are thirsty, you need a small spring, you need a small well, to drink. An ocean won’t help, it is too salty. It will kill you.Rabiya is absolutely true: the door has never been shut. Who will shut it? Nature is not against you, God is not your enemy. Who will shut the door? The door has always remained open.Move back to the story of the prodigal son. The father’s heart was never shut. Nothing was needed to open it, not even a knock was needed to open it. Just the message – or not even the message, just the rumor – that the son was coming back, and the father started preparing a feast for him. Just the rumor, not even a knock, not even a message from the son saying, “I am coming”, just the rumor that the son is coming back, and the father started creating a feast for him, a reception, a welcome.This is the meaning of God as father. The heart of existence is always open for you. It is waiting, throbbing for you, just waiting for the rumor that you are coming back; you have been away long, long, far away.Who will shut the door? Rabiya is absolutely right, but this is the standpoint of the siddhas, of those who have attained. Tilopa will talk in this way. Krishnamurti goes on talking in this way, but whatsoever he says is just like the water of the ocean – too salty to drink. It won’t help anybody’s thirst. A final statement of truth, of course, absolutely right, but absolutely useless.Rabiya is saying something which can be understood only by the buddhas. But they don’t need it! Salih, of course, understood it; that’s why he remained silent, he wouldn’t say anything. Of course Rabiya is right, but he won’t say anything. And Salih continued to teach – even after this encounter with Rabiya he was heard again and again every day to say the same thing: Whoever knocks at the door continually, it will be opened to him. He didn’t say a single word to Rabiya because there was nothing to be said; she was right. But that didn’t change his own mind. He continued.Once a messenger came to me saying that Krishnamurti would like to meet me. I said, “That is beautiful. And whenever the possibility arises I will come and see him and meet him.” But it is going to be useless, because I am Salih and he is Rabiya. I am talking to the disciples, and he is talking to the sky. I am talking to actual people who are thirsty, and he is talking in a vacuum. Whatsoever he says is true but useless. And whatsoever I say may not be so true, but it is useful.Salih continued. He didn’t say even a single word to Rabiya because what to say? – she is right! The door has never been shut. But this truth is meaningful only when you have attained. When you have entered the door, then you come to know that the door has never been shut. But those who have not attained – if you say to them that the door has never been shut, you misguide them. You don’t help them; rather, you hinder them, because if they hear that the door has never been shut, you don’t know how they are going to interpret it. They are going to interpret it in this way: then there is no need to knock on it continuously, no need to knock when the door is not shut. And if they don’t knock, the door is going to remain shut for them, because they will not open to it. You need a constant knocking.It is just like Shankara used to say again and again; he used to use a metaphor: On a dark night a traveler is going along. Suddenly he sees a snake moving. He becomes afraid, he runs, backward. But there is no snake – just a rope lying on the street, and the rope has moved because a wind came and moved it.He saw the rope moving, just a slight tremor in the rope, and he thought: “It is a snake!” He projects the snake, becomes afraid, as afraid as if the snake is real, and escapes from the place. But he has to go on, he has to pass that snake.So he asks somebody. The man says, “There is no snake, because snakes are not found in this part of the country. You need not be afraid. Maybe it is just a rope.”But the traveler won’t listen. He says, “I have seen it myself, and not only have I seen it, it moved, and it seems to be a very long and dark, dangerous snake!”Then another man who is listening to the whole dialogue comes with a lamp and he says, “Come, follow me.” This man also knows that in this part of the country snakes are not found. He also knows that it is more possible that it is going to be a rope, because sometimes he has also encountered ropes on the street and thought that they were snakes, and always it was found later on that there was no snake – snakes are not found in that part. But you can’t tell this man, “There is no snake, don’t be afraid. You go ahead, don’t bother about it.” That will not be of much help. He brings a lamp. Knowing well that there is no snake, still he brings a lamp. The man follows behind the lamp. They reach the place. There is no need to say anything: with the lamp the man can see it is just a rope. He laughs, thanks the man who has brought the lamp, and goes ahead.Salih is the man who will bring a lamp, knowing well that there is no snake, just a rope. Rabiya will just make the statement, “There is no snake to be found in this part of the country. Don’t be foolish; go ahead.” She is absolutely true, but useless. This statement is not going to help this man. This statement can be understood only by those people who know that part of the country, who live there – but for them it is not needed.If I was listening to Rabiya it would be useless to say to me that the door is not shut, because I also know it. The question is not of me, the question is of those who don’t know. If it is said to them it is going to become a hindrance.This has been my observation: Krishnamurti has not helped people, he has created many hindrances. And he has been talking about truth and nothing else. He has hindered many people because he says, “It is you who attain the truth.” It is absolutely true, nobody can help you – that too is true. But this assertion has not helped anybody, it has hindered. Many people listening to him have become very egoistic. They think: “Nobody can help us. No master is needed. No reverence, no trust – we alone are enough.” And they have not reached anywhere. They have not become humble through it, they have become egoists.Krishnamurti says no meditation is needed. Absolutely true, a hundred percent true. But people who have listened to him have not achieved that state which he means by “no meditation.” And they are as miserable as anybody else. They come to me and they say, “We understand that no meditation is needed, but still nothing has happened to us.” Then I tell them, “Then do meditation. You have tried no meditation, now you try meditation.”But they say, “This is not right, because Krishnamurti says no meditation is needed.” Now he has created a barrier for meditations, and by his saying that no meditation is needed, these people have become addicted to the idea of no meditation.I also know that no meditation is needed, but that state comes only after you have meditated for a long, long time. When you have been knocking continually, one day suddenly you become aware that the door is open: “It is not shut, why am I knocking?” But this realization comes through knocking for years and years, and even for lives. The knocking doesn’t open the door, the knocking breaks your sleep. The knocking itself creates a situation in which you become alert, jostled out of your sleep, shocked out of your sleep.When I say meditate, I know that through meditation nobody reaches, but through meditation you reach to the point where no meditation becomes possible. Unless you meditate, how will “no meditation” become possible? One has to go through meditations, and as strongly and as totally as possible. Nothing should be left out. You should bring your total energy to it. You should knock your head against the wall. Not that the wall will break and the door will open – the door is always open, but knocking your head against it, suddenly you will come out of your sleep. The dreams will break, not the door. The door has always been open.I will tell you one anecdote. It happened: A man came to Nagarjuna, the great Buddhist mystic, and the greatest alchemist that India has ever produced. The man said, “I would like to meditate, but I cannot. I try to concentrate on the name of God, but my mind goes on slipping here and there. I completely forget the name of God, and other things come into the mind. My mind is a crowd, and I cannot manage it in any way. Help me.”Nagarjuna looked at the man and said, “Forget about God. Tell me one thing: do you love somebody?”The man felt a little awkward, embarrassed. He said, “You have asked and I cannot be untrue to you. But don’t laugh at me, I am a foolish man. I don’t love anybody; I love only my buffalo. But I really love her, she is a beautiful being.”Nagarjuna said, “That will do, because it makes no difference whether you love God or the buffalo. Even a buffalo is a god – a goddess. So that will do. You just go into that cave, and sit inside the cave, and you just continuously think only one thing – that you have become your buffalo.”The man said, “This will do, I can do it. In fact, I am wondering how you came to know it, because sometimes I think…I love my buffalo so much that sometimes I think how it will be if I become a buffalo in my next life.”Nagarjuna said, “You go, and don’t come out of it until I come and ask you to come out.”One day passed. The second day passed. The third day passed. On the fourth day, in the morning, Nagarjuna reached the cave and he said to the man, “Now please come out.” The man tried, tried but he would not come out. Nagarjuna said, “What is the matter?”The man said, “You see? the door is so small…and don’t you see my horns? I cannot get out of it!” Three days, continuously thinking that he is a buffalo, a buffalo, a buffalo…. He autohypnotized himself: he was a buffalo! Whatsoever you think, you become. Thinking creates your identity.The man started weeping. He said, “Now it seems that I will never in my life be able to get out of this cave. And for three days I have been hungry and thirsty, and now I cannot get out. You help me, please!” And tears started rolling down his face.Nagarjuna said, “It is difficult, I can see it is so difficult. Now you have to go back and again become a man. Now think that you are a man and not a buffalo. “The man had to think for at least three hours that he was a man and not a buffalo – in three hours the buffalo disappeared, the delusion disappeared. He opened his eyes. He came out laughing, and he said to Nagarjuna, “Whatsoever I needed, I have attained.”Nagarjuna said, “Now you know. You can meditate. But through meditation one starts getting new identities. You are a worldly man; you meditate, then you become a spiritual man: a new identity. But to be spiritual is as wrong as to be worldly. The real thing only happens when there is no identity. Now this is a new illusion. But it helps. From the world you move to the spiritual. From being a householder you become a sannyasin. From being a materialist you become spiritual. You create a new illusion. To throw the old out, the new is needed.”But, passing through the old to the new, there is a gap between the two in which you will be nobody, and once that nobodiness is realized, you can follow it. Then no meditation is needed. No methods are needed, no techniques are needed.I am as much against techniques as Krishnamurti, even more, but I am not talking to myself here. Krishnamurti is in a monologue; it is not a dialogue. He is talking to himself, he is not talking to you, you are just an excuse. He is in a monologue.I am talking to you, otherwise what is the point of talking? And when I am talking to you, I look to your need. And the question is not: What is truth? The question is: If I say something to you, what are you going to do about it? If I say the door is not shut, you will stop knocking. That is the logical conclusion. If I say no methods are needed, you will drop methods, but then you will remain the same as you are.A man who has compassion has to think how others are going to react to his statements. The statement is not the point – how you react to the statement is the point: what energy it creates in you, where it leads you. If that leads you toward truth, toward the door which is always open, then I will also say: Knock, and knock continually.One day you will realize that Rabiya was right, Salih was not right. But still, you will feel grateful to Salih and not to Rabiya, because without Salih you would have never been able to realize that Rabiya was right. This is the complexity. Rabiya cannot be a master, Salih can be a master; Krishnamurti cannot be a master, Patanjali can be a master – because being a master means that an enlightened person is relating himself to the ignorant ones. And when ignorance and enlightenment meet, there is bound to be a happening. In that happening the ignorant person will contribute something, and something will be contributed by the enlightened person. Something will be wrong, something will be right. And the whole art of the master is how to bring you out, by and by, slowly, step by step, layer by layer, toward himself.He has to compromise with you. To help you to come toward him, he has to come toward you. In that coming, he will say things which are not absolutely true, cannot be. He will have to devise things which are in a way arbitrary. They are like boats. You use them, and when you have used them, when you have crossed the river, you leave them in the river and you go on. They are like ladders. You pass over them, and then they are useless. They are means, not ends.Salih is saying something as a means. Rabiya is talking about the end. Both are true. Rabiya will be found, in the end, absolutely true. But Salih is true in the beginning, and the beginning is the end, because if there is no beginning there can be no end. Remember this: you have to take care of the beginning. The end will take care of itself. Rabiya, Krishnamurti, Tilopa – if you forget them, nothing is lost. They are the ends. But if you forget Patanjali, Buddha, Bodhidharma, Salih, then everything is lost, because they are the beginning.You take care of the beginning and the end will take care of itself. The end follows the beginning. Go on knocking at the door. Continually knock at the door. And I know that the door has never been shut, it is open. But still you have to knock – only then will it open for you, because through knocking, you will be open to it.Enough for today.

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Just Like That 01-10Category: SUFISM

Just Like That 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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A man who was believed to have died and was being prepared for burial, revived. He sat up, but was so shocked at the scene surrounding him that he fainted. He was put in the coffin and the funeral party set off for the cemetery.Just as they arrived at the grave he regained consciousness, lifted the lid, and cried out for help.“It is not possible that he has revived,“ said the mourners, “because he has been certified dead by competent experts.““But I am alive!“ shouted the man. He appealed to a well known and impartial scientist and jurisprudent who was present.“Just a moment,“ said the expert. He then turned to the mourners, counting them. “Now we have heard what the alleged deceased has had to say. You fifty witnesses tell me what you regard as the truth.““He is dead,“ said the witnesses. “Bury him,“ said the expert.And so he was buried.Is existence a problem? If it is a problem, then philosophers can help, then experts are useful. But philosophers have failed utterly. For centuries and centuries they have been thinking and thinking. Nothing comes out of their grinding, no conclusion is reached, no truth arrived at. Something is basically wrong with their attitude.It is not that their competence is lacking, their competence is perfect. They are absolutely efficient. But somehow they have mistaken existence for a problem. It is not. It is not there to be solved, it is there to be lived! If it was a problem it could have been solved long ago. It is not a problem at all. It has to be lived. Life is not separate from you, to be tackled as a problem, it is you. Who is going to solve whom?Existence is not there outside you. It is inside you, it is your very inside. And existence is not apart; you are part of it, organically one with it. How can a wave solve the ocean? The ocean is not a problem for the wave, it is something to be lived. And the ocean is not separate; in fact the ocean is waving in the wave. The wave and the ocean are not two things: they are one unity.You are existence, existence is you. Who is going to solve it and how?Philosophy starts from a wrong beginning. It takes it for granted that there is a problem. It never doubts the very ground – that maybe there is no problem. Once you start wrongly you go on and on, and if the first step has been wrong, the last is already missed. From a wrong beginning nobody can come to a right ending; that’s why philosophy goes on theorizing, philosophizing. Its very attitude is such that it turns everything into a problem.A great philosopher, a professor of philosophy, was ill, mentally ill. He was psychoanalyzed, treated. He started feeling a little better. And then the psychoanalyst said, “Now it will be good if you go to the hills. It is hot on the plains and the climatic change will help you. So go to the Himalayas. “The philosopher went. There he felt very good. The hills were covered with ice, and it was so silent that he felt a sort of euphoria bursting in him. Immediately he telegraphed his psychoanalyst: “I am feeling happy. Why? “The very attitude of philosophy is to make a problem out of any and every thing. If you are happy – why? That too becomes a problem. How to solve it? If you are sad, of course, why? If you are happy, again: why? It makes no difference to a philosopher what the case is – he creates problems out of it. A philosopher is a problem-creator. First he creates the problems, and then he starts solving them.In the first place the problems are false, they are not there. Happiness is there. There is no question mark around it, the question mark has been added by the philosopher. Happiness simply exists, there is no why. Existence is, there is no why. Trees are, flowers are…birds singing, clouds floating in the sky – there is no why. The why is added by the philosopher, and once the why is added and the question mark is there, of course he has to solve it. And how can you solve a problem which doesn’t exist? Whatsoever you do will create more problems. You will find one answer – you think it solves. Immediately that answer creates more questions.So philosophy has been simply a search for more questions, more whys. Not even a single answer has been given by it. For millennia philosophers have been grinding. Nothing comes out of it because in the first place nothing has been put in. The why is empty. Philosophy is the most absurd effort of humanity.Existence is not a problem to be solved, it is a mystery to be lived. And you should be perfectly aware what the difference is between a mystery and a problem. A problem is something created by the mind; a mystery is something which is there, not created by the mind. A problem has an ugliness in it, like disease. A mystery is beautiful. With a problem, immediately a fight arises. You have to solve it; something is wrong, you have to put it right; something is missing, you have to supply the missing link. With a mystery there is no question like that.The moon arises in the night…. It is not a problem, it is a mystery. You have to live with it. You have to dance with it. You have to sing with it, or you can be just silent with it. Something mysterious surrounds you.A philosopher has completely forgotten the language of mystery. Mystery is natural. Problems are man-created. If man is not on the earth, the mystery will be there, but there will be no problems. Crows will caw, and they will not ask why. Cuckoos will go on singing, and nobody will ask why. Trees will flower as they have been flowering always; nobody will sit underneath and philosophize. Life doesn’t bother about philosophization. It is a foolish effort – but very ego-fulfilling, because you create the problem, then you try to find the solution, then more problems are created…. You start feeling that you are doing something great.You are not doing anything. Nothing is there, just hot air, bubbles of hot air in the mind that you call thoughts. Ripples, confusion, chaos. A philosopher misses life completely. He bypasses life, completely unaware that there was something to be lived, loved; that there was something to be merged with; that there was something to float with; that there was something to dance with and become one with. A philosopher is a closed mind, completely life-proof. Life does not penetrate him.And these philosophers become great experts about life because they can talk, they are articulate people. They can create problems where none exist, and then they go on supplying answers for them. They are self-sufficient, they don’t need anybody. They create the problems and then they create the solution. And then they create more questions and questions, and they go on and on. They create an illusion around them that they know.In India, we don’t have a word like philosophy in Indian languages. This Greek word philosophy means love of knowledge. We don’t have any word like that. And the word that we have is totally different: it is darshan. It means the capacity to see. Not love of knowledge, but love of realization. Not love toward more and more knowledge, no, but toward a greater, clearer vision. That’s why we call those who have known, seers – those who have seen. Life has to be lived and seen, not thought about. Philosophy creates experts, and those experts go on giving answers to you which are false. The whole effort of philosophy is a false effort, and this is one of the greatest systems of human effort to know.The second system is science. Science again takes it for granted that life is a challenge; not a problem in the sense of a philosopher, but a challenge. One has to fight. That’s why scientists go on in terms of conquering nature: as if there is an enemy, not a problem, but an enemy who is challenging you and whom you have to conquer. Scientists become warriors, conquerors. They fight with nature. But how can you live if you start with hate? Science is based on hatred, enmity, fear, as if life is there surrounding you like an enemy: not like your mother, not something beloved, not caring about you, but ready to kill and destroy you. Science has taken the attitude of hatred, and through that, science goes on fighting. If you fight, you miss again.Philosophy theorizes, and misses. Science fights, and misses. How can you live if from the very beginning your whole attitude is based on enmity?A scientist lives a desert life. He may get the Nobel prize award, but life never awards him. Life never comes any nearer to him. He does not allow that closeness with life. He is always in search of ways and means to conquer. The system of science is aggressive, it is violent. It is a rape against nature.So scientists may get a few facts here and there. They may snatch something, just as a robber can. It is possible: you can steal, you can rob life of a few facts. Life will give those few facts to you very reluctantly. It is as if you gather a few crumbs from the table of an emperor, but you don’t become the emperor…you remain a beggar, or a robber, and life was there ready to crown you as the emperor.There was no need to fight because life is the mother – you come out of it! You are born out of existence, existence carried you in its womb; how can existence be inimical to you? It has given birth to you, it has protected you, it still protects you. You come out of it and you dissolve into it again. You are part of it: a hand raised by nature. Eyes, ears…through all your being nature is trying to reach a certain height of consciousness. You are not the enemy, you are the beloved son.That is the meaning of Jesus’ saying of himself, “I am the son and God is my father. “ The Jews never understood him, what he was saying: he was saying that life is a family, existence is not inimical, it mothers you, it fathers you. You are the son, loved by it, nourished by it. Something is meant through you, some greater significance has to evolve in you. Don’t fight, because if you start fighting the friend you will create unnecessary barriers for yourself.Science creates the attitude of fight; that’s why science has been very very destructive. Philosophers have failed, but they have not done any harm to anybody. They have failed so utterly they cannot do any harm. Science has been a success, and science has completely crippled life. Now, in all the countries where science has become very developed, it has become a menace. The whole ecology is suffering. Rivers and lakes are becoming dead, trees are dying. The earth itself is dying, on its deathbed. The whole atmosphere is poisoned. And there is panic in those who know, for there seems to be no possibility of stopping it – because who will stop it? Scientists themselves are impotent now. They have released the demon; now they don’t know how to put it back in the bottle again. And the politicians won’t allow them to put it back in the bottle.Two types of mad people have joined together: the politicians and the scientists. The scientists go on supplying them with secrets and the politicians go on using those secrets in Hiroshima, in Nagasaki, and in everyday life. Technology is killing completely the whole of nature. Things are disappearing…because existence is a coherent whole: if you destroy one part of it, the whole is affected. Finally one day the whole system collapses. This is how it is happening.Science has been a dagger driven into the back of nature. Philosophers have not done much harm – they cannot because they are absolute failures – but science has done much harm. Now the greatest enemy today is science. And why has it been so harmful? – because from the very beginning enmity has been at the base. Hatred, not love…enmity with life, not friendship. Science has created the idea in humanity that you are unaccepted guests here and you are not at home. You have to fight. From Darwin to Einstein they have been teaching survival of the fittest – as if life is just a struggle! The fact is otherwise, just the contrary. Life is a vast cooperation.Prince Kropotkin is nearer to the truth than Charles Darwin. Prince Kropotkin says – and he is a religious man, a really religious man – he says that cooperation is the base of life, not struggle, and it is not a question of survival of the fittest, because if it is a question of the survival of the fittest, then might becomes right. It is not a question of survival of the fittest; most tender things also survive. Look at the flowers! They are not Adolf Hitlers, and they have survived. Look at the birds, the small birds, singing beautiful songs: they are not Genghis Khans and Alexanders, and they have survived. Life must be a deep cooperation – it is. Everything is cooperating; it is a cosmic whole, interdependent.Look: the earth goes on feeding the tree, the sun goes on feeding the tree, the air goes on feeding the tree, and then a fruit is born. That fruit feeds you. It becomes your body, it circulates in your blood. It becomes your bones, it becomes your heart, it becomes your brain, it becomes the very marrow of your brain. Then one day you die. Insects start eating you. Then the insects die, they are reabsorbed in the earth. The trees start eating the earth. Again fruits will come. Your grandchildren will eat you in the fruits. Everything related, interrelated, connected. You have been eating your grandfathers, your grandmothers; they are again reabsorbed! You will be reabsorbed.Waves come and go, the ocean remains – and each wave is connected with each other wave. Past and future – you are related to the whole past, you are a link; and you are related to the whole future that is going to be there. You are a link in the chain, and if one chain link is broken, the whole chain suffers. It is a cooperation. Nobody is independent and nobody is dependent. because even to be dependent you have to be separate. No, it is not a question of independence or dependence. Life is interdependence. Nobody is independent and nobody is dependent, everybody is interdependent.So I call those messiahs pseudo who teach people independence, because it is a false attitude, untrue to life. Nobody can be independent. If you try it, you are being stupid. You can go to the Himalayas and you can try to be independent: you cannot be, because there also you will be part of the interdependence that is life.Monks have been trying over all the centuries to become totally independent because they think if you are dependent then you are in bondage. So escape from the wife, escape from the children, escape from society; but where will you escape from oxygen? Where will you escape from water? Where will you escape from food? Where will you escape from the sun and the moon? Wherever you go you will remain part of the interconnected pattern of life.You can never become independent, absolute independence is not possible, because that means you become an isolated unit, you become an island – and there exists no island. Islands that you see in the ocean, they also are not separate, they also are part of continents hidden under the sea. No island exists. Nobody can be independent. It is interdependence. It is a deep cooperation.Don’t start with enmity; otherwise you will destroy life and your whole energy will be engaged in destruction – and existence is creative. You can enjoy it, you can become one with it, only when you are creative. And science has been destructive. It is not needed. Or, a totally different type of science is needed, based more on Kropotkin and less on Darwin. A totally different science is needed based on love, not on hate, based on Lao Tzu and not on Aristotle.Science has to be Eastern if it is to be right. It need not be so logical. It has to be a little more loving, then it is not against nature, then it is not a rape, rather it is a courting. You court nature. Nature becomes the bride, you become the bridegroom. You court nature, you persuade her to reveal her secrets. A lover also persuades a woman, and the woman reveals everything that she can reveal, everything that she has. She reveals her very heart.And then a man can rape a woman. The rape and the lovemaking may look similar from the outside, but they are not, because when you violate a woman she simply shrinks, she closes. You may violate the body, but you cannot violate the soul. The soul remains virgin. It simply shrinks back. A man who rapes a woman never touches her soul – he cannot. And that is what has happened with science. It has been a rape of nature. It could have been love.And science has accumulated much expertise about everything. If you have to prove anything you have only to say that science says so: enough! – nobody questions it. It is proved already if science says so. Science is the model superstition. In the old days it was enough to say that the Vedas say so, or The Bible says so, or it is written in the Koran; and if you could show that it was written in the Koran – finished, then nobody asked whether it is right or wrong. If it was written in the Koran, in the Vedas, it had to be right; it was enough if you could prove that it was in the Vedas. Now it is enough if you can prove that scientists say so.Who are these scientists? What have they been doing? They are experts. They have gathered a few facts. But they don’t know what life is because life can never be known through analysis, through dissection.You love a woman, a beautiful body, but you don’t go to a surgeon to ask whether this body is beautiful or not. A surgeon of course knows many bodies, deeper than anybody else; he has been dissecting, he has cut thousands of bodies. But don’t go to a surgeon because a dissected body is no longer alive, and beauty belongs to life. Analyzed, a thing becomes dead. Life exists as a whole. You cannot dissect it. If you want to know it, and the beauty and grace of it, you have to watch it while it is alive. You have to love it as it is – alive. If you try to cut it and find the innermost parts, and how they function and what is happening inside, you may come to know the mechanism of the body but you have missed the soul.The soul lives in the unity – the unity is the soul. And the soul is greater than all the parts put together. The soul surrounds all the parts – in fact the soul keeps all the parts together. Once the soul has left a body, it starts deteriorating. Within hours it is dying, things are falling apart. You leave the body there a few days and it is already becoming one with the earth. Who was holding the whole as a whole? Who was keeping things together? What was the source of the togetherness?A desire arises in me – I feel thirsty; my hand immediately reaches toward water. From where comes this unity? A desire arises – the desire is not in the hand, the hand never feels thirsty. My throat is feeling dry. I feel thirst. That thirst is recorded in the brain, is witnessed by the soul. The hand never feels thirst, but immediately, without any order, without any message given to the hand, if the throat feels thirsty the brain immediately starts functioning. Not a single moment is lost – the hand reaches toward water. The hand, the throat, the brain – they are functioning together.There must exist an organic whole which keeps all parts together. That whole is the soul. You cannot dissect a body and come to know the soul, because the moment you dissect, it is gone. It is there only when the unity is functioning. It is the very unity.If you go to the scientists to ask about life they have many answers, but all their answers belong more to death than to life, because they have been fighting, destroying, dissecting, analyzing. In the whole process they have missed life. They will never come to encounter it; that’s why they always say that there is no soul – because they never encounter it in their lab. They have dissected many bodies and they have never come to see any soul. Before they start dissecting, the soul has left. They will never come to know it, and science will go on denying that there is any soul, and science will go on denying that there is any God. But this is not the point, whether there is or is not a God, because the very method of science prohibits…the very method becomes the barrier.Then there is a third system, which is art. These three systems produce experts: philosophy, science and art. These are the three dimensions in which the human mind functions. Art is not interested in theorizing, and art is not interested in dissecting; that’s why art is closer to religion than anything else. Philosophers are the farthest. You may have thought otherwise, but philosophers are the farthest from religion. Even scientists are nearer, because if there exists a hate relationship it can be converted into a love relationship, because hate is nothing but love upside down.So an Einstein can become religious more easily than a Bertrand Russell. At least he hates. At least he is fighting life – even fighting is a way to live; even fighting is an alive moment. A scientist is not just in theories, he is experimenting. A philosopher is sitting with closed eyes, thinking about “woman”: much fantasy. A scientist is raping a woman. At least that is better than the philosopher, at least a real woman is there. Maybe a right relationship doesn’t exist between the man who rapes and the woman raped, but some type of relationship exists. Even the enemy is related to you.The scientist can be converted – and it happens that many scientists by and by, as they grow older, with more understanding, start turning toward religion. But philosophers remain stubborn. To the very end they go on talking their nonsense and theories and this and that. A scientist by his whole life’s effort of struggle, fight, murdering nature, may suddenly awake. His whole life may take a turn of one-hundred-eighty degrees. That’s possible. An enemy can any day become a friend. You are related at least – wrongly, but related at least.Farthest from religion is the philosopher, the system of philosophy. Closer than philosophy is science, and closer than science is art.What is art? What is art doing in the world? Art is just like a child – enjoying the butterflies, running after them. Art is a childlike attitude. It tries to make life a little more beautiful. It is an interior decoration; it decorates life. It gives a quality of dream to life. Through painting, through poetry, through music, it enhances the beauty, the euphoria. It tries to give momentary pleasures, a quality, something resembling permanence. It is an effort to live, but it is still not religion. It does not accept life as it is, it tries to improve it; it tries to make it more beautiful. It feels as if raw life is not worth living. It tries to improve existence. It is nearer to religion because it tries to live, but still it is not religion.Religion is the jump into raw existence as it is. Religion accepts totally. It says there is no need to decorate life; it is already such a beautiful poem that no Shakespeares can improve it, no Kalidases are needed. It is already such a tremendous poetry that all improvements are just futile. It is as if you are trying to put legs on a snake. Foolish! The snake is perfect, there is no need to put legs on the snake. And if you put legs on it then sooner or later somebody will come and try to fix shoes on the legs, and you will kill the snake!Art is trying to put legs on the snake. There is no need – life in the raw is tremendously beautiful, it is utterly wonderful. To enjoy it nothing is lacking. The more you decorate it, the more false it becomes. It becomes like the painted face of a woman.I have heard one anecdote. It happened that one saint was very much against women using any decorations for the face, powder, lipstick, this and that – he was very much against them. Another saint lived there also, just in the neighborhood, who was very much in favor of it. The first one used to say that as life is, it is beautiful, there is no need to improve upon it, and you cannot improve on it, it is the final word. The other used to say life is ugly, one has to hide it.A woman used to go to listen to both the saints and she was very troubled and puzzled. She went to an expert, a logician, to ask what to do because one saint said this and another saint said that. The philosopher, the logician, pondered over it, meditated upon the matter, and he said, “You do one thing: paint half your face…because when two saints are against each other this is the only logical answer. Be in the middle, follow the middle path. “This has happened, this is happening every day to you. Somebody is saying something, somebody else is against it. What do you do? You compromise. You paint half your face. You become uglier.Life as it is, is perfect. That’s why we say life is God. God means perfection; there is no beyond to it.But art comes closer, because it doesn’t bother about theories, it does not bother about any fight. It simply tries to decorate. It simply tries to make it a little more beautiful so that you can enjoy it. But there it misses also, because life can be enjoyed as it is. In fact it can be enjoyed only as it is.Art is childlike. Philosophy belongs to old age, to the cunning mind. That’s why whenever you think of philosophers you always think them very ancient, old. Artists are always children, playing on the beach, trying to accumulate colored stones.It happens again and again that there come periods in art when the art simply becomes absolutely unsophisticated and childlike. That has happened with Picasso, and that is his appeal: he paints like a child. There is great art in it, but the painting looks like a child’s, as if he has been playing with colors with no idea what to do…as if just by playing with colors it has happened. But a child has to grow because a child is only the beginning, not the end, and if the child grows rightly he becomes religious. If an artist grows rightly he becomes religious. If he does not grow, then he remains an artist.For a philosopher to become religious is a long journey…very very difficult, almost impossible. Seems arduous. His whole being is at stake, he has to destroy himself completely; only then can he become religious. That’s why philosophers have created a game. The name of the game is theology. It is not religion, it is just a trick of philosophers to feel as if they are religious. They have been thinking about truth, beauty, this and that, then they think about God. Theology means logic about theos, logic about God. They make God a problem also, and they start thinking about it. Theology is a false religion. It is part of philosophy, it has nothing to do with religion.For a scientist it is difficult, but possible, to turn and take a hundred-and-eighty-degree conversion and become a religious man, because science and religion both belong to the age of youth. Just try to understand it: art belongs to the child, philosophy belongs to the old man, science and religion both belong to the young man. Both need energy. Science is hate, religion is love. Science fights with life, religion loves it.A child is nearer to the young man because he will have to grow up sooner or later. Unless he is a retarded child he is bound to become religious. Every artist, if he moves, grows, will find one day he has entered the temple of the divine. Every poet, every musician, every dancer, if he goes on growing, if his growth is not stopped somewhere in the middle, then he will become religious. That is a natural consequence of being an artist.A scientist will have to take a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. He cannot grow into religion; he has to change himself, his direction. He can grow easily into a philosopher. So many scientists in their old age – Eddington, James Jeans – they all become philosophers. It is easy.For a religious man it is impossible to grow into old age because a religious man never grows old; he grows and grows and grows, and becomes younger and younger. He never becomes old. Old age does not belong to the religious man because he lives moment to moment so fresh. He remains young. He loves life so deeply that life nourishes his youth. An old man simply means somebody who has been rejected by life and is now getting ready for the garbage can, being thrown away. Used, now there is no need for him.A religious man never grows old, that’s why you never see a statue of Buddha as an old man. He became old, he lived for eighty years, but you never see a statue of Buddha, or Mahavira or Krishna or Rama as old, no. We have never painted a single picture of them as old because we know a religious man never grows old. The body grows old, but that is not the point; consciousness remains young and fresh.A religious man never becomes a philosopher. It is impossible. It is not in the very nature of things. It is difficult for a philosopher to become religious, because he will have to go back. It is against nature to go back, but it is possible. Rarely it happens, very rarely, but it is possible; one can go back. Much is involved, investment is there – a whole life invested in philosophy; it is difficult to move back. Philosophers, to the very last, go on insisting on their theories, remain confined in them.These are the four ways of living life. A religious man lives life without becoming an expert, he never becomes an expert because life is so vast – how can you claim expertise? Life is so infinite, beginningless, endless, how can you become knowledgeable about it? In fact the more you know, the less you feel that you know. The greater your knowing becomes, the more intensely ignorance is felt. When knowledge becomes absolute, the man of religion simply feels that he doesn’t know anything. He is not an expert.So if you find anybody expert in religion, know well he is not a religious man. He may belong to the false discipline of theology. Theology is the false coin which tries to deceive people that it is a religion. Christianity died because of theology; too much theology suffocated it.The Jews could not kill Jesus. They crucified him, but he survived. Then the theologians – and Christianity has produced great theologians; in fact Christianity has not produced anything else, just rotten theology that has suffocated Jesus completely – they murdered him. Jesus was not murdered on the hill of Golgotha, he was murdered in the Vatican.Religion is always killed by theology; it is a dangerous, cancerous growth. Religion never makes you an expert, it never makes you a pundit. A man with eyes can never become a pundit because life is not a theory, it is not a scripture; it is not a hypothesis to be learned, it is a mystery to be lived. And the more you move into this mystery the more you are lost.A day comes when life is and you are not. A day comes when you are dissolved completely. The wave has disappeared into the ocean. This is the final, the ultimate – what in India we have been calling samadhi, the enlightenment, sambodhi. When you are no more you have become a buddha.Now, this small parable.A man who was believed to have died and was being prepared for burial, revived. He sat up, but he was so shocked at the scene surrounding him that he fainted. He was put in the coffin and the funeral party set off for the cemetery.Just as they arrived at the grave he regained consciousness, lifted the lid, and cried out for help.“It is not possible that he has revived,“ said the mourners, “because he has been certified dead by competent experts.“When competent experts have said that he is dead, how is it possible that he has revived? People believe in theories, not in life. The man is there alive and crying for help, but no, their eyes are closed by theories, knowledge, and competent experts have given the certificate that he is dead. How can they be wrong? It must be an illusion: “Maybe we are hallucinating, or maybe this man is hallucinating: he is dead and he thinks he is not. Something has gone wrong, because how can the experts be wrong?”And don’t laugh, because this is your attitude also. If something is said in the Vedas and life denies it, you will forget life and you will believe in the Vedas. You will say, “How is it possible? The rishis of the Vedas, the great experts, they say this is not so. Something must be wrong in life. Life can go wrong, experts never go wrong.”It has happened so many times, it is happening every day, with you, with others.When for the first time astrologers and astronomers proved that the earth is round-shaped, not flat, the pope of the Vatican denied it. He said, “How is it possible? because in The Bible it is said that the earth is flat.”They had all the proofs that the earth is round but the Christian theologians wouldn’t listen. They said, “How is it possible? The earth has to be flat. How can The Bible be wrong? The Devil must be playing tricks with your minds; that’s why you are finding these arguments. But you cannot deceive us, we know the word of God.”Then it was proved that the sun is not moving around the earth as it was believed. Just the contrary, the earth is moving around the sun. Every proof was there, and not a single proof existed against it. But again Galileo was called to the court of the pope, and he was forced to take his statement back.Galileo, on his knees in the court, said, “I also believe that the sun must be moving around the earth, because it says so in the scriptures, and I must apologize for making a statement that the earth moves around the sun.” And he said to the pope, “My Lord, if you wish I can write another book to prove that the scripture is true. But one thing I must say: Even if I prove it, it makes no difference, the earth is moving around the sun. Nothing can be done about it. I can write a book to disprove my argument – that is nothing, that is not the point.”Galileo must have been a rare man. People think that he was a coward; I don’t think so. People think that he was a coward because why should he apologize? He should have become a martyr. But as my feeling goes martyrs are almost always foolish, stupid people. Ninety-nine percent are stupid. Galileo must have been a very very understanding man.If you live with fools you have to accept their foolishness. Why unnecessarily become a martyr for just this ordinary thing? And whether the earth moves around the sun or the sun moves around the earth, what difference does it make? Why waste your life for it? He must have been a very rare, understanding man. He was not a coward at all. He was not foolhardy, that’s right, but his statement is beautiful in the end. He says, “But I cannot do anything. I can prove it, but that sun won’t listen, and neither will the earth follow.”It happened that Galileo made the first telescope, and he asked his friends – university professors, priests – to come and see through it, because many stars were there which could not be seen by the naked eye but they could be seen through this telescope. Nobody was ready to look through it, because everything is counted in The Bible, and it is said how many stars are there, and God created only that amount, that number, and how can you suddenly find more with an instrument? That instrument must have been supplied by the Devil!Nobody was ready to look through it – so afraid…because maybe you can see some stars there which are not written about in the scriptures. Then there will be trouble. When a few courageous people tried to look, they looked and they laughed and they said, “You must have been playing tricks! “ The stars were there; this Galileo must be playing tricks.This has been the attitude, that life has to follow the scriptures, life has to follow the theory. So don’t laugh about these people – they are following a well-established law of foolishness. “It is not possible,” they said, “that he has revived, because he has been certified dead by competent experts.”I have heard: It happened that somehow Mulla Nasruddin’s wife’s name was missed in the voters’ list. Then there was an election, and his wife was very anxious to vote, but her name was not there. So Nasruddin took his wife to the election commissioner – and not only was the name not there on the list, it was said that his wife was dead. Of course his wife was very furious, and she was more furious because Nasruddin was taking the thing with much ease. He was not disturbed and he was not angry, and he should have been because how dare these people count her as dead when she was alive? She was very angry. They went to the commissioner and she told him, “This is not right. I am alive! And in your list it is said that I am dead. What is this?”She was so angry that Nasruddin said, “Wait. You cannot fight with the officers. They must be right; how can they be wrong? Of course they know better than we do, and you, a foolish woman, not educated at all, trying to argue with a great officer? If they write that you are dead, you must be dead. Experts cannot be wrong.”“But I am alive!“ shouted the man.And life is shouting all around you, but you have never listened to it. You are too engaged with experts. You go on reading your Ramayana, your Bible, and life is all around shouting, “I am here! Look at me!” It shouts through the birds, through the trees, through the rocks, through the clouds – but you are deaf. Your ears are filled with the scriptures and the experts and the theoreticians. You are reading your book, you are looking in the book, you are searching for life in the book.Ramakrishna used to say that it happened: The wife of a disciple of Ramakrishna told her husband that in the neighborhood, just two or three houses away, a house had burned down in the night. He was an educated man. Immediately he took his newspaper and went through it. The wife said, “What are you doing?” He said, “If the house has really burned down then there must be news of it in the newspaper, and it is not there. I don’t think that house could have burned down, it must be a rumor.” Just three houses away – but you have to look in the newspaper, you have to check in the newspaper. The newspaper has become more alive than life. Words have become more meaningful than facts.Existence has gone far away from you. Between you and existence there is a vast wall of China, made of words, theories, scriptures, religions, philosophies. It is difficult to penetrate the wall and reach existence; that’s why you are so miserable, so thirsty, so starved. You have not lived at all. You have been just dragging.“But I am alive!“ shouted the man. He appealed to a well known and impartial scientist and jurisprudent who was present.There he also committed the same mistake as the mourners were committing, because he also belonged to the same crowd. Sometimes I think, reading this story, that he may also be thinking inside: Maybe they are right, because how can the experts be wrong? Maybe I am deceived!…because he was part of these mourners, of the same crowd. He was not a different man but a member of the same group. He must also be thinking inside: I feel that I am alive, but who relies on his own feelings? You also don’t rely on your own feelings. You feel suspicious. Who knows? – you may be wrong. The man was alive, he was feeling alive, he was shouting, “I am alive!” but still he appealed to the wrong man – a well known and impartial scientist.First, he was a scientist, which means he was an expert about dead things. No scientist ever encounters life, he cannot. His methodology debars it. A man who knows about dead things – appealing to him about life was a wrong step, and the step was even more wrong because the man was well known. When an expert is not well known sometimes he can put his expertise aside; nothing much is at stake. But when a well known expert is there he has to save his expertise. The question is not whether this man is alive or not; the question is, he has to save his prestige of being a well known scientist. A small man can commit suicide but not a well known scientist. An immature scientist may have looked at the man and thought: Maybe he is alive. But that would mean that he was immature, not really well established.The more a man is established the more he has invested in it and the less is the possibility for him to allow any new fact to arise. He will have to push away the new fact because the new fact, if accepted, will destroy the whole old pattern. More established people are less rebellious, they have to be. They cannot afford rebellion. This is one of the basic tricks that societies play against revolution.In India, for five thousand years there has been no revolution because we gave the brahmins so much prestige. The man of knowledge was made the highest, the topmost; the man of knowledge was the base of the whole establishment. Who will rebel? Because to rebel you first have to be a brahmin, an intellectual. Only the intelligentsia rebels. But if the intelligentsia is made the very base of the establishment, then nobody can rebel, there is no possibility. All the brahmins in India were the topmost people. They could not afford to be rebellious because in rebellion their prestige would be lost. If the establishment is lost, they are lost. They exist with the establishment. They cannot afford rebellion.And the same trick is being played in Soviet Russia. That’s why in Soviet Russia there is no possibility of any revolution, no possibility at all. The same trick. They must have learned it from Hindus, because India is the only country which has been on Earth for thousands of years without revolution, the only social structure with no rebellion, no possibility of any rebellion – they must know some secret. The man who gave Hindu society its foundation, Manu, must have known the secret.And now, Marx plus Manu is the structure of Soviet Russia. They pay much respect to authors, professors, writers, novelists, scientists – the brahmins, the intelligentsia. Again, in Russia the brahmin is the highest, the top class. Now there is no possibility of any revolution there, because who will revolt? Laborers, sudras, never revolt; on their own they will never revolt. The intelligentsia is needed to provoke them, but who will provoke them? – because a revolution will go against the intelligentsia itself. Warriors, soldiers, they never revolt, they are the most obedient people in the world, soldiers – the most obedient, even foolishly obedient. Their whole training is for obedience. They never revolt. And business people of course cannot revolt, because they will be robbed in a revolution. They have much to lose. Business people never revolt, vaishyas never revolt – they cannot. They are always against revolution. That’s why in America revolution is not possible, because the whole country consists of the middle class, the whole country is the business class, vaishyas. In America revolution is not possible – who will revolt? The major part of the country is middle class. A middle-class mind is always trying to reach to the topmost. He has no time for revolution, and any revolution will disturb his own ambition. Vaishyas are never revolutionaries.Warriors, soldiers, kshatriyas, are the most obedient part of a country. They never revolt. Whosoever rules, they follow him. Sudras have no mind – laborers, the proletariat, they have no mind to revolt. They are contented with whatsoever they have. They drag on with it. They don’t hope much. They are not frustrated. To create the frustrations, brahmins are needed. The brahmin is the only revolutionary class, and if you make the brahmins the top, then revolution is killed from the very seed, burned. Experts can never be revolutionaries. They are the brahmins. They are already so established that they would not like any change.The man appealed to the wrong person. He appealed to a well known and “impartial” scientist – and there is one more condition: impartial.This is something to be understood, it is a very delicate point. Science thinks that it is impartial, science thinks that it is impersonal knowledge. This is wrong. No knowledge is ever impersonal, all knowledge is personal. No knowledge is impartial, all knowledge is partial, because the knower enters into the knowledge, he cannot remain outside of it. Whenever you know something, you know. You have entered into it, you have become part of it. That’s why in Soviet Russia a different type of science exists than in America – because they have different investments, different commitments.In Stalin’s Russia many scientific theories were denied. They were not accepted because they were against Marxism, so nobody would talk about them, nobody would discover them. They were discovering something else. In Soviet Russia, Freud’s psychoanalysis is not accepted. Not a single psychologist there says that Freudian analysis is right, no. The whole world has said so, but not Russia.They have their own psychology – Pavlovian. Pavlov is their Freud because he supports communism, because he says there is no soul, no mind: man is nothing but behavior, a mechanism; biological, but still a mechanism. And the whole point is how to condition it. Wrong conditioning leads to psychic illnesses, right conditioning will change the man. There is no need for psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is bourgeois, it is capitalistic. Freud has not entered into the Soviet bloc. They have their own psychology, and they also think they are impartial, and Freud also thought he was impartial. In fact, impartial knowledge is not possible, because the man who finds it, he has his own bias, his own prejudice. He has his own knowledge, he has his own mind; it colors the whole thing. Nothing is impartial.Only one possibility exists of impartial knowledge, and that is when you have lost your mind completely. We in the East say: Only a buddha can be impartial, a buddha, who has no mind, who has no self, who has no prejudice, no ideology, who lives in emptiness – he can be impartial. But a man who lives in mind – how can he be impartial? His mind is going to color, his mind is going to interpret.This man must have been a very well-known scientist, “impartial” – because what he did proves that he must have been well known, and he must have been thinking that he was impartial. That impartiality killed the man. He appealed to the wrong man.“Just a moment,“ said the expert. He then turned to the mourners, counting them. “Now, we have heard what the alleged deceased has had to say. You fifty witnesses tell me what you regard as the truth.“Of course, this is the only way to be impartial: Take votes. And of course the majority is always right, truth is to be proved by majority. This is how the whole world is run by experts – truth is to be proved by majority. And in fact just the reverse is the case: the majority always believes in lies, because the majority consists of fools.Democracy basically is mobocracy. It cannot be otherwise. You have to ask the fools who is right, what is right, and there is a tendency in the mob to follow others. The mob has no standpoint of its own. It is a chaos. Somebody raises his hand, the others follow. The mob are like sheep.One teacher was asking a small boy – because the boy was the son of a shepherd – he asked, “You have ten sheep. Five jump out of the fence, how many are left behind?”The boy said, “None.”The teacher said, “What! You can’t even figure it out? Five have jumped out, and there were ten in the beginning, so how many are left?”The boy said again, “None.”The teacher was at a loss. He said, “Then you can’t figure it out?”The child said, “You may know figures, but I know sheep. None is left. Even if one jumps out, that will be enough; the other nine will follow.”And he is right. What did this impartial, well known scientist do? He did a democratic thing.“Just a moment,“ said the expert. He then turned to the mourners, counting them. “Now we have heard what the alleged deceased has had to say. You fifty witnesses tell me what you regard as the truth.““He is dead,“ said the witnesses. “Bury him,“ said the expert. And so he was buried.And so you have been buried. Your experts have buried you. Your scriptures have buried you. Your theologies have buried you. You were alive but you went to ask the experts.Don’t go to the experts, go to life itself. Don’t go to the scriptures, go to existence itself. Don’t ask the theoreticians, ask life itself.The man was just foolish. He should have run from the expert. The moment he had seen that a well known scientist, an impartial man, was there, he should have jumped out of the coffin and run as fast as possible – that was the only way to save himself.And you also should do the same: jump out of your coffin and run as fast as you can from all your experts; otherwise they will kill you. They have already killed you. They will bury you. If you want to be alive, listen to life, not to knowledge. If you want to be alive, listen to your own heart. What a foolish man that man must have been who asked the expert to decide!Remember, your own heart is the only judge. No other judge exists. Listen to it. Listen to the inner voice, and follow it, wheresoever it leads. If you listen to the inner voice, if you don’t bother about theories, if you make contact with life itself, direct and immediate, you will attain to the ultimate.God is waiting there, alive and kicking. And there is nobody who is hindering you except yourself. Just don’t come in your own way.Enough for today.

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Just Like That 01-10Category: SUFISM

Just Like That 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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There was a man who lost his ax, and he suspected the boy next door.He watched the boy walking – he had stolen his ax. His expression, his talk, his behavior, his manner, everything about him betrayed that he had stolen the ax.Soon afterward the man was digging in his garden and he found the ax.On another day he saw the boy next door again. Nothing in his behavior and manner suggested that he would steal an ax.Every man, and you are included in it, lives a closed life, lives in his own world. There is not one world around you, there are as many worlds as there are minds. Each mind has its own world and is closed. Sometimes you come in close contact with other worlds, but that is only on the periphery. Your centers remain separate, and they go on living in their own capsule.The mind is a wall around you. You are enclosed in it as a prisoner. But the wall is transparent. It is a glass wall made of only thoughts, prejudices, theories, scriptures; that’s why you cannot touch it, that’s why you are not even aware of it. But you live behind it, and whatsoever you see and feel is not the fact. It is an interpretation.You look at a woman and you feel: How beautiful! This is an interpretation. Somebody else may not agree with you. And somebody else may absolutely disagree with you. You think she is the paradigm of beauty, and somebody else thinks that she is just homely, can be tolerated, that’s all. And somebody else thinks that she is positively ugly, the worst that he has ever seen; she is a nightmare, not a beautiful dream.What are they talking about? Are they talking about the same woman? How can it be that they are talking about the same woman and they differ so much? They are not talking about the same woman. The same woman is an illusion. They are talking about different interpretations. The woman is being used just like a screen, and they are projecting their own minds on her. They are seeing whatsoever they want to see. They are seeing whatsoever they are capable of seeing. They are seeing whatsoever they are conditioned to see from the very beginning. It is an interpretation, it is not a fact.That’s why aesthetics for centuries have been trying to define what beauty is. They have not yet been able; they will never be able to define it because beauty is not a fact. It doesn’t belong to the world of reality, it is an interpretation – and so is ugliness.And the same is true about all dualities, because the reality is one. The reality is not two. It is neither ugly nor beautiful; it is simply there without any beauty and without any ugliness. There is no question of any comparison because nothing else exists besides it. It is the only reality. There is no other reality, so how can you compare what is beautiful and what is ugly, and what is good and what is bad, and what is divine and what is evil? No, only one exists. All divisions are of the mind.You say someone is good, some other man is bad. You think someone is a saint and you think someone else is a sinner. All projections, all interpretations. That’s why Jews thought Jesus to be a criminal. And Christians think him to be the only begotten son of God, the greatest who ever walked on Earth. And Jews – they thought him to be the worst, sin incarnate.When they crucified Jesus, they didn’t crucify him alone. On both his sides were criminals; three persons were crucified together. He was crucified like a criminal. Not only that, every year the viceroy of the country, the Roman viceroy, had the power to forgive one person, to release him from the death penalty. Four persons were to be crucified – Jesus and three others. The other three were murderers, and when the viceroy asked the Jews, “I can free one man” – and he was thinking of Jesus because to him it looked as if he was just innocent, childlike. It was simply unjust to kill this man.The viceroy was not a Jew, his standpoint was different; he could not project the same idea as Jews were projecting on Jesus. He could not see the badness, the evil. He talked to Jesus and found he was a simple man. Maybe too bold, maybe too bold because of his innocence; he may have been saying things in a metaphorical way, but he never meant it. He wanted – deep down in his heart was the idea that the Jews would ask for Jesus to be forgiven.But no, the Jews wouldn’t ask for Jesus. They decided for a criminal, a murderer. Barabbas was his name. They decided that he should be freed but Jesus had to be killed. Jesus died like a criminal. What happened? Why are the standpoints about Jesus so contrary, so diametrically opposite?Not that Jesus is the problem, the problem is of the interpreting mind. You call somebody good and you call somebody bad, but have you ever thought – what is goodness? Can you define it? Has anybody ever been able to define it?One of the greatest logicians of this century, G.E. Moore, has written a book. The name of the book is Principia Ethica – one of the rare books, so penetrating, so logical – and he starts by asking “What is good?” And a man of the caliber of G.E. Moore is rarely born. You cannot find anybody else in this century who has such an acute penetrating quality of the mind.He starts by asking: What is good? and he ends the book by saying that good is indefinable. He works hard through the book, round and round he goes, tries many ways to penetrate the mystery of good, and fails. And this is the conclusion: you dig the whole mountain and not even a mouse is found; good is indefinable.But that has been known forever – that good is indefinable. The question is, Why is good indefinable? Why is beauty indefinable? It is indefinable because it doesn’t exist as a fact in the world, it is an interpretation. It depends on the mind. It is just like, like and dislike.Somebody says, “I like this flower,” and you can say you don’t like it. There is no quarrel about it; we know that likings differ. Beauty is also like, like and dislike and good is also like, like and dislike. They are not facticities in the world. You bring your own idea to the fact, and between your idea and the fact a notion is born: you say it is beautiful. It fits your idea of beauty.But your idea is not universal, it is personal to you. That’s why Sufis insist that all knowledge is personal. No knowledge is impersonal. They insist that all knowledge is partial, no knowledge is impartial, cannot be. Only a man like Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, is impartial – but then he has no knowledge. He has no mind to interpret. He looks at reality, he simply looks! He does not bring any idea to reality. He is passive. His mind is not an activity. He is alert, but just receptive; he does not project.That is the difference between a buddha mind and an ordinary mind. An ordinary mind is an active agent. It is not like a mirror. It is not just showing whatsoever is the case; no, it penetrates actively. It brings its own ideas to reality. It colors reality, it gives a shape. It gives a form to reality which is not there, which has been brought by the mind itself.The flower is there; the mind says, “Beautiful.” Only the flower is there – nothing of beauty, nothing of ugliness. The mountains are there. Nothing beautiful, nothing ugly; they simply are there. Existence simply is. It is not divided. Mind brings its knowledge, divides it, and then you go on and on, and you never become aware that a subtle wall surrounds you. Because of that wall you are unable to penetrate reality. One has to become passive. Remember: alert, but passive – that is my definition of meditation. Alert but passive.Just the other day somebody sent me a small cartoon. I loved it. Two men are standing – maybe neighbors, friends – and one says to the other, “I hear that your son has started meditating.”The other says, “Yes, he has started meditating. And I think it is far better than just sitting and doing nothing.”But that is the meaning of meditation! – just sitting and doing nothing. If you do, it is not meditation.Alert, and passive. Says Zenerin: Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. Nothing has to be done, because once you do, you are there. Once you do something you have changed reality; already it is no more the same. Don’t do anything. Just watch. Be passive but alert. Aware, nondoing, sitting quietly…suddenly the reality is there. The mind is dropped. When the mind is not, then you know what is real. The mind won’t allow you to know the reality, because the mind goes on creating its own hallucinations.Once I was working as a teacher in a university, in a far corner of India. I lived in the bachelor quarters and shared my room with a colleague, a very gentle, good-hearted man, simple. But then came the festival of Holi, and he took some bhang, a psychedelic – and he had never taken it before. So he went completely crazy. He was found in the street naked. He was caught, and the whole night he had to stay in the police station. That disturbed that poor soul, and that disturbed him so much, he became paranoid.He came back – I had to go and find him, where he was. I found him in the police station; I persuaded the police officer that he was a simple man, just a victim of some friends, and he had never taken bhang before, so it affected him too much. I brought him back. But from that day he became afraid, so afraid that a car would pass and he would jump on my bed and he would say, “The police are coming!” In the night, somebody would be knocking at somebody else’s door, and he would immediately hide under my bed: “The police are coming!” He became so afraid that it became impossible for him to go and teach, because anywhere you can come across a policeman.Twenty-four hours a day I watched him, because he was just an exaggerated case of ordinary humanity. And when a case is exaggerated you can watch more easily. He started creating fantasies of his own, nightmares, that the government was conspiring against him. An ordinary teacher in a university, why should the government bother? There are many other things to bother about.A simple-hearted man, but now he created in his own imagination – he worked it up, and the more he worked it up the more he got into it – that the whole world was against him, and everybody was watching him, and they were just trying to find an opportunity to catch him and throw him into jail. He stopped going outside the room. Even if I came back he would look first from the window, make certain that it was me and not somebody else trying to deceive: maybe the police have come, or somebody else – the enemy. When I came, minutes would pass, even sometimes half an hour, then he would open the door, when he was absolutely convinced that it was me and nobody else.Then it became too much because I also could not sleep or rest – the whole night, the whole day! Even if just a breeze came on the door and knocked he would jump up and hide in the cupboard. So I had to do something.I went to the police station, I persuaded those men: “You have done this. Now help me – because he says that the police have some documents against him. So you please come tonight, bring a file, just a false file, because there is no document against him or anything, he has never done anything else other than this taking bhang once. So you bring a false file, his name written on it, with many papers inside – any papers will do, and you beat him hard. A shock is needed, otherwise he will not come out of his enclosure, and he is shrinking and shrinking inward. So you beat him hard, don’t be worried. Hit him hard. And bring the chains, put him in chains, then I will try to persuade you, and I will bribe you in front of him, so he is satisfied that now the case is closed, and you burn those files in front of him.”That was arranged – a mock show. And it worked. He was beaten hard, really beaten. But when they were beating him he was looking at me and saying, “Look. It is happening as I said, and nobody listened to me!” He was feeling a deep satisfaction also in it, that finally he was proved right. When they were putting chains on him, he winked at me, and he said, “Look at the file: my name.” But he was shocked. Then I bribed the police, the file was burned and the matter closed.While watching him for one month continuously I became aware that he is not in any way different from ordinary human beings. No qualitative difference, just the difference of quantity, degrees. He may be at the topmost rung of the ladder, you may be just in the middle, and somebody may be just in the beginning; but the difference is of degrees, not of quality. Whosoever has a mind is mad in some way or other. Mind IS madness. But you may be mad, and you may not know it, because all others are mad to the same degree. You fit together; there is no problem.There is an old Sufi story: It happened that a witch came to a capital town. She threw something into the well, chanted a mantra, and said, “Whosoever will drink the water from this well will go mad.” The capital had only two wells: one for the ordinary humanity, another was in the palace for the king and the prime minister.Of course, people had to drink, knowing well that they will go mad. But there was no other way – that was the only well. They were not allowed to go to the palace to get water from there.So the whole town by the evening, when the sun was setting, became mad. But nobody was aware, because when everybody goes mad, how can you be aware of it? As hippies say, everybody was doing his own thing. People were dancing naked, crying, screaming; women were running naked on the streets. People were doing all sorts of yogas…somebody standing on his head, somebody doing other asanas – the whole town was in a nightmare. Much rejoicing was going on. People were celebrating and jumping and screaming – the whole town was awake!Only the king and the prime minister were sad, very sad: “What to do? The whole town has gone mad, and poor souls, they are not even aware of it because when everybody goes mad, how to judge?” In fact, the prime minister and the king became suspicious of their own sanity. Maybe the madness had happened to them, because the whole town seemed blissfully unaware. Thousands of people, and they had all gone mad, and nobody thought that anybody was mad.In that town of course the king and the prime minister became suspicious of themselves: maybe the madness had happened to them! And by midnight there was great trouble, because the whole town gathered and the town also became aware that something had gone wrong with the king and the prime minister. A rumor spread that the king and prime minister had gone mad. And of course everybody agreed.They surrounded the palace. The guards were mad, the police were mad, the army was mad, so there was no protection, and they started demanding, “Either you come back to your senses, otherwise we will dethrone you.”The king said, “What to do?”The prime minister said, “You talk to them, and I will run and fetch some water from the well, because there is no other way now. In this mad capital, if we want to survive even for a single minute we have to be mad.”He fetched some water from the well of the town. They both drank, they both started dancing, they threw off their clothes – and the whole town was happy that the king and the prime minister were back to their senses, they had regained their sanity.The whole of ordinary humanity is mad because mind IS mad, and whatsoever you see through the mad mind is just your own interpretation of reality. It doesn’t exist anywhere else than within your mind. It is an idea.A madman lives closed in his mind. You are also closed. Maybe not so closed, but closed. Maybe here and there, there are a few apertures and sometimes a little light breaks in. But you are just like the whole crowd, so you don’t have any comparison.Scientists say that if suddenly God decides to reduce everything to one-tenth of its size nobody will become aware of it. If you are reduced – you may be six feet, and you are reduced to point six feet, but everything is reduced in the same proportion. The tree that was sixty feet is reduced to six feet, and the mountain that was six thousand feet is reduced to six hundred feet. If everything is reduced in the same proportion – you become point six feet and everything comes down in the same proportion – nobody will ever become aware that anything has happened. How can you become aware? Even your yards will be reduced. Nobody will ever become aware.You become aware only when you don’t fit; otherwise you are not aware. And the reverse is also true: when you become aware, you don’t fit. The more you become aware, the less and less will you fit with ordinary humanity. A Jesus is an outsider; he becomes a stranger to you. He fits with existence perfectly, but with this mad world he does not fit at all. On the contrary, you think that he is mad. A Socrates, a Jesus, a Buddha are thought to be mad; something abnormal has happened to them. You live in such abnormality that a normal, healthy man will look abnormal to you.Sufis say the mind is the disease. And all those who have known agree with them. And the trick is such that whatsoever the mind thinks, it always finds there…because first you put something in reality and then you read it. With the right hand you put it, with the left hand you read it and you think you are reading reality.I am talking to you. But you are not listening to me, to what I am saying. You cannot; there is no possibility. You may be listening to a thousand and one things. You will be listening differently from one another. Your interpretation will be yours, your friend’s will be his. And if after this talk you gather together and decide what you have heard, you will be surprised: everybody has heard a different thing, a different story, because the mind is there continuously adding, deleting, interpreting, philosophizing….You are not simply hearing me. You are active. And if you are active, you will miss me. An active mind is the barrier to understanding anything. A passive mind is needed. A vacant mind is needed, empty of all thoughts. You become like a mirror. You simply listen. You don’t try to think about it because if you think about it, you miss. You have gone astray, you have already gone far away.Simply listen! Listen to me as if you are listening to music. Listen to me as if you are listening to a bird, or to a river. Simply listen passively. To listen passively is to become a learner. To listen passively is to learn. There is no other way to learn.This is one of the most fundamental things to be understood. Otherwise you can read the Gita and the Koran, and you will not be reading the Gita and the Koran at all, you will be reading yourself. Through the Koran you will be reading your own mind. You move in a vicious circle, and the wall surrounds you – but it is very subtle and you cannot see it and you cannot feel it. Once you understand that the mind is the wall, you start dropping it.Be with the trees sometimes and don’t say anything, don’t verbalize, just be. Sit under a tree. Many flowers have come to it. But don’t verbalize. Just look at the flowers, look at the tree, touch the tree, embrace the tree, kiss the tree; but don’t verbalize! Do whatsoever you want, simply don’t verbalize. Don’t bring the mind in. Allow the tree and your reality to be together. Don’t have the mind in between. Drop the mind. Be related directly and immediately with the tree. Be related directly and immediately with the sky. Be related immediately and directly to me…or to your beloved or friend.Remember only one thing: the moment you bring in the mind, you bring madness. The moment you bring the mind in, you bring the distorting factor, the frustrating factor.Can you be a no-mind? That is the only possibility to know reality.Now this small parable.There was a man who lost his ax, and he suspected the boy next door.Once you suspect, the mind has become active. Now the suspicion is there, and the suspicion will start projecting things. The man suspected the boy next door.He watched the boy walking – and of course, he was absolutely certain that in the very walk he could see the thief. The way he was walking was the way thieves walk – he had stolen his ax. His expression…. The eyes of the boy were trying to hide something. He was not looking directly, he was avoiding: he was the thief. His talk was roundabout. He was trying to deceive: he was the thief. His behavior was not normal…something abnormal, something on his heart, heavy. He was no more the same as he used to be. The ax was heavy on his head. His manner…all gave the man proofs, everything about him betrayed the fact that he had stolen the ax.You also know that this happens to you. Once you suspect a thing you start projecting it. Once the suspicion enters, the seed is there. Then everything changes.If you are in love with a woman – and she may not even have dreamed that she is in love with you, but if you are in love, then everything – the way she walks, the way she says hello, the way she stands near you, everything helps: she is in love. You become more and more certain that she is in love. She may not even have suspected, the very idea may not have occurred to her, but you are certain. She may be just the same, but you are no more the same – your mind is carrying something in it, a seed, a projection. Your mind is loaded with an idea. Or, you suspect your wife or your husband of being unfaithful. Once the idea enters then you will find proofs.Remember this, this is what madness is: first you decide and then you find proofs. And you will always find them. Life is vast. Once you decide – and this is the path of madness, that first you decide then you start finding proofs. Those proofs are not real proofs, those are pseudo-proofs. They are more or less rationalizations. But you have already decided the case.Proofs should be first, and then the decision. But people decide first, then they always find. Remember, whatsoever you decide, you will find. Nobody can prevent you from finding it. If you decide there is a God you will find one. If you decide there is no God you will find that there is no God. If you decide that the number thirteen is a bad omen, it is evil, you will find proofs every day that number thirteen has something evil in it. On the thirteenth day of the month something will go wrong. It goes wrong every day, but then you don’t take notice of it. But on the thirteenth, you take notice. In America, in many hotels they don’t have a thirteenth floor because nobody wants to stay on the thirteenth floor. So after the twelfth floor comes the fourteenth. The thirteenth never comes.I was reading one article: A man has found thousands of things to prove that the number thirteen belongs to the devil. He has accumulated thousands of facts: on the thirteenth of each month – how many murders are committed in the world, how many robberies, how many people commit suicide, how many auto accidents, how many people become mad on that date, the thirteenth. He has accumulated thousands of facts. Somebody sent me the article – he was also impressed. One has to be impressed; the man has forced so many facts to support the idea.I wrote to the man who had sent me the article, “You try to find the same about the number twelve, and you will find the same number of murders, robberies, heart attacks, suicides, people going mad. Any number will do. You just decide first on the number, and then you go on looking in life and you will find…. If you decide that number thirteen is a good number, then you will find some other facts: how many people get married, how many children are born, how many people fall in love.”On the date of the thirteenth, people get married, people get divorced also. It depends on you, which you choose. People are born and people die also. In reality every day is the same. Reality does not favor. But your mind…if it starts working, you will find….People come to me – if they have decided that I am a bad man, almost always they find proofs. Nobody can prevent them; they will always find proofs. Life is vast. It is both summer and winter. It is both good and bad. It is both right and wrong. It is just like two wings of a bird – you cannot be without both. A man comes who has decided that this man is bad – he will find all proofs. Another comes who has decided that this man is good – he will also find all proofs. Life gives you ample opportunity. All alternatives are open.Once that man suspected that this boy had stolen his ax, he watched him walking, and in the very walk he could see the thief. Everything about him betrayed that he had stolen the ax.Soon afterward the man was digging in his garden and he found the ax.Suddenly everything changed.On another day he saw the boy next door again. Nothing in his behavior and manner suggested that he would steal an ax.Everything changed. The boy remains the same. The boy is not even aware of what is happening. He had become a thief, now he is no more a thief – a beautiful, nice boy, very good! Look at his walk – so innocent. The boy remains the same but the mind of the man has changed.If you bring your mind to reality you will see something which is not there. You may miss something which is there. Hindus call this bringing of the mind to reality, maya. This is the root cause of all illusion.If you want to understand the Hindu concept of maya, this is the base. If you live through the mind you live in maya, you live in illusion, you live in your own projections and ideas. Layers of your thoughts hide you from reality and hide reality from you. Dropping the mind is dropping the maya, the very base of all hallucination. Once the mind is not there, suddenly that which is, is revealed. And that is God, not your ideas about God.A Hindu will always find Krishna playing on the flute; no Christian ever finds Krishna playing on the flute. In fact, to a Christian mind all this playing on the flute and girls dancing around looks a little bit profane. It doesn’t look right. Krishna looks like a hippie. Christians cannot think of him as a god. Impossible. A god should be serious. In fact a god should be always on the cross, a martyr, carrying the whole burden of humanity, trying to rid humanity of all sins. How can he be playing on the flute? Impossible. He is the savior of sins; he is carrying a mountain load – of all humanity. The fate of humanity depends on him – and he is playing with girls? Krishna looks like a playboy. No, not like a god at all.To Christians, Jesus comes sad, the saddest you can imagine – the very face more like death than like life. Crucified. Death worshipped, not life; very serious. Christians say that Jesus never laughed. It may not be true but Christians have that idea. How can God laugh when there is so much misery, when there is so much sin? How can God laugh when there is Vietnam and when there is Cambodia and when there is Israel and all types of wars and killing and murder? How can God play on a flute? Impossible. He should be serious, on the cross.To a Christian mind the cross is the symbol, not the flute. But to a Hindu, to think of God on the cross will look simply absurd, because God should be a laughter, a singing, a rejoicing, a celebration! A god should be blissful, playing on the flute, because the whole existence is a celebration.You never see any flower on the cross, you never see any bird on the cross, you never see any river sad, any mountain sad. The whole existence is playing on the flute. That is the meaning of Krishna playing on the flute: the celebration that goes on all around, continuously. And the feminine energy dancing.That’s how a god should be: both polarities meeting in him, in a deep embrace with his own energy, with his own creation. The creator and the creation, the male and the female, the yin and the yang, the positive and the negative must be dancing together – otherwise there can be no dance. How can a man dance alone? It will look foolish. For what?…Because man is half, and how can a half dance? Only a whole can dance.When the circle becomes whole the dance happens by itself, on its own accord. There is no need – celebration comes on its own accord. It simply happens – just like that. It happens! – Krishna is not trying to dance, he is not an actor. He is not manipulating. The female energy is there, and the male energy is satisfied, a deep content. A meeting, a marriage. The dance is spontaneous.Hindus cannot think that Jesus never laughed. If he never laughed, then he does not know anything. He must be laughter itself – the deepest that is possible. Jesus must be a belly-laugh; otherwise is not possible.But these are conceptions. A Hindu will think in his own terms, then a Hindu god appears; a Christian thinks in his own words, in his own phraseology, ideology, and a Christian god comes. But both are mind creations. Neither is true, both are projections.Unless all krishnas and all christs drop, you will not be able to know reality. They are all dreams, created by you. Beautiful dreams, but dreams still.When you alone are left, a passive alertness, doing nothing, just being, suddenly the reality bursts into an explosion. And it is not going to be according to any ideology, not Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan. All ideologies are transcended. Ideologies are very narrow. Reality is infinitely vast. It cannot be contained by any idea. It cannot be contained by any concept. It cannot be present.Mind is too narrow a thing: it cannot surround reality, it has to dissolve into reality.When you are not a mind, reality is. And reality is God. And that God – you will not find that it fits with Hindus or it fits with Christians. It fits with nobody. It cannot. Hence I go on insisting that religion is not Christian, not Hindu, not Buddhist. Religion knows no adjectives, religion knows no labels. It is life itself, in its tremendous vitality, in its unlimited expanse, in its endless, beginningless flow.God is life. And all concepts are poor, and if you become too much attached to the concepts, you will find – this is the trouble. A Christian will find that his God is true, because he realizes it. A Mohammedan will find that his concept of God is true, because he finds it. And they all say, “We have experienced!” And how can you deny the experience? A Hindu finds his own God. Mind is self-fulfilling. Whatsoever you have as an idea, you will find as a fulfillment. You will find whatsoever you seek. But whatsoever you find will be only a projection of the mind.Then what to do? Truth cannot be sought through the mind. The mind has to be dropped if you want to seek truth. To truth, to reality, to life, to existence, you have to come completely stripped of your mind, completely nude, completely innocent of all ideologies, completely empty, totally empty. Only then you come to truth. Otherwise, whatsoever you come to is your own mind playing tricks with you. And you can go on deceiving, for many lives you have done that.It is time, the time is absolutely ripe to drop out of this game. You have played it long enough, more than it was necessary. Drop out of the game! And the game is this: if you have an idea, the mind will create the dream, and the dream will be thought of as reality.Reality is never known through the mind because mind is the known, the past, the dead. The past has to cease for the present to be. The known has to cease for the unknown to be. The mind has to cease for God to be. You have to drop all that you have. If you can drop it, if you don’t cling, the greatest revolution, the greatest mutation becomes possible within you.Meditation means a state of no-mind.Every day, every day, I come across the same trouble: you have read in a book that the kundalini rises in a certain way. If you have read it in the book it will rise! And then it will be difficult for anybody to prove that you are wrong, because you have the experience, and you say, “I have felt the experience, how can you say that I am wrong? I have felt the snake of kundalini rising in the spine. It goes with tremendous energy, upward.” And you feel it – and the feeling is so solid that no doubt arises. But I tell you it is your mind. Because there are people who have never heard of kundalini; then it never arises, then it is never felt. They have also attained. Jainas never talk about kundalini, but a Mahavira attains to the ultimate unfoldment of being without any kundalini. Buddhists never talk about kundalini. Hindus talk about it – then it arises.Buddhists talk of four chakras; then a follower of Buddhism feels only four chakras. Hindus talk of seven chakras; a follower of Hinduism feels seven chakras. Once I told a man who was feeling seven chakras, “You don’t know there are thirteen chakras?”He said, “What! Thirteen? But I have felt only seven up to now.”“Six more are left,” I told him. “You go and try, and when you have felt the thirteen all together, then come to me.”After six months he was there. He had felt thirteen – and the man was not deceiving, he was deceived. He was not a liar, he was not lying to me; he is a sincere man.Mind can create experiences. So remember, I repeat again and again, that spirituality is not an experience. It is the experiencer, not the experience; the witness of all experiences, not any experience in particular. When all experiences have been transcended, then you come to the spiritual experience. Spiritual experience is not an experience of this or that. Simply you are left with a consciousness, not experiencing anything.The greed to experience is of the mind, and when it is fulfilled the mind feels very gratified, even with foolish things. What can you gain out of the feeling that energy is rising in the spine? It is just a sensation – and created by the mind. Mind is powerful.Have you seen somebody walking on fire? red-hot coals? Now it is a proved fact that people can walk on them. Just a few years back in Oxford University, one yogi from Sri Lanka walked on fire – with all scientific arrangements so that he could not deceive. He was not deceiving! – he walked on fire. What happens when a yogi walks on red-hot burning coal? He is not burned – what happens?Mind has tremendous capacities. If the mind feels that the fire is not going to burn, if the feeling is absolute, total, the very feeling becomes a protecting energy all around you. Then your feet are not touching the coal. In fact between the coal and the feet there is a pad of unknown energy. And the fire is not passing through; an invisible pad of energy protects you. It is your body aura, concentrated there under your feet. You are not walking on the fire really, you are walking on your own energy. It protects your feet like a shoe, a shoe of energy. The mind has forced it.It happened that a professor of the university became so magnetized seeing this man walking on fire, he became so certain, that he came near. When he came near, the yogi who was walking on the coals pulled him on to the course and he also walked. He had never tried it before and he was not a trained man. What happened? Even in a certain moment if you have total belief, immediately the body is protected.Now medical science has become aware of certain phenomena. One of them is really very peculiar, and the phenomenon is this: every country has different types of prevalent diseases, and every community, every religion, sect, has different diseases occurring more.For example, Eastern people are more prone toward epidemics: plague, cholera, more prone toward communal diseases, infections and diseases which spread by infection, because in the East the individual doesn’t exist much. Only the community exists. In an Indian village, the village exists. Nobody exists as an individual; the community exists. When the community is too great, then infectious diseases will be prevalent, because nobody has a protective aura around himself. If one becomes ill, then the whole community by and by will become a victim to the illness. And in the same community there can be a few Westerners – they will not be affected by the infection.In fact, just the reverse should be the case, because a Western man in India should be more prone to diseases because he is not immune. He is not immune to this climate, to such diseases; he should become a victim sooner. But no. For the last hundred years it has been observed that whenever there is an infectious disease, Europeans are protected by some unknown force. Indians become victims.The Indian mind is more a communal mind. The European mind is more egoistic and personal. So in the West certain other diseases are prevalent. For example, heart attack; it is an individual disease, noninfectious. In the East heart attack is not so common unless you are Western, you are educated in a Western way and you have become almost Western. In the East, heart attack is not a big problem, diabetes is not a big problem, blood pressure is not a big problem – these are noninfectious diseases. Christians are more prone to them. The Western mind lives as an individual unit. Of course, when you live as an individual unit, the community cannot impress you too much. You will be protected from infections.In the West, infections have disappeared by and by, but people are becoming more and more personally ill. Heart attacks, suicide, blood pressure, madness – these are individual diseases. They don’t carry any infection. Tenseness, anguish, anxiety…. In the East people are more at ease. You don’t find them too tense. They don’t suffer from insomnia. They don’t suffer from heart illnesses. From that they are protected by the community. Because the community has no heart. If you live a communal life you cannot suffer from a heart disease.This is a rare phenomenon. It means your mind makes you available to certain diseases, and makes you protected against certain diseases. Your mind is your world. Your mind is your health, your mind is your illness. And if you live with the mind, you continue to live in a capsule and you cannot know what reality is. That reality is known only when you drop all types of minds – communal, individual, social, cultural, personal…when you drop all types of minds. Then your mind becomes universal. Then your mind becomes one with the mind of the universe.When you don’t have your own mind, your consciousness becomes universal. God is known not as an object. Truth is known not as an object. You become the truth. You become God himself. That is the meaning of al-Hillaj Mansoor’s famous assertion: Ana’l haq. He says, “I am God; Aham brahmasmi, I am the Brahman.”Sufis believe in the universal mind. And they want you to drop the individual mind, the communal mind, the social mind. They want you to drop all the barriers that divide you from the universal mind. You become a drop in the ocean. You become the ocean, only then you know what it is. Only then you know what existence is, never before it. The mind has to die.Until you die, God will not be possible for you. God is not an experience. He is never separate from you. You cannot look at him because he is hidden in the looker. You cannot confront him. Where will you confront him? He is hidden in you.I would like to tell you one story, a very old Hindu story. It is said, God created the world. Everything was going well. Then he created man, and something went astray. With man trouble started. And in those days God used to live just on the Earth. He had created this Earth to live on, and to be here and in it. These trees and these flowers, and these rivers and mountains – for what should he create them? The story says he created the Earth to live on, to be here. And he was here, and everything was going well with the birds, trees, rivers and animals; everything was perfect.Then he committed a mistake: he created man, and trouble started, because man started complaining. He would not see if it is night, midnight, and whether God is asleep, he would come and knock at the door with his complaints. He was always there. Man started driving God crazy – his complaints were infinite. And the problem was this: if you solve one man’s complaint, then the very solution creates another man’s complaint.Somebody says, “I need rains today.” And if God gives rains, somebody else comes and he says, “You have destroyed my house – I had just painted it!” But somebody was needing it for his garden. It was impossible to satisfy all, so God asked his advisers what to do. Somebody said, “You had better go to the Himalayas and hide there.”God said, “You are right, but you don’t know the future. Sooner or later a man named Edmund Hillary will come even to Everest. They will not leave me alone there. And once they know I am in the Himalayas, the whole world will go there. No, that won’t help much. For a time, okay, a temporary arrangement, but you don’t know this man Edmund Hillary. I can see him already approaching, because I can see the future.”So they said, “Then it will be good if you go to the moon.”God said, “No. For just a little while it will help. But man is going there. Man is going everywhere.”Then one old adviser whispered something in God’s ear, and God nodded and said, “Yes, you are right.”That old man said, “Better hide yourself in man himself. Go deep into his heart and hide yourself there.”God said, “You are right, because he will never suspect….” This is the one place rarely possible for any man to suspect that God can be – within you.God is not an experience. He is hiding in you. You are just a hiding place. God is not an experience, he is the experiencer of all experiences.Become passive, alert, and suddenly you will find him within yourself. The story is true, absolutely true…because I followed the story and found him. You also follow the story. It is not a fiction; it is absolutely, literally true. He is hiding in you.Enough for today.

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Just Like That 01-10Category: SUFISM

Just Like That 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Saadi said:“A man had an ugly daughter. He married her to a blind man because nobody else would have her.”“A doctor offered to restore the blind man’s sight. But the father would not allow him for fear that he would then divorce his daughter.”Saadi concluded: “The husband of an ugly woman is best blind.”Man is ignorant, blind, as if living in sleep, drunk, not aware. This is the situation. This has always been so. Many cures have been invented, many methods to awaken him. But he resists. So the real problem is not ignorance but the resistance. Ignorance can be cured, but man insists on remaining ignorant. His eyes can be opened – the medicine exists, the doctors are there but man is not ready to open his eyes. He is against it.This is the real problem. Ignorance is not the real problem; it can be cured. It is a simple disease, there is no complexity in it. But something in man is against curing it. There seems to be a great investment in it, as if with ignorance many other things will disappear; as if man clings to ignorance in the hope that something valuable is hidden there, a treasure.Once it happened: A man was brought to me; his wife brought him. He was seriously ill but he wouldn’t go to the doctor, and he would deny absolutely that he was ill. He would say, “What is the need to go to the doctor’s? I am not ill. I am perfectly healthy. Something has gone wrong with my wife – she has become neurotic, she is obsessed with the idea of bringing me to the doctor’s…not only that, she wants to hospitalize me. For what?”The man was really ill, and he was saying these things to me: “I am not ill. What is the purpose? Why are people forcing me? What do they want? There must be something they want out of it. All my relatives, my wife, my children – they are all conspiring against me, and I am perfectly healthy!”I could see that the man was trembling, his face was ill and pale, his body weak, his eyes murky, with no health around his body, no well-being. What to do with this man? Why is he insisting…? I asked the wife the details.She said, “He has always been afraid of death, always afraid of illness. When he was healthy, then too it was difficult for him to go to the hospital, even if some relative was there, or friend; even to see and visit the patient was difficult for him. The moment he reaches near a hospital something in him catches fear – death, the idea of death. And now it is creating trouble because he is ill and he won’t go – and he insists that he is not ill so what is the use of going to any doctor? Why should he go?”I looked at the whole situation. The man was really afraid. I told him, “Your wife has gone really mad. You are perfectly healthy” – he smiled, his face changed – “nothing is wrong with you.”As if a new lease of energy, something came up. He started laughing and he said, “I always suspected it. You are the only man who has understood me. Nobody understands! I am perfectly healthy.” And he told his wife, “Look! Look at what Osho says: I am perfectly healthy. Do you need any other certificate?” He asked me, “Now there is no need to go to the hospital?”I said, “Absolutely no need to go to any doctor, to any physician. Don’t think of it, you are perfectly healthy. Rarely have I seen such a healthy man.”He smiled, but a suspicion was there in his eyes. He could not believe me completely – how could an ill man believe me? He knows deep down that he is ill, but he is afraid to accept the fact. Then he said, “Then there is no need?”I said, “There is no need, but just for your neurotic wife, it will be good if you go to the doctor. You are perfectly healthy – but this poor woman is suffering so much.”He laughed. He said, “Then I can go. But are you certain that I am not ill?”I said, “Absolutely certain. Nothing is wrong with you. But just to console this poor woman, go to the doctor and let your body be examined. There is nothing wrong.”He said, “Then I can go.” And that’s how he was caught in the hospital.And the same is the trouble with you. The same is the trouble with every man. You are afraid of something. From Socrates up to now, or from the Vedas up to now, all those who have had any glimpse of themselves have been insisting on self knowledge: Know thyself. Nobody listens to them, nobody really listens to them. Everybody creates a protective armor around himself against self knowledge. Something seems to be at risk. And the problem seems to be very complex. Why are you afraid of self knowledge?In your ignorance you have a certain feeling of blissfulness. Ignorance gives a false feeling of blissfulness because one lives on the surface. In fact one doesn’t live, one simply drifts. Irresponsibly one drifts. With self knowledge enters responsibility. You cannot be as you are if you know yourself. You cannot indulge in whatsoever you are indulging if you know yourself. You cannot remain the same if you know yourself. There is going to be a radical change through self knowledge, and that change seems to be too much. You feel almost established. You feel almost in comfort.You have made a house; you think this is the home. But you have made the house on the road. The journey has not yet ended, but you have convinced yourself that the end has come. Now, to know yourself will mean again a beginning, again a birth, again moving. Now, to know yourself will mean this is not a house where you are staying. This may be a serai, a dharmshala, but it is not a home. For an overnight stay it is good, but in the morning – the journey.You feel comfortable. Even in your misery, anguish and anxiety, you feel comfortable because everything looks familiar. If you start trying to know yourself you are moving into the world of the unknown, the unfamiliar. That gives fear, a trembling comes. Why bother? Things are going well – not so well that you know, but still, somehow well. Things are drifting, time is passing. Half your life you have lived, only half is left; you can drift the same way. And then comes death, and oblivion. And nobody knows where one goes. Why bother about self knowledge?In your ignorance you have created a comfortable, an established life, a secure life with a bank balance, insurance, the government, the society, membership of a religion, the church – you have created a false world around you. Nothing is protective, just it gives the notion that you are protected. Nothing is secure – just an illusion of security.You have a wife – what is secure in it? Tomorrow she can fall in love with someone. She fell in love with you, one day you were also a stranger to her; she can fall in love again with another stranger. She could fall in love with you, so what is wrong in falling for another stranger? You were a stranger one day. You could fall in love with this woman, you can fall in love with another woman. What is secure?But man tries to create a notion of security. You have a marriage certificate, that is your security; you can go to the court. But what type of security is it if the court is needed to protect love, if the policeman is needed to protect marriage, if the vast machinery of government, of violence, is needed to protect your love? What type of security is this? You are not together, you are forced to be together: the government is forcing, the police are there with the bayonet.And the government is nothing but the agency of absolute violence. No government can be nonviolent; a government has to be violent. It is violence, pure violence. Are you in love really? Or just protected, forced, by bayonets and the courts and the laws…? But it gives a feeling that things are secure.With self knowledge again a chaos is born, a chaos which unsettles everything, which unsettles all values. It is a transvaluation of all values. You again have a new vision. You look at the world – not with the old eyes, nothing will seem to be the same – as if you have been suddenly thrown into a strange world.You were fast asleep, comfortably tucked in your blanket, sleeping, having a beautiful dream, and suddenly self knowledge awakens you. The dream is not there. You may have been an emperor in the dream – and all beggars always dream that they are emperors. They have to substitute. A dream is a substitute; whatsoever you don’t have in life, you substitute in your dreams.Suddenly you are no more an emperor. The dream disappears, the cozy comfort of sleep disappears. The day stands, the sun has risen, and the world of worries, responsibilities, anxiety – this is nothing. When one awakens, then for the first time one feels responsible. And not responsible as an obligation – no, one simply feels responsible, without any obligation in it. It becomes part of one’s being.You also feel responsible, because this woman is your wife, so you are responsible to feed her and look after her. You have to go to work and to the job. You have children, you feel responsible…. But this responsibility is just a duty. You have to do it, so you do it. But you are not really responsible, it is not coming from the heart.When somebody awakens he becomes responsible for whatsoever he is; even for his breathing he becomes responsible. And he becomes responsible for the whole existence; whatsoever happens anywhere he feels that he is part of it. If there is violence in Vietnam, he feels: “I am part of it, I am responsible for it – not related at all, but still responsible.”…Because a man of self knowledge comes to know, “No man is an island, and the whole existence is interlinked. The whole existence is one, one organ. We are waves in it, and whatsoever happens in the world, I am responsible. Not only for whatsoever is happening today: for whatsoever has happened in the past I am responsible, and for whatsoever is going to happen in the future I am responsible, because now I have become a conscious part of the whole. Up to now I was an unconscious part. Somebody was killing somebody else – I was not responsible. I had a small responsibility around my family, my wife, my children, and that was all. Somebody is killing somebody else – how am I responsible? No, that doesn’t bother me.”But a man of knowledge, a man of awakening, a buddha, knows now consciously that he is part of every leaf and every tree, and every tree and every leaf is part of him. The individuality is no more there, he has become universal. The self is a universal entity, it has nothing to do with you. The self is Brahman.Your hidden being has nothing to do with you. Your innermost center is the very center of existence itself. One suspects it somehow. One feels the tremors on the surface of this phenomenon. One doesn’t want to awake – it will be too much responsibility.Right now you may be moral or immoral, but your morality and immorality are just on the surface, conditioning. A society thinks something is moral – it conditions you. But you are not moral yet. Only a man who has awakened becomes moral, moral in the sense that now nothing wrong can happen through him. Not that he avoids wrong, not that he tries to do the good; now there is no effort to do the good and no effort to avoid the wrong.With awakening, with awareness, only that which is true, that which is good, that which is right, happens. That which is untrue, evil, bad, does not happen. It is just as if you have lighted a candle in the room and the darkness disappears. When one is awake the immorality, the sin, the evil, disappears. One has, for the first time, virtue.This has to be understood, because it is one of the most delicate things. A perfect man has no character; he can’t have. He has consciousness, not character. You have character, no consciousness. Character is a poor substitute for consciousness, a very very poor substitute. That’s why your life is a life of poverty – impoverished.What is the difference between character and consciousness? When I say Buddha has no character, try to understand it. A buddha can’t have any character, there is no need. Character means you are not so alert, you cannot be allowed total freedom to be. A character hangs around you to force you to do the right.We teach every child not to be untrue, not to steal; be true. Why? – because we can’t rely on the child himself, his consciousness. We have to force a pattern over his being. We have to give him a character. Character means a conditioning. If you go on enforcing…. A character means just a dead pattern given from the past. And then the being of the man starts flowing through the lines that the character allows. He is not free.A man of character is in bondage. He is a slave, a slave of a particular society he happened to be born in. He may have a Hindu character or a Mohammedan character; both are slaves. He may have a Christian character or a non-Christian character; both are slaves. He is a slave of the society; the society has forced his mind to learn certain things. Now they hang around him. He cannot go in any way different from his character. If he goes, then he feels guilt. That guilt brings him back, because it is too much.A man of character has a conscience. The perfect man has no conscience, no character. He is simply conscious, but being conscious is enough. He does not live his life through the past, he lives his life here and now. And he is aware, so he need not have concepts from the past, routine morality from the past; he need not have any notion of what is good and what is wrong. It is not needed.Look: if a blind man is sitting here and he wants to go out, he will start inquiring where the door is. He has to inquire, he has no eyes. And even if he has inquired from you he would like to inquire from a few other people because, who knows, you may be deceiving him. How can he trust you? He will inquire from a few others, “Where is the door?” – because many times people have played tricks on him. People are cruel. They even play tricks on blind men. They will say: “This is the door” – and the wall is there, and the blind man has stumbled many times, and then people laugh.People are ugly. He cannot trust them. He will have to ask a few more, and if everybody says, “This is the door,” only then can he believe, at least ninety-nine percent. Then too he will grope for the door with his stick. He cannot just go, he has to check.This is what a character is. A man who is not conscious – he has a character. Character means notions, values, given by others. He has a conscience. Conscience is a trick played by society on the blind man. Conscience means, if you go wrong; wrong means, if you go against the society. The society may itself be wrong altogether – that is not the point. If you go against the society, the society has put the idea inside you that you are doing something wrong and you will suffer through it. You yourself will feel condemned. You will feel rejected by yourself – not worthy, not valuable. You will feel a deep rejection, a repulsion against yourself. This is the trick of the society. You are punished by your own being.The society has placed the court and the constable on the road, and conscience inside you. Conscience is the constable standing inside and the constable is the conscience standing outside. The society tries to control you from the outside and the inside, both. It appreciates if you follow. It awards you, rewards you, if you follow. It punishes you, condemns you, if you go astray.A man of perfect awareness has nothing to do with character. He comes out of it. He has no conscience because he has consciousness. He is like a man who has eyes. He doesn’t ask, “Where is the door?” He himself can see. And he doesn’t grope with his stick – where is the door? There is no need, he has eyes. In fact, a man who can see does not think at all: Where is the door? Even thinking is not needed. When he wants to go out he simply goes out, without even thinking: Where is the door, what is the door, and how to go through it? He may not even for a single moment think about the door, he simply passes through it. A man of awareness simply passes through the door, he doesn’t stumble against the walls. Whatsoever he does is good. He never repents. He has no conscience, he never feels guilty.He lives moment to moment. He does not live out of the past, he lives in the present. He does not live out of the future, he lives just here, just now. This is all. His existence culminates, converges, on the only existential moment that is – here and now.You live through the past. Your parents are still guiding you. Your society is still following you like a ghost. You live through the past – The Bible, the Vedas, the Koran still guiding you – the dead leading the alive. Mohammed, Manu and Marx, they still go on forcing you to move in certain directions. You are not an alive man yet, because the dead are still your leaders. Or you live through the future. Either through the past which is no more, or through the future which is not yet. Rewards in heaven, or rewards on this Earth; some future rewards – respectability, honor, hope of gaining something in the future – these are the forces that lead you.A man of awareness is not controlled either by past or by future. He has nobody to force him. The Vedas are no more on his head, Mahavira and Mohammed and Christ no more force him to move anywhere. He is free. That’s why in India we call him a mukta. A mukta means he who is totally free. He is freedom.In this moment, whatsoever the situation he responds with full awareness. That is his responsibility. He is capable of response. His responsibility is not an obligation, it is a sensitivity to the present moment. The meaning of responsibility changes. It is not responsibility as an obligation, as a duty, as a burden, as something which has to be done. No, responsibility is just a sensitivity, a mirror-like phenomenon. You come before the mirror, and the mirror reflects, responds. Whatsoever happens, a man of awareness responds with his totality. He does not hold anything back; that’s why he never regrets, that’s why he never feels guilty – whatsoever could be done, he has done, he is finished with it. He lives each moment totally and completely.In your ignorance everything is incomplete. You have not completed anything. Millions of experiences are inside you, waiting for their completion. You wanted to laugh, but the society wouldn’t allow it. You suppressed it. That laughter is waiting there as a wound. What a miserable state – even laughter becomes a wound! When you don’t allow laughter it becomes a wound, an incomplete thing inside you waiting and waiting and waiting someday to be completed.You loved somebody, but you could not love totally, the character prohibited it, the conscience wouldn’t allow it. Even when you are with your beloved in the dark night, alone in your room, the society is present. The constable is standing there and watching. You are not alone. You have a conscience, your beloved has a conscience: how can you be alone? The whole society is there, the whole marketplace is standing all around. And God, looking from the top, watching you, what you are doing, God seems to be the universal Peeping Tom – he goes on looking.The society has used God’s eyes to control you, to make you a slave. You cannot even love totally, you cannot hate totally, you cannot be angry totally. You cannot be total in anything. You eat halfheartedly, you walk halfheartedly, you laugh halfheartedly. You cannot cry – you are holding thousands of tears in your eyes. Everything is a burdened thing, loaded; the whole past you are carrying unnecessarily. And this is your character.Yes, I say to you, a buddha has no character because he is fluid, because he is flexible. A character means inflexibility. It is armor-like. It protects you from certain things, but then it kills you also.Just now India has absorbed a small Himalayan country, Sikkim. It is the same game of politics. China absorbed Tibet; then India was against – now they have absorbed Sikkim in the same way; China is against.The king of Sikkim, the chogyam, is under house arrest. But the Indian government says that he is not under house arrest, the military is surrounding his palace so that nobody enters and harms him, because people are against him. So the Indian government is protecting him; he is not under house arrest but under protection, because his own people are against him and they may kill him, or they may enter the palace, they may burn the palace. So the Indian government says, “The military is there to protect him from his people.” And he goes on saying that he is under house arrest and he is not allowed to go out.This is what is happening to everybody. You are under house arrest by the society. The character is the army around you. But the society says, “You are not under house arrest. We are protecting you; otherwise you may do something wrong or something wrong will be done to you. It is a protection.”But as I see it, everybody is under house arrest. And this is a subtle house arrest; even if you escape to the Himalayas you cannot escape it, because character is now something inbuilt in you. It is not around you, it has penetrated you. It is not like a dress that you can take off; it is now like the skin. You cannot peel it off easily. It is going to be hard. It is going to be a tapascharya, an austerity.That’s why you are afraid to leave your ignorance, you go on protecting it because you feel it protects you. Ignorance is not a simple thing; otherwise the cure exists. There are a thousand and one complexities in it. You want to remain ignorant, you insist. You like to remain ignorant because in your ignorance in the past you have created a volcano within you, a volcano of incomplete desires, incomplete experiences. That volcano is there, suppressed but alive, waiting for the moment when it can explode and throw you to thousands and millions of bits.You are afraid. You don’t want to go in, you want to go out. Everybody is interested in going out, nobody is interested in going in, because the moment you think of going in you think of many things that are there, hidden. You have suppressed them, nobody else, so you know well that anger is there, hatred is there, sex is there, greed is there, jealousy is there…. Thousands of things are bubbling and boiling and any moment they can explode. It is better to go out, not to go in. It is better to escape somewhere and you have tried many ways to escape.People want to remain occupied. If they have nothing to do they will find something to do, something or other. They may start reading the same newspaper again. In the first place it was rubbish, so why are you reading it again? Nothing to do – and you would like to do something, because whenever you are not doing anything, suddenly the energy starts moving inward. If it has something to cling to, only then can it remain out.Sitting alone you feel restless. You want to go to the club, to the theater, or just to go and move in the market so that you are occupied. At least walking, looking at the shops, at the shop windows, or talking to people about absolutely nonsense things – neither you need to talk, nor do they want to listen, but people are talking and talking – somehow, something to cling to….People are busy without business. And they may say that they would like to rest, but nobody wants to rest because if you rest really it automatically becomes a meditation and you start falling inward. You start moving toward your inner center and fear grips you. You become afraid. So go to the market, go to the club, become a member of the Rotary Club, the Lions Club – thousands of stupidities exist all around for you to waste your time in.Do something. And if you cannot find anything, or if to be a Rotarian is difficult, or you are not rich enough and you cannot go to the restaurant, you can go to the church, you can go to the mosque, you can go to the temple. They are at least free; there you can chant, “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama,” and get occupied. Or you can listen to a stupid priest who is repeating the same thing again and again. But at least you are occupied. Remain occupied. Go on moving outward and cling to something exterior, because if you don’t cling, suddenly the energy starts moving inward.When people come to me and they ask, “How to meditate?” I tell them, “There is no need to ask how to meditate, just ask how to remain unoccupied. Meditation happens spontaneously. Just ask how to remain unoccupied, that’s all. That’s the whole trick of meditation – how to remain unoccupied. Then you cannot do anything. The meditation will flower.”When you are not doing anything the energy moves toward the center, it settles down toward the center. When you are doing something the energy moves out. Doing is a way of moving out. Nondoing is a way of moving in. Occupation is an escape. You can read The Bible, you can make it an occupation. There is no difference between religious occupation and secular occupation: all occupations are occupations, and they help you to cling outside your being. They are excuses to remain outside.Man is ignorant and blind, and he wants to remain ignorant and blind, because to come inward looks like entering into a chaos. And it is so; inside you have created a chaos. You have to encounter it and go through it. Courage is needed – courage to be oneself, and courage to move inward. I have not come across a greater courage than that – the courage to be meditative.But people who are engaged outside with worldly things or non-worldly things, but occupied all the same, they think – and they have created a rumor around it, they have their own philosophers – they say that if you are an introvert you are somehow morbid, something is wrong with you. And they are in the majority. If you meditate, if you sit silently, they will joke about you: “What are you doing? – gazing at your navel? What are you doing? – opening the third eye? Where are you going? Are you morbid?…because what is there to do inside? There is nothing inside.”Inside doesn’t exist for the majority of people, only the outside exists. And just the opposite is the case. Only inside is real; outside is nothing but a dream. But they call introverts morbid, they call meditators morbid. In the West they think that the East is a little morbid. What is the point of sitting alone and looking inward? What are you going to get there? There is nothing.David Hume, one of the great British philosophers, tried once…because he was studying the Upanishads and they go on saying: Go in, go in, go in – that is their only message. So he tried it. He closed his eyes one day – a totally secular man, very logical, empirical, but not meditative at all – he closed his eyes and he said, “It is so boring! It is a boredom to look in. Thoughts move, sometimes a few emotions, and they go on racing in the mind, and you go on looking at them – what is the point of it? It is useless. It has no utility.”And this is the understanding of many people. Hume’s standpoint is that of the majority: What are you going to get inside? There is darkness, thoughts floating here and there. What will you do? What will come out of it? Had Hume waited a little longer – and that is difficult for such people – if he had been a little more patient, by and by thoughts disappear, emotions subside. But if it had happened to him he would have said, “That is even worse, because emptiness comes. At least first there were thoughts, something to be occupied with, to look at, to think about. Now even thoughts have disappeared; only emptiness…. What to do with emptiness? It is absolutely useless.”But had he waited a little more, then darkness also disappears. It is just like when you come from the hot sun and you enter your house: everything looks dark because your eyes need a little attunement. They are fixed on the hot sun outside. Comparatively, your house looks dark. You cannot see, you feel as if it is night. But you wait, you sit, you rest in a chair, and after a few seconds the eyes get attuned. Now it is not dark, a little more light…. You rest for an hour, and everything is light, there is no darkness at all.If Hume had waited a little longer, then darkness also disappears. Because you have lived in the hot sun outside for many lives your eyes have become fixed, they have lost the flexibility. They need tuning. When one comes inside the house it takes a little while, a little time, a patience. Don’t be in a hurry.In haste nobody can come to know himself. It is a very very deep awaiting. Infinite patience is needed. By and by darkness disappears. There comes a light with no source. There is no flame in it, no lamp is burning, no sun is there. A light, just like it is in the morning: the night has disappeared, and the sun has not risen…. Or in the evening – the twilight, when the sun has set and the night has not yet descended. That’s why Hindus call their prayer time sandhya. Sandhya means twilight, light without any source.When you move inward you will come to the light without any source. In that light, for the first time you start understanding yourself, who you are, because you are that light. You are that twilight, that sandhya, that pure clarity, that perception, where the observer and the observed disappear, and only the light remains.But it takes time. In the beginning you will feel chaos. One has to pass through it. And nobody else can do it for you, remember, you have to pass through it. The master can only do this much – he can help you to pass, he can give you courage. He can say, “Don’t be afraid, just a few steps more.”It happened: Buddha was moving from one town to another. They had lost their way. They asked a few villagers on the way, “How far until the next town?”They said, “Just two miles,” as is always said in India. Whether it is fifty miles or twenty miles, it makes no difference; villagers always say, “Just two miles.”Buddha and his disciple Ananda, they walked two miles but there was no sign of any village coming nearer. They couldn’t see any possibility that the village was any nearer. They asked again a few villagers, “How far is the village?”They said, “Just two miles.”They moved two miles. Ananda became desperate. He said, “Are these people absolute fools or are they knowingly deceiving us? – because we have again moved two miles and there is no village. Are they playing tricks? Why should they lie?”Buddha said, “You don’t understand. They are like me. It is because of compassion that they say, ‘Just two miles,’ so you get courage. And you say, ‘Okay, so just two miles? Let two miles be passed.’ They help you. If they say, ‘It is a hundred miles,’ you will drop dead. You will be flat on the earth. You will lose courage.”A master cannot do it for you. He cannot pass through the misery, through the chaos. If he could he would have done it, but that is not possible in the nature of things. But he can help you, he can give you courage, he can say, “Come on, just a little more, and the night will pass. And when the night is the darkest the morning is nearest.” He will give you courage, and that is needed.That’s why without a master it is almost impossible to travel on the path, because who will help give you courage? Who will say, “Just two miles more…”? Who will say that you are almost at the end of the journey, you have almost reached, just a little bit more…? And as Lao Tzu says, a thousand-league journey is completed by taking only one step at a time. You take one step, then another, then another, and a thousand-mile journey is completed.Chaos is going to be there. When you enter inside, all diseases that you have suppressed will erupt to the surface. All the miseries that you have been avoiding – they are waiting for you there, restlessly waiting for you. They will surface. You will pass through hell. But nobody ever reaches heaven if he is not ready to pass through hell. Hell is the gateway. Hell is the way, heaven is the journey’s end. But one has to pass through the hell. Through a dark night one has to pass to come to the morning. And you will have to encounter it.Man is ignorant, and he resists any effort to break his ignorance because he is afraid a chaos is waiting. And you rightly suspect, the chaos is there. You will almost go mad. A master will be needed who can hold your hand while you are going mad, and take you out of the madness.These are the implications. That’s why the mind goes on playing games with you. It says, “Yes, tomorrow I am going to meditate.” But it is afraid. Meditation is like death. And it is. You will have to die as you are; only then the new can be born.This is a small story by Sheik Saadi, one of the great Sufi mystic poets. A very simple anecdote, but carrying much meaning. And all those who have known, they talk in the simplest words possible…because the truth itself is so complex. Why make it more complex by complex words and theories? The truth is itself so difficult to reach, why make the journey more difficult? They talk in parables, so that even a child can understand – and as far as that ultimate is concerned, everybody is a child, ignorant, playing with toys and wasting life.Said Sheik Saadi:“A man had an ugly daughter. He married her to a blind man because nobody else would have her.”Yes, this is the case. Many things that you are embracing are such that no man with eyes would look at them. But you are blind. You can marry an ugly woman, you are already married to an ugly woman. This world is the ugly woman you are married to. Money is the ugly woman you are married to. Politics is the ugly woman you are married to. Ambition is the ugly woman you are married to. But you cannot see the ugliness.Have you ever watched an ambitious man, how ugly he looks? He loses all grace, because with ambition grace is not possible. An ambitious man is violent, aggressive. An ambitious man is almost mad. And that’s why only mad people succeed in this race of ambition: Hitler and Mao Zedong and Stalin – they reach the top because they are the maddest. They become powerful…because if you are a little sane you cannot be in the competition at all. You will feel foolish. The madder a person is the more he is competitive because the more aggression is in him. He is full of fever. He has to do something. He is so restless that he has to run in the race. Of course, he will win.Those who win in politics in fact should be in madhouses; they should not be in the capitals. But they are in the capitals, unfortunately, and they create wars and they create suffering and they create misery all over the Earth…. They are bound to create them – mad people in power…. You have given a sword to a madman: now he is going to cut many throats and many heads. Without a sword he was dangerous enough; now he is danger incarnate.Watch yourself. Whenever you feel ambitious go and look in the mirror. You will see a certain ugliness spreading on your face, in your eyes; you will lose the grace that belongs naturally to a human being. You even lose the grace that belongs to animals. You lose the grace – even that that belongs to rocks.Violence is ugliness. A man after money, a victim of money mania – look how ugly! A miserly man, clinging to money – you cannot find more ugly a phenomenon in the world. Greed is like spiritual leprosy. Everything stinks. Saadi is right in writing this small anecdote.“A man had an ugly daughter. He married her to a blind man because nobody else would have her.”Who would have an ugly wife? If you were not blind you would not have been married to this world and all its uglinesses. And deep down the suspicion comes to you also. How can it be otherwise? Howsoever unaware, a ray of awareness is in you. If the ray was not there I could not help you. If the ray was not there Buddha could not help you. If the ray was not there then nothing could be done. If the ray is there, then through that ray you can move toward the very source of light. That ray will become the bridge. You also suspect in your more silent moments, in your still moments you also become aware of the ugliness that you are doing, the ugliness that has become your life, the ugliness that is your ambition, aggression, violence, hatred…. You have become so ugly that even if you touch love it becomes ugly. You touch gold and immediately it is dust; no more gold is there.“A doctor offered to restore the blind man’s sight. But the father would not allow him for fear that he would then divorce his daughter.”Who is this father? Can you suspect and find this father within you? This is what we have been calling the ego. All your miseries, all that has happened to you and is happening – the ego is fathering it all. And the ego won’t allow the physician to cure your eyes. I am here, ready to cure your eyes. Who is creating the resistance?The ego says, “No, don’t surrender. Be an individual, and be free. If you surrender you become a slave! And why surrender? There is no need – one has to be oneself….” And the ego goes on rationalizing.But the whole point is, it protects your blindness because once your eyes are open the ego will not have any possibility to exist. It will not have any place to exist inside you. It is like darkness; light comes in – it has to leave. That’s why it is afraid. It is afraid to go nearer a buddha because buddhahood is infectious. The ego creates all sorts of barriers.I have come across people who are dead against me. They have not seen me, they have not read a single book, they have not listened to me, they don’t know what I am doing and they are dead against me. Sometimes it is surprising. Even to be against, one has to come a little nearer, to know, to watch, to judge. They have not even seen me. They will not recognize me if suddenly they come across me. But they would like to kill me.What has happened to them? A deep fear – the volcano inside and the ego is sitting on top of it. And they are afraid to come near. Even to hear they are afraid; to read, they are afraid, because, who knows, you may be caught in the trap. So it is better to protect yourself and protect your ignorance. Create some idea. That becomes the barrier.The father is not somewhere outside of you. It is within you, the ego…. He is fathering all your hell.“A doctor offered to restore the blind man’s sight. But the father would not allow him for fear that he would then divorce his daughter.”There is investment; the father is afraid, the ego is afraid.Saadi concluded:“The husband of an ugly woman is best blind.”If you are a husband of an ugly woman you will have to protect your blindness – one way. The other way is: if you want to drop your blindness you have to be ready to face all ugliness that your ego, your blindness, your ignorance, has created in its wake. You have to encounter yourself.Self encounter is a suffering in the beginning, painful, deeply painful; it hurts, and hurts like hell. But only through suffering bliss is achieved; there is no other way. One who has passed through all sufferings becomes capable of the ultimate ecstasy – what Abraham Maslow and the humanistic psychologists call the “Aha!” experience.When you have passed through a suffering it is like a long journey. Journey-tired you come, you cannot even move, and suddenly you see the goal – and your whole being feels: Aha! – an ecstasy, and all suffering disappears. And you are in a totally different dimension.Self encounter is the deepest suffering in the world; that’s why you are avoiding it. Socrates goes on saying: Know thyself – but nobody listens, because to know thyself means to know thyself as suffering. Of course, bliss follows, but that is not in the beginning, that is in the end. The beginning is painful. It is like a birth. Birth is painful.If a child becomes afraid in the womb of the mother, afraid to pass through the birth passage – it is very narrow, it is painful, suffocating, it is a trauma, it leaves a wound forever – if the child becomes afraid, then there will be no birth, and there will be no life. Then the child will die in the womb. If the bird in the egg becomes afraid to leave the protecting shell…. He is closed in, completely closed in, and protected from everything, and he has whatsoever he needs inside. If a seed becomes afraid to sprout…because as a seed there is no suffering, there is no death because there is no life. As a seed there is no danger; the seed can remain for millions of years.In Mohenjo Daro seeds have been found that are ten thousand years old. They are still alive, they can sprout. In a cave in China seeds have been found which are one million years old. They are still alive. Put them in the soil, water them, care – and they will sprout. One million years a seed has remained inside!And you are the same seed. Wherever you are, in the cave of China or in the cave of New York, it makes no difference: you have been a seed for millions of lives. You have been afraid to take the jump and become a plant. It is a great jump. It is a risk. The shell is torn asunder, the protection lost; the security disappears.The tender plant comes out, so delicate, so tender, and such a difficult world! – where all sorts of hazards exist. Animals are there, and children are there – and nobody knows what will happen. And the plant is so tender, so soft, so feminine, and the seed was so masculine, so protective, so hard, so strong. And life is soft, death is hard. Life is tender…. For death there exists no hazard, because a dead person cannot die again. For life – millions of hazards. Hazards and hazards – it is an adventure into the unknown.Watch a seed sprouting, breaking the hard shell, then the hard crust of the earth, then rising into the world – the unknown, unmapped, uncharted future. Nobody knows what is going to happen and all sorts of danger all around. If the plant becomes afraid and remains in the seed, then it will never taste what life is.Don’t be afraid. Come out of your ignorance, come out of your protective shell, come out of the ego. Ego is just like the egg: a shell which protects. Come out of your character, come out of your conscience. Take the challenge! Adventure into the unknown.In the beginning much misery, much suffering will happen. But it is only in the beginning, I promise you; it is only in the beginning. And if you can pass through it – and the more totally you pass through it the sooner it passes away…. If you can be really total, in a single moment it passes away. But in the single moment you suffer all hell.And that suffering, when it passes then you know what it has done to you. It cleanses you, it purifies you. It is like fire; you are like gold. It purifies you. It doesn’t burn you, it doesn’t destroy you. It destroys only all that is rubbish in you, all that is not gold. All that is just foreign to you is destroyed.But your nature, your tao, is saved, purified, absolutely cleansed of all impurities. And in that pure heart happens that ecstasy which we call moksha, the absolute liberation. Or you can call it God. Purified, you become God. Purified, cleansed, you become divine.That ultimate ecstasy is yours, but at a cost. And the cost is to pass through the suffering.Enough for today.

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Just Like That 01-10Category: SUFISM

Just Like That 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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There was a man living by the seashore who loved seagulls. Every morning he went down to the sea to roam with the seagulls. More birds came to him than could be counted in hundreds.His father said to him one day: “I hear the seagulls all come roaming with you – bring me some to play with.”Next day, when he went to the sea, the seagulls danced above him and would not come down.The greatest secret of life is – and remember it always – that life is a gift. You have not deserved it in the first place. It is not your right. It has been given to you, you have not earned it. Once you understand this, many things will become clear.If life is a gift then all that belongs to life is going to be a gift. Happiness, love, meditation – all that is beautiful is going to be a gift from the holy, from the whole. You cannot deserve it in any way and you cannot force existence to make you happy, or to make you loving, or to make you meditative. That very effort is of the ego. That very effort creates misery. That very effort goes against you. That very effort has destroyed you – it is suicidal.In the American constitution they have given a right, a basic right – and they call it the basic fundamental right – to pursue happiness. It is impossible to pursue happiness. Nobody has ever pursued it. One has to wait for it. And it is not a right at all. No law court can force you to be happy or force happiness to be with you. No government violence is capable of making you happy. No power can make you happy.The founding fathers committed a very deep mistake. It seems Jefferson didn’t know much about happiness. Politicians can’t know – they are the unhappiest people on earth. Jefferson added this right to the American constitution, and you will be surprised that because of this, the very wording of it, America has become one of the unhappiest countries in the world, ever.…Because the very idea that you can pursue happiness, that you can deserve it, that you can demand it, that you have the right to be happy, is foolish. Nobody has the right to be happy. You can be happy, but there is nothing like a right about it. And if you think that it is your right you will go on missing, because you have started to look in the wrong direction from the very beginning.Why is it so? If life is a gift, all that belongs to and is intrinsic to life is going to be a gift. You can wait for it, you can be receptive to it, you can remain in a surrendered mood, waiting, patient, but you cannot demand, and you cannot force.Emile Coue is more alert than Jefferson. Emile Coue has discovered a law he calls The Law of Reverse Effect. There are certain things which, if you try to do, you will undo. If you don’t try to do them you may be able to do them. The very effort leads you to the reverse effect. For example, sleep. You want to go to sleep – what can you do? Everybody has a fundamental right to sleep, but what can you do? Can you ask the police to come and help? What can you do when you don’t feel like going to sleep? Whatsoever you do is going to disturb you because the very effort works against sleep. Sleep is an effortlessness. When you simply relax, not doing anything, by and by you drift into sleep. You cannot swim toward it – you drift. You cannot make any conscious effort.And this is the problem with all those people who suffer from sleeplessness, insomnia. All insomniacs have their rituals. They do certain things to cause sleep to come to them. And that is where they miss, that is where everything goes wrong. How can you force sleep? The more you force the more you will be there – aware, alert, conscious. Every effort will make you more aware, more alert, and sleep will be put off.What do you do when you want to go to sleep? You don’t do anything. You simply wait, in a restful mood. You simply allow sleep to come to you – you cannot force it. You cannot demand, you cannot say, “Come!” With closed eyes, in a dark room, on your pillow, you simply wait…and waiting, you start drifting. Like a cloud glides, drifts, you drift by and by from the conscious mind to the unconscious.You lose all control. You have to lose control; otherwise you cannot go to sleep, because the part that controls is the conscious mind. It has to allow. Control has to be left completely. Then – you don’t know when and why and how – sleep comes to you. Only in the morning you become aware that you have been asleep, and you slept well. Ninety-nine percent of people who suffer from sleeplessness create their own trouble. I have not come across more than one percent of insomniacs who are really suffering from something in their body chemistry. Ninety-nine percent are simply suffering because they don’t know Emile Coue’s Law of Reverse Effect. They are followers of Jefferson; they think sleep is a right.In life, only on the surface, in the marketplace, rights exist. As you move deeper, rights disappear. As you move deeper, gifts appear. This is one of the most basic things to remember always: you have not deserved life, and life is there! Absolutely undeserved, you are alive, with tremendous energy – alive!How does it happen? And if life can happen without deserving it, without any right to it, why not happiness? why not love? why not ecstasy? They can all happen, but you have to understand the law. The law is: don’t try directly. Happiness cannot be pursued. It can be persuaded. Persuasion is indirect. It is not an attack. You move, but not directly, because when you are direct you are aggressive. Nothing is as direct as violence. And nothing is as violent as directness.Life moves in circles, not direct. The Earth moves around the sun. The sun moves around some greater sun. Galaxies move, the whole universe moves, in rounds. Seasons move in a round. Childhood, youth, old age, move in a round. The whole of life is circular, it never goes direct. It is not like an arrow that goes direct to the target. An arrow is man’s invention. In life there is nothing like an arrow. An arrow is man’s violent mind. An arrow chooses the very shortest cut between two points. The arrow is in a great hurry, seems to be too time-conscious. But God is not in a hurry.Just the other day I was reading a small booklet from Jesus freaks – ninety-nine percent nonsense, but one percent really beautiful! And even if something is one percent beautiful it is so much, because if you go to the Christian theologians, they are one hundred percent nonsense. The one percent that was meaningful, I loved. That part says, “Hurry kills! Haste is waste.” And God is not in a hurry. He moves with infinite patience. God is a loafer, he hangs around. In fact, God is not going anywhere – he is already there. So there is no goal. The arrow is dancing round and round and round. It is not going to any target – there is no target. Just being is the target. So God hangs around like the fragrance of a flower which hangs in a summer night – just around and around, nowhere to go.And God has infinite patience. He works with care, and in very indirect ways. He creates a baby, and takes nine months – he doesn’t seem to have any efficiency experts around him. This has been going on for millions of years, and he has not learned anything; otherwise he could have managed to create better instruments so that a baby could be created within nine minutes. Why nine months? And from the very beginning he has been doing the same thing; he has not learned anything. He should ask the experts, particularly the efficiency experts. They will show him how to produce, how to produce on a mass scale, and not waste so much time – nine months per baby!But it is not only with babies – with flowers also he takes infinite care; with birds, even with a blade of grass he takes infinite care and time. He is not in a hurry. In fact it seems he is not aware of time at all. He exists timelessly. If you want to be with him, don’t be in a hurry; otherwise you will bypass him. He will be always loitering here and now, and you will always be going there and then. You will always be like an arrow, and he is not like an arrow.And to be with God is to be happy, to be with God is to be alive, to be with God is to be in meditation.But the whole training of man is how to do things fast. Speed in itself seems to be a value. It is not. In itself it can create only madness – and it has created madness.Move indirectly. And what is indirectly?I used to know an old man who was always complaining, always grumpy. Everything was wrong – he was a born critic. And of course as critics suffer, he suffered, because sometimes it was too hot, and sometimes it was too cold, and sometimes it rained too much, and sometimes it didn’t rain at all. All seasons, all the year round, he was suffering. A negative mind, a negative attitude – and he was continuously in search of being happy, continuously making every effort to be contented and satisfied. But I have not seen a more discontented man than him; he was the very personification of suffering, dissatisfaction, discontent. In his eyes there was nothing but discontent. On his face many wrinkles of tension and discontent, all the grumblings of his whole life were written there.But suddenly one day he changed. He had become sixty and the next day was his birthday; people came to greet him, and they could not believe their eyes – he had changed so suddenly, in the night. Somebody told me about it also, so I walked down to his house to inquire, because this was a revolution! The Russian Revolution was nothing compared to it. The Chinese Revolution, nothing compared to it. A revolution! For sixty years this man had trained himself for discontent. How, suddenly…? What had happened, what miracle? I could not believe that even Jesus could have done such a miracle, it was not possible, because you never hear in The Bible…. Jesus cured blind men, he cured the deaf and dumb, he cured even the dead, but you don’t hear a single story of Jesus curing anybody of discontent. It is not possible.I asked the old man – he was really happy, bubbling with happiness – I said, “What has happened to you?”He said, “Enough is enough! For sixty years I tried to be happy and could not, so last night I decided: Now forget about it; don’t bother about happiness, just live. And here I am, happy.”He pursued happiness for sixty years. If you pursue, you will become more and more unhappy. You are going direct, like an arrow, and God doesn’t believe in shortcuts. You will attain to your target, but happiness will not be there.Millions of people attain their targets: they wanted to be successful, they are successful – but unhappy. They wanted to be rich, they are rich – but unhappy. The richer they get, the unhappier they become, because now even the hope is lost. They were thinking that when they became rich they would be happy; now they are rich, and happiness – they cannot see any sign of it anywhere. Now, with unhappiness hopelessness also settles.A poor man is never hopeless, a rich man always is. And if you find a rich man who is not yet hopeless it is certain he is not yet rich. Hopelessness is the symbol of being rich. A poor man can hope. Millions of things are there which he has not got. He can dream, he can hope that when these things are there he will have attained the target. Then everything will be okay, he will be happy.This man pursued happiness for sixty years. At sixty death is coming nearer, and he must have felt it that night, because whenever a birthday comes a subtle feeling of death arises. To suppress that feeling we celebrate birthdays. Whenever a birthday comes, on that day it is impossible to forget death. To help you forget, friends come and greet you and they say, “This is your birthday.” Every birthday is a death day, because one more year has gone, death is nearing. In fact a birthday is not a birthday, cannot be – death is approaching, death is coming nearer. Time is slipping fast through the fingers. The very earth on which you are standing is being pulled away. Soon you will be in the abyss. A birthday is a death day. To hide it, to suppress it, the society has created tricks. People will come with flowers and gifts to help you forget that death is coming nearer – and they call it a birthday.He had become sixty. Next morning a new birthday was approaching. He must have felt, he must have heard the sounds, the footsteps, of death somewhere around…the shadow. And he decided: Enough is enough. I pursued long – almost my whole life has been wasted in trying to be contented, and I could not be, so now I will do without. The old man said, “Now here I am. I have never been so contented as I am today, absolutely contented. There is no discontent, no unhappiness.”In the very search you create unhappiness. When you don’t search, happiness searches for you. When you search, you search alone and you will not find. Where will you seek? How will you search? Mind can never be happy. Mind is your accumulated discontent. Mind is your accumulated unhappy past, the whole suffering that you have passed through: it is a wound in your being. And the mind tries to seek, to pursue, and you miss.When you forget about happiness, suddenly you are happy. When you forget about contentment, suddenly it is there. It has always been there around you, but you were not there. You were thinking: Somewhere in the future a target has to be achieved, happiness earned, contentment practiced. You were in the future and happiness was just around you like the fragrance of a flower.Yes, God is a loafer. He is always loitering somewhere around. And you have gone too far, seeking. Come back home! And just be. Don’t bother about happiness. Life is there as a gift; happiness is also going to be there as a gift – a gift from the whole, a holy gift.When you are seeking too much you are closed; the very tension of seeking and searching closes you. When you are desiring too much, the very desire becomes such a tense state of affairs that happiness cannot penetrate you. Happiness penetrates you in the same way as sleep; contentment comes to you in the same way as sleep: when you are in a letgo, when you allow, when you simply wait, they come.In fact, to say they come is not right: they are already there. In a letgo you can see them and feel them, because you are relaxed. In relaxation you become more sensitive – and happiness is the subtlest thing possible, the most subtle, the very cream of life, the essence. When you are relaxed in a total letgo, not doing anything, not going anywhere, not thinking of any goals, no target, not like an arrow but like a bow, relaxing, without tension – it is there.I have heard a story about a great mogul emperor, Babur, who conquered India. He became one of the greatest emperors in the world, ruled almost the biggest part of the world any man has ever ruled.A man, a very wise man, came to see him, but the wise man was very disappointed because Babur was talking to his court people in such a profane way – vulgar, cracking jokes; ordinary, not refined even – and laughing a belly laugh. The wise man was disappointed. He said, “I was thinking that you were a cultured man, and I have heard many stories that you love wisdom; that’s why I am here. I have heard that in your court you have many wise men, learned men, scholars, musicians, philosophers, religious men, and what do I see here? A simple vulgarity. It is intolerable. I cannot be here in your court a single moment more!”Babur said, “Just one moment, then you can go. Look in that corner.” In that corner was a bow.The wise man said, “What has that to do with the situation?”Babur said, “I cannot be always tense. If the bow is always tense, and the arrow is always on it, soon the bow will be broken. It will lose its elasticity. It won’t be flexible then, and a bow has to be flexible; only then is it alive…the more flexible, the more alive. That is my bow, and I am like my bow. Sometimes, yes, I am tense; the arrow is on it, the bow is stretched. But only sometimes. Then I rest and relax also.”I don’t know what happened to that wise man. I feel Babur was wiser than that wise man. A bow needs relaxation. You are also a bow. You also need relaxation.For small matters, the world of the market, you can move like an arrow, because that is man-created. But for that which is not man-created, you cannot be like an arrow – you have to be like a relaxed bow.God is total relaxation. Hence Patanjali says that perfect samadhi is like sleep, with only one difference – otherwise the quality is the same, the same flavor, the same taste – with just one difference: in sleep you are unconscious, in samadhi you are conscious. But the relaxation, the letgo, is the same. Everything untense, not going anywhere, not even a thought of going anywhere, just being here and now – suddenly everything starts happening.You are not to do anything to be happy. In fact you have done too much to become unhappy. If you want to be unhappy, do too much. If you want to be happy, allow things, allow things to be. Rest, relax, and be in a letgo.Letgo is the secret of life. Letgo is the secret of religion. Letgo is the greatest secret. When you are in a letgo many things, millions of things, start happening. They were already happening but you were never aware. You could not be aware; you were engaged somewhere else, you were occupied.The birds go on singing. The trees go on flowering. The rivers go on flowing. The whole is continuously happening, and the whole is very psychedelic, very colorful, with infinite celebrations going on. But you are so engaged, so occupied, so closed, with not even a single window open, no cross-ventilation in you. No sun rays can penetrate you, no breeze can blow through you, you are so solid, so closed, what Leibniz called monads. You are monads. Monad means something without any windows, with no opening, with every possibility of opening closed. How can you be happy? So closed, how can you participate in the mysteries all around? How can you participate in the divine? You will have to come out. You will have to drop this enclosure, this imprisonment.Where are you going? And you think that somewhere in the future there is some target to be achieved? Life is already here! Why wait for the future? Why postpone it for the future? Postponement is suicidal. Life is slow; that’s why you cannot feel it. It is very slow, and you are insensitive; otherwise postponement is the only poison. You kill yourself by and by. You go on postponing – and you go on missing the life that is here and now.For those who have attained to the here and now, the whole life starts showering flowers on them. Many things start happening which they never dreamed of.When for the first time you are really relaxed in a meditative state, you cannot believe that life is so beautiful, so euphoric, such infinite bliss, such a sat-chit-anand; you cannot believe it! It is unbelievable. When a Buddha reports, nobody believes. When a Jesus talks about his kingdom of God, nobody believes. Even those who follow, they also are not absolutely trusting.There is a story that Thomas was Jesus’ most beloved disciple, but even he was not an absolute believer, even he doubted; hence the phrase, Doubting Thomas. Thomas was the most beloved disciple, the closest – and yet he too was a doubting Thomas.It happened that Jesus was moving from one shore of Lake Galilee to the other shore. He told his disciples to move ahead and he would be coming. So they moved off in a boat. Then suddenly, when they were just in the middle of the lake, they couldn’t believe their eyes – Jesus was coming on the water, walking. They forgot everything about Jesus; they thought this must be a ghost. They had seen so many miracles, even the dead had been raised, but now they could not believe. They forgot everything in the moment of surprise, it was such an unbelievable phenomenon – Jesus walking on the water.The disciples became so afraid and trembling, they started praying to God: “Save us! Who is this man coming? It must be a ghost! We are in danger.” Even Thomas cried, “Who are you?” when Jesus came near.Jesus said, “Can’t you see me? Have you forgotten me completely? Can’t you believe that I am Jesus, your master?” But still they were trembling.Thomas said, “If you are really Jesus and not a ghost, or the Devil in disguise, if you are really Jesus, and if you are really walking on the water, then let me also walk on the water, master.” This was a trick to test.Jesus said, “Yes, you can come!” Then there was trouble. Thomas walked two, three steps. Yes, he could walk, but then the doubt arose: “Maybe this is the Devil playing a trick on me; otherwise how can I walk? It is impossible!” The thing was happening, he was walking on the water, but he couldn’t believe it himself: a doubt arose and immediately he sank into the lake and Jesus had to run and bring him out.And Jesus said, “You man of little faith.” From that day the phrase Doubting Thomas became prevalent. But he was the most beloved. The others were not even trusting enough to come out of the boat, even to try.When Jesus brings the news, the good news of the kingdom of God, nobody believes him. When Buddha talks about the infinite emptiness within, nobody believes him. We cannot believe! How can we believe unless we know? At least a glimpse is needed.We live in such a suffering, hell, the news about the kingdom of God seems to be just a dream, a poetry maybe, but nothing more. Religion seems not more than literature: fictitious – great fiction, but nothing more. It has to be so, it is natural in a way, because you don’t know where you are standing, what is happening all around you. You are so insensitive, closed….Open the windows, break the doors open! And run out of this imprisonment, stand under the skies. Feel again! Thinking won’t help. Thinking can go on and on inside you without opening a single window. Only feeling brings you out of yourself – and you are so afraid of feeling, so much at ease with thinking and so afraid of feeling, because feeling will bring you out. It will bring you again into the very current of life. You will be in the river, moving toward the ocean.Feel more, think less, and by and by you will see that the more you can feel, the more relaxed you are. The more you can feel, the more you become aware of the secret of life – that you need not do anything about it, you just have to be available. Just available, I say, and everything comes to you. Once the idea arises to catch hold, to cling, everything disappears. This is the meaning of this Sufi story.There was a man living by the seashore who loved seagulls.Love is the very center of all feelings, love is the soul of all feelings. All feelings hang on love. If you don’t love, by and by all feelings will disappear. If you love, all feelings will be revived. And remember, I say all feelings: negative, positive, all. When you love, you start hating also – immediately. When you love, you start feeling anger also – immediately. When you love, you feel sad, you feel happy. When you love, all feelings are again back to life.This is the trouble. That’s why no society allows love; because if it were the case that with love only good feelings, feelings that society decides are good, came up, there would be no trouble. But with love, the trouble is that not only heaven starts flowering, but hell also. They are together, they are two aspects of the same coin. They cannot be separated – and there is no need to separate them, because a heaven without a hell would be poorer. A love without anger would be impotent. A love without sadness would be shallow.Life is a polarity, and through polarities life becomes richer and richer and more and more complex. Life is not like ordinary Aristotelian logic, life is more like Hegelian dialectics: thesis, antithesis. Two polarities meet and fight, and a third phenomenon arises: synthesis. A greater harmony arises out of two polarities; then that greater harmony again becomes thesis, a new antithesis arises, then again a higher rung of the ladder of synthesis is reached.This is how life moves. Life is Hegelian dialectics, it is not Aristotelian logic. It is not simple duality. It again and again reaches to oneness through duality – and that oneness again becomes a pole. It creates another pole; the movement starts. This is how life is trying to reach higher and higher pinnacles of being.When you love you become happy, and you become sad also. These are the thesis and antithesis. Love is a harmony, the synthesis. Life moves through opposites, just like a river moves through two banks. You cannot conceive of a river with one bank. If you conceive of this, then all rivers disappear. If you try to ensure that one shore will be better, then rivers cannot exist.That’s what has happened to human consciousness. In the very beginning man decided against hate, against anger, against all negative poles, that they are not good. They are not good if they are alone, they are very bad. If a man is simply angry without love, he is mad. This anger is a disease. But if a man is angry because of love, a father angry with his child, with love, then anger has a beauty of its own.No child will ever feel bad toward a parent who was angry with love. But a parent who was simply angry without love cannot be forgiven. The child may forget him, but he cannot forgive. Just anger, with no love? It is illness. It is poisonous. But if you are angry with love, the child understands. He understands your love. And in that bigger whole of love, the anger fits. It is just love in action, nothing else; and the child immediately feels it, and loves you more for it.A husband angry without love is just ego, trying to possess, dominate. A husband angry with love is not ego trying to possess, but love, trying to help. Even if anger is needed, love is ready to be angry.When love arises, all feelings erupt; a volcano explodes and man becomes afraid. So it is better, man decided, not to touch this volcano. Let it be there, hidden, because it brings negatives also. But those who know, they say don’t be afraid of the negative. The negative is bound to be there with the positive, like a shadow is bound to be with you. If you want no shadow, you will have to kill yourself. Then only can the shadow disappear. But nothing is wrong in a shadow. If you are there, nothing is wrong. If love is there, nothing is wrong.Somebody asked Saint Augustine, “Tell me in one sentence, in a simple sentence, the whole message of Christ, because I am an ignorant man, and I cannot understand the subtleties of theology. And I don’t know much about morality, so don’t give me complex disciplines I may not be able to follow. Give me a simple discipline, so simple that I can understand and follow.”It is said Saint Augustine closed his eyes and meditated, and then he said, “Then there is only one thing – love, and everything else will follow.”Love is the greatest morality, because it brings the feeling part of you up, and the thinking part goes down. Nothing is wrong with the thinking part, but it is playing the role of the master, which is wrong. Reason is good if it helps feeling. Feeling should be the master and reason should be the servant. Feeling should guide and reason should manage. But if reason becomes the master and feeling has to follow, you will be dead…because how can you be alive only with reason? Life is feeling. Trees can exist without reason, but they cannot exist without feeling.Now even scientists are becoming more and more aware that trees feel, and feel tremendously. Stars, rocks, rivers – they cannot exist without feeling. Feeling is their very life. Birds, animals, the whole – exist with feeling. Except man. Man is upside down. The head has become the prominent thing, and head has been suppressing feeling.And it has happened all over life in that way. Politicians rule, dominate; in fact, poets should be the guides, not politicians. But as it happens in the atomic individual, so it happens on a vaster scale in society. If feeling rules the individual, then poets will rule life, then poets will rule nations. The world will be totally different. If the head rules, if reason rules the individual, then politicians will rule the world, and the world is going to be constantly in trouble, constantly at war, in constant conflict.It is good to feel, and if feeling surrounds you, then there is nothing wrong in thinking. If thinking follows feeling – beautiful; it helps. It is like a radar. It opens the way for the feeling to move on. It protects the feeling from dangers. It helps the feeling to know what is going to happen next, to plan a little. It is good! But good only as a servant.If you love, you will have a deep affinity with existence. Trees will talk to you. Birds will start coming nearer to you. Animals will not be afraid of you – there is no need. Man creates fear because of his head. With his heart he is again one with the universe.There was a man living by the seashore who loved seagulls. Every morning he went down to the sea to roam with the seagulls. More birds came to him than could be counted in hundreds.Thousands of seagulls gathered around him. They jumped and hopped, and they flew and they danced, and they moved with him on the shore. The man was accepted by the seagulls, because feeling is everywhere accepted. That is the language of existence: feeling. Reason is the language of humanity, not of existence – a local phenomenon, not universal. Feeling is the language, the forgotten language. If you understand feeling, you understand the whole.It is said of Lukman, one of the wisest men ever born – he is the founder of Yunani medicine – it is said about Lukman that he would go to plants, to bushes, trees, sit there, feel them, and ask them, “What use can you be put to? What disease can you be helpful in?” And it is said that he discovered millions of herbs, just by feeling them. The herb would say, “It will be good if you use me in tuberculosis; I can help.”This looks like a myth, a fiction, but scientists have been at a loss: if this is a fiction, then how did Lukman come to know?…because whatsoever he knew has been proved by all scientific experiment to be right. And no laboratories existed then, like they exist today; not such refined instruments, not at all! If this is a fiction, then a greater problem arises: How did he come to know? And not one or two or a hundred herbs – millions! If he had been experimenting with crude implements then it would have taken at least ten to twenty thousand years for him to discover all that. That seems to be more fictitious. The first fiction seems to be nearer reality – that he asked.And there is the same story in India also. Ayurveda, the Indian medicine, is based on the same secret. Those secrets were revealed by the plants themselves. But then a language is needed, a language which is universal and not local to humanity. Feeling is that language. Greek or Arabic or Sanskrit won’t do. No language originating in the mind is divine language. No, the divine language originated in the heart. Feeling is the language.If you start really feeling, and your heart starts really throbbing with feeling, you can ask a tree, and a tree is always ready to reveal its secret. You can ask a bird, and the bird is ready to reveal its secret. You can ask existence, and existence is ready to reveal its heart. That heart is God, the kingdom of God, the ecstasy, the final liberation, moksha, nirvana; whatsoever you want to call it, you can call it.More birds came to him than could be counted in hundreds.He knew the language of feeling. It is love. Nobody is afraid of love, not even birds. And they can certainly feel more than you because they have no thinking apparatus, no disturbance of the mind.In the West now they are experimenting with plants. They say that if you come near a plant with the idea to pluck the flowers, just with the idea – you have not plucked the flowers yet – if just with the idea you come near the plant then the whole plant starts trembling. A fear arises: the enemy is coming.Now they have made very refined instruments which can check what emotion the plant is going through. If it is fear, then just like a cardiogram, on the paper the instrument records fear. If you come with the idea to water the plant, the whole plant feels happy. This is recorded, the instrument goes on recording that the plant is very happy. You water the plant, the plant is satiated, very thankful; in fact, showing all gratefulness toward you.It happened in one of the laboratories in New York, suddenly it happened: A scientist was working on insects, and a plant was in the room, a cactus plant. He was working with earthworms, experimenting in many ways – and scientists, in the name of experiment, are torturing many types of insects, animals; he threw one earthworm in hot boiling water. He was also working with plants, and the cactus plant was accidentally connected with the instrument that records the feelings of the plant. Suddenly the plant went through much anger, fear, a very violent state. An earthworm had just been thrown into hot water!Life is dying: a plant feels it. You cut one plant – the whole garden feels it, because everything is surrounded by an ocean of feeling, all around. You create vibrations. When you are angry you create vibrations. When you are lustful you create vibrations. When you are loving you create vibrations. Those vibrations are the universal language – they are understood by the whole existence.It is said that when Buddha attained to enlightenment, trees flowered out of season. It may not be a fiction, it may be true. And one day we may be able to prove it scientifically, because if an earthworm, not related to a plant at all, of a totally different species, is thrown into hot water, and the death, the torture, the violence, is felt by the plant and the plant goes through a turmoil, a terrible turmoil, shaken to the very roots, then the other thing also seems possible.Buddha attains to nirvana, he becomes enlightened. One life has reached the goal: it does not seem too fictitious that the trees around him suddenly flower out of season, in celebration. If pain can be felt, celebration can also be felt. Just a few steps more and science will be saying, “Yes, this is not a fiction.” Life sometimes is stranger than fiction. It is.His father said to him one day: “I hear the seagulls all come roaming with you – bring me some to play with.”Now an idea had entered the head. The man was no longer the same. Love was not there. The heart was not functioning that day. A desire had entered. He had a target now. He had come to the seashore now with a business. He was no more a friend to the seagulls – he was going to catch them – he was the enemy.Next day, when he went down to the sea, the seagulls danced over him and would not come down.The seagulls cannot understand what you are thinking in the mind but they can understand the vibes that you are creating around – and you are continuously creating vibes around you. You are a continuous broadcast of vibes, continuous. Whatsoever happens in your heart, it is just as if someone has thrown a stone in a lake: ripples arise, and they go on and on and on – they will go to the very end, to the very shore, all around. A feeling arises in you; immediately a stone has been thrown in the lake of your being. An idea arises in you – ripples arise. They go all around.Those seagulls don’t know exactly what the father has said to the son, because they don’t understand the local language of man. They don’t know what has really happened, but deep down they still know that this man is not the same. Somebody else has come, a stranger, not the old friend. Now he has come with an idea. The idea is not known, but throughout his whole body he is now not in a letgo. He has some idea to do, some plan, some desire. He is not the same relaxed man with whom seagulls could feel at home.And this is the secret of the whole of life: not only seagulls but happiness, meditation, ecstasy – they all come to you when you are in a total letgo, in a deeply friendly mood, in a loving attitude toward existence. When you are at the heart, they come. When you are persuading them, and you think that happiness is something like a right, that you have to pursue it, suddenly the seagulls of happiness are not descending. They will dance above your head but they will never come down to play with you, to move with you, to jump and hop! No, they will never become one with you. They will not descend into your being.Yes, happiness is a seagull. Meditation also is a seagull. Ecstasy is also a seagull. Existence understands only letgo. If you are in a letgo, you will attain. You will attain to whatsoever this existence can give you – and it can give you infinite blessings, infinite benediction. It can give you total satiety, contentment. You can become a buddha.Existence is ready to give, but you are not ready to take it, because you are thinking in terms of how to snatch it. Existence gives to you as gifts; you cannot snatch, you cannot conquer, you cannot achieve. You surrender, please. Please, be in a letgo.All that is beautiful is like seagulls. Remember this: nothing can be done. The feast is already ready – you have been invited. You can enter from the front door. But you are foolish, you are trying to enter from the back door, and in existence there is no back door. You are trying to enter like a thief. The front door is open for you, and the host is waiting on the steps to receive you, and you are trying to enter from the back door like a thief.Life has no back doors. You cannot steal life. You cannot be a thief. Life gives, and gives infinitely and gives unconditionally. You please be just in a letgo. Let the seagulls descend and play with you, and loiter with you on the seashore. Everything is ready. The feast, the host – everything is ready, just waiting for you to come in from the front door. Effort is not needed. Effort is the back door. Effortlessness is needed.Don’t listen to Jefferson. Happiness is not a right, you cannot pursue it. You have to persuade it. It is like a shy woman: you have to court it, indirectly. You don’t go to a woman and say, “I would like to go to bed with you.” That is too direct, too insulting, too vulgar. Any worthwhile woman would slap your face. One has to be a little more subtle with a woman. One has to be a little more indirect.Patience is needed. Poetry is needed. And even if you have the idea in your mind to go to bed, that will be a disturbance, that will create an unbridgeable gap. If the idea is not there then you simply enjoy being with this woman. One day you will go to bed with her, but that will happen. The seagulls will descend on you.Let life happen, don’t try to force it. Through doing, only worthless things are achieved; through nondoing – all that is beautiful, all that is sacred, all that is divine.Enough for today.

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Just Like That 01-10Category: SUFISM

Just Like That 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Three men made their way to the circle of a Sufi, seeking admission to his teachings. Almost at once one of them detached himself from the group, angered by the erratic behavior of the master.On the master’s instructions, the second was told by a disciple that the sage was a fraud.The third was allowed to stay, but he was offered no teaching for so long that he lost interest and left the circle.When they had all gone away the teacher instructed his circle thus:The first man was an illustration of the principle: Do not judge fundamental things by sight.The second was an illustration of the injunction: Do not judge things of deep importance by hearing.The third was an example of the dictum: Never judge by speech, or the lack of it.When asked by a disciple why the applicants could not have been instructed in this matter, the sage retorted: “I am here to give higher knowledge, not to teach what people pretend that they already know at their mother’s knees.”I am talking to you, not about something, I am talking that very something. And whether I am talking or not talking, I am that very something. You may call it God, you may call it X.The unknown cannot be taught, the unknown has to be learned. And even when you have learned it, it remains unknown – that’s the beauty of it. It never becomes the known. God never becomes knowledge. On the contrary, the more you know, the more he becomes mysterious. The more you penetrate him, the more he is elusive. As you come nearer to the center you start feeling lost – all certainty gone, all clinging disappeared. In fact you are disappearing.And when you have really reached the center, God is there in his absolute grandeur. But you are not there; the seeker has disappeared, the knower has disappeared. And when there is no knower, how can you reduce the unknown to knowledge? The unknown becomes knowledge through the knower. If the knower has disappeared, there is no possibility of knowledge. The abyss remains, the mystery remains. But, in a very paradoxical way, the mystery is also revealed to you. You know it, you feel it, because you are it.A master is not there to impart knowledge, a master is there to impart himself. A master is not communicating something about God, he is communicating God himself. The about does not interest a master; the about is lower knowledge. If you have come to me to know about God, you have come to a wrong person because I am not interested in about. If you have come to know God, you have come to the right person. But then, you have to be ready, ready to die for it – nothing less will do. It is the greatest risk that one can take.Unless you lose yourself you will not gain anything here. And if you have come to gain something, and you are not ready to lose yourself, then you are wasting your time – and a master will not allow that wastage, he will push you away. Subtle will be his ways. He will not push you away in such a way that you feel that you have been pushed; rather, he will give you the impression that you yourself have left him: he was not worth it, there was nothing to be got there. The master, even in rejecting you, will not give you the feeling of being rejected. That is his compassion. On the contrary, he will give you the impression that you have rejected the master.Sufis have the essential religion with them. This story is a very fundamental one. Before we enter the story a few things have to be understood.First, when you come to a master decide well that you will not judge him, because if you judge you cannot trust. It is better to leave. If you trust, you cannot judge. A disciple has to decide whether he is still continuing judging, or he has started trusting.Trust is a totally different dimension from judgment. In judgment you remain the center, and from your center and from your mind, you judge. You remain the criterion, the touchstone. In trust, you are no more. You have no center to judge from, no values to judge by.When you surrender to a master you surrender your valuation. You say to him, “Now, I will not be a judge. From now onward I will be a shadow to you, a surrendered soul. Whatsoever you do, it is none of my business to judge.”It happened: A king wanted to become a disciple of one Sufi master, Bayazid, Bayazid of Bistun, one of the greatest names among the Sufis. When the king approached it was difficult for Bayazid to say no – and the king was not ready at all. He was not worthy to become a disciple and to be accepted.Bayazid asked, “Why have you chosen me? There are other masters better than me. Why have you chosen me? I am nothing, just an ordinary master.”The king said, “I have chosen you because of your character, your behavior, your morality. You are a good man. About others I am not so certain; their behavior is a little erratic, and they confuse me. About you I am certain. You are a good man, a saintly man, that’s why.”Bayazid said, “Then wait a little. Postpone a little, because you don’t know me and my character. You wait a little and watch.”One day the king had gone for some hunting in the forest. Suddenly he saw, near a lake, Bayazid sitting on the other shore – it was a small lake and the king could see to the other shore – and he was not alone, he was with a woman. What was he doing in the forest with a woman, with no disciples around? Whenever he had gone to see Bayazid in the town he was always surrounded by hundreds of disciples. What had happened? What was he doing with the woman? Suspicion arose: in this privacy with a woman…?And not only that, as he watched, hiding himself behind a tree, the woman poured something into a glass. Maybe it was wine? The flask seemed to be of wine. Now he was absolutely certain that it was good he didn’t surrender to this man. He seemed to be a debauchee.He started moving from the shore but Bayazid called out loudly, “Don’t go. Come nearer, because a judgment from that far can be wrong.” And judgments are always from a distance. In fact if you judge, the distance cannot disappear. Just to remain a judge you have to be at a certain distance. If you move closer you will lose the capacity to judge, you will become so intimate you will get involved, you will be committed. You will lose the clarity of judgment.Seeing that Bayazid had seen him the king felt a little awkward and embarrassed, but when he had seen him and was calling him, it was difficult to go away. And there was also a lingering curiosity inside: What was happening here?He came nearer. Bayazid said, “Now what do you decide? The right moment has come for me to accept you. What do you say?”The king laughed, and said, “You are not even worthy to be my servant, so how can you pretend to be my master?”Bayazid said, “So you take back your idea of being initiated by me? If you take it back, then the reality can be revealed to you.” He threw back the screen under which the woman was hiding, the burqa, the cover, the veil Mohammedans use. The king could not believe his eyes: the woman was Bayazid’s mother. And then Bayazid gave the flask of “wine” to him and said, “Taste it. It is nothing but pure, colored water.”The king fell at the feet of Bayazid and said, “Accept me.”Bayazid said, “You have missed. If you judge, you cannot trust – and you can judge from that faraway distance? No, we are not made for each other.”This situation Bayazid created so that he could show the king that judgment can never be trusting.Trust is a blind leap.It is not that you judge that the jump is worth it. No, if you have taken the jump with judgment you have not yet taken it. If you have taken it by your own values, mind, you have not taken it, because the jump is possible only when you drop judging.Through judgment you can never be intimate with a master. Judgment creates barriers. Only through trust an intimacy arises, and that intimacy is deeper than any love; hence it is blind. But to see the other world you have to be blind in this world, because when these eyes are closed, your other eyes open. Blindness in spirituality is the capacity to see. Your eyes stop looking at the outside and you start a new journey inward.Remember, judgment can never lead you to trust, and if judgment has led you to trust, that trust is false, not rightly grounded. Underneath there is nothing but sand and foam. Your house is going to fall any moment. It is better to abandon it before it falls and destroys you.The second thing to remember is: You may be inquiring but that doesn’t mean you are ready to receive. There are curious people who go on inquiring about higher things, but they never mean it because they are not ready to take any risk. They are not ready to put themselves at stake. They are curious people, in a way childish, inquiring about each and every thing as if just by inquiry you can attain to truth.Curiosity is not enough. You have to be ready. Sufis say that a master accepts you not because of your inquiry, he accepts you because of your preparation – and that is a totally different thing.Just a few days ago a young man came and he said he would like to be initiated by me. I asked him, “Have you really decided?”He said, “Fifty-fifty. Sometimes I feel like taking sannyas, and sometimes I don’t feel like entering into it, and I am at a loss. So I leave it to you, whatsoever you say.”I told him, “You had better wait three days more. There is no hurry. Just wait for three days more, and let your mind come to a decision. But the decision must be a hundred percent.”He came to a decision, and the decision must have been a hundred percent, because the next day he simply disappeared. He never came back, and I don’t think that he is going to come back again.He was ready to be initiated – he was thinking that he was ready to commit himself, to enter the path – and just a three days’ postponement…. As I feel it, it is postponed for at least thirty lives. The man was not ready at all, not even a ray of light in him, not even a seed ever sown in his past lives, and he was ready to cut the crop, and he has never sown a single seed. But people remain in absolute unawareness. They don’t know that you cannot cut the crop if you have not sown the seed.But a master has to see within you whether the possibility exists. When I accept anybody I have to see whether the possibility exists in this life, because I am not going to come back again, and it is better not to start work on you if you don’t have the potentiality to attain in this life.You may not attain, you may miss, but I must be certain about the potentiality, the very possibility, because if I start a certain type of work in you, and I am no more there, it will be difficult for you to be adjusted with any other master. You will have a certain structure given by me, and that will create trouble. It is better not to start so that you are completely available for somebody else to work upon. When I am certain that this man can attain in this life, in this very life, only then I initiate. The man may not be aware of his possibilities. He may be completely oblivious of the type of work he has done in past lives.You are very ancient ones, you are not new ones here. You have trodden the same Earth thousands of times. The Earth is new in comparison to you because you have been to other planets also. You have been eternally here. You have been millions of things. You are not a clean slate, much is written there. Many incomplete systems are alive there. I have to look: Is something possible in this life? – otherwise it will be more compassionate not to start the work, so that you remain open. Otherwise I can create trouble.So when a master rejects somebody it is because of compassion. If he accepts, it is because of compassion. Nothing else is possible because a master is nothing else; he is compassion.I know well that I cannot be here very long. In fact my ship has arrived, and has been waiting for almost two decades. I have to leave the shore any moment. Somehow I go on postponing. A little longer I can be here, and a little more I can help you.Of course, I cannot accept people at random. Even when you think I am accepting people at random I am not accepting at random. You may not be aware – because you don’t know who you are, what you are, what is possible with you. When I reject a certain person I reject because he has no possibility in this life, and he cannot take the risk. He is not prepared. He is asking for things which he is not ready to receive.And the spiritual, the occult, is not like something that can be given to you whether you are ready or not. You can inherit riches from your father, but you cannot inherit spirituality from your master. It is not a simple inheritance. It cannot be transferred. You have to be absolutely ready for it; otherwise it can be given and it will never reach you. You will forget it somewhere or other.Sufis say a master starts working only when he feels the potentiality exists, that the man is ready in many ways; a few strokes here and there and the painting will be complete. Otherwise he will not waste his time and your time. And a master is not there to teach you ordinary things. For that many teachers exist; you can go to them. A master is to give you something of the higher, of the extraordinary, of the invisible. You have to be very refined, very delicately prepared, because only then can the music of the unknown descend on you. A master cannot teach you if you already think that you know.Many knowers come to me: pundits, scholars…. One old man I know has been coming to me for at least ten years. After every few months he comes again, and he talks about his knowledge, the Vedas, the Upanishads, and he talks about his yoga and what he has been doing, and what type of experiences he has attained. If he is right, he need not come to me. But he persists in coming. Whatsoever he says is just pretension, imagination. He thinks he has attained. And I can see that he has not attained anything, he has just learned from the scriptures. He has been moving in the spiritual circles, so he knows many rumors about kundalini and about chakras and about light and this and that, and every time he comes he wants me to say something to him, he wants my help. But he himself prohibits it. If he wants my help he has to stop pretending that he knows. He has to stop all this nonsense that he thinks is knowledge. And he goes on repeating that these things are not sayings from the scriptures, he has experienced them.So I say, “It is very beautiful that you have experienced – this is what I am here to help happen. But you have attained, so no need…. Why do you bother to come to me?” But then I see that his face becomes sad. He has not known anything. But he cannot drop the pretension either, he cannot say, “I don’t know.” Such a simple thing seems to be impossible for him. And unless he realizes that, nothing is possible.If you think that you know without knowing, your doors are closed. You have to feel the ignorance, and feel it profoundly, feel deeply in the very depths of your being that you don’t know. In that knowledge of ignorance, the door opens. You become available to a master, and then he can work.Sufis are very choosy. Every master is, has to be, by necessity, otherwise the wrong people will surround him. I had to get rid of wrong people, in subtle ways. I was surrounded in the beginning by Jainas. Of course, because I am a born Jaina they were the first to come to me. But they were around me not because of me, they were around me for a wrong reason – that I am a Jaina. And I am not a Jaina. I am not a Christian, not a Hindu, not a Mohammedan…or I am all. I am nobody in particular.They surrounded me by the thousands all over the country. They were not seekers. They were not in any way interested in any transformation. They wanted me to strengthen their beliefs that Jainism is right, that whatsoever Mahavira says is true. They were not interested in me, they were interested in Mahavira. They already knew that Mahavira is true; they simply wanted my support also.I had to get rid of them. But how to get rid of them? I started talking about sex. They disappeared, because brahmacharya, celibacy, absolute celibacy, remains their foundational doctrine, and when I talked about sex, and I said that from sex you can go toward super-consciousness, that samadhi is possible through sex, they simply disappeared. Nothing else was needed. Then those who were left were the seekers. There was one left in a thousand. That crowd has never turned up again.Then I found another group around me – of Gandhians. They had been in search of a mahatma. When Gandhi died, they had been left without a guru. I had to do simple things. I used to wear khadi. I loved it: it is so cool, and handmade – so aesthetic. But I had to stop using it, because there was a link: I was using khadi and Gandhians were thinking that I was a Gandhian. I had to suffer. Now I am using terri-cotton. It is a suffering – but that was necessary, they made it necessary. The moment I stopped wearing khadi many of them left me. And then I criticized Gandhi – since then I have not seen those faces again. They were not seekers. Only one in a thousand has been left behind.To the seeker – the real seeker who is really in inquiry, who does not bother whether I am for Gandhi or against Gandhi, or for Mahavira or against Mahavira, who is directly related to me and who is not in any way judging me, who trusts me – whatsoever I say does not make any difference.A master has to be very very choosy; otherwise work becomes impossible. You can talk to the crowds, but you cannot convert them. They exist on a very low level of being. Only a man who is finished with this world, completely frustrated, has become hopeless, and has been able to feel that all this is not more than a dream – at the most a good dream, at the worst a nightmare – who is really frustrated and is in a situation where he starts thinking of committing suicide, is ready for a master.…Because a man who starts thinking about suicide, finishing his life because life seems so meaningless, is ready to be transformed. He is ready to die in front of a master. And then the master can resurrect him.When you are near a master you don’t just listen to his words, you listen to him, his being, the symphony of his being, the subtle music of his being. You try to listen to that, not to what he says, because whatsoever he is cannot be said in words. Even in silence only a part of him is expressed. In words almost nothing is expressed, in silence only a part. You have to listen to his being. Whatsoever he is doing – talking, in silence, walking, sitting, not doing anything – you have to watch, and you have to be alert, and you have to become receptive to the subtle music that surrounds him, the subtle vibrations. It is there.One has to be in an absolutely feminine mood to be near a master and to be profited by him. The male attitude won’t help.Just the other day one sannyasin, one woman sannyasin, told me that this is rare: Why is it happening that many male sannyasins have started leaning more toward the feminine side of their being? They have become feminine.That’s right, it happens, because to be a disciple is to be feminine. It is to be receptive, not aggressive. You cannot snatch, you cannot steal; you have to be receptive. A master has to be eaten, chewed, absorbed, so that he becomes your blood, your bones, your marrow.The other night a sannyasin came and said that it is just unbelievable what is happening to him. He said, “I start feeling, while I am doing meditation, I start feeling like a dog, and I bark – and not only that, sometimes I feel that I am eating your toe!”Yes, a master has to be eaten, chewed, absorbed, digested. I told the sannyasin, “Don’t take it literally” – because once it happened, one sannyasin did exactly that. He jumped on me like a dog, and he started eating my toe. Blood came out, he hurt the toe very much. He took the vision in a literal way.That vision is right. One of the American seekers – he is dead now – has written a beautiful book; I love the title. The name of the man was Rudi, and he has written a book the title of which is Spiritual Cannibalism. The title is good, the book not so much, but the title is really wonderful. One has to eat the master, one has to become a cannibal.But don’t take it literally. It is an inner vision, and an inner phenomenon. By and by you are replaced completely by the master. You no more exist, the master exists in you. Saint Paul has said, “I don’t exist. Christ exists in me.”The master by and by replaces you. When you go in, you don’t find yourself, you find the master there. When this has happened, the knowledge – knowledge that cannot be known – has been transferred. The master transfers himself.It is a very subtle phenomenon. So people who have come just as curious people, childish inquirers, have to be rejected; they cannot be allowed. They exist in millions. If they are allowed, then the seekers will never be able to reach near the master.I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin’s father was dying, on his deathbed, and he wanted to give some advice to his son who was going in many ways astray. He had become the Don Juan of the town, and was chasing every woman. The old man said, “Nasruddin, remember one thing: beauty is only skin-deep, and don’t be mad for it – and this is my whole life’s experience I am telling you. I have chased women, but this is how I feel now, at the end of my life, that beauty is nothing but a skin-deep phenomenon, an appearance.”Nasruddin brooded over it and said, “Dad, that much will do – because I am no cannibal, I am not going to eat women. Skin-deep is enough for me. Who wants the inside of a woman?”But if you are related to a master in a skin-deep way, with only the skin of the master, you are not related at all. With a master you have to be a cannibal. You have to eat him all, whole and all, all of him, in his totality. But that is possible only if you drop totally. You create the vacuum, you create the emptiness, and suddenly that emptiness sucks the master in. It is a transfer of being to being. It is not a transfer of knowledge but a transfer of life itself – just as if you bring an unlighted lamp near a lighted lamp and the flame jumps.The master loses nothing, and you gain everything, because from the lamp that is already lighted nothing is lost. Another lamp is lit – it gains everything, and from the first lamp nothing is lost, it loses nothing. And you can light thousands of lamps from one lighted lamp, and the lighted lamp remains the same. Nothing is lost. Just the flame jumps.A master is a lighted lamp. Come to him, be close to him.Judgment won’t allow you to be close, and then the flame cannot jump because the flame can jump only when both lamps have become so intimate that no distance exists.Now, this beautiful story.Three men made their way to the circle of a Sufi, seeking admission to his teachings. Almost at once one of them detached himself from the group, angered by the erratic behavior of the master.Masters are difficult people. Never take them at their face value, never take them by their appearance; their appearance can be deceptive.It is said about Gurdjieff that whenever a new disciple would come who would like to enter into the inner circle, he would start behaving erratically, suddenly he would start being crazy. And the old disciples would know that again he was playing his old trick, but the new one would escape, looking at this madman, what he was doing.Once it happened, a journalist came. He wanted an interview, and he was showing much interest in Gurdjieff’s teachings. Gurdjieff looked around, saw an old disciple and asked, “What day is it today?”The disciple said, “Today is Saturday.”Gurdjieff said, “How is it possible? Yesterday it was Friday, how is it possible that it is Saturday today? That is just mad – yesterday was Friday, how is it possible then that today is Saturday?”The journalist stood up and he said, “I am not in search of mad people. What’s going on here?”And Gurdjieff looked at him in such an angry way, such a penetrating way, that the journalist started perspiring with fear, feeling that this man can be dangerous. And Gurdjieff was a very strong man. If he jumped, he could kill you. The journalist simply escaped, never came back again. And Gurdjieff had a belly laugh.Some disciple asked, “But why did you behave in such a way? He could have been helpful. He could have written an article. And he has contacts, he is a very well known man. Why…?”Gurdjieff said, “It is better to finish from the very beginning, because once he starts coming he will be coming more and more, and he cannot understand; he is a superficial man. He just took the appearance, how can he understand deeper things?”Almost at once one of them detached himself from the group, angered by the erratic behavior of the master.On the master’s instructions, the second was told by a disciple that the sage was a fraud.On the master’s instructions the second was told by a disciple, “Don’t be deceived by this man, he is a fraud.” And the second disappeared.Man is really something! If somebody says that the master is a fraud, it is enough. You never see that maybe this man is a fraud, or this man is playing some game, or this man has some motive for saying it.To believe in the master is difficult, but to believe in this man is so easy. You never ask about his credentials, his bona fides you never ask about – you simply believe. It seems that whenever somebody says that something is wrong you are always ready to trust. Whenever somebody says that something is good you are reluctant to. In the bad you trust, in the Devil you believe. In God you have doubt.In English we have the expression: Too good to be true. This shows the mind. You never say: Too bad to be true. No, there exists no expression like that. Too bad is never too bad, and it is almost always true. But too good cannot be believed. You distrust humanity so deeply that you are always ready to believe if something wrong is said about something or somebody.If somebody comes and says, “This man has attained to buddhahood,” you laugh, you say this is not possible; this is all fiction, it has never happened, and it will never happen. How can it happen that somebody else can become a buddha and you have not become a buddha yet? Impossible. If ever buddhahood is going to happen to anybody, it is you to whom it is going to happen. Nietzsche says somewhere: I cannot believe in God, because if he is already the God then what are the chances for me? I don’t believe that there is any God. If there was, I would have been him.You always believe negative things about people, you never believe the positive. Even if you don’t show the doubt, the doubt is there. How foolish! Somebody says that this man is a fraud and immediately you accept. You don’t go into it, you don’t inquire. You don’t say, “I will postpone and I will inquire, and then I will decide.” Immediately trust comes to you. But even if a buddha comes to say to you, “I have attained to perfect bliss,” you look at him with suspicion. How is this possible? It is too good to believe.You believe in the Devil. God may be dead, the Devil is never dead. And I have seen people who are absolutely atheistic – they don’t believe in God – but I have not seen a single person who does not believe in the Devil. Everybody believes in the Devil, even the atheist. Atheists have never brought any arguments against the Devil. Against God they have thousands of arguments, but against the Devil, no argument. Everybody seems to be the disciple of the Devil! He seems worth believing.When you come nearer to a master it is very difficult to judge. The master had instructed the disciple to say, “This sage is a fraud.” This was under the instructions of the master. He was creating a situation.Can you believe the Devil easily? Then you are not for spiritual growth. Do you resist belief in the wrong? the negative? Then you have taken one step toward the right, the good, the divine. How can you trust a master if you trust so much what any ordinary man says?There are thousands of people who have never reached me because somebody, just a taxi driver, or a pan wallah, or a coolie on the station, a porter, said, “Where are you going? It is all fraud.” And they have stopped many reaching me. They may be my disciples under instruction! You never know.The second man left.The third was allowed to stay but he was offered no teaching for so long that he lost interest and left the circle.The third was allowed to stay, but was offered no teaching for so long that he lost all interest and left the circle. A master knows well how to instruct you. You need not advise the master how he should instruct you. He knows well. One has to trust and wait. When the right moment comes he will say something.The first man was an absolutely third-rate possibility. Nothing was possible. The master immediately disposed of him by his erratic behavior. The second must have had a little possibility. The master gave him a chance, but he failed. The third must have had the most potential of all three. The master allowed him to remain but wouldn’t instruct him, wouldn’t say anything – not that he was not saying, because a master is a constant message. Even while he is talking to others, he may be talking to you.This has been my observation. Many times when I am talking to somebody else I am talking to you, because I feel that is the most appropriate way. When I am talking directly to you, you may miss, because your ego becomes too prominent. When I pay attention to you, your ego comes up to the surface, and the ego won’t allow…. No, you are just sitting by the side, I am talking to somebody else; then you are listening more properly. Then the ego is not involved.If I am telling somebody else how to drop anger, you are listening, and because you are not concerned you are a little detached, and when you are detached you listen better. When you are concerned, when it is your problem, you are so worried about it that there is a barrier. When I am talking to somebody else and talking on his problem, I may not be talking to him at all, I may be talking to somebody else really. And when I start talking to you I may be talking now to the other person, not to you.That has to be decided by the master: what to do, how to do it. I had to stop personal interviews because of this, because I felt it took a longer time for the thing to reach you. If you are alone with me you become so nervous – and it is your problem, you cannot be detached, you cannot be an observer. And you are burdened so much by the problem that whatsoever I say, when I am saying it you know well it is impossible, because you think you have tried everything, and nothing happens.I had to stop personal interviews completely. Now it is better: ten, twelve people are there in the interview. I talk to A, and I may be talking to B; I talk to C, and I may be hinting to A. Now it is simple. When I hit somebody else, the hit may be for you. And you can take it easily, because it seems not to be meant for you. But it works. It finds you unaware. It penetrates deeper in you. It moves into the subtle layers of your unconscious without any effort because you are sitting relaxed. It is somebody else’s problem.You may have observed that whenever somebody else is in difficulty you can be a wise counselor, a good adviser – everybody is a good adviser, I have never seen anybody who is not a good adviser when others are in difficulty. Everybody is a good adviser. You can give such wise counsel that even Lao Tzu will feel jealous. Such a great wise man! But when the problem is yours, suddenly you become childish. Suddenly you lose your bearings, you lose balance.Why does it happen? – because now it is too close a problem. You are already disturbed and you are expecting a miracle. You cannot give the same advice to yourself that you have given to others in the same situation. A detached feeling helps.The third was allowed, but no particular instruction was given to him directly. Then he became uninterested. It seemed the master was not interested in him. And the master was interested; otherwise he would have disposed of him already, as he had disposed of the other two. He was interested, but he was waiting for the man to become a little more patient, become a little more settled. He may have been giving instructions, but the man was foolish. He was thinking that instruction is only instruction when it is given directly to you.Subtle are the ways of masters. They know better how to give an instruction. Sometimes when they don’t give you a message, that is the message: Wait. Wait a little more; you are not yet ready and ripe. But the man lost interest – he left the circle.It may have been an interest, but it was not a thirst. An interest can be lost, but never a thirst. If you come to me through your intellectual interest, or even a bit of your spiritual interest, if it is only interest, sooner or later you will have to leave me because interest cannot be sustained for long. One gets fed up with one’s own interest, it becomes heavy.But if it is a thirst, a hunger, then the more you wait the more the hunger grows. The more you have to wait the more fiery becomes the thirst. In the beginning it was just a slight sensation. The master waits until the thirst becomes the totality of the man, because only then will the meeting be possible, only then can he be instructed. When the thirst is so much that the man is ready to stake anything for it, when for just one glass of water he is ready to pay with his life, when the thirst is so great that he is ready even to lose life for it, only then positive instruction, direct instruction, becomes possible – never before. Otherwise the master has to look at somebody else and talk to somebody else; as yet the thirst is not enough, it is just an interest.If you are forced to wait, thirst will grow. A moment comes when your whole being is thirsty, every cell of it. It is not only in the throat – the whole body is burning with it. Only then the cool breeze from the heart of the master can penetrate you. And in deep thirst and hunger your trust is tested, whether you really trust.It happened to Bayazid, with his master. For twelve years, the tradition has it, Bayazid had to wait. For twelve years the master didn’t say anything to him. One day the master said, “You go into the hall” – the hall that Bayazid had passed through every day, coming and going to the master – “and there in the hall there is a book. Bring me that book.”Bayazid said, “But I have never seen the book. In fact, I have never looked in the hall, because I was interested in you, not in any book, not in any hall. But I will go – if you say, I will go.”The master said, “No need. I was just trying to learn whether you are interested in anything else or not.” Such a total interest – thousands of times in twelve years coming and going to the master he passed through the hall and he never looked around. That was not his interest, his whole interest was the master. The master said, “There is no need for the book. There is no book there. I was just trying to find out whether you are looking here and there also, or if you are completely focused, arrowed.”That very night the transfer happened. The master said, “Don’t go. Tonight you sleep here.” Bayazid slept just by the side of the master – but he could not sleep. It was such an intense moment. He could not dream, he could not think, it was such an intense moment, so expectant, so pregnant. His mind completely stopped in that intensity of thirst, hunger, and the flame jumped.Next morning Bayazid was no more the same man. The old died, the new was born. And no instruction was ever given. He just had to wait for twelve years, that was the message, that was the method the master used for him. If he had left even one day before, the whole effort of twelve years would have been lost.And he could have left, because one gets uninterested: twelve years – such a long phenomenon. And how long has one to wait? The mind goes on saying, “Now what are you doing here? Now leave this man, because nothing is going to happen – twelve years have passed!” But even twelve lives are nothing, because when it happens then you know that you could have given twelve thousand lives for it. That too would not be costly; then too it would be cheap.The third was allowed to stay, but he was offered no teaching for so long that he lost interest and left the circle.When they had all gone away the teacher instructed his circle thus:The first was an illustration of the principle: Do not judge fundamental things by sight.…Because by sight you can see only the appearance, not the reality. The first judged by sight. Behavior is just an appearance, the man is hidden deep down. Behavior is just like the ripples on the surface of the ocean, the ocean is hidden deep down. You have to go in deep. Eyes cannot go in deep, they are meant to see only the appearance.Sufis have it as a fundamental principle: Do not judge fundamental things by sight. The first man was an illustration of this principle; he judged by sight and missed. How can you see the depth with your eyes? You can see what I am doing; how can you see me with the eyes? You can listen with the ears to what I am saying; how can you listen to me with the ears? You can touch my body – how can you touch me? All senses are superficial. Never judge anything by sight, by the senses, because everything has an inside; everything, even a rock, has an inside. Don’t judge it by sight.And when you come to a master, a realized man, he is as deep as existence itself – that’s why he is enlightened.Never judge by sight; otherwise you will miss. You may have come many times near a buddha and missed, and you haven’t even known. You must have missed because Buddha walked on this Earth for forty years after his enlightenment, and thousands of buddhas before him, and hundreds after him. Jesus walked on it – you may have been somewhere in Israel; Mahavira was here and you may have been somewhere in Bihar; and Krishna, and thousands of others….It is impossible, almost impossible that you never came across a buddha. In millions of lives, many times it must have occurred that you passed a buddha, you touched a buddha, you listened to a buddha, and you missed. If you judge by sight, then that is going to happen. You can miss me also if you judge by your senses, if you judge by your mind, when you cannot penetrate to the depth that is talking to you.The second man was an illustration of the injunction: Do not judge things of deep importance by hearing.He simply heard a disciple say that this sage was a fraud, and he believed him – and the disciple was under instruction from the master.People will say a thousand and one things. Don’t be too trusting of your ears. Ears cannot penetrate to the depth. One has to be with a master to feel him, to feel him from the heart. A thousand and one things will be said – don’t listen. Good and bad things will be said – don’t listen, because how can you judge by the ears? It is not ordinary music, that can be judged by the ears; it is the eternal music. You can hear it, but not with your ears. You can hear it, but the ears are not enough.And how foolish man is! Fundamental things he goes on judging by appearance, or somebody says something and he judges.The third was an example of the dictum: Never judge by speech, or the lack of it.…Because the truth cannot be said, and all that can be said cannot be true. Truth remains unsaid, so don’t judge by speech or by the lack of it.The third simply waited for the master to instruct him, in words, what is to be done and what is not to be done. He missed because of that. He should have listened to the very being of the master, to the miracle that had happened there in the master, to the unknown that was throbbing there in the master, to God that had descended in the master. He should have listened to that reality, not to the words.And the master was continually giving messages, in thousands of ways – sometimes silent, sometimes talking to others…. But the man wanted attention to be paid to him, and a master never pays attention to you unless you stop asking for attention, because if he pays attention to you when you are demanding it, it will strengthen your ego more; he will not be a help, he will be a hindrance. A master gives you attention only when you have completely dropped the very idea.Everybody asks for attention because attention is food for the ego. So whenever people pay attention to you, you feel very important. If more people pay attention to you, you feel very very important. When nobody pays attention to you, you feel already dead; people have forgotten you, you are worthless. You start feeling your uselessness.And when you come to a master, of course that desire is there; it has to be. It is natural that he should pay attention to you – not only attention, but special attention. But he cannot do that, because he cannot give you poison. He will have to wait. And you will have to drop the very hunger for attention. The day you drop it, he will look at you.The day you drop it he will become all attention toward you, because only in that attention, when the ego is not demanding, can he help. That attention becomes a bridge. When ego is there, attention becomes food for the ego. When the ego is not there, attention becomes food for your being.When asked by a disciple why the applicants could not have been instructed in this matter, the sage retorted: “I am here to give higher knowledge, not to teach what people pretend that they already know at their mother’s knees.”A master is to instruct you in the highest dimension of life and existence. That’s not possible if you already think that you know. Then you are closed. The first man knew already what erratic behavior was. The first man knew already, he had decided what erratic behavior was.The journalist who met Gurdjieff already knew that this was sheer insanity; this man was neurotic who was saying, “How can today be Saturday when just yesterday it was Friday?” This man was either a fool or a madman. The journalist simply decided this, without looking at Gurdjieff. Such a light this man was! Such a tremendously wonderful phenomenon this man was! But just an ordinary trick, and the journalist was befooled.How could he be befooled so easily? – because he already knew that he knew how to define a neurotic man, a madman or a fool. He had definitions. The first man immediately knew that this man was not right. Without knowing what is right and what is wrong, without knowing what is good and what is bad, he had conclusions. A disciple should not have conclusions; otherwise conclusions will become the obstacles, and there will be no possibility to reach the master. By your conclusions you become surrounded and walled and imprisoned. If you have knowledge, you have conclusions. Drop all conclusions. Don’t be the first man.The second man simply believed somebody without even knowing the name of the man. Without knowing his past, without knowing anything of what he was saying, he believed him. If you believe in this way you will never reach a buddha, because on the way toward a buddha you will meet thousands of people, and they will say a thousand things, and you will believe them, and you will return to your home.Buddha is not standing just in front of you, you will have to pass thousands of people before you reach a buddha. They can distract you. Anybody can distract you, and you never think how impotent you are. Anybody can distract you. Somebody you meet on the road says, “Where are you going? Are you mad?” And suddenly you stop. Somebody has put an idea into you, and now you will follow this man. And you will never ask anybody who this man is. And you will think yourself very wise. You are simply gullible. And you have no strength of being. You can be led astray by anybody. Don’t be the second man.The third man waited. But he wanted attention to be paid to him, and special attention. Because of that, he missed. Don’t be the third man also.And right was the master. He said:“I am here to give higher knowledge, not to teach what people pretend that they already know at their mother’s knees.”Enough for today.

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Just Like That 01-10Category: SUFISM

Just Like That 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Shibli went to visit another great sage, Junnaid. The wife of Junnaid was about to conceal herself modestly behind a screen.Junnaid said: “Stay where you are – Shibli is absent.” At that moment Shibli began to weep.Junnaid said to his wife: “You must now be absent, for Shibli has returned.”Why does man go on missing that which is always present, that which is everywhere present, that which has always been, is, and will be, within and without? Why does man go on missing that? It should be the easiest thing to be realized. But something functions as a barrier.Why can’t you see it? Why are your eyes closed? You cannot see it because you are too full of yourself, too much filled with the “I”.Just a few days ago a man came to see me and he said, “I am a humble man. I am just like the dust on your feet. I have been trying for almost twenty years to achieve higher consciousness, but I have been a failure. Why can’t I attain?”And on and on he went. Every sentence started with I. If the grammar allowed, every sentence would have ended with I. And if everything was allowed, every sentence would have consisted only of I’s. “I et cetera, I et cetera, I et cetera,” it went on and on.You are filled too much. There is no room, no space for God to enter in you. You are too crowded. A thousand I’s milling inside – they don’t leave any space for anything to enter in you. That’s why you go on missing that which is always present.This is the arithmetic of spirituality: If you are present, you will miss the divine. If you are absent, only the divine is, nothing else exists. God may be absent if you are present. God will be present if you are absent.So the whole effort of a seeker is how to be not present, how to become an absence. Absence is meditation. That space where you exist but not as an I, not focused in the ego, unfocused, not centered anywhere…you exist without a center, an empty house, a temple, not even the worshipper inside – suddenly, God is there! God has always been there, not even for a single moment was he absent. But you were too much present. Your presence is the barrier.Self-consciousness is the barrier. Self-unconsciousness is the gate. And remember, self-unconsciousness means unself-consciousness. Self-unconsciousness is the highest form of consciousness. It is unself-consciousness: consciousness exists, but there is nobody in it. The self has disappeared, melted away, has been absorbed. You are and yet you are not.It looks paradoxical, but the whole existence is paradoxical. When you are not, it can be said that for the first time you are, because now you are divine. Now you don’t exist separately. Now you exist as an organic part – not even like a mechanical part, because a mechanical part, howsoever joined, still remains separate. It functions with the whole but it is still a part. An organic unity – you are not even a mechanical part. You have become the whole, and the whole has become you.I have heard: Once a great Sufi saint, Hassan, had a dream. For years he was seeking and seeking, and suddenly that night in the dream he found God himself standing in front of him, and in his hand God was holding an onion. Hassan was surprised: Why an onion? And God said to him, “Now you choose. Now you have become able to choose. Would you like a slice of onion or the whole onion? The alternatives are open, and whatsoever you want you can have – you choose.”Hassan started meditating in his dream. He was at a loss to choose. He could have chosen the part if the ego was there; he could have chosen the part because the ego always chooses the part. It cannot choose the whole because in the whole is fear. It will have to disappear. Or, he could have chosen the whole, because ego is greedy; not knowing that in the whole it will have to disappear, it may choose the whole.But he opened his eyes in the dream and said to God, “It is difficult. I cannot choose because if I choose the part there will always be conflict. If I choose the part there will always be fear and death. The part has to die, it cannot live forever; only the whole can live. If I choose the part I am choosing struggle, conflict, disharmony; I am choosing limitation, bondage, because I am choosing the finite. No, I cannot choose the part.”God laughed and said, “Then why don’t you choose the whole?”Hassan said, “I cannot choose the whole because a whole without the parts won’t be much alive.”God blessed Hassan and said, “You did well. It is right.”If you choose the part there will always be conflict, struggle to survive – because the part is always on the verge of dying, it is always near death. In fact it is already dead. If you choose the whole against the part you again choose a dead thing. A whole without parts won’t be alive. It will be monotonous. It will have no inner tension in it to make it alive. It won’t throb. It cannot dance, it cannot walk. It will be like a dead rock, with no music coming out of it. Music needs tension, a throbbing, expectant tension.With the part and the whole there is continuously a tension – and that tension is the very life. Between the part and the whole the river of life flows as between two banks. Between the part and the whole, God exists, as the subtlest, delicatemost tension. Between the duality, the oneness exists. The duality is like two banks and the oneness is the river between the two. It doesn’t belong to either, and it belongs to both; hence the paradox.A part is always going separate and coming nearer together again. A part is moving away from the whole and still is rooted in the whole – just like a plant moving toward the sky, away from the earth, and still rooted in the earth; trying to be a bird, but rooted, trying to reach the sky, but rooted in the earth. Only then the tree can exist. It is a subtle tension between the earth and the sky.A part is continuously marrying the whole and continuously divorcing it. And there is the whole beauty of it: moving away and coming nearer, falling in love and fighting – and this goes on simultaneously. The oneness is not against duality; in fact the oneness is between the duality, and hence it is so alive.God is not a dead concept. If God is simply one, the whole, it will be a dead concept. That’s why the Hegelian absolute is a dead concept – it is the god of the philosophers.Soren Kierkegaard, one of the great Danish philosophers, has said a very beautiful thing. He said, “My God, I pray to you, but you are not the god of the philosophers. I don’t pray to the god of the philosophers,” says Kierkegaard. “I pray to the god of Abraham, Jacob and Jesus. The god of philosophers is dead. The god of Abraham, Jesus, Jacob, is totally different.”The god of the lover, the god of the poet, the god of the devotee, is different. The god of the lover is alive. It has all the contradictions in it, and still the harmony exists.God is harmony in contradiction. God is relaxation in tension. God is one in the many. God is formless in the form, nameless in all names.Hindus have a very beautiful scripture. The name of the scripture is Vishnu Sahastra Nam, one thousand names of God. Hindus continuously say that God has no name, and then they write a book in which they compile simply the names, nothing else. The whole scripture consists only of one thousand names of God. Almost all the names have been compiled. God is nameless, and yet all names belong to him, because to whom can they belong? Your name is also God’s name; otherwise is not possible, because to whom will it belong?Only God exists. So the sinner is God, and the saint is also God. In fact, between the sinner and the saint, remember, between the sinner and the saint exists the harmony. Without sinners, God will be impoverished, infinitely impoverished. Without saints, God will not be so rich. Sinners alone, and the whole harmony will be lost; saints alone, and you cannot find more boring a phenomenon, more monotonous. There will be no music.The whole music throbs between tense notes, contradicting and yet not contradicting, going apart, and still coming together. If you understand this, then Hassan’s dream is really tremendous. God said, “Hassan, you did well. Had you chosen one, you would have missed an opportunity. I will give you both. I will give you the part in the whole, and the whole in the part.”The whole exists in the part. The part exists in the whole. In fact part and whole are not two things. You cannot draw a dividing boundary. The part melts into the whole and the whole melts into the part.But you have become too much of the part; you have chosen, you have become a self. And you have completely forgotten the no-self. You have become too much of a presence, and you don’t have absence; hence, you have lost the music. You have become a discord. The same notes can become a disharmony – only a new arrangement is needed.Everything you have; you don’t lack anything. I have not come across a single man in my thousands of lives who lacks anything. Maybe a little mismanagement, but you are not lacking anything. Maybe things are not in their right places, but you are not lacking anything. Maybe you have put A in the place of B, and C in the place of D, but the whole alphabet exists in you. It may not be in order, maybe there is a disorder, but you lack nothing.And the clue exists within you. The clue is: Become as much absent as you are present. Exist in a deep contradiction. You may have never thought about it. You have been trying to exist very consistently. You are trying to be consistent, never in contradiction. Then, either you choose the part – as you have chosen, as many have chosen – and then there is conflict, continuously, because the part feels it is against the whole. If you choose it, if you get identified with the part…that is what I mean when I say “I,” the ego: it is an identification with the part.You are vast, as vast as the universe, and you are trying to get into a small hole. For a mouse, okay, but for you – too narrow. Misery follows. You feel in bondage. You feel from everywhere walled in, imprisoned. You become angry, you get irritated. You start fighting, you start being destructive, because life seems to be a narrowing, a continuous narrowing.A child is born – and the narrowing starts. A child is born and he comes through a very narrow passage, from the mother’s womb. From the very first moment of life narrowing has started, and then the whole life, until death releases you – for entry into another hole – you feel yourself being narrowed continuously, you don’t feel the expansion. And the further ahead you look, the more the hole seems to be like a tunnel. Have you ever stood in front of a tunnel and looked in? The far end looks very small.Once I was traveling with a villager in a bullock cart, and we had to enter a tunnel to pass over a river. The villager refused completely. He said, “It is okay from this end, we can enter, but look at that end: how can we get out?” He had never been in a tunnel, and I tried and tried…but he said, “Whatsoever you say, I can see the hole here is big enough – we can enter, but then it goes on narrowing. What will happen at the other end? You will kill my bullocks! And it may be difficult even to come back if once we are caught.”Death looks like the other end. The passage of the mother’s womb is the beginning, and then life goes on narrowing, and then one day somebody simply disappears. That means the whole process has become so narrow you cannot find the man again.The whole process of narrowing, why is it so? – because you get identified, and when you start getting identified with the part, then it is a natural process that you will be getting identified with smaller and smaller parts. In the end only a very small thing, the narrowest thing in the world, the ego, is left. To be too much present, to be too much in the I, to be too much the I, is an identification with the part.Hassan did well. He said, “I cannot choose the part, because that is the foolishness I have been doing all along. Now I cannot choose the part.” But he must have been a very perceptive man, because it ordinarily happens that if you have been too much identified with the part, you are too prone to choose the whole. Simple logic. One moves to the other extreme.Many have done that also. Then they try destroying their egos. The monks in the monasteries, the traditional sannyasins in India, you go to them, they have been trying to kill the ego, to destroy the part. But they don’t know: if the part is destroyed, the very path to the whole is destroyed.It is a delicate affair. Life is very very subtle and mysterious.You should not get identified with the part, that’s right, but you should not destroy it, because then the very base is destroyed.That’s why monks live a very monotonous life – that is my definition of a monk: one who lives a monotonous life. He may not be living in a monastery, but he lives in monotony. Monotony is his monastery. He lives a life of a single note, he has no other notes. He cannot create a harmony, because he is afraid of the conflict. He is trying to destroy the part. If you destroy the part, in the destruction of the part the very possibility to move to the whole is lost.But fortunately nobody can destroy the part, you can only think that you have destroyed it: it always remains hidden in you. At the most you can suppress it, that’s all. You cannot destroy it.Destruction is not possible in this world. You can neither create anything nor can you destroy anything, because destruction means something was there and now it has become nothing. Something cannot become nothing, there is no way to reduce something to nothing. And there is no way to create anything, because creation means to bring something out of nothing. There is no way. Something can change into something else, but there is no creation and no destruction.You cannot destroy the part, because in fact the part never belonged to you – who are you to destroy it? The part belongs to the whole, how can you destroy it? You never created it. Can you create the ego? If you cannot create the ego, how can you destroy it? Don’t be stupid.All that you can do is to create a gestalt or to destroy a gestalt. This German word is beautiful. Out of this word a whole attitude toward life has arisen – gestalt psychology. It is meaningful, tremendously meaningful. There is no way to translate this word into English or into any other language. Gestalt means: the relationship between the figure and the ground.Gestalts change. For example, I am talking to you. Then everything else that is going on around – the airplane, the constant singing of the birds, chirping, the movement of the wind in the trees, the traffic noise – everything has become the background, the field. You are listening to me, attentive to me – my words have become the focus. You are focused on my words, on me. That has become the figure.But if I stop, suddenly the gestalt disappears. You start listening to the birds, to the noise around. The gestalt has disappeared. Gestalt means: when you pay attention to something it becomes important, and everything else becomes just the background. It does not disappear, it is there; the chirping of the birds is there even while I am talking. Even while you are listening, it is there, it has just gone a little back, stepped a little back to the boundary. It has become the very background. You are concentrated toward me. This has become the gestalt.Gestalts go on changing. A child has a different gestalt of the world. If you give him a flower and a one hundred rupee note, he will take the flower.I used to know a beggar in my town who was always sitting under a tree near the river. And it had become a joke, not only in the town but all around in the surrounding towns, that people would offer him one anna or a one rupee note, and he would always choose the one anna, he would never choose the one rupee note. Even if you offered a hundred rupee note and one anna, and gave him the choice – “Whatsoever you want between the two you can take” – he would take the one anna piece. It had been going on for years.Once I asked that old man, “You must know the difference by now, and you don’t seem so foolish – why don’t you choose the hundred rupee note if somebody is offering it?”He said, “Then the whole game will be lost. Then they won’t give me even one anna. They enjoy my foolishness, but I am not so foolish. Don’t tell me that I should choose the hundred rupee note. I can choose it, but only once; then nobody is going to play the game. They enjoy my foolishness and my emotions. I am not so foolish as they think. For twenty years I have been living on the game. I always choose the smallest coin they offer, and they enjoy and they laugh at my foolishness. But I am not a foolish man.”A child will choose the flower. He is not foolish, his gestalt is different. A hundred rupee note doesn’t mean anything, he has not yet come to the world of the market where a hundred rupee note means something. But if you offer him a plain paper or a hundred rupee note, he may choose the hundred rupee note, not because it is a hundred rupee note, but because it is painted, colored. He has a different gestalt.A young man has a different gestalt, an old man has a different gestalt. That’s why there is the gap between generations – they have different gestalts, and gestalts go on changing. They not only change over the years, every moment they go on changing. This morning you were so loving, and now you are so angry, your gestalt was different. When you were loving anger disappeared into the background, love came into focus. Now you are angry, love has gone to the background and anger has come into focus.But nothing disappears, remember. Everything remains, always remains. Only gestalts change. Something comes up, something goes down; something surfaces, something goes to the bottom. But nothing disappears, nothing can disappear. Everything is everlasting and eternally everlasting. Everything always is. That’s what Hindus call nama-rupa. This Hindi word, nama-rupa, can give a little feeling and nuance of gestalt. Hindus say only name and form change; otherwise reality remains the same.So don’t try to kill the ego – you cannot. If you try to kill the ego you will become a very very humble man, but remember, “very, very” is important. You cannot be an ordinary humble man but very very humble – and that will be the hiding place of your ego. Then you will claim that you are the humblest man on earth.I was reading an anecdote: Three monks belonging to three Christian monasteries met at a crossroad. Of course they started bragging. One said, “You will have to concede that our monastery has produced the greatest saints. Your monasteries are nothing in that matter. Look at our legendary past – how many saints we have produced!”The second said, “You are right. But you will have to concede that all the great theologians have come from our monastery – the great philosophers, the great knowers, systematizers. You cannot boast even a single theologian of the caliber that we have produced in thousands.”Both looked at the third, and they said, “We feel sorry for you because you have nothing to claim.”The third said, “No, we have not produced great saints, that’s right. And we have not produced great thinkers, theologians, that too is right. But as far as humility is concerned we are the top.” Concerning humility we are the top! What type of humility is this, when you are the top?The gestalt has changed. The ego has gone to the bottom, but starts functioning from there. Now you are humble, but at the top. A humble man has to be last, how can he be at the top? But a humble man always claims that he is at the top. The ego is not dead, cannot be dead. It has only gone to the deeper layers of the unconscious and functions from there and controls from there. Humility on the surface and ego deep down, controlling humility. Humbleness is controlled by the ego.Look at people who say and think that they are humble, look in their eyes: you will not find any humbleness there, but a very subtle pride. Pious egoists they are, holy egoists they are. And when ego becomes holy it becomes more poisonous. Poison in itself is bad, but when poison becomes holy then it is very dangerous.You cannot kill the ego. If you try to kill it, two things will happen. One, your life will become monotonous, it will lose the tension of the opposites. It will lose the music. That’s why monks are so monotonous.Once it was asked of a great American actor – somebody interviewed him and asked him, “Can you say what has been the greatest disappointment in your life?” The interviewer must have been thinking that in the life of an actor there are many failures: when people don’t respond, don’t clap, then whatsoever the actor is doing goes flat.The actor said, “The greatest disappointment in my life, you ask? Yes, it happened…. I was a child, a small kid, and I was passing down a road, and near the road I saw a big tent. I thought there must be a circus going on, but I had no money, so I tried to enter the tent from somewhere other than the main entrance, and somehow I sneaked in. And when I entered, it was not a circus but a priest was giving a sermon – and that was the greatest disappointment in my life.”Priests, monks, are so monotonous, so deadly monotonous, with no music, with no harmony, because they have been trying to walk with one leg, or to fly with one wing. They have been trying to improve upon God himself. Even God cannot be without the two, and they have been trying that. Of course, they can hop on one leg a little – that is what their sermons are. Or they can try to fly on one wing – just an ugly effort, and they fall to the ground. Or they can go on producing the same note on their veena….I have heard, Mulla Nasruddin’s wife was very very irritated one night and she said to Mulla, “Enough is enough – now you stop! Why do you go on playing the same note on your veena continuously for hours together? I have seen many people playing but they never do this. They change, they change notes, they move their hands. You go on playing on the same spot!”Nasruddin said, “Stop! You don’t know, I have been playing for twenty years. The others have to move their hands because they have not yet found the right spot. I have found it, so why bother? I go on playing the same note.”That is the note of the monks, the priests, the religious people. They are so sad, so serious, so somber and solemn – dead graves, no music of life arises out of them. They have killed religion everywhere. They have captured all the temples and all the churches.And temples are meant to be places of celebration. Temples are meant to be places of thanksgiving. Temples are meant to be places where one learns how to love and how to live, and how to pray and how to be blissful. They have turned all those places into very serious, deathlike places. They are more like cemeteries than temples. And in those temples only a dead god is worshipped.God is alive, near in the trees, in the clouds, in the birds chirping! God is life, and life depends on duality. Of course it is not only duality, it is a deep harmony between the two, between the many. It is one manifesting as many.Don’t try to kill the ego; otherwise you will suppress it, and you will miss the whole point of being alive here. You will miss the whole opportunity.Then what to do? Just change the gestalt. Don’t be identified with the part – because you are also the whole. And don’t be identified with the whole – because you are also the part.To cut it short: Don’t be identified at all.You are both and neither, and that is transcendence. Then suddenly you are absent, and everything is present. Nothing is lost. But when you lose identification the feeling of “I” is lost. You remain, you remain more than ever, you are more than ever, your being is infinitely rich. Without identification, the I disappears. But the I is getting identified either with the part – that is the I of the worldly man – or getting identified with the whole; that is the I of the so-called religious man.Real, authentic religion is born when you are not identified at all. You move in the part and you move in the whole also. You are both: part in the whole, whole in the part, a harmony in discord, a continuous marriage and a continuous divorce, a continuum of coming together and falling apart. Then there is flow, then there is movement – and then there is grace.Now this small anecdote.Shibli went to visit another great sage, Junnaid.This must have happened before Shibli became an enlightened man himself. Junnaid was already a perfect master, but Shibli was still on the path, still moving toward the perfect illumination of being. He was not a beginner, that’s right, he was already an adept. But the journey had not ended yet – far advanced on the path, but the journey not yet complete.Shibli went to visit another great sage, Junnaid. The wife of Junnaid was about to conceal herself modestly behind a screen.As is the custom with Mohammedans, the wife tried to conceal herself behind a screen as she should do for ordinary mortals.Junnaid said: “Stay where you are – Shibli is absent.”There is no need to hide yourself, because nobody has come. When I say nobody has come, I mean two things. One, nobody has come, he who is a nobody; and second, nobody has come – Shibli has come but there is nobody like Shibli in him.“Stay where you are – Shibli is absent.”Nothing has happened, as if Junnaid is sitting with his wife and nobody has entered. What do you do when a breeze enters the room and passes by? You don’t hide behind a screen. Or if a sun ray penetrates, you don’t hide. “No need to hide,” said Junnaid. “Shibli is coming, but he is deeply absent inside.”At that moment when Shibli entered, he was not identified with himself; a nonidentifiable being without any gestalt coming in like a breeze comes in – unobtrusively. Not even giving a feeling: What is happening? As if a drunk man comes in, drifts in, rather, because there is nobody who is coming in. It may be better to say, Shibli drifted into the room of Junnaid. The wife started hiding herself.Said Junnaid: “Stay where you are – Shibli is absent.” At that moment Shibli began to weep.The identification entered immediately. A gestalt formed; he is no more the same. Just this being said, that Shibli is absent, must have brought the ego back. So much appreciation from the mouth of a great sage like Junnaid. Even a look from Junnaid would have gratified you tremendously. And a man like Junnaid said, “Stay – Shibli is absent.”This is the highest appreciation that can be given for people who are on the path. This is the greatest achievement – when a man is absent. Nothing more is there then, because when you are absent, God is present. In fact Junnaid said, “Don’t be worried. Shibli is not coming, God is entering.” It is the same. To say that Shibli is absent is to say that God is present. And where can you hide from God? And what is the need to hide from him? – because God is nothing but your purest being.Immediately the gestalt came in.At that moment Shibli began to weep.Why did he begin to weep? Immediately, when he was appreciated by Junnaid, the ego came back. Immediately he felt: Yes, I am absent – and the I was there. God disappeared.He was moving dazed, filled with the grace of the divine. An aura was surrounding him – not his aura, but the aura of the very center of existence. He was filled with unknown bliss. He was like a flower, with a divine fragrance. Suddenly, in a single moment, or even in a particle of a single moment, in a split second, a gestalt formed.The gestalt takes no time to form. Just a look and the gestalt forms. It is constantly being created and being destroyed. That is the only thing you can create and destroy, you can do nothing else. It is just like waves coming high and falling down.At the peak was Shibli, at the peak of absence. The moment he heard Junnaid saying, “Shibli is absent,” and, “Shibli has not come, nobody has entered. It is God, look. Where are you hiding?” – hearing this, the ego entered, jumped back in. A gestalt formed: “So I have achieved? So I have entered? So Junnaid has certified, recognized me?” Everything is lost.Junnaid played a trick. In fact, the wife was not the concern. He tried a trick on Shibli and helped him to see what was happening to him.From the peak Shibli has fallen into the abyss. Just a second before he was the divine; now he is just a worm on the earth, an ordinary mortal, fallen from immortality. Just a moment before he was in the garden of Eden, and just a moment afterward he is thrown out, expelled. The peak has gone far away. Even to dream about it will be difficult now.The valley and the darkness…the fall. This is the fall all religions talk about. It is not something that happened in the past. It happens to every individual and it happens many times. The fall is not something that happened to Adam and Eve. It happens to every Adam and every Eve. And the snake in the parable is nothing but the ego, that rises, persuades you. Why has the symbol of a snake been chosen? – because a snake seems to be the most cunning animal in the world, very clever and cunning. Ego IS cunning and clever. The snake persuaded Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. This is not something which happened in the past, somewhere one day, and then the doors of the garden of Eden were closed. No, it happens to every man. Whenever you are at a peak, you are again in the garden – and immediately, if the ego arises, you have fallen back.It happened in that moment to Shibli. He was floating in a different world; altogether different was the quality of his being, a different dimension. He was not part of this world; he was floating high like clouds, and suddenly he has fallen. A cloud has fallen into the dust – a sudden fall. The ego has arisen.Junnaid did well. And he has not even uttered a single word to Shibli – he was talking to his wife – but he created a situation. This is how Sufis work. They create situations very deliberately.At that moment Shibli began to weep.Seeing that he had fallen he began to weep. Adam must have wept, wept bitterly, when he was being expelled from the garden of Eden. What else could he have done? Tears must have been flowing down…his whole heart in a turmoil.It is the greatest misery that happens – when one comes out of bliss into the darker realms of suffering. Up to now he was innocent. Now, suddenly, all innocence is lost. The child has suddenly become old. In a single moment the flower of innocence is dead.Shibli began to weep.Why is he weeping? He is weeping for his own fall. He became aware of what Junnaid had done: not even uttering a single word to him, he had penetrated him so deeply. He provoked his ego. Shibli started weeping. Again he is present and God is missed. No more is he a child, no more in ecstasy. The samadhi has disappeared.Junnaid said to his wife: “You must now be absent, for Shibli has returned.”Don’t come out. Now there comes an ordinary man, just an ordinary man, filled with lust and greed and sex, filled with anger, jealousy, ego. Here comes an ordinary mortal. Now you hide yourself, don’t come out.You are both; that’s why this can happen. You are both the peak and the valley; that’s why this can happen. You are the expelled Adam, and the father who expelled him. You are both; that’s why it can happen. Otherwise, how is it possible to come from the peak to the valley so suddenly and so immediately in a single moment? How is it possible if you are not both?Both these extremes are yours: the devil and the divine. You will weep when you get identified with the devil, because you cannot be blissful with the devil. With the part you will weep. With the whole, if you get identified, you may feel happier, but that identification also cannot last forever – a Junnaid can bring it immediately back. A man who knows the art can throw you back. No, don’t get identified.Where did Shibli miss? What was the point of his misfortune? He was getting identified with the idea of his liberation, freedom, enlightenment. He had forgotten completely that the ego existed; it had just moved into the background, but it was there. And you can be a victim again. Just a slight provocation and the gestalt will change: the figure will become the background and the background will become the figure. A small change, just a slight change. This man Junnaid must have been the greatest gestalt psychologist.I have been doing it every day. Just a slight device and you are suffering no more; you are flowing high, moving in the skies, no gravitation. You have become weightless, you are not walking on the earth. Just another sentence, and you fall – and you fall so fast, as if no time is needed, and you are back in hell.You have been moving between heaven and hell continuously. And wherever you are you get identified, that is the problem. You have suffered. You have seen the downs, the blues, but you get identified; you say, “I am suffering.” You become one with the valley and the darkness.And then, someday suddenly, a woman laughs at you, smiles, and you are high and the doors of heaven are open. Again you get identified. You are in love, not walking on the earth. In fact not walking, flying – no gravitation exists for you. You have completely forgotten the valley, the darkness, that existed just a minute before. It has moved into the background – the gestalt changed. And the woman is not laughing now. She has turned her face away. She is looking at somebody else. And the doors of the garden are closed, you are expelled, weeping bitterly, weeping and crying. The valley, the darkness – you are again identified with it.Pain comes, pleasure comes – but you go on missing the thing. You should not get identified, you should remain transcendental.In the valley, yes, but you are not the valley. At the peak, yes, but you are not the peak. The peak is the situation around you. You are in it, but not of it. In the world? Okay, move in the world – but you are in the world, the world is not in you. Go to the Himalayas – nothing wrong with it – but you are in the Himalayas, the Himalayas are not in you. Remain transcendental. Pain and pleasure, suffering and bliss, day and night, summer and winter – remain unidentified. Disidentification, remaining unidentified, is the way of transcendence. Then you remain always far away: in, and yet away. Then life becomes a beautiful game. Hindus call it leela, a game, a play.Then you neither suffer nor do you become blissful. You simply move through all the shades and nuances – and millions are the shades and millions are the nuances. God has taken thousands of names and thousands of forms. Everywhere is his mark. If you are transcendental, even in the valley you are in him. Then you never lose contact with him, because God means: that which transcends duality yet lives in it, yet surrounds it, yet enjoys it. God is the greatest paradox, the mystery.Once you understand the art of nonidentification, you have learned all that Sufis can teach you. Gurdjieff introduced Sufi essentials into the West. He was the man who brought to the West the secrets of the Sufis. His whole teaching depends on one word, and that is nonidentification. Don’t get identified with anything because consciousness is always transcendental. It cannot be reduced to anything.Seasons come and go, consciousness remains. Childhood comes and goes, youth comes and goes, health and disease; consciousness remains. That which remains always is God. That which passes is the world. That which comes and goes is not you.You are the witness, to whom things happen but who remains a witness. Witnessing is the art of nonidentification, and nonidentification is all. Nonidentification is all there is to meditation. It is the whole meditation.It is said that this situation created by Junnaid helped Shibli, and after a few days, just after a few days, he himself became enlightened.Someone asked Shibli when he became enlightened, “Who have been your teachers?”He counted many. A dog – because the dog was thirsty and tried to jump into the river and drink to his heart’s desire, but as he looked into the river he would see another dog and he was afraid. But the thirst was too much. Finally he overcame his fear and jumped into the river – and the reflection disappeared. There was no other dog, it was just a reflection. The river was just mirroring himself.And Shibli said, “That dog was my first teacher…because there is nobody else – only I am, and everybody else is just mirroring my face, and I am unnecessarily afraid. Once I understood the art of jumping into the river, I jumped, and reflections disappeared and only the river was there – the river of God, the river of existence. And since then I have never been thirsty. I live in the river.”He counted many. He said, “The second master was a thief, because I was lost in a town one night, and all the doors of all the serais were closed and I was at a loss to find some shelter for the night. Then I found a thief. In a dark street, he was trying to enter a house, and I asked him: ‘Where can I stay for the night? I am tired, and I am hungry.’ He said, ‘You can stay at my house, but I must be frank with you because you look like a saint – I don’t know whether you are or not because I never believe in appearances – but for me it will be bad if I don’t tell you that I am a thief. And I am really a thief. You may not be a real sage but I am a real thief. So if you are ready to be a guest in a thief’s house, you are welcome. Come!’”Shibli hesitated a little – to go to a thief’s house and stay there, and people would come to know and what would happen to his respectability? He was an honored man…. The thief stopped immediately and he said, “You are afraid, and a real sage is never afraid. Why are you afraid? Are you afraid that the thief can convert you to an atheist? I am not afraid of you. I don’t care – you cannot change me a little bit. I am a perfect thief, but you don’t look a perfect sage.”And Shibli said, “He was my second teacher. I stayed in his home for one month. He was really a lovely person, and very true and authentic. Every night he would go out and by the morning he would return. I would open the door and I would ask, ‘Have you been successful?’ And he would say, ‘Not today. But tomorrow….’ He was always happy – and for one month he was never successful. Every night he would go out and every morning he would come back empty-handed. But he was always laughing and happy, and he was never miserable. He could live with failure, and he could hope. His hope was great.”And Shibli said, “When I was seeking God, many times the moment came to me when it seemed to be absolutely futile, the whole search nonsense. Many times I was just on the brink of stopping the whole nonsense and going to the world to enjoy and indulge a bit while life lasts. I had been doing everything that I had been told to do and there seemed to be no God appearing, not a sign. I had not even heard a footfall, not even seen a footprint. The whole thing seemed to be imaginary, a great deception. But immediately, whenever I was ready to drop the search, I would see that thief in my vision, standing at the door and saying, ‘Tomorrow…’ and I would again hope, and I would say, ‘Okay, one day more.’ That is how one day I attained. I am very much obliged to that thief. He was my second teacher.”And he said, “My last teacher was the wife of Junnaid – because she tried to hide behind a screen. That became a situation. And Junnaid brought me down from my high flight to the earth, I crashed to the earth, shattered. Junnaid was cruel – but he helped. And the wife was just helping the device. When I started crying, she started laughing behind the screen. I was shattered, completely shattered and destroyed. But that became the destruction of my identification. Since then I have been in the valleys, and I have been to the peaks, but I remain aloof. I can still hear – whenever I go to the peak I can still hear the laughter of Junnaid’s wife behind the screen. She is still laughing. I never get identified.” Soon after this situation Shibli became an enlightened man.What is enlightenment? It is to live in transcendence.Enough for today.

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Just Like That 01-10Category: SUFISM

Just Like That 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Uwais Al-Qarni was offered some money. He said: “I do not need it as I already have a coin.”The other said: “How long will that last you? – it is nothing.”Uwais answered: “Guarantee me that I shall live longer than this sum will suffice me and I will accept your gift.”Life is always in the now. There is no other moment to it. Only one moment exists – this moment – all else is just a projection of the mind. Only today is, and only today remains. Tomorrow never comes, it cannot come because it doesn’t belong to reality. Only today comes, goes on coming, because today belongs to reality.Tomorrow is your dream. And you need a dream because you are not rooted in reality. This has to be understood. Why are dreams needed? When reality is available, why do you dream?A man fasts. The whole day the body suffers; the hunger is there. He suppresses the hunger because he is on some religious fast, a religious ritual. To satisfy the ego he makes the body hungry – so that the ego can feel that he is religious, something special, not an ordinary man, a saint, a sage, not an ordinary sinner.To feed the ego you make the body hungry. You starve the body. Ego is a dream – the body is the reality. The whole day you have been fasting; in the night you cannot sleep because the body goes on asking for food. It is a need, it is a necessity. You feel restless, you turn from one side to another, you cannot go to sleep. Food is a need, but rest also is a need. So the mind creates a dream: You are an honored guest in a great feast given by the king; you are eating delicious food, you go on eating…. Of course the body doesn’t get nourishment, but there is a false notion that you have eaten well; now you can go to sleep. In the morning you will be hungry, more than ever, but at least the dream helped you to rest and relax. One need, the need for food, could not be fulfilled, but another need, the need for rest, could be fulfilled through the dream.If you are tense you will need dreams, because they help you to relax. If you are not here, you will need a dream of being there, because you have to be somewhere. If you cannot be here then you will feel suspended in the sky, uprooted, unanchored, just hanging in the middle. That will give you a very restless, uncomfortable feeling. So…a dream: “I may not be here, but I am going to be there.” The dream helps you to rest and relax.If you cannot be now, then you create a future. The future is needed. The future gives you a consoling sleep, it relaxes you. Millions of things are there which you cannot fulfill right now, and if there is no future you will be too much burdened by unfulfilled desires. A future is needed so you can at least say to yourself: “If things are not as they should be, there is tomorrow. Don’t get panicky, things will be better tomorrow.” You can hope, because there is time.Hope needs space, desire needs space, ambition needs space to move.Look at the trees – they don’t dream. They don’t need to, they are already here, in the now – fulfilled, flowering. Listen to the birds – they are singing now, they are not preparing to sing tomorrow. Except man, nobody is preparing for tomorrow. This day is so beautiful, who bothers for tomorrow?If this day is ugly and it is inconvenient to live with it, a beautiful dream of the future is needed as a substitute for reality. Otherwise you will feel so much anguish – intolerable. You will not be able to live! The more desire you have, the more future you need, the more ambitions the more future you need. For needs, this moment is more than enough. Today is enough. Jesus said to his disciples, “Look at the lilies. Look in the field – the flowers are flowering, and they are so beautiful that even Solomon in all his grandeur was not so beautiful.”Solomon is the greatest king in the mythology of Jews – the richest man ever on earth, and the wisest man also. The wisest, the richest, the greatest emperor in the world was not so beautiful as these ordinary lilies in the field. “Look!” said Jesus to his disciples. “These lilies must be carrying a secret within their hearts.” What is the secret? The secret is, lilies are here and now. Solomon may have been very very wise but he was not here and now.All beauty is here, and all life is now.Tomorrow is death, tomorrow is no life. But why do we live in the tomorrow? It looks absurd: How can you live in the tomorrow? – but you live there. You never live here; that’s why you look so dead. How can one live in the tomorrow? Jesus said to his disciples, “Take care of this moment. Live today, and tomorrow will take care of itself. Don’t worry for the morrow because the moment you are losing in worrying about tomorrow is the real moment. And tomorrow is never going to be there.”For dreams you are losing life. Needs don’t need them, but desires need them. For example, you are hungry, you can eat; if you are thirsty, you can drink. There is not much trouble about it. There would have been no trouble and there would have been nothing like poverty in the world if man remained true to his needs. Then everybody has more than enough. The Earth has plenty. The sky is not poor, the rivers are rich, the oceans vast – life has tremendous treasures. Not a single bird sleeps without food, not a single tree remains thirsty. Everything is more than is needed. Life is affluent, very luxuriant – if you stick to the needs. But if you start desiring, then life becomes poor.If you are hungry you can eat and feel satiated – and there is nothing like satiated hunger. It is a deep prayer, a gratefulness. I tell you, not by fasting will you become religious, but when hunger is satisfied. In that moment of satisfaction a gratefulness, a gratitude arises, a prayer. You feel fulfilled. You can thank God. Never by fasting do you become religious. How can you become religious by destroying your body and being violent toward it? That is the way of the murderer, the torturer, the sadist, the masochist, the somehow perverted.When you have eaten well, eaten rightly and the food suits you, in that moment a prayer arises, not only from your mind but from your body also. Satiety is a prayer. You were thirsty and you have drunk to the full. Now suddenly nothing is needed. You are absolutely perfect in that moment. You are a god, a fulfilled god. No thirst…what else is lacking?If you stick to the needs – and this is my message, that a religious man sticks to his needs. He is never against needs and never for desires. Desires are false needs. For example, if you are hungry you can eat right now, but if you are desiring a Rolls Royce, how can you get it right now? If you are ambitious for a big palace – Rome is not built in one day, a big palace will need time. You will have to exploit money. You will not only have to exploit others you will have to exploit your own needs also, because you will have to accumulate money. You will sleep hungry, because tomorrow – the palace, and when the palace is ready, then you are going to eat. How can you eat without a palace? Tomorrow comes the Rolls Royce, and there is nothing wrong in being a little hungry for a few days, starving your needs; otherwise how are you going to have a Rolls Royce?A Rolls Royce is neither a thirst nor a hunger, it is simply a foolish desire. When it is not there you will be waiting for it and destroying your life, and when it comes you will feel nothing has come. And you waited so long, and you killed yourself so much. The Rolls Royce is there, but you are already dead. There is no real need for it; that’s why it can never satisfy. Satisfaction comes out of real dissatisfaction.Contentment comes out of real hunger, real thirst. You were dying, you could not do without it; only then contentment happens. Desires need the future; they cannot be fulfilled right now. If you want to be the president of a country, how can you be the president right now? You will have to pass long ladders of ambition, much time will be needed. By the time you reach, if death has not reached before, you will be already dead. People become presidents when they are already senile, past their sixties, becoming seventy, just ready for the grave. Then they enter the presidential house. And the whole life wasted, – for nothing. Even if your picture is in all the newspapers, what does it matter? How does it satisfy? Birds are happy without newspapers, trees are happy without the radio and the television. If trees are happy and birds are happy, and they don’t bother a bit for the tomorrow, why can’t man be happy right now?The whole of religion, real religion, is the message to drop desires and to fulfill needs. And needs are simple and beautiful. Thirst is beautiful – it comes out of nature – and then being satisfied is also beautiful. It gives a balance, a subtle tranquillity. A silence happens to your whole existence. You are at rest; no dream is needed.A man who lives true to his needs will live here and now; he has no tomorrow. But look, the bigger the need for desires, the bigger the ambition, the bigger the future you will need. But worldly people don’t really need a big future because their desires, howsoever big, can be fulfilled in one lifetime. If you need a Rolls Royce, you feel you need it, okay – you put your life at stake and you will get a Rolls Royce. If you want to be a president you can, because people just as stupid as you have already become presidents. You are not lacking anything. You can also become one, there is not much of a problem about it; you need to go a little madly after it, that’s all. One only has to go madly after something, and he will attain. Others have attained, you can attain.If you have not attained, that means only that you are not so stupid and so mad. A desire comes but it is a vagrant desire. You are not ready to stake your whole life for it. A dream comes, but it is a very superficial dream. If somebody makes you a president you will become one, but you are not going to stake your whole life for it.One day I saw Mulla Nasruddin on the road, smoking. I was surprised. I asked him, “Nasruddin, just the other day you told me that you have stopped smoking.”He said, “Yes, I have stopped purchasing cigarettes, but if somebody offers me one, it’s okay.” He said, “One has to go by and by, in steps. I have stopped purchasing – that is my first step toward no smoking – but if somebody offers me one, it’s okay. Later on I am going to drop that also.”If you have not become a president of a country or a prime minister, you have just a superficial dream about it, that’s all. If you become obsessed by it, nobody can prevent you. You have to be mad. An ambitious man is mad, crazy! – obsessed by one idea. Unless that idea is fulfilled he himself is not going to rest, and he is not going to allow anybody else to rest.Worldly desires can be fulfilled in a mere lifetime, but what about moksha? What about God? What about nirvana, enlightenment? A mere one life seems to be not enough. There are so many things to do, and for nirvana there seems to be no time.If you live for seventy years…. Life has an inner pattern; it is good to understand it. Every seven years, physiologists say, the body and mind go through a crisis and a change. Every seven years all the cells of the body change, are completely renewed. In fact, if you live seventy years, the average limit, your body dies ten times. Each seventh year everything changes. It is just like changing seasons. In seventy years, the circle is complete. The line that moves from birth comes to death. The circle is complete in seventy years. It has ten divisions.In fact, man’s life should not be divided into childhood, youth, old age – that is not very scientific because every seven years a new age, a new step is taken.For the first seven years a child is self-centered, as if he is the center of the whole world. The whole family moves around him. Whatever his needs are, they are to be fulfilled immediately, otherwise he will go into a tantrum: anger, rage… He lives like an emperor, a real emperor. His mother, his father – all are servants, and the whole family just exists for him. And of course he thinks the same is true for the wider world. The moon rises for him, the sun rises for him, the seasons change for him. A child remains absolutely egoistic, self-centered for seven years. If you ask psychologists they will say a child remains masturbatory for seven years, satisfied with himself. He does not need anything, anybody. He feels complete.After seven years – a breakthrough. The child is no longer self-centered; he becomes eccentric, literally. Eccentric – the word means going out of the center. He moves toward others. The other becomes the important phenomenon – friends, gangs… Now he is not so interested in himself; he is interested in the other, the bigger world. He enters an adventure to know who this “other” Is. Inquiry starts.After the seventh year, the child becomes a great questioner. He questions everything. He becomes a great skeptic because inquiry is there; he asks millions of questions. He bores the parents to death, he becomes a nuisance. He is interested in the other, and everything of the world is of interest. Why are the trees green? Why did God create the world? Why is this so? He starts becoming more philosophic; inquiry, skepticism – he insists on going into things.He kills a butterfly to see what is inside, destroys a toy just to see how it works, throws a clock just to look into it, how it goes on ticking and chiming – what is the matter inside? He becomes interested in the other, but the other remains of the same sex. He is not interested in girls. If other boys are interested in girls, he will think they are sissy. Girls are not interested in boys. If some girl is interested in boys and plays with them, she is a tomboy, not normal, average; something is wrong. Psychoanalysts and psychologists will say this second stage is homosexual.After the fourteenth year, a third door opens. He is no longer interested in boys, girls are no longer interested in girls. They are polite, but not interested. That’s why any friendship that happens between the seventh year and the fourteenth is the deepest, because the mind is homosexual, and no longer in life will such friendship happen again. Those friends remain friends forever; it was such a deep tie. You will become friendly with people but it will remain acquaintance, not that deep phenomenon that happened between the seventh and the fourteenth year.After the fourteenth year, a boy is not interested in boys. If everything goes normal, if he is not stuck somewhere, he will be interested in girls. Now he is becoming heterosexual – not only interested in the others, but really the other, because when a boy is interested in boys, the boy may be other but he is still a boy just like himself, not exactly the other. When a boy becomes interested in a girl, now he is really interested in the opposite, the real other. When a girl becomes interested in a boy, now the world enters.The fourteenth year is a great revolutionary year. Sex becomes mature, one starts thinking in terms of sex, sex fantasies become prominent in the dreams. The boy becomes a great Don Juan, starts courting. Poetry arises, romance. He is entering the world.By the twenty-first year – if everything goes normally, and a child is not forced by the society to do something which is not natural – by the twenty-first year, a child becomes interested more in ambition than in love. He wants a Rolls Royce, a great palace. He wants to be a success, a Rockefeller, a prime minister. Ambitions become prominent: desiring for the future, being a success. How to succeed, how to compete, how to move in the struggle is his whole concern.Now he is not only entering the world of nature, he is entering the world of humanity, the marketplace. Now he is entering the world of madness. Now the market becomes the most prominent thing. His whole being goes toward the market: money, power, prestige.If everything goes right – as it never goes, I am talking of the absolutely natural phenomenon – by the twenty-eighth year, a man is not in any way trying to enter an adventurous life. From twenty-one to twenty-eight, one lives in adventure; by the twenty-eighth year, one becomes more alert that not all desires can be fulfilled. There is more understanding that many desires are impossible. If you are a fool, you can go after them. But people who are intelligent, by the twenty-eighth year enter another door. They become more interested in security and comfort, less in adventure and ambition. They start settling. The twenty-eighth year is the end of hippiedom.At twenty-eight, hippies become squares, revolutionaries are no longer revolutionaries; they start settling, they seek a comfortable life, a little bank balance. They don’t want to be Rockefellers; finished, that urge is no longer there. They want a small house, but established, a cozy place to live in, security – so at least this much they can always have; a small bank balance. They go to the insurance company nearabout the age of twenty-eight. They start settling. Now the vagabond is no longer the vagabond. He purchases a house, starts living…he becomes civilized. The word civilization comes from the word civis, citizen. Now he becomes part of a town, a city, an establishment. He is no longer a vagabond, a wanderer. Now he is not going to Kathmandu and Goa. He is not going anywhere – finished, traveled enough, known enough; now he wants to settle and rest a little.By the thirty-fifth year, life energy reaches its omega point. The circle is half complete and energies start declining. Now the man is not only interested in security and comfort, he becomes a Tory, orthodox. He becomes not only disinterested in revolution, he becomes an antirevolutionary. Now he is against all change. He is a conformist. He is against all revolution; he wants the status quo because now he has settled and if anything changes, the whole thing will unsettle. Now he is talking against hippies, against rebels; now he has become really a part of the establishment.And this is natural. Unless something goes wrong, a man is not going to remain a hippie forever. That was a phase, good to pass through, but bad to be stuck in. That means you remain stuck at a certain stage. It was good to be homosexual between seven and fourteen, but if one remains homosexual for his whole life, that means he has not grown up, he is not adult. A woman has to be contacted, that is part of life. The other sex has to become important because only then will you be able to know the harmony of the opposites, the conflict, the misery, and the ecstasy: agony and ecstasy both. That is a training, a necessary training.By the thirty-fifth year, one has become part of the conventional world. One starts believing in tradition, in the past, in the Vedas, the Koran, The Bible. One is absolutely against change because every change means your own life will be disturbed; now you have much to lose. You cannot be for revolution – you want to protect… One is for the law and the courts and the government. One is no longer an anarchist; one is all for the government, rules, regulations, discipline.By the forty-second year, all sorts of physical and mental illnesses erupt because now life is declining. Energy is moving toward death.Just as in the beginning energies were coming up and you were becoming more and more vital, energetic, you were becoming stronger and stronger – now just the opposite happens, you become weaker every day.But your habits persist. You have been eating enough up to the age of thirty-five; now you continue your habit. You will start gathering fat. Now that much food is not needed. It was needed but now it is not needed because life is moving toward death, it does not need that much food. If you go on filling your belly as you were doing before, all sorts of illnesses will happen: high blood pressure, heart attack, insomnia, ulcers – they all happen nearabout forty-two. Forty-two is one of the most dangerous points. The hair starts falling out, becoming gray. Life is turning into death.And near the age of forty-two, religion starts becoming important for the first time. You may have dabbled a little here and there in religion before, but now religion becomes important for the first time – because religion is deeply concerned with death. Now death is approaching and the first desire for religion arises.Carl Gustav Jung has written that his whole life he has been observing that the people who come to him at the age of forty or nearabout are always in need of religion. If they go mad, neurotic, psychotic, they cannot be helped unless they become rooted in religion. They need religion; their basic need is religion. And if the society is secular and you have never been taught religion, the greatest difficulty comes nearabout the age of forty-two – because society does not give you any avenue, any door, any dimension.Society was good when you were fourteen, because it gives enough of sex – the whole society is sexual; sex seems to be the only commodity hidden in every commodity. If you want to sell a ten-ton truck, you have to use a naked woman, or toothpaste – then too. Truck or toothpaste, it makes no difference: a naked woman is always smiling there behind. Really the woman is sold. The truck is not sold, the toothpaste is not sold; the woman is sold. And because the woman is there – her smile comes with the toothpaste – you have to purchase the toothpaste. Everywhere sex is sold.So this society, a secular society, is good for young people. But they are not going to remain young forever. When they become forty-two suddenly the society leaves them in limbo. They don’t know what to do now. They go neurotic because they don’t know, they have never been trained, no discipline has been given them to face death. The society has made them ready for life, but nobody has taught them to become ready for death. They need as much education for death as they need for life.If I was allowed my way, I would divide universities into two parts: one for young people, another for old people. Young people would come to learn the art of life – sex, ambition, struggle. Then when they became old and reached the forty-two mark, they would come back to the university to learn about death, God, meditation – because then the old universities wouldn’t be of any help to them. They need a new training, a new discipline, so that they can become anchored with the new phase that is happening to them.This society leaves them in limbo; that’s why in the West there is so much mental illness. It is not so much in the East. Why? – because the East still gives a little training in religion. It has not disappeared completely; howsoever false, pseudo, it is still there, it exists, just around the corner. No longer in the marketplace, no longer in the thick of life, just at the side, but there is a temple. Out of the way of life, but still it is there. You have to walk a few steps and you can go there. It still exists.In the West religion is no longer part of life. Nearabout the age of forty-two, every Westerner is going through psychic problems. Thousands of types of neuroses happen – and ulcers. Ulcers are the footprints of ambition. An ambitious man is bound to have ulcers in the stomach: ambition bites, it eats itself. An ulcer is nothing but eating yourself. You are so tense that you have started eating your own stomach lining. You are so tense, your stomach is so tense, it never relaxes. Whenever the mind is tense, the stomach is tense. Ulcers are the footprints of ambition. If you have ulcers, that shows you are a very successful man.If you have no ulcers, you are a poor man: your life has been a failure, you failed utterly. If you have your first heart attack nearabout forty-two, you are a great success: you must be at least a cabinet minister, or a rich industrialist, or a famous actor; otherwise, how will you explain the heart attack? A heart attack is the definition of success. All successful people will have heart attacks. They have to.The whole system is burdened with toxic elements: ambition, desire, future, tomorrow – which are never there. You lived in dreams. Now your system cannot tolerate it anymore. You remain so tense for the future that tension has become your very style of life. Now it is a deep-rooted habit.At forty-two, again a breakthrough comes. One starts thinking about religion, the other world. Then life seems to be very short. Little time is left. How can you achieve God, nirvana, enlightenment? Hence the theory of reincarnation: don’t be afraid, again you will be born, again and again, and the wheel of life will go on moving and moving. Don’t be afraid: there is enough time, there is enough eternity left – you can attain.That’s why in India three religions were born – Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism – and they don’t agree on any other point except reincarnation. They don’t agree on any other point. Even about such an important theory as God there is not an agreement. Jainas say there is no God, Buddhists say there is no God. Even about a more important theory than God, the theory of the soul, atman – Buddhists say there is no atman, no soul. Such divergent theories! Not even agreeing on the basic foundations: God, self… But they all agree on the theory of reincarnation. There must be something to it.They all need time, because to attain brahman – Hindus call it brahman – much time is needed. It is such a great ambition, and at the age of forty-two, you become interested. Only twenty-eight years are left.And this is just the beginning of the interest. In fact, at the age of forty-two, you become again a child in the world of religion. Only twenty-eight years are left. Time seems too short, not enough at all to attain such great heights – brahman, Hindus call it. Jainas call it moksha, absolute freedom from all past karmas. Thousands and millions of lives have been there in the past; how are you going to cope within twenty-eight years? How will you undo the whole past? Such a vast past is there – bad and good karmas. How are you going to clean your sins completely within twenty-eight years? It seems unjust. God is demanding too much, it is not possible. You will feel frustrated if only twenty-eight years are given to you.And Buddhists – who don’t believe in God, don’t believe in the soul – also believe in reincarnation, nirvana, the final emptiness, the total emptiness. When you have remained filled with so much rubbish for so many lives, how are you going to unburden within twenty-eight years? It is too much, seems an impossible task. They all agree on one thing, that more future is needed, more time is needed.Whenever you have ambition, time is needed. And to me, a religious person is one who does not need time. He is liberated here and now, he achieves to brahman here and now, he is mukta, liberated, enlightened here and now. A religious man does not need time at all because religion happens in a timeless moment. It happens now, it always happens now. It has never happened otherwise, in no other way has it ever happened.At the age of forty-two, the first urge arises, vague, not clear, confused. You are not even aware of what is happening, but you start looking at the temple with keen interest. Sometimes, by the way, as a casual visitor, you come to the church also. Sometimes, having time, not doing anything, you start looking in The Bible which has always been gathering dust on the table. Vague, not exactly clear, just like the small child who is vague about sex starts playing with his own sex organ, not knowing what he is doing. A vague urge… Sometimes one sits alone silently, suddenly feels peaceful, not knowing what he is doing. Sometimes one starts a mantra heard in the childhood. The old grandmother used to do it; feeling tense, one starts repeating it. One starts seeking, searching for a guru, somebody to guide you. One takes initiation, starts learning a mantra, repeating it sometimes, then again forgeting for a few days, again repeating… A vague search, groping…By the forty-ninth year, the search becomes clear; seven years it takes for the search to become clear. Now a determination arises. You are no longer interested in the others, particularly if everything has gone right – and I have to repeat this again and again because it never goes right. At the age of forty-nine, one becomes disinterested in women. A woman becomes disinterested in man – the menopause, the forty-ninth year… The man doesn’t feel like being sexual. The whole thing looks a little juvenile, the whole thing looks a little immature.But society can force… In the East, they have been against sex and they have suppressed sex. When a boy is fourteen they are suppressing sex, and they want to believe that he is still a child: he doesn’t think about girls. Other boys maybe – they always belong to the neighborhood, never your boy; he is innocent, like a child, like an angel. And he looks very innocent, but that’s not true: he fantasizes. The girl has entered his consciousness, has to enter – it is natural – and he has to hide it. He starts masturbating, and he has to hide it. He has wet dreams and he has to hide it.In the East, a boy of fourteen becomes guilty. Something wrong is happening – only to him, because he cannot know that everybody everywhere is doing the same. And much is expected of him – that he should remain an angel, a virgin, not thinking about girls, not even dreaming about girls. But he has become interested and society is suppressing.In the West, this suppression has disappeared, but another has come – and this has to be understood, because it is my feeling that the society can never be non-suppressive. If it changes one suppression, immediately it starts another. Now the next suppression is near the age of forty-nine in the West: people are forced to remain in sex because the whole teaching says, “What are you doing? – a man can be sexually potent up to the age of ninety!” Great authorities are saying it. And if you are not potent, and you are not interested, you start feeling guilty. At the age of forty-nine, a man starts feeling guilty that he is not making as much love as he should.There are teachers who go on teaching: “This is nonsense. You can make love, you can make love up to the age of ninety. Go on making love.” And they say if you don’t make love you will lose potency. If you continue, then your organs continue functioning. If you stop, then they will stop. And once you stop sex, life energy will drop down, you will die soon.If the husband stops, the wife is after him: “What are you doing?” If the wife stops the husband is after her: “This is against the psychologists and may create some perversion!”In the East, we did one stupidity, and in the West also in the ancient days they did the same. It was against religion for a child of fourteen to become sexually potent – and he becomes so naturally. The child cannot do anything, it is beyond his control. What can he do? How can he do it? And all teaching about brahmacharya at the age of fourteen is stupid. You are suppressing. But the old authorities, traditions, gurus, rishis, old psychologists and religious people – they were all against, the whole authority was against. A child was suppressed. Guilt was created. Nature was not allowed.Now just the opposite is happening at the other end. At the age of forty-nine, psychologists are forcing people to continue to make love; otherwise you will lose life. And at the age of forty-nine… As at the age of fourteen sex naturally arises, so at the age of forty-nine it naturally subsides. It has to, because every circle has to be complete.That’s why in India we had decided that at the age of fifty man should start becoming a vanprasth, his eyes should move toward the forest, his back toward the marketplace. Vanprasth is a beautiful word; it means one who starts looking toward the Himalayas, toward the forest. Now his back is toward life and ambitions and desires and all that. Finished. He starts moving toward aloneness, toward being himself.Before this, life was too much and he could not be alone; there were responsibilities to be fulfilled, children to be raised. Now they have become young people. They are married – by the time you are forty-nine your children are getting married, settling. They are no longer hippies, they must be reaching the age of twenty-eight. They will settle – now you can unsettle. Now you can move beyond the home; you can become homeless. At the age of forty-nine, one should start looking toward the forest, moving inward, becoming introvert, becoming more and more meditative and prayerful.At the age of fifty-six, again a change comes, a revolution. Now it is not enough to look toward the Himalayas, one has to really travel, one has to go. Life is ending, death is coming nearer. At the age of forty-nine one becomes disinterested in the other sex. At the age of fifty-six one should become uninterested in others, society, social formalities, the club – Rotary and Lions. At the age of fifty-six, one should resign from all Rotaries, all Lions; it looks foolish now, childish. Go to some Rotary Club or Lions Club and see people, dressed up with their ties and everything. It looks juvenile, childish; what are they doing? Lions – the very name looks foolish. For a small child, good. Now they have for small children Cub clubs, and for women Lioness clubs. For cubs, perfectly right, but for lions and lionesses…? It shows that the minds are mediocre. They have no intelligence, nothing at all.At the age of fifty-six, one should be so mature as to come out of all social entanglements. Finished! One lived enough, learned enough; now one gives thanks to everybody and comes out of it. Fifty-six is the time one should naturally become a sannyasin. One should take sannyas, one should renounce. It is natural – as you enter, so you should renounce. Life should have an entrance and it should also have an exit; otherwise it will be suffocating. You enter and you never come out and then you say you are suffocated, in agony.There is an exit, and that is sannyas. You come out. You are not even interested in others by the age of fifty-six.By the age of sixty-three you again become like a child, only interested in yourself. That is what meditation is – to be moving inward, as if everything has fallen away. Only you exist. Again you have become a child – of course, very much enriched by life, very mature, understanding, with great intelligence. Now you again become innocent. You start moving inward. Only seven years are left, and you have to prepare for death. You have to be ready to die. And what is the readiness to die?To die celebrating is the readiness to die. To die happy, joyfully, to die willingly, welcomingly, is to be ready. Existence gave you an opportunity to learn, and be, and you learned. Now you would like to rest. Now you would like to go to the ultimate home.It was a sojourn. You wandered in a strange land, you lived with strange people, you loved strangers, and you learned much. Now the time has come: the prince must return to his own kingdom.Sixty-three is the time when one becomes completely enclosed in one’s self. The whole energy moves in and in and in, turning in. You become a circle of energy, not moving anywhere. No reading, not much talking. More and more silent, more and more with one’s self, remaining totally independent of all that is around you. The energy by and by subsides.By the age of seventy, you are ready. And if you have followed this natural pattern, just before your death, nine months before your death, you will become aware of it. As a child has to pass nine months in the mother’s womb, the same circle is totally repeated, completely repeated, utterly repeated. By the time death comes, nine months before, you will become aware. Now you are entering the womb again. This womb is no longer outside in the mother, this womb is inside you.Indians call the innermost shrine of a temple the garbha, the womb. When you go to a temple, the innermost part of the temple is called the womb. It is very symbolically called so, very consideredly; it is the womb one has to enter. In the last phase – nine months – one enters oneself, one’s own body becomes the womb. One moves to the innermost shrine where the flame has always been burning, where the light has always been, where the temple is, where the god has always been living.This is the natural process. For this natural process no future is needed. You have to be living naturally this moment. The next moment will come out of it on its own accord – as a child grows and becomes a youth. There is no need to plan for it, one simply becomes; it is natural, it happens. As a river flows and comes to the ocean, the same way you flow, and you come to the final, the ocean. But one should remain natural, floating, and in the moment. Once you start thinking about the future and ambition and desire, you are missing this moment. And this moment missed will create perversion because you will always lack something; there will be a gap.If a child has not lived his childhood well, that unlived childhood will enter his youth – because where will it go? It has to be lived. And when a child is at the age of four and dances and jumps and runs around, butterfly-catching, it is beautiful. But when a young man of twenty runs after butterflies he is crazy. Then you have to admit him to the hospital; he is a mental case. Nothing was wrong with it at the age of four; it was just natural, it was the thing to do. It was the right thing to do; if the child was not running after butterflies something was wrong, he had to be taken to the psychoanalyst.Then it was okay; but when he is twenty and running after butterflies, you should suspect something has gone wrong, he has not grown up. The body has grown, the mind is lagging behind. It must be somewhere in his childhood – he was not allowed to live it completely. If he lives childhood completely, he will become a young man: beautiful, fresh, uncontaminated by the childhood. He will shed childhood as a snake sheds its old skin. He will come out of it fresh. He will have the intelligence of a young man, and he won’t look retarded.Live youth completely. Don’t listen to the Eastern and ancient authorities. Just drop them out of the way. If you meet them on the way, kill them immediately. Don’t listen to them because they have killed youth, they are suppressive of youth. They are against sex, and if a society is against sex, sex will spread all over your life. It will become poison. Live it! Enjoy it!Between the fourteenth and twenty-first year, a boy is at his highest peak of sexuality. In fact, near the age of seventeen or eighteen he reaches the peak of sexuality. Never will he be so potent. And if those moments are missed he will never achieve the beautiful orgasm that could have been achieved near the age of seventeen or eighteen.I am in a continuous difficulty because society forces you to remain celibate, at least up to the twenty-first year. That means the greatest possibility of achieving sex, learning sex, entering sex, will be missed. By the time you reach twenty-one, twenty-two, you are already old as far as sex is concerned! Near the age of seventeen you were at the peak – so potent, so powerful, that the orgasm, the sexual orgasm, would have spread to your very cells. Your whole body would have taken a bath of eternal bliss.And when I say sex can become samadhi, I don’t say it for people who are seventy, remember. I am saying it for people who are seventeen. Old men come to me and they say, “We have read your book, From Sex to Superconsciousness, but we never achieve anything like this.”How can you achieve it? You have missed the time, and it cannot be replaced. And I am not responsible; society is responsible, and you listened to it.If between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one a child is allowed to have free sex, absolutely free sex, he will never bother about sex. He will be completely free. He will not look at the magazines Playboy and Playgirl. He will not hide nude, ugly, obscene pictures in the cupboard or in The Bible. He will not go out of his way to throw things at women. He will not become a bottom-pincher. These things are ugly, simply ugly, but you go on tolerating them and not feeling what is happening, why everybody is neurotic.Once you find a chance to rub against a woman’s body, you never miss it. What ugliness! – rubbing against a body. Something has remained unfulfilled in you. And when an old man looks with lustful eyes, there is nothing like that; it is the ugliest thing in the world when an old man looks with lust in his eyes. His eyes should be innocent now, he must be finished by now. Not that sex is something ugly; remember, I am not saying sex is ugly. Sex is beautiful at its own time and season, and it is ugly out of season, out of time. Sex is a disease when it is in a ninety-year-old man. That’s why people say “dirty old man.” It is dirty.A young man is beautiful, sexual. He shows vitality, life. An old man, sexual, shows an unlived life, an empty life, immature. He missed the opportunity and now he cannot do anything, but he goes on thinking, rambling in the mind about sex, fantasizing.Remember, between the fourteenth and the twenty-first year, a right society will allow absolute freedom for sex. And then society will become less sexual automatically. Beyond this time there will be no sex; the disease will not be there. Live it when the moment is ripe and forget it when the moment has gone. But that you can do only if you have lived; otherwise you cannot forget and you cannot forgive. You will cling, it will become a wound inside.In the East, don’t listen to the authorities, whatever they say. Listen to nature. When nature says it is time to love, love. When nature says it is time to renounce, renounce. And don’t listen to the foolish psychoanalysts and psychologists in the West. Howsoever refined instruments they have – Masters and Johnson and others – and however many vaginas they have been testing and examining, they don’t know life.In fact, I suspect that these Masters and Johnsons and Kinseys in the West are voyeurs. They themselves are ill about sex; otherwise who bothers to watch one thousand vaginas with instruments – watching what is happening inside when a woman makes love? Who bothers? What nonsense! But when things become perverted, this type of thing happens. Now Masters and Johnsons have become the experts, the final authorities. If you are having any sexual problem, they are the final authority to go to. And I suspect they have missed their youth, they have not lived their sex lives rightly. Somewhere something is lacking and they are fulfilling it through such tricks.And when a thing is in the garb of science you can do anything. Now they have made false, electric penises, and those electric penises go on throbbing in the real vaginas, and they go on trying to find what is happening inside, whether orgasm is clitoral or vaginal, what hormones are flowing, what hormones are not flowing, and how long a woman can make love. They say: to the very end. A woman can make love on her deathbed.In fact, their suggestion is that after menopause a woman can make better love than ever – that means after the forty-ninth year. Why do they say that? – because, they say, before the forty-ninth a woman is always afraid of getting pregnant. Even if she is on the pill, no pill is a hundred percent proof; there is a fear. By the forty-ninth year, when the menopause comes and the period stops, then there is no fear; a woman is completely free.If their teaching spreads women are going to become vampires, and old women will chase men because they are unafraid and the authority sanctions it. In fact, they say that then is the right time to enjoy – without any responsibility. For men also they go on saying the same. And they have come across men – so now they say there is no average – they have come across a man who in his sixtieth year can make love five times a day. This man seems to be a freak. Something is wrong with his hormones and his body. And at the age of sixty! He is not natural, because as I see it – and this I am saying out of my own experiences in many lives, I can remember them – by the forty-ninth year a natural man is not interested in women; the interest goes. As it comes, it goes.Everything that comes has to go. Everything that arises has to fall. Every wave that arises has to disappear. There must be a time when it goes. At fourteen it comes; at forty-nine or nearabout it goes.But a man making love five times a day at the age of sixty – something is wrong, something is very, very wrong. His body is not functioning rightly. It is the other end of impotence, the other extreme. When a boy of fourteen does not feel any sex, a young man of eighteen has no desire, something is wrong – he has to be treated. When a man of sixty needs to make love five times a day, something is wrong. His body has gone berserk. It is not functioning rightly, naturally.If you live in the moment totally, then there is no need to worry for the future. A rightly lived childhood brings you to a right, ripe youth – flowing, vital, alive, a wild ocean of energy. A rightly lived youth brings you to the very settled calm and quiet life. A calm and quiet life brings you to a religious inquiry: What is life? Living is not enough, one has to penetrate the mystery. A calm and quiet life brings you to meditative moments. Meditation brings you to renounce all that is useless now, just junk, garbage. The whole of life becomes garbage; only one thing remains always eternally valuable, and that is your awareness.By the time of the seventieth year, when you are ready to die – if you lived everything rightly, in the moment, never postponing for the future, never dreaming for the future, you lived in the moment totally, whatsoever it was – nine months before your death you will become aware… You have attained that much awareness, you can see: now death is coming.Many saints have declared their deaths, but I have not come across a single instance when the death was declared earlier than nine months. Exactly nine months before, a man of awareness, uncluttered with the past – because one who never thinks of the future will never think of the past. They are together, the past and future are together, joined together. When you think of the future, it is nothing but the projection of the past; when you think of the past, it is nothing but trying to plan for the future. They are together. The present is out of them. A man who lives in this moment now and here is not cluttered with the past and not cluttered with the future. He remains unburdened. He has no burden to carry, he moves without weight. Gravitation doesn’t affect him. In fact, he doesn’t walk, he flies. He has wings.Before he dies, exactly nine months before, he will become aware that death is coming. And he will enjoy and he will celebrate and he will tell people, “My ship is coming, and I am only on this bank a little while more. Soon I will be going to my home. This life has been beautiful, a strange experience. I loved, learned, lived much, I am enriched. I had come here with nothing and I am going with much experience, much maturity.”He will be thankful to all that has happened – both good and bad, both right and wrong both, because he learned from everything, not only from right, from wrong also. Sages that he came across, he learned from them; and sinners, yes, from them also – they all helped. People who robbed him helped, people who helped him helped; people who were friends helped, people who were enemies helped. Everything helped. Summer and winter, satiety and hunger, everything helped. One can be thankful to all.When one is thankful to all, and ready to die celebrating for this opportunity that was there, death becomes beautiful. Then death is not the enemy, it is the greatest friend, because it is the crescendo of life. It is the highest peak that life achieves. It is not the end of life, it is the climax. It looks like the end because you have never known life. To one who has known life it appears as the very crescendo, the very peak, the highest peak.Death is the culmination, the fulfillment. Life does not end in it; in fact, life flowers in it, it is the flower. But to know the beauty of death, one has to be ready for it, one has to learn the art. That’s why I go on saying that I am here to teach you how to die. A master is a death. He allows you to die in him. He helps you to die every moment to the past, and he helps you to live an uncluttered moment – this moment.This small parable is beautiful. It says:Uwais Al-Qarni was offered some money…Money is a symbol of the future. Why do you accumulate money? – for the future. Money is future, money is hidden future; that’s why people who don’t live in the present will always cling to money. They can afford to lose love but they cannot afford to lose money, because love is not a promise for the future. It may be good right now but what will you do in your old age? Be miserly, accumulate money, because in the future money will be helpful.Why are people so mad after money? It is a symbol of future. Money is future. Money is condensed future in a coin, in a note. It is a promise for the future. Every note says, “I promise that this much amount of money whenever demanded will be given to you.” It is a promise for the future.Misers never live here, they cannot. They live in their money. Uwais is an enlightened master. He was offered some money. It is a symbol, a symbol for the future. He was offered some future – let me put it that way.He said: “I do not need it as I already have a coin.”Already I have a coin, I don’t need it. Right now I am living, he said. And right now it is enough. I have a coin. What coin? This moment is the coin. It is a single coin, a very small coin. You can live it herenow, it is not of much use for the future. It is such a small coin, you will look foolish if you gather it for the future. A moment is so small, it is a coin. Time is a promissory note, a thousand rupee note, a one lakh rupee note, a one crore rupee note. Time is big money. A moment – it is just a drop, a small coin.“I do not need it as I already have a coin,” said Uwais.The other must not have understood. Difficult, difficult when you talk to a man like Uwais. He has a different language, you have a different language; communication becomes impossible.The other said: “How long will that last you? – it is nothing.”And he was looking at the coin, thinking of the coin; he did not understand what Uwais is saying. He said, “How long will it last you?” The present moment, how long can it last? It is such a small coin. It will be finished.“Don’t think of the moment,” say the wiser ones. They say, “Think of the future.” Say the wiser ones: “Don’t think of the immediate, how long will it last you? Think of the future.” And I tell you, these “wiser” ones are the poisoners of humanity. They have poisoned your mind completely…because the immediate is all that is there. The immediate moment is the only reality that is there. Howsoever small, it is the only reality. And your promissory notes, howsoever big amount they promise in the future, are simply promissory notes. The future never comes. No governor-general of the reserve bank can give you the guarantee for the future. Future? – who can guarantee it? who can predict it? How long will it last you? It is nothing, just a moment.The wiser ones say, “Don’t live the momentary life.” They say, “Think of the future.” They say, “Don’t live just here and now, look ahead! Think of the long range – not only of this world, of the other world also. Think of heaven and hell, moksha, Brahman, nirvana.” And I say to you, these wiser ones are poisoners. The real wisdom consists in being here and now because for the real wisdom that is the only existence, there is no other existence. It is the only existence there is.Uwais answered: “Guarantee me that I shall live longer than this sum will suffice me and I will accept your gift.”It is a beautiful dialogue. Uwais said: Guarantee me that I shall live longer, longer than this moment, this small coin. Can you guarantee me that I will live the next moment? Can you guarantee me that I will live tomorrow? If you cannot guarantee me that then please let me live today. If you cannot guarantee the next moment, then howsoever small this moment is please let me live it right now. Once lost, it is lost forever, and you cannot guarantee the next. So why should I waste my small coin for bigger coins which cannot be guaranteed?Future is never; only this moment is. Don’t listen to so-called wise ones who are really foolish. Listen to life! And listen to existence. It is better to go to the trees and listen how they live, go to the animals and watch how they live. Look all around, except at man. Man is perverted. Look at existence and see how existence lives – it lives moment to moment, with no planning for the future. That’s why it is so beautiful, it is so ecstatic. Its ecstasy knows no boundaries. From one moment it flows into the other, but it never thinks of the other. One moment lived totally automatically brings another moment, with more possibilities – because the other moment is not coming from somewhere else, it grows out of you as leaves grow out of trees.If the tree has been healthy, lived really, then out of beautiful trees come beautiful leaves, beautiful flowers and fruits. It need not worry about them. Have you seen any tree sitting like Rodin’s statue of “The Thinker” with the hand on the head, wrinkles on the forehead, thinking how to bring fruits, how to flower this season again? where to go? who are the experts to ask? where to find a guru? It doesn’t bother. Even if gurus come to them and talk to them they won’t listen. They will say, “Go somewhere else, find some stupid human being. Here no gurus are needed. We are already okay, absolutely okay. “When the time comes the tree flowers. When the time comes it is laden with fruits. When the time comes, fruits are ripe, ready to fall, die into the earth, create new seeds, new trees – and the circle goes on and on and on. It is eternal. From each moment is born another moment – it comes out of it. Live it as totally as possible, because through that totality another will be born.Uwais said: “Guarantee that I shall live longer than this sum will suffice me.”This small coin of the moment seems to be enough for me because who can guarantee that there is going to be another moment for me to live? If you can guarantee it, I will accept your gift.Nobody can guarantee the future. Only the present is. Live it as deeply, as ecstatically, as dancingly as possible, because from it will come the next….I don’t talk to you about the next life because I don’t talk about even the next moment. The next life will come, I know. It comes, it always comes, why bother…? You live this life totally and the next will come out of this. If this has been beautiful the next is going to be better than this.This moment will decide the fate of the next moment that is going to follow. There is no other way. Death is the only guarantee. This moment lived well is the only guarantee for the next moment which is going to follow it, because it is not following really, it is coming out of it, it is an outcome. You are growing each moment. Don’t leave gaps, otherwise those gaps will hang around you. They will be holes in your being. In those holes will be wounds, and they will color your whole life to come.Die to the past. Die to the future and live in the present.Death is the only message that I would like to give to you – and if you can allow, millions of things will become possible to you. Let me repeat the Sufi saying: Simply trust. Do not the petals flutter down just like that? Trust life. Trust this moment here and now and allow things to take their own shape. You need not worry, there is no need to worry. Trust life, simply trust.Do not the petals flutter down just like that?Go and see a rose, and by the evening the petals are fluttering down toward the earth, going to rest. They lived their day. They enjoyed, they enjoyed the strong wind, they took the challenge, they rose high to the sky. They have spread their fragrance to the four winds – the winds have taken it already to the corners of the earth. They loved the sun, they played with it a little while. Their day is over. Now they don’t cling. Now they don’t hesitate to fall. They are ready.A beautiful life creates a beautiful death, because death is nothing but the whole life condensed again in a seed.Now the petals are falling. Evening has come. The sun has set, the night will take over. The death has come, the petals are falling toward the earth. They don’t hesitate. They don’t know where they are going, they don’t know whether there is any earth down there or not – maybe it is a bottomless abyss – but they don’t doubt, they don’t hesitate.When you have lived your life, trust arises. It arises – it is an afterglow of a lived life.Petals falling, fluttering down toward the earth. Simply trust – do not the petals flutter down just like that? And everything – God, moksha, nirvana – everything, I say to you, becomes possible.Just trust. Just like that.Enough for today.

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Joshu The Lions Roar 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Joshu The Lions Roar 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Joshu, also known as Chao-Chou, was born in 778. When he first met Nansen, Joshu entered the master’s room in the monastery. Nansen was lying down, and his first question to Joshu was: “Where have you come from?””From the Jui-hsiang temple,” replied Joshu. (“Jui-hsiang” means holy image).“Do you still see the holy image?” Nansen asked.“No, I don’t,” replied Joshu, “I only see the Tathagata lying down.”At this, Nansen got up, saying, “Are you a monk who has a master or one without a master?”“With a master,” replied Joshu.“Who is your master?” Nansen asked.“Early spring is cold,” said Joshu. “I am so glad that you are well.”Nansen called the senior monk and said, “Give him special treatment.”Maneesha, Joshu is one of those exceptional people who become enlightened without any formal initiation. They are nobody’s disciple. It is a very exceptional case. But the story of Joshu is going to be very beautiful. His each statement is so poetic, so pregnant, that unless you listen in utter silence, you will miss its fragrance, its meaning, its penetrating insight into reality.Joshu is one of the most loved masters in the Zen tradition. There have been great masters, but nobody has been loved so much as Joshu – and he deserved it. His working on people, on disciples, was so soft, so delicate, that only a poet can manage it…a great craftsmanship in carving buddhas out of the stones of humanity.Every man is just a big rock. It needs a craftsman, a great artist, a sculptor, who with loving hands removes all that is unessential and leaves only that which is absolutely essential.That absolutely essential is our buddha.You will see the working of Joshu and you will fall in love with the man, in this anecdote Maneesha has brought.Joshu, also known as Chao-Chou, was born in 778. When he first met Nansen, Joshu entered the master’s room in the monastery. Nansen was lying down, and his first question to Joshu was: “Where have you come from?”It has to be understood that the same questions have been asked by different masters to different disciples again and again. They don’t mean exactly what you understand. When Nansen, lying down, says, “Where have you come from?” it does not mean that he is asking Joshu’s address. He is asking his original source. He is asking, “From where have you suddenly appeared into existence? Where have you been before your birth? Where have you been before your parents were born?” Certainly somewhere….”From the Jui-hsiang temple,” replied Joshu. (“Jui-hsiang” means holy image).Now there is something to be told to you which is not directly said in this anecdote. There used to be a very ancient temple, Jui-hsiang, meaning holy image – a temple of Buddha. But it has disappeared through natural disaster, in an earthquake. That must have been before Joshu was born. His statement that he is coming from Jui-hsiang temple…and Jui-hsiang temple exists no more!In Japan the earthquake is a daily experience. That’s why wood and bamboo have become so important in Japan. You cannot make houses of marble; any moment the earthquake can come and then it will be very dangerous, it will kill. You can make only very thin walls; most of the walls are made of paper. You have to use very lightweight material, so even if the earthquake comes it cannot kill you. Just because of those earthquakes, bamboo has taken on a special significance in Japanese life.Joshu’s saying that he is coming from Jui-hsiang temple means that he remembers his past life, that he was a priest in the Jui-hsiang temple which exists no more.“Do you still see the holy image?” Nansen asked.…because it was said that that temple had a really beautiful image. Just because of earthquakes, in Japan they started making Buddha statues of wood. India has never known any images of wood, but China and Japan had to change from marble to wood. The wooden image could survive an earthquake. Wood is not so hard, it is soft; but a stone image is bound to get shattered.Nansen asked him – he did not say anything about his past life. He could see that what Joshu was saying was right.When you encounter a master, before you tell him anything about your being, he knows it. You cannot lie, you can only be authentic and true. Nansen did not ask for any proof, for any validation, for any argument, even though that temple had disappeared long before. On the contrary, he asked, “Do you still see the holy image? We have heard it had a very beautiful image of Buddha which was destroyed. Do you still see it?”“No, I don’t,” replied Joshu, “I only see the Tathagata lying down.”Nansen was lying down. Now without saying directly that “You are the buddha; now what have I to do with any holy image?”…this subtleness, this beauty! Joshu says, “I only see the Tathagata” – Tathagata is another name of Gautam Buddha – “lying down in front of me. Who cares about images when you are facing the buddha himself?” All that is implied in it. He has already accepted Nansen as an enlightened being.At this, Nansen got up, saying, “Are you a monk who has a master or one without a master?”Seeing Joshu’s great insight, that he declares that the Tathagata is lying in front of him, so who bothers about images…this is not an ordinary man. Nansen simply got up and asked,“Are you a monk who has a master or one without a master?”“With a master.”Remember the word with. He is saying, “I am already with the master. What are you talking about?” He did not say, “I don’t have a master” and he did not say, “I have a master.” He said, “With a master.”That’s why I told you that he never became formally a disciple. His clarity, his enlightenment was so close when he came to Nansen that there was no need for him to be initiated. He was going to explode into light any moment. The season was ripe, the time was right. Any moment the fruit is going to fall down from the tree, as it becomes completely ripe. It is only a question of a few moments.His answer is of tremendous beauty. He does not say, “I don’t have a master” and he does not say, “I have a master.”“With a master,” replied Joshu.“Who is your master?”Nansen is poking him, to see whether he is simply talking like a parrot or he really knows.“Early spring is cold,” said Joshu. “I am so glad that you are well.”He did not answer the question, “Who is your master?” but simply indicated that, “I am with a master. Early spring is very cold and I am so glad that you are well.” Such an indirect and delicate, so sweet an answer.Nansen called the senior monk and said, “Give him special treatment.”He should not be thought just an ordinary monk. There were thousands…“Give him special treatment.” He is almost enlightened and he does not need any guidance.” Special treatment just means, give him opportunity, space, love, an atmosphere of friendliness, so he can blossom into a flower. He is already bursting to be a flower. He cannot remain a bud much longer, so give him special treatment.On both sides it is a very special encounter. Nansen did not ask him to become a disciple. He accepted him as a guest. He gave him the same treatment as he would have given to an enlightened person. Neither did Joshu ask Nansen to accept him as a disciple. There is no need – Nansen will do everything that is necessary. All these formalities of being a disciple are put aside. Joshu can see Nansen, his radiant buddhahood, and he is absolutely satisfied that just sitting by his side is enough. No formality is needed. On both sides it is understood that it is an informal relationship.Joshu is a master soon to reach to his ultimate peak, and Nansen is happy to give him special treatment. It is very rare, perhaps the only case, because I have not come across any case in which the master says, “Give him special treatment.” But it happens, rarely, that such a ripe person comes. Even if he had not come, he would have become a buddha. Now that he has come it does not mean that Nansen should take advantage of his coming and make him his disciple. All those are marketplace values. Nansen is happy that Joshu is going to flower soon, and Joshu is happy that Nansen is well, healthy, and he has found a living buddha. Nothing is said directly, but everything is understood clearly by both.Soseki, a Zen poet, wrote:At those times when I cannot decidethe way back where I came from,anywhere I go becomes the road home.He is saying, if you don’t know from where you have come, don’t be worried. Just go on: any road is going to end up at your home.In this world, you should think of a center and a circumference. From the center to the circumference you can join many different lines. You don’t know from where you have come, you don’t know the center…no need to worry. Just stick to one path that is going inward and you will reach.Soseki is very representative; this is the case with everybody. You don’t know your center…and I go on insisting, “Go to the center.” And I know perfectly well that you don’t know your center. So where will you go? But I know that wherever you go, just go – if you go with your full energy, then you are going to end up at the very source of your being. This is such a valid experience of thousands of mystics that there is no anxiety about it.I have not told you where the center is. I know only one thing, that if you go inward with your totality and urgency, you will reach it. Nobody has ever missed. The moment you are total and there is urgency the center pulls you – the center itself pulls you toward itself. You don’t go, you are being pulled.It is just that you have to be together. That togetherness is the problem. People are so fragmentary that even when I say totality, urgency, you think perhaps it is for somebody else – “I am not going to die this moment.” But that somebody else may be you! Some moment you are going to die – why not this moment? Who knows?And in the moment of death, if you have not been going and coming, in and out, and you have not made the path clean from the circumference to the center, you will not be able to in the moment of death. It has to be done when you are alive, so fully alive that you can gather all your energy and go toward the center. Totality and urgency are the absolute prerequisites. If you go in a lousy way, just with a curiosity in the mind – “Let us see, what is in?” – you will not enter in.A curious mind has no way inward. To reach your center a tremendous intensity is needed. You have to gather yourself, all that you have, into a single spearhead. Then don’t be worried: go with speed, and wherever you reach will be the center of your being. You cannot go anywhere else.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Does where we have come from have some significance in relation to where we are going?No, Maneesha, because it is the same place. Where you have come from and where you are going is the same place. These are not two places, so there is no question of any significance.There is no need to bother about from where you have come. That is a long route, a very long route. A few people have done that, and it creates a tremendous anguish that you cannot even conceive. One life is enough to make anybody insane, but remembering backward, other lives…and you don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of lives you have lived, because for four million years you have been here on this planet. And that is also not the end.To those who have been concerned with that problem, it is a necessary question: from where have we come to this planet and in what way? Life must have come to this planet from another planet which was dying either because of a natural disaster, or because the beings who lived there destroyed it by creating something like nuclear weapons. But something must have happened on some planet. There are five hundred planets on which life can exist. We must have come as seeds from some other planet.So even if you go backward…which is a very difficult process, but possible if you are stubborn enough, like Mahavira. He is a very stubborn man. I don’t think there is any parallel. He lived naked and he would not speak. For twelve years he was absolutely silent – so silent that one day he was standing by the side of a river under a tree meditating…And he would never meditate sitting, simply because sitting is a very comfortable position. He did not like Gautam Buddha’s posture; that was too comfortable. In that comfortable posture there is so much possibility of your falling into dreams, into sleep. But standing, it is very difficult to fall into dreams or sleep. You have to remain awake. Mahavira is the only man who has meditated standing.So he was meditating under the tree. And a man brought his cows to the river, and as the cows were drinking water, and Mahavira was standing to the side under the tree, somebody came running to the man – he had brought almost a hundred cows – and told him, “Your house is on fire, you are required immediately.” But to leave these hundred cows in the forest…Then he saw a good point, that this man was standing there. So he told Mahavira, “You are standing here anyway, just keep a little watch over my cows and I will be coming back soon.” He did not bother even to consider that Mahavira had not answered, and he had no idea who he was.Mahavira was in his meditation. He did not bother about anybody’s cows. He did not bother about his own kingdom, he had left it – he has to look after the cows? And the cows went into the shade under the trees, behind the hedges. When the man came back, there was not a single cow, and this man was standing there. He asked, “Where are my cows?” And Mahavira would not speak. The man said, “You are a strange fellow. Do you hear me or not?”But Mahavira remained just like stone. The man said, “My god, it seems he is deaf and dumb both! Neither he speaks nor he listens, and I left my cows in his care and all are gone. The forest is deep, with wild animals. How am I going to find one hundred cows alone?” He went into the forest to look.But the cows had not gone very far; they were just behind Mahavira, resting under big trees. When they had rested there, they again came back, close to Mahavira. The man came back from the forest very frustrated. There had not been a sign of a single cow and here he saw all hundred cows standing next to Mahavira! He said, “This man seems to be a thief. He was playing a really great game: to me he was pretending that he is deaf and dumb, so I go into the forest and meanwhile he has gathered all the cows! If I had gone farther, he would have escaped. He was just waiting for the sun to set.” Just pure imagination of his own….He became so angry that he took two pieces of wood and hammered them into Mahavira’s ears – “I will give you a lesson. This deafness, this dumbness – you will be really deaf.” Still, Mahavira stood there. He did not say anything. Both ears were gone, blood was flowing….The story is tremendously beautiful. At this point it seems it becomes more metaphorical. In Indian mythology the god of the clouds and the lightning is called Indra. Indra was watching what was happening, and he was very concerned that an innocent man who had not done anything was being punished without reason or rhyme. So Indra came down from the clouds and told Mahavira, “You have decided to remain silent for twelve years. You will not survive if such things go on happening. I can appoint two bodyguards who can look after you.”This dialogue must have happened just mind-to-mind, because Mahavira would not speak. But mind-to-mind he said to Indra, “I am grateful that nature – and you represent nature – takes care of the innocent. But don’t be worried, it won’t happen again and again. It has not happened before. And I cannot afford two bodyguards; I want to be absolutely alone. These ears and these eyes, this body is going to be burned on a funeral pyre one day, so what is there to be worried about?”Indra said, “You are very stubborn.”And Mahavira told him, “Without being stubborn I cannot enter into my past lives. These twelve years of silence are just an effort to pierce all barriers and reach to the place from where I have come. Unless I know from where I have come, how can I go back to the source? How can I make the circle complete?”That was Mahavira’s attitude: first you have to know from where you have come. But that is not my attitude because there is no need to get into that unnecessary trouble. It is not small; it is tremendous, because it is not only remembering, it is really living your past lives. Everything becomes so complex and dense; you are surrounded by black clouds upon clouds. You need a tremendous willpower to go on and on to find the place from where you have come. This is unnecessary torture, and I am never in favor of any unnecessary torture.I have heard about a man who was driving his car near New Delhi. He asked an old man who was sitting under a tree, collecting wood, “How far is New Delhi?”The old man said, “The way you are going, if you go directly, it is very far. You will have to go around the whole earth because you have left Delhi eight miles behind. Now it is up to you: if you are stubborn, then go ahead. If you are sensible, just turn the car around and go back.”My approach is, when the thing can be done in a simple way and without any torturing…It is absolutely absurd – forget about where you are coming from. One thing is certain, you have come. Now the best way and the easiest way is to look where you are going, because ultimately you will find that the point you reach is also the point from where you have come. This is the way life becomes a perfect circle.So I don’t see any necessity, Maneesha, to remember from where you are coming. But both Buddhism and Jainism, and only these two religions, have worked out ways to enter into the past. Jainism has gone very deep into the science of remembering the whole past. And because of this arduous methodology adopted by Mahavira, Jainas have remained a very small minority. Who is going to suffer so much? Life in itself is enough suffering; why invite more suffering, suffering that you have forgotten, that you have passed? How many wives you had…just remembering all those wives will not give you any insight but only migraine! How many husbands…all kinds of idiots, and just to remember them will be living a ghost life. There is no need.Buddhism tried a little, but did not go very far into it. After Buddha, a very few monks tried but it never became a specialty of Buddhism. But Jainism is a very particular case. Buddhism became a world religion – the whole of the Far East became Buddhist – while Jainism remained a small community in India. Only three and a half million is their number today. If Mahavira has converted one couple twenty-five hundred years ago, that one couple would have produced three and a half million by this time!So you can understand that Mahavira could not convince many people. He was offering such an arduous way that only a few adventurers who loved the impossible became interested in him. Buddha and Mahavira were contemporaries. Buddha’s path is more soft, more human; Mahavira is absolutely dry, very stern. Buddha’s path moves through a garden; Mahavira chooses to move through deserts where even drinking water will not be available. But just different, unique personalities….Maneesha, you need not be unnecessarily trying to find out where you come from. You already have migraine, do you want it more? Poor Maneesha suffers from migraine. I suffered from migraine for almost fifteen years, so I know what it means. It is almost as if your head is splitting in two. The desire arises to hit the head against the wall.But a strange incident happened….I was in Jalgaon, very close to here, and it is one of the hottest places in summer. I had just reached there, it must have been two o’clock in the afternoon, and I was so tired and I had a migraine. So I told my host that first I would like to take a shower.I went into his bathroom, and they had their taps wrongly fitted. I thought it was cold water but it was hot water, and I turned it full on, on my head. And then I jumped – because it was not cold, it was absolutely hot! But in that jump I forgot about the migraine. Since then it has not come. What happened I don’t know; I simply forgot, the shock was so much. That day I understood the wise saying, that if you have a small trouble the only way to cure it is to find a bigger trouble. Then you will forget about it.That day I understood why Mulla Nasruddin used to wear his shoes one size too small. The owner of the shoe shop asked him again and again, “Why do you suffer? You always come limping, and again ask for the size that is not for you – it is one size too small. And all day long the whole town knows how much suffering you are going through. Just think – one size smaller shoe!”Nasruddin said, “You don’t know the philosophy behind it. Because of this shoe, no trouble, no anxiety touches me. This is such an anxiety that I don’t have anything left except the shoes and waiting to die. Nothing else matters. And besides, when I reach home in the evening and I take the shoes off…what relief! Where else can you get such relief?!”It is almost what was being done, unknowingly, in the EST program. For eight hours you cannot go to the bathroom. After two or three hours it starts becoming difficult, and there comes a moment when you cannot contain it anymore. But you have committed to the program and you cannot get up and go to the bathroom. The bathroom is locked and everybody will laugh at you, that you are not courageous enough. So everybody is trying to be courageous enough.Then suddenly somebody, in spite of himself, just looks down and he sees – what is he doing? He does not want to do it, but now it is not under his control. The bladder can contain only a certain quantity of water, now it is a flood. But it brings such a great relief. And once one person does it, everybody else is doing it. And they tell their friends, “It is something to experience – the relief! We have never known such a relief.”So Maneesha, there is no need to know such kinds of relief. Simpler ways are available, and I am in favor of the simple and the obvious. Just find out where you are: that is the point from where you started going out and to where you have to go back.Your original source is also your ultimate goal.Now it is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.Poor Sardar Gurudayal Singh has to wait so long and contain himself. I have known him for thirty-five years. He would have become enlightened any day, but just because of the jokes…he is a joke addict. He thinks, “If I become enlightened, then what about tomorrow’s jokes? So postpone; enlightenment is not something that you are going to lose. Any day you can become enlightened, but meanwhile enjoy the jokes first.”Mrs. Wimple and her little boy Willie get onto the bus. She pays one fare and walks off down the aisle of the bus, towing Willie by the hand.“Just a minute, lady,” says the conductor. “You will have to pay the fare for your little boy, too.”“But he is only three years old,” protests Mrs. Wimple.“Well,” replies the conductor, “he looks more like seven to me.”“But he can’t be!” cries Mrs. Wimple. “I have only been married for four years.”“Look, lady,” replies the conductor, “I only want your money, not a confession!”There is a nasty accident at the London lunatic asylum, when one of the inmates falls down the well.Loony Larry sees the situation and suddenly, to everyone’s amazement, lowers himself down to the water on the end of a rope. After an incredible effort, Loony Larry manages to pull his fellow inmate out.The media get to hear about the event, and the Channel Four News team are soon at the lunatic asylum to interview Loony Larry, the hero.“That was an outstanding act of human courage and compassion,” says Walter Wicket, the TV reporter, into his microphone.“Thank you very much,” replies Loony Larry, grinning sheepishly.“And can you tell me,” continues Walter, “right now where is the man you saved?”“Oh!” says Larry, pointing to the flagpole. “I just hung him out to dry!”“My god!” says Doctor Snooze, the hypnotist, to his newly-arrived patient, Herman. “You look ghastly. What has been happening to you?”“Well, Doc,” explains Herman, sprawling out on the couch. “I just got married and my wife Suzie is so gorgeous that we make love five times every night! And I never get any sleep.”“I see!” says Snooze. “Well listen, I will show you how to hypnotize yourself so that you can just go to sleep every night.“When you go to bed, you just lie down and tell each part of your body to go to sleep, piece by piece.”“Thanks, Doc,” says Herman, “I’ll try it.” And he staggers home.That night, after a large dinner, Herman goes into the bedroom, leaving Suzie to do the washing up. Herman slips under the sheets and starts hypnotizing himself.“Toes!” commands Herman, “go to sleep!”“Feet!” orders Herman, “go to sleep!”“Legs!” directs Herman, “go to sleep!”“Body!” yawns Herman, “go to sleep!”“Head!” sighs Herman, “go to sleep!”Just then the door opens and Suzie glides into the bedroom wearing a tiny see-through nightgown.One of Herman’s eyes pops open, and slowly absorbs the gorgeous woman climbing into bed.“Quick,” he shouts. “Everybody wake up!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes, feel the body completely frozen.Now look inward with your total consciousness, with an urgency, as if this is the last moment of your life. Deeper and deeper – go like a spear. You will reach to the center without fail.The center of your being is also the center of existence. So many roses blossom, so much beauty, such grace and such splendor. Rejoice in this fortunate moment.The world has forgotten the language and the golden path that leads you to your own treasure.Truth is here, good is here, beauty is here. From this source arises everything and to this source everything comes back.This is the eternal source of existence.Just a small taste of it and you are no more the same person. You start becoming a buddha.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax. Let go of the body and the mind.You are neither, you are just a witness.This witnessing is the very golden key, the master key that opens all the mysteries of existence.Feel the buddha as deeply, as intimately as possible. The buddha is another name of your witnessing power, and you have to live it around the clock, in all your activities.Be graceful, be aware, behave the way Buddha would have behaved.Go on reminding yourself the whole day long that you belong to the transcendental, that you are not part of the mundane existence.Your home is of the eternal, of the sacred.This evening was beautiful in itself. But the presence of ten thousand buddhas witnessing together has made it especially beautiful. In this witnessing you have dissolved your individuality. I can see only an ocean of consciousness without any waves. The Buddha Hall has become one oceanic consciousness.This is what makes a place holy.This moment you are at the highest peak of consciousness, of joy, of benediction. Soon you will be called back. Start collecting all the flowers and the fragrance. When you come back, come as a buddha.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but reminding yourself how Buddha would have come – with grace, with silence, with peace.Sit for a few minutes just to recollect where you have been, the space, the golden path.This will prepare you for the lion’s roar.Buddha has said that a man, when he becomes enlightened, gives a lion’s roar. This series that we have started today is named Joshu-The Lion’s Roar.Remember your beauty as a lion,as a tremendous power, as a great aloneness.The moment you roar,all the valleys will echo it.All the hearts which are empty will echo it.One buddha can trigger off thousands of buddhas in the world. This is going to be your message. To a dying world, you are the last hope.

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Joshu The Lions Roar 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Joshu The Lions Roar 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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On first entering Nansen’s monastery, Joshu was made to serve in the kitchen as the stoker. One day he closed all the doors and piled wood on the fire until the whole kitchen was filled with smoke. Then he shouted, “Fire! Fire! Come to my rescue!”When the whole community had flocked to the door, he said, “I will not open the door unless you can say the right word.” No answer came from the crowd. But Nansen silently passed the key through a window hole. This was the right word that Joshu had in mind, and he opened the door immediately.Maneesha, Joshu is a very rare case. Joshu had become a priest when he was still a child and experienced his first satori when he was seventeen. He said of this experience: “Suddenly, I was ruined and homeless.”This statement, after having the first glimpse of enlightenment, is of tremendous significance. He says, “Suddenly I was ruined. Whatever I was before, is all ruined. I was not that. I had cultivated a personality, a mind, a heart – nothing of that was me. The satori left me suddenly ruined and homeless. The home that I had made for myself according to the rules of the society, among the crowd, a cozy place…enlightenment, just the first glimpse of it, has taken away all. I am standing alone, homeless, shattered, ruined.”But this is only one part of the experience. The other part, he is not saying. The other part cannot be said. Only those who enter the experience know the other part.The first part can be said: that the old is gone. We all know the old, but the new we don’t know. So when the new comes, it brings a problem: you can say what has been ruined, what has been shattered, what has been taken away, but you cannot say what have you got. On that point there is utter silence.That’s why he is talking about only one part of it, the first part. The second part has to be experienced. The second part is finding your real home. The second part is finding your original face. The second part is finding your eternity. But these are mere words if not experienced. Experienced, they are the only true realities.Everything depends on experience. Zen is experiential. It is not a talk about great things, it is not a philosophy. It is a very simple and obvious phenomenon – just to look in. What can be more simple? As you look in, a totally new world opens its doors and your old language becomes irrelevant. All that you can say is, the old is finished.The new is discontinuous with the old. Neither the language nor any gesture, nothing can manage the new in the form that the old allows.The new brings its own language.The new brings its own home.The new brings your ultimate reality.I said that Joshu was a rare case…. Maneesha has brought one anecdote:On first entering Nansen’s monastery, Joshu was made to serve in the kitchen as the stoker. One day he closed all the doors and piled wood on the fire until the whole kitchen was filled with smoke. Then he shouted, “Fire! Fire! Come to my rescue!”Symbolically, this is the situation of everyone. You live in fire and you die in fire. Your heart is always on fire, burning with all kinds of jealousies and anger and greed – a psychological fire that goes on creating new anxieties, new wounds, and it never heals on its own. Joshu’s effort, his first effort in the commune of Nansen, was to create a great fire and close all the doors of the kitchen. And when there was only smoke, and there was danger of his being burned, he shouted, “Fire! Fire! Come to my rescue!”A seeker, whether he says it or not, really feels it: “Fire! Fire! Come to my rescue!”When the whole community had flocked to the door, he said…This is how he shows his tremendous insight in Zen. In childhood he became a priest, at the age of seventeen he became almost enlightened, and meeting Nansen he became fully enlightened.When the whole community had flocked to the door, he said, “I will not open the door unless you can say the right word.”Now, how can you say the right word? What can be the right word? And his life is at stake! Soon the flames will grow bigger, the wooden temple will be on fire, and the man is asking about the right word!That has also to be understood. There are thousands of cases on record when masters have asked, “Say the right word! If you say it I will hit you. If you don’t say it I will hit you anyway.” What is asked for is a response, spontaneous. The master has not asked an examination question. He has created a situation in which you cannot say a word from your past memory. If you say it, he will hit; if you don’t say anything, anyway you are going to be hit. Don’t think that not saying anything means silence.Now it depends on different disciples, how they react. Sometimes the situation becomes very crucial. In one monastery there were two wings, a right wing and a left wing, and one thousand sannyasins were living there.The master had a cat. Because it was the master’s, a tremendous respect and love was shown to the cat and both sides wanted to take it to their wing. There was a continuous fight between monks about the cat.Finally one day the master gathered the whole assembly. Only one monk was missing; he had gone for some work, down to the plains. So nine hundred ninety-nine monks were present. And the master took a sword at the cat and he said, “Say the right word! If you don’t say it, I will cut the cat in two parts and divide it for you, so this fight, this continuous fight, is finished! Say the right word quickly; otherwise the cat will lose her life.”Those nine hundred ninety-nine people just looked at each other: “What can be the right word?” The master cut the cat and gave it, half and half, to both wings. Sad, carrying the dead cat, with blood flowing…And then came the monk who had gone down to the village. He came in and hit the master with a good slap! The master said, “Good! If you had been here, the poor cat would have been saved.”This was the right word. “What nonsense you are talking – cutting the cat! A living being cannot be divided that way.” The master said, “This was the right thing, but those nine hundred ninety-nine monks had not the courage to come to me and hit me. I had given the opportunity…they could have saved the cat, but the very idea did not arise in their minds.”The idea can arise only in a mind who is coming very close to enlightenment. It is a spontaneous response. Otherwise, hitting the master is very rare. The master hits, that’s okay; but the disciple hitting the master…There are a few instances, and they are always right. The disciple has shown a great insight, that the master is asking an absurdity.When the whole community had flocked to the door, he said, “I will not open the door unless you can say the right word.” No answer came from the crowd. But Nansen silently passed the key through a window hole.In fact, Joshu could not open the door without the key. That was the right word. He was closed in, he needed a key. Nobody thought of it, that the door was closed.Nansen silently passed the key through a window hole. This was the right word that Joshu had in mind, and he opened the door immediately.The “right word” simply means a spontaneous response, with clarity and intelligence, to the situation. There are two kinds of possibilities. One is a reaction. In a reaction you start thinking – what can be the right word? You have missed the point. Now you can go on thinking and consulting encyclopedias, you will not find the right word. The second is responsibility, not reaction. Responsibility means you don’t go into your memory storage. You look directly at the situation: the door is closed, the flames are growing bigger and bigger. Any man of clarity will think of how to help him to open the door. That will be the right word, the right response.Gido wrote:Toward dawn,the same bright stars return,night after nighton the mountain ranges.Winter snows appear every year.Silly to imagine from these thingsthat Gautama is in anyparticular place – like carving nicks on the sideof a boat to mark its placein the river!First I have to tell you a small story.Mulla Nasruddin had gone fishing…His wife had been insisting continuously, “Some day you take me with you.” He said, “I will not have time for you. I will be so concentrated on fishing, and you don’t know how to keep your mouth shut.”But she promised that she would not speak, so he took the wife. Strangely enough he found a place in the river where there were so many fish…he had never been so fortunate! Obviously it was the fortune of the wife. He thanked her. He said, “Strange! I have been searching and searching – a few fish here and there. But this place is full of all kinds of fish and so easily catchable! I should mark this place so I don’t forget; otherwise how to find this place again?”So he took a piece of chalk – he was a schoolmaster – and made a cross on the side of the boat to remember, that “this is the place where there are so many fish.” But marking on the boat won’t help in any way.Gido says: Toward dawn – always remember, these poems are visualized.Toward dawn,the same bright stars return,night after nighton the mountain ranges.Winter snows appear every year.Silly to imagine from these thingsthat Gautama is in anyparticular place – like carving nicks on the sideof a boat to mark its placein the river!Toward dawn,…as the morning sun is rising,the same bright stars return,night after nighton the mountain ranges.Winter snows appear every year.Silly to imagine from these thingsthat Gautama is in anyparticular place…He is saying that seeing all this change, it is almost silly to think that the Buddha is in any particular place.…like carving nicks on the sideof a boat to mark its placein the river!All your marks are on the boat. And they don’t in any way help you to find the place in the river, because in the river you cannot make a mark. The moment you make it, it disappears.You will laugh at Nasruddin, but all his anecdotes are very indicative. What are your statues of Gautam Buddha? Just marks on the side of the boat. Buddha has disappeared in the universal; he has not left any footprints. Just as a bird flying into the blue sky leaves no footprints – where are you going to find him?So you make a temple, you put up a statue, but do you think this is marking the place? You cannot catch hold of Buddha. You cannot make a cross on eternity, on universality. Whatever you will do – your scriptures, your images, your temples, are as irrelevant as marking the boat to find the same place in the river.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Whatever Nansen meant when he requested “special treatment” for Joshu, apparently it didn't mean Joshu moving into Lao Tzu House and having private, daily chats with the master. On the contrary, Joshu's first job was in Zorba the Buddha restaurant, slaving over a hot stove. What is the lesson here for us?Maneesha, in the first place your question has come neither from mind nor from no-mind, but from migraine. I would have given you a good hit, but I don’t hit people. My representative, Stonehead Niskriya, is hitting people in Germany. I have heard that he hits people, strangers, sits on their chests and asks, “Got it?” And obviously, to get rid of this fellow they have to say, “Yes!” But what is it? Niskriya says, “I don’t know myself; I am just spreading the message.” Fortunately he is not here; otherwise he would have given you a good hit.“Special treatment” does not mean a special job. “Special treatment” means: Be careful of this man; his flowering is very close. Don’t neglect him in any way, because there are thousands of monks…Whatever job you give him, that is not the point. But just be careful: it is a precious time for him, he is ripening. And any moment, suddenly he will explode into enlightenment. He already had a satori….Satori is the Japanese word for samadhi. I have explained to you that samadhi and enlightenment ordinarily are thought to be synonymous. That is not true. Satori is equivalent to samadhi. That’s how Patanjali defines it in his sutras, the only authority on Yoga – he says that samadhi is a deep sleep, with the innermost center awake. All around there is deep sleep, darkness, unconsciousness, but just at the center a small candle of light. So Patanjali has said it is no different from sleep; the only difference is that sleep is without any light in it, it is a house without any light. And samadhi is a house with a candle.But enlightenment is prajna. To understand it more accurately you have to think of a ladder. We are exactly in the middle of the ladder. Underneath us there is the subconscious, unconscious, collective unconscious and cosmic unconscious. If you dive deep into your depth, from the cosmic unconscious you can get out into the universal. Samadhi’s way is moving into the depths.And just as there are steps going deeper in you, there are steps moving above you. Just as there is a subconscious, there is a super-conscious, collective super-conscious, cosmic super-conscious. And when you take a jump from that point, it is enlightenment. Both experience the same; both enter into no-mind. But one enters through the dark path and one enters through the lighted path.The dark path is dangerous because there is no certainty where you are. Very few people have reached enlightenment through the dark path. Ramakrishna seems to be the only one. Many have tried, but it is obvious that only accidentally can you reach the ultimate depth.When you are moving toward heights you are moving in full light, and as you go above, you have more light and more light. At the highest peak everything is pure light. The path is very beautiful – not accidental but very intentional, very conscious.But this discrimination has not been made, so the misunderstanding continues that Ramakrishna and Buddha are the same. They are the same at the last point, but the paths they follow are very contrary. And Ramakrishna is accidental – just by chance he has moved in the right direction in darkness. There are more chances of getting lost than of reaching to the point.Gautam Buddha takes the safer course, more scientific: go beyond your conscious mind, make it more conscious – super-conscious. And you will always be entering a higher and more lighted space. There is no danger of getting lost; your enlightenment is absolutely certain if you continue. It is not accidental, it is a scientific conclusion.Satori is the translation of samadhi. That’s why even Joshu had a satori. Coming to Nansen, he said, “Now I am fulfilled,” because with Nansen he saw for the first time a lighted path where one does not become accidentally enlightened. Every step is very calculated, very conscious, very alert.So when the head monk was told by Nansen to give Joshu special treatment, that did not mean to give him special comforts. That did not mean to give him no job, that did not mean that he had to be thought of as superior to others. Give him any job – that is the function of the head monk in a monastery – but keep an eye out, don’t forget him. There are thousands of people you have to take care of. Keep an eye out, because this man is not going to stay unenlightened long. He is going to become a buddha very soon.So it is not a question Maneesha, that special treatment means “moving into Lao Tzu and having private, daily chats with the master.” If you are aware of what you are asking…do you see your jealousy? Do you see your woman? How do you know that the people who are allowed to come to me are chitchatting? They have their work; they need instructions, they are called because of their work. It is not that they have the right to come to me to chitchat. What will I chitchat about?They have their work just as you have your work. Others are jealous of you. You are also in Lao Tzu and you have the special work of collecting my words, of editing my words. When we are all gone, Maneesha’s collections will be remembered for centuries. But it is very difficult to get rid of our jealousies….The first commune was destroyed because of women’s jealousies. They were fighting continuously. The second commune was destroyed because of women’s jealousies. And this is the third commune – and the last, because I am getting tired. Once in a while I think perhaps Buddha was right not to allow any women in his commune for twenty years. I am not in favor of him: I am the first who has allowed men and women the same, equal opportunity for enlightenment. But I have burnt my fingers twice, and it has always been the jealousy of the women.Still, I am a stubborn person. After two communes, immense effort wasted, I have started a third commune, but I have not created any difference – women are still running it. I want women here in this commune not to behave like women. But small jealousies…Now, somebody has to bring my food – the whole commune cannot do that. Somebody has to make my room clean, my bathroom clean – the whole community is not needed there; otherwise the result will be the opposite!I call Anando every morning while I am eating, every evening while I am eating, just to give her instructions so that nothing goes wrong. Things go wrong so easily…and because Anando has been in all three communes, and is a law graduate, she understands very clearly why these two communes, created with such great effort, with so much money poured into them, got destroyed. She has a very clear conception. And whatever I say, she manages to do it. I have not heard her saying a single time that, “I have forgotten.” She immediately takes notes and reports the next day what the situation is. Otherwise, very easily things can go wrong.I had talked to Neelam – she is my secretary. I had told her that I was thinking to make Anand Swabhav an ambassador, going around the country, because I am not moving. And he has been doing very good work, conducting camps, giving talks, approaching different institutions in different places. So most of the time he is going to be out. He has been in charge of the ashram, and I had told Neelam that it would be good to talk to him and ask if he would like to be an ambassador, because now we are appointing ambassadors in every country – somebody who represents me to the news media, conducts camps, takes care of what is going on in those countries, against me or for me, and informs me.She must have asked him, and he was happy. There was a question of putting someone else as the ashram in-charge. I had one idea in my mind and I told Neelam, “You ask a beautiful woman, perfectly capable – Zareen.” She has been doing so well with her job at the gate with the visitors, with the receptionists, taking people around the ashram. I thought perhaps she would be good as the in-charge of the ashram. Neelam talked to her, and Zareen went to Hasya, who is the international secretary. Zareen told Hasya that she is not a “puppet type.” She will do whatever she wants to do; nobody can dictate to her. It is perfectly good, but in a commune it will immediately create conflicts. I had to drop the idea.Without Anando, I would have not known and things would have gone wrong. Anando informed me – she is my legal secretary. She informed me that Zareen is good, but she has this spoiled mind from her very childhood. Whatever she wants to do, she will do. That’s perfectly good, but not good in commune life. And she is doing so perfectly well – that work would be disturbed if she becomes ashram in-charge.Zareen even immediately changed the word, in her unconscious. She told Hasya, “I have been asked to become the president of the ashram.” Ashram in-charge is a different thing. It is a rough job. Mainly it is concerned with the police, courts, cases. And knowing that Neelam is soft, there is going to be trouble…Neelam is doing her work perfectly well, but if Zareen starts thinking she is the president and Neelam is only a secretary, then there is going to be trouble. So I had to change. I had to put Tathagata as ashram in-charge. And he is already doing that job without any title. He is continuously fighting in the courts, and dealing with the police and the government officers. He is taking care of that side and he has been here with Swabhav for years, in deep friendship. So I thought it would be better – he should be named as ashram in-charge.Now I would not have known, because I don’t go anywhere. I don’t know where the office of my secretary is, where the office of my president is, where the office of the ashram in-charge is. I know only three places: my bedroom, my bathroom, and Buddha Hall. If anybody asks me any question about the ashram, I am absolutely ignorant. Somebody needs to inform me – and somebody who has a comprehensive insight. So only Anando comes, and she comes only because I ask her to come. Just while I am taking food, she gives me information about publications, the books, how many books are in publication, how many are going into publication…how we should manage exhibitions around the world, how we should find publishers. And just in five or ten minutes – she is very accurate, not a gossipy type.Now Maneesha’s question is full of jealousy. Not only I am saying it; Nirvano brings the sutras and the questions to show me – she wanted to change it. I said, “Don’t change it, let it be as it is,” because in commune life we should expose ourselves without fear. Love knows no fear. If something is arising in your mind, you should tell it.And remember one thing: everybody is doing his work. Nobody is to dominate anybody. Yes, everybody is allowed to suggest, to help, but to suggest and to help does not mean that you are being made a puppet. Nobody is a puppet here. It is a gathering of absolutely independent individuals.But just because it is a gathering of independent individuals there has to be much more responsibility, much more awareness, much more remembrance. Outside in the world you have learned jealousy, you have learned domination, you have learned stubbornness. You have learned that “I will do things according to my own mind; whether it is right or wrong does not matter.” It is perfectly okay outside in the world, where there is so much mess that you cannot make it worse. But at least in this small commune don’t bring in the outside world and the outside world’s tendencies.We are trying a great experiment, that independent individuals can live together without enslaving anyone. Here everybody is equal. It does not matter what job he is doing. He may be editing, he may be cleaning, he may be cooking, it does not matter. What matters is that you should cook with awareness, as if a buddha is cooking. And you are cooking for other buddhas; your cooking has to be done with great awareness and love. It is not a duty; it is your contribution, your share, to the commune. It is as valuable as anybody else’s work. If you are cleaning bathrooms, it is as respectable as being the president of the commune or the secretary of the commune. There is no question of jealousy at all, because nobody is superior to anybody else.This is what I call authentic communism. The Soviet communism has failed – failed because of dictatorship, failed because it tries to dominate people, and the people who loved freedom were killed. One million people were killed by Stalin alone. He could not tolerate any difference of ideas. But the same was the situation after Stalin died and Khrushchev came into power. He had been in the same presidium, the highest committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – and there are no other parties. Khrushchev had been with Stalin for decades, and he was one of the most intimate to him among the other twenty-one members of the presidium. He succeeded Stalin. The day after Stalin died, he spoke on his death to the Communist Party and said, “Stalin has killed almost one million people and he has made the whole country a slave camp.” Somebody from the back seats asked, “You were with Stalin all these years. Why did you not object?”Khrushchev’s answer is very significant. He said, “Please stand up, and you will know. Who has asked the question? Stand up!” Nobody stood, because to stand up means…finished! And he said, “That is the reason I was silent. Why are you not standing up? If I had opposed anything, if even a question was in Stalin’s mind that ‘Khrushchev is not totally with me,’ I would have been finished. And what was the need to become unnecessarily finished? You can see it yourself. You are silent now, you are not standing up. Because if you stand up, you are gone; nobody will ever hear of you again.”Communism has been completely destroyed by the dictatorial ideology.I am basically a communist, an anarchist, and something more – all kinds of dangerous ideas and something more!Here we are trying on a small scale an experiment of living equally. Your job does not make any difference to your individuality. Nobody is a puppet because nobody is here who is a puppeteer. I don’t come out, I have no post, I am not even member of the sannyas movement. I am just a guest, absolutely at your mercy.I hate the idea that anybody should dominate anybody. And nobody is doing that, things are flowing beautifully. But your question must be the question of many people. That’s why I told Nirvano “Don’t change it, let it remain as it is.”Maneesha is intelligent enough not to ask a stupid question. But she suffers from migraines. And today she has a migraine, I can say it without any doubt; otherwise she would not have asked such a question. With a migraine, strange ideas arise and you cannot do anything. The whole world seems to be hell. One feels like doing something nasty. It is a chemical, hormonal matter. One wants to be nasty, one wants to behave in a way that is insulting, humiliating; but the person is not doing it, it is the chemistry.Now Maneesha needs Amrito’s injection, not my answer.Now it is Sardar Gurudayal time, and he is sitting first in the row. He enjoys his place. Once in a while he gets there, but then he sits like an emperor, because his time is bound to come!Boris Babblebrain, the prosecuting attorney, is striding up and down the courtroom in front of the glamorous blonde witness, Gorgeous Gloria.“Is it true,” rants Babblebrain, “that on the tenth of July you committed adultery in a snowstorm, while lying across the top of a motorbike being driven by a one-legged dwarf who was also waving the Polish national flag?”Gloria looks unblinking into Babblebrain’s eyes, and calmly says, “What was the date again?”Pope the Polack is getting forgetful. One morning he is sitting on the toilet in Cardinal Catsass’ place, reading the newspaper, when he looks at his watch and notices the time. He is nearly late for one of his famous addresses to the people from his balcony.He leaps up and runs toward his apartment, muttering a prayer to himself as he goes – “Please, God, don’t let me be late.” And again, “Please, God, don’t let me be late,” and yet again…when suddenly he trips and falls flat on his face!Getting up hurriedly and straightening his robes, he shakes his fist at the sky and shouts, “Jesus Christ – don’t push!”Ronald Reagan goes to see Doctor Bones for a complete check-up. He is very depressed and says to Bones, “Doctor, it’s terrible, I get up in the morning and look in the mirror and I’m just a mess!”“Really?” says Bones, raising his eyebrows, “tell me about it.”“Yes, Doc,” continues Reagan, “I look in the mirror and my cheeks are sagging and I have blotches all over my face, my hair is falling out, and I look so ugly. What is it?”“I have no idea what it is,” replies Bones, “but your eyesight is perfect!”Little Albert’s Uncle Tony owns a sex shop and every day after school, Little Albert drops by to visit him.One afternoon, Albert walks through the door and Uncle Tony says, “Hi, kid. Can you look after the store for a few minutes while I run out to the post office?”“Sure, Uncle,” replies Albert, and sets his school things on the counter. Tony leaves and a few minutes later, three nuns walk in.The nuns are a little embarrassed to see a kid running the store, but they are desperate.“How much for that big, pink dildo?” whispers the first nun.“Ten dollars,” replies Little Albert, confidently. “Batteries not included.”“I will take it,” says the nun, as she is pushed aside by the next nun.“How much for that huge, bright purple one?” whispers the second nun.“Twenty dollars,” replies Albert. “Batteries not included.”“I will take it sonny,” snaps the second nun. “And put it in a plain brown wrapper.”Then the third nun looks around nervously and says, “Sonny, how much for that big black and red plaid one?”“That one is not for sale,” says Albert.“Come on kid!” snaps the nun. “I will pay any price for that big one.”“Okay, lady,” says Albert. “Fifty dollars!”“I will take it,” says the nun, and the three of them leave the shop.A few minutes later, Uncle Tony comes back from the post office.“How did it go?” he asks. “Any business?”“Sure, Uncle Tony,” says Little Albert. “Three nuns came in and I sold the first one a dildo for ten dollars. The second nun bought one for twenty dollars. And you won’t believe this,” continues Albert. “The last nun paid fifty dollars for my thermos bottle!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes.Feel your body to be completely frozen.Now look inward, with your total consciousness arrowed toward the center…with an urgency, as if this is your last moment of life.As you go deeper, it becomes more and more light. As you go deeper, it becomes more and more fragrant.The moment you reach to your center you are only a witness. Not only a witness of your body and mind, but also a witness of great blissfulness, silence, peace, a great joy arising in you.At the center everyone is a buddha.That is the only equality I know of.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Just be a witness.The body is lying there, the mind is there, but you are neither the body nor the mind – just a pure mirror, reflecting. The moment you become a pure mirror, thousands of stars start reflecting in you. You are at the very gate of the kingdom of God.This night was beautiful in itself. But the silent of ten thousand buddhas, merging their consciousness into an oceanic reality, have made it a historic event.Whatever you feel in this space, you have to carry out in your twenty-four hours’ ordinary life.A buddha has no holiday.Once a buddha, forever a buddha.Just look how thousands of flowers have blossomed. Suddenly the spring has come. The old is gone and the new is born.Every moment the old has to be left, and the new has to arise. Moment-to-moment dying and living is the very style of a buddha. He has no yesterdays, no tomorrows, just this moment. Thisness, suchness.Before Nivedano calls you back, gather as many flowers and as much fragrance as possible to bring with you from the center to the circumference. The whole discipline is to bring the center and circumference into a deep synchronicity, so whatever is at the center also blossoms on the circumference – in your activities, in your gestures, in your words, in your silences. Unless the buddha becomes active on the surface, the realization is not complete.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Now all the buddhas, come back – with the same gesture, with the same grace and silence. Remember you are a buddha. Sit for a few moments, recollecting, remembering the path you have followed, the center that you have touched, the flowers, invisible, that you have brought with you, and the fragrance that is surrounding you.Every day it has to become deeper and deeper and deeper. One day suddenly there is an explosion. That explosion is the ultimate experience of life; there is nothing more valuable than that.

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Joshu The Lions Roar 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Joshu The Lions Roar 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Joshu stayed with Nansen for thirty years. After his enlightenment he lived for thirty years more in the Kuan-yin temple. Once, he said:“Smoke from the chimneys around me I see in vain, no bun or rice cake since last year have I eaten. Now thoughts of them make my mouth water.“Not mindful of Buddhism, I often sigh deep sighs. None of the people of one hundred houses are good: every visitor only asks me for a cup of tea. If not given enough, he angrily leaves me.”At another time Joshu was asked: “A hair’s breadth of difference – and what happens?”The master answered, “Heaven and earth are far away.”The monk asked, “And when there is not a hair’s breadth of difference?”“Heaven and earth are far away,” Joshu replied.Maneesha, before discussing the sutras of Joshu I have to introduce to you something very modern, but relating to the ancient gods. Before I call Avirbhava and Anando to show you, I will say a few things about lightning.Anything mysterious that man could not understand became a god. Lightning is very mysterious: from where does it come, and where does it go? Suddenly it appears and suddenly it is gone. And it is dangerous too; it kills people, it kills trees, it kills animals – so it must be in the hands of a certain god; a power that he throws against the enemies.In India, the god Indra has been worshipped for centuries. He is the god of lightning and clouds and rains. Even man has been sacrificed to satisfy him so that he does not destroy their crops, so he does not kill their animals, so he does not send those lightning thunderbolts to their villages. It is out of fear that all gods are born, out of fear and out of ignorance. So first, something about lightning….In ancient civilizations, thousands of years before Christ, some people believed that thunder and lightning were demonstrations of the power and wrath of the gods. In Greek mythology, lightning was the weapon of Zeus, father of all the gods.In southern Africa it is widely held that lightning is a bird. In the mythology of the American Indian, both the sun and the moon are made of lightning bolts collected by a turtle as he climbed up to heaven.In India, Indra was a storm god, wielder of the thunderbolt.In Australia, aboriginal mythology has it that the lightning man lived at the bottom of a water hole in the dry season and in the wet season he rode on the tops of the thunderclouds. His voice was the thunder and he struck down with his stone axes the trees and the people.Associated with this is a very ancient concept, the concept of the aura. It is now a scientific fact that man also has his own energy which is electrical. In an accident in Switzerland a few years ago, a woman became so electrified that even her husband would not touch her. Even her children escaped from home, because whomsoever she would touch would get a great electric shock. She was brought to the hospital: just by holding it in her hand, an electric bulb would start to light up. There was no need of any wiring or any electricity.Her body was too full. This energy of the body radiates about one inch around the body, around every healthy body. The more radiant you are, the bigger the aura around the body becomes. The more sickly you are, the more the aura shrinks. As a man dies the aura disappears.And now, because of Kirlian photography, your photograph can be taken showing the aura. You have seen statues, photographs, paintings of Krishna, Jesus, Buddha; you will always see an aura around their heads. It was thought this is just mythology – it is not. There is an energy field around them. To indicate that energy field, all the pictures of all the gods around the world have that aura. It is very symbolic. It is not confined to the head, but certainly the ancient man had come to recognize that there is a certain kind of radiation.As a man becomes more enlightened, the area of his field of energy also becomes bigger. Anybody who enters into that area suddenly finds that it is as if he has entered into a different climate, a different air, a different silence, a different peace. This has been the criterion to find the master. There are no visible signs for how to find the master. The only way is, if you come close to a man and inside you something starts changing, flowering, blossoming…suddenly you feel as if the spring has come. The man has not done anything. The aura is invisible. But the aura can do miracles in the disciples who come close to the master.By the way, I would like to tell you that this is what in Zen is called the transmission of the lamp. Nothing is given by the master, but something is received by the disciple. Where there was darkness in the house, now there is light.Avirbhava has brought a mechanism which creates an aura. You cannot see the aura, but you can bring a light bulb close to the mechanism and suddenly the light bulb flares up, with no connection. Not only is there no connection with the machinery, but even if you put a hindrance, like a book, between the two, that will not make any difference. You cannot prevent the aura even with stone walls. It passes through without any doors.Before they bring their new addition to the Museum of Gods, it will be good to know something more about the aura.Surrounding the physical body is a protective electromagnetic field, composed of radiations formed by all the bodies of man. The aura appears as a fountain of energy and when radiating competently has a definite and regular shape.Auras are absorbers, soaking up vibrations from everything around – the sun, moon, animals, plants, stones and people. They develop as the consciousness develops.The word aura comes from the Greek word Avra, which means breeze.It is certainly like a breeze. You cannot see it but you can feel it.The auric fields of the astral and mental bodies extend much further from the physical body than that of the etheric body, which stands out no more than a half inch or so. The undulating flow and rhythmically shimmering color of the mental and astral bodies give the impression that they are moved by a breeze. In people, when the activity of the being is intensified, as during meditation, its energies pour through the fields of the mental, astral and etheric bodies, increasing their size and the brilliance of their colors. Auras are often depicted as a field of flames surrounding the physical body.Now Avirbhava and Anando, bring your mechanism.(Sure enough, the mysterious box illuminates the bulbs held by Anando and Avirbhava. The assembly cheers the new addition, and it is wheeled away.)Maneesha has brought these sutras.Joshu stayed with Nansen for thirty years. After his enlightenment he lived for thirty years more in the Kuan-yin temple. Once, he said:“Smoke from the chimneys around me I see in vain, no bun or rice cake since last year have I eaten. Now thoughts of them make my mouth water.“Not mindful of Buddhism, I often sigh deep sighs. None of the people of one hundred houses are good: every visitor only asks me for a cup of tea. If not given enough, he angrily leaves me.”What he is saying is all symbolic. First you have to understand that Nansen stayed with his disciple Joshu for thirty years, waiting for the time when Joshu completely and totally opens up and becomes a flower of spiritual splendor. What you have to note about it is that neither is the master in a hurry, nor is the disciple in a hurry. Nowadays, to tell somebody that, “You will have to stay here thirty years, then you can hope – perhaps, it cannot be guaranteed – that you may become enlightened”…The world has changed in many ways. The most important way is that everybody is in a hurry, not knowing for what. Everybody is running, not knowing where and why. Everybody is collecting money, power, prestige, without ever thinking – what are you going to do with all this? Soon, death will knock on your doors and everything will be taken away.That which can be taken away by death is worthless to accumulate. Accumulate something that death cannot destroy. There were times when people were interested only in the immortal. That which dies is already dead; it is only a question of time, whether it is today or tomorrow. The body dies, the mind dies, they are of interest no more. The interest has to go deeper – is there something in you, hidden deep in your empty heart, which does not die? Discover it while there is time.The whole effort of a certain golden age that we have passed and completely forgotten…all the intelligent people were interested only in one thing: to find the eternal in man. So thirty years was not a question; nobody counted time. The calendar was not consulted. Nobody said to the master, “Now I have been here for two years and nothing has happened.”It reminds me of Junnaid. He used to say to his disciples, the first lesson to every new disciple, was: “Remember this anecdote of my life…. I remained with my master for twelve years. For three years he did not look at me. I would sit by his side, people would come and go – and he had hundreds of disciples, with their problems – but he did not look at me. The question of being introduced and the question of asking anything was simply impossible. He behaved as if I were not there, he completely ignored me.“After three years, for the first time he looked at me. And just his look…as if the first rains had come and I was drenched in a new energy, as if I had been dead up to now. Suddenly, his look made me alive.”New doors, new dimensions opened. And for three years again, there was not any other gesture. But Junnaid was perfectly happy and satisfied and contented. If nothing more happens, this much is too much. After three more years passed, the master touched the head of Junnaid. And Junnaid used to say, “I felt such a serenity, such a deep silence descending over me. I became completely hollow, just filled by the grace of the master.”And this went on happening. Three years again, but he was perfectly satisfied. After three years the master hugged him. And the moment the master hugged him – and not even a word had passed in all these nine years – he dissolved into the master, he became one with him. Now there was nothing more that he could imagine.Three more years passed, and the master kissed his third eye. Suddenly, a tremendous lightning, cleansing all his being of all that was ugly, of all that was rubbish; making him completely pure, twenty-four carat gold. And after these twelve years, the master spoke to him for the first time, saying, “Now you can go.”Strange. He has not said a single word to him and now he says, “Now you can go. What I have done to you, try to spread it.”This is transmission: the master is ready to pour down all that is splendorous, but the question is whether the disciple is ready to receive it. Buddha used to say, “There may be a great rain falling – you can put your pot upside down. What can the rains do? – your pot will remain empty. Your pot has to be in a position to receive the rains.”These thirty years, Joshu stayed with Nansen. It has to be understood that it was a totally different kind of calculation about time. People were not interested in time but were interested in the timeless.I have not come across a single incident in the whole history of consciousness and its evolution where a man was tired because “so many years have passed and nothing has happened.” Nobody has ever complained about that. It shows a very unhurried way of life. It shows an understanding that whether we know or not, we are part of eternity. If it is not happening today, it will happen tomorrow; if it is not happening tomorrow, perhaps next life. But immense possibilities are there, so don’t be in a hurry. In a hurry you may miss many things which were worth being enjoyed, being tasted. Go slow.Time went so slow that almost nobody was interested in time. The whole effort was to know the timeless.Today, time has become very important. People are counting minutes, people are counting hours, because they have forgotten their eternity completely. And particularly Mohammedanism, Judaism, Christianity – these three religions have been helpful in making people too hurried, too tense, because in seventy years so many longings and so many dreams have to be fulfilled. There is no time for anything else.And all those dreams remain unfulfilled; all those longings remain as far away as the origin. Man runs and runs and reaches nowhere, but more and more he wants.You must have read Leo Tolstoy’s famous story, How Much Land Does a Man Require? Leo Tolstoy is one of the greatest men humanity has produced. And just a few days ago I came to know…He was never given a Nobel Prize. Nobody is more worthy of a Nobel Prize than Leo Tolstoy. His creativity is immense, he has not been surpassed by anyone. He was nominated, but the nomination was refused by the committee.The Nobel Prize committee opens it records to the public only after fifty years, so just this year they have opened their records for the public to see, or for research workers to look into. And I was so shocked! In the records it is said, “Leo Tolstoy cannot be given the Nobel Prize because he is not an orthodox Christian.” That was the reason. He is Christian, but he is not orthodox Christian. He has his own original ideas which are not traditional.These considerations… His great books Anna Karenina, War And Peace – they are not considered at all. The consideration is whether he’s orthodox Christian or not. Then they should make it clear that the Nobel Prize is only for orthodox Christians. Why go on being hypocritical?But these three religions have created a tremendous difficulty for humanity. They have all given the idea that you have only one life. Not knowing anything about past lives, they have given man a tremendously speedy, hurried way of life. You have to fulfill so much that everything remains incomplete. You cannot complete anything because you are in such a hurry – another thing is waiting, lined up!People die with empty hands.All the Eastern religions – Taoism, Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism – have given a totally different dimension, the whole eternity. You are not confined into seventy years; birth and death are simply episodes in your eternity. Many times you have been born and many times you have died; still, the eternal principle of life continues.That has given the East a certain restfulness. There is no hurry, you can sit by the side of the master for twelve years. The master can take his own time – three years to look at you, three years to put his hand on you. Three years to hug you. Three years to touch your third eye and send a thunderbolt which transforms your whole being. And not giving you any verbal message…Junnaid was simply told by the master, “Now you can go. My work is complete. And whatever I have done to you, do to others.”This you have to remember. Just the very remembrance that we have been here forever and we will be here forever gives a deep relaxation. There is no hurry; we can do everything as minutely, in as much detail…we can do things to perfection.After his enlightenment he lived for thirty years more in the Kuan-yin temple. Once, he said– what he is saying is very symbolic –“Smoke from the chimneys around me I see in vain…”He’s saying, “There are people, I see the smoke from their chimneys from my mountaintop. But in vain, because nothing ever becomes ripe. Nothing is ever completely cooked. These people are absolutely aware that I am waiting here on the mountaintop and I have something precious to give them.”“No bun or rice cake since last year have I eaten.”He does not mean buns or rice cakes. What he means is “Since last year I have not come across a ripe man.” That’s what his master Nansen has said, that, “He is a very ripe fruit. Give him good treatment. He can fall from the tree any moment.”“Now thoughts of them make my mouth water.”He is saying, “Just the thought that these people are there, carrying inside a tremendous delight…and I am sitting here ready to open up the door, but they are absolutely unaware of their own treasures.”“Not mindful of Buddhism…”Naturally, when you become enlightened you are no more interested in any “ism.” It may be Buddhism, it may be Jainism, it may be Taoism, it does not matter. Enlightenment takes you beyond all “isms.” “Isms” are simply philosophical statements. Enlightenment is the very experience.So he says, not mindful of Buddhism – because Buddhism will not allow what he is doing – I often sigh deep sighs for the people, who are so close to the truth but will remain far away because even the desire, even the quest has not arisen in them.“None of the people of one hundred houses are good…”Just below his mountain there were one hundred houses. Not a single individual from that village has come to inquire, “What is this monk doing here, sitting under his tree, for thirty years?” They are unconcerned.It is not something new. In Pune there may be more than two million people, and none of them must have ever thought, “What is going in this place in Buddha Auditorium?” They may pass by on the road, they may see something is going on, but no inquiry. They are so involved in the ordinary that they keep themselves completely blind about the ultimate.“Every visitor only asks me for a cup of tea.”And even if someone comes by the way, a stranger, he asks me for a cup of tea. I could have given him the whole world, the whole universe. But such is the poverty of the mind. He does not look at me, he simply wants a cup of tea. He is just passing by: “Perhaps this monk in his temple must have tea. But this monk has something of the divine – that he is not concerned about.”“If not given enough, he angrily leaves me.”Now, Joshu has no obligation to provide tea for strangers. He himself is a poor monk. He can give something which you have not even imagined in your dreams, but you are completely unaware and blind. People even become angry if he says that there is no tea. “I can give you myself, I can share many other things, but tea is not there. I am a poor monk.” They become angry.While you are listening to these statements and anecdotes, always remember one thing: don’t listen to them as if they are about somebody else.One line of an English poem is, “For whom the bell tolls.” In a Christian village, when somebody dies, the church bell rings to inform the farmers around that “somebody has died, come back from the fields.”The poem says: “Never ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” It has a great insight. Whoever dies shows you one fact, that you are also going to die.Before death takes you, do something to find something so that you can defeat death.At another time Joshu was asked: “A hair’s breadth of difference – and what happens?”It is again an ancient Zen koan: A hair’s breadth of difference – and what happens? People are given this koan to meditate upon. Nothing else is said. What are the things in which a hair’s breadth of difference makes a great difference? “A hair’s breadth”…people meditate on it. As they go deeper…they cannot find any intellectual answer to it, but as they go deeper they find the answer one day.The answer is, between you and your center just a hair’s breadth of difference is a great difference. Even that much difference should not remain. You should dissolve into your center, utterly and completely. Only then can you be called a fulfilled man, an awakened man, a buddha.The master answered, “Heaven and earth are far away.”Zen is very special in its ways of dialogue and everything.The master answered, “Heaven and earth are far away.” Now this seems to be absolutely irrelevant to what the man is asking.The monk asked, “And when there is not a hair’s breadth of difference?” Then what happens? And Joshu said, “Heaven and earth are far away.” The same answer to both questions, and both answers are absolutely irrelevant to the question! It creates a situation, and that is the whole work of a master. He is saying, “You are asking a question which is not for asking, which is only available to those who enter in themselves and find it. Otherwise, heaven and earth are far apart.”The man had thought perhaps he could ask the question differently. But the answer remained the same. The master, without saying that “You are asking irrelevant things, things which cannot be asked and answered, which can only be experienced”…But this is the way Zen has developed a tremendous language of its own. Replying to him with irrelevant answers, Joshu is throwing him back again and again; perhaps he may get the point. He does not say to him directly, “Experience!”There is only one thing in life where a hair’s breadth will make an immense difference: if you reach so close to your center…but just a hair’s breadth and heaven and earth are far apart. The distance is as much as it is between the earth and heaven. It does not matter that you have come very close; even closeness is a distance.You cannot say, “I am approximately enlightened.” Even approximately enlightened you are ignorant. Either you are enlightened or you are not enlightened; not even a single hair’s breadth will make you approximately enlightened. Just think: either you are alive or you are dead, you cannot say fifty-fifty! Either you are awake or you are asleep, you cannot say fifty-fifty.Joshu is kind enough to have answered even such a man. Because Zen is a very delicate matter, a very fragile matter: it deals with the ultimate reality. You have to handle it very carefully.Tetsuan wrote:Too much happens herewhere nothing should at all;a thatched hut is not supposed to bea busy place,but mountain birds cometo flee the evening rainin these dense woods.Clouds drip patternsof slippery mosson stone beds.This floating world is just a tunewhistled on a sword hilt.Fame and fortunehave forgotten all about me.Tetsuan is talking about the small hut in which Joshu lived. He is saying, “Too much happens here on this faraway mountain, in a thatched hut.”Too much happens here where nothing should at allBecause it is so far away from the world. But still so much happens.A thatched hut is not supposed to be a busy place.But it is a busy place because to a Zen master, everything happening around – clouds and flowers and trees – have equal status to man.A thatched hut is not supposed to bea busy place,but mountain birds come.Man may not come…but mountain birds cometo flee the evening rainin these dense woods. Clouds drip patterns of slippery moss on stone beds. This floating world is just a tune whistled on a sword hilt. Fame and fortune have forgotten all about me.Tetsuan lived with Joshu. The world may have forgotten them, their fame and name – but a few seekers find the way, however deep in the forest a man like Joshu hides. A man of awakened soul is a great magnetic pull. Wherever somebody suddenly has an urge to search on unknown paths, they start moving toward the master, not knowing exactly where they are going.That’s how you have gathered here. There is no reason for you to be here, but something goes on keeping you here. Some immense possibility of finding the truth, of experiencing the beauty, of knowing the meaning of life.Maneesha has asked a question:Osho,Has one only received a hit if it hurts?Maneesha, a master hits not to hurt but to heal. And a disciple receives the hit with tremendous gratitude, not with anger. Unless a hit is received with gratitude it cannot do its work of healing. You are all full of wounds, and they all need to be exposed to the sun, to the open sky. Unless you allow yourself to be exposed completely, you cannot get rid of those wounds. The normal way in the world is to hide the wounds so nobody knows about them – go on hiding them deeper and deeper in the unconscious, so even you forget them. But to work on the consciousness, cleaning it from all the wounds is absolutely necessary. Those wounds have to be brought into the open.You are asking, “Has one only received a hit if it hurts?” No, Maneesha. If it hurts you have missed. If it does not hurt but creates a gratitude, a love, it heals.Last night I did not feel hurt.You are an old sinner, Maneesha. You have been with this strange man long enough. But you don’t know that by your side, Zareen was sitting; your migraine immediately jumped on Zareen! Today she is sitting far away from you.For seven years she had no migraine. Last night she suffered migraine, I saw it jumping on her! But I kept quiet, because she is new and she has to understand many things.This was also a great experience for her, that this is not an ordinary assembly of people, this is not a Lion’s Club or a Rotary Club. We are involved in the greatest experiment of transforming consciousness. If you keep remembering it, you can overcome all the stumbling blocks.I hope that Zareen has overcome the migraine. But it jumped on her because she is new and she does not know that in such a place, the master hits only when he loves. The master hits only when he finds you worthy enough.You are saying:I saw the truth of what you said but did not hate myself or stop loving you. Did I miss?No, Maneesha, fortunately you did not miss.I know you will hit me again if I need it – and this time I don't have the excuse of a migraine.Look where your migraine has gone! Now, when everybody is in meditation, Zareen has to throw it as far away as possible. Whoever deserves it will get it! And I promise you, Maneesha, whether you need it or not I will hit. Just for sheer joy!Now today’s time is devoted to Zareen….Little Ernie swaggers into the bar and shouts to the shapely barmaid, “Gimme a triple scotch on the rocks!”“Hey, kid,” says the barmaid. “You don’t look to be more than seven years old. Do you want to get me into trouble or something?”“Maybe later,” says Ernie. “Right now I just want the scotch!”Alfonso, the Italian, is dragging a large, heavy box down the middle of the street when he suddenly stops in front of a house. He knocks on the door and a woman comes to open it.“Are you Widow Jones?” asks Alfonso.“My name is not Widow Jones,” replies the woman. “It is Mrs. Jones.”“Well,” says Alfonso, sadly, “just wait till you see what I’ve got in this box!”Old Father Fungus is getting very deaf in his advanced years, so he asks his flock to write down their sins on a piece of paper instead of speaking them to him.Everything is going well with this method, until one day Father Fungus hears someone crash his way into his confessional booth, belch loudly, and blow his nose. The strong smell of whiskey pours from the other side of the box as Father Fungus hears his old friend Paddy fumbling around in his pockets. Finally, Paddy passes a small, crumpled scrap of paper through the curtain into the priest’s hand.The confession reads: Ten cans of beer. One six-pack of Coca-Cola. Half a dozen eggs. Three rolls of toilet paper, two condoms and one box of tampons.Old Father Fungus looks at the note for a minute, shrugs, and silently passes it back to Paddy.Paddy stares at the paper in shock. “Oh Jesus!” he cries. “I must have left my goddam sins at the supermarket!”Prince Charles and Princess Diana of England are invited to be the guests of honor at the All-England Agricultural Show.After they preside over the opening ceremony, the royal couple dutifully walk around to mix with the farmers and look at the exhibits. Soon Charles gets bored and heads for the beer tent, and Diana walks over to admire the prize bull – and never did a male animal have such splendid equipment!The princess is shocked and amazed at the size of the beast’s machinery, and calls over the bull’s attendant, Farmer Cowtit, for a talk.“That is a fine animal you have there,” says Diana.“Yes, your highness,” replies Cowtit. “He is a champion, and the father of champions.”“Really?” says the princess, getting excited. “Tell me about him.”“Well, my lady,” continues the farmer, “this bull went to stud three hundred times last year!”“Really?” exclaims Diana. “That’s amazing! I must tell my husband about this.” And she runs off to get Charles.She finds him in the beer tent, boozing with a bunch of farmers.“Come with me, Charles!” snaps Diana. “I am going to show you an animal that will make you feel ashamed of yourself!” And she drags him over to the bull.“Now, my good man,” says Diana to Farmer Cowtit, pointing to the bull’s balls. “Tell my husband what you told me about this bull.”“Well,” replies the farmer, “as I was explaining to the princess here, this magnificent bull went to stud three hundred times last year.”“And that, Charles,” interrupts Diana, “is almost every day!”“Very interesting,” slurs Charles. “But I bet he doesn’t have to screw the same old cow!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen.Now look inward, collecting your whole consciousness – with great urgency, as if this moment is your last moment of life. Only with such urgency can one reach to the center of life. And the center of life is the center of eternal, immortal, universal being.Deeper and deeper, because you are going to meet, at the boundary line between you and the oceanic consciousness, the buddha himself. Your being a buddha is a necessary preparation for taking another step and jumping into the cosmic whole…not leaving even footprints in the blue sky.The greatest blissfulness is not to be. Thousands of flowers start showering on you.Just be an empty heart and you will be filled with tremendous treasures.To make it clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax.And just remain watchful, witnessing the body, the mind. You are neither of them. You are only the witness. This witness is metaphorically referred to as the buddha, the awakened one.How cool it feels at the center – a fresh breeze, a new fragrance that you have never experienced. The whole consciousness becomes full of stars.This evening was beautiful in itself. But ten thousand buddhas dissolving themselves into the ocean of consciousness have made it majestic. I can see that your consciousnesses have become a lake. Buddha Auditorium is just a lake of silent witnessing.In such lakes, lotuses blossom, truth is experienced, love for the first time understood. Beauty is no more a physical thing but an inner grace.Collect as many flowers as you can before Nivedano calls you back.This is your true nature.This is your original face.You don’t have to go to any temple to find the buddha. Your witness is the buddha.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Now come back. But come back like buddhas, with great peace, with immense grace, with a song in the heart, with a dance in every fiber of your being. And sit for a few moments, just to recollect the whole experience – where you have been, the golden path that you’ve traveled back and forth. This path you will have to travel back and forth many many times.Only then, one day you are ripe.Only then the time comes for the ultimate explosion.

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Joshu The Lions Roar 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Joshu The Lions Roar 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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On one occasion, Joshu said to his monks:I have single-heartedly practiced Zazen in the southern province for thirty years. If you want to realize enlightenment, you should realize the essence of Buddhism, doing Zazen.In the course of three, five, twenty or thirty years, if you fail to grasp the way, you may cut off my head and make it into a ladle to draw urine with.Joshu is also reported to have said:Thousands upon thousands of people are only seekers after Buddha, but not a single one is a true man of Tao. Before the existence of the world the self-nature remains intact. Now that you have seen this old monk, you are no longer someone else, but a master of yourself. What’s the use of seeking another in the exterior?Once a monk asked Joshu: “What is your family’s tradition?”Joshu responded: “I have nothing inside, and I seek for nothing outside.”Maneesha, the word Zazen has to be understood before I can start discussing the sutras that you have brought. Zen I have explained to you. It comes from the Sanskrit dhyan. Buddha never used Sanskrit as a part of his revolution. Sanskrit was the language of the learned, it has never been a language of the masses. Buddha broke away from tradition and started speaking in the language of the masses. It was a revolt against scholarship, learnedness, the pundits, the rabbis, the people of the scripture, whose whole heart is in their books. And because of those books they cannot see the reality.Buddha started speaking in the language of his province, Pali. In Pali, dhyan changes its form a little bit. It becomes jhan. When Bodhidharma reached China, jhan again changed, into Chinese; it became ch’an. And when the school of Rinzai took the same message to Japan from China, the word ch’an came very close to the very original Pali, jhan. It became in Japan, zen.In English there is no equivalent word. There are words like concentration, contemplation…but they are all of the mind. Dhyan means going beyond the mind. It is not concentration, it is not contemplation; it is just letting the mind be put aside and looking at reality and your own existence directly, without the mind interpreting it.Have you ever tried small experiments? Watching a roseflower, can you watch the roseflower without the mind saying, “How beautiful”? Can you just watch the rose without the mind saying anything at all? In that moment you are in the state of dhyan, or zen.I am reminded of a story.Twenty-five centuries ago it was a great coincidence that in Greece there was Socrates and in India were Gautam Buddha and Mahavira, and in China there were Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu – all expressing the existential truth, indicating toward it. It is very strange that suddenly, all over the world, there were at least six people fully awakened. Their words may be different because their languages are different, but their indication is to the same moon. That is absolutely certain.Dhyan means looking, either outside or inside, without thinking – just looking straight forward. Your eyes become only a mirror. The mirror never says anything to anybody. Neither does it condemn the ugly nor does it appreciate the beautiful; it is simply non-judgmental.Dhyan is, exactly, a non-judgmental state of mirror-like consciousness, just seeing and not saying anything. Then seeing becomes total. And in that seeing is the truth, is the good, is the beauty.Because of this phenomenon, in the East there is no equivalent word for philosophy. In the East the word that has become equivalent is darshan, but darshan refers to a totally different dimension than philosophy. Philosophy means love of wisdom. It is love of knowledge. And darshan means just the opposite: not the love of wisdom or of knowledge, but of seeing. Darshan means seeing. Dhyan is the method, the path; and darshan, seeing the truth with your own eyes, is the goal of the whole Eastern effort.What is zazen? Zen is, just once or twice a day…in the early morning when the sun is rising and the birds are singing, you sit silently by the side of the ocean or the river or the lake. It is not something that you have to do continuously. It is just like any other activity. You take your bath – that does not mean that for twenty-four hours you have to continue taking a shower. Zazen exactly means that: taking a shower continuously. Zen is a periodic effort to see the truth. Zazen is a twenty-four hour, around-the-clock remaining aware, alert, in the state beyond mind. Your activities should show it, your words should show it. Even your walking should show it – the grace, the beauty, the truth, the validity, the authority.So zazen is an extension of Zen around the clock. Just because of zazen, monasteries came into existence. Because if you are living an ordinary life of a householder you cannot manage to contemplate, to be in the state of Zen twenty-four hours a day. You have to do many other things. And there is every possibility that while you are doing other things you may forget the undercurrent. So monasteries came into existence. The society decided that the people who want to go deeper into their being are doing such a great experiment for the whole humanity, because if even one man becomes a buddha, with him the whole humanity rises a little bit in consciousness.It may not be apparent. It is just like when the Ganges…a big river, so big that by the time it reaches to meet the ocean its name, from Ganga, becomes Gangasagar, “the ocean of Ganges.” It becomes oceanic – so vast. As it moves into the ocean, the ocean certainly rises a little bit. The ocean is so vast that even hundreds and thousands of rivers never create a flood in the ocean, but certainly even a single dewdrop raises the level. At least you can comprehend it: a single dewdrop losing itself in the ocean, and the ocean is something more than it was before – one dewdrop more.The people of those days were certainly more subjective, of more clarity that the real evolution of man is not in developing machines, technology; the real evolution has to happen in the consciousness of man. His consciousness has to become a pinnacle, an Everest, a peak that rises high above the clouds. If even a single man succeeds, it is not only his success, it is also the success of all men – past, present, future – because it gives a clear-cut indication that we are not trying; otherwise we could also be buddhas. Those who have tried, have become. It is our intrinsic nature.The society supported the monks, supported the monasteries. There were thousands of monasteries with thousands of monks who were not doing anything. Society allowed them – “We are engaged in production. We will provide you with food and clothes. You go totally into your effort of reaching the highest peak of consciousness. Your success is not going to be only your success. If thousands of people become buddhas, the whole humanity, without any effort, will find a certain rise in consciousness.”This was a great insight. And society took over the burden of thousands of monks, of thousands of monasteries; all their needs were fulfilled by the society. Today, that society has disappeared because today even the concept that you are a hidden buddha has disappeared. A strange idea has caught humanity, that every man is an island. And that is sheer nonsense. Even the islands are not islands. Just go down a little deeper and they are joined with the continent.Everybody is joined, it is just a question of going a little deeper. Our roots are entangled with each other, our source of life is the same.It was a tremendous insight of those days that they decided – particularly, for example, in Tibet: every family had to contribute one child to the monastery, and in the monastery he had to do only zazen. He had no other work to distract him.But now that possibility does not exist. Hence, I have managed different devices in which you can remain in the world – no need to go to a monastery, because there is nobody to support you. You can be in the world and yet manage an undercurrent of fire that slowly slowly becomes like your breathing. You don’t have to remember it.Maneesha has asked:Osho,On one occasion, Joshu said to his monks:I have single-heartedly practiced Zazen in the southern province for thirty years.He is referring to those thirty years with his master, Nansen. He is saying, “I have single-heartedly practiced Zazen for thirty years continuously, without ever bothering about how far away enlightenment is.” Is it going to happen or not? Is it a truth or just a mirage? Is it something real or only a fiction created by dreamers? Without any doubt, how can one sustain for thirty years the same routine around the clock – walking, sitting, sleeping?The whole heart is devoted to one thing: how to become more conscious, how to become a witness, how to remain a witness whatever happens. It is possible only if you have come in contact with a master, exceptions not included. The master is an example that the dream can be fulfilled. That it is not a dream, it is a reality – it is just that we have not tried in the right way.Joshu could continue for thirty years just because he saw Nansen. The very presence of Nansen filled him with a great explosion of joy. “It is possible! If it is possible for Nansen, it is possible for me.”Nansen had asked him, “Do you have a master or not?” and he did not reply to exactly the question that was asked. He said, “I am with the master.” He said, “My master is in front of me,” indicating Nansen, who was lying down meditating. And he addressed Nansen as “Tathagata.”Tathagata is the most lovely word used for Gautam Buddha. Just out of respect, the disciples don’t use the name Gautam Buddha, they use the word Tathagata. And tathagata is very meaningful. It comes from tathata. Tathata means thisness, just here and now – a man who always remains here and now, never wavering toward past or future, is a tathagata. He neither goes anywhere nor comes back, he simply remains here. Time passes by, clouds pass by, but nothing touches him. His being here is from eternity to eternity. That is the most cherished word the followers of Buddha used to address him.Joshu said to Nansen, “Tathagata, I am with my master.” And in that moment something happened – just in silence. Nothing was said, nothing was heard, but something transpired, something was transferred. In Zen they call it “transmission of the lamp.” And Nansen never asked him to be initiated; neither did Joshu ask to be initiated. The initiation had happened without any ceremony and without anybody ever knowing it. The moment he called him “Tathagata”…that moment was very precious. “I am with my master.”Nansen accepted him, without saying anything. He simply called the head monk of the monastery and told him, “Take care of this new fellow. He is going to become ripe very soon. If he can recognize me as tathagata, he has already moved half the way. It won’t take long for him to recognize himself as tathagata. He has the right vision, the right direction…just a question of a little time.”But that “little time” took thirty years. Those days of patience are gone. Now you need quick things, the quicker the better. Because of this strange idea of quickness all things that grow very slowly and very silently have disappeared. Consciousness is one of those things which you cannot grow quickly. Thirty years sitting in zazen, Joshu became enlightened. What Nansen said was, “He will take just a little time.” In the eyes of Nansen, thirty years are just a little time compared to the eternity of existence on both sides. What is thirty years? Nothing, not even a little time.Joshu was talking to his disciples:“If you want to realize enlightenment, you should realize the essence of Buddhism, doing Zazen.”The essence of Buddhism is not in the scriptures, not in the words of Buddha. It is something to be understood, because it has far-reaching implications. Whatever Buddha has said is as close to truth as possible, but even being close to truth, it is not true. Even closeness is only a kind of distance. So you cannot find the essence of the experience of Buddha through the scriptures. That is the ordinary conception of people, that if you read Buddhism, if you become a learned scholar of Buddhism, you will know the essence of it.One great Buddhist monk, Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan, met me by chance in a Buddhist conference in Bodhgaya. He took me out of the crowd and asked me, “Whatever you were saying is so authoritative, but… Forgive me for interrupting you, I loved whatever you said, but I have never found in any scripture the stories you were telling. And I am the head of the Buddhist Society of India.”I had heard his name, I had read his books. I said, “It is a great opportunity to meet you. I have loved your books, but I can say to you that you don’t know the essence of Buddhism. Otherwise you would have understood my stories. It does not matter whether it really happened or not.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “Whatever I have said, if it has not happened it should have happened. That’s what I mean. Even Gautam Buddha cannot deny it. It may not have happened – that I can accept, that it is not factual. I don’t care much about facts. To me, truth is something more than a factual incident. It is anything that carries the essence.”He said, “You are a strange fellow. I have never heard such an idea.”He lived in Nagpur. I used to pass Nagpur once in a while; he would always come and he would say, “This story I have read in your book. I loved it, but the problem is that it never happened in Buddha’s life.”I said, “For that I am not responsible. If it did not happen, what can I do? It should have happened! You are a learned scholar; you can add it somewhere in the Buddhist scriptures.”He said, “What are you saying? Nothing can be added to the scriptures.”I said, “Any scripture to which nothing can be added is dead.”When I entered America, the inquiry officer asked me a few questions…whether I am an anarchist, a communist. I told him, “Listen, I am a living man.” He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “I may not be anarchist today, but tomorrow I can be an anarchist. So this whole stupid inquiry…with a living man! You should only allow the dead who are not going to change, ever. Living persons you should not allow in America. Because I am continuously growing, new leaves will come, new flowers will come. Who knows? Anarchism, communism…”He said, “You are a strange fellow! I am asking a simple thing, I am not a philosopher.”I said, “I am also not a philosopher, but make a note that your inquiry is applicable to a dead person only – not to a living person. If you ask me this moment what I am, I can tell you. Next moment, nobody knows what I will be. Even I don’t know. Then don’t call me contradictory. I am a communist, I am an anarchist, and a little more. Do you have any category?”Gautam Buddha, twenty-five centuries back…I can add much more to his teachings. These twenty-five centuries have not gone by in vain. Consciousness has taken on new terms, has known new skies, has flown farther than ever before. Because of this stupidity that you cannot add anything, all the scriptures become dead.I asked Anand Kausalyayan, “If Gautam Buddha himself had lived for twenty-five centuries, do you think he would be saying the same things?”He said, “You are crazy, but rational. It is true. If he had lived for twenty-five centuries, he would have added much.”I said, “Then it is my responsibility to add a few things here and there. I take the liberty because I have tasted the same consciousness. You have not tasted the consciousness – that’s why you are worried. You know only the dead scripture, which died twenty-five centuries ago. I am a living scripture.”To realize the essence of Buddhism is to realize what Buddha realized, is to go as deep into yourself as Buddha went in. That’s what we are doing here. And we are not Buddhists, we don’t belong to any dead tradition or any dead orthodoxy. There is no need. We are all carrying the buddha within us – why go on searching anywhere else?That is the purpose of zazen, to search through all the garbage that you have accumulated down the centuries. You have been here on the earth for four million years in different shapes, in different bodies, in different species. You have gathered so much around your small buddha that you will have to dig as deep as possible. And don’t waver in digging.One great Sufi mystic, Jalaluddin Rumi, one day took his disciples to a field where a farmer had been trying for months to dig a well. The disciples were feeling a little reluctant – what is the point in going there? Whatever he wants to say, he can say here. But Jalaluddin insisted: “You come with me. Without coming you will not understand.”What the farmer had done was, he would start digging in one place, go ten feet, twelve feet, would not find water and would start digging in another place. He had dug eight holes and now he was working on the ninth. He had destroyed the whole field.Rumi told his disciples, “Don’t be like this idiot. If he had put all this energy into digging one hole he would have found water, howsoever deep it is. He has wasted his energy unnecessarily.”And that’s what everybody is doing. You start, you go a little bit, and then you start again sometime later, or some years later. You go a little bit from a different direction.These little bits are dangerous. Your effort should be concentrated, and once you start, and you have a master in whom you can trust and in whom you can see the realization of a buddha, then there is no going back. Then go on digging, even if it takes thirty years.That’s what Joshu is saying:In the course of three, five, twenty or thirty years, if you fail to grasp the way, you may cut off my head and make it into a ladle to draw urine with.I promise you, at the risk of my head, that if you continue…one never knows. Three years, five years, twenty years, thirty years – one never knows how much garbage you have gathered. Sometimes it can happen in a single moment. Sometimes it can take years. It all depends on the thickness of the layers of dust, past memories, future aspirations, and how courageous you are to cut the whole thing in a single blow.Without any rest, go on digging. The water is certainly everywhere; so is the buddha-consciousness in every living being. Only man is so fortunate that he can understand it. Other animals are also on the way….Scientists think that the theory of evolution is Charles Darwin’s concept. In the scientific field it is true, but they are not aware of the Eastern concept of evolution. A very different concept – far more relevant and far more valid. It is not that one monkey simply becomes man. It is very difficult. You can force him, massage him, stretch him, operate on his tail, put his tie right, but a monkey is a monkey. I don’t think that suddenly one day some monkey got the idea, jumped out of the tree, stood on his two feet, and started becoming man. If so, all the other monkeys would have become man. They don’t become, they are still there in the trees.The East does not mean by evolution that a monkey becomes a man, but the consciousness of a monkey may be born into a human being. It is not the body that evolves; it is the consciousness within that goes on taking higher forms, goes on reaching toward higher peaks. Man up to now is the highest peak of all that the animals have been trying to be, unconsciously. This is the fortunate situation for man, that he can do consciously some work that other animals cannot do.It is impossible to teach meditation to a buffalo, although buffaloes look more meditative than man. But nothing can be taught, and even if there are a few birds, or a few animals who can be taught a few tricks, that does not become their evolution. They simply become actors. A few animals have the capacity to imitate, but only to imitate. Neither can they add anything nor can they delete anything.I told Anand Kausalyayan, “You are old, but still it is not too late. The essence of Buddhism is not in the Buddhist scriptures, the essence of Buddhism is in being a buddha.” And one becomes a buddha if he reaches his own center.Joshu is completely certain; otherwise he would not have made such a statement: in the course of three, five, twenty or thirty years…because in thirty years he became enlightened. He thinks, “If a man like me can become a buddha, then anybody can become. There are more intelligent people than me, more courageous people than me. Somebody may become in three years, somebody in five years.”The question of time is irrelevant. The real thing is to begin now, don’t postpone for tomorrow. Deeper somewhere, there is a life source – that much is certain. You are alive, you are breathing, you are listening, your heart is beating. You are perfectly alive, so there must be a source from where life is coming to you. This much can be said with an absolute guarantee, that you are connected with the universe and that connection is your buddhahood.Joshu is also reported to have said:thousands upon thousands of people are only seekers after Buddha, but not a single one is a true man of Tao.To be a seeker in a lukewarm way, thinking that buddhahood is certain… “If I don’t work it out today, there is tomorrow.” The seeker without an urgency – there are thousands of people around the world. There are even more cases now than at the time of Joshu – there are millions of people who have a certain idea that one day they will turn inward, but that day has not come yet. There are so many other things to be done. There are always, there have always been thousands of people interested, but not interested enough to risk their whole life. And unless you risk your whole life, unless it becomes such an urgency that it has to be done whatever the consequences – whatsoever the losses, you have to know yourself – unless this becomes such a total thirst, you will not become a buddha. Or a man of Tao – which are not two things; a man of Tao is the Chinese expression for the same experience as becoming a buddha.Before the existence of the world the self-nature remains intact. Now that you have seen this old monk…Joshu is pointing at himself.…Now that you have seen this old monk, you are no longer someone else, but a master of yourself.If you have seen me clearly, you have seen yourself clearly, because I am nothing but a mirror. Only a blind man can pass without seeing himself in me, his own image.The master’s basic, fundamental function is to be a mirror to the disciple so the disciple can have a certain idea of what a man of Tao means, what it means to be a buddha.Joshu, with a lion’s roar, is saying, “When you have seen this old monk, you are no longer someone else but a master of yourself.” A master only reflects your masterhood. He reflects your potentiality, he reflects what originally you are and you have forgotten.What is the use of seeking another in the exterior?Joshu is saying, “If you cannot see the buddha in me, then don’t waste your time. You will not be able to see it anywhere.” This certainty comes with self-experience.I have called this book Joshu – The Lion’s Roar. Normally, buddhas are very humble. Joshu is also very humble but he cannot help but say with absolute authority that “once you have seen me, you have looked into a mirror. If you cannot find your master here, then you will be wasting your time wandering around the world, and you will think that you are a seeker. There is no need to seek; just see that you are fortunate to have come across a master.”This authority arises out of absolute experience.Once a monk asked Joshu, “What is your family’s tradition?”By “family” is not meant the ordinary family; by “family” is meant your master, your master’s master. Once you have become a buddha, you are reborn. Now there is no question of your ordinary family, your ordinary parents. Your master has become the one closest to you. Your master has become a rebirth for you. So, What is your family’s tradition? someone asked Joshu.Joshu responded…and you have to learn how these Zen masters respond, they don’t reply. They don’t repeat. Their response…perhaps the questioner has never dreamt that somebody will respond to his question in this way.Joshu responded: “I have nothing inside, and I seek for nothing outside.This is the tradition of my family. Inside, an empty heart asking for nothing. Outside, no desire, no ambition. This is the tradition of my family.”This is the tradition of all the buddhas. This has to become your tradition too.Ryushu, a Zen poet, wrote:Three, two, one; one, two, three –how are you ever going to probethe mysteries of zen?Spring birds busy on my roofafter the raintry out some new sounds,tweeting and chirping.What does Ryushu mean by three, two, one? Man begins either from the concept of three…just like the Hindu trimurti, three faces of God, or like the Christian trinity. The words trinity and trimurti both come from the same root, tri. The word three comes from tri. Either one can begin from three – the knower, the known and the knowledge, the seeker, the sought and the search – or one can begin in a contrary way: one, two, three. One can start from oneself; then he finds the other, he witnesses it. The other can be anything in your inner experience. And then the third: the third is the very witnessing. The one who witnesses, the other, which is witnessed, and the process of witnessing is the third.Ryushu is saying: Whatever you do, this way or that, you will not reach to the ultimate. These are all games, which philosophers tend to play. It is better not to get involved in games of spirituality, but just be silent and watch what is happening around you.Spring birds busy on my roof after the rainWatch these small things, the rain and the mist that it has left behind, and the fragrance that comes from the earth. And the birds who are busy on the roof – they are trying…new sounds,tweeting and chirping.Ryushu is saying there is no need to be very serious about the search. You can become a witness of ordinary things – the witnessing is the same, whether you witness a bird chirping or you witness your mind chattering. Whether you witness a sunrise outside or you witness your innermost being, witnessing is the same.Ryushu is saying, rather than getting involved in controversial philosophies, start from small things. Learn from small things one art – the art of witnessing. And then use that same art inward. It is easier to learn it in the outside world.It is because of this that Zen became a very artistic religion. No other religion is so artistic: their monasteries are beautiful gardens, with beautiful ponds, birds, great trees, thick forests, mountains…and all this is for zazen. You sit under an ancient tree and nothing has to be done: just watch.You know the famous haikus:Sitting silently,doing nothing,spring comesand the grass grows by itself.Ancient pond,a frog jumps inthe sound– of the frog, and then the great silence. And you are just sitting by the side of an ancient tree.Zen has made the spiritual search very aesthetic. First learn it from outside, watching the flowers and the sunrise and the sunset. The effort is not concerned with the object, the effort is to learn the art of watching without any interpretation, without any judgment. A non-judgmental, mirror-like witnessing…if you have learned it from outside, it will be easy for you to enter in with the same art.Maneesha has asked:Osho,It seems you have closed off all escape routes for us. Am I right in feeling that enlightenment is less and less an option, but, rather, the only exit?It is the only exit, Maneesha. It is not an option. You cannot avoid it. You can delay, you can postpone for centuries, but finally you will end up a buddha – so why unnecessarily wait? That’s how I became a buddha. When I saw that one has to become a buddha, this life or another life…when this has to happen, then why unnecessarily waste time? I simply dropped the idea of searching for Buddha and became a buddha.The family in which I used to live at that time were suddenly surprised. They said “You are behaving very strangely!”I said, “I have to. Last night I became a buddha.”They said, “This is not a joking matter…are you serious?”I said, “I have to be!”They shrugged their shoulders, they said, “But how did you become a buddha?”I said, “That is not the question. Once I understood that it is the destiny of every living being, last night I thought: Why unnecessarily wait?”And since then, if I have tried to take even one holiday…It is not allowed. Once you have become a buddha, I warn you, then there are no holidays. Once a buddha, forever a buddha.So Maneesha you are right, but it is not me who has closed all the routes, it is existence itself. It gives you as much rope as you want. But why unnecessarily remain miserable? Why unnecessarily remain in anguish? If you can become a buddha and have all the blessings of existence available to you, then why not this moment? It is not me, it is existence itself asking you, “Why not this moment?”Look at Zareen: she has come back to her place, has thrown away her migraine last night, and is again sitting behind Maneesha. Beware of Maneesha! Because migraine is her old habit. She may throw it any moment. And it is very easy when the gibberish starts – everybody is throwing all kinds of bullshit. So remember one thing: go on throwing your bullshit with your mouth, and with your hands go on protecting yourself. Otherwise, only bullshit is exchanged and you go happy to your home thinking that it was great.A little change is good. But it is somebody else’s bullshit, so remember it: when you are deeply involved in throwing all your nonsense, keep protecting your mind with both your hands; otherwise you may get new rubbish, new rotten eggs, but you will remain the same. So be clever. Forcibly move away everything that is being thrown to you.Maneesha, existence does not allow any option except enlightenment. It goes on forcing you toward enlightenment. It has infinite time available to it, so it is not in a hurry. But you should understand – what is the point of postponing it for tomorrow? That is what Buddha used to say: tathata, thisness, suchness, herenow – try to see a simple point that you are a buddha. And a mirror is in front of you! If a master cannot be a mirror to you, then either the master is not a master, or you are blind.Just a few days ago Hasya had gone to New Delhi for a press conference. She was showing a small video there about the ashram and its activities. She was very much puzzled that the journalists who had come, when I started speaking, started looking…somebody this way, somebody that way, somebody downward. She could not understand what was the matter. Then the Delhi friends told her, “You don’t know, they all think that even to look into the eyes of this man is dangerous, or to hear his voice. You will be hypnotized.”Thousands of people want to come here. But they will come only when I am dead, because then I cannot hypnotize them. Then they will bring flowers and offerings, too. Right now it is dangerous. And you know it is dangerous! Even though I am hiding my eyes, it does not matter. The energy that hypnotizes passes through the glasses. Just last night, Avirbhava and Anando have shown you: the energy knows no barrier. I have started wearing these glasses just to console people, so they can look toward me without fear – and I am going to do whatever I am supposed to do!It is existence itself that brings you to a master. It is your own urge that impels you toward a master. There is no exit. Even if you go far away from me, it will not make any difference; I will haunt you wherever you go.Zareen had gone to her house, but I haunted her there. In the morning she was back. I inquired of Anando, “Just look to see whether Zareen is back on the gate or not.” She said, “Why?”I said, “I have been haunting her the whole night! I hope that she is well enough and back at the gate where she is needed.”Once you have become part of my caravan there is no way out, there is only a way in.Now Sardar Gurudayal Singh is repressing his desire. He wants to laugh even while I am speaking. But he has to suppress it because it will be very embarrassing, particularly for an old disciple. So he keeps suppressing it and waiting for his time. And his time comes….Pope the Polack dies and goes to heaven. He is met at the Pearly Gates by Saint Peter, who asks the Polack if he has any questions before he comes in.“Yes, I have,” replies the pope. “I always knew that I would go to heaven, but I often wondered what hell would be like.”“Okay,” says Saint Peter. “You can visit hell if you want. But you must return after half an hour, or you will get stuck there.”So the Polack pope takes the elevator down to hell and finds himself in the lobby of a luxury hotel. He looks around and sees it is a beach resort, with beautiful men and women lazing around in the sun. There is a well-stocked bar, where the drinks are free, and a magnificent spread of multinational food. A Brazilian band is playing a hot Samba, and everything is just far out!The Polack wanders around in rapture for a while and then notices that his half an hour is nearly up. He makes a dash for the elevator and only just gets back in time.The pope walks through the gates of heaven just as Saint Peter announces that lunch is ready. So the Polack pope sits himself down at the table.After a few moments they are joined by Jesus, who brings in a plate of peanut butter sandwiches and a pot of herb tea.“What is this?” cries the Polack, in dismay. “Down in hell, they eat pizza and ice cream, and drink French wine!”“Well,” replies Saint Peter, “it’s not worth putting on a fancy spread for just the three of us!”Young Spud Kowalski wins a fortune in the Polish National Lottery. When he comes home that evening, he finds his dad, Kowalski, sitting in front of the TV.“Hi, Dad!” he says. “Guess what? I won the lottery today.”“I know,” says Kowalski, “I just saw it on the TV. Fifty thousand dollars!”“Well, Dad,” says Spud, “you and mom have been so good to me over the years that I have decided to give you a cut. Here Dad, take ten dollars.”“Wow! Thanks, son,” says Kowalski, examining the ten dollar bill carefully. “And now, let me give you some good advice.”“Okay Dad,” says Spud. “I’m listening.”“Son,” continues Kowalski, “don’t just waste your good fortune. Settle down and get married properly – not like your mother and me.”“Gee Dad!” cries Spud. “You mean you and mom never got married? Do you realize what that makes me?”“Sure I do, son,” snaps Kowalski. “And you’re a real tight one, too!”Three sailors – a German, an American and a Polack – are in a pub drinking a few beers.“Our submarines can stay under water for a half a year,” brags the German sailor.“That’s nothing,” says the American, swallowing his beer and wiping his lips. “Our nuclear submarines can stay under water for one whole year!”“Hey,” says the Polack sailor, spilling his beer. “That is really nothing. Our submarines dive down and never come up!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes, feel your body to be completely frozen.Now look inward, gathering all your consciousness – almost like an arrow, forcing toward the center.At the center you are the buddha. On the circumference you may be anybody, Tom, Dick, Harry; on the circumference you are all different but at the center your essential nature is that of a buddha, the man of Tao.Deeper and deeper – because the deeper you go, the more will be your experience of your eternal reality. Flowers will start showering on you, the whole existence will rejoice your silence.Just be a witness, from the center, and you have arrived home.To make it clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax. Just remember that you are only a witness. The body is not you, the mind is not you. You are just a mirror.And as you settle down into a mirror-like witnessing, the whole existence takes on a tremendously beautiful form. Everything becomes divine.This evening was beautiful on its own, but Joshu’s lion’s roar has made it tremendously beautiful.This very moment you are a buddha.When you come back, bring the buddha with you. You have to live out the buddha in your day-to-day life. I am against renouncing the world – I am for recreating the world. The more buddhas there are, the world will have new skies, new dimensions, new doors opening…new mysteries, new miracles.Collect as much fragrance and flowers as you can.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but come back as a buddha – peacefully, gracefully. Sit down for a few moments just to recollect your experience of the space that you have visited and the splendor that you have experienced.Every day you have to go deeper and deeper.So always remember how far you have gone: tomorrow you have to go a little more. It may take two, or five, or twenty, or thirty years – but you are to become a buddha. As far as I am concerned you are right now a buddha, you have only to gain courage.In those thirty years you will not be changing into a buddha – you are a buddha already. Those thirty years are just to drop the doubt, the doubt that you – how can you be a buddha? Even if I say it, even if all the buddhas try to convince you, deep down is the doubt: “My god, me? and a buddha?” But one day you will become convinced by your own experience. There is no real conversion without your own experience.And Maneesha, I am not allowing you any exit.You have been out for centuries.Now you have to go in.

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Joshu The Lions Roar 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Joshu The Lions Roar 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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A monk put the question to Joshu: “I have heard that you said that when the universe is destroyed the buddha nature will not be destroyed. What is this ‘nature’?”Joshu responded by saying, “The four elements and the five components.”The monk asked again, “These are the very things that will be destroyed; what is this ‘nature’?”Joshu said, “It is the four elements and the five components.”Once, a monk was saying farewell to Joshu, who asked him, “Where are you going?”The monk replied, “All over the place, to learn Buddhism.”Holding up his mosquito-flapper, Joshu instructed the monk, “Do not stay where the buddha is! Pass quickly through a place where there is no buddha! Do not make a mistake and bring up Buddhism to anyone for three thousand leagues!”The monk said, “In that case I won’t go!” To which Joshu responded, “Farewell! Farewell!”Maneesha, these immensely important dialogues have remained obscure even in Zen circles because only a master, only a buddha, can give a right interpretation. Anybody else commenting on them is bound to fall far away from the right.These sutras are not written by intellect; they do not follow rationality, they are not logical in any way. They are responses. And to find the response you need to have the same experience. That’s why they have remained in existence, but uncommented upon. This small anecdote will explain it to you.A monk put the question to Joshu: “I have heard that you said that when the universe is destroyed the buddha nature will not be destroyed. What is this ‘nature’?”The question is absolutely rational and right. But the answer needs a tremendous insight to understand.Joshu responded by saying, “The four elements and the five components.”According to Buddhist mythology, existence consists of Four Elements and Five Components. Now this is an absurd answer to the question because these are the very things the world is constituted of. And the questioner is asking, “When the world is destroyed, you say the Buddha nature remains. What is that nature?” Joshu simply says, “Four elements and five components.”The monk asked again, “These are the very things that will be destroyed; what is this ‘nature’ that will not be destroyed?”Joshu said, “It is the four elements and the five components.”Again the same answer. Now it becomes very absurd as far as reason is concerned, but what Joshu is saying is hidden behind the words. He is saying, “The witness who knows these Five Components and Four Elements.” He does not use the word witness, because no word is really capable of explaining the witness. So rather than using the word, he again repeats: “The world may be destroyed but the witness will remain. Up to now you have not even witnessed the Four Elements and Five Components. If you go inward you will witness these Four Elements and Five Components, and the one that is witnessing is the buddha nature – about which nothing can be said.”The limit of language comes with Four Elements and Five Components. Beyond that is an open sky of witnessing, just a pure awareness. You can have it, but you cannot say anything about it. That’s why Joshu does not say it. He again and again reminds the person, “Language ends with Four Elements and Five Components. What can I do? This is the last milestone; beyond this, what remains is the buddha nature.”This is the way of Zen, not to say things to their completion. This has to be understood; it is a very important methodology. Not to say everything means to give an opportunity to the listener to complete it. All answers are incomplete. The master has only given you a direction: go in the direction of Four Elements and Five Components. By the time you reach the limit, you will know what is going to remain.This way, if somebody is trying to understand Zen intellectually he will fail. It is not an answer to the question but something more than the answer. It is indicating the very reality. Joshu is saying that you, as a witness, will remain. The buddha nature is not something far away – your very consciousness is buddha nature. And your consciousness can witness these things which constitute the world. The world will end but the mirror will remain, mirroring nothing.But he does not say anything about witnessing, about the mirror. He leaves it to the person’s meditativeness. The person has to find the answer himself. This is not a school or a college or a university.Zen is an opportunity for anybody to rise in consciousness and awareness. The master’s function is not to supply the answer. If the master supplies the answer, he is your enemy. The master can only give you the line to follow; your experience will be the answer. This way of dialogue has never existed anywhere else in the world.Once, a monk was saying farewell to Joshu, who asked him, “Where are you going?”The monk replied, “All over the place, to learn Buddhism.”Holding up his mosquito-flapper, Joshu instructed the monk, “Do not stay where the buddha is!”A strange suggestion…because the monk seems to be stupid not to see Joshu, a living buddha, before him. Obviously, Joshu does not want to say, “Remain here! I am the buddha you are searching for.” On the contrary, he says:“Do not stay where the buddha is. Pass quickly through a place where there is no buddha!”Because where there is no buddha, what is the point? Pass quickly and don’t stay where a buddha is.Now, he is not leaving any place to go, because these are the only two places: either the Buddha will be there or the Buddha will not be there.“Do not make a mistake and bring up Buddhism to anyone for three thousand leagues!”He is saying, “As far as you can go – three thousands leagues – do not make a mistake and bring up buddhism to anyone, because you don’t have it.” So his three suggestions are, first: don’t become a missionary, because it is not your experience. That which is not yours, don’t repeat it to people like a parrot. Only your experience of ultimate, eternal consciousness enables you to point others toward the same route. You cannot teach Buddhism, because Buddhism is not a philosophy, it is a living experience. So if you have lived it, help others to join in living it. Share your life, your love, your compassion, your meditation, but don’t teach principles. Buddhism is not interested in principles.And second, don’t stay in a place where there is no buddha, because what will you gain in a place where there is no buddha? You can gain some insight only by the side of an awakened one. You can start moving toward your center if you see someone who has reached the center, and you see the glory and the beauty and the majesty of the person. Otherwise there is no evidence that anybody has ever reached to the ultimate.Once a great logician of Bengal, Keshav Chandra, went to see Ramakrishna. Keshav Chandra was a very great scholar, and he had founded a religion also. So he was the founder of a religion, he had thousands of followers. But he was always amazed: “Why do people go to this stupid, uneducated Ramakrishna?”Keshav Chandra lived in Calcutta, and just a few miles away from Calcutta is Dakshineshwar where Ramakrishna lived. Thousands of people would go there. Keshav Chandra could not believe it: “What has that man got?” Finally he decided to go and put the man right.Ramakrishna’s followers were very much disturbed, worried, because Ramakrishna does not know any reason, any logic. He is just like a child, so innocent, and Keshav Chandra is known nationwide as a logician, philosopher. What will Ramakrishna do in a discussion with him?They were worried that it was going to be a very critical moment. But Ramakrishna said, “Why are you worried? It is good that he is coming.” Ramakrishna waited. Keshav Chandra came with many followers. He was determined to finish this man forever so that no followers would gather there at Dakshineshwar.Ramakrishna danced in welcome when Keshav Chandra arrived. Keshav Chandra became a little shaky: “This is not a man to discuss with; he seems to be crazy.” Ramakrishna hugged Keshav Chandra and said, “I have been waiting for so long! Now, start the dialogue to finish me.”There was utter silence. Even Keshav Chandra could not say anything: from where to start? Ramakrishna said, “You start from anywhere. Whatever you want to say, say it. I will love it!”Keshav Chandra was an atheist, he did not believe in God. So it was obvious that he should start by saying, “There is no God. What is your opinion?”Ramakrishna said, “It is not a question of opinion. If a man of your knowledge says there is no God, how can I deny it? But to me you are a proof, an evidence, that existence is not without consciousness. Such beautiful logical acumen! From where does it come? That very source is God, you are the proof. But if you say there is no God, I will agree with you absolutely.”Keshav Chandra had debated with many people, he was a supreme court attorney, and he found himself completely voiceless before a man who had studied only the first two primary classes and had no knowledge of anything. But the way Ramakrishna said, “If you say so, I trust you. You are such a great rational being you must have known whether God is or not. I am uneducated; all that I know is to sing songs and dance and play music. I can do all this without God, but God is a good excuse. Otherwise it looks crazy. If I go into a house and start dancing and singing, it looks crazy, but in a temple it looks very devotional. God is a good excuse. Have you ever danced in a temple? We have here a beautiful temple…”Keshav Chandra had never thought that dance would come into an argument. And it looked appealing, because the man was so sincere. Ramakrishna said, “If you, a man of great intelligence, say to me, who is an uneducated man, I will believe it; I will drop all gods. Just say it to me, that you have explored the whole universe and found no God.”Keshav Chandra could not say that. Nobody has explored the whole universe. But without exploring the whole universe, how can you be so decisive that there is no God? Keshav Chandra said, “I cannot say that I have explored the whole universe. Naturally, my statement that there is no God is not valid. But what about you?”Ramakrishna said, “About me? I have danced with him, I have loved him. I have threatened him; there have been times we have not been on talking terms. I sometimes close and lock the door of the temple and keep him hungry for days. But then I start feeling compassion for the poor fellow. I open the door, I bring food for him, and he is so nice that he has not said a single word to me.”And he told Keshav Chandra, “One day it happened that there was a sword hanging by the side of the Mother Goddess in the temple of Dakshineshwar. I told the Mother Goddess, ‘If you don’t appear to me today I am going to cut off my head.’ I took the sword from Mother Goddess’ hand and I danced from morning till evening. I told her, ‘As the sun is setting, if you don’t show yourself to me, remember: you will be responsible for my murder.’”And as the sun was setting – he danced the whole day – a great crowd silently watched this strange man. He had danced from morning till evening singing songs of praise, and as the sun was setting, suddenly the sword he was going to use fell from his hand. He fell unconscious for six days.After six days he opened his eyes and he said, “I have not asked that you should come into my deep unconscious. I wanted to see you clearly, in consciousness. I wanted witnesses from the crowd. But you played a trick!” And tears were flowing from his eyes and he said, “But now the world looks very pale. Take me back to the same space where I had gone. You took away the sword and now you have created more trouble for me, because now I can compare the tremendous beauty of the inner world and the tremendous poverty of the outer world. Just take me in.”He said to Keshav Chandra, “Have you ever done anything to go in?”Keshav Chandra said, “I touch your feet. And please forgive me that I have come to argue with you. You are not a man to be argued with; you are the proof. If there can be a proof of God, you are the proof. You cannot be argued about.”Keshav Chandra’s followers could not understand what was happening, because he was the founder of their religion, an atheistic religion. And he is touching the feet of a man he used to call an idiot.Ramakrishna used to send messages to Keshav Chandra: “Sometimes, once in a while come back again just to finish me.”Keshav Chandra said, “You have finished me!” He renounced being the head and founder of his religion. He said, “I could not argue with an uneducated man. He had some experience, and I could see that I was absolutely empty and he was so full, so full of joy. I had discussed with many scholars…but the way he received me, dancing, and hugged me. And whenever I argued something he would again stand up and say, ‘Good, very good!’ He never used a single word against me. On the contrary, he said, ‘If you say, I can join your religion, because to me you are also part of God.’”Any consciousness is an argument that existence is conscious. That is the whole meaning of God. It is not that God is a person somewhere. God is spread all over the place, in the trees, in the mountains, in the rivers, in the birds, in men, in stones. Everywhere, there is a possibility of consciousness.This whole consciousness in its totality you can call by any name. You can call it the truth, you can call it nirvana, you can call it God, it does not matter. One thing is certain, that existence is not unconscious; existence is not unintelligent.These dialogues of Zen trust in the person, that “if we show him a line, his intelligence will not stay with what we have said but will follow the indication.” To the monk who was going to take Buddhism to people, Joshu said, “Please don’t do such a thing. You cannot share something with others which you don’t have. First have it. And never stay in a place where there is no buddha because that will be a sheer wastage of time. And don’t stay in a place where there is a buddha because that will transform you. You will not be anymore what you are.”Listening to this, the man understood quickly. He must have been a very intelligent, understanding man. He must have looked at Joshu again and found the buddha, just present in front of him.The monk said, “In that case I won’t go!I am going to remain here.”To which Joshu responded, “Farewell! Farewell!”Just go wherever you want to go. Why are you changing your mind? I have not asked you to stay here.He wants a clear-cut response from the man that he has recognized the buddhahood of Joshu.So these are very strange dialogues. They are not like Socratic dialogues. Much that is important is left out of the dialogue and much that is absolutely non-essential is talked about. The essential is left by the corner to be understood.One has to be very conscious with a Zen master; otherwise one can live with a Zen master and miss. The master cannot give you anything directly. There is no direct way of expressing the truth. The master can give only situations. Now, this is a situation: “Don’t stay where a buddha is and don’t stay where a buddha is not.” Now Joshu is putting the monk in a dilemma – then where to stay? He is not leaving him any place to stay.Obviously he looked again at Joshu with a more conscious, alert mind. And he saw, “I was wrong in going away. This is the place where I should remain.” So he said immediately, “In that case I won’t go.” Jokingly, Joshu responded, “Farewell! Farewell!”But the monk remained with Joshu. How can you leave such a master? It is impossible, first, to find a master like Joshu. And second, it is impossible to leave him. He will manage a trap for you, and once you are trapped in a master’s hand, your buddhahood is not far away. The very meeting with the master is the beginning of your growing into a buddha.A Zen poet, Isho, wrote:Before the window,slender, jade-colored bamboos singwhen the cool rains fall,with a rustling sound.Their feathery greenintruding at my desk,they know there isno purer hidden spot than this.Around the world people have written poems, mostly devoted to man and woman and their love. A few are devoted to the beauty of nature. But Zen is not in the same category as other poetry. It is simply a meditative mind, just watching what is happening around. And he sees beauty all around. The splendor of existence is so much that he feels to make a note in his book. Before the window…you have to visualize. Just visualize the window:Before the window,slender, jade-colored bamboos singwhen the cool rains fall,with a rustling sound.Their feathery greenintruding at my desk,they know there isno purer, hidden spot than this.Poor Isho lived in a hut near the bamboos, and the falling leaves are running into his hut, under his desk. He says:they know there is no purer, hidden spot than this.Zen wants you to know that even the leaves falling from the trees have a consciousness of their own. Nothing is unconscious. There are different ways of being conscious, but we are living in an ocean of consciousness. Millions are the aspects…so that we cannot understand exactly what the bamboos are doing.Now in Mukta’s pond, two beautiful snow-white swans have come, flown from England. Great visitors! And every night when I come and go, I cannot resist looking at them. They look so meditative, the whole day doing zazen…because they don’t have any rented bicycle, they don’t have to go to any movie. They are so silent that if you sit by the side of Mukta’s pond you will become silent, seeing their silence. They just don’t do anything – simply exist, no philosophical argument.Seeing those swans I remember that in India, the man of self-realization is also called paramahansa. Hansa means swan and paramahansa means the great swan. Every day seeing them, I could understand: they look so buddhalike, just enjoying being – no work, no job, no strike, no lock-out, no interest in the whole world around them; they don’t have anything.But with their coming, the pond has become a temple. They are meditating day and night. What is happening inside them is difficult for us to know, but something must be happening inside them. They are such beautiful people. It must be in a different dimension, so we never crisscross each other, but in the same direction there must be other people, other birds.There were ducks also – now, ducks are small; they became afraid when the swans came. So the ducks were in a very great trouble for a few days because the peacocks peck them on the head, so they cannot come out of the pond. And in the pond, two big swans are there – so unfamiliar, one does not know what they will do. So the ducks were hiding in the bushes. But slowly slowly some communication is certainly happening, because the ducks are coming closer…and yesterday Avesh informed me that they have entered the water with the swans. In silence, something has grown, a friendship. Nothing has been said, nothing has been heard, but something must have transpired between them.Either the swans must have told them, “Come on, don’t be worried,” or the ducks must have asked, “Can we come in?” Something is bound to have happened, because suddenly it cannot be. But it is outside the area of our intelligence.That is the very effort of Zen poems – to bring to your consciousness that the whole of existence is conscious. Different colors and different nuances and different ways, but the man who has reached the highest peak can see that nothing in the world is without a living force, without a potentiality that can grow one day into a buddha.Buddha himself has told about one of his past lives. He was an elephant. One night the forest suddenly caught fire. The fire was going so wild, and animals were running to find some way out. The elephant was also running, because the fire was tremendous. Just to take rest, he stood under a tree which was not yet burning. As he was settling to stand there, a small rabbit just came under one of his feet which was up. Now it was difficult for the elephant to put his foot down; the poor fellow will die. So he tried hard to remain standing on three feet, but an elephant’s weight….Buddha says that because of that compassion the elephant remained standing, he could not put his foot down. The fire surrounded the whole place. He risked his life as long as he could save the rabbit, and then the fire burned both of them. Buddha says, “I was that elephant and I earned my buddhahood by being compassionate.”Now all over the world, in the birds, in the animals, something is happening. It is not a dead world. Everybody is trying to move to higher peaks. This idea of evolution is totally different from Darwin’s evolution. Darwin’s evolution looks very stupid, because we don’t see any animal changing into any other animal. For millions of years there is no record that somebody has seen a monkey suddenly going to the tailor’s shop to say that, “I have changed my mind, I want to be a man. Now prepare the dress, made to order.” Neither is any other animal changing into another species. That idea of Darwin is absolutely absurd.But the East has a different concept. The same evolution is happening – in every animal something is evolving. At a certain point when the animal dies, he will be born on a higher scale. Up to now, man is the highest scale that millions of animals have reached. Among human beings, the buddhas are the highest peaks.These small poems are just to remind you that even fallen leaves in the rain and in the storm are rushing toward poor Isho’s hut and his writing table, and hiding under the table. And he says:they know there is no purer, hidden spot than this.Otherwise they would not have come here.This understanding that the whole existence is alive, conscious, makes your whole behavior different. Then you don’t think of hunting animals, because they are your brothers. A little backward, a little uneducated, a little primitive, but killing them, you are killing future buddhas. Hence, the experience of all the buddhas has terminated in a very loving and compassionate relationship with existence. Not even a tree has to be cut. It is alive; it may have a different kind of consciousness. Don’t wound it, don’t hurt it, because every wound and hurt that you do will have effects on you, your own evolution.Maneesha has asked:Osho,The terror and the relief of having a master who promises to hit “just for the joy of it”! Is this what Zen is? – When rationality, right and wrong fly out the window, the mind is on hold, and all one can offer is one's self?Maneesha, that’s exactly what Zen is. There are hundreds of cases on record, when a master has called a certain disciple even in the middle of the night and told him, “Let me hit you.”And the disciple said, “But for what?”The master said, “Because by morning you are going to become enlightened and then I will not be able to hit you. And it is such a joy to hit!”The master enjoyed hitting and the disciples enjoyed being hit. It is a very loving gesture, the hit was not hurting.Somebody has brought me a Zen staff. It is made of bamboo, and the bamboo is cut in such a way that howsoever hard you hit, it makes only sound, not much hurt. I have put it with Anando, so when Zen Master Stonehead Niskriya comes back he can have this really authentic Zen stick from Korea. However you hit, it makes a good noise. It seems as if somebody’s head is broken!But Zen is a very playful religion. It has made even hitting a joyful play. There is no other religion in the world which allows playfulness and laughter and life and love. Zen allows total freedom in all the aspects of life.Zen has transformed almost impossible things into very loving gestures. For example Zen wrestlers – you will see them fighting, but not with any anger, enmity, or any desire to win over the other. That is the whole training, playful: who wins is not the point. Who plays perfectly consciously is the point. So if you don’t know, you may not understand what is happening.When the two Zen wrestlers come onto the ground, first they bow down to each other, because everybody is a buddha. Before fighting starts, the buddha has to be recognized. And you cannot be angry with a buddha, you cannot hurt the buddha. Both are meditative – while they are wrestling you will not be able to see, but you can see the grace, you can see the silence. You can’t see violence in their eyes.And the master who is going to judge, does not declare a man the winner in the same way it is declared all over the world. You will be surprised: sometimes the man who wins is not accepted by the master as a winner because he lost his meditativeness. And the defeated one gets the trophy because he remained conscious all the time: even in his defeat, he has won.Now, fighting is transformed into meditation. Archery is transformed into meditation, swordsmanship is transformed into meditation. Zen has done miracles, because nobody has ever thought that swordsmanship can be a meditative art.And when there are two meditators of equal consciousness, nobody wins. The fight can continue for hours and days, but nobody wins because both have equal meditativeness – the same depth, the same height, the same love, the same compassion. Nobody is in any way inferior to the other, and only the inferior is going to be defeated.So most of the time archers, swordsmen, wrestlers, are declared to be equal. Nobody wins, nobody is defeated. Compared to this, Western boxing looks barbarous. The whole effort is violent, bloody. There is no respect for the other partner, nor any compassion. Every effort is an ambition to win by any means possible, right or wrong.Zen has created a totally different approach to everything. If the world understands Zen, it will be a different world. It is certainly the most alchemical process.So when I said to you, Maneesha, that I will hit you just for the joy of it, remember that the joy is not only my joy. It has to be your joy also; only then it takes the great quantum leap. Then the master and disciple are simply playing with each other. Nobody is higher and nobody is lower.And the master calling in the middle of the night shows his insight, that tomorrow morning his disciple is going to become enlightened. He is just on the verge. After that, it won’t be right to hit him. And it is such a hilarious job! So he sends his attendant – “Bring him quickly!”He is meditating. He says, “What is the purpose, in the middle of the night?”The attendant says, “I don’t know, I have just seen him holding his stick. So I think he wants to hit you. Other than that, there is no purpose in the middle of the night.”The disciple rushes immediately. If he wants to hit, it is a special privilege – otherwise, who cares? In the middle of the night, the old man is waiting to hit you – what more kindness, what more compassion!When the disciple reached, the master said, “Aha! So you have come. You don’t know but I know…. Come closer. This is the last hit, because early in the morning as the sun rises you will be enlightened. After that, even if you ask me to hit you I will not be able to hit a buddha. That’s why I had to call you urgently.”The disciple touched the feet of the master, and the master gave him a good hit, and both laughed. And in the morning the disciple became enlightened. There are not one but hundreds of cases on record. It is sheer playfulness. It is not to harm you, it is just to announce to the disciple that, “Tomorrow morning you are going to become enlightened. And obviously, we have enjoyed for years: you have come and I have hit you. This is the last hit – it is a memorable hit. Remember: this hit declares that the light is going to come soon and the night is just about to be over.”Strange methods, and strange people, and perhaps the most beautiful development of a small religious stream. It could never become a crowd religion. It could not be a Catholic religion; six hundred million people will not be able to understand it. It is a religion of only the chosen few, because it needs great heart and great intelligence which very few possess.I am introducing you to Zen for a simple purpose: all other religions have destroyed your laughter, destroyed your smiles, destroyed your creativity – destroyed even the sense of humor. And life without a sense of humor is not much of a life.Now comes Sardar Gurudayal Singh. He is the most religious person around here. I don’t think that if he dies Saint Peter will allow him in heaven. Just because of his laughter, Saint Peter will immediately close the doors: “You don’t belong here, just go the other side. All your fellows are there.”I always think that nothing can be worse than reaching heaven. Such deadly people you will find there, rotten, skeletons, doing all kinds of stupid things. You cannot live with a saint even for twenty-four hours, and to live for eternity surrounded only by saints….I have told you about a Munich porter who was a good happy fellow, just lying down in the gutter because he drank too much beer. Some mistake happened – in every bureaucracy some mistake is always possible – so the devils who had come to take him, took him to heaven. There, the judgment was to be given where this man should go: Should he remain in heaven or be sent to hell? Saint Peter looked into his files and found that this man had to be in heaven.The man was continuously saying, “Just let me go! I have my duty at the station, I am a porter.” But nobody listened to him. He said, “It is not my time to come into heaven – I have not even finished my beer!” But they forced him, drunk…they gave him a harp. He said, “What am I supposed to do?”They said, “Here, nothing is done. Everybody has a cloud. Sit on the cloud, float, have a harp, and sing hallelujah.”He said, “It is strange. I am not that sort of person, I have never gone to church in my whole life. What kind of misfortune has fallen over me?” But he was forced to sit on a cloud, and told, “Sing hallelujah!”The poor fellow had to sing – half drunk, half asleep – and there were thousands of clouds floating like small boats, and every saint was doing the same thing, “hallelujah.” So the poor porter also said, “hallelujah, hallelujah” and in between he would say, “You son of a bitch!”God heard that. He thought, “It seems a wrong person has entered. What kind of hallelujah? Two times he says ‘hallelujah’ and then he says, ‘you son of a bitch!’” God inquired of Peter, “Look into the files better; it seems you have brought a wrong person here.” And it was found that yes, he was a wrong person, so take him back.He was very happy. He thanked Saint Peter, “I will never forget this kindness. Just let me go to my pub! And I am perfectly happy. Don’t send any messengers again. I am the happiest person at the Munich station. I don’t want this singing of hallelujah and harp and sitting on a cloud. It looks so stupid.”He was brought back, left in the gutter from where they had caught him. Looking around, finding familiar situation, he said, “My god, what kind of a nightmare was that?”Sardar Gurudayal Singh cannot enter heaven, they won’t allow him. They don’t allow any intelligent man there. Laughter is a sin, and anyway you cannot joke with saints.Paddy is drinking a few beers in the pub, and he has a worried look on his face.“What is the matter?” asks his friend, Seamus.Paddy drinks down his beer and says, “I am totally afraid to go near the highway, day or night.”“Why?” asks Seamus, sipping his beer.“Well,” replies Paddy, “my wife just escaped with a truck driver, and every time I hear a horn I’m afraid he is bringing her back!”One day in English class at Horowitz High School in LA, Tom Robbins, the famous author, comes to lecture the class on creative writing.After discussing how to write a short story, he says, “Okay, for a successful short story, there are four essential ingredients: religion, sex, politicians, and mystery. And it should be concise and to the point.”“No problem!” shouts Bobby Babblebrain, Boris’s young punk son, from the back of the room. And he scribbles something on a scrap of paper. He hands it to Tom. On it is written:A Short Story.“Jesus Christ!” screams Nancy Reagan. “I’m pregnant again. I wonder who the hell did it this time?”A black couple, Luther and Ruby, and their seven-year-old kid Samson, are having a hard time living in New York.Luther has heard that if you swim across the Mississippi River, and make it alive, you turn white. So they pack up and drive to Mississippi.They are standing on the banks of the mighty river, and they can hardly see the other side. The water is very rough, and the current incredibly strong. Samson, the kid, seeing his parents’ hesitation, cries bravely, “I’ll go first!” and he jumps into the river.Little Samson is swept along, but manages to struggle his way to the other side. As he steps out of the water, he looks down and sees that he has turned lily white.Seeing her boy’s success, Ruby jumps in next and is nearly drowned. But with incredible effort, she makes it to the other side – as a white woman. Samson and Ruby wave to Luther to come across, so Luther jumps into the raging river. He gets halfway across, and then Ruby and Samson hear shouting and cries for help. Then there is silence.Ruby is about to jump in to try and save Luther, when Samson takes her by the hand and says, “Don’t worry, Mom – it’s only a nigger!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent, close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen.Now look inward, collecting your whole consciousness. Try to reach to the center of your being. You live on the circumference. It is not far away – just a great urgency is needed, as if this is your last moment of life. You have to reach to the center of your being; otherwise you will never know the taste of eternity.Just at the very center you are the buddha, the awakened one.Thousands of flowers start showering on you.The whole existence rejoices in your silence.For the first time you are not an island but part of the whole continent, of the whole cosmos.This moment, when your boundaries disappear, is the most valuable moment. The Buddha Auditorium becomes suddenly a lake of consciousness without any ripples. Ten thousand buddhas simply become one.This oneness is eternal, immortal, the origin of everything.Everything changes. Only your witnessing buddha remains unchanging. It is the very center of the cyclone.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax. But remain alert, a witness of your body, of your mind, and all that is happening in this moment within you.The silence, the peace, the bliss…As you go deeper, the splendor becomes more and more rich. As you go deeper, life becomes a mystery, a miracle of immense significance. And a deep gratitude arises, just for the sake of all that existence has done for you. It is not a prayer, it is a thankfulness.The evening was beautiful on its own. But your witnessing, your consciousness, has added thousands of stars to its beauty. Gather as much of the experience as you can, because you have to bring it to the circumference, to your actual life. It has to become a twenty-four-hour, round-the-clock experience. Slowly slowly, the circumference and the center come closer. One day the circumference disappears into the center: you have attained perfect buddhahood.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but now come a little more alert, a little more of a buddha, a little more loving, a little more graceful. Sit down for a few moments just to recollect the path you have gone in, and the path that you have come out. It is the same path, the golden path.You have to live your experience in your life, in your activity, in your gestures, in your relations with people. Remember you are a buddha, and you have to behave like a buddha, and you will find great transforming forces entering into your life.The whole existence becomes supportive – supportive to your metamorphosis.

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Joshu The Lions Roar 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Joshu The Lions Roar 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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On one occasion, as Joshu was receiving new arrivals in his monastery, he asked one of them, “Have you been here before?”“Yes,” the monk replied.“Help yourself to a cup of tea!” Joshu said to him. Then he turned to another new arrival and said, “Have you been here before?”“No, your reverence,” the visitor replied. “This is my first visit here.”Joshu said to him, “Help yourself to a cup of tea!”The prior of the monastery took Joshu aside and said, “One had been here before, and you gave him a cup of tea. The other had not been here, and you also gave him a cup of tea. What is the meaning of this?”Joshu called out loudly, “Prior!”“Yes?” The prior replied.“Help yourself to a cup of tea!” instructed Joshu.Maneesha, the way of Zen is very light, very weightless. It expresses itself in the simplest way. But just because of that, millions of people who think themselves intelligent misunderstand it. The obviousness, the simplicity, becomes a barrier to them. The mind is always interested in the impossible.It has to be understood why mind is always interested in the impossible: because the impossible can never be achieved, and mind can go on living, gathering more and more force, taking you farther and farther away from yourself. Because the impossible cannot be achieved, it is a great victory of the mind. The mind avoids the obvious and the simple because they are not only achievable, they are already achieved.So it is a very political strategy, a diplomatic effort on the part of the mind, not to let you see the obvious – the buddha that is you.In this simple anecdote you laughed; you laughed as if it is just a joke. It says everything that needs to be said, it contains the whole essence of Zen. But you laughed because you did not understand its implications. Sometimes one laughs because he does not understand; sometimes one laughs because he understands; sometimes one laughs just to hide the fact that he has not understood. You laughed because it looks like a joke – but it only looks like a joke. It is the whole philosophy of Zen. Now let me read it to you with its implications….On one occasion, as Joshu was receiving new arrivals in his monastery, he asked one of them, “Have you been here before?”Small things to be noted: one, the master himself is at the reception desk receiving new arrivals. Zen is an effort to look into your potentialities. Why waste time? – not even a few moments. So the master is receiving new arrivals at the gate of the monastery. In the first encounter with each new arrival it will be determined whether he is worthwhile to work upon, or just to let him have a cup of tea and move on.And the question that he asked does not mean what you think it means. “Have you been here before?” He is not talking about the ordinary “here”; he is talking about the ultimate “here.” It is not concerned with the place, the monastery, or Joshu. It is concerned with a meditative state where time ceases and only now-ness remains; where space disappears and only here-ness is left behind.This now and here, these two words, contain the whole approach of Zen. If you can be now and here, nothing else has to be done. Every door of existential mystery will be opened unto you.So when a man like Joshu asks, “Have you been here before?” don’t misunderstand him. He is not talking about the place, he is talking about spacelessness, timelessness. “Have you ever been in deep meditation?” That is what he is asking.“Yes,” the monk said.“Help yourself to a cup of tea!”The monk has understood the meaning of “here.” It is not that he has been here to this monastery before, it simply means he has known the taste of here-ness. A simple “yes” implies a vast meaning, that “I am not a newcomer, don’t count me among the new arrivals. I have been here – where else can I be?”But it is not said so explicitly. That is the beauty of Zen, that it leaves the most important part to be discovered by you. When the monk says, “Yes,” he is also saying, through his eyes and through his gestures, “What kind of a question are you asking? Where else can I be? Everybody is here, wherever he is – it doesn’t matter. Here is the only point where you can be.”His “yes” is not to be misunderstood. He does not mean that he has been to this place; he says, “I have been here always – where else can I be?”With a great respectfulness Joshu said, “Help yourself to a cup of tea!”A cup of tea in Zen is not the same as it is anywhere else in the world. A cup of tea is the greatest reception a Zen master can give to you. The cup of tea represents awareness. After drinking tea you cannot go to sleep; hence tea became one of the most important symbols of awareness, of meditation. “Have a cup of tea” does not simply mean, “Have a cup of tea.” Certainly the tea is offered, but with the understanding that the cup is full of awareness. A cup of tea has been used in many ways by the Zen masters.A professor of philosophy reached Joshu. He had many questions in his mind, many complicated answers which he had borrowed from all the scriptures and philosophical systems.Coming up the mountain he was perspiring, looked a little tired. Joshu received him and told him, “You are tired…just wait, I will prepare a cup of tea for you. It is not time for tea – otherwise tea would have been served immediately – I will prepare it specially. You just wait and rest.”And Joshu prepared the tea, brought the tea, put the cup and saucer into the hands of the professor, and from the kettle started pouring tea – and went on pouring, to the very brink. The professor watched and then he saw that now, if any more tea is poured in, it will start flowing out. But he still waited, till the cup was full and the saucer was also full. Then he could not contain himself, he said, “Wait! What are you doing? Now my cup and saucer cannot contain a single drop more of tea.”Joshu said, “Have you ever asked the same question about your mind? Is there any space, empty space, where even a drop of tea can manage to fit? You are too full of thoughts. So many answers, so many questions! You have read too much, you are too learned to become enlightened.“This cup of tea is simply symbolic. I wanted to show you that before you can ask any question to me, I should make my position clear: you have to be empty; otherwise you have to excuse me, I cannot answer. You don’t have the space to receive it.”Joshu used the cup of tea in different situations. Now he said, “Help yourself to a cup of tea!”Joshu then turned to another new arrival and said, “Have you been here before?”You may not see the difference in the questions. The first question was, “Have you been here before?” The emphasis was on here. In the second question the emphasis is on you.“Have you been here before?”“No, your reverence,” the visitor replied.He is saying, “I am no more – how I can be here before?”Both monks have understood the difference. Although the question looks similar, they have seen the emphasis of the master. They are watching his eyes, they are watching his face, they are looking at his hands.To talk to a Zen master is not an ordinary conversation – it is a total, being-to-being communion.The first monk understood well, and the second also understood well. He said, “No, your reverence.”But the essential part remains by the side. The essential part is, “How can I be? I am no more, I have never been; the question does not arise. I have tried to find myself – there is no one.”Joshu said to him, “Help yourself to a cup of tea!”The prior of the monastery took Joshu aside and said, “One had been here before, and you gave him a cup of tea. The other had not been here, and you also gave him a cup of tea. What is the meaning of this?”The prior is the head monk of the monastery. He saw a contradiction in it – must be a logical man. He could not see the hidden part that was exchanged between Joshu and those two new arrivals.He took Joshu aside and asked, “What is the meaning of this? You offered the same to both visitors – although one has visited before, and another has not. But your offering of the cup of tea was the same.”Joshu called out loudly, “Prior!”“Yes?” The prior replied.This is also a very significant method used by Zen: suddenly to call when there is no need. When suddenly someone is called, for a moment his thinking stops because the continuity is not there. Mind can function only with a continuity.He is asking, “You have offered a cup of tea to different arrivals; to two different persons, the same welcome. I see a contradiction in it.” Now he is wanting to know the meaning of this.Rather than giving him the meaning,Joshu called out loudly, “Prior!”That is breaking his thinking process, suddenly bringing an awareness.“Yes?” The prior replied.“Help yourself to a cup of tea!”– you are also capable of being a little aware once in a while –…instructed Joshu.The cup of tea is a symbol of awareness. Zen offers nothing but awareness, and Zen offers awareness to everybody, without any distinction. One has been here, one has not been here; one is the head monk of the monastery – but as far as Joshu is concerned, he has nothing else to offer them except a cup of tea. A cup of tea means Joshu can offer only awareness, watchfulness, witnessing. A cup of tea has become in Zen circles one of the most important symbols.So it is not a joke.Joshu has, without saying anything about Zen, made it clear to everybody, all three persons concerned, that “You have come to a man who can only offer a cup of tea; you should not expect anything else. I can teach you awareness – and you are all three capable of it. Even the head monk is capable of it once in a while.”One Zen monk is reported to have said – every morning of his life after his enlightenment, the first thing in the morning he would say was, “Osho!” Because he has become enlightened now, an honorable word has to be used….“Reverence” is a little less than “Osho.” “Reverence” only means respect; “Osho” also means respect, and love, and gratitude. You may not have thought about it – because people don’t think about words; otherwise strange meanings come out of them. Have you ever thought? – “respect” simply means looking back: re-spect, looking once again. It simply means that somebody is so beautiful that you have to look again, one more time; you cannot just go on without looking again. Out of this, “respectfulness” has arisen.But “Osho” contains some more elements: love and gratitude. It is much more than “reverence.” “Reverence” is a Christian word and is used for learned bishops, missionaries, priests. “Osho” cannot be translated correctly as “reverence” because it is used only for the enlightened ones, not the learned ones.And this Zen master used to call every morning, “Osho, are you still here?” He was asking himself about his own presence: “Are you still here? Then have a cup of tea!”His disciples knew perfectly well that every morning this was the first thing he would say to himself, so they kept ready the samovar, making its song. And they would ask him, “Master, why do you do this?”And he used to say, “I am so surprised that existence has given one day again for me. I don’t deserve, I am not worthy of it. I have not done anything to deserve another day, another sunrise, and the whole sky, and the whole universe. I just want to make sure that I am here. This beautiful universe one day will be taken away from me.”And he used to answer himself also. First he will say, “Osho, are you here?”And he will say, “Yes sir.”Then he will say, “Then have a cup of tea!”This was a monologue. The disciples produced the cup of tea. They loved the master, they loved this small, beautiful approach to the morning. The night is over – it is symbolic of the night in which most of us live the whole life; the morning never comes.A cup of tea declares that the night is over, wake up! Be aware and see the whole beauty of existence. The universe has allowed you one day more – you cannot demand, it is a gift. One day the sun will rise and the roses will blossom but you will not be there to celebrate this new morning. And there is no way to complain, it is absolutely in the hands of the cosmos.But we have not paid our gratitude even for our life. Do you think there can be anything more precious than life, than consciousness? And existence gives it to you without asking any payment in return. At least you can be thankful. This thankfulness is the only authentic prayer; all other prayers are childish, they are nothing but hidden demands.Just today Anando informed me…A group of Christian research scholars has been working for many years on the Lord’s Prayer – every Christian has to do The Lord’s Prayer – and their whole research has now been exposed to the public. They have found that in the Lord’s Prayer, except the word abba, father, everything else is fake. Jesus only called abba; everything else has been added by other people.Millions of Christians will be shocked, and will be shocked even more because it is the Christian scholars who have found that all other words in the Lord’s Prayer have been added by other people. They may not listen to the scholars – most probably they will not. But when Anando reported it to me, I was thinking that just to say, “Abba” – that is Hebrew for “father” – is enough; the prayer is complete. Just to relate with existence in a loving relationship, to call the existence “Abba,” the prayer is finished. What more can you say? You have shown your gratitude, you have shown that “You are the source of my being.” Hence “Abba” is exactly right, but more than that is non-essential commentary.These same scholars, a few months ago, have done a tremendous job of research and they have threatened the whole of Christianity with their research. I was thinking that Christians would take note, but nobody has taken any note of it. And I am not the Christian, but I have to take notes!They came to the conclusion that Jesus was not a Virgin Mary’s son, fathered by a Holy Ghost. Frankly speaking, he was really the son of Mariam and Joseph. But to avoid Joseph and to replace Joseph with God, this whole strategy was used. So, working through ancient scriptures they have found that this is absolutely false – Jesus was not a bastard!But strangely enough, the Christian leaders around the world, rather being happy that Jesus was a properly licensed son, were shocked. He has to be a bastard; otherwise the main stone of the foundation will be removed. That is the first miracle, that God himself…because the Holy Ghost and God are one.It is just a trick to talk about the Holy Ghost and then in the next sentence say that the Holy Ghost and God are one. Then why hide God behind the Holy Ghost? Why not bring him directly into the case of making a virgin pregnant? That would look a little awkward to the high position of God, so a mediator has been found: the Holy Ghost.But if the Holy Ghost is really the father of Jesus, then God can at the most be an uncle – if he is a brother of Holy Ghost. It depends on who he is, in what way he is related with the Holy Ghost, but one thing is certain: he cannot be the father of Jesus.The bishop of England immediately reacted, saying “The theory of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Ghost is the very foundation of Christianity and we cannot change it.” But their own researchers are saying that it is just an invention to make Jesus special. Everybody is born out of his father and mother, but to make Jesus special…poor fellow has to be made a bastard! And that is the very foundation of Christianity.The same group of scholars has found that even God is not necessary for Christianity, because there is no evidence of God. Neither is there any evidence of the Holy Ghost. All that we can say is that Jesus and his crucifixion happened. There is no evidence even of his resurrection. The problem is, can you find anybody who will become a Christian just because Jesus was crucified? The whole religion is finished! God is taken away, the Holy Ghost is taken away, the resurrection is taken away, the virgin birth is taken away….This makes a strange exposition of Christianity. These things make up Christianity, and nothing of them is essential to any religiousness.And the same group again made a statement that all the miracles are fake. Then the pope had to speak. He said, “Without miracles Christianity will be finished. We need miracles; otherwise what is the difference between an ordinary man and the only begotten son of God?”The difference is that he walks on water, he turns water into wine, he makes dead people alive, he cures and heals just by touching people. And the Christian scholars’ group is certainly very honest, that all these miracles have been added just to raise Jesus to a special position, above humanity.But there is no need for anybody to be above humanity; one only has to become more aware, one has to become more aware of one’s being. In that very awareness he touches the highest point of consciousness. Everything else is not only childish, but absurd.Religion is simply another name of meditation; anything added to it is absolutely unnecessary. It is a hindrance rather than a help.So Joshu’s offering a cup of tea to everybody, without any distinction, is exactly what I am doing – offering a cup of tea, but in a more direct way than in a symbolic way. Because the symbolic can be misunderstood – it has been misunderstood. In every Zen monastery in China and in Japan it has become a tradition.One young Japanese woman used to come to every celebration in the commune in America. Her mother is very famous for arranging tea ceremonies. It has become a profession; there are a few professionals who arrange the tea ceremony. And when I came back here, the girl started to come here. Seeing that I am going to stay here, she wanted to stay here – she refused to go back. Her mother came…and she was a famous woman, had great contacts even with the emperor of Japan.She brought the girl to me, and said, “You tell my girl to go back to Japan!”I said, “You are a famous woman – you must understand the essentials of Zen. The most essential is freedom. Now it is up to her: if she wants to go, I will not prevent her; if she does not want to go, I will not tell her to go.”The woman became absolutely angry – freaked out. I said, “This freaking will not help.”She became so angry that she said, “You are not a buddha!”I said, “Just because I am not sending your girl away, I lose my buddhahood! I can accept that I am not a buddha but I cannot take away anybody’s freedom.”She was very much shocked. She said, “I have so many contacts, and I promise to open a center for you in Tokyo.”I said, “All these bribes will not help. It is absolutely your girl’s freedom to be here or not to be here. It is none of my concern whether she is here or she goes away.”The mother must have forced her – she was a very strong woman – she must have forced her for three days continuously, so the girl came to me to say, “I am going in spite of myself. Just give me one of your robes.”I gave her one of my robes and I told her, “Don’t be worried. She will relax, and once in a while she will not object and you can come.”But once she went away, the mother would not allow her even to come for a holiday. She escaped.I told her, “This is not good. You should have told your mother that you were going; you should have shown your integrity. But like a thief, without telling anybody, you simply escaped. You will never be able to forgive yourself. You had better go, and unless you have guts to come with an absolute declaration of your individuality…and you are old enough, you are not a child.”But I came to know from Geeta, who is Japanese and has been here almost since eternity – as long as I remember I have seen her here – she said that almost one third of the girls in Japan are prevented by their mothers from even getting married. The mother is such a power in Japan – that I had never known. One third of the girls remain unmarried just because the mother won’t allow it.So Geeta told me, “You are talking of freedom, and there is not even freedom to get married!”But man is living with beautiful words: freedom, democracy, love – but all empty words. Civilization does not exist, culture does not exist. There is no independence in the world. My own experience has been absolutely bitter. The only freedom that I know is possible is to wake up, and to know yourself and your roots in existence. Except that, all are political promises which are not going to be fulfilled, ever.So only a few people have lived freedom, like Gautam Buddha or Joshu or Nansen. I would like you all to live freedom, but I have to make a distinction clear to you. There are two kinds of freedom: one is freedom from, and another is freedom for. Freedom from is not very difficult, but the real freedom is freedom for – for some creativity, for some love, for some experience.The first, freedom from, is negative. It prepares the ground, but it is not all.The second is the real thing – freedom for. Creating your self, discovering your buddha, discovering your potentialities, releasing your own powers, living under the sky with a lion’s roar, without any fear. But this is possible only to a man who has reached his own sources. That’s what we are trying to do in this place: trying to discover the source from where you can have freedom from all bondages and for all creations.Ryushu wrote:Quietly I watch spring cloudsgrow in the vast sky,green mountains and white hairon opposite sidesof slatted bamboo blinds;a myriad miles of heaven and earthrain with white blossoms,and all of them are fallingin one Zen monk’s eyes.Just the last line makes it a tremendously meaningful poem. Just the last line:in one zen monk’s eyes.Thousands of flowers. When you enter your subjectivity, you don’t have two eyes – that’s why, in India, they started talking about a third eye. That is only a symbol, but it has great meaning: as you go deeper inside, your two eyes join together into one force; that becomes your third eye.And in this third eye:…white blossoms,and all of them are fallingin one Zen monk’s eyes.Ryushu is surprised, that “I am a poor monk and so much beauty is falling, showering on me.”Meditation makes even a beggar an emperor. And without meditation even the emperor is just a beggar and nothing more.Maneesha has asked:Osho,I heard you say during our meditation that the intensity of our effort would pull us toward our center. I have also heard you say that potential disciples are pulled magnetically toward the master. Is there a similarity and connection between these two things?Maneesha, they are not two things. It is the same energy that brings you closer to the master, and it is the same energy that will bring you closer to yourself. In other words, to be closer to yourself is to be closer to the master. They are not two things. The master is at the center, and the moment you reach the center you are surprised: the buddha has reached there before you.Every master is a buddha, and every disciple is a potential buddha. It is the same energy; somewhere it has become manifest, somewhere it is still dormant, but there is no qualitative difference.Now it is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Poor fellow has to wait too long…and he does not become enlightened for fear that one never knows what jokes will be told when he is gone. These jokes are keeping him on this shore; otherwise he would have passed to the other shore long before. He is a very ancient man, retired from the army, but he is not going to leave as long as I continue telling jokes.Wu, the old Chinese waiter at the Mye Long Dong Chinese Restaurant, is always being teased by Colonel Wimple and his cronies, whenever they come to eat.Finally, one day, as Wu is serving the dessert and coffee, Colonel Wimple leans back in his chair, puffs on his big cigar, and announces in a loud voice, “Okay, Chink! We have been teasing you for a long time now. So I guess from now on we will stop playing jokes on you. What do you say?”The wizened old waiter pauses for a moment, then says with a smile, “Okie Dokie! You no jokie, me no pee in the coffee!”Katie the cannibal wanders out of the jungle and into town. She does a little shopping and then stops at the cannibal butcher’s store.“How much are brains today?” asks Katie.“Well,” replies Butch, the cannibal butcher, pointing to his display shelf, “the missionaries’ brains are ten dollars a pound, the nuns’ brains are twenty dollars, and the politicians’ brains are two hundred dollars.”“Two Hundred Dollars?” screams Katie. “That’s impossible! How can they be so expensive?”“Well,” explains Butch, looking quite hurt, “have you any idea how many politicians we have to catch to find one with a brain?”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)(Drumbeat)Be silent; close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen.Now, look inward – with totality and great urgency, as if this is your last moment.Deeper and deeper…Take your consciousness like a spear, piercing to the very center of being.This space is what we call the buddha; this silence is what we call the buddha.Just be a witness, because a buddha is only a witness, only a mirror.You are not the body, you are not the mind, you are just the pure witness.At the very center of your being…utterly empty silence.To make it clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax, and watch silently your transcendence of everything – the body, the mind, the world.You are beyond.You are the beyond, the transcendental consciousness.Rejoice! Those thousands of flowers have started showering on you.This beautiful evening has become a very mysterious and miraculous evening. Ten thousand buddhas are merged into an oceanic consciousness. This Buddha Auditorium has become a lake of consciousness, without any ripples.Gather as much of this experience as you can, because soon Nivedano will call you back. You have to bring the buddha to the circumference, into your ordinary activities, in your day-to-day work.We are not renouncers of the world; we are going to be in the world and yet not allow the world in us.This is possible only if you are a witness.Live like a buddha.The only thing to remember is: just be a witness.The witness is the master key.Thousands of masters have come to the same conclusion: that to be at the center, just a witness, is to become a buddha, the awakened one.Then, slowly slowly persuade the buddha to come to your ordinary life. From the hidden sources, bring him to your extrovert activities.When the inner and the outer become one, the miracle has happened.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but come back like a buddha – with the grace, with the silence, with the beauty, with the gratitude.Sit silently for a few moments, rejoicing this miraculous evening, remembering the path that you have followed to the center and back. This path has to be followed again and again. Slowly slowly, that which is at the center will also spread all over your circumference.That day is the great day of celebration.

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Joshu The Lions Roar 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Joshu The Lions Roar 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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When Tosu was in Tojo province, Joshu asked him, “Aren’t you the master of Tosu hermitage?”Tosu said, “Give me some tea, salt, and cash!”Joshu went back to the hermitage, and that evening saw Tosu coming back with some oil. Joshu said to him, “I heard much of Tosu, but all I find is an old man selling oil.”Tosu said, “You see the old oil-seller, but you don’t know Tosu.”Joshu said, “Well, how about Tosu?”Tosu held up the bottle and said, “Oil! Oil!”At the funeral of one of his monks, Joshu joined in the procession and commented, “What a long procession of dead bodies follows in the wake of a single living person!”Maneesha, Zen believes in a life which you are not acquainted with, a love that you have not even dreamt of. It lives in a totally different dimension, a dimension where everything is a dance, a celebration.Zen is the only religion of life. Others are worshippers of the dead. Life contains millions of things, from the very small trivia to the greatest sacred peaks of consciousness. Zen does not renounce anything but transforms it as a stepping stone toward the higher.It is the only life-affirmative religion that has arisen during the past centuries. Its affirmation is total. All other religions are religions of denial. Anything that seems to be a hindrance, they escape from it. Zen tries to turn it from a hindrance into a help – and it has succeeded. Its success is of profound interest for the coming new man.The new man will not think of Christianity as a religion, or Hinduism or Mohammedanism or any other religion, because they are all carrying a dead past. Life has escaped from them long before. They have not laughed for centuries; they have not been in tune with the universal music. They have forgotten the language of dance.Zen alone seems a possibility for the future man. It will survive – when all other religions are gone, Zen will be the only religion around the earth. In fact, all other religions are already dead. Just because of old habit, old conditioning, we go on carrying them, but they have not contributed anything to human consciousness. Rather than contributing they have destroyed much. They have enslaved man, they have oppressed man, they have put man against man; they have created immense violence, war, massacre.Zen is a religion of flowers, is a religion of songs, is a religion of ecstasy. It has nothing in it which in any way tries to avoid life in any form. It lives life in its totality – and the miracle is that by living totally, each moment becomes so precious…there is no way to measure the beauty of the moment when a person is total, herenow.These two anecdotes are very small, but great is their significance. The first will look very strange unless you understand that in each activity, a Zen master almost disappears in the action itself. His totality is so great that you can almost say that only the dance remains; the dancer disappears.Once the great dancer Nijinsky was asked, “What are the greatest moments in your life?”Nijinsky said, “The greatest moments in my life are those moments when only the dance remains and the dancer disappears.”The same answer was given by Picasso. While he was painting, somebody asked him. He said, “Don’t ask me anything right now. While I am painting I am just a painter; I am not that great Picasso you have heard about. And when the deepest moments come, then even this painter disappears. Only the painting remains.”If you can see this point, then the first anecdote will become clear to you, because it is a little out-of-the-way….When Tosu was in Tojo province, Joshu asked him, “Aren’t you the master of Tosu hermitage?”Tosu said, “Give me some tea, salt, and cash!”He did not answer the question. That is one of the important things to understand: Zen answers in its own way, not in the ordinary way. We expect dialogues to happen. Joshu and Tosu both are prominent masters. Joshu asked him, “Aren’t you the master, Tosu?” Without saying anything about himself, Tosu said, “Give me some tea, salt and cash!” What does it mean?It means, “You are a great master, you don’t need to be answered. You can see for yourself that Tosu is standing before you. To answer you will be insulting, suggesting that you could not see for yourself the radiance of Tosu, his presence, his energy field, his aura. No, I will not insult a great master like Joshu.” That’s why he simply ignored the question.This ignoring of the question would be taken anywhere else in the world as an insult – but in Zen, this ignoring of the question has a totally different meaning. It is showing great respect: “What are you talking about? You have eyes to see. Just as I can recognize you, you can recognize me; hence the question is irrelevant and I am not going to insult you by answering it.” Rather than answering, Tosu asked, “Give me some tea, salt and cash. I am a poor Zen master.”Tosu was a very poor Zen master because he lived in a hermitage on a faraway mountain where it was very difficult for people to reach. He had become known as the master of Tosu Hermitage, but he was very poor. So rather than bothering about saying, “I am Tosu,” he is showing his poverty. He was known as the poorest master – one of the greatest souls, but the poorest in the sense that he had not much of a following. He lived in such a strange place that nobody bothered to go there, it was too far away. And his behavior was very strange….Joshu had just gone there to see him, hearing about him so much. There were many rumors about him and why he did not get disciples: “He himself is responsible because he behaves in such a way that disciples escape! In the first place nobody goes to that faraway hermitage. But sometimes somebody gathers courage, and Tosu behaves in such a way that the man loses heart and tries somehow to escape this strange man!”Joshu has gone to see Tosu, and Tosu is showing his poverty by asking him, “Give me some tea! Don’t bother about Tosu – in this very moment I need some tea, some salt, and cash!”A man of immense understanding – he trusts Joshu that he will understand: “In this moment, don’t ask unnecessary questions. I have not got even tea or salt or any cash. You are a great master, you have thousands of followers. I am a poor master, I don’t have any followers. Nobody else is responsible for that; I am responsible. I behave in a way that they cannot understand. But I cannot change myself. I have to remain myself; I have to retain my integrity. Whether any disciple remains with me or not does not matter; I am alone enough.“But in this moment you must be carrying some cash – you have traveled so far from your monastery. So give me some tea – you must be carrying tea and salt; you have been on a long journey. And a little cash won’t do any harm.”Showing his poverty – that was his fame, that he is the poorest man yet one of the greatest masters. By showing his poverty he is saying, “You can see for yourself that Tosu is standing before you, asking for cash. Even the poorest have salt, but I don’t even have salt.”Joshu went back to the hermitage and that evening he saw Tosu coming back with some oil. He had remained in Tosu’s hermitage the whole day, waiting for him to come. But he had disappeared somewhere. In the evening Joshu saw him coming back with some oil. He was so poor, there was no oil even for a lamp in the night. So he must have gone to the nearby village to ask for some oil, and he was coming with a bottle of oil.Joshu said to him, “I heard much of Tosu, but all I find is an old man selling oil.”Tosu said, “You see the old oil-seller, but you don’t know Tosu.You are looking only at the outside, you are not looking in my eyes. You are not looking into my very being.”Joshu said, “Well, how about Tosu?”Tosu held up the bottle and said, “Oil! Oil!”In this moment there is no Tosu but only a bottle of oil. As far as Tosu is concerned he is an absence. He is just an emptiness, a nothingness. In this moment at least he has something: “In the morning when you came I had nothing, so I asked you for some tea, some salt and a little cash. For the night, I don’t have any oil. I am not a oil-seller; I have begged this oil from the town. And in this moment, in my emptiness, there is no other thought than simply ‘Oil! Oil!’ and nothing else.”It is easier to understand Nijinsky when he says, “I disappear in my dance. The dance becomes so intense that I am no more.” Out of such experiences Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, a Sufi mystic, simply made whirling his only method. His followers are called whirling dervishes. They whirl for hours – it is not easy. Jalaluddin Rumi himself whirled for thirty-six hours continuously, and in the whirling he became enlightened because in the whirling he got lost; only whirling remained. There was no one inside. There was utter emptiness and silence.It is easy to understand Jalaluddin Rumi, or Picasso, or Nijinsky. It is a little more difficult to understand Tosu when he says, “What are you asking about Tosu? At this moment there is only oil. In the morning there was not even oil; I had asked you for some cash…”This small anecdote between two masters of similar experience, similar greatness, can be of great help to you. Any activity, if it becomes so total that you are completely absorbed in it, becomes a meditation. Losing yourself and remaining conscious – that is the simplest formula for meditation.At the funeral of one of his monks, Joshu joined in the procession and commented, “What a long procession of dead bodies follows in the wake of a single living person!”The man who had died was a master, and a master is more alive even in his death than you are in your life. The master never dies. That is the very secret that has made him a master – that he knows there is no death. He has got hold of eternity in his hands. He carries immortality in his very depths. You can burn his body, but you cannot burn his eternity, his immortality.Joshu is right when he says, “Look at the strange procession! In the wake of one living man…and that living man is lying down in the coffin; thousands of dead bodies are following.”To the man of understanding, unless you are utterly conscious you can’t claim that you are alive. At the most you can say you are surviving, just at the minimum. You have not known the Himalayan peaks of life; you have not known the Pacific depths of your consciousness. So thin is your consciousness that it is a miracle that you manage for seventy years to breathe, to walk, to talk, to do all kinds of things. And your roots remain neglected. You don’t know even that you have roots. You never nourish your roots.Do you understand that attention is food for consciousness? In a very unconscious way you are aware that if nobody pays attention to you, you start feeling a little embarrassed. If the whole city decides one day that nobody will take note of you, as if you are not, you yourself will start suspecting whether you are alive or dead: “Do I exist or am I only dreaming?” You need attention continuously.And that is the struggle between parents and children, husband and wife, and friends. What is the struggle? – “Give me more attention!” I have seen wives taking newspapers away from their husbands’ hands: “While I am here, what do you mean by reading the same newspaper the whole day? How many times have you read it?” And the poor fellow was simply reading it to avoid getting into any conversation with the wife; because every conversation ends in a fight.Nobody can argue with a woman. As far as I know, up to now nobody has been able because the woman does not allow you to argue. She has her own, totally different methodology. She throws things, she breaks plates, she beats small children – that is her argument. And the husband has to agree with her; otherwise she will burn down the whole house! He has to say, “Yes, you are right.” And he knows that she is not right at all, but what to do? She has taken such a position that it is better to agree in the very early stages. Later on, it becomes more and more difficult and the distance becomes bigger and she becomes more and more insane.You cannot argue with insane people. And the woman has found that it is very beneficial to her: the husband has to agree at some point, without fail. She has only to press more and more, give him as much pain in the neck as possible and finally she is always the winner. So, husbands who are intelligent enough accept defeat from the very beginning.That’s why there is only one kind of husband in the world, and that is henpecked; there exists no other kind, a single category. It is better not to get into the argument at all.Two men used to sit in a pub, late in the night after everybody else had gone. When the pub would be closing, then, very reluctantly they would leave. They were strangers, but by and by – because every night they were the only ones, the last to get out of the pub – one finally asked the other, “What is the matter? Why do you go on sitting here?”The other man said, “It is very simple, that’s why I have not asked you. It is my wife. Until she is asleep, I have to remain here. If I find her awake, then there is bound to be difficulty. She will create some kind of trouble.” And then he asked the first man, “Why are you sitting here? I think the problem must be the same.”The other man said, “No, I am not married. It is because there is nobody at home, just an empty, dark house.”The man who had a wife said, “You idiot! You are the luckiest man. You should enjoy the darkness of your house! Listen to me, I am more experienced. You are wasting your time here in the pub. I have to, but you don’t have to stay here.”But this is the problem. The people who have not known women will never know that they are a different kind of creatures – very nice to look at, very good to meet at the beach, but just keep a distance. Once you come closer, into their grip, then you know – “My god!”Hindus have a temple in Calcutta, perhaps the most famous temple of India. It is a temple of the Mother Goddess Kali, a black woman, ferocious, with four hands. In one hand she has a naked sword, in another hand the head – just the head, freshly cut, the blood is dripping – standing on the chest of her own husband.I have often been to the temple, because the people who have created it must have known some psychology. The way the society is managed, the man thinks he is the master. The woman allows him to think, because she knows exactly who the master is – let him enjoy! Just an idea, no harm in it – let him enjoy thinking that he is the master. He calls himself a “husband.” Husband means the farmer, and the woman is the earth, and he farms the earth. Let him enjoy all these fictions, but the reality is totally different.These men, these women, quarreling, fighting, never come to know what life in its purity is. They don’t have time. And strangest of all…I have heard many people, playing cards or chess, or going to the movie…you ask them for what and they say, “We are going to kill time.” And nobody objects!What are you saying? Time is killing you! From where did you get the idea that you can kill time? You cannot even catch hold of time. Time is fleeting, so fast that you can’t see it. The speed is beyond your visualization. How can you kill time? But millions of people around the world are killing time in different ways, as if life has been given to them just to destroy.These people only think they are alive, because they have not known the secrets of life. They have not known the silences of the heart. They have never gone into the deepest source of their being. They have never nourished their roots by giving attention to them.The deeper you go, taking your total attention, the more alive you are. And then a change comes: from time, you move into timelessness. In time, you are bound to die. In time things are born and things have to die. If you want to avoid the vicious circle of life and death and the whole agony, the anguish, then you have to move from time to timelessness.And that is a small step. The moment you reach within your very center, you have moved beyond time. You have reached into eternity.That eternity is your buddha.This is the essential religion. All the prayers of other religions, all their scriptures, all their rituals, are not only useless but dangerous – dangerous in the sense that they are preventing you from finding the essential religion. They are fake religions. Those fake religions have lost their ground, but just because of old habits we continue – going to the church, going to the temple, going to the synagogue.And all these religions are in the hands of a worldwide priesthood. It does not matter whether that priest is a rabbi, or a bishop, or a pundit; it is a great conspiracy against humanity. The priest, who goes on giving you toys in the name of religion, keeps you engaged, gives you the feeling that you are doing something religious. He keeps you, as Karl Marx says, under the influence of a certain kind of drug, opium.I don’t agree with Karl Marx on a thousand and one things, but on this point that the priesthood, religion, has been the opium of the people, I agree with him absolutely, unconditionally, categorically. They keep you dead. They never allow you the chance to have a look into the eternal life.Joshu is right when he says,“What a long procession of dead bodies follows in the wake of a single living person!”You can be a living person only if you are rooted in your center. If you are not rooted in the center and are living only on the circumference, you are just so-so alive, lukewarm, without any intensity, without any urgency, without any joy. Your life is just an empty word.You have to find your authentic life. It is there, hidden in you, but you go on running everywhere else. You never think of going inward. The very idea seems to be strange – “What is there inward? Just a skeleton, blood, bones.” What is the point of unnecessarily creating fear for yourself? If you see your skeleton, you will be really afraid! But that is not what we mean by the inward. By the inward we mean going beyond all that is material. Your skeleton is matter, your blood is matter, your bones are material. By going inward we mean going beyond this skeleton that you think you are.And the going is so simple. Just a little intelligence and you can be alive, a dancing life full of songs and full of flowers. At least for my people I would like to say, never settle for less. Find out the total secret of your being, because in finding the whole secret of your being you will find the whole secret of the universe. Then life becomes a totally different phenomenon, a continuous celebration, each moment a festival. Each moment the opening of a new dimension, a new mystery. The whole of life becomes so full of miracles that naturally a deep gratitude arises in you, to bow down not to any god but to this universe which contains the trees and the animals and the birds.This universe is your home. You come out of this universe and you go back into this universe. Prayer is meaningless. Only gratitude…you don’t even have to use the word, just the feeling of gratitude.But the feeling of gratitude will arise only when you have experienced the mysteries, the splendor, the whole garden of flowers that is given to you. And you had not asked for it; you don’t in any way deserve it, you have not earned it. It is a sheer gift, from the abundance of existence itself.Existence is heavy, so loaded with splendor it wants to share.It cannot share unless you are centered in your being. It can share its secrets only with a buddha. And you have every opportunity to become a buddha.Gido wrote:There could never be an accurate paintingof blossoms in the air…Obviously, because the blossoms are always dancing in the air, in the rain, in the sun. How can there be an accurate painting? All photographs will be dead, all paintings will be dead.There could never be an accurate paintingof blossoms in the air.Put down your brushand look again closely:it is in the blank spaceof the backgroundthat the figure materializes.What Gido means to say is that everything is flowing and changing. There can never be an accurate photograph, because by the time the photograph is taken and the positive is made from the negative, you have changed. You have become older; photographs don’t become old. You are no more the same person.And that applies to your experience of the world. Everything is in change, continuously shifting, except one thing: that is your witness. So put down the brush and your camera – just look. And in looking, remember not to get lost in the seen. Remember the seer – that is the only permanent point you can depend on. That is the only security, the only certainty, the only thing you can rely on. Everything else is going to shift and change. It is all a flux, all around.It is beautiful – if you understand it as a flux, it is perfectly beautiful. It becomes a disappointment when you start making it permanent. A meeting of a man with a woman is beautiful, but the moment you start thinking of marriage, you are starting to destroy something beautiful that was growing. The moment you reach the marriage registrar’s office…there is still time; escape before you go inside!I have heard about a couple who had gone to the registrar’s office, and they were filling out the form to be married. The man signed after the signing by the woman, and the woman immediately said to the magistrate, “I want a divorce!”He said, “Are you mad or something? You have just now filled out the form! What has happened that makes you ask for a divorce?”The woman said, “Look at this paper!” On the paper, the man had signed in such big, capital letters…The woman had signed in small, normal letters but the man had signed as if it were a headline in a newspaper!The woman said, “This is enough. I don’t want to get into trouble with this man. He has shown his reality and it is already a conflict. It is better to move out from the very beginning.”It is a tremendous experience to go to the registrar’s office and watch what goes on happening there day by day. One man, ninety-five years old, went to the registrar’s office with his wife, ninety-three years old. They wanted a divorce. The registrar could not believe it. He said, “When did you get married?”The man said, “It is so long ago, perhaps seventy years before? But we are not certain. It seems, with the way we have lived in agony and continuous conflict, as if we have been married since eternity. I cannot think of any time in the past when I was not married to this woman.”The magistrate said, “If you have managed for that long, now it is only a question of a few months, maybe a few years. You are at the very end of the rope. Now what is the point? And if you wanted to divorce because of agony and struggle, why did you not come before?”They both said, “We were waiting for all our children to die. Today our last son died; now we are finished. Now, at least for a few months or a few years, we can live peacefully. We waited and waited, and hoped that one day all would be dead so we would not be deserting our children. We suffered all kinds of agony, but this hope that one day we could divorce kept us alive. Now don’t refuse us. We have lived our whole life just for this divorce, just to have a few moments of independence, of freedom.”Things become difficult because you ask and expect something unnatural. You cannot make anything permanent in this world, any relationship. The moment you try to make anything permanent, you are getting into troubled waters unnecessarily, because it is against nature. Nature is a flux. Movement, and continuous movement, is its very nature.Only one thing is unmovable, and that is your very center.So first get deeply rooted in your center, and your life will blossom in thousands of flowers. Life can be such a delight if you don’t ask anything against nature. Just be in a let-go. Things change – let them change. Allow them, help them change. Just remember: one thing never changes and that is your original reality. That is enough. You are safe, secure; you don’t need any other insurance.Maneesha has asked:Osho,We were told that our total participation in the Yaa-hoo is needed for your work on us. Is it that a crescendo of sound in the Yaa-hoo, and the intense experience of silence in the last stage of meditation, lead to exactly the same space – the “sea of consciousness”?Yes, Maneesha, Yaa-Hoo can lead even deeper because Yaa-Hoo can become more intense, one-pointed. It can hit, deep down. You just watch when you make the sound Yaa-Hoo. It is not a word, it means nothing. It is simply my finding, among many sounds which have been used by different mystics in different times. I have found that Yaa-Hoo goes the deepest.It has never been used. Hoo has been used; it has been used as part of Allah-Hoo. If you repeat “Allah,” which is the name Sufis give to God – if you repeat it continuously, Allah, Allah, Allah, soon you will find it is becoming “Allah-hoo, Allah-hoo, Allah-hoo Allah-hoo.” Then Sufis dropped the “Allah.” There is no need, you can just shout “Hoo” and it hits at the very center of your being.But my finding is that “Hoo” only touches your being and immediately comes back. It does not go deep, like an arrow, penetrating. For that, my experience with Yaa-Hoo has made me absolutely certain that it goes deepest in you. It goes just like a sword. It all depends with how much intensity, urgency, totality, you do it.It is not a mantra. It is simply using sound to reach the soundless silence. After Yaa-Hoo you are left in a deep silence. So it is part of my work on you, and as you get deeper into it, you will find changes happening to you.Now it is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. If Sardar Gurudayal Singh leaves his material body, he will have to come as a ghost, a holy ghost, just to help all these people with a total laughter.Don’t laugh superficially, because that is wasting time. Laugh as totally as possible, bringing your whole consciousness to it. The jokes are just to trigger you.Soon I will have to drop jokes, because I must have told more jokes then anybody else in the whole history of man. In fact, I have told more jokes than there are! So sooner or later we have to change the technique, from jokes to spontaneous laughter.Why unnecessarily waste time with a joke when we can laugh without it? It is just for Sardar Gurudayal Singh that I am postponing, day by day, because he is old and any time he may pop off. At least in his lifetime, I think to continue the jokes. Anyway, when he is not here it will be so embarrassing to tell jokes in his absence.It is Thanksgiving weekend, the big national holiday in America, and at the Sons of Columbus annual picnic, Grandpa Risotto gets up and makes an announcement.“And-a now,” he says, “for the winner of the grand-a prize! This beautiful apple pie baked by Mrs. Alucchi!”Grandad Piesta is sitting at the back of the picnic a little drunk, and shouts out, “Fuck Mrs. Alucchi!”“Ah!” says Grandpa Risotto. “That’s-a second prize!”An Englishman, an Italian and a German are exploring the Amazon jungle in Brazil, when they are captured by cannibals. They are tied to bamboo poles and carried to “Spoon-em-out,” the village cook.“Hmm!” says Spoon-em-out, prodding the naked bodies expertly. “I don’t think we can cook them all together in the soup. But this one,” he says, poking the Italian, “we can eat for dinner tonight. He is greasy enough to be fried immediately.“This one,” continues Spoon-em-out, jabbing the Englishman, “we can boil up for the sick people. He has no salt and almost no taste, like tofu!“And this one,” grimaces Spoon-em-out, eyeing the German, “we will soak in water for a week. Then he might be less tough and easier to digest!”Sidney Silicon, the San Francisco yuppie, is jogging on a foggy morning along the cliff-tops around the bay.He loses his way in the fog, gets too close to the edge, trips, and falls over the cliff. He manages to grab hold of a small branch which is sticking out halfway down, and there he hangs, suspended in space.“Help!” screams Sidney. “Is anybody there?”There is a long silence, and then a loud voice booms from above, “Yes, my son, I am here. I am God! Just let go of the branch and my angels will catch you and bring you to paradise.”Some seconds go by, and then Sidney shouts again, “Is there anybody there?”“My son,” booms the voice from above, “I told you, I am God and I am here! Trust me!”“I know,” says Sidney, “that you are there. But isn’t anybody else there?”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes, feel your body to be completely frozen.Now look inward, with your total consciousness, with great urgency, as if this is going to be your last moment. Just like a spear, go on piercing toward the center.This moment that you are at the center, you are a buddha. This buddha nature is the only thing that remains forever.Witnessing is another name of buddha nature. Just remain unwavering at the center and witnessing whatever comes before the mirror.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax. Just witness: you are not the body, you are not the mind. You are only the witness. This experience of being only the witness is what we metaphorically call the buddha.As silence becomes deeper, as your separateness from existence disappears…as this Buddha Auditorium contains only consciousness as an ocean, the evening becomes tremendously beautiful. It becomes a festival.Thousands of flowers will be showering on you. Gather as much fragrance, as many flowers as possible, to bring back. Slowly slowly, you have to bring the buddha back to your circumference. In your every activity, in your every gesture, every word, every silence, you have to show the buddha.This is the highest achievement in existence.Bring as much of your self-nature as possible.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but remember: each movement of sitting up should be that of a buddha – peaceful, graceful, a beauty unto itself. Blissful, grateful, sit for a few moments just recollecting where you have been, just remembering the golden path that you traveled to the center and back.Your meditation has to become your very heartbeat. Twenty-four hours a day you have to remind yourself: nothing should happen through you which will not be suitable for a buddha. And soon you will see the great transformation happening.

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Joshu The Lions Roar 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Joshu The Lions Roar 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Once Joshu was asked, “What is the special teaching of your school?”Joshu’s response was, “Though the folding screen is broken, the frame is still there.”At another time, the same question was asked of Joshu, and he replied, “Ask in a loud voice – I’m hard of hearing.”When the monk had repeated the question in a loud voice, Joshu said, “You ask me my special teaching – I know your special teaching.”Once, Joshu was asked to go to a Korean temple to a meeting. When he reached the gate, he asked, “What temple is this?”Someone answered: “A Korean one.”Joshu said, “You and I are oceans away.”On another occasion, a monk asked, “When a beggar comes, what shall we give him?”Joshu answered, “He is lacking in nothing.”Maneesha, this is the last night of the lion’s roar. Before I discuss the sutras placed before me, I have to give you a few hints to understand Joshu and his lion’s roar.A lion is a special symbol. He walks alone, unafraid of any danger. He has nothing, but still he is called the king of the jungle.A man of enlightenment has some similarities. He walks alone, and although there may be thousands of dead bodies following him, it does not take away his aloneness. His aloneness is something of his inner being – no crowd can take it away, there is no way for anyone to approach it. And he walks on a dangerous path.Most people have remained outside themselves for a particular reason: to go in is a little dangerous. The outside seems to be familiar, well known. You know how to deal with it, you are well acquainted with it, you are educated and conditioned to relate with it.But you don’t know the language of the inner, and you don’t know the sky of the inner, and you don’t know where you are going – you don’t have any map, you don’t have any guide. Nobody can come with you to help you. This creates tremendous fear. People remain their whole life outside, engaged, keeping themselves occupied. They don’t leave any time gap in their occupations because in the time gap they may become aware of something of the unknown that is always there.One day it happened in a New York church: as the bishop entered the church he found a young man, looking just like Jesus Christ. He thought in his mind that this fellow must be a hippie…but what a similarity! He asked the man, “Who are you and what are you doing here?”The man said, “I thought you would recognize me – I am Jesus Christ!”The bishop became really afraid: who knows, he may be! But he may be just deceiving; that too is possible. He immediately phoned the Polack pope in Rome, asking him, “A young man – who looks to me like a hippie, but also looks like Jesus Christ – is standing here. Now what am I supposed to do? I have never been taught, I have never thought that I would ever in my life encounter Jesus.”The pope remained silent for a moment, because he himself was not prepared for such a situation. But something has to be said to the poor bishop. He told the bishop, “Just keep yourself occupied, and don’t pay any attention to him. Everything is possible – he may be Jesus Christ, he may be a hippie. Inform the police, and meanwhile keep an eye on what the fellow is doing. And you keep yourself occupied – in anything – so that you don’t become afraid or frightened. But call the police!”Strange, that if a Jesus appears in a Christian church, this will be the welcome.With the unknown, somehow our whole stomach gets disturbed. We don’t know how to respond because our whole teaching, our whole upbringing, is to react to particular conditions for which we already have the answer.Our mind functions almost like a computer memory and our educational system goes on pouring information into our mind computer. So whenever a situation arises for which you are already informed, you don’t get frightened – you are well prepared, you have done the homework. But for the inner you are absolutely unprepared.Entering into the inner forest, one knows nothing about what is going to happen and whether he will be able to find anything valuable, or whether he will be able to come back again.I have come across a man…his wife brought him to me. The man had become afraid of sleep. And his argument was perfectly right: he said, “What is the guarantee that I will not die in my sleep? Who knows, I may not get up the next morning – then what? Sleep takes you to your deeper unconscious, inward. You may go so deep that you cannot come out!”The wife said, “Now he is driving the whole family nuts. He does not sleep, and he goes on asking everybody, ‘Are you asleep?’”Now, to ask a sleeping person, “Are you asleep?” is to wake him up. And that was the whole strategy: everybody should be awake; alone he is also afraid because everybody is asleep and he is left alone, awake. If something happens there is nobody to look to. So neither he sleeps, nor does he allow anybody else to sleep.He must have been taken to many people – to doctors, to psychiatrists, and finally somebody suggested, “It is better to take him to a crazier man than he is!”So I agreed with the man. I said, “You are absolutely right. Your wife is wrong, your family is wrong, and anybody who says to you…”He laughed, and looked at his wife and said, “See! A wise man understands, and you have been taking me to idiots.”I told the wife, “Your husband is really doing the right thing.”The wife said, “You are creating more difficulty! Up to now, at least he felt that he was doing something wrong, something he should not do but he was helpless. Now he will be absolutely right and everybody else will be wrong.”I said, “That’s the truth, he is absolutely right. So you go away; we have made a communion, so leave us alone just for a few minutes and he will be back.”The man said, “Strange that in the whole city you are the only man who has understood my situation.”I said to him, “This is the situation of the whole humanity: nobody wants to go in. The fear of going in is that you are going into the unknown, in the darkness. And the same fear has taken over you in regard to sleep. You are a spiritual man, it is just that you have not understood the reason you are afraid of going to sleep.”He was very happy to hear that he was a spiritual man! Everybody was thinking he was insane. I said, “You are so spiritual that death cannot do anything, any harm to you. You can sleep perfectly well.”He said, “You are certain?”I said, “I am certain.”He said, “Then it is okay, I will sleep. And if you say that I am a spiritual man, then certainly I should not be afraid of death.”The whole phenomenon of spirituality is not to be afraid of death, because death is a fiction; it does not happen. Your innermost life principle is eternal. I said, “By the way, you have found something very essential in the search of every man. Your fear is absolutely right, because you don’t know that you are deathless, that you are beyond death. Just go home, go to sleep, and I will come in the morning to see you.”In the morning I went – the whole family was puzzled about how I had managed. That man had slept, after many days. In the morning he was very fresh and he said, “You are right. Sleep has nothing to take away; not even death has anything to take away. Death, after all, is a longer sleep.”Zen, particularly in the hands of Joshu, becomes a lion’s roar that resounds in faraway mountains and valleys. Only a man who knows life as an experience, not as an explanation, is capable to give a lion’s roar to wake up other lions.I have told you the story, a very ancient story, about a lioness giving birth to a cub while she was jumping from one hillock to another hillock. The cub fell into a crowd of sheep and grew up among the sheep. There was no way for him to know that he was not a sheep – perhaps that was the only vegetarian lion in the whole history of animalhood! Absolutely vegetarian, just eating grass.Even eating grass he started becoming bigger than the sheep, longer, a beautiful specimen. But the sheep were not afraid, they never thought that he was dangerous. He had grown among them, they had relations with him, friends. Somebody mothered him, somebody was taking care of him; there was no question of being afraid. They were just concerned…what a strange kind of sheep! – looks like a lion, but must be a natural mistake. And they were very happy to have him among them. While they moved in thousands in a crowd, he stood aloof in the middle of them.One day an old lion saw this phenomenon and could not believe it. He had never seen any lion walking in a crowd of sheep. The moment sheep see a lion they start escaping – it was a miracle.The old lion went down to catch hold of the young lion. The sheep started running and the young lion also started running – naturally. He believed he was a sheep.But the old lion was a man just like Joshu. He got hold of him. He started trembling, and the old lion said, “You idiot! You are trembling and weeping and crying and asking that you should be released because you want to join your group. There is something you don’t know, it seems you are unaware, and I will not leave you unless I make you aware. You come with me!”He dragged him to a nearby lake. The lake was silent – no ripples, no wind was there. He took the young lion to the edge of the water and told him, “Look in the water. Look at my face and your face.”Instantaneously, from the young lion a roar came out. It was not any effort, it was simply the fact of seeing that he is a lion – immediately a roar that resounded in faraway mountains.The old lion said, “My work is done. Now do you know who you are?”The young lion thanked the old lion and said, “You have been very kind to me. Otherwise my whole life I would have lived chewing grass with the sheep, continuously afraid of being alone. You have given me a new birth.”That’s exactly the function of a master: to create a situation in which the lion’s roar comes spontaneously, the recognition of your being. And Joshu was a great craftsman, immensely capable of devising new methods to wake up those who are fast asleep and completely unaware of their being.These sutras will help you to understand his methodology.Once Joshu was asked, “What is the special teaching of your school?”Now such questions are very ordinary and common; you can ask them to any philosopher, you can ask them to any priest, any pedagogue. But you cannot ask such a question to a Zen master.That is where the Zen master is a completely different category – because Zen has no teaching, what to say about special or not special. It has a method of awakening you, but it has no doctrine, no theology. It does not teach you anything, it simply wakes you up and leaves you liberated.It does not program you for anything. Its function is finished the moment you are aware. Your very awareness will become your discipline, your compassion, your love. Your actions will be transformed by your awareness, not by rehearsals, not by repressing the opposite.What are teachings? What are doctrines? Ways of repressing. To teach you that you are a Christian, and you should love even your enemy…now in the first place if you are really a man of love, how can you find an enemy? And if you have an enemy, then it is going to be absolutely difficult to love him. It is difficult to love even the friend. And if you want to know the ultimate fact, it is even difficult to love yourself, because you don’t know what you are. You don’t know what love is. So what will you do? You will simply impose, you will become a hypocrite.Every Christian, every Mohammedan, every Hindu, every Buddhist is nothing but a hypocrite. He has to cover up all jealousy, hate, cruelty, greed – and cover them up with beautiful disciplines, practiced well. But howsoever you practice them, what you are doing is simply repressing. So what you have repressed remains in you, and will come out at any moment.There was a Christian missionary who used to say in every sermon, quoting Jesus, “If somebody slaps your cheek, give him the other cheek also.”Everybody loved the teaching – it is beautiful. But in one village, one idiot created trouble. Hearing this, he stood up and slapped the priest on one cheek, and asked him, “Now give me the other cheek!”The priest was boiling with anger – this had never happened, this was strange. Still, he contained his anger. It is only a question of one cheek more; then he will see.He gave the other cheek. And that man was so stupid, he hit him again on the other cheek! Just as he hit him, the priest jumped on the man and started hitting him here and there – everywhere.The man said, “What are you doing? Have you forgotten your sermon?”He said, “There are only two cheeks, and Jesus said nothing beyond that. Beyond that I am free.”So how long can you…?Once it happened to Gautam Buddha…. A man was going to spread the teaching of his master. He asked Buddha, “If somebody is very unkind, cruel, how many times do I have to forgive him?” Because that was the teaching of Buddha – forgive. But the problem is, how many times? And in the very question, “How many times?” it shows that the man has not forgiven, he is just repressing. He is asking, “How many times to repress?” – reduced to its exact meaning.Buddha said, “Seven times.”That man said, “Okay. The eighth time I am absolutely free.”Buddha said, “You have not understood my idea. What do you mean by saying the eighth time you are absolutely free?”He said, “The eighth time I will kill the man! Seven times I forgave him, now it is enough.”Seeing the situation – still, people who make doctrines and moralities and principles to live by, can’t see the underlying repression – Buddha said, “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”Buddha’s chief disciple Sariputra said, “It does not make any difference. Even if you say seven hundred seventy-seven times, it does not make any difference, because after that he is free. And he is waiting for that moment when the principle comes to an end and he can show his reality.”All discipline is limited. You cannot condition a man absolutely. You can cover him up with a thin layer, but just scratch the layer and immediately all discipline is forgotten. All Christianity is forgotten, all Buddhism is forgotten; immediately your animal comes out.Hence, masters like Joshu have improved immensely on Gautam Buddha. Although they are disciples of Gautam Buddha, he has shown the way…but the way is always capable of being refined, more refined.Joshu has made a great contribution. He has no teaching, no “special teaching.” He simply wakes you up and then it is up to you how to live. If your wakefulness does not prevent you from being greedy and ambitious, hateful, jealous, revengeful, then nothing can transform you. The ultimate principle of transformation has been given to you. You are awake, alert, responsible – now you are free. You can do whatever comes spontaneously to you. There is no abiding teaching, no abiding theology. You are your own decision, your own discipline.That is the beauty of Zen that no other religion has.Once Joshu was asked, “What is the special teaching of your school?”Joshu’s response was, “Though the folding screen is broken, the frame is still there.”The man who has asked the question was Joshu’s own disciple. He is saying to him, though the folding screen is broken, the frame is still there – the frame of the window. The screen is broken, but the frame is still there. You have been with me, you understand that I don’t have any teaching. So you are asking, “What is your special teaching? Must be to the very intimate, inner circle that you give the special teaching.” So the folding screen is broken – a part of your mind, that there needs to be a teaching, is broken. But only a part; the frame of the window is still there. You are again asking the same thing, just by joining on the word special. There is no teaching, and there is no special teaching.”Zen is the only way of life which has nothing to teach you. It does exactly what the English word education means in its original roots. To educate means to bring out what is inside you. It is almost like drawing water from a well.All our educational systems are doing just the opposite. They should not be called educational institutions. But such is the blindness and such is the unintelligence, the retardedness, of the people who decide the fate of millions – the politicians, the priests. They can’t see a simple thing, that your educational institutions are feeding things from outside into your mind. They are programming your mind, they are not doing education. They are not drawing your life to the circumference; they are not drawing your innermost awareness into your life.I have been fighting with the Indian government for my whole life but they cannot understand the simple fact that this is an educational institution and what you call educational institutions are not; they are programming schools. But it is almost one man against the whole world. They go on denying that this place is a place of education. They don’t understand the meaning of the word at all.Zen is not a teaching but it is an education. It draws out whatever you have in your innermost core – the joy, the bliss, all the flowers that are possible; compassion and love, all the songs that are hidden in you, all the dances, all creativity. You are part of a creative universe; you must have some part to play in the whole creativity that is going on everywhere.But your so-called educational systems, rather than bringing anything out from you, do just the opposite: they force things upon you. Your religions do the same, your society, culture, everybody is doing the same. Nobody is careful of the delicate seed. They go on throwing all kinds of rubbish and the seed is covered, is never given the right soil, is never given the right climate. Its season never comes. It never becomes a sprout, green and living and radiant. It never becomes foliage; it never brings roses, which you all are carrying.I am calling those roses hidden in you “the buddha.” Everybody is carrying a buddha within him, just it has to be carried out. Devices have to be made so that you can carry your center out to the circumference. This is the only education in the world. Everything else is a teaching, not education; and teaching is always in the favor of the vested interests.Teaching can never be revolutionary. The teacher is the servant of the vested interests. Only a sannyasin can be a revolutionary because he has no vested interest, no obligation to any investment. He has liberated himself from all connections, all dominating forces. He stands alone. He is capable of giving a lion’s roar, which may trigger the same roar in you also.Only very few sannyasins in the world have been authentic rebels. Joshu is a great rebel, a whole rebellion.At another time, the same question was asked of Joshu, and he replied, “Ask in a loud voice – I’m hard of hearing.”This question was also from a disciple. And everybody knew that Joshu is not hard of hearing, he just wants to wake up the man by asking him to speak loudly. Perhaps by speaking loudly you may come out of your sleep.Have you ever experienced that in sleep, if you speak loudly in some dream, you are immediately awake. You can go on talking in a normal way, but there are situations in dreams where you have to scream. Perhaps you are falling from a cliff and you have to scream, and suddenly you are awake. Every nightmare ends up in your waking because the nightmare brings you to a position where you have to scream loudly. Nobody has commented on Joshu’s answer, even in Zen circles: why did he say, ask in a loud voice – I’m hard of hearing.When the monk had repeated the question in a loud voice, Joshu said, “You ask me my special teaching – I know your special teaching.”The man was a missionary type. He was a disciple but he was a disciple just to gather some more knowledge so he could go pretending to be a master himself.He missed the whole device. If he had understood why Joshu was saying, “Speak in a loud voice” – and he knows that he is not hard of hearing, so there must be some point to be understood. He is asking for loud speaking so that you can wake up. But the man missed the point. He repeated the question in a loud voice. If he had got the point, he would have touched the feet of Joshu.In awareness, there is no teaching, no special teaching; one just goes on acting spontaneously. Whatever situation arises, one is a mirror, and goes on reflecting whoever comes before the mirror.Awareness is just a mirror, and your response is not a repetition from an old teaching. Your response is fresh, of this moment. Even you were not aware that you would respond in this way, because you are not repeating a memorized answer; you are simply responding with full awareness. Seeing the situation, whatever is needed in this moment comes out of you from the very center – not from the memory but from your very being.The man missed. And because he missed, Joshu told him:You ask me my special teaching – I know your special teaching.Zen is a very subtle game. It is very delicate. You have to be very alert and watchful of what is happening.Joshu said, “You are asking my teaching – I have not asked your teaching but I know your special teaching because all that you have are the scriptures. Everything is borrowed, nothing is your own contribution, so anybody could know what your special teaching is.”He did not say to him directly, “You missed,” but indirectly he has pointed out to him that all teachings are borrowed, all disciplines are borrowed. That a man of awareness acts in the moment according to his own awareness, not according to some principle.But all the religions are full of principles. And those principles have destroyed humanity, its awareness, its responsibility.I have told you, when God made the world he went around asking different people – the Babylonians, the Egyptians – “Do you want a commandment?”The Babylonians said, “First we would like to know what the commandment is. Without knowing, we don’t want one.”He sad, “You should not commit adultery.”The Babylonians said, “Then what shall we do? Keep your commandment.”He said to the Egyptians, “You should not steal.” And they said, “Life will not be so juicy. We are not interested in such commandments; stealing is a game.”Then he met Moses. And you can see immediately the response of Moses – he did not ask, “What is the commandment?” He immediately asked, “How much?”God said, “It is absolutely free.”Moses did not even ask what the commandments were. He simply said, “Then I will have ten, if they are free.”Now, those ten commandments are not just in the Jewish tradition. Similar commandments are in every tradition: you should do this, you should not do this. Times change, life goes on changing, but those commandments remain heavy on the heart.For example, Mohammed gave the commandment to the Mohammedans, “You should not take interest on money.” Now, all business depends on interest. If Mohammedans are poor – and they are poor everywhere around the world – the simple reason is that they are still following a strange idea that you should not give or take interest on money. Now, no bank can give you money without interest. Even the richest people go on borrowing money from banks because they can use it to earn much more than the interest, but the Mohammedans are carrying a heavy principle on their hearts, that it will be a betrayal to the religion if you take or give interest. So obviously they are poor. In India the poorest jobs are being done by the Mohammedans. It is just an example.Zen emphasizes the fact that man’s consciousness in its ultimate form is enough to decide how to respond in any particular situation. So the only important thing is to become as conscious as possible. All these commandments are for children.Once, Joshu was asked to go to a Korean temple to a meeting. When he reached the gate, he asked, “What temple is this?”Someone answered: “A Korean one.”Joshu said, “You and I are oceans away.”He is saying that the Buddha can not be Korean, can not be Japanese. Awareness belongs to no land, to no country. How can this temple be Korean? It is a temple of Buddha. It cannot belong to any country, to any nation, to any race. Buddha belongs to the whole of humanity.The very word buddha simply means awareness. It is not his personal name. His personal name was Gautam Siddhartha. When he became awakened, those who realized his awakening started calling him Gautam Buddha. They dropped his personal name, Siddhartha. The word buddha comes from a Sanskrit root budh. It simply means one who is fully awakened.How can awakening belong to any country? That’s why Joshu said, “You and I are oceans away.” Although we are standing in the same temple, the distance between you and me is oceans away. You think it is a Korean Buddha, it is a Korean temple? Can’t you see that buddha consciousness is simply everybody’s? It is not the monopoly of anybody special.It is in the normal course of things that everybody has to become a buddha one day. You can avoid it as long as you want – you have been avoiding for centuries. But you cannot escape, because it is your intrinsic nature. Sooner or later you are bound to be fed up with the outside world and look inward. And that inner reality belongs to no nation.On another occasion, a monk asked, “When a beggar comes, what shall we give him?”Now, in the English translation of the word beggar there is bound to be some misunderstanding. In India, what you call a beggar is called bhikhari. Buddha called his sannyasins another name, which also means bhikhari; he called them bhikkshu. Both words can be translated as beggar, but the two words are as far away from each other as possible. The bhikkshu is one who has renounced all ambition, who has renounced the objective, greed, who has renounced all jealousy. The bhikkshu is one who has found himself and now he is enough unto himself; he does not need anything more.So bhikkshu is a very respectable, honorable word; bhikhari is just a beggar. This translation… “When a beggar comes, what shall we give him?” You should remember that English does not have a word like bhikkshu. It is saying, “When a bhikkshu comes, what shall we give him? One who has renounced everything, one who has found himself, who has found his nothingness – what shall we give him?”Joshu answered, “He is lacking in nothing.”That answer will make it clear to you that the word beggar is not an appropriate translation. A bhikkshu is one who is lacking in nothing, who is so contented you cannot give him anything. He needs nothing; he has come to a place where he is absolutely satisfied. So the bhikkshu is really the emperor without any outside empire. He has an inner empire which is far more valuable than anything in the outside world can be.So Joshu said, “He is lacking in nothing. Please don’t think that you can give him something.” But the translation gives a wrong indication. If you say, “When a beggar comes, what shall we give him?”…a beggar is not a bhikkshu. A beggar has come to beg. He has all the desires and all the ambitions, everything. Begging is his profession.I have heard about a beggar who used to stay by the side of a bridge where there was much traffic. And one man, every month when he would get his salary, would give him something. Just by chance, it was a little late in the evening that he came back from the office. He had been given his salary, so he wanted to give something to the beggar.He found that somebody else was sitting there – but it did not matter, the other beggar was blind, and this one too was blind, so the man gave him a one-rupee note. The beggar looked at the note and said, “This note is fake.”The man said, “You are blind – how did you manage to see it?”He said, “I am not blind, and this is not my usual place. I used to be blind before, but people were cheating me just because I was blind. They would give all kinds of false coins and I could not say anything. I could see that they were cheating me, but what to do? So I dropped being blind. Now I am deaf. And my friend, who usually sits here, has gone to see a movie today. So he said, ‘You just take my business. It is only a question of two or three hours and I will be back. I have not seen a movie for many days.’”Beggars have their accounts in the banks and they are perhaps even more desirous than other people. They don’t have anything, they want everything of the world. The English language is poor in the sense that it does not have any word equivalent to bhikkshu. It is better to remember that a bhikkshu is not a beggar; the bhikkshu is a master.And the tradition in Zen is that when a bhikkshu comes because he needs food just for one meal, you give him food and you feel obliged that he thought you worthy enough to ask you for food. First you give him food and then you give him something as a thankfulness, because “I am grateful that you knock on my door – a man of your quality. I hope that some day I will also be in the same consciousness as you are. But even to provide food for you, just for one day, is a great virtue. You have made me happy – accept my thankfulness.” And the person may give a blanket, or something that can be used by the bhikkshu.A bhikkshu is not a beggar. Only then will Joshu’s answer be right: “He is lacking in nothing.” You cannot give him anything, you can only ask for his blessings. You can only touch his feet and feel gratitude that he has allowed you to touch his feet.Su Tung-Po wrote:In the teachings of the creek’s sounds,in the purity of the mountain’s hues,a hundred thousand hymnscame to me last night – but today, how am I to talk about them?In a very beautiful way he is saying, “Last night, in the teaching of the creek’s sounds, in the purity of the mountain’s hues, a hundred thousand hymns came to me last night – but today, how am I to talk about them? They were so beyond words, they were such existential experiences that even if I want to say something about them, it will not be right. Only silence, perhaps, may be able to convey something. Or a dance, or a song. But straightforward prose will not help.”This is not only about the creek’s sounds, it is about every aesthetic, spiritual, mystical experience. When it overwhelms you, you feel you will be able to convey it. But when you try to convey it, you find yourself utterly helpless. No word seems to be the right word. No language seems to be appropriate to convey the depth, the height.In fact, mind is not made to communicate the inner experiences. Inner experiences only transpire, are only transferred from one being to another being. It is a heart-to-heart communication. Head to head, it is impossible.Maneesha has asked a question:Osho,What is the difference between a puzzle and a mystery?Maneesha, a puzzle is solvable. However difficult it may be, you can find the solution. The mystery becomes more mysterious the more you search. You cannot solve the mystery, you can only dissolve into it.I have heard about a professor of mathematics. It was New Year’s Day and he wanted to purchase some toy for his child. Being a mathematician, he looked for some kind of mathematical puzzle. The owner of the shop said, “I have got absolutely the right thing for you. I know you are a great mathematician and this is the latest toy. But before giving it to your child, please try to solve it yourself.”The mathematician tried to solve it, this way and that way – in every way it was wrong. Desperate and perspiring, because it was looking very awkward…other customers gathered, the salesmen gathered, the owner was watching. With tremendous interest, everybody was watching to see whether a professor of mathematics could solve a simple child’s puzzle or not. Finally he gave up. He said to the owner, “I don’t see any way to solve it.”He said, “You need not be so sad, and don’t perspire and don’t be worried. This toy is made in such a way that any way you try, you will be wrong. This toy is meant for a certain purpose: to teach children that this is how life is. You try it any way, and you will end up in a wrong place.”You can ask anybody. Everybody has ended up in the wrong place. It is very rare to find a buddha, who ends up in the right place; otherwise everybody is trying hard, but always reaches the grave with empty hands.A puzzle, Maneesha, can be solved. The mystery cannot be solved. That is the difference. The mystery becomes more mysterious as you try to solve it, and sooner or later you find that the mystery is so big, by and by you are dissolving into it rather than solving it.Kabir, one of the most important mystics of India, made a statement worth remembering:Herat, herat, he sakhi Kabir raha herai.He is saying, “My friend, I was searching and searching, and rather than finding I have lost myself.”The mystery is that in which you will be lost. It will dissolve you. You will become part of the mystery itself.But the puzzle is a small thing, it can be solved.It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.Mick and Stella McManus live on a small island off the west coast of Ireland. They have fourteen kids, and life is hard. One day, Mick decides that he has had enough.“Stella!” he shouts, “I’m leaving you!”So he jumps into his little rowing boat and starts rowing toward the mainland, leaving Stella standing on the beach.“But Mick, what about the house?” shouts Stella.“I’m sorry Stella,” replies Mick, “but I’m leaving you!” And he keeps on rowing out to sea.“But Mick!” pleads Stella. “What about the children?”“It’s no good Stella,” replies Mick, “I am leaving you!” And he keeps on rowing.“But Mick!” cries Stella, pulling up her dress and displaying her feminine charms. “What about this?”“Ah! God!” mutters Mick, rowing back to the beach. “One of these days I am really going to leave you!”Kowalski and Zabriski go moose hunting every year in Canada, to try and catch moose for the local zoo. This year, as usual, they hire a seaplane and a pilot. They fly deep into the Canadian wilderness, and land on a lake.As the pilot drops them on the shore, he gives them a warning.“Now remember,” he says, “only one moose, or we will have too much weight to take off again. I will be back to pick you up in a week.”The plane takes off into the air and the two Polacks, armed with a crate full of vodka, take off into the wilderness.One week later, they are standing on the shore with two moose when the plane arrives.“I told you guys, only one moose!” cries the pilot.“Come on,” replies Kowalski, “last year the pilot took us with two moose. He was not afraid!”Eventually, after a lot of vodka and persuasion, the pilot agrees and they push the two moose onto the plane.The plane starts from the shore, but there is too much weight to take off and they crash into the trees at the other end of the lake. The moose escape and run off into the forest.Kowalski and Zabriski wake up and look around at the wreckage.“Where are we?” asks Zabriski, completely dazed.“Ah!” says Kowalski, looking back at the lake. “About a hundred yards further than last year!”Kevin McMurphy, a good Irish Catholic boy, goes to see the priest, Father Dingle.“Father,” says Kevin, “my wife Kathleen is going to have a baby!”“Praise the Lord!” exclaims the priest.“Yes, Father!” says Kevin, “and it being our first, Kathleen and I were wondering if you could be praying in the hospital chapel while she is delivering it?”“Say no more, my son. It shall be done,” says Dingle. “And bring along your parents and Kathleen’s family to help with the praying.”When Kathleen goes into labor, Kevin phones Father Dingle and both sets of parents. And half an hour later, Kevin is pacing up and down outside the delivery room when the nurse sticks her head out.“It’s a boy!” she cries, and Kevin runs downstairs to the chapel, where everyone is praying.“A boy! A boy!” cries Kevin, and dashes back upstairs.As he arrives back at the delivery room door, the nurse pops her head out, and cries, “Now it’s a girl!”“Holy Jesus!” cries Kevin, and runs back down to the chapel.“Twins!” shouts Kevin, “I am the father of twins! It’s a girl!”Father Dingle and the families start singing “Hail Mary’s” to the blessed Virgin.Kevin races back upstairs, and as he reaches the delivery room he hears the doctor say, “Another boy!”Kevin turns round and rushes back downstairs, flings open the door of the chapel, and shouts, “Triplets!”“Triplets?” cries Father Dingle.“Yes,” screams Kevin, “and for God’s sake, Stop praying!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes, feel your body to be completely frozen.Now look inward, with total consciousness and with a great urgency, as if this moment is your last moment.One should live in the same way. Every moment is the last moment. Then only can one live totally.Go deeper, make a spear of your consciousness. The moment you touch your center of being, flowers will start showering all over.Just be a witness of the silence, of the peace, of the deep contentment, of the immense sky that opens up from your center.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Simply witness: you are not the body, you are not the mind. You are only a witnessing consciousness.This witnessing consciousness is the door to the divine.This witnessing consciousness is what we have been calling the buddha.This buddha has to be brought to every act, to every gesture, to every word, to every silence. It has to become a reality, twenty-four hours. Only then is life a perfection, a completion.One has come home.Gather as many flowers…and the stars and the fragrance. You have to bring the buddha with you. Soon Nivedano will be calling you back. As you get up, get up with grace, with beauty, with silence, with immense blissfulness surrounding you.This moment, the night has become the most blissful it has ever been.This moment, the Buddha Auditorium is just a lake of consciousness. You all have disappeared in it. Ten thousand buddhas have just become a lake of consciousness.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but come back as buddhas – with as much grace as possible, with great serenity and silence – a few minutes just to sit and recollect where you have been.Remember the center, and the path that leads to it. You have to go on this path again and again till your circumference and center become one. Till you are a buddha, without any doubt.It is everybody’s destiny.

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Kyozan A True Man of Zen 01-04Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Kyozan A True Man of Zen 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Once, when he was still with his master, Kyozan said to Isan, “Where does the real buddha dwell?”Isan replied, “By means of the subtlety of thoughtless thought, contemplate the boundless spiritual brightness. Contemplate it until returning to the ground of being, the always abiding nature, and its form of the undichotomous principle. This is the real buddha.”On hearing this, Kyozan was enlightened.Later, when Kyozan had become a master himself, Isan sent him a mirror as a gift. When he went to the hall where his monks were assembled, Kyozan held up the mirror and said to the assembly, “Please say whether this is Isan’s mirror or Kyozan’s mirror. If someone can give a correct reply, I will not smash it.”No one answered, and Kyozan smashed the mirror.Maneesha, a new series of talks begins today.These are not sermons in a church; these are communions. A discourse, a sermon, remains within the limits of the mind. Only a communion can raise you beyond the mind, and that which is beyond the mind is Zen. A new series of communions is a great event. We will be looking into the very heart of Kyozan.Kyozan was a very simple man – not the philosophic kind, not a poet, nor a sculptor. Nothing can be said about him except that he was absolutely authentic, honest. If he does not know a thing he will say so, even at the risk of people thinking that he has fallen from his enlightenment. But this makes him a unique master.Zen is full of unique masters, but Kyozan’s uniqueness is his simplicity. He is just like a child. It took Isan, his master, forty years of hard work to make Kyozan enlightened. He was determined, and he said he would not leave the body until Kyozan became enlightened – though he was old enough.Kyozan did everything that Isan said, but nothing penetrated to his very being. He was a very ordinary man. Heaven and hell, God and the beyond had never worried him. He was not a seeker in the sense every seeker is – a seeker of truth.No, he was not seeking truth, because he is reported to have said that, “If you are seeking the truth you have certainly accepted that truth exists, and I will not accept anything on belief. So I am just seeking, searching in all directions, trying to come in tune with the universe. It may be just my fallacy, my fantasy, but I want to go without any prejudice.”Even the prejudice may prove right, but when a prejudice proves right, you will never know the truth. You will go on projecting your prejudice. And you can create a whole paraphernalia of prejudices, a system of beliefs – rational, logical, appealing, presentable – but if belief is the base stone on which you are creating the whole palace, you are working unnecessarily hard.Nobody can come to know the truth by any preconceived idea. His preconceived idea will give a certain shape, a certain color to the experience. The experience will not be pure. It will be as polluted as Pune’s air!But Isan, it seems, took it as a challenge: if an ordinary man like Kyozan cannot be transformed into a buddha, how can you allow others to trust in the existence of the buddha?All the religions have done just the contrary. Krishna is God’s incarnation, so is Rama, so is Parasuram. They have made them sit on such a high pedestal that you can only worship, you can only pray; you cannot conceive that you yourself can also experience what these people on the heights are experiencing.And the creation of hierarchies makes it difficult for almost anyone to be unprejudiced. When the child is born, we have good intentions, but good intentions do not mean that they are going to lead you to the truth. Everybody is burdened with good intentions – with Shrimad Bhagavadgita, with the Holy Koran, with the Holy Bible. Continuously repeating anything, slowly slowly it becomes a truth to you. And for centuries these religions have been repeating.Isan chose Kyozan to be his successor. It took forty years of tremendous work on him, because he was a simple man, and in the first place he was not in search of truth. Just think of some man who is not in search of truth, and you go on knocking on his door every day.Look at the Witnesses of Jehovah! Whether you want to listen to them or not – that is immaterial – you have to listen, you have to confess. And now Pope the Polack has made it a sin…He is a discoverer of a new sin – all old sinners who are dead must be tossing and turning in their graves that they missed – he has declared that to confess to God directly is a sin; you should go through the right channel. You should go to the priest, confess to him, receive the punishment, and the priest will take care of you, so that on the Judgment Day when God opens all the graves, the priest will be a witness that, “This fellow is good; as punishment he has given five dollars to you.”But God is going to be in a difficulty, particularly in India. Most of the population believe in fire and burn the dead body. When he opens the Hindu graves, he himself may freak out – just skeletons, and not even a passport! But I always think how you will look, something similar to the photo that you are carrying in your passport but without the skin.And I cannot conceive that the judgment is going to be over in one day. In the millions of years, trillions of people have lived on the earth. Some researcher has calculated that, wherever you are sitting, you are sitting on ten dead men’s skeletons. Don’t be afraid, they are very good people! And remember also that the judgment is not only for men. Women will also be there. And women will be chattering so much: “What is the news? Who are the new arrivals?”I don’t think God will be able to manage, and perhaps that is the reason Jesus says, “The Judgment Day is coming soon – in your life,” but it has not even come up to now, though two thousand years have passed. I can say to you the judgment will never come, because it is not feasible.And there will be on Judgment Day a tremendous bloodless fight amongst the skeletons; because one man has been a husband in his hundreds of lives to hundreds of women, one woman has been a wife to hundreds of men in her past lives. And everybody will be pulling at each other. Somebody is pulling at your leg, “Where are you going?” The whole world will be such a mess that I say unto you definitively that the idea of judgment has been postponed forever.Choosing Kyozan as his successor, and waiting for forty years – what patience! – almost transforming a stone into a diamond. But Isan was determined to make one point absolutely clear to humanity: if Kyozan, a simple and ordinary person, not belonging to any speciality, any category, without any talent, any genius – if he can become enlightened, it will be a proof. To give this proof to humanity he chose Kyozan and worked hard on him. And the day Kyozan became enlightened, the day Isan transferred his enlightenment and the two flames became one, Isan disappeared from the world of matter, body, mind.Kyozan was so radiant now. He was not only once enlightened, he was twice enlightened. His master has given him richer experiences, far deeper spaces, far clearer skies.A little biographical note:When Kyozan was fifteen, he wanted to become a monk, but his parents would not allow it. Two years after that, he cut off two fingers of his left hand and pleaded with his parents to let him follow the spiritual path, and finally they agreed.They had to agree. If he can cut off two fingers he can cut off his whole hand, and the blame would be on them.Kyozan studied under several masters and then remained with Isan for many years, before moving to Mount Kyo where disciples came to be with him.In Zen, there is not much to a biography. What is important is that the man has become an eternal flame, that the man has achieved his ultimate potential, that his blue lotus has blossomed. Who cares about dates of birth, about your parents? Those become negligible. That’s why in the East there is nothing like Western history.Western history is factual; it takes note of all the facts from birth to death. Eastern history does not bother about physical appearance; it takes care of your spiritual growth. Those are the real progress points.For the experience you should go to a Jaina temple. Don’t mention my name! And you will see in the temple twenty-four statues of the Jaina masters. And you will be puzzled because they all look alike; there is no way to find out who is who.I am trying to make the point clear to you that it does not matter who is who. Those statues don’t represent the physical body; they represent spiritual silence, spiritual grace, spiritual peace. If you sit there, you will be engulfed if you are not a Jaina – because the Jaina goes with a prejudice.Just go on inquiring why these twenty-four statues are exactly the same. The reason is, the inner experience is the same- whether it happens to Adinatha or to Mahavira or to Gautam Buddha, it does not matter. The inner flame and the fragrance and the silence will surround you. Just sit silently, let it happen. Don’t be in a hurry.So we don’t know many names, we don’t know when they were born, we don’t know when they became enlightened, but we know that a sudden explosion of light has happened in a man. We have included only these people in our history.All that is concerned with the physical we have deleted from Eastern history. But we have remembered, and we continue to remember…and if you sit before the statue of Buddha outside the entrance, just sitting silently, you will be surprised how for the first time you feel so relaxed, so peaceful, so unworried. The form of the statue creates a certain space and a certain energy.This was discovered in the early days of this century when there was great excitement about the Egyptian pyramids. They are completely sealed. When one pyramid was opened – the first pyramid – there was a strange peace inside, a strange fragrance inside.And the most puzzling thing that came to light was a cat that must have died hundreds of years before, but there was no rottenness of the body. It was as if she had died just then. They could not believe it because the stupa was three thousand years old, and it had never been opened.When they were closing the last doors, somehow the cat must have got in, and remained in, and of course had to die; there was no way out. She must have died three thousand years before, but the problem is there was no deterioration.And scientists became interested that perhaps the form of the pyramid creates a certain space in which nothing can die. Death came because there was no food, no water, but the pyramid kept the cat as if it was as alive as any cat can be.Now there are on sale in the world markets small pyramids. You just sit under the pyramid for an hour and you will see some changes; you are no more in a hurry, you don’t have any tension. The stupa has done something, but it is still a mystery.The Buddhists also have made stupas: in India, Bodhgaya, where Buddha became enlightened…in Sanchi, where many buddhas became enlightened. But nobody seems to be interested except in their architecture. Studying the architecture is not the way to find the mystery of why these stupas were made in a certain way.In India, in Tibet, in China, in Japan, in Ceylon – wherever Buddhism went, these stupas, these memorials were raised to give an indication that nobody dies; only the body and the mind are left behind and you open your wings of consciousness. And for the first time when all the shutters are broken the whole blue sky is your empire.Kyozan studied with many masters, but either they were not masters…and certainly he was not ready to be a disciple. The moment he saw Isan, suddenly a new breeze, a new fragrance passed through him.They met on a small footpath on the mountain. He could not resist…this man smells like sandalwood and has such a light around him, such an at-easeness.He turned and asked Isan, “Can you accept me as a disciple?”Isan looked at him. He said, “I have never rejected anyone, that would be humiliation – although I am aware, looking at you, that it is going to be a long task. But if you are ready to go on a long pilgrimage with me, perhaps that which can happen may now happen.”Isan had one thousand disciple-monks, and they were all puzzled that, having such a great scholarly assembly, he had chosen a farmer, uneducated, who had not even heard the names of the Buddha’s sutras. “Why has he become so interested in him?” And they were great scholars with a fine discipline who had been with him for years – and, “This is a newcomer, a villager.”Isan said to his other disciples, “Today he is not ready, he is just a seed. But tomorrow you will know why I have chosen him. I am trying to serve two purposes in a single event. If this man can become a buddha, then the doors are open for all men.” And he made it a promise that he would not leave his body until Kyozan could satisfy the whole assembly of disciples that the master had not been wrong.The sutra:Osho,Once when he was still with his master, Kyozan said to Isan, “Where does the real buddha dwell?”Isan replied, “By means of the subtlety of thoughtless thought, contemplate the boundless spiritual brightness. Contemplate it until returning to the ground of being, the always abiding nature, and its form of the undichotomous principle. This is the real buddha.”On hearing this, Kyozan was enlightened.It is a very strange incident.Western education everywhere has made us very limited and one-dimensional. So if you read this you will simply laugh. You can understand each word and its implications, but that is not the real thing that is happening between Isan and Kyozan.Once, when he was still with his master, Kyozan said to Isan, “Where does the real buddha dwell?”Isan replied, “By means of the subtlety of thoughtless thought,– when the mind is thoughtless and just empty, that is the temple of the buddha –…contemplate the boundless spiritual brightness. Contemplate it until returning to the ground of being, the always abiding nature, and its form of the undichotomous principle. This is the real buddha.”Always move into unity with the cosmos. Dichotomy is division; undichotomy is no division, no division of any kind. Contemplate it, and this very contemplation…you will not find the buddha; you will find you are the buddha. There will not be two, because that will create dichotomy. There will not be you standing looking at buddha. You will merge in silence, disappear in the oceanic experience of consciousness, the eternal serenity of existence. There is no knower and nothing is known, but everything is. This “isness” is buddha.On hearing this, Kyozan was enlightened.This makes difficulty for the modern mind. How can one become enlightened just by listening to a few lines? You can go on reading these lines again and again, you will not become enlightened; you will simply become crazy.Underneath, something else is happening. While the master is speaking, the disciple is not only listening because he has ears. The disciple is listening with his total being, every fiber of his being; not only with ears, he is also listening with his eyes, looking at the master; he is also feeling the master, his vibe. It is a total phenomenon. He has forgotten himself and disappeared in the tremendous statement.The moment you forget yourself and only a silent consciousness remains, you have come home. Enlightenment is not something special; it is hidden in you, your hidden splendor. It is just that you are so much occupied with the outside world that you can forget anything, particularly those things which are very obvious.In the first world war rationing was introduced and everybody had to appear before the rationing officer to get a ration card. Thomas Alva Edison, a world-famous figure – all your facilities and comforts, most of them are because of Edison; he discovered one thousand things – he was also standing in the queue. And as he was coming closer to the top of the queue, people were leaving, taking their cards, and finally the clerk shouted, “Now it is time for Thomas Alva Edison.”Edison looked here and there; he could not see anybody. A long queue was behind him. Somebody from the back said, “As far as I know, the man who is standing in front of you is Thomas Alva Edison.”Edison said, “Perhaps I may be, but for fifty years nobody has used my name in front of me.” He was so famous; in the university he was called “the professor”, nobody used his name. And he was so engrossed and engaged in his experiments, he had no time to meet people, to talk to people. He was a man who was absolutely alone in the crowd. He had forgotten his own name – fifty years is a long time.If nobody uses your name, you will also forget, or you may think, “Perhaps I have heard this name somewhere far away, far back, as an echo, but I cannot guarantee it. I have to find witnesses.”Now, if your name is not used by others out of respect and love, you are not going to use it yourself. Naturally, not being used for fifty years – and a name is an arbitrary device – Edison forgot his.But you have forgotten your innermost being. His loss was not much of a loss, just a label. Your loss is far deeper and greater. For centuries you have lived, but you don’t know who you are.The explosion of enlightenment is: Suddenly you become aware of your eternal being.Later, when Kyozan had become a master himself, Isan sent him a mirror as a gift. When he went to the hall where his monks were assembled, Kyozan held up the mirror and said to the assembly, “Please say whether this is Isan’s mirror or Kyozan’s mirror. If someone can give a correct reply, I will not smash it.”This is how in Zen very subtle and intricate matters become immensely important. To the outsider it will look a stupid question.In the first place, you should remember that sending a mirror as a gift – he is opening a new monastery, he will be the master – sending the mirror to him is to remind him: “Don’t forget. This mirror will remind you that whatever the mirror reflects is not you. But whoever witnesses the reflection in the mirror, that is your buddhahood.”Kyozan rose to these heights. He said to the assembly of monks:“Please say whether this is Isan’s mirror or Kyozan’s mirror. If someone can give a correct reply, I will not smash it.”No one answered, and Kyozan smashed the mirror.To answer the question a man of enlightenment was needed. Spontaneously he would have responded – thousands of ways are open – but remaining silent, dumb, simply shows your ignorance, your unawareness. And Kyozan’s smashing the mirror is just to make a beginning to what is going to happen in his monastery.If anyone had been enlightened he could have done anything. He could have come and slapped Kyozan and taken the mirror from him, and said to the assembly, “The mirror is mine! There is no need to smash it.” Or anything!The mirror is nobody’s. And to use a gift of the master on the first day of the opening ceremony…this is not nice to smash the mirror. Somebody was needed to smash the face of Kyozan, which would have saved the mirror! But nobody was enlightened enough.You will come across many incidents, and when you hear about them, just think that you were there; just close your eyes and feel the energy that had gathered in Kyozan’s monastery; what would you have done?It reminds me:A great Zen master had two wings to his monastery, and he had a beautiful cat. Everybody loved that cat, and everybody claimed that, “Of course the master cannot possess anything, so it belongs to the right wing,” or “it belongs to the left wing.”Things became so hot that one day the master had to call the whole assembly of both wings, to say, showing the cat and a sword, “Do you see this cat and this sword? If anybody can answer – this is a question about this cat and this sword – if anybody can answer, the cat will belong to him. If nobody answers then the only possible way for me to settle this hot dispute and struggle is to cut the cat in two pieces and divide it between the right wing and the left wing.”A great chill went through the people, but what is the right answer?Seeing their silence, the master cut the cat in half. He gave a bleeding half to each of the parties. At that very moment Lieh Tzu, who was going to be his successor and had gone to the marketplace for some work, entered in and slapped the master, and said to him, “You old idiot! You unnecessarily killed a beautiful cat.”The master laughed and said, “Lieh Tzu, if you had been here the poor cat would still be alive.”Zen has a language of its own. Most particularly, it needs courage, spontaneity, clarity, and then out of that clarity whatever you do is right.Isa wrote:Plum blossoms:my springis an ecstasyJust visualize.Plum blossoms:my springis an ecstasyIf you start looking silently at things, the roses will become your ecstasy, the mountains will become your ecstasy, the naked tree without any leaves will become your ecstasy. The ecstasy is an utter silence, watching, witnessing the tremendous beauty that surrounds you. This beauty is alcoholic. Experiencing this beauty around you, you forget about small things. Your life becomes a golden life.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Is our original face that of the witness? Is it that we live as amnesiacs, forgetting that we have only arbitrarily adopted a body and mind, and that enlightenment is simply regaining our memory?Yes, Maneesha. You have condensed in your question the whole answer.But she goes on writing:P.S. Why do you call me “poor ”Maneesha?Stonehead Niskriya, give a good hit to poor Maneesha.(Niskriya taps Maneesha lightly on the head with his Zen stick.)I call you “poor Maneesha” because there is a poverty of the outer world, and there is a poverty of the inner world. I am against the poverty of the outer world, but I am not against the poverty of the inner world. The poverty of the inner world means: no ego, no pride, no arrogance, pure humbleness, as if you are not. And what begins “as if” soon you find it is so. There is no need to call it “as if.”Whenever I call you, Maneesha, “poor Maneesha,” that is to wake in you a silence, a peace, a blossom, a spring.Because of this, Buddha used to call his sannyasins – against the whole tradition of India – bhikkshu, the beggar. But he is a beggar on the outside. The more beggarly he becomes on the outside, the richer becomes his inner being.The poverty of a humble man, the poverty of an innocent man, the poverty of a silent meditative man is not a poverty. Through this poverty you are attaining the whole world. The whole blue sky becomes smaller than you.Now it is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.It is that fateful day on Calvary Hill. Jesus has been hanging from his cross for hours, and he is getting weaker and weaker.Suddenly he sees Moseki, his Polish disciple, among the faces in the crowd below.“Moseki, Moseki,” gasps Jesus to the Polack. “Moseki, come here; I have a message for you and your people.”Moseki shimmies up the cross, bringing his ear next to Jesus and says, “Yes, Lord, what is the message for us Polacks?”“The times are dangerous for my Polish disciples,” whispers Jesus, “so until I come back, just play dumb!”Little Ernie walks into his parents’ bedroom and sees his father putting on a condom.“Hey, Dad,” says Little Ernie. “What are you doing?”“Uh, er…I am going out to hunt rabbits,” stammers his embarrassed father.“Really?” says Ernie. “What are you going to do when you reach them, Dad? Fuck them?”Little Ernie and Little Sally are discussing what big boys and girls do together when they are alone at night.“What do you think they do?” asks Sally.“I’m not sure,” replies Ernie. “But I know a way of finding out. Tonight, when my sister Suzy takes her boyfriend Herbert into the sitting room, I will hide behind the curtains and watch them.”“Great idea!” says Little Sally. “Then you can tell me all about it tomorrow.”The next morning, the two little kids meet.“Sally!” cries Little Ernie, excitedly. “You won’t believe what happened last night. I was playing behind the sofa, when my sister, Suzy, and her boyfriend, Herbert, came home. They sat on the sofa and did not know I was there.”“They talked for a while, then Herbert turned off most of the lights. Suzy must have been cold, because he put his arms around her back and blew hot breath on her neck.”“I guessed she must have been feeling sick, because her face looked funny. He must have thought so too, because he put his hand inside her blouse to feel her heart – just like the doctor. Except he is not as smart as the doctor, because he seemed to have trouble finding it!”“I guess he was feeling sick too, because pretty soon both of them started panting and getting all out of breath. His other hand must have been pretty cold because he put it under her skirt.”“About this time, Suzy got worse and began to moan and groan and started squirming around and slid down to the end of the sofa.”“This is when the fever started! I know it was a fever because Suzy told Herbert she was getting really hot.”“Finally, I found out what was making them sick. A big snake jumped out of Herbert’s pants, and stood there – it was about ten inches long! It was incredible! Suzy got really scared. Her eyes got big and her mouth fell open and she started saying, ‘My God!’ and stuff like that. She said it was the biggest one she had ever seen!”“Anyway, Suzy got braver and tried to kill it by biting its head off! I guess it bit her back, because suddenly she made a noise and let go. Then she grabbed it with both hands and held it tight while Herbert took a plastic muzzle from his pocket and put it over the snake’s head to keep it from biting again.”“Then Suzy and Herbert lay back on the sofa and tried to squash the snake between them. But the snake put up a hell of a fight. They both started groaning and squealing and almost turned over the sofa! And after a long struggle they finally stopped and gave a big sigh.”“When Herbert got up, I could tell that the snake was dead. It was all limp and just hanging there.”“You know, Sally, I think they are the bravest people I know.”“Why is that?” asks Sally.”“Because,” replies Ernie, “as Herbert was leaving, he and Sally decided to do the same thing again next week!”Nivedano…(drumbeat)(gibberish)Nivedano…(drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen. Now look inwards with your total consciousness, with an urgency as if this is the last moment, and pierce into the very center of your being.Your center is also the center of the universe. We are all connected at the center. On the circumference we have different personalities.Deeper and deeper.This is your very life source. Go deep into it, it will refresh you, rejuvenate you. It will bring freedom to you from all the nonsense that societies have poured into your mind.This moment you are the buddha. Just witnessing, doing nothing – the same mirror that Isan has sent to Kyozan as a gift. The mirror only witnesses.To make it clear, Nivedano…(drumbeat)Relax and witness the body is separate from you, the mind is separate from you. Your only identity is witnessing. The Sanskrit word for witnessing is buddha.You are those few blessed people on the earth today, who are entering on the ancient golden path which leads you to eternity, immortality. Slowly slowly you start melting, and Gautam the Buddha Auditorium becomes a pure lake of consciousness: one buddha you all share.Do you see the change in your inner climate?Has not the spring come?Are not flowers of joy showering over you?Is not this moment the most precious, because you are at home? To be a buddha simply means to be at home.Soon Nivedano will be calling you awake. Before he gives his beat, collect as much of the experience as possible. Bring all those flowers to your circumference.The ultimate in the search for truth is to bring the hidden buddha into your day-to-day actions, gestures, words, silences.Nivedano…(drumbeat)Come back, but remember you are coming with the grace of buddha, with the silence and the joy of the buddha.Sit down for a few moments just to recollect, to remember where you have been, the golden path that you have gone on; and you have returned back on the same path. One has to go on repeating – going in, coming out, going in, coming out – and slowly slowly the going becomes so deep that you need not come back, you can remain a buddha in the world.I am against all renunciation. My philosia is to live in this beautiful world with grace and love and blissfulness.It is a great opportunity to blossom. Don’t miss it.

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Kyozan A True Man of Zen 01-04Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Kyozan A True Man of Zen 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Once, Kyozan’s master asked him, “The Nirvana Sutra has about forty chapters of the Buddha’s teaching. How many of these are devil teachings?”“All of them,” replied Kyozan.The master commented: “From now on, nobody will be able to do what he likes with you.”Then Kyozan asked: “From now on, what should be my mode of life?”His master responded, “I admire your just eye; I am not concerned about the practical side of the matter.”Once Kyozan was asked by a monk, “Can you explain the law body?”“I can’t,” said Kyozan, “but there is one who can.”The monk then said, “Where is the one who can explain it?”By way of response, Kyozan pulled forward the pillow.Kyozan’s master, on hearing of this interchange, said, “Kyozan is using the blade of the sword.”Maneesha, Zen is both a religion and a revolution against religion; this makes people confused. But the thing is not confusing. The so-called religions have become fossilized – they no more breathe, they no more sing, they no more dance. They have become a hidden organized politics.Against all these things Zen is a revolution, and by this revolution Zen thinks religion can be purified, raised to the highest stars of its possibilities. Hence the strangeness of Zen. It is a religion but not like any other. Even the Buddhists do not accept Zen as authentic Buddhism.The moment an experience becomes an explanation, a philosophy, a theology, it loses life. It may catch many people in its fold but these will be the people who want religion at a very cheap price.Religion needs you to risk all, nothing less will do. Hence the organized religions – Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Jainaism, Buddhism – they are not only giving you a false idea of religiousness, they are also preventing you from searching for the right one. When you think that you have the right one already in your hands, there is no need to search for it.I agree with Karl Marx on this point, when he says: “Religions are the opium of the people.” They have consoled…for centuries. They have not done any creative work for consciousness, nor have they enriched the earth, its beauty and its productivity. On the contrary they have taught people to renounce the world – and this is the only world we know.Somebody of the caliber of Gautam Buddha was absolutely needed in his time to declare a constant war against those who have a negative attitude towards life. They only count the thorns in a rosebush and, amongst so many thorns, naturally they forget the beautiful roses. Looking positively, affirmatively, looking with love they should first count the flowers; they should become engulfed by the perfume of the flowers.And then those thorns would appear in a totally different context. Those thorns would appear as bodyguards, as protective armor around the rose; that is their function. The same life juice that becomes the rose becomes the thorn. At their source they come from the same roots; they cannot be enemies. But all the religions were afraid of one thing: that religion may become a changing, moving, alive river. The fear was that if religion remains a flowing river…who knows, people may change tomorrow.Mahavira closes the door on anything else being added. He is the twenty-fourth tirthankara. That is the last number; now nothing can be added to Jainaism. It is a very tricky game.Mohammed is the last prophet. Why this insistence on being last? Why not be first? But being last means you are closing the doors. Now the Holy Koran will remain, forever and forever, the only directions and guidance for the followers. It cannot take note of the changing circumstances; it cannot take note of the changing consciousness of man, his changing and deepening insight into reality. Christians are waiting for Christ. These are the tricks – one day Christ will come and he has promised them, “Soon.” The “soon” seems to be very long…He cannot come again. He can only come in those same circumstances that existed in Judea two thousand years ago. Now, declaring oneself the only begotten son of God…any child will laugh.Two small children were sitting on the steps of their house. The small one asked, “I wonder why these Christian bishops and cardinals are called ‘father.’ They don’t have any children.”But the question, although it has come from a small child – and what is always being done to children’s questions is, “Just wait. In time, in your maturity, you will know” – even Jesus never asked it. And if you are the only begotten son of God…is God so miserly? And at that time I don’t think there were available any birth control methods.Why did he stop at one? The same problem from a different angle. He has to stop at Jesus because somebody may later on declare, “I am another son of God.” But what is the problem? Jesus has no proofs so evidence cannot be asked. Any idiot…and idiots are abundant, you try to seek one and you will find a thousand!It happened in Baghdad, the capital of Mohammedanism, that a man was brought to Khalif Omar. He was claiming to be the latest messenger from God. “Mohammed is perfectly right but things have changed and a new dispensation from the direct source is needed.” Mohammed cannot be bypassed in this way.Omar said, “Listen. You will be beaten for seven days – no food, no water – and then I will come to see you in the jail. I hope by that time you have changed your mind.”The man laughed. He said, “These were exactly God’s last instructions to me: ‘People will not believe you. Even a man of the insight of Omar will first test you.’ So I am available.” He was taken to the prison, tied to a pole, naked, and beaten – no food, no water, no sleep. It was real torture.After seven days when Omar came, he asked the man, whose whole body was oozing blood, but his eyes were glittering, shining, “Have you changed your mind?”He said, “I was thinking to change but these seven days have proved to me that I am the prophet. That’s what God said to me, ‘You will be tortured. You will be harassed. You may be killed.’ You have fulfilled all this and made me more certain. I was a little hesitant and it felt a little embarrassing to call myself a messenger of God.”At the same time at the next pole another man was tied. He had come a month before and he had not come with any Koran, any message from God. He declared that, “Because all the prophets have failed – Mohammed included – I finally decided to come myself.” Now this is too much for fanatic, fascist fundamentalists. The man shouted from his pole, “Omar, don’t be deceived by this man. After Mohammed I have not appointed any messenger.”All these religions are grabbing everybody by the neck. Freedom means disobedience. To decide your own life means going against the organized religion, morality, ethos. Zen has specialities of its own. Perhaps it is the only religion which can be called religiousness. Religion becomes solid and centered, and then there is the hierarchy: the pope, the cardinal, the bishop, the priest.Zen has no fixed teaching because every fixed teaching will become out of date tomorrow. Tomorrow new flowers will come on the bushes. Tomorrow new leaves will sprout. Tomorrow new waters will be flowing from the Himalayas. Tomorrow nothing will be there that you used to know. Every new dawn brings a totally new world around you. If it does not look new it is because you continue to hang on with old eyes.Zen is rebellious at all possible points. It fills my heart full of great gratitude for these lions. At least a few people have declined the offer, the invitation to become slaves. At least a few people have roared and declared their freedom from bondage. And these are the only real people. Unfortunately they are not many.But even those few people prove one thing for certain, that you also carry the same consciousness, dormant. You have not dared to go inside yourself to find the diamond which will give you the whole universe as yours.This anecdote…And Zen is not very serious about things. It could have been very scholarly; it could have been very philosophic – like Bertrand Russell who wrote a book on mathematics and took two hundred and fifty pages to argue that two plus two are really four. Zen is just like wild flowers; it grows anywhere. It does not need much effort; all that it needs is a deepening in your consciousness so that you can see the world around you more clearly.Now your vision of the world is very shadowy, very dark, and your world looks very small. As you go deeper inwards you will be surprised that the world goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger, and a point comes where you know there is no end, no boundary line of existence. Being born in this infinite existence brings a tremendous bliss and a great ecstasy and a sense of eternity.And Zen has found the right way by small anecdotes which even a child can understand, though it is possible that even an old man may not understand. The older a man becomes, he becomes so knowledgeable – he knows everything. The child is open and clean. The function of meditation – and that is the meaning of Zen – is to bring your childhood back to you, and from there on to look at the beauty, the godliness, the truth that has always been there but you have never looked at it.Once, Kyozan’s master asked him, “The Nirvana Sutra has about forty chapters of the Buddha’s teaching. How many of these are devil teachings?”A strange question, which can only be asked in the Zen atmosphere. You cannot ask in a Christian monastery, “How many teachings in the Bible are devil teachings?” The idea simply looks awkward. But in Zen you can ask anything because nothing matters. It is not a serious, philosophical system. Asking such a question…The Nirvana Sutra is one of the most respected sutras in the Buddhist world and it contains almost everything essential that Buddha has said. It is called Nirvana Sutra because it concludes at the point where you disappear. Its whole process is how to help you disappear.First you become silent. And as the silence goes deeper you start feeling that you are not the body, that you are not the mind. You are living in the body but you are not it. You are using the mind but you are not it. As the silence goes to serenity you suddenly become aware that, “I am only a witness, witness of the whole world and witness of my body and mind too.” Just a pure witness, a cool breeze, a fragrant breeze.The word nirvana means blowing out the candle. Buddha chose a really beautiful word for the ultimate. When you disappear into the ultimate ocean, the dewdrop disappears. Or you can say in other words, the dewdrop becomes the ocean. Or, you can even say the ocean disappears in the dewdrop. But something disappears, just as if you have blown a candle flame out and there is absolute silence and darkness.Isan asked,“The Nirvana Sutra has about forty chapters of the Buddha’s teaching. How many of these are devil teachings?”In no other religion can such a question be asked. But the answer is even greater.“All of them,” replied Kyozan.Isan was not expecting that much. Buddha’s words, and Kyozan is saying all of them are devil’s words! And it is perfectly in line with Buddha’s approach to life. It is not through books, it is not through words.So Isan will go on teaching the Nirvana Sutra, and at the same time will remind his disciples, “Don’t cling to any sutra – Nirvana or Diamond Sutra – don’t cling. These are simply footsteps leading to your ultimate disappearance.”“If you start thinking that these words of Gautam Buddha’s…You may start loving them, you may become attached to them. Attachment is very easy when you love a book. And the Nirvana Sutra is so full of splendor, with so much of beauty; each word implies so much. It seems impossible for a man to make words dance like this; one is bound to fall in love. And of course the Nirvana Sutra will not say no to you; it is just a dead book, paper and ink and nothing else.”Kyozan said to his master, “All of them,”It simply means: all words are only echoes of faraway truths. Don’t cling to the echo; otherwise, who is going to discover the truth? Avoid the echoes.What are all the buddhas? – just an echo of the ultimate truth, just echoing the eternity of your being. Experience what they say, but don’t cling to the explanations.There is so much difficulty. First, the man who has come to realize his ultimate consciousness is in a difficulty how to convey it. There are not words which are capable of conveying it. Whatever he says, he immediately looks and finds it is not the same as it was in the experience. Explanation has fallen far away; it has betrayed.And then the explanation is caught by the disciples, which is another tragedy, because the disciple is going to comment according to his conditioning. That will change the meaning again. And if the disciple also starts teaching people, then the truth has been left far behind. Not even a single ray reaches that far. Hundreds of mystics have remained silent for just this reason.So when Kyozan says, “All of them,” he is not talking about the Nirvana Sutra only. He is talking about all words. Words are incapable of containing the truth; some other way has to be found. That some other way becomes meditation.Mind has to be put aside, so it does not start interpreting. And you have to go deep to where your life is arising, as if a rose is going deeper into the roots from where the juice of life is arising, manifesting in great foliage, in flowers. Once you know your original source you know also your ultimate destiny.The master commented: “From now on, nobody will be able to do what he likes with you.”Obviously, if all words are useless and all words are from the devil, then there is no more possibility of any communication, any dialogue.One of the most famous Jewish philosophers, Martin Buber, worked for his whole life on a single theme: dialogue. I wrote him a letter – I was very young – saying, “In your dialogue the two remain, and a dialogue is not worthwhile that does not culminate in one. Two bodies may be there, but one consciousness.” I was informed that he was dead. I said, “It is fortunate for him. If he was alive I would have tortured him. Now he can rest, toss and turn in his grave.”But the man remained for his whole life concerned with only one thing: that there should arise a dialogue between religions, between politics, between ideologies, between man and man. His effort was right, his direction was right, but he did not come to the point where it becomes nirvana. Two must ultimately become one, because ultimately we are one.Meditation is not a dialogue. Meditation is to get out of the mind and slowly enter into the oceanic reality.Then Kyozan asked: “From now on, what should be my mode of life?”“What should I do now? If you say even the words of Gautam Buddha are those of the devil, what about me? I was teaching people.” Of course, you cannot teach without words.His master responded: “I admire your just eye; I am not concerned about the practical side of the matter.”No man of strength, integrity, individuality, is ever concerned about the practical side of the thing. If your consciousness is right, it will manage somehow your practical side.A consciousness harmonious with existence is under the care of existence. You have said to existence, “Now it is up to you. If you want me to breathe, I will breathe. If you don’t want me to breathe, I won’t. Up to now I have been a separate being, now I dissolve my separateness.”That’s what Isan means, “I admire your just eye. You have understood what I have said, but I am not concerned about the practical side of the matter.”Why is he not concerned about the practical side of the matter? Nobody needs to be concerned. In your enlightened being you have become one with the universe. You are no more.Existence takes care of trees and birds and animals, why should existence not take care of you? In fact, you are existence’s greatest flower. And when you become enlightened you have attained your destiny. Now everything is care of existence; you need not be worried about it.Once, Kyozan was asked by a monk, “Can you explain the law body?”“I can’t,” said Kyozan, “but there is one who can.”The monk then said, “Where is the one who can explain it?”By way of response, Kyozan pulled forward the pillow.Kyozan’s master, on hearing of this interchange, said, “Kyozan is using the blade of the sword.”What has conspired? The question that was asked is relevant, because Buddha says you have many bodies, but the ultimate body that is immortal he calls the Body of Law. Law gives a different connotation to the word. He calls it the Body of Dhamma, the body of nature. You have gathered many bodies around it; they will all fall down. Only the body that has been moving through eternity to eternity he calls your authentic body.And the man who has asked Kyozan has not asked a nonessential point:“Can you explain the law body?”“I can’t,” said Kyozan…These points show the humbleness; these points show the simplicity. If he cannot explain, he will not try some arbitrary explanation. He will simply accept that, “I cannot, but there is one who can.”The monk then said, “Where is the one who can explain it?”By way of response, Kyozan pulled forward the pillow.In any reference, in any context, it will look absurd. The man is asking a question and you give him your pillow! And this is the one that can give you the answer.The pillow represents total rest, total relaxation, going inwards so deep that the outer world is almost like a dream you have seen sometime. When the outer world starts looking illusory, you have come to the center point of your being. There is the answer. The answer is in your experience of utter restfulness.Kyozan’s master, on hearing of this interchange said, “Kyozan is using the blade of the sword.”An ordinary man will not understand anything. Only a man who has the sharpness of intelligence like a sword will be able to understand.A beautiful answer he has given, but you would have been puzzled. You would have looked at the pillow. And how does the pillow explain the question, “What is Buddha’s ultimate natural body?” It certainly conveys something.Zen is very earthbound, very pragmatic. By showing his pillow to him, he is saying, “What cannot be said can be experienced. Just rest, and rest with totality.”That’s what we are doing here every day. Your meditation is an ultimate rest.But Isan commented, “Kyozan is using the blade of the sword.”The person may not understand it, most probably will not understand it and will think that this Zen is all nonsense, or may think that the pillow actually is the answer; so, “Keep a pillow continuously with you and you have found the body of the buddha.” Now what the person does with such an exchange can be dangerous.But masters look deep into disciples and say only things or indicate only things which they are capable of. No master is so unkind as to give a child a sword.Basho wrote:Dewdrops –how better wash awayworld’s dust?The experience of truth is just washing away the dust that goes on gathering on your mirrorlike consciousness.Basho says:Dewdrops –how better wash awayworld’s dust?The dewdrops may be small but they can cleanse your inner eye, your mirror, which has gathered so much dust. And that dust has to be cleared. Only then can you see the depth in things, the life in things; a world full of love, a world full of blessings, a world which could be a dancing place but has been turned by stupid politicians into a battlefield.When more people become buddhas – they are already buddhas – when more people remember their being buddhas, this world will have a totally different aroma, a totally different fragrance, a totally different ecstasy.Right now, what we have done, we have made the world a tragedy. Each step we are moving further into tragedy, and at the end of the tunnel is death.Maneesha has asked a question:Osho,It seems to me that formal religions have used the sense of the mysterious negatively – to delude and baffle people. On the other hand, unless science has a sense of the mysterious, it seems that it will always be destructive.Is this so?Maneesha, your question is two questions.The first is perfectly right. All the religions have made the world ugly; they have made the world unlivable; their whole teaching has been to renounce.A man who renounces the world will certainly not create a painting or a poetry or a sculpture. He will become uncreative. And where is this whole uncreative energy going to go?Energy is neutral. If you don’t move your energy in creative ways, it is going to be a calamity to you and to the world. But because all the religions have condemned the world and worldly relations, they have made the world poor. They have a reason, an investment in the world being poor.They have cut the world into fragments, and seventy percent of the energy of man goes into war. War seems to be the only god. Man is just a sacrifice, either in the name of nationality or in the name of religion. Whatever the name may be, man has to be slaughtered.It is true that coming down from a hilltop is easy. Destructiveness is coming down from your humanity, becoming animals again. Hence, it is easy. And you can find any excuse, any excuse will do.But the second part of your question:On the other hand, unless science has a sense of the mysterious, it seems that it will always be destructive.No, Maneesha. Science is coming every day closer and closer to the mysterious. Science is no more than three hundred years old, but it has evolved in three hundred years and gone far away from the destructive and negative mind of the religions.As I said to you, energy is neutral. Science creates energy, discovers energy, but it falls into the hands of the politicians, and the politicians use it for negative purposes. Their only goal is war. And science itself has become so complicated that you have to depend on some government or corporation. Because so much money is needed, you cannot be a scientist just by yourself.Those days are gone when Galileo could be a scientist, just using instruments which were ordinarily, easily available. He did not need trillions of dollars. Now the situation is different.The Wright brothers could manage to make the first airplane with discarded parts of bicycles. Now you cannot create an airplane so easily.But one thing is certain: that if a World Academy of Sciences – which is not committed to any government, to any ideology – can be created…in my opinion that must be the whole and sole reason for the existence of organizations like the UN.Create a world academy. Every nation contributes to it, but the energy is in the hands of a world organization. And the world organization has the power to use it in any way it deems fit.Science is not destructive in itself. Destruction has come from politics, and because politics has the money….Albert Einstein’s last dying words – he must have suffered deeply. He was a man of great conscience, and he could see that he had given a dangerous weapon into the hands of the politicians. He discovered atomic energy, and in a hurry….He was employed by Germany first, but because he was a Jew he had to escape from Germany. But he knew that even without him all the basic facts were in German hands. “It may take a year or two, but Germany will harness atomic energy. Before Germany does it, somebody else should be able to do it; otherwise the world will fall into the hands of fascists.” But he was naive; he wrote a letter to Roosevelt. Roosevelt was very happy and gave him all the facilities to develop atomic energy, which could destroy millions of people within seconds.Einstein never thought that it would be used. He thought just its presence would be enough for Germany and Japan to surrender. Germany surrendered and Japan was going to surrender within a week at the most. Without Germany, Japan could not stand alone against the whole world. It is a small land, but full of great people. And Roosevelt had gone by that time. Truman was the President and his generals also insisted to him, “Don’t use such a destructive force, which will remain for generations affecting people; and not only people – trees, fish, animals. And there is no time to create any preventive cure. And there is no need in the first place. Germany is collapsing every moment. Our forces have entered Berlin.”You may not believe it…. Adolf Hitler was hiding underneath his building in a bunker, and because he never liked the idea that, “We are being defeated,” he was given a radio for which his own people created a small station that would give him the news that, “We are progressing,” that, “We are winning.” Such a deception has never happened before. The enemy’s forces were entering into Berlin and the radio was proclaiming, “We have reached London.”And poor Adolf Hitler was kept until the last moment…. When bombs started falling on Berlin, he could not believe that, “I can hear, hiding in this bunker, the falling buildings of London?” He called his general and asked, “What is the matter?”He said, “I am sorry. So as not to make you tense, this was a special arrangement to give you good news, always good news.” He had been kept in darkness for almost one year.And the American generals persuaded Truman not to be in a hurry: “Within seven days with ordinary weapons Japan is going to go down.” But Truman was in a hurry, because if Japan goes down and surrenders then there will be no chance to experiment with atomic bombs. He did not listen to his generals and ordered two cities to be killed, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, more than two hundred thousand people. And the radiation is still killing, is still effective and will remain effective one knows not for how long; because there were many people not in the area where everyone was dying, but whom the radiation started to reach with the winds, with the water, with the rivers, in the fruits, in the vegetables. There was no way to say that, “You are eating your own death.”Science can give contribute immense energy for creative purposes, Maneesha, and the great scientists alive today are all coming closer to the mysterious. A day can be hoped for when science and religion will merge into each other. Religion will become the inner science and science will become the outer religion. And their meeting point is when both are facing the miraculous.Now Sardar Gurudayal Singh’s time. Sometimes I think that I should begin with Sardar Gurudayal Singh’s time but that will destroy the serious attentiveness. So I keep him for the last. And it is respectful also.Sally and Joan are chit-chatting over tea. Joan says, “When I married George, I was looking for sex and good humor, and I have found them both with him.”“Oh, really?” Sally asks.“Yes,” says Joan, “every time we have sex, it is a joke!”The black dude in a full-length mink coat walks into the Rolls-Royce show room. He goes over to the most expensive model and proceeds to kick the tires and fenders. The usually staid salesman runs over and exclaims, “Excuse me, sir, but were you thinking of buying a Rolls-Royce?”The black dude looks at him with a scowl and replies: “I is not thinking of buying a Rolls-Royce. I is gonna buy a Rolls-Royce. I is thinkin’ of pussy!”Jesus is hanging from the cross. Mary, his mother, sits a short distance away. Suddenly Jesus begins to cry uncontrollably. Seeing this, Mary has a pained look on her face.“I am sorry to upset you, mum,” Jesus sobs. “I just could not help but think – what a hell of a way to spend Easter!”Nivedano…(drumbeat)(gibberish)Nivedano…(drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen.Now look inwards with your total consciousness, and with an urgency, as if it is going to be the last moment of your life.Deeper and deeper, reach to the center of your being.At this moment you are the buddha, unscratched by thousands of lives. The deeper you can go the more splendor, the more miraculous it becomes. The Buddha Auditorium has changed into a silent lake without any ripples.A little more…Because buddha is your eternity, and buddha is your infinity, you can go deep, but you can never find the bottom. That’s why it gives you ultimate freedom.To make it more clear-cut, Nivedano….(drumbeat)Relax. Just witness the body – you are not it. Witness the mind – you are not it. You are only the witnessing consciousness.Thousands of lotuses have blossomed. The evening was beautiful enough on its own, but you have poured your witnessing, your consciousness and made it a majesty, a miracle.Such blissfulness.Such benediction.Such ecstasy.Collect as many flowers and as many juices from your center, because you have to bring them to the circumference. You have to remember in your day-to-day life, whatever you are doing, you are the buddha. That small remembrance will become ultimately a transformation of being.Nivedano…(drumbeat)Come back. But come back as a buddha, silent, graceful, at ease.Just for a few moments sit, remembering where you have been, to what miracle you have reached. And the golden path that you have been traveling every day back and forth will become shorter and shorter…because your buddha has to come from the hidden to your ordinary life.Meditation is the only way to know yourself and to know the very meaning of life. It cannot be said, but it can be transferred.When you are in deep meditation here, utterly receptive, it is so easy to enter into your hearts. It is so easy to become a song, so easy to become a subtle music.You will feel it for a few moments later on also, like a drunkard. You have been drinking from the divine.

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Kyozan A True Man of Zen 01-04Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Kyozan A True Man of Zen 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,When he was with Kyozan, Ryusen was the monk in charge of food. One day a strange monk came and asked for a meal, at which Ryusen gave him part of his own.Kyozan knew of this but called Ryusen to him and asked, “That enlightened monk who came just now – did he give you any food?”Ryusen said, “He denied himself and passed on his alms.”Kyozan commented: “You made a great profit.”Maneesha, the understanding of Zen is not an ordinary understanding, for the simple reason that Zen does not care about language, does not care about common communications. It has evolved in its own way, a unique way. So those who are spectators and are afraid to enter into the stream will feel the cool breeze but will not understand the heart of Zen. In a word, Zen has contributed to the world a totally new language, a totally new communication, a very fresh communion.Just in the morning as the lotus opens,so newness is that of Zen.The sun rises, the lotus opens,and the dewdrops on the lotus leaves shine,better than real pearls.It is a very delicate matter, and rather than putting Zen into any category…Religion is too strict and hard, and in that very hardness the heart is crushed to death. Philosophy is so vague, making castles in the air, beautiful castles but it does not bring to the world any new fragrance, any new form of transformation.Zen in some way accumulates all that man has created, but its approach is more aesthetic. All religions talk about truth, about beauty. In fact, truth, beauty and God – satyam, shivam, sunderam – has been the ancient search. These are the three doors: satyam, truth – but truth is a little hard, demands too much of you. Hence many never bother to ask what truth is. Godliness seems to be far away beyond the skies; the distance is so great that it discourages the traveler. Beauty is very close, in the flowers, in the birds singing; a solitary cuckoo deep in the forest gives a love call.Zen’s approach is to find the truth, but not to be as hard as philosophers tend to be – more peaceful and more graceful. That’s why no philosopher in the whole history of man has raised his consciousness to the point where you can call him a buddha. He talks much of things beyond, but if you look into his ordinary life he is just as you are. All his flights of thought, his dreamlands are writings on water. Writings on paper don’t differ from writings on water. The only difference is: water is quick and finishes the writing; the papers, the books, the scriptures take a long time.Zen has a very musical approach, a very poetic approach, the approach of a dancer, the approach of a lover. You have to treat existence with loving hands. You have arisen out of it, you will be dissolved into it one day. It is your life, it is your death. But whether in life or in death, you will remain part of the cosmos.Zen does not talk about God, for the simple reason that there is no such person as God. What is there? – a tremendous quality of eternal life all around. Nothing dies; if this wave is disappearing another wave is coming, and the disappearing wave will simply go to sleep just to rest, and will be back soon.Hence, I will not say anything about God. Zen does not talk about it; but it certainly implies godliness. Then God becomes melted ice. Then the personality of God disappears into all living beings. Then God is not a person but the very existence.Religions have been concerned about God and good, and they have created fossilized dogmas. And they are not willing even to change a little, although anybody can see the foolishness. The foolishness is not God’s. That poor fellow suffers at our hands.Somebody has made the elephant a god. Somebody has made the monkey a god – even without its permission. There are people who worship trees, and the trees must be giggling, “Why do these idiots waste their time bringing flowers and coconuts?”Our own coconut has gone on a missionary trip. He was here and it was a good coincidence that when he was here, our Stonehead Niskriya, the first German Zen master, was not here. A single hit on the poor coconut, who used to go to Goa and come back….And do you know why people offer coconuts? There was a time some five thousand years back, when men’s actual heads were offered – living men, young, in robust health, that was the condition. But because it was a great ritual and whoever offered themselves became immensely loved by the society. And particularly, the idea of meeting God…But slowly slowly, people started thinking that this is very stupid: nobody has returned, nobody has even written a postcard saying, “We have arrived,” or any kind of news. And it looks so inhuman. The coconut is a substitute, because it has a little beard, two eyes, hairs.If you go into the implications of your religious rituals you will find strange things hidden behind them. You will find the statues of the elephant god, Ganesh. You can make any stone a statue just by painting the stone red, and soon people will start worshipping it.When for the first time the British empire started to put down tracks for the railway lines, they were in a very great difficulty, because they could not put the stones in that denote the miles. Wherever they put the stone they would make it bright red, because bright red is more visible than any other color. And it was a difficulty for them. The villagers would come, would bring sweets, some flowers. A god has arrived in their town.The British officers tried hard: “What are you doing? This is just a stone.”And the villagers laughed. They said, “You don’t understand. This is not a stone; this is the symbol of the god Ganesh.”Why did red become so important? It was symbolic of blood. You could not pour blood on the god, but you could paint. And nobody thinks of the connection, that first blood was poured on, and later…For thousands of years man has been cutting off men’s heads, offering heads with blood oozing out of them. As a little intelligence arose, they substituted a coconut for the head, and they substituted the red color for blood.But if you tell them, you are in danger; you have hurt their religious feelings. I hear this phrase “religious feelings” only when they are hurt; otherwise nobody knows what these religious feelings are.Zen is the purest religion, with no hang-ups.Before I take the sutras, a little biographical note:Ryusen was a disciple of Kyozan. He became a monk at the age of seven and studied Zen under Daiji, a disciple of Hyakujo and then went to Kyozan, under whom he became enlightened.When Ryusen was about to die, at midnight he said to his monks, “If you use up the mind of the Three Worlds, that is Nirvana.” Saying this he sat in the proper manner, and passed away.A man who has been going deeper into meditation passes the door of death many times. Whenever he goes, he passes it, whenever he comes back…It is simple to understand that death has nothing to do with life. Death is a door. If you move inside the door, you move into the universe. If you move outside the door, you move into mortal existence. And because we go on living on the outside our whole life, the fear of death arises.And out of fear – it is a chain – other things will arise: out of fear you will believe in God; out of fear you will believe in the priest; out of fear you will go to the temple, to the mosque, to the church. Out of fear you will fast, out of fear you will worship; out of fear you will do all kinds of things. But anything done out of fear is not religious. That point is absolute. Anything arising out of fear cannot lead you to truth.Truth needs guts and courage. It comes out of a loving search. The inquirer is a lover; he is trying to find the ultimate lover. Even the ordinary love affairs are stepping-stones. I am not against love, for the simple reason that that’s how you will learn something, in fragments. Each love affair will give you some maturity, some integrity.But love is in bondage. The society has sealed every love. Anything that becomes a law becomes dead. When love becomes a marriage you are committing suicide. If love remains a freedom, step-by-step you will be able to reach your innermost being. And you will have a good laughter, that the search was for yourself; the lover and the loved are not two. Other loves were failing because you were depending on the other. Unless you find in your inner consciousness both together, the love and the lover…We have in India one of the most beautiful statues. It is ancient, because examples have even been found in the excavations of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro. The statue is of ardhanarishwar; half of it is male, and half of the statue is female – a tremendous insight.Only Carl Gustav Jung in this century again brought up the question of what does it mean. As a psychologist he had of course a certain insight, but his insight was the lowest possible. He interpreted ardhanarishwar as meaning that all men and women have also their opposite sex within them. It is true, because you are born out of a father and a mother and both have contributed. How can you be only male? How can you be only female? But he stopped there, and that statue needs a much deeper exploration.It is saying that if you go deep in meditation a moment comes when the lover finds the beloved – not as a separate entity, but as one with himself. One is both: the lover and the loved. This non-duality, this non-dichotomy takes you to the point at the highest peak of consciousness where everything starts blossoming.Ryusen moved from master to master with an open heart, with a receptivity, with a begging bowl, and finally he found Kyozan. And it is a strange experience, when you find your master; deep in your heart so many bells start ringing, so much dance, every cell of your being…It becomes a celebration; you have found the master.And when he found Kyozan, the road came to an end. Then he remained with Kyozan, and became enlightened. He established a new monastery in the mountains. And the night that death was going to come to him, he asked his disciples to wait, “because in the middle of the night I am going to leave my body.”This has been a Zen tradition, that at the last moment disciples ask the master whatever is the most prominent question in their mind, because the master will not be available any more.Ryusen said, “If you use up the mind of the Three Worlds, that is Nirvana.” Saying this he sat in the proper manner – that is the lotus posture – and passed away.What does he mean?According to Gautam Buddha – and confirmed by all the awakened ones – we are divided into three parts: the body, the mind, the being. And every part has its own mind.Even the body has its own mind. Without the body having its own mind you will not be able to live a single moment, because so much work is going on inside you. Blood is circulating, food is being transformed into its basic elements, and different parts of the body need different kinds of nourishment. The blood is continuously running, distributing…for example, if your mind does not get oxygen for six minutes, it will die, and you will die with it.And the wisdom of the body is independent, because you have to sleep too. In sleep you may forget breathing. In fact, even awake you cannot remember your breathing. If you can remember your breathing for one minute, you are on the right path. You will be surprised that you cannot remember even for one minute; there are so many distractions.Just put your wristwatch in front of you. Start looking, and suddenly you forget. You say, “Aha! So Stonehead is going somewhere with his staff,” and you have forgotten what your work was. And then you remember, and then you feel full of repentance. Then you are again wasting time. Go back and remember.It takes months to remember something for a single minute continuously without being distracted. All kinds of distractions are there: bananas…you cannot resist being distracted.The mind has its own mind too. That’s why it is not needed in the body. If surgery is needed, your whole brain can be taken out and put in the proper conditions where it gets the necessary nourishment. It is amazing that you will not know that it has been taken out of the body, and you will not know that there is any difference. You will still be counting on the lottery, “Let us see what happens this time. Tomorrow the lottery is going to be opened.” And all kinds of things that were going on inside your mind will continue.I have heard about a politician. They had to take his brain out to clean it; there was so much dust, so much garbage. So they took the brain to another room and left the politician.A man suddenly came running in and woke up the politician. “What are you doing here? You have been declared president of the country!”Things looked a little different. When a person becomes a president, naturally it looks a little different. And he was going out with his friend when the doctors called him, “Where are you going? Your brain is still in the lab.”He said, “At least for five years I will not need it.”It is possible, and is going to become an actuality – we have wasted so much brain energy – Einstein’s mind or Bertrand Russell’s mind could have been kept. If they want to go, let them go. Their brains need a certain nourishment that could be given artificially; the minds could be kept alive as long as you want, and could continue to work. We have wasted so many minds. The day is not far away when great minds will be saved for the progress of science, for the progress of consciousness.When the dying master said, “If you use up the mind of the Three Worlds, that is Nirvana…” If you can create a synchronicity between your mind, your being and the body, you have come to your fulfillment. Now there is no more. I am leaving this body in the middle of the night; otherwise in the morning as the news spreads so many people will come to prevent me, out of their love, out of their respect. So I am leaving this body like a thief. Remember my words as the last words of one who knows.”Now the sutra:Osho,When he was with Kyozan, Ryusen was the monk in charge of food. One day a strange monk came and asked for a meal, at which Ryusen gave him part of his own.Kyozan knew of this but called Ryusen to him and asked, “That enlightened monk who came just now – did he give you any food?”Ryusen said, “He denied himself and passed on all his alms.”Kyozan commented: “You made a great profit.”There are things which you can see, and there are things far superior, far more precious, that you cannot see.In this incident the strange monk asked Ryusen – who was in charge of the food of the monastery, but there was nothing to spare; only his own food was left, so he gave part of it to the stranger. This is the visible part; anybody can see it. Kyozan, the master, can see what is happening. He is also seeing what is not ordinarily seen. He called Ryusen and asked,“That enlightened monk who came just now – did he give you any food?”He is asking him, “Did he give you anything in return?”Ryusen said, “He denied himself and passed on all his alms.”Kyozan commented: “You made a great profit.”Ryusen has given only a small part of his food, but the strange monk showered him with all his joy and blissfulness, with all his light and love – which are not visible to the ordinary eye, but which are visible to one who is in the same state and height of consciousness. Kyozan had seen everything, but he wanted to know whether Ryusen had consciously received with thankfulness what that strange monk had given to him.He does not call him “strange monk.” In the beginning the anecdote says “a strange monk,” but Kyozan calls him the enlightened monk. He was simply watching whatever was going on, the exchange.What Ryusen gave was material, anybody can see it. But what he received is immaterial, it is spiritual. You can see it only if your inner eye is open. Listening to Ryusen’s answer, Kyozan commented: “You made a great deal. You gave him ordinary food and he showered so much nourishment on you without being asked. You have made a great profit.”The Buddha created a line which deviated from Hinduism on every point, on smaller immaterial points too. For example, the Hindu sannyasin for centuries has been called swami, the master. It has its own reasons. It is to remind him that he is the master, not to get subdued either by his mind or by anybody else. But there is also a danger. And the danger is by calling somebody a swami he may start thinking that he is a swami. And it may simply give nourishment, strength to his ego; the target has been missed. Buddha changed it. He did not call his sannyasins swami; he called them just the opposite: Bhikkshu, the beggar. Why did he change it? There were reasons.You should be as humble as a beggar. You should be humble to see how much existence is pouring out for your growth. You must be so humble that you can find your master. It was an absolute extreme from swami to bhikkshu.But Buddha gave bhikkshu a great meaning. He made it golden. There are fingers which make things golden. There are people whose words bring the wordless into the world.Isa wrote:Cuckoo’s crying –nothing special to do,nor has the burweed.Zen’s whole vision is: everything is exactly in its right place. You just have to relax. You don’t have to do anything to make a better world; it is your activity which is making it worse every day. The lazy people certainly have one quality: they have never disturbed anybody.Lazy people cannot be Genghis Khan killing thirty million people. They cannot be Tamerlane killing forty million people. They cannot be Nadirshah, they cannot be Alexander the Great, they cannot be Napoleon; they cannot be Ivan the Terrible, they cannot be Stalins, Mussolinis, Adolf Hitlers. Lazy people have one thing that is good: because they cannot be bothered, they remain out of trouble.You may not have seen an authentic lazy man, but he is sitting before you. I have never done anything, so the question of good and bad does not arise.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Does the urge to understand ever become a violation of the mystery of life?Maneesha, nothing can be a violation of the mystery of life, for the simple reason that there is no solution. So you can do as much gymnastics, what people call mind-fucking, as you like, but the mystery remains the same.It is a good time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.George is watching a TV show, when it is interrupted by a special bulletin.“Good evening,” the announcer says. “The directors of the National Institute of Health have announced that, as of today, they will no longer be using rats in their experiments. Instead they will use lawyers. The chief director gave three reasons for the change:First – there are more lawyers than rats.Second – the lab technicians don’t get as attached to lawyers as they do to rats.And Third – there are just some things that rats won’t do!”Mary returns home to America after her marriage to a Polack. She meets her friend, Susan, on the street.“I heard you got married in Poland!” Susan exclaims.“Yes,” says Mary, “and after our wedding my husband gave me the longest, hardest thing I have ever seen!”“Oh, really!” shrieks Susan. “What was that?”Mary replies, “His name!”Fred and Bill, two historians, are comparing ancient and modern history.“Do you remember Julius Caesar’s war slogan?” asks Bill.“Yes,” replies Fred. “In Latin it was: ‘Veni, Vidi, Vici.’ It means: ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’”“Correct,” says Bill. “And nowadays, all the young ‘Caesars’ have a different slogan – ‘Vidi, Vici, Veni’ – ‘I saw, I conquered, I came!’”Nivedano…(drumbeat)(gibberish)Nivedano…(drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes, and feel your body to be completely frozen.Now look inwards with your total consciousness, your whole life energy, and with an urgency as if it is your last moment of life.You have to reach to the center of your being.It is from this center you are connected with the universe.Those who have reached this point are called buddhas, the awakened ones, because they know that what they appear they are not, and what is hidden can be known only by themselves.Their outer personality starts melting like ice.This moment you are all buddhas. And the Buddha Auditorium has become a lake full of lotuses, utterly silent.Just witness all this, because witnessing is your only nature. Everything is added to you; witnessing is your eternity.To make it clear, Nivedano…(drumbeat)Relax, and remain a witness. The body is there, the mind is there, but you are neither. You are just a witness. A pure witness without any flaw is the goal of all the buddhas.Melt, melt. For the first time know your real nature. The evening was beautiful on its own, but ten thousand buddhas it has not seen for centuries. There is rejoicing…Flowers are showering on you.Collect as many flowers as possible, and persuade the buddha to come from the hidden to the circumference. And remember around the clock as many times as possible that you are the buddha.Nivedano…(drumbeat)Come back, but come back as buddhas. That is your dignity and your privilege. Peacefully, gracefully, sitting for few a moments just recollect the depth you have reached – because every day you have to go deeper. The deeper you go, the closer comes the buddha. If you take one step towards the buddha, he takes one thousand steps.And remember the blissfulness, the peace, the serenity, in your acts, in your behavior, in your gestures, in your words, in your silences. Fill your whole life with roses.

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Kyozan A True Man of Zen 01-04Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Kyozan A True Man of Zen 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Kyozan was uncertain as to the validity of Kyogen’s enlightenment so, by way of testing him, he said to Kyogen, “I have heard that you composed a verse expressing your enlightenment. Please let me hear it and I will study it.”When Kyogen had finished reciting the verse, he said, “We will leave it ready for some leisure time,” and he then proceeded to make another verse:“Last year my poverty was not real poverty;this year my poverty is the real thing.Last year there was no placefor the awl to be struck;this year I haven’t even an awl.”On hearing this verse, Kyozan commented, “What you have got is just Nyorai Zen, not Patriarchal Zen.”Kyogen then made another verse:“I had a potentialitywhich I show to him.If he doesn’t understand it,let him call the attendant!”Kyozan then commented:“Fortunately, you have now attained to Patriarchal Zen.”Maneesha, it hurts me to disturb your silence by using words, but I hope a day will arrive when we will be sitting together allowing the silence to become deeper – because whatever can be said only touches the periphery, it never goes beyond the periphery. No word has ever reached to the center.Zen brought it in, in a very strong way. No other religion has been so strong on the point. Words have to be discarded by words themselves, just as poison has to be destroyed by more poison.These sutras bring many implications. You are not only hearing my words, you are also hearing me, and that is the true hearing: my heartbeat. And when all the present buddhas here breathe in tune, in a rhythm, even the impossible becomes possible.I have entitled this series, Kyozan: A True Man of Zen. I have not given any speciality to him, for the simple reason that he avoided speciality, uniqueness, some higher quality. He removed himself deep into the forest just to avoid seekers. But if you have found the truth, if your innermost lotus has blossomed, wherever you go seekers will come. There seems to be an inner pathway.The seeker may not know even where he is going. He may not be aware of his thirst, may not be aware of the truth, but he starts moving towards the master.Mostly the master has nothing to do. He teaches you simply a different way of being graceful. He gives you a beauty that no mirror can give to you. He gives you a dignity. He declares your potential buddhahood, and unless your potential buddhahood is declared you may never think that in the innermost core you are a buddha. The master makes many devices, but the aim is the same.Zen is religion and is not religion. It is religion in the sense that it brings you to your godliness, which no other religion has been capable of doing. All other religions live with the idea of a god far away beyond the clouds. Zen proclaims your god is your innermost being, and the moment you reach to your innermost being all your personality disappears as if it was a dream, and now you are awake.Have you ever asked what happened to the dream when you have been dreaming the whole night? Strange, so much time is devoted to dreaming. If you sleep eight hours, then six hours are devoted to dreaming, only two hours for dreamless sleep. But in the morning, the moment you wake up, suddenly you realize you were asleep and you were dreaming. And that cuts you off from a world you have been in for six hours.Zen is religion in the sense that it helps you to drop the false, the sleepy, the fake, that which up to now you believed was your personality.A great king, Prasenjita, came to Buddha. He brought a beautiful lotus flower. It was out of season, and it has its own story.A shoemaker had a pond behind his house. And suddenly they were puzzled – out of season a beautiful blue lotus. It had never happened before. So the shoemaker thought, “Somebody who goes every day to worship Buddha and listen to Buddha may purchase it. Perhaps one rupee?” The poor man could not think it could be more.As he came out of his house the richest man of the town was going to pay his respects to Buddha. He suddenly stopped his chariot and he asked Sudas – that was the name of the shoemaker – “How much will you take for this flower?”Sudas said, “I have never sold flowers, never purchased them. It is better you give your offer. It is out of season.”The richest man, according to his dignity, said, “I will give you one hundred rupees” – beyond the conception of Sudas.But just then another chariot stopped. The king was going to Buddha, and the king said to Sudas, “I have purchased that flower. I will pay ten times more than the rich man is offering you.”This was even more surprising – one thousand rupees for one flower! So that flower was a revelation to Sudas. He thought, “I am so poor I cannot afford to refuse, but my whole being says, ‘Refuse this offer. Go yourself to Buddha and offer the flower directly.’ But my poverty is so much I cannot afford it.”The king thought, “Perhaps he considers the price is not yet right.” He said to Sudas, “Don’t think. Whatever you want to ask will be given. I have offered one thousand rupees. Do you want ten thousand rupees, one hundred thousand rupees?”Sudas was going mad. One hundred thousand rupees he cannot even count!Prasenjita ordered his people to deliver one hundred thousand rupees to Sudas.Of course, the rich man did not contest it, it was futile. The king would not accept defeat in any way. It could even lead to bloodshed.And when Prasenjita offered the flower to Buddha, all that Buddha said was, “Drop it.” He dropped the flower. What else can you do before a buddha if he says, “Drop the flower”?Now he was standing with empty hands and Buddha again said, “Drop it too!” This was beyond the mind and its comprehension.Sariputra said to Prasenjita, “Buddha does not mean the flower; Buddha means the ego. You are so full of ego; even offering, touching the feet of Buddha, your ego has not changed even a little bit. And to be with Buddha, the only way is to drop your ego, your personality.”In this small anecdote is contained the whole of Zen. You have to drop all that has been given to you by others. You have to reach to your innermost center which you have carried from eternity to eternity. And then life is a bliss, then life is love, then life contains all kinds of ecstasies.Zen is not a religion because there is no reference to God, soul, heaven and hell, no rituals. It is a very concentrated effort to penetrate to your very being. Drop, go on dropping anything that you can drop. When only a witness remains which you cannot drop, you have arrived home. Zen has brought religion to its scientific crescendo.Before the sutras…Kyogen was a fellow disciple of Kyozan. He studied under Isan for a while but, failing to attain enlightenment, he left Isan and went to Nanyang, where he lived a solitary existence in a hut in the forest.He realized his enlightenment one day on hearing the sound of a stone striking bamboo.Somebody must have thrown a stone that struck the bamboo and created a sound. And this is strange: hearing the sound of a stone striking bamboo brought his enlightenment. What has happened?He lived with Kyozan’s master, Isan, who transformed a great number of disciples into enlightenment, but Kyogen failed.Sometimes when you think you have failed you drop the mind, the mind of the achiever. The mind turns everything into an object: “Achieve this, attain that!” Mind makes everything a goal.Frustrated that he is not attaining enlightenment, he left Isan and went to live a solitary existence in a hut in the forest. He realized his enlightenment one day on hearing the sound of a stone striking bamboo.There are moments of which you may not be aware, but if you have dropped the idea of attaining anything, any achievement, mind slowly slowly settles. If there is nowhere to go, why prepare for it? If nothing has to be achieved, then why unnecessarily harass yourself?It was not the stone hitting the bamboo, it was really the right moment, a coincidence. The bamboo made the sound in a mind that was utterly empty, that had dropped even the idea of enlightenment. What Isan could not do, what no master can do, was done by hearing the sound of a stone striking bamboo.After this, Kyogen left his hermitage and went back to Isan, who confirmed his enlightenment.He has gone for two reasons back to Isan: to see whether Isan recognizes his enlightenment or not, and to express his gratitude to him, to say that without being with him for fifteen years doing all kinds of meditations, he could not have dropped everything; without those fifteen years of strenuous work, it would not have been possible for him to have become enlightened by the sound of a stone striking the bamboos.He still considers Isan his master; he prepared him. Although enlightenment did not happen in his vicinity, the preparation had been done by Isan wherever it was going to happen. So these were the two reasons: to show his gratitude by putting his head on Isan’s feet, and to wait to see whether Isan recognizes what has happened to him.Recognition is not a kind of certificate. It is simply that a man of clear insight can decide more easily about the new phenomenon. For Kyozan it was so new. He has never known such a thing; what to call it? Is this enlightenment? He wanted to know also.After this, Kyogen left his hermitage and went back to Isan, who confirmed his enlightenment – without his asking.Enlightenment is such a subtle fragrance, so invisible a flower that only another enlightened person can recognize it. As far as others are concerned, they are absolutely blind. If you ask them whether the sun has risen or not, they will say, “It never set. The question of rising does not arise. I am a blind man, I cannot make judgments about light. That window is closed for me.”So first people go from one teacher to another teacher in search of the master. And even if they have found the master, it is not certain that they will become enlightened. Their greed for it, their ambition for it prevents it.Perhaps tired, bored, they leave the master. They find far more freedom, a greater space, more clarity just being away from the master. And if they have really dropped the ambitious mind, then anything – a cuckoo singing, or the bamboos making songs of their own in the strong wind, or the oceanic waves – it does not matter what….The point is, if you are prepared, and not asking for anything, not even for enlightenment, the right moment has come for you. Then the whole world from anywhere may bring you the light, the eyes, the interiority which you were missing – although you were trying. And you were missing because you were trying. Don’t try! Simply let it happen. And watch.Here, when you do the meditation every evening, your function is to watch very silently how the body makes itself comfortable. It is not a question of trying. You cannot try relaxation – only in America!There are books sold in millions of copies. When I came across such a book, it said, “You must relax!” Now that “must” will not allow you to relax; that “must” is your problem; that “must” is keeping you tense, strained.You must not be; and suddenly there is relaxation. You are not, then relaxation is.The sutra:OshoKyozan was uncertain as to the validity of Kyogen’s enlightenment so, by way of testing him, he said to Kyogen, “I have heard that you composed a verse expressing your enlightenment. Please let me hear it and I will study it.”When Kyogen had finished reciting the verse, he said, “We will leave it ready for some leisure time,” and he then proceeded to make another verse:“Last year my poverty was not real poverty;this year my poverty is the real thing.Last year there was no placefor the awl to be struck;this year I have not even an awl.”The awl is an instrument – just like a bamboo but very pointed – for marking surfaces, piercing leather.What is false poverty and what is real poverty?“Last year, he says, my poverty was not real poverty;” I was only pretending to be nobody. But I knew who I was. In fact I was enriching my ego by the idea that I was nobody, that I was the humble, the simple person.…this year my poverty is the real thing. This year I am not proclaiming my ego or any egoistic attitude. This year I don’t know what is humbleness. This year I don’t know what is egolessness. This year I have really become poor.But in the world of Zen this poverty, the real poverty – which is not concerned with your possessions, with your money, with your acquirements in the world – the real poverty means the ego has shattered, ambition has left you. Even if you meet God you will not have anything to ask him. Such deep poverty is really great richness.When a man can meet God himself – this is just for argument’s sake; there is no God. Don’t start searching for him; you will not find him, particularly in Koregaon Park. But just for the argument’s sake, if you meet God, do you have some ambition to be fulfilled, a desire to be completed?If you don’t have anything to beg for, in your poverty you have become the richest man in history. You don’t have anything to depend on. Now this richness, this poverty cannot be taken away from you.On hearing this verse, Kyozan commented, “What you have got is just Nyorai Zen, not Patriarchal Zen.”Nyorai Zen implies Buddhist, pre-Daruma Zen. Patriarchal Zen is that handed down from master to master after Daruma.Bodhidharma’s name in Japan changed into Daruma, and with Daruma there came a divergence of paths. Traditional Buddhism does not recognize what has grown through Bodhidharma’s insight.So when, On hearing this verse, Kyozan commented, “What you have got is just Nyorai Zen, not Patriarchal Zen,” he means, “You have got a great insight into things by following the traditional Buddhism, but you don’t know there are higher skies beyond the skies, which Bodhidharma opened, which is called Patriarchal Zen.”Bodhidharma has contributed so much that he has become himself a new source of realization, and his insight is more revolutionary. He has used new methods; he has used new devices, finding words impotent. His contribution is so great that the traditional Buddhism has become as dead as all traditional religions have become. But what Bodhidharma brought is still alive.He himself is a disciple of Buddha, but his addition of new methods, of new strategies which were not even thought of by Buddha…You cannot think of Buddha hitting a “poor” Maneesha. When she asked the question, her poverty was not true poverty. But when Zen Master Stonehead hit her head with his staff, she bowed down with gratitude.Just think, if somebody hits you and you bow down and express your thankfulness, the poverty changes. It becomes real poverty, and the real poverty is the real richness. The false poverty is dependent on your possessions.The man who brought me to Pune sometime in the sixties was a good Marathi and Hindi writer, Rishabhdas Ranka. He had lived in Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram and was very much respected. According to Gandhi, all religions are one, no religion is higher or lower. Rishabhdas Ranka was writing a book on this theme. I asked him what the title of his book was. The title was: Bhagwan Mahavira and Mahatma Gautam Buddha: A Comparative Study.I told him, “You have already decided that Mahavira is ‘Bhagwan’ and Buddha is just a mahatma. You are not an unprejudiced researcher. What are your grounds?”All that he could find was that Mahavira’s dispossession of things was total, because he discarded even clothes, he remained naked, and Buddha kept three garments. “That’s why I cannot call him ‘Bhagwan’.”I said, “Then how can Buddhism and Jainaism and Islam and Christianity all be at the same level of evolution? Jesus even drinks alcohol. Where are you going to put Jesus? And just three garments put Buddha lower than Mahavira! Because you are born a Jaina, you are still carrying the conditioning.”I refute completely the idea that all religions are the same. Most religions are not even religions. And if you look without any prejudice, any predetermined idea, you will be able to see who has reached to the Everest of consciousness. Others are perhaps on the way, and some others may even be going backwards. It is a whole panorama.And small things make people fuss so much.This man says, “Your Zen is not Patriarchal. It is traditional.” That is not the point. If you are enlightened, you may have become enlightened from a Hassidic tradition, you may have come from a Sufi source, you may have come from a Zen background – it does not matter. The enlightened man is simply enlightened consciousness, a house full of light, a house full of songs, a house where dance continues, a festivity for eternity. At that point who cares by what path you traveled? When you have reached the ultimate consciousness, you have reached!Still you make distinctions: “This fellow used to wear clothes; he should be given a lower seat.” What will you do with Mohammed? What will you do with Jesus? Or Moses? And from their side it does not matter if once in a while Jesus gets a little drunk. He has harmed nobody, a nice fellow, does not give disciplines that are too restrictive.I refute the very idea that all religions are the same. Most of them are not religions at all. A few individuals in those traditions have reached ultimate consciousness; by what path, from north or south, is immaterial.You should see the fruit, the ripe fruit. You should not bother in what climate, in what soil it has grown.Kyogen then made another verse:“I had a potentialitywhich I show to him.If he doesn’t understand it,let him call the attendant!”Calling the attendant means: throw this man out. “I have told in a small, summarized form my understanding of enlightenment. If he does not understand,” he says, “it is better to call the attendant.”Kyozan then commented:“Fortunately, you have now attained to Patriarchal Zen.”Kyozan was simply trying to figure out whether this man has reached the peak. What he said would be acceptable to the old Buddhist tradition. But now calling the attendant to throw him out would not be accepted by Buddha. But it would be accepted by Bodhidharma, the patriarch.Kyozan then commented: “Good, Fortunately, you have now attained to Patriarchal Zen – in a single moment. First you were talking the way traditional Buddhist priests talk. Now you are calling the attendant to beat you and throw you out. This shows that you have also understood the contribution of the patriarch, Bodhidharma.”Basho wrote:Cicada – did itchirp till itknew nothing else?I have told you, Zen masters just note down their impressions of the world. And their impressions are certainly golden. They have clarity and subtlety.Basho wrote:Cicada – did itchirp till itknew nothing else?Just chirping, just chirping, the cicada did it without knowing anything else, utterly blissful, in tune with existence, no problem, no anxiety – the cicada did it.The whole existence is doing it except man. Man has got puzzled in his mind. Rather than seeing, he has started thinking. And our whole education, our whole society wants us to think, not to see, because we have hidden many ugly things around us. “Don’t see them!” – as if they are not there.Life needs a total openness. The more open you are, the more existence you have.Maneesha has asked:Osho,To remember to witness, could it be helpful to start with one routine – like showering or making the bed – in which as much awareness is brought to the moment as possible? Then when one is able to maintain that for several days, another activity could be undertaken in the same manner. Perhaps triggers could also be used – like a particular person or a certain color – to recall the space of witnessing.Is this a good idea or are there pitfalls I can't see?Maneesha, it is a good idea, but you will still get a hit. Stonehead, a real German hit!(There is the sound of Niskriya’s Zen stick tapping Maneesha on the head.)Good!Now Gurudayal Singh is thinking his time seems to have come.The third-grade teacher calls on Little Ernie and says, “Can you use the word beautiful twice in the same sentence?”“Oh, sure,” replies Ernie. “Um…Yesterday, my sister came home, told my father that she was pregnant, and he said, ‘Beautiful, fucking beautiful!’”Doctor Geet, the dentist, begins to work on the teeth of a voluptuous young woman. All of a sudden, he feels soft warm fingers slide up the inside of his thigh, encircle his family jewels, and then gently squeeze them. Doctor Geet stops his work.“Now that I have got your attention, doctor,” says the woman, smiling sweetly, “we are not going to hurt each other, are we?”“The Israeli War”…The prime minister of Israel calls a special cabinet meeting in secret session. The prime minister reports that the prolonged Middle East conflict is weakening the country; inflation is rampant; the people are discouraged and the future is very gloomy. He asks for proposals.One cabinet member suggests that Israel declare war on the United States. “Then,” he says, “after the defeat, they will do with us what they have done with Germany and Japan. We will become a great, prosperous nation!”The prime minister remains somber and says, “Yes, but suppose we win?”Gorgeous Gloria walks into the bar and sits down next to Big Black Rufus. She eyes him up and down carefully, then orders herself a drink.“I am really impressed with the size of your huge chest,” Gloria whispers to Rufus.“Yup,” says Rufus. “It is sixty-two inches – I measured it this morning after pumping iron.”“Really?” says Gloria, her eyes widening. “And I must say,” she coos, “that you look very strong with those steel-packed arm muscles you have.”“Yup,” replies Rufus. “Twenty-five inches – I measured them this morning.”Gloria swallows down her drink, smiles hotly at Rufus, points at his machinery, and says, “My, that looks rather nice, too.”“Yup,” replies Rufus, “two inches – I measured it this morning.”“Two inches?” gasps Gloria, “only two inches?”“Yup,” replies Rufus, with a grin. “From the floor!”Nivedano…(drumbeat)(gibberish)Nivedano…(drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen.Now look inwards with all your life energy, with all your consciousness, and with an urgency to reach the center of your being, urgently as if this could be your last moment.This moment, at your very center, you are the buddha. This is the only thing: witnessing, which is eternal. Thousands of bodies you have lived in before, but you lived only outwardly. Don’t miss this life.You are the buddha when you are witnessing the body as separate, the mind as separate, and yourself just a mirror reflecting.Nivedano…(drumbeat)Relax. The body is there, the mind is there, but you are neither. You are the one who is witnessing, and that is the meaning of the buddha: the one who is witnessing.The night was beautiful in itself, but by your relaxed consciousness merging into each other, it has become a splendor, a miracle.You have to collect as much grace, peace, silence, as many flowers that are showering, as much juice that is flowing from your center as possible, because you have to bring buddha every day closer to your outer life.The day your center and circumference are one, that will be the day of your enlightenment.Before Nivedano calls you, collect as much gold to bring to the circumference as you can. And persuade the buddha – it has been long he has been hiding in you – to come with you.Nivedano…(drumbeat)Even in coming, show the grace, the beauty of a buddha, of an awakened being.For a few minutes sit silently recalling the golden path you had moved on to the center and again back to the circumference.In your day-to-day life remember as much as you can,but don’t make it a tension – a relaxed undercurrentthat you are a buddha. And in your being a buddha,the whole universe becomes the buddha.

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The Language of Existence 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Language of Existence 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Daio once said to a monk: “The peak experience, the final act – as soon as you try to pursue it in thought, there are white clouds for a thousand miles. But even if you go back upon seeing the monastery flagpole at a distance, or head off freely upon seeing a beckoning hand, this is still only half the issue; it is not yet the strategic action of the whole capability.You have traveled and studied various places and spent a long time in monasteries. Don’t stick to the ruts in the road of the ancients – you must travel a living road on your own.East, west, foot up, foot down, using it directly – only then will you know that the peak experience illumines the heavens and covers the earth, illumines the past and flashes through the present. This is your own place to settle and live. When I say this, I am only using water to offer flowers, never adding anything extra.”On another occasion Daio said to a Zen nun, “At the top of the hundred-foot pole, go forward.”The nun replied, “At the top of the hundred-foot pole, there is no place to go.”Daio said, “Where there is no place to step, go a hundred thousand steps farther – only then will you be able to walk alone in the red skies, pervading the universe as your whole body.”The nun agreed and Daio continued: “That’s all. Now you want to return to your old capital and have come with incense in your sleeve to ask for a saying. I once made a verse of praise on the master of Ikusan, so I will write that:“‘Atop the pole, walk on by the ordinary route. It is most painful, when taking a tumble in a valley. Earth, mountains, and rivers cannot hold you up, and space suppresses laughter, filling a donkey’s cheeks.’“I ask you, Zen nun,” continued Daio, “to bring this up and look at it time and again: how to go forward from atop the pole? Suddenly, when the time comes, you can go forward a step, and space will surely swallow a laugh. Remember, remember.”Maneesha, before I discuss these very significant statements, I have to inaugurate Avirbhava’s Museum of Gods. She has brought a few great gods, but before she brings her gods before you I have to say something about them.Octopus: On the island of Corfu in the Greek archipelago, the octopus was worshipped as an incarnation of one of the Greek gods.Known as the most evil of the sea animals, the innocent octopus acquired the name ‘devil-fish’ by fearful ancient fishermen.The second is, Crocodile: Among the southern Bantus of Africa, the crocodile is considered sacrosanct.The Egyptian god Sebek was believed to take the shape of a crocodile; sometimes he was represented as wholly animal, sometimes only with a crocodile head. Offerings of cake, meat, and honey wine were made to the sacred crocodiles, some of which were tamed by priests. Oracles were drawn from the crocodiles’ behavior, and they were embalmed at death.And the third is, Lobster: The lobster was generally considered sacred among the ancient Greeks.In New Caledonia, the crab goddess, or demon, is known to have a sacred grove. On the trees in her grove are hung little packets of food for her. She is the enemy of married people, and is known to cause elephantiasis.Even today, the lobster is worshipped in the Isa district fishing villages of Japan. Huge replicas are paraded through the towns during their festivals.Before I ask Avirbhava to bring her newly acquired gods, I have heard a joke about an octopus:Klopski is overjoyed with his new pet octopus, Clyde. The magnificent creature drinks vodka like a fish, but also can play any musical instrument in the world.One evening, after polishing off a few bottles of vodka together, Clyde and Klopski go out to the Jumpin’ Jellyfish Jazz Club.Klopski shouts, “Hey, everybody! I will bet anyone here that my octopus can play anything anyone gives him.”Laughter fills the bar. Then Benny the banjo player says, “Okay, I bet you fifty dollars he can’t play my banjo.”Klopski nods enthusiastically, swallows back a shot of vodka and gives one to Clyde. The octopus swallows his drink and crawls onto the stage, grabbing not one but two banjos on the way.As he plays “God Save The Queen,” he sneaks out a free tentacle and snatches another glass of vodka.“Hey, man,” yells Pete the piano player, “that is cool. But I will bet you a hundred bucks he can’t play my grand piano.”“Right!” yells Klopski, swallowing his vodka, and pouring one for the octopus. Clyde knocks back the vodka and jumps on the piano. Waving all his arms about wildly, Clyde plays the Polish national anthem stylishly.“That is fine,” comes a shout from the corner, “but I will bet you five hundred dollars he will never be able to play this!” It is Hamish MacTavish, and be brings a big, old Scottish bagpipe up to Klopski.“Okay,” says Klopski. But before Klopski can touch it, Clyde leaps on the bagpipe, squeezing and tangling his arms all over it. Then the octopus and the bagpipe fall onto the floor in a knotted heap, making only a pitiful gasping sound.Losing the bet, an enraged Klopski grabs the octopus, holds him up in the air and cries, “What the hell went wrong with you?”“Well,” grins the octopus, drunkenly, “she looked so beautiful, but I just couldn’t get her cotton panties off!”Now, Avirbhava, come on.(A gray velvety octopus appears in front of the podium, holding between his tentacles a flute, playing the Beatles tune “In An Octopus’ Garden,” and dancing up and down in front of Osho.)So let him settle on the Stonehead, now…(But the octopus lands on Nirvano’s head instead. meanwhile, a large crocodile is inching along the podium, while a red, cuddly lobster is dancing in the air. Finally, the octopus gets to his destination – Stonehead’s head. Osho is chuckling and enjoying the show tremendously, as well as the assembly, which is simply drowning in an ocean of laughter.)Great, Avirbhava! Take your gods away.Daio once said to a monk:“The peak experience, the final act – as soon as you try to pursue it in thought, there are white clouds for a thousand miles. But even if you go back upon seeing the monastery flagpole at a distance, or head off freely upon seeing a beckoning hand, this is still only half the issue; it is not yet the strategic action of the whole capability.You have traveled and studied various places and spent a long time in monasteries. Don’t stick to the ruts in the road of the ancients – you must travel a living road on your own.”This can be called one of the very fundamentals of Zen: Don’t stick to the ruts in the roads of the ancients – you must travel a living road on your own.The fact is, you cannot travel on anybody’s road because that road will never lead you to yourself. It will lead you to somebody else, whose road it is. Never be a follower; always be a path finder. And the path in the unknown reality of your inner world is made by walking into the unknown, without any road prepared by others for you.All the religions are doing that: they are preparing roads for millions of people – highways, super highways. There are six hundred million Catholics walking on one road. They are not going to reach anywhere; not a single one of them has reached even to the state of Jesus Christ. And nobody even thinks about it. Six hundred million Catholics for eighteen hundred years following a certain road persistently, and they have not produced a single Jesus worth the name. It is not their fault, it is our whole mental makeup. We have been told that we have to walk on paths which are prepared. But this is a different path.All paths that go outwards are prepared beforehand. You can go to the north, you can go to the south; you can go anywhere, the road is ready. But to go inside, no road is ready, you will have to create it by walking. It will remain always an individual pathway. Nobody else will ever walk on it and nobody else should ever walk on it, because that will lead him into a hypocrisy. He will become someone else that he is not. It is a very important message:Don’t stick to the ruts in the road of the ancients.All the religions emphasize the opposite; all the religions try to prove that they are the most ancient – to be an ancient religion is a great value. The reality is, the more ancient a religion is, the more rotten it is bound to be. The more ancient, the farther away from you. There is no question of following any ancient way. You should not follow even a modern way, because all ways that are created by others may only be suitable for them.This is a great challenge of existence, that you have to create your own path to your own temple. No help is possible, and it is the grandeur of humanity, a tremendous dignity, that you can follow only your own path.All religions are leading people wrongly; they are destroying people, making them into sheep. An authentic religion will make a man into a lion who walks alone, who never walks in a crowd. The crowd never suits him, because with the crowd you have always to compromise. With the crowd you have always to listen to others: their criticism, their appraisal, their conceptions of right and wrong, their values of good and bad.In the crowd you cannot remain natural. The crowd is a very unnatural environment. Unless you are very aware, the crowd is going to crush you into dust. It is because of this that you don’t find many buddhas in the world. A buddha has to fight inch by inch for his individuality. He has not to give way to the crowd, whatever the cost. Unless such an uncompromising attitude remains constantly in you, you cannot remain unaffected by the crowd in which you live.And unfortunately everybody is born in a crowd – the parents, the teachers, the neighbors. Nobody is fortunate enough to be born alone, so that is out of the question. You are born in the society, in the crowd. Unless you can keep your intelligence clean of the pollution that will be surrounding you from every side, sooner or later you will become somebody else, somebody who nature had never intended you to be.Remember constantly that you have your own destiny, just as everybody else has his own destiny. Unless you become the flower, the seeds of which you have been carrying within you, you will not feel blissfulness, fulfillment, contentment, you will not be able to dance in the wind, in the rain, in the sun. You can be in paradise only as an individual, if you have followed the path that you create by walking in. There are no ready-made pathways.When you enter in, you enter into pure space – not a road; there are not even footprints. Buddha used to say that the inner world is just like the sky. The birds fly but they don’t leave their footprints. Nobody can follow their footprints because in the sky their footprints are not; as they have flown away, their footprints have dissolved.The inner sky remains always pure, just waiting for you, because nobody can get inside you. He is saying:“You must travel a living road on your own.“East, west, foot up, foot down, using it directly – only then will you know that the peak experience illumines the heavens and covers the earth, illumines the past and flashes through the present. This is your own place to settle and live.”Following your own path, not imitating anybody, you are bound to reach the space where you will feel you have arrived at the home, where you can settle for eternity.“When I say this I am only using water to offer flowers, never adding anything extra.”He is perfectly aware that people may start following him. Such is the stupidity of humanity. To the man who is saying, “Never follow anybody,” they say, “Okay.” But their okay means, “Now we are going to follow you.” When the person is saying, “Never follow anybody,” he is included in that “anybody.” Then why is he speaking, what is he doing? He says:“I am only using water to offer flowers, never adding anything extra.”I am saying the very essential, not adding anything extra, just like watering flowers.Such a simple thing…following yourself is such a simple thing. The flowers will start blossoming, you just go on watering them, nourishing them with your attention, with your love, with your silence, with your celebration, with your laughter. Just don’t add anything extra from other sources, from scriptures, from great teachers, from buddhas. Nobody is to be included on your path. Your path has to be absolutely pure and virgin.On another occasion Daio said to a Zen nun, “At the top of the hundred-foot pole, go forward.”It will look a very absurd statement.“At the top of the hundred-foot pole, go forward.”You will think that man is mad. There is no way to go anywhere, you will cling to the pole. But going inside is just like this, as if you are standing on a hundred-foot-long pole. And when you go in there is no road, just pure inner sky. It is a jump into the unknown, but a jump of tremendous beauty.You may have heard, or you may not have heard…. On the China Wall that surrounds the whole of China – it is the biggest wall in the world…It took one thousand years to build; it is almost a mountain. And it is so wide that you can drive a car on it, and as high as sixty feet, seventy feet, eighty feet – as the terrain allows. It was built against the Mongol attackers, to prevent them from entering China. And of course they were absolutely unable – a hundred-foot wall standing between Mongolia and China.China had suffered so much from the Mongols that it took on this tremendous task – almost inhuman. It took one thousand years to make the wall, and millions of people were engaged in the work. But it had to be done because great Mongols like Genghis Khan…he alone killed forty million people. Killing was their joy. His son killed thirty million people; another Mongol, Tamerlane, again killed forty million people. The successor of Tamerlane, Nadir Shah, is thought to have killed more than any of his forefathers, but there are no records available. The whole of China must have become so threatened by these monsters – murderers for no reason, just for the simple joy they would burn a whole city alive – that they made this China Wall.A fictitious story is connected with the China Wall. There is a place in the China Wall where it is said that if you stand there and look at the other side, you simply give a good laughter and jump, you never return. Many people tried but they simply laughed and jumped. And it is one hundred feet high, a mountainous terrain. The fiction became so much of a reality that the government had to put soldiers there to prevent people from looking from that place. Nobody could explain it. What happens? Why do they simply laugh? What do they see? And then without saying anything to anybody, they simply jump.I don’t think it is a historical fact but I understand it as mythological, and a very beautiful phenomenon. When you look in, you are looking into a tremendous nothingness. And all that the mystics have done is, they have given a laugh and jumped. They have simply said good-bye and jumped.It is so enchanting, so magnetically pulling; the gravitation is so much that once you look in, you cannot resist taking the jump. It is risky, it is dangerous, you may be lost. But on the contrary, you find yourself for the first time. You were lost before; hence the laughter. And now you have come home, which was just looking inwards, and everything that you ever wanted is fulfilled. You have entered the lotus paradise.This statement – “At the top of the hundred-foot pole, go forward” – is not concerned with an actual pole. It is concerned with your hundred-foot-long ego. That is your pole, where you are standing.Look within and take a jump!Then go forward.The nun replied, “At the top of the hundred-foot pole, there is no place to go.”Daio said, “Where there is no place to step, go a hundred thousand steps farther – only then will you be able to walk alone in the red skies, pervading the universe as your whole body.”Zen has a language of its own. It is simple, but because we are complicated we cannot understand the simple language. A hundred-foot-long pole…you would never have thought that it could be representative of the ego.Once you see the metaphor, it becomes very clear that everybody is standing on a very long pole. And people are trying to get on longer poles. When Henry Ford was dying, before his death he was asked, “What have you learned in your whole life? Because you became the world’s greatest rich man – from poverty to riches.”Henry Ford said, “Don’t remind me. I have learned only one thing: climbing poles. And when you have climbed the pole, you look so awkward, so stupid. Fortunately you are alone there sitting on your pole. I have learned the art of climbing poles, that has been my whole life. I have not learned anything. I am dying without having learned anything from life.”But Daio’s interpretation:“Where there is no place to step…”‘Place’ is always outside. Inside there is no place, there is only space. And you should understand the difference between place and space.You are sitting here. The place you are sitting in is one thing and the space that you are within is another. It is nothing material, so there is no question of falling. There is no fear of falling into a ditch. There is no place of any kind, just pure silence and spaciousness. Where there is no place to step, that is the real place from where to begin the journey.Howsoever absurd, he has said a great truth.“…go a hundred thousand steps” further –“…only then will you be able to walk alone in the red skies,pervading the universe as your whole body.”The nun agreed and Daio continued: “That’s all. Now you want to return to your old capital and have come with incense in your sleeve to ask for a saying. I once made a verse of praise on the master of Ikusan, so I will write that:‘Atop the pole, walk on by the ordinary route. It is most painful, when taking a tumble in a valley. Earth, mountains, and rivers cannot hold you up, and space suppresses laughter, filling a donkey’s cheeks.’”Once you have taken the jump into the inner space, everything is easy. Before taking the jump everything is difficult. You have never thought that you have any interiority, you have never thought that there is any space inside.When I say “your interiority” I don’t mean your bones and your heart and your brain. These are all outside coverings of your inside nothingness. When you detach yourself from your body and mind and heart, you find that place from where the journey begins. That is the true pilgrimage, the only pilgrimage that is of any worth. All others are unnecessarily running here and there, not knowing where they are going.I have heard….Once George Bernard Shaw was caught in a railway train without a ticket. He had purchased a ticket, but where had he put it? He had much luggage. He must have been like Avirbhava – she travels with twelve suitcases! So he looked into this suitcase, into that suitcase. The whole compartment was filled with his clothes and things and books, and the ticket collector finally said in desperation, “I know you, everybody knows you. I cannot conceive that you are traveling without a ticket. It must have got lost – you have so much luggage. Don’t be worried, I will not come again, and I will give the message to the other ticket collectors on the train not to bother you.”George Bernard Shaw shouted at him, “You idiot! You think I am taking all this trouble for you? The problem is not the ticket, the problem is that without the ticket I don’t know where I am going. The train is going so fast and I don’t know which station I am to get out at. And why are you standing here like an idiot? Just do your work and let me find my ticket!” He was a world famous man, but he was a man with a very bad memory.A similar story is told about Mulla Nasruddin, but juicier. The ticket collector comes, and Mulla Nasruddin looks into everything – his bags, his pockets. The ticket collector is standing there and he says, “You have looked in every pocket, but you don’t look in the left-side pocket of your coat.”Mulla Nasruddin said, “Don’t interfere in my work. Never mention that pocket!”He said, “You are strange. I am simply helping you because you cannot find the ticket. Perhaps…why are you leaving out that pocket?”Mulla Nasruddin said, “That is my only hope. If the ticket is not in the left pocket, I am finished. So first I will look into everything else. Only as the last resort may I touch that pocket. That is my last hope, don’t destroy it.”“I ask you, Zen nun,” continued Daio, “to bring this up and look at it time and again: how to go forward from atop the pole?”I give you this poem. Remember, that this is my message: that you have to leave the place and enter into space.“Suddenly, when the time comes, you can go forward a step, and space will surely swallow a laugh. Remember, remember.”Don’t be afraid of laughing. Just take a step from place into space, have a good laugh and just go on. We are doing that every day – not one laugh but many laughs.(A loud laugh is heard from Sardar Gurudayal Singh.)Sardar Gurudayal Singh, wherever this caravan is going you will be needed. Without you life will not be so juicy.A haiku by Sodo:After the moon-viewing,my shadow walking homealong with me.After the moon-viewing…A full moon – that has become traditional in Zen. On the full-moon night the Zen seekers don’t sleep, they walk into the mountains where the moon has made waterfalls look as if silver is falling, where the moon has made the whole surroundings a dream.Sodo says, After the moon-viewing…This is called moon-viewing; it is a tremendously aesthetic experience.My shadow walking homealong with me.Such silence. Nobody is with me, just my shadow walking along with me. After seeing this whole beautiful world, when you enter into your home nobody will be with you, not even your shadow. Your aloneness will be total.Every meditation is a preparation for enjoying the aloneness which is our nature.Isa wrote:Not yet having become a buddha,this ancient pine tree,idly dreaming.According to those who have awakened, everything is full of buddhahood. Buddhahood is just the nature of existence. Issue’s haiku is saying:Not yet having become a buddha,this ancient pine tree,Although it is ancient, it has not yet become a buddha.…idly dreaming.It is still dreaming. Someday it may wake up. This can be said about everybody. We are all unconscious of our ultimate reality, and we go on dreaming, we go on sleeping, we go on desiring, we go on longing for this and that, not knowing that the greatest treasure is within our awakening.There is no more than becoming a buddha. You have come to the highest peak of consciousness.Consciousness is the only wealth.Maneesha has asked:Osho,What would you say is the one, most significant attribute a sannyasin of yours needs?My sannyasins don’t need, Maneesha, any attribute. My perception of sannyas is to be just yourself. If I say any attribute, I am imposing that attribute on my sannyasins. My sannyas is absolute freedom. With freedom of course a great responsibility comes, but that is not my business.There is a special event happening in the streets of Jerusalem, and there is great excitement throughout the city. Pontius and Mrs. Pilate are standing on the balcony of the palace, waving to the crowds below. They are watching as Jesus and the procession following him slowly make their way through the streets towards Crucifix Hill.Suddenly, Jesus stumbles and he and his cross crash to the ground. The procession grinds to a standstill. Slowly, Jesus gets back on his feet, picks up the cross, and carries on.“Pontius, did you see that?” remarks Mrs. Pilate, out of the corner of her mouth, as she continues waving with a smile plastered on her face.“Yes, dear,” replies Pontius, “I’m afraid he did it again.”“Well, I really don’t care who he is,” remarks Mrs. Pilate. “If he drops his cross one more time, he is out of the parade!”In the small hours of the morning, Paddy is crawling along the street on his hands and knees. Suddenly, he notices a large pair of boots in front of him, and looking up, he sees the outline of Police Officer O’Leary.“What is going on here?” asks the cop.“I’m just looking for a ten-dollar bill,” mumbles Paddy.“Oh!” says O’Leary, “are you sure you lost it here?”“Well,” slobbers Paddy, “I didn’t say I had lost one. I’m just looking.”Luigi gets home to Italy from his holiday in California. He is very depressed, and his friend Alfonso asks him, “What’s the matter? You no like-a California?”“Mama mia!” replies Luigi. “What a nightmare! I go-a to California and stay at the Pope and Pasta Hotel in Palm Springs. In the morning, I go-a to breakfast. I tell-a the waiter, ‘I want two pissis of toast.’ He bring-a me only one piss.“I say, ‘I want-a two piss.’ He say, ‘Go to the bathroom.’ I say, ‘You no understand. I wanna piss on the plate.’ He say, ‘You no piss on the plate, you son-of-a-bitch!’“Later, I have-a lunch. The waitress brings me a knife and a spoon, but no fock. I tell her, ‘I wanna fock.’ She tell me, ‘Everyone wanna fock.’ I say, ‘You no understand, I wanna fock on the table.’ She say, ‘You no gonna fock on the table, you son-of-a-bitch!’“So I go-a back to my hotel room, and there are no shits on my bed. I call-a the manager and tell him, ‘I wanna shit.’ He say, ‘Go to the bathroom.’ I say, ‘You no understand, I wanna shit on my bed.’ He say, ‘You no gonna shit on the bed, you son-of-a-bitch!’“So, I’m-a finished. I go-a to check out, and the man at the desk say, ‘Happy holidays, and peace on you.’“I say, ‘Piss on you too, you son-of-a-bitch, I go-a home!’”Now is the time. The air is clean, you have laughed and you are ready.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent, close your eyes.Feel your body to be completely frozen.No movement.Gather yourself in.Just like an arrow, move deeper and deeperwithin yourself.Soon you will reach the one-hundred-foot polefrom where begins the journey into space.Take a jump without looking back.It is our space, it is our origin.You are blessed.This evening is blessed by your being a buddha,just a pure awareness.This awareness is your very nature;you can forget it but you cannot lose it.It cannot be stolen. It is your very center.To make it clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax, but go on enteringdeeper and deeper into yourself.The body remains far away, miles away,the mind remains miles away.You are just a silent watchfulness,a peace that passeth understanding,a bliss that no word can express.An experience of eternity and immortalitywhich will bring you a great feelingof dance, rejoicings, songs.Even your silence will become a songand your no-movement will become a dance.Those who have known this sourcehave become pure love, compassion, consciousness, purity.This is your ultimate nature.Life is only a school to bring you to this ultimate nature. Those who remain unfortunately unaware of this grandeur of your being, this Everest of your consciousness, are really pitiable.Feel this moment and the silence of it because you have to carry it with you twenty-four hours.On this path there is no specific period for meditation. The whole life has to become meditation. Sitting, standing, walking; waking, sleeping, meditation continues just like a thread in a garland of flowers. It does not show up but it is there, the connecting link of each flower.All your actions, gestures, are just like flowers, but a consciousness should run through all of them. Only then the garland is a garland; otherwise it is just a heap of flowers.Let your life be a garland with a consciousness connecting every action, every movement, every mood, and it will bring a total transformation. You will be a new man.Each meditation will take away something false from you and will bring some new, fresh quality.Slowly slowly a day comes when your whole life becomes the life of a buddha.It is not far away,it is always within your reach.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back. But bring with youthe silence, the experience.Sit down for a few minutes like a buddha.This is your nature.As Daio said, “Remember, remember!”He was referring to this experience of meditation:“Remember, remember!”In twenty-four hours,whatever you are doing it does not matter,your remembrance should remain a continuity.Can we celebrate the gathering of the buddhas?

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The Language of Existence 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Language of Existence 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Hakuin said:“The study of Zen is like drilling wood to get fire. The wisest course is to forge straight ahead without stopping. If you rest at the first sign of heat, and then again as soon as the first wisp of smoke arises, even though you drill for three asamkhya kalpas, you will never see a spark of fire.“My native place is close to the seashore, barely a few hundred paces from the beach. Suppose a man of my village is concerned because he does not know the flavor of sea water, and wants to go and taste it for himself. If he turns back after having taken only a few steps, or even if he returns after having taken a hundred steps, in either case when will he ever know the ocean’s bitter, salty taste?“But, though a man comes from as far as the mountains of Koshu or Shinshu, Hida or Mino, if he goes straight ahead without stopping, within a few days he will reach the shore, and, the moment he dips the tip of one finger into the sea and licks it, he will instantly know the taste of the waters of the distant oceans and the nearby seas, of the southern beaches and the northern shores, in fact of all the sea water in the world.”Maneesha, Hakuin is one of the most respected Zen masters. His respect is because of his ability to express the inexpressible, to create devices that somehow can manage to give you a glimpse of the unknown. He is basically concerned with the method. If a right method is used in the right time and ripe time, it is not going to fail. If you are on the right way, it may take some time to reach, but you will reach. The whole question before Hakuin is: the right way, the right method, the right beginning.It was Gautam Buddha’s habitual way of expression. All the great qualities that he has called for in an experienced, self-realized man, all begin with the word right. For example, he will not say simply samadhi. He will say samma samadhi. Samadhi can go wrong, people can mistake similar experiences for samadhi and get lost.That’s what happened to Aldous Huxley when he took LSD. He was a man of tremendous knowledge, particularly of the East, and most of the saints of the East he knew well. He immediately said that, “The experience of LSD is samadhi, the same experience that Patanjali has described, the ultimate phenomenon.”This gives a clear illustration that Buddha was right not to use simply the word samadhi. It is dangerous. You can find something else and think it is samadhi; there are similar phenomena. There are people who have become addicted to opium, or hashish, or marijuana. And these drugs have been used for centuries, from the very beginning of man. It is nothing new.The reason why they became addicted is because the drugs gave them a glimpse of something…how things should be. They are temporary glimpses, and they are produced by chemicals so they don’t go beyond the mind. But mind gets a glimpse, just as the lake reflects the faraway moon. And the experience is so beautiful that not to repeat it again and again becomes impossible.All the societies have been fighting against drugs but the fight has not been successful. It will never succeed the way the society is. It can succeed only if you give people the right experience of samma samadhi – ‘samma samadhi’ means right samadhi – so that they can make a differentiation, a discrimination between what is right and what is wrong. Those who have known their buddha-nature are not addicted to drugs, do not need drugs for their experience. Their experience is not caused by any chemicals; their experience is caused by turning their whole energy in towards the center of their being. That has nothing to do with chemicals. But chemicals can give you an illusion, something very similar.Hakuin has adopted Buddha’s habit. Buddha never spoke about anything without adding the word right first, because his understanding was – and he is correct – that everything can go wrong if you get caught up with something similar which is illusory. And you cannot make the distinction because you don’t know the real. Unless you know the real, how can you expect to make a discrimination between the unreal and the real?It was a great contribution of Gautam Buddha that he would talk about all the qualities using the word right first. Samma means right. Because everything can be taken for granted as right if you don’t have any experience of it. Then any illusion, any hallucination…and these hallucinations will drag you through life after life.A man like Aldous Huxley, one of the most intelligent men of this century, got caught into it. He became addicted to LSD and he preached that what he was experiencing was the same as what Buddha experienced and Kabir experienced. This is definitely going beyond the limitations. Aldous Huxley has no way to know what Kabir experienced, he has no way to know what Buddha experienced. Buddha’s experience was not dependent on any LSD, it was an inner experience dependent only on his own consciousness.LSD gives you unconsciousness, not consciousness. If you are in a good mood LSD can give you paradise; LSD is simply a magnifying glass. If you are in a good mood, a loving mood, and you take LSD, you feel the whole world is filled with love. You will even touch your chair with a loving hand. All around everything will be beautiful, nothing will be wrong.But it lasts only for a few hours and when you wake up, you wake up in a far worse world than the one you had been in before you took the LSD, because you have seen something beautiful and now you see an ordinary world which has lost its luster. You have seen in LSD rainbows all around; suddenly they have all disappeared. You have seen people having auras and now they are just so ordinary. But even to imagine that they had an aura looks stupid.But Buddha or Kabir, once they become enlightened…this enlightenment is not something that has to be renewed every year like a license. Once it has happened, it has happened. It may become bigger and more mature, but there is no way of going back. That is the criterion of whether you are hallucinating through drugs or you are authentically meditating.The word right has to be understood. Many people have been worried about why Buddha continually uses the word right about every quality. They are not aware that for every real quality there is a phony quality available – “made in USA” That phony quality is cheap, but it serves only for a few hours, and then you are caught in it because it is so beautiful – again and again…And every time you take it, you have to take it in a bigger dose because your body becomes immune. A moment comes when no LSD can make any difference; your body has become completely immune.India is far more experienced with drugs because for ten thousand years at least it has been trying to use all kinds of drugs and poisons to create a cheap imitation of the ultimate experience. They have gone even to the point…even today there are monasteries in Ladakh where they keep cobra snakes.When a person becomes so accustomed to all the drugs that no drug helps anymore, then the last thing is a cobra bite. The cobra bites on his tongue, then he feels a little samadhi. Otherwise a cobra bite usually means the end. And you will be surprised: there are cases of the cobra dying, because the man is so full of poison.It has been used in India for centuries. Each great king used to raise a beautiful girl, and from her very childhood she was given poison – from smaller doses to bigger doses. It made her so immune that she was able to absorb any dose of poison without falling unconscious. And the final stage was, when she became a young girl, blossomed in her youth, she could be sent to the enemy king. There was no difficulty in it, she had just to move to the other capital and the king himself would become interested in her. Those girls were chosen from thousands of beautiful girls; they were unique specimens. Immediately the king would become aware that there was a beautiful girl he had never seen before, and just a kiss from that girl was enough to kill the man.It is good that nowadays you don’t find such trained and disciplined girls. They were available at the time of Gautam Buddha. And it was not something that you use one time and then throw away, in the American way. They would kill the king and they would come home ready to be sent somewhere else, because nobody could think that the kiss of the girl had killed the king.Aldous Huxley and his colleagues are not aware of the whole history of drugs. And why was the girl ready to take it? It gave such a good feeling, such a joyful feeling. She was not thinking about what she was being prepared for, but she was floating in a euphoria.Buddha is right when he says samma samadhi. He will not accept Aldous Huxley’s samadhi as a right samadhi. It is an illusion.But I wonder that nobody has criticized Aldous Huxley. All the governments are against drugs; obviously they should criticize Aldous Huxley first. But they don’t have either the intelligence or the experience. That man at least had the experience of the illusory – the governments don’t have the experience even of the illusory. But down the ages, although every government has been against drugs, this has not made any change. No prohibition ever makes any change; on the contrary it increases your interest in the things prohibited.I am against all prohibition. My own understanding is that if LSD can give some glimpse of samadhi, then all its bad aftereffects should be removed, because it is a chemical and it is in our hands. Those bad aftereffects are the problem. They should be removed and an LSD number two should be made – clean, taken in complete awareness that it is going to give you only a glimpse. Its addictiveness can be taken out, and when you know it is going to give you only a glimpse there is no harm. It may lead you to the search for the real.Rather than prohibiting the drugs, what is needed is to produce drugs which lead people to samadhi, which give an indication: if a chemical drug can be such a blessing, what will the real thing be? It is just a dewdrop in comparison with the real oceanic feeling, the oceanic ecstasy.But nobody listens to any right approach. Thousands of people are unnecessarily in the jails. The number may be millions, not thousands, and most of them are under-age; even six-year-olds have been found taking drugs. Nobody has suggested any solution for it.And once a boy or girl, whatever their age, takes the drug, they cannot forget the experience. Everything else becomes just rotten; the mind continuously hankers for the drug. It is the duty of the governments of the whole world, through their chemical drug research, to produce drugs which are not harmful, which are not addictive. Any bad aftereffects have been removed, and only that part which gives a joyous feeling, a desire to dance and a desire to find something real is left, because that feeling will disappear within hours.These drugs can be used in a right way. Everything can be used in a right way and everything can be used in a wrong way, but it is still the same thing.Hakuin said to his disciples:“The study of Zen is like drilling wood to get fire.”An old, ancient method.“The wisest course is to forge straight ahead without stopping. If you rest at the first sign of heat and then again as soon as the first wisp of smoke arises, even though you drill for three asamkhya kalpas…”Asamk means innumerable, and kalpas means yugas, or ages. If you drill for asamk, for innumerable ages, you will never find a spark of fire.What he is saying is that there are things which have to be done fast. If you do them slowly, at the most you may create smoke but not fire. To create fire you have to drill hard and without resting. If, seeing that the wood is becoming hot, you say, “Let us rest a little,” the wood will become cool again. If, seeing that the wood is smoking, you say, “Now the fire is not far away we can rest a little,” the smoke will disappear, the wood will become cool again. The fire is hidden in the wood but you have to be very continuous until you find the spark, the flame jumping up from the wood.This is a very good example for meditators. You go a little while and then you say, “I have to go tomorrow again, what is the hurry? It is enough, now rest – and if finally everybody has to become a buddha, what does it matter whether it is Sunday or Saturday? There are only seven days; some day I will become a buddha.” But if you think in terms of going slowly, in a lousy way, taking rests, you will never reach.Although the path is very short, it is short only for those who go like an arrow. The arrow does not stop on the way, there are no stations for the arrow. It does not rest a little while in the air and then go again, it simply goes straight without halting on the way. And that should be remembered by every meditator.I have been using the word arrow purposely so that you can understand that going into yourself is not a morning walk – that you can return from anywhere. It is not something that you can do in parts; you have to do it one day in a single quantum leap. Whenever you decide, then don’t look back, just go ahead.Certainly it needs guts and courage because you are moving in a dark and unknown space. You don’t have with you even a lamp – no companion, you don’t have any map. And meditation demands that you go with the speed of light, so fast that the journey of thousands of lives is completed in a single moment.Hakuin says:“My native place is close to the seashore, barely a few hundred paces from the beach. Suppose a man of my village is concerned because he does not know the flavor of sea, and wants to go and taste it for himself. If he turns back after having taken only a few steps, or even if he returns after having taken a hundred steps, in either case when will he ever know the ocean’s bitter, salty taste?”You have to go to the ocean; one hundred feet or two hundred feet, that is not the question. You have to go all the way.“But, though a man comes from as far as the mountains of Koshu or Shinshu, Hida or Mino, if he goes straight ahead without stopping, within a few days he will reach the shore, and, the moment he dips the tip of one finger into the sea and licks it, he will instantly know the taste of the waters of the distant oceans and the nearby seas, and of the southern beaches and the northern shores, in fact of all the sea water in the world.”But the question is of going to the sea, not just going in a lukewarm way: “Today a few steps and then we will see tomorrow.” But tomorrow you will have to take these few steps again. And if this becomes your habit – “A few steps today and then we will see tomorrow” – if this becomes your pattern then you will never reach. Always you will be going on those few steps, and then the decision that, “It is enough, now we will see tomorrow.”For the meditator there is no tomorrow.Future is not the concern of meditation. Future is the concern of the mind; mind cannot live without future. If suddenly all future disappears, mind will be at a loss what to do. Future is the space in which mind goes on weaving imaginations, projects, ideas: what one is going to become, what one is going to achieve. All ambitions are laid out in the future. But if the future completely disappears – suddenly you come to the point where you see that there is no future – either your heart will stop or you will run away backwards, thinking that at least the past will be there. But the past is not there.The past and the future both are in your mind.Existentially there is only this moment.So when you meditate today, do it as if this is the last day. You may not have any chance to meditate again, so go all the way to the seashore. And once you have got the taste of your being – the rejoicing, the dancing, the blessing, the ecstasy – then there is no problem, you know the way. It is not far, it is just within you, just a few inches away from your mind. But once you have to know it. Just once you have to know it, then there is no problem. Then you cannot forget it, then you cannot go away against it; then it becomes your very life. And when meditation becomes one’s very life, there is nothing more in this existence to make you richer, to make you more of a splendor. The secret is hidden within you.A Zen poet wrote:With a pierced net– a net with holes.With a pierced netI’ve caughtall the butterfliesof the universe.He is not talking about butterflies; neither is he talking about a pierced net. He is talking about your mind, which is certainly pierced – so many holes, so many loopholes, so many stitches here and there, so many cracks. But the poet is saying, don’t be worried:With a pierced netI’ve caughtall the butterfliesof the universe.Just know the secret. And the secret is to go beyond the pierced net. Be a master of your mind, then even a pierced net is capable of catching all the butterflies of the world. Right now your mind catches nothing. From all the holes and loopholes everything goes on leaking out. Have you seen that you are leaking continuously? I don’t think…but now you will see.Basho says, sitting silently…It is right, but he does not know that when you sit silently it is not necessarily true that the grass grows by itself. What seems to be more likely is that the mind leaks by itself. Basho’s experience is a great experience, but this is a very simple experiment that you can do. Just sitting in your room with closed eyes, see: thoughts are rushing this way and that way, everything is leaking.When I say go beyond the mind, I mean go beyond all this leaking so that you can find something solid to stand upon. Before you take the jump, you need to find a spot at least to stand on, from which to jump into the darkness, into the unknown territory of your own being.Buddha is reported to have said that everything that is great is bitter in the beginning and very sweet in the end – and vice versa. That which is very sweet in the beginning, for example a honeymoon, is very bitter in the end. Meditation may be entering into darkness, unknown territory, but it ends up in self-illumination, in a great explosion of light. And once the explosion has happened, you remain the buddha forever; you cannot go back. The mind has gone, just as a shadow disappears. You function now from no-mind, and any action from no-mind is good, is a blessing to the world.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Hakuin said, “The wisest course is to forge straight ahead without stopping.” But if we knew where straight ahead was, would we need to walk it?It is just a way of saying it. There is no problem in it when Hakuin says, “The wisest course is to forge straight ahead.” He is talking to the disciples, not to the students; he is talking to the meditators.When I say to you, go straight in, you don’t ask me, “Where is this ‘in’?” You don’t consult an encyclopedia or a map of the world – where is this ‘in’? You understand, you know perfectly well where it is, just you have not gone that way before.So, Maneesha, you know perfectly well where you have to go. Just go straight ahead. Walking will not do, not even running. That’s why I have used the word arrow – with the speed of light. I have used the words quantum leap. One moment you were not a buddha and another moment you are a buddha – so fast.There is no distance between you and your buddhahood, only a misunderstanding. It is something like, two plus two is four but by some mistake you have been calculating that two plus two is five, and I tell you that this is a mistake: two plus two is not five, it is four. Do you think you will have to do something? Immediately you see the point.It is said that psychotics are ones who think two plus two is certainly five. They are very fundamentalist. All fundamentalists are psychotics. They know everything – where God is…They know that the Holy Ghost committed a crime, and rather than hanging God on the cross, the Jews hung the poor boy Jesus – it was not his fault.The Holy Ghost and God are not separate. The Holy Ghost seems to be God’s personality, his mask. Not to say directly that God committed adultery, and with a poor virgin, Mary, they say that the Holy Ghost did it. And the poor boy who was born out of this criminal act, they crucified. They should have crucified God, but the difficulty is…In fact everybody would like to crucify God, but where to find him? They found the only begotten son, so they said, “It is near enough. Crucify this fellow at least.”The psychotics cannot be convinced that two plus two is not five; the neurotics are those who think that perhaps two plus two is four, but they are very uncertain of it, very worried: why is it four? Why is it not five? With five they were perfectly at ease. This is the way psychologists find out who is a psychotic and who is a neurotic.You cannot remove the psychotic from his position, whatever position he has taken. The neurotic you can remove, but he will remain always worried: “This seems to be right, but who knows? Perhaps I was right before, because then I was at ease. Here, with two plus two making four it creates such an anxiety.”There is no distance between you and your ultimate reality. Just an about turn…just, rather than looking outwards, close your eyes and look in. In a single instance, when you have forgotten the outside world completely – the past, the future, everything – and you remain only in this moment, looking inwards, the happening, the transformation, the arrival of the buddha…Maneesha is also asking:Is not our uncertainty, our groping, because we have to discover for ourselves what is straight ahead and what is going off track?If you look in you cannot go off track, because there are no tracks. There are not two ways even. It is the outside world where if you don’t know, naturally you will have to grope around. In the inside world you don’t even have hands with which to grope. The inside world is a pure seeing.In this country we have called this seeing darshan. Darshan means just seeing. And that does everything, you don’t have to do anything else.Before you do the seeing, a little laughing. That’s why you have not done it before.Pope the Polack is visiting the optician.“I keep seeing spots in front of my eyes,” complains the Polack pope.“Really?” replies the optician, putting a new pair of glasses on the pope’s nose. “There! How’s that?”“Wow! That’s great,” replies Pope the Polack. “Now I can see the spots much clearer.”Luigi is sitting with his teenage son, Spagnoli.“What-a do you want-a for your birthday, my son?” Luigi proudly asks his son.“I wanna watch,” says the son.“Okay,” shrugs Luigi. “It is-a okay with me if it is okay with-a your mother.”Get it? Otherwise in the middle of the night you will get it!(Waves of increasing laughter are rolling through Buddha Hall as more and more disciples are getting it.)Do you see? Somebody got it!One morning, Miss Goodbody, the fifth grade teacher, asks the class what the best kind of business is.“Real estate,” says little Ernie, “because everybody needs somewhere to live, and houses always increase in value.”“Oil!” exclaims little Albert, “because cars always need petrol.”“No,” says little Peggy Sue, from the back of the room. “The best business is the world is prostitution.”“What!” cries Miss Goodbody, shocked. “Peggy Sue, how can you say such a thing?”“Easy,” replies Peggy Sue, “because it is the only business where you have it, you sell it, and you still have it.”Three women arrive at the Pearly Gates. Betty and Margaret are English girls, and Lolita is Italian. Saint Peter looks the women over very carefully. Then he turns to Betty and says, “Have you been a pure and honest woman?”“My good man,” replies Betty, “I am English. I have been honest and clean my whole life.”“Okay, okay,” says Peter, checking his list. “Follow that angel to the pink room.”Then Peter turns to Margaret. “And have you been a pure, forthright woman?”“Oh Peter,” replies Margaret, “I have been as pure as the driven snow.”“Okay,” says Peter, checking his list, “follow that angel to the pink room.”Then he turns to Lolita. “And have you been honest and pure?”“I never did-a no harm to anyone,” replies Lolita. “I could-a say I was honest. I loved love. And I was-a pure. I loved loving purely for love, and only for love.”“Okay,” says Peter, dropping his list, “follow me to my room!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent, close your eyes.Feel your body to be completely frozen.Now look inwards.Collect all your life energy just like an arrow and without stopping anywhere go straight forward to the center of your being.This moment you are the buddha.This moment you are the glory of being.This moment all that is yourswill be revealed to you,all the secrets, all the miracles.The greatest miracle is that as you go deeper darkness disappears and a totally different kind of light, a light without source, illuminates your being. And you have an absolute feeling of immortality, of eternity.To make it clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Forget your bodies – you are not your body.And forget your mind – you are not your mind.You are the watcher of both.The body is lying there, the mind may be chattering – you are watching. You have always been a watcher, unscratched by any thought, any desire, any action. Your purity is eternal.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back.But come back with your experience,come back with the light that you have seen.Come back with the joy, with the blissfulness,the pure space in which you have moved.Sit down for a few seconds, just as a buddha.Utterly silent, immensely contented,knowing nothing but full of wonder,desiring nothing but full of love.This is your truth.Can we celebrate the buddhas?

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The Language of Existence 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Language of Existence 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,“Followers of the Tao,” said Rinzai, “this mountain monk’s view does not differ from that of Sakyamuni Buddha. In all the variety of our daily activities, is there anything lacking? The spiritual light manifesting through the six senses has never been interrupted. He who is able to perceive it in this manner can be an unconcerned man for the rest of his life.“Virtuous ones, there is no peace in the three worlds which are like a house on fire. It is not a place for a long stay because the murderous demon of impermanence will, in an instant, make no choice between the noble and the humble, and between the old and the young. If you do not want to differ from the Patriarch and the Buddha, it will suffice for you to seek nothing outside.“If, in the time of a thought, your pure and clean no-mind shines, this is your own Dharmakaya buddha. If, in the time of a thought, your passionless no-mind shines, this is your own Sambhogakaya buddha. If, in the time of a thought, your non-differentiating no-mind shines, this is your own Nirmanakaya buddha.“This threefold body is the one who is now listening to my expounding of the dharma. This can only be achieved if nothing is sought from without.”Maneesha, I have to say something about my absence yesterday before I can enter into the discussion of Rinzai’s statements. I could not come yesterday because Anando took all my clothes to some dry cleaner. First I thought the dry cleaner must be in Pune, but by the end of the evening it became clear that the dry cleaner was in Bombay. And in the night she phoned to say that she was going to Switzerland, with all the twelve suitcases of Avirbhava full of my clothes for dry cleaning!Somehow she had to be persuaded to come back, because without clothes the government will have immediate reason to arrest me. Fortunately she has returned from Bombay. The whole credit of my being here today goes to her.“Followers of the Tao,” said Rinzai, “this mountain monk’s view does not differ from that of Sakyamuni Buddha.”In fact he is saying that not only are his thoughts actually the same as Gautam Buddha’s, all the buddhas, past and present and future, have the same insight, the same illumination. But he can say only about himself for the simple reason that this is his actual experience. Since the moment when his buddhahood became known to him, he has been watching that every action, every activity, every response is exactly that of Sakyamuni Gautam Buddha.“In all the variety of our daily activities, is their anything lacking? The spiritual light manifesting through the six senses…”The six senses have to be noted down. Ordinarily we talk only of five senses; the sixth is dormant. The moment you turn in, the sixth sense starts working. Hence when the Buddhists talk about six senses it amazes people – where is the sixth sense? It is not visible, it is when you close your eyes: suddenly you see a new sense penetrating in your interiority which you have never known before. It has always been there, but you have never turned inwards. So Buddha always talks about six senses.“The spiritual light manifesting through the six senses has never been interrupted.”Now it should be made seven senses, for the simple reason…Up until this century physiologists were not aware that in your ear there are two senses, not one. One is the sense of hearing and the other is the sense of balance. The drunkard wavers, wobbles as he walks, for the simple reason that the alcohol affects the sense of balance. He wants to put his foot in one place, and it goes to another. This sense that is hidden in the ear has never been mentioned in the past, because it is not as manifest as eyes, ears or hands. The poor drunkard suffers because of the sixth sense.So I would like to change the order. The seventh sense is the buddha-sense, the buddha-eye. The sixth you all have. Somebody hits on your ear, and suddenly you feel the whole world moving – that is the sixth sense.A drunkard is trying hard to open the lock of his door. His wife had got tired of him; he won’t listen, he will come home whenever he feels like it – in the middle of the night…So she said, “You keep the key and you silently open the door, go into the room, and sleep. And don’t disturb me!”He was in great trouble, and a policeman on the street was watching the difficulty of the poor man. He could not manage to enter the key into the lock; both his hands were wobbling. You need a little balance to make the lock stand still, and you need also balance for your other hand which is holding the key.The policeman, feeling for the old man, came by and asked him, “Can I help you?” He said, “You have to. Just hold my house while I open the door. Everything is trembling, it seems there is an earthquake going on.” The policeman laughed, and he said, “This idea never entered in my mind.”At that very moment the wife, hearing some noise, opened the window on the second story and asked, “What is the matter? Is the key not working? Shall I throw down another key?” The man said, “The key is perfectly okay, you just send another lock so that I can open it.”Just, everything loses its sense of balance. One starts not only walking wobbly, one starts seeing things which are not there, avoiding things which are not there, and staggering against things which are there. There is a confusion. To follow a drunkard from the pub to his house is a great experience. How many great things happen on the way, you cannot believe.So I would like for you to remember that there are seven senses. The sixth, that Rinzai says is the buddha-sense, I would like to call the seventh. About the sixth Rinzai is as traditional, conventional, as everybody else. It was not his fault, it was never thought that there needs to be a sense of balance. It was only the discovery of the deeper structure of the ear that made it clear to us that we have a certain sense of balance, too. From all these senses, Rinzai is saying, constantly a certain light is radiating.“He who is able to perceive it, in this manner, can be an unconcerned man for the rest of his life.“Virtuous ones, there is no peace in the three worlds which are like a house on fire.”This is the experience of all the buddhas. There is no peace anywhere. Everything is as if it is on fire, and all that you need to do is to jump out of this fire. Your jealousy is fire, your anger is fire, your fear is fire, your love is fire – all that you are living is nothing but a house on fire. Every moment there is anxiety, every moment there is anguish.“Virtuous ones, there is no peace in the three worlds which are like a house on fire. It is not a place for a long stay because the murderous demon of impermanence will, in an instant, make no choice between the noble and the humble, and between the old and the young. If you do not want to differ from the Patriarch and the Buddha, it will suffice for you to seek nothing outside.”That is the essence of the message: nothing to seek outside. Seeking for something outside is entering into a house which is on fire. However much you try…You may even become comfortable in an uncomfortable situation, just by saying to yourself, “This is what life is.” But this is not so. You may settle with your sadness, your misery – everybody has settled with things believing that, what else can one do? Anger comes, love comes, hate comes, and they all possess you like demons.The only way to avoid this vicious circle – from one prison to another prison, from one fire to another fire – the only way is to seek nothing outside and turn inwards. There is no seeking inwards, you simply find. Outside you seek and you never find anything; inside you do not seek, it is already there.“If, in the time of a thought, your pure and clean no-mind shines, this is your own Dharmakaya buddha.”Buddha has made categories. Dharmakaya means the body of religiousness. If in the time of a thought, your mind is clear, clean, no-mind shines, this is your dharmakaya Buddha. You are entering into a realm of your inner space which can be said to be the very body of religiousness.“If, in the time of a thought, your passionless no-mind shines, this is your own Sambhogakaya buddha.”No-mind shining itself is meditation. That’s what is called samadhi. Buddha has called it sambhogakaya – the body of blissfulness.“If in the time of a thought, your non-differentiating no-mind shines, this is your own Nirmanakaya buddha.”Perhaps Buddha is the only person in the past who has given any credit to creativeness. Nirmanakaya means the body of creativeness. Nirman means creativeness.If no-mind shines without any differentiating, your whole energy itself spontaneously starts creating. It does not matter what it creates; you may be a potter, or you may be a musician, or you may be a poet. Whoever you are and whatever you are doing – you may be just a housewife – your work will take the quality of creativeness. Your work will take the quality of love, of silence, of peace.“This threefold body is the one who is now listening to my expounding of the dharma.”Rinzai says, “You are all these three bodies, although you are not aware of them. You are aware of only one body, the skin body, which is just a skeleton. Hidden behind it are treasures.” Buddha has divided them into three: Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, Nirmanakaya.“This threefold body is the one who is now listening to my expounding of the dharma. This can only be achieved if nothing is sought from without.”If you do not seek anything from without, you are complete, you are entire, you are perfect. The moment you start desiring something from outside, trouble starts. You have already descended from the throne of an emperor and become a beggar. And once you are a beggar, it will be very difficult to find the throne again.The world is vast and desires take you far away. Whole lives are devoted to fulfill childish desires.One of the richest men of his time, in 1940…I was a small child and my father was sick, so I was with my father in the hospital. This rich man, Sir Seth Hukumchand, had created a really great hospital in Indore. He used to come, and by chance we became friends. He was an old man but he used to come every day and I used to wait for him at the gate. I asked him, “You have so much…” Almost three-fourths of the houses of Indore were his property. And Indore is the next most beautiful and rich place to Bombay.He said, “You are asking a strange question. Nobody ever asked me.”I had asked him, “Why are you still creating new industries, creating new palaces? And you are becoming old. How is all this going to be of any help at the time of death?”He said, “I know, everything will remain here and I will be gone. But just a desire to be the most successful, rich man in the country keeps driving me. For no other reason, just that everything I have must be the best.”He has the only Rolls Royce in the whole world made of solid gold. It was never driven, it was just for show, standing in front of his beautiful palace. He has the best horses in the world that you can imagine. I have never seen such beautiful horses. He had a whole palace filled with all kinds of exotic things. And the reason was that he wanted to be the only owner of a certain thing. It was his absolute condition: whenever he purchases a thing, that thing should not be produced again; he should be the only owner. And he was ready to pay any money for it.His only desire was – because Indore in those days was a state – to purchase all the houses in the state, even the palace of the king. And he almost succeeded – seventy-five percent of the houses of Indore belonged to him. Even the king had to borrow money from him, and he was giving to him very generously in order to finally settle that the whole of Indore…”He may be the king but it is my property.”I asked him, “What will it do to you? What peace will it bring? You are always anxious, tense, coming to the hospital, asking the psychiatrist about your troubles. These houses cannot solve your troubles and this money cannot solve your troubles.”And finally a time came when he captured all the gold of India, he became the gold king of India. He purchased all the gold, wherever it was possible. And once you have all the gold in your hands, you have the whole country in your hands. If you start selling it, the prices will go down. He kept the whole market dependent on him just because he was holding the gold.And I asked him, “What enjoyment are you getting out of it?”He said, “I don’t know, just there is a tremendous desire to be the richest, to be the most powerful.”The inward journey begins only when you understand it clearly that anything outside is not going to give you contentment.Takuan wrote:Invited by our parents,we came hereas temporary guests,and without remaining mind,we go back to our native place.In a small haiku he is describing the whole of life. A child comes invited by the parents as a guest in the world, stays here some time, and again moves into the unknown universality, just as a wave arises and disappears in the ocean. This much is our so-called life.If you understand it, you become humble, you become utterly peaceful. You know that you are just a guest here; there is no need to possess anything, there is no need to cling to anything. Everything will be left behind and you will be gone. The tidal wave of death will be coming and will clean the shore of all the signatures that you have been making.Hotei, another Zen master’s haiku:Maitreya! Maitreya!Forever dividing himself,he is here, there, everywhere –yet scarcely noticed.This haiku is particularly important for us, because Maitreya is lying here. Hotei was not aware where Maitreya is. He used to sit here in the front row, and he has been missed. I can provoke him…(Sardarji gives a loud belly laugh from the back of the hall.)You see, Sardar Gurudayal Singh…he will have to go and provoke him, that is the problem. Because Maitreya won’t listen to anybody, he will have to be dragged out. And once in a while he comes, still knocks on doors in Lao Tzu House. For a few days Anando was very much terrified because he was knocking on her door every night. He used to be her neighbor.He is being missed tremendously, but anyway he is here in the trees, in the air.Maitreya! Maitreya!He is here, there, everywhere –yet scarcely noticed.Maitreya is Buddha’s other name. ‘The friend’ is the meaning of the word maitreya.A question by Maneesha:Osho,When you talk about nirvana, or anything else that our minds do not know, it is easy enough to listen without the mind – just allowing your words to filter through our consciousness, to use your words to meditate. However, when you speak on an issue that might affect our daily life, it is more difficult to listen without engaging the mind.For example, apparently, the other night some of us heard you endorse drugs; some of us heard you say they were of no help for seekers.If we use our mind at all in listening to you, have we missed the point of sitting here?Maneesha, your question is significant because it may be the question of many, and it arises because you are not listening. What I said the other night was neither that I want any kind of drugs, nor that I don’t want them. What I said was a third thing: I said that for centuries humanity has struggled to stop drugs, but has failed. The only way to get rid of drugs is to purify drugs. And it is possible because they are chemical – we can change their composition. And we can make them so useful that they don’t destroy or harm anybody, but just give him a restful, peaceful moment to look beyond his ordinary life. That may help him to inquire more deeply, that small incident may become a search for meditation.Unless drugs can be used as a step towards meditation they are dangerous. As they are today they are all dangerous, and no government has been able to prevent them. All kinds of measures…millions of people are in jail – particularly young people, who have been utterly destroyed by those drugs. And a simple solution…I have always wondered why the people who are in power always go for something that is impossible and don’t try that which is very simple. The simplest thing is that no factories should produce any drug that destroys anything in people’s minds. The drug should be a nourishment and creative of an urge towards meditation. But nobody has even proposed that.The situation is the same with all our difficulties. Those who are in power are in power only because most of the humanity is sick. Either they are sick because of undernourishment, or they are sick because of wrong nourishment. Either they are suffering from drugs, or they are suffering from anxieties and other anguishes.It seems the elite, the powerful, want people to remain as they are. Nobody wants that everybody should become a buddha. And every opportunity should be provided – by education, by parents, by neighbors – every opportunity to help the person to meditate.My understanding is that there is nothing in the world to be denied. I am absolutely in affirmation of everything, because even poison can be used to cure something. So nothing has to be denied, only you have to find how to use it in an affirmative way so that life becomes richer. Now, you say a few people heard that I endorse drugs. In a way, yes; however, not the drugs that are available, but the drugs that can be created, which will not be the same as marijuana or hashish or LSD. They will have a different composition of chemicals, helping your body and mind in all the possible ways. So they heard rightly, but they may interpret it wrongly.They may think, “My god, I have been thinking Osho is against drugs.” And they may have rushed after the meeting, thinking, “Enough of the buddha, now find someone who is selling all kinds of drugs.” But they misinterpreted me, they did injustice to me. I am not for these drugs.And you say, “Some of us heard you say they were of no use for seekers.” That was also wrong. As they are, they are of no use for seekers, they are hindrances. But it is in our hands to change them.Man can reach to the moon, and he cannot transform a drug with its negative, harmful aspects to have life affirmative, life enhancing qualities. It is simply a surprise. Nobody is trying in that direction just because the religious leaders are afraid: if people become satisfied with drugs, who is going to go to the church? Who is going to go to the temples? People will simply be enjoying drugs, and without any bad effects so you cannot even speak against them.The governments will be afraid of such drugs, because soldiers will be taking them and then you cannot convince them that they have to go to war. They will become so peaceful. They have to be kept in such a state that they are ready any moment to kill anybody. But if such drugs are available then there will be such peace in the soldiers. The general may order, “Turn left!” and nobody will turn left.I have told you the story of the professor in the second world war who was enrolled because more soldiers were needed, and from every profession. He was a professor of philosophy. He said again and again, “I am not the type one needs to become a soldier. I am a professor of philosophy,” but nobody heard him – everybody was finding excuses not to go to the front. He was forced.The first day he stood in line at the morning parade and the orders were given: “Turn left, turn right. Go forward, come back.” He remained standing.The general came to him and asked, “What is the matter, man? Why don’t you do what you are told?”He said, “What is the point? Finally everybody has to come here where I am standing. All this exercise…can you tell me the point of it, where they are going? Because finally they fall in, in the line. So I am already standing here. Nothing new is going to happen out of this left and right – I am watching.”The general said, “You are a very strange person. Who has recruited you into the army?” He said, “I have said beforehand that I am not the type. All these idiots – you included – are unnecessarily doing things. I don’t see any enemy here.”So he was taken to the man who had brought him – he was the manager of the mess. He was asked, “What to do with this man? He does not listen to the orders; on the contrary, he argues. And he is dangerous because others laugh, and his arguments may spread around, others may start saying the same things. He is a very dangerous person; I don’t want him in my regiment. He called me an idiot before everybody else. And in fact I cannot refute him, it is idiotic. So he was right, but I cannot have him, you put him to some other work.”The manager said, “I will put him in the mess.”There was a pile of peas, and he told him, “Sit down and sort out the peas – the bigger ones on this side, and the smaller ones on this side.” He said, “At least this I can do.”After one hour when the manager came, nothing had happened. The professor was simply sitting there, almost meditating. The manager said, “My god, what happened? You have not done anything, you have not even touched a single pea.”He said, “I am a man who never takes a single step without comprehending all the implications.”The manager had never heard the word implications. He said, “Implications? It was such a simple task.”He said, “It is not simple. You don’t understand the theory of relativity.”The manager said, “We don’t need Albert Einstein here. Anybody can do that – bigger ones on one side, smaller ones on the other side.”The professor said, “And what about those which are in the middle? That is the problem I’ve been meditating on – where to put them? They have no place, and you never told me where to put the middle ones. And this is a very complicated problem because some are bigger, some are smaller, some are even smaller, and some are even smaller than that. If I do it accurately then I will have to make a line out of the peas, which will go for miles. If you want me to do that I can do it, but I don’t see in what way it serves the country.“I thought you were a sensible man, but it seems the whole company here is of idiots. The first idiot was saying, ‘Left, right!’ And you are telling me to do a thing that is almost impossible. The line will go for miles, and who will take care? – I will be going with the line. So without comprehending all the implications, I cannot touch anything. I had told you beforehand that my profession is philosophy.”It is a trouble. Either you hear and then interpret it wrongly, or you don’t hear and then you think that drugs cannot help. Both are wrong, because both are thinking of the present day drugs. And I am saying that something that has not been solved for centuries and has disturbed millions of people’s lives…It is time that somebody points out to the scientists and to the governments of the world that they are unnecessarily torturing millions of people in jails. The simple thing will be to change the composition of the drugs and make the drugs healthier.But the trouble is, the government is interested in violent people, not silent people. And the priest is interested in tense, anxiety ridden, miserable people. Otherwise, who is going to pray for whom? This is the basic reason why nothing has been done; otherwise it is a simple matter, nothing can be more simple. And the same is the situation with other matters.And, Maneesha, I understand that you can listen about nirvana or anything else that your minds do not know. Do you want me to talk only about things which you don’t know? That will simply mean that I do not talk. Because in fact I have talked so much about nirvana that you know about it already as much as you know about drugs – perhaps more about nirvana than about drugs.And don’t you want me to talk about your practical life? You simply want me to talk about things you have nothing to do with – just have an entertainment and move towards the canteen.No, I will talk about your practical life and I will talk about the beyond together, because half is not possible. If you only talk about the beyond then your actual life remains the same and the beyond cannot be reached; it can never become your experience.I have to talk about the beyond so that slowly, slowly it sinks into every fiber of your being. And I have to talk about your practical life so that you can start changing that according to your life beyond. They have to become one. But right now nirvana has no meaning to you – it is just a word.People like to talk about things which make no difference in their life. But I am not interested in that kind of gathering. If you are not interested in transforming your life, you are wasting your time here unnecessarily.Your practical life and your life beyond are one single whole; they both have to be discussed. And you have to learn not to interpret, but to listen clearly to what I am saying.Maneesha has asked another question:Osho,Sometimes during meditation there is the sensation of consciousness arising and expanding. Is that the same phenomenon that is involved in watching?Maneesha, watching is the highest point. What arises in meditation is the beginning, it is just a dewdrop. When you will go farther and farther and farther and reach the ocean, then you will know the tremendous vastness and greatness and grandeur of watchfulness. Meditation is only a technique; watchfulness is your nature.Meditation is a way to reach to watchfulness.Now, something serious….Maggie Muldoon finally decides to go to see that infamous shrink, Doctor Feelgood.“Doc,” says Maggie, “my husband is unbearable. He drinks three bottles of whiskey a day, smokes five packs of cigarettes, and screams at me all day and all night to ‘do this!’ and ‘do that!’ He pushes me around, and he can’t keep a job.”“Well,” says Feelgood, putting down his notepad, “if he’s as bad as all that, why on earth did you have fifteen children by him?”“I was hoping,” replies Maggie, “to lose him in the crowd.”Kowalski is brought to court for stealing a frozen chicken from the local supermarket. Boris Babblebrain, the young lawyer, puts up an amazing defense for Kowalski and the Polack is found “not guilty.”“You are discharged,” says Judge Rumcake. But Kowalski does not move, he only looks back, blankly.“The judge says you can go,” says Babblebrain, waving his arms at Kowalski and the door.Suddenly, Kowalski’s face lights up and he smiles at the judge. “Thank you, your honor,” Kowalski says. “And does that mean I can keep the chicken?”Polly gets religion – it happens in Christianity; a few people get religion – and when she leaves her profession in a whorehouse she starts a new life with Christ’s Salvation Army. One night she is beating a drum on a street corner.“I used to lay in the arms of men!” shouts Polly. “Boom!” goes the drum.“White men!” shouts Polly. “Boom!”“Black men!” shouts Polly. “Boom! Boom!”“Chinamen!” shouts Polly. “Boom! Boom! Boom!”“I used to lay in the arms of the devil himself!” she shouts. “Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!”“That’s right, sister. Hallelujah!” comes a voice from the back of the crowd. “Screw them all!”But this is a common phenomenon, when people get religion. It is a great contribution of Christianity to the world – they get religion and also a drum! So they shout their sins and beat the drum to attract the attention of people, so they also can have religion. But it is such a stupid thing. Religion is not something that one gets – one has it, nobody can give it to you. It is your very being.Now, Nivedano…Boom!(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes.Feel your body to be completely frozen.Look inwards.This is the way to your innermost being.As your look centers,you become slowly aware of your real nature.The real nature we have called the buddha.In this moment you are all buddhas.And this moment can be carried all around the day. Not as a tension, not as a thought, but just as a fragrance, as a remembrance, an undercurrent. It will show in your practical life.The buddha is your beyond. It will show in your actions, in your responses, in everything that you do – the buddha will be present.And this is the greatest experience in the world, to have buddha present twenty-four hours inside you, like a burning torch radiating light all around, filling you with a deep contentment, making you aware of all the blessings of life that are continuously showered on you, but you have been blind.To make it more sharp and clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax, let go.You are just a watcher.The mind is there, the body is there,but you are not the body,neither are you the mind.You are simply a watcher.Just watching, you become more and more centered.Just watching, you come closer and closerto the universal center.Just watching, and you have got it:the eternity of it,the immortality of it,the tremendous rejoicing of it.A man who has experienced buddha within himself,his whole life becomes a festival,a festival of lights.Each moment a ceremony,each moment a dance,each moment thousands of flowersblossom in the consciousness.The deeper the watcher goes,the more hidden treasures open their doors.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back. But come back as a buddha,remembering the space in which you have been.Bring that joy with you,that peace, that silence, all those flowers.Sit for a few seconds just like a buddha.Can we celebrate the meeting of the buddhas?

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The Language of Existence 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Language of Existence 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Bukko said:“The way out of life-and-death is not some special technique; the essential thing is to see through to the root of life-and-death. That root is not something that fell from heaven or sprang up from earth. It is at the center of the functioning of every man, living with his life, dying with his death, becoming a buddha, making a patriarch. These are all in dependence of it, and one who goes into Zen has to pierce and break through to this thing.“What is called Zen sitting is not some sort of operation to be performed, and to take it so is wrong. In our line, it is simply realizing what one’s own true heart really is, and it is necessary to pledge oneself to the true heart.Going into Zen is seeing one’s original nature, and the main thing is to make out what one was before even father or mother were born. For this, one must concentrate one’s feeling and purify it, then, eliminating all that weighs on one’s thought and feeling, one must go to grasp the self.“We are saying that the self seeks to grasp the self, but in fact it is already the self, so why should it go to grasp the self?It is because in the mass of knowings and perceivings and judgments, the true self is always so wrapped up in the distinctions and exclusivities that it does not emerge to show itself as it is.”Maneesha, in the world of Zen, Bukko is something like George Gurdjieff. When George Gurdjieff for the first time said, “You all don’t have souls. Unless you achieve a crystallization of your being, you will live and die just as a signature on the sand; winds will come and you will be forgotten. There will not be left a single trace of you,” it shocked the whole spiritual world, because all the religions and all the spiritual traditions at least agree on one thing, that the soul is immortal. You have it whether you know it or not and it can never die.Death happens to the body, not to the soul. It is simply a separation from the body and a movement into a new body. But the journey of the soul is eternal: body to body, species to species. Finally it achieves its nature, matures, and it is revealed to it that it is the buddha. That has been a common understanding around the whole world for centuries.Gurdjieff was alive just fifty years ago. He made a point of it that not everybody has a soul, the soul has to be earned. This was a very new idea, that you have to deserve it. Ordinarily you are just an empty bottle; inside there is nothing. You have to earn, you have to be worthy, you have to gather your consciousness in such a crystallized way that it can pass through death without dying.So according to George Gurdjieff, only a few people live eternally, most people are just experimental. They are born, they do all kinds of stupid things, and the final stupidity – they die. But they don’t leave even a trace in the world of eternity. Only very few people, like Gautam Buddha, achieve to the eternal. And because of these few people, the fallacy has come into being that everybody has an eternal being: Buddha achieved it, Mahavira achieved it, Bukko achieved it. Gurdjieff’s logic was, because these few have achieved it, people think everybody else has it – just he has not discovered it.Gurdjieff was not ready to agree on only discovering, because discovery means it already exists – you have just to pull back the curtains. Gurdjieff used a word never before used in spiritual experience, and that was ‘crystallization’. You have this small life and this small consciousness. You can make it so concentrated, so hard, like a diamond, that it can pass through fire without being burned. But unless you do it, don’t hope.Have you ever observed that coal has the same chemical elements as a diamond? There is no chemical difference between diamonds and coal, but coal has no value. What has happened to the diamond? How has it become the diamond? A piece of coal, for millions of years, under tremendous pressure, becomes crystallized, and because the heat has been tremendous, now no fire can burn it. It is the hardest thing in the world. Crystallization means a coal becoming a diamond.I am prefacing Bukko’s statement with Gurdjieff. Perhaps Gurdjieff was not aware of Bukko at all. He traveled in India, he traveled up to Tibet, but he never went to Japan or China. He gathered from Mohammedan mystics, Hindu mystics and Tibetan mystics many secrets of crystallization. I don’t think he even heard the name of Bukko; otherwise he would have found at least one person who agrees with him. Bukko’s idea is also the same. The terminology is almost similar but being in a Buddhist world he uses different words. But the sense and the fragrance can be caught by anyone who is acquainted with Gurdjieff.I would like you to understand Bukko as a predecessor of George Gurdjieff; George Gurdjieff is not alone. And they have a point. I don’t agree with either of them but I certainly appreciate their idea – their idea is a device. To say to you that, “You are just empty, without any soul, unless you earn it,” is very necessary for sleeping people, for unconscious people, for their awakening. Even if you are fast asleep and the idea suddenly occurs to you that “I am empty,” you will jump out of the bed and try to look: What is the meaning of my life? Who am I?I have told you Mulla Nasruddin’s famous anecdote…. He had come to Kaaba for a great fair that happens every year – millions of Mohammedans go to the stone of Kaaba to worship it. There was so much crowd; every caravanserai, every hotel, every possible place was completely filled. He went around…finally he collapsed before a hotel manager.He said, “I will die. The whole day I have been searching for somewhere to stay and I have not been able to find a place. You have to help me; otherwise my death will be on your head.”The manager said, “It is very difficult. Every room is full, just…I am a little concerned but I will tell you one thing. One room has two beds, and one bed is unoccupied. The other fellow is fast asleep, so if you can silently go to sleep without disturbing the other fellow – because it is against the laws of the hotel – I can allow you. And in the early morning you will have to leave.”He said, “I am absolutely willing.” Feeling a great relief, he went into the room. But Mulla was Mulla – his nature…He could not resist to say at least good night to the other fellow.The other fellow was dead. That’s why the manager had said, “Silently you go to sleep – don’t disturb the other fellow. He is fast asleep.” But when he did not answer good night, Mulla pushed him from this side and that side, and finally tried to open his eyes. And when he saw that that man was dead, he freaked out.The whole hotel gathered and the manager said, “I was afraid of this – and you did this. What was the need for you? You had a bed, you simply should have gone to sleep. What were you doing with that fellow? He is fast asleep.”Mulla said, “Fast asleep? My God, I cannot sleep in this room. He is dead!”But the manager was a mystic, and he said, “You only think that you are alive. He also thinks he is alive. I have tried the whole day to persuade him that ‘You are not alive,’ but he does not listen. Now, you think you are alive – do you have any proof that you are alive?”Mulla said, “Never in my life has anybody asked for proof of my life, and I don’t know whether really I am alive or just fast asleep like that fellow, only speaking in sleep. Many people speak in sleep, have great dialogues.”According to George Gurdjieff, this is your situation. You sleep, you wake up in the morning, you do everything according to a routine, but is there really a soul in you? Do you think you will be able to pass through the funeral pyre? Is there anything in you that you have touched, felt, experienced, that will not be burned?Perhaps you have never thought about it. You have simply believed the idea of all religions that everybody has a soul, an immortal soul. It is a good idea, that you will be here always, enjoying different ways of being: sometimes a tiger, and sometimes an elephant, and sometimes a man – but you will be here. That idea has gone so deep in man’s mind that he does not feel the necessity to discover it; there is no need.To create the need Gurdjieff and Bukko both insisted that as you are, you are really empty. You can be filled with fulfillment and contentment, with tremendous joy and celebration, but you will have to do something.Bukko said:“The way out of life-and-death is not some special technique.”To go beyond life-and-death there is no certain technique. The essential thing is to see through to the root of life-and-death. Do you know you have roots? You know perfectly well any tree uprooted is going to die. Roots are hidden underneath the ground. Just because you don’t have roots in the ground, because you walk here and there…Have you heard about trees in Africa which walk? Not very fast, no traffic rule is needed, but they go on moving towards the sources where more water is available. What will you say – their roots are their legs? Nothing can exist without roots.In the same part of Africa where trees move – sometimes miles from their place – another kind of tree also exists: the cannibal tree. It has big leaves and a very intoxicating fragrance so that any bird that comes close is bound to have a little desire to experience it. And the flower is so full of juice that it is irresistible. It has not yet been heard of that any bird has renounced and passed beyond the tree; no bird can do that. The bird simply sits on the flower, drinking. While the bird is drinking the juice, the flower closes and crushes the bird.Rather than the bird drinking the tree, the tree drinks the bird. And as the bird is completely squeezed out, the flower opens again, throwing the dead body outside, waiting for somebody else. Its flowers are very big – even a human being can be caught in them – and very strong, very muscular.It has eaten a few human beings! Ordinarily it does not happen because those flowers open too high up…unless some fellow like Mulla Nasruddin climbs the tree and tries to look inside the flower – what is happening there? But it will eat birds of any kind, any size. Once in a while if some accident happens – perhaps in a high wind the tree has fallen and a man is passing by…You cannot go away without having a closer look, because so much fragrance you have never smelt, and it is so intoxicating, alcoholic. When you come close the flower gives you a good hug, but then you cannot get out of the hug. He sucks all your blood and leaves you just as an empty shell. Have you ever thought that you are an empty shell?But Bukko and Gurdjieff both insist…although they know everybody has the potentiality of becoming a buddha. But that does not mean that you can simply remain believing it. You have to be awakened, and you cannot be awakened unless you are really shocked. This is their way of shocking people into awakening.Once you start looking inwards, you will find your roots. Those roots are not in the earth and those roots are not in heaven. Those roots are in your own being, connected with the universal being. Neither can you see your own being, nor can you see the universal being. But once you feel your roots, you have come to a place from where you can take the jump into the universal life.Then fire does not matter. Then you are beyond ordinary material things. Then no sword can cut you and no fire can burn you. Now there is no life and no death, but a totally new phenomenon which is beyond.The other ordinary fallacy is that by being spiritual you will overcome death. But you don’t understand that you can overcome death only if you overcome life also. They are both part of one coin, two sides; you cannot have a coin which has only one side. The moment you transcend death, in the same moment you transcend life. Then what remains? All that we know is our mundane life…and then one day people are carrying you towards the burning ghat. We don’t know anything at all beyond life-and-death.Bukko’s approach is:“The way out of life-and-death is not some special technique; the essential thing is to see through to the root of life-and-death.”From where this life is arising, from the same place death will arise. To be more accurate, life and death both are walking together. They are two wings, or two legs – side by side.Every day you live, every day you die. It is not that after seventy years, one day suddenly you die. It is not possible so suddenly, for no reason – just lying in your bed and you die. And what have you been doing for seventy years? Seventy years’ training of life ends in a single moment? No, the more accurate account is that you start dying the day you are born.Every day you are living and dying, living and dying; both processes are together. At a certain point in the journey – seventy years, eighty years, ninety years – the energy that was carrying you is finished. The roots no longer support you, the roots no longer nourish you; you shrink, you close your eyes and you die.All the meditations are in fact in the search for the roots from where the life has arisen and to where the life goes back – to where? If we can find the roots, we can find from where it is getting its nourishment. And to know the universal life as your nourishment, you have gone beyond life-and-death. This is the authentic Zen experience.“That root is not something that fell from heaven or sprang up from earth. It is at the center of the functioning of every man, living with his life, dying with his death, becoming a buddha, making a patriarch.”Whatever you do, at the center of your being is the root that is connecting you with the universal life source.“These are all in dependence of it, and one who goes into Zen has to pierce and break through this thing.What is called Zen sitting is not some sort of operation to be performed, and to take it so is wrong. In our line, it is simply realizing what one’s own true heart really is, and it is necessary to pledge oneself to the true heart.Going into Zen is seeing one’s original nature, and the main thing is to make out what one was before even father or mother were born. For this one must concentrate one’s feeling and purify it, then, eliminating all that weighs on one’s thought and feeling, one must go to grasp the self.“We are saying that the self seeks to grasp the self, but in fact it is already the self, so why should it go to grasp the self?It is because in the mass of knowings and perceivings and judgments, the true self is always so wrapped up in the distinctions and exclusivities that it does not emerge to show itself as it is.”Bukko’s way is very special in the lineage of Zen masters. He ends up in the same place but he follows a very different route.He is saying: first you have to encounter your heart, the very center of your being. And as you encounter it, hold on to it. The holding of your own self is necessary because so many judgments, imaginations, theories, rationalizations have been forced upon you. They drag you away from yourself; otherwise every child is born with a pure self. Just turning his eyes in, he will encounter himself, there is no need to grab. But for you, you are lost in a crowd of many conceptions, many ideas about the self – what it is, how it functions, whether it is or not.So the first thing is to find the center of your functionings. One thing is certain, that you are functioning: speaking, talking, walking, breathing. One thing is certain – you are functioning, so we are not moving from any theoretical point.That is the contribution of Bukko and Gurdjieff both: they always move from a real point, not a point of belief. The only thing that you know about is that you are a functioning mechanism. Your mind thinks, your heart falls in love, you feel hungry, you drink water when you feel thirsty. All that you know about you is so many functions. These are not theorizations; it is not a question of being a Hindu or being a Mohammedan. When you are thirsty, whoever you are, water is needed to quench the thirst. You cannot say, “I am a Catholic – how can water quench my thirst if it is quenching the thirst of the Protestant?”The actual functioning should be your starting point. Then just look inwards to find the center – from where these functions are arising. From where you become hungry, from where arises the thirst. Where is the point from where the breathing arises? Just choose these functions, any function. For example, Buddha has chosen breathing; it is one of the functions. From where does it arise? When you breathe, just watch. But breathe fully, because nobody breathes fully.You will be surprised that our breathing reaches only to thirty percent. Seventy percent of our lungs are full of carbon dioxide; they never breathe. Only when you are running or doing some gymnastics do you start breathing more. To breathe one hundred percent without running, just sitting and taking in the breath, in silence, to its deepest source, you will find the roots not only of breathing, but of hunger, of thirst, of intelligence, of everything.When I say “Go to the center” that’s what I mean. Every day we “go in” in meditation. People think that just by closing the eyes you are in. If you were just-born, certainly you would be in. But there is so much garbage, so many scriptures and so many scholars standing in between you and your real self that before you go anywhere they will say, “Where are you going? I have the answer. There is no need to torture yourself. Just say, ‘I am the immortal self’ and you will be back home. Why bother unnecessarily? Aham brahmasmi – I am the ultimate.”I have asked many Hindu sannyasins, “Have you really experienced it – aham brahmasmi – or just read it in a scripture?” If they are alone, without their disciples, they will say, “To be true, we have not reached to that point yet, but someday we will reach. At least we have understood the scripture.” It is just scripture. It is not your experience. All religions have managed to turn humanity into parrots.A bishop used to have a parrot – a very unique specimen. He used to give the whole Sermon on the Mount. And everybody was surprised about his authority, accuracy. The parrot died and the bishop was very sad. He went to every pet shop, and finally at one shop the man said, “I have the right parrot for you, come within. It is very special.” The parrot was very beautiful, and the man described him: “Do you see around one of the legs of the parrot a small thread, and around the other leg another small thread?”The bishop looked and he said, “Yes.”He said, “If you pull one thread he will immediately give you the Sermon on the Mount.”The bishop said, “That’s what I have been looking for. And what about the other leg?”He said, “If you pull the other leg he will give you a lecture on the Koran. He has been trained for both religions, so anybody can purchase him, either a Mohammedan or a Christian.”The bishop said, “This is even better – just for a change…” But the bishop said, “I have an inquiry. If I pull both threads together, what will happen?”The parrot said, “You idiot! I will fall flat on the ground. What will happen? This way you must have killed your last parrot. I refuse to go with this man.”The owner of the pet shop said, “You have disturbed my parrot – he is a very intelligent person, and you asked such an unintelligent question. If you pull both legs, obviously he will fall.”All the religions have converted everybody into a parrot. And people are perfectly satisfied with being parrots; it is so easy, so simple. But the experience needs tremendous energy to inquire, a great love to find out who you are, where are your roots.Our effort here is not to create parrots. That is being done in every church, in every synagogue, in every temple, in every mosque. Our effort is to bring you to your own roots, because from those roots, slowly slowly you can sink deeper into the universal, into the ultimate. There is no other way.It is not a technique, it is simply grabbing your original roots, from where you are coming. Naturally you have to dig deep – and without any fear because nothing can be taken from you. The day you were born your destiny was decided, that you will die. Between birth and death, whatever you do is of no meaning.Only one thing can be meaningful: if you can find the roots of birth and death. Then you can sit silently like a buddha, in utter peace, with no fear, in great ecstasy.Tokken wrote:Seventy-six years,unborn, undying:clouds break up,moon sails on.Zen has such a beautiful way of saying things.Seventy-six years,unborn, undying:clouds break up,moon sails on.He is giving you the idea how you have been moving. Clouds are there but the moon goes on moving. Once you have got hold of the moon, it does not matter whether clouds are there or not – they don’t leave their marks on the moon.Isa wrote, on the death of his child:This dewdrop world –it may be a dewdrop,and yet…and yet….He loved his child very much – the mother had died. He loved his small child and that child also died. On his death he wrote this small haiku…not saying much, still it says much.This dewdrop world –it may be a dewdrop,Agreed, it is a dewdrop – and particularly this small child.…and yet…and yet….Yet a love arises. Yet one feels for it.Zen is not against the world. On the contrary, it makes your dewdrop love into an oceanic love. It is absolutely for reality – it is not an escape. It is a tremendous indulgence into the very roots of your being. And the man who knows his roots, only he lives. Others only pretend; others are simply actors acting somebody else’s role.A man who is original is not acting anybody’s role, he is himself. And his authority does not come from anybody, it comes from the universe itself.Maneesha has asked:Osho,I am seriously concerned: last night when you were speaking of the senses, as traditionally classified, you did not mention the eighth sense, the sense of humor. What happened?I thought you would understand it without saying. All that we are doing here is practicing the sense of humor – that’s why I left it out of the count. But if you want, it can be counted in, because certainly only man has the sense of humor. No buffalo laughs – and if you find a buffalo laughing you will run so fast. You will lose all control over yourself if suddenly your horse starts laughing!The whole world is silent as far as laughter is concerned – only man laughs. Man can laugh because he has a small consciousness. As the consciousness grows deeper, his humor also becomes deeper. At the ultimate peak, everything becomes a hilarious festival, a carnival.Something about the sense of humor….Captain Kurtski, the pilot, turns on the public address system.“We will be landing at Moscow airport in three hours’ time. We hope you have had a pleasant trip. Thank you for flying Polack Airlines.”Then, forgetting to turn off the loudspeaker, he turns to copilot Cliffski.“Take over, Cliffs,” says Curtsey, his voice booming through the plane. “I’m going for a cup of coffee, and then I’m going to take that new stewardess, Gertie, and give her all my hot Polish machinery.”Gertie, the stewardess, hears this in the main cabin of the plane. She dashes towards the cockpit to tell Kurtski to shut up. On the way, she trips and nearly falls over, next to a little old lady.“Don’t be in such a hurry, dearie,” says the little old lady. “Let him finish his coffee at least.”Paddy is feeling sad as he orders his tenth beer at the Loony Licker Pub.“What’s wrong, Paddy?” asks Igor, the bartender.“I lost my dog,” sobs Paddy.“Why don’t you put an advertisement in the newspaper?” suggests Igor.“It is no good,” moans Paddy. “My dog can’t read.”Old lady Gilda runs the town drugstore with her sister, Maggie. One day, a large stranger comes to town and is feeling very horny. But the town is very quiet, and he cannot find anyone to help him relieve his hormonal harassment. So he decides to go to the pharmacy to get something to take for it. When he walks in he sees old lady Gilda at the counter.“Excuse me,” says the stranger, slightly embarrassed, “but I would like to see the boss.”“Well,” says Gilda, “I am the boss.”“Oh,” stammers the stranger, “then I would like to see a man clerk.”“Sorry,” says Gilda casually, “we ain’t got no man clerk. But you can tell me what you want, I won’t be embarrassed.”“Okay,” says the stranger. “I have got an awful erection. What can you give me for it?”“Just a minute,” says Gilda, and she goes back inside the store.Five minutes later she returns.“I have just been talking with my sister, Maggie, who makes up the prescriptions,” says Gilda, smiling, “and we decided the best we can give you is the whole store and two hundred dollars.”You get it?No, even Sardar Gurudayal Singh is silent. Late in the night think of it again. Then you will know what the sense of humor is.It is training time at Camp Killjoy and the American General, Lard Peckerhead, is hosting a training camp for a group of Russian and Polack soldiers.General Popov, the Russian officer, and Field Marshal Dogski, the Polack, are discussing courage with General Peckerhead.“Let me demonstrate real courage,” barks the Russian officer. “Climb up that telephone pole,” he commands one of his men, “and jump straight down.” The soldier obeys immediately, and is carried away by the medical team.Not to be out-done, the American general yells, “I’ll show you courage! Climb that telephone pole and jump down backwards,” he screams at his soldier. The man does and is also carried away, broken and battered, by the medical team.“That’s nothing,” says Field Marshal Dogski, the Polack. “Watch this. Hey, Klopski! Climb that telephone pole, jump off, do a double-flip, and land on your head.”The soldier looks at the general, then yells back, “Fuck you, you stupid bastard!”“You see, gentlemen?” replies Dogski, proudly. “Now, that is courage!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes.Feel the body to be completely frozen.Look inwards…to the very roots of your being.Deeper…and deeper,as if you are digging a hole in the earth.To reach to the roots is to discover the buddha within you, the eternal principal of life. A little more…a little more…Sometimes one returns from only one step away – if he had taken one step more, he would have found the roots. So until you find the roots go on digging – they are there.One thing is absolutely certain, that you have roots in existence. It is only a question of digging deep enough to find them. And you are prepared to reach to the roots and to reach the universal nourishment which is our eternal life.Only once you have experienced this can you say, aham brahmasmi, I am the divine.Before this experience you are just an emptiness.With this experience life becomes a fulfillment,a great benediction.Now, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax…let go, just be a watcher.The body is lying there, the mind is lying there…You are not the mind, you are not the body,you are just the watcher.This watcher is another name for your roots. This watcher is the original man, the buddha. Let it sink into every fiber of your being, drink it deeply. It is the greatest moment in life – to drink the divine.What a beautiful evening…so many drunkards, and such a great silence…and the rain drops creating a song of their own, the coolness of the wind making your experience richer.In this moment you are all one consciousness. It is no more a crowd of people,it is just one consciousness,one divine being pervading all of you.It is just an atmosphere,an ocean in which you all have drowned.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back…but come back as a buddha.Come back slowly, peacefully, gracefully,collecting the experience…You have to carry this experience in your day-to-day life. Sit down for a few moments, remembering that you are a buddha. It is no more parrot talk, it is your experience – you have been to the ocean yourself.With deep authority sit down as a buddha.Slowly slowly it becomesyour normal, natural heartbeat.The rains have come to rejoice with you,and to celebrate with you.Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

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The Language of Existence 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Language of Existence 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Torei said:“If you want to be free from this world of suffering, first you must contemplate impermanence.Those who are born must inevitably die. Even the young are not exempt; even the strong are in danger. Even a long life does not last more than eighty years or so. If you don’t annihilate the nature of afflictions somehow, and arrive on the path of liberation, even if you ascend to the rank of sovereign of a nation, great minister, deity, spirit, or wizard, it is still evanescent as lightning and morning dew, lasting only for a while.“When conditions meet, everything surely seems to exist; but when the conditions disintegrate – emptiness. This body is gained through the relationship of father and mother, and comes from their conditions. Solidity becomes skin, flesh, ligament, and bone; fluidity becomes spittle, tears, pus, and blood; heat becomes warmth and flexibility; air becomes breath and movement.When these four conditions suddenly are exhausted, the body gets cold and the breath stops – there is nothing called “me.” At that time this body is really not our own; it is only a temporary inn. How can we be so greedily attached to this temporary inn that we ignore eternity?“Contemplating these four transcendences – impermanence, suffering, emptiness, selflessness – seeking the way of enlightenment is called, “the teaching of four realities for disciples.” This is the essential gateway to beginning entry into the way for all enlightened ones.”Maneesha, before I discuss Torei’s serious things, I have to introduce a few new animal gods into Avirbhava’s Museum of Gods. Before I call her, I will have to tell you something about these gods.Sheep: The male sheep is known as a ram and has been a symbol of numerous gods. Osiris and Ammon-Ra of Egypt were both worshipped as rams. The ram was sacrificed each year in Egypt. It was skinned and the skin placed over an image of the god, recalling the time when Ammon-Ra was incarnated in the form of a ram.Apes: In ancient Egypt, apes were considered sacred and were preserved by embalming them at death.Mouse: One of the greatest of the Greek gods, Apollo, was known to take the form of a mouse in his role as sender of the plague. Apollo, the sun god, would incarnate as mice and rats to dispel the forces of night.Horse: In Hinduism, the tenth incarnation of Vishnu is a white horse, Kalki. It has not yet happened. Nine incarnations have happened; the tenth is awaited. The tenth will be called Kalki. It will be a white horse, who is to come to judge the world at the end of this yuga, the fourth and the last cycle of one million, eight hundred thousand years in the Hindu concept of the world. He will destroy the wicked, reward the good, and enable Vishnu to create a new world.It seems the time for Kalki is coming near. Beware of the white horse!Bull: In ancient Persia, the bull was worshipped as the god who caused the grass to grow. In Greece, the great god Zeus used the guise of a bull to seduce Europa, hoping thereby that his animal transformation would elude his ever-watchful wife, Hera, from detecting his adultery. The followers of Dionysius would kill a bull during midsummer festivals in honor of the great god Zeus.This Museum of Gods is not just a museum, it shows how human mind has remained retarded. Rather than bringing consciousness to its heights, man has been worshipping all kinds of animals. Even the future, the final incarnation of God in Hinduism, Kalki, is going to be a white horse – not a man, not a buddha. It shows the retardedness, the primitiveness of our intelligence. This museum will be a symbol to the whole world to remind them: “This is what your forefathers have been doing, what you are doing. And you call it religion!”Before I ask Avirbhava to bring her new acquisitions, two little jokes about these gods.Late one night, Satan the devil and his partner, Lucifer the monkey, knock on the door of Pope the Polack’s Vatican apartment. The Polack Pope comes to the door with an arm around his best friend, Simon the sheep.“Good evening, your phoniness,” says the devil, grinning cheekily and fondling his forked tail. “My friend and I were wondering, do you have any midget nuns in your apartment?”“Certainly not!” snaps back the pope, trying to slam the door.“Well then, Holy Father,” chuckles the devil, licking the flames of his lips and jamming his pitchfork in the doorway, “do you have any midget nuns living in the Vatican?”“I don’t know of any,” cries the frightened Pope the Polack.“Perhaps,” giggles Lucifer, the monkey, swinging from Satan’s pitchfork, “you know of any midget nuns living anywhere?”“I cannot say,” shouts Pope the Polack, infuriated, “that I know of any midget nuns anywhere at all!” And he grabs Simon the sheep’s crucifix, and waves it wildly under the devil’s nose.The devil picks up the monkey by the shoulders, lifts him in the air, and shakes him hard.“You see, you idiot!” shouts Satan. “I told you, you fucked a penguin!”Pope the Polack goes for a summer retreat into the mountains of Italy. He lives in a little stone cottage, and the only companions he has are a flock of sheep.After a few days without any company, the Polack pope becomes crazy for sex, and he chooses one of the horned sheep as a partner.He takes off his gown and puts his machinery into the sheep. But while he is in action with the poor animal, it suddenly starts to run. Pope the Polack, with his underwear down around his ankles, is unable to do anything but hold on to the sheep’s horns.They race down the mountainside together, past a field where Grandma Pickle is picking daisies. Grandma is a little short-sighted, but looks up in amazement as the sheep and the Polack pope go racing past.“My god!” she mutters to herself. “No money to buy pants, but he is driving a white motorbike!”Now, Avirbhava, bring your gods.(Osho laughingly beckons Avirbhava forward. Avirbhava comes forward with a bull dressed as the pope, while simultaneously sheep and mice start dancing in front of Osho on a string, and an ape is bouncing up and down wildly on a piece of elastic.)Great!(Avirbhava assists the little pope in kissing Osho’s feet, while a live recording of the pope’s sermon booms over the loudspeakers.)Great, Avirbhava!(There is general hilarity with the mice squeaking, the ape growling, etc. by this time Osho is really enjoying it!)That’s good!Now the serious matter….Torei is not a master but he is certainly a great teacher. And I have chosen him so that you can make a clear-cut distinction between the greatest teacher and the smallest master.Even the smallest master, the humblest master, has a beauty, a truth, a realization. He may not say a single word, but his silence is a scripture. The greatest teacher may know all the scriptures, may have great interpretations, but he remains a parrot. What he says he does not know; his saying is dependent on his learning, studying, but not on his experience, not on his existential approach to his own being.Torei is a good example of a great teacher. But such teachers can deceive humanity – they have been deceiving, because they talk beautifully. Their words are the same as the words of the masters – sometimes more refined, more cultivated, more cultured – but still they are empty. Once in a while they may quote a sentence which has significance; not because of them, but because that sentence has come from some great living master. They have been great collectors, but as far as their own reality is concerned they are as ignorant as one can be.Torei said:“If you want to be free from this world of suffering, first you must contemplate impermanence.”I have told you these words: concentration, contemplation, meditation. The fourth, which is missing in the English language, is dhyana, or Zen in Japanese.Contemplation is the way of the philosopher. He thinks it over. It is not beyond mind, it is within mind. He may be very sophisticated, his words may be arranged beautifully, but he cannot understand what meditation is; he can only understand contemplation. The very word contemplation means thinking about higher things. But if you don’t know those things, what can you think about?Contemplation is one of the most empty words. If you know, you know; there is no need to contemplate. If you don’t know, how can you contemplate? What are you going to contemplate? What is going to be your subject matter? You are simply groping in darkness and calling it contemplation.He certainly is acquainted with the scriptures, very well acquainted, but he is committing the same mistake millions of teachers around the world have committed. First:“If you want to be free from this world of suffering…”Can you find a person who does not want to be free from suffering? There is no question about it. Everybody wants to get rid of suffering, misery.The way that Torei suggests is, “…first you must contemplate impermanence.” It won’t help. You can think everything is impermanent: birth is impermanent, youth is impermanent, wealth is impermanent; life itself is running out. Everything is impermanent. That does not mean it will take you out of suffering. It simply makes you more aware that while there is time, enjoy as much as you can, because time is passing and death is not far away.Strangely enough, the same argument is given by Charvakas, the Indian atheists. They say, “Everything is fleeting, so don’t waste time in temples, in rituals, just eat, drink and be merry. And if you don’t have money, borrow money, because after death everyone is finished, nobody is going to ask for his money back. After death, in the graveyard everybody sleeps soundly. The man who borrowed the money and the man who gave the money both are dead. So don’t miss a single moment. Enjoy it, even if it is to be enjoyed on borrowed money.”The statement in Sanskrit is very beautiful. The statement says, no one who has gone beyond death has ever come back. This is enough proof, more than enough, that death is the end. And if death is the end, then why be worried about small things? It may be your own pocket or somebody else’s pocket, it does not matter. Death will not differentiate between the sinner and the saint. There is no one to make the judgment.Rinam kritva ghritam pibet. Even if you have to borrow money, borrow it, but drink refined butter. Don’t be worried about tomorrow.It was a great school, not only in India but in Greece also. These were the two countries at that time which were touching the peaks of civilization. In Greece there was a great man, Epicurus, and he still has a small following. But generally, the whole Western world is Epicurean; they may know, they may not know.Epicurus’ whole teaching was that all is matter, and when all matter disintegrates nothing is left behind. So don’t bother about any spirituality, and don’t bother about any other world – there is none. There has not been a single witness. It is certainly a tremendous argument, that there is not a single witness of the other world, the paradise. It seems to be all fancy, imagination, wish-fulfillment. What you cannot get here, you project that you will get it after life. It gives a certain consolation.But what can you contemplate? Even if you contemplate that everything is impermanent, that simply means do it quick, be speedy, things are fast running out of hand; squeeze the juice of every moment without delay. Contemplation can take you into an atheistic worldview.“Those who are born must inevitably die. Even the young are not exempt.”Just because everyone is going to die…Torei and similar teachers think that it is enough for people to become detached because everything is going to die. The result is just the contrary – because everything is going to die, be quick before it dies.A man was brought into a court in France for making love to a woman on the sea beach. The charge was that he had been making love to a dead woman.The magistrate asked him, “What do you have to say?”He said, “I thought she was an English lady.”Man has been told by these teachers:“Even the strong are in danger. Even a long life does not last more than eighty years or so.”The desire is that you will think, “Everything is so changing, what is the point in going after it?” That’s what Torei is thinking. But he is absolutely blind to the fact that the more people think things are going to change, the more they increase their speed. Why has humanity been increasing its speed?I have heard…A newly-wed couple is rushing in a fresh, new Ferrari. The girl feels afraid because the car is going at one hundred and fifty miles per hour. She is trembling, and she asks the man, “Please at least look at the map.”The man says, “Who bothers about the map! Is it not enough to enjoy the speed itself? We must reach somewhere, it cannot be nowhere. You can consult the map – I am enjoying the speed. I don’t have any time to waste consulting the map. What is the point? Wherever we reach, we will find a hotel; whether its name is Honeymoon Hotel or not does not matter.”Increasingly, humanity has been interested in speed, more speed. Perhaps you have not taken into consideration the implication. The implication is, do everything as fast and quickly as you can because life is short. But these people like Torei thought that if people contemplate that everything is going to die…why love this woman if she is going to die? – if not today then tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Even if she does not die, she will be in a worse position – she will become old. What is the point in loving a woman who will become old?A man was telling a woman, “I love you. I love you more than my life.”The woman said, “Really? Will you love me always as you love me now?”The man contemplated and he said, “There is only one problem. When you become old, will you look like your mother? Then I withdraw my statement. I cannot love your mother – that much is certain. Will you remain the same?”Nothing remains the same.From the point of change there are two roads. One leads to atheism, materialism – enjoy, there is nothing much to discover. The other road is that because everything is impermanent, try to find something permanent. That is what the masters do – help the person to find something in himself that is absolutely eternal.That is the goal of meditation, not of contemplation. But a thinker cannot understand meditation. He cannot understand that you can go out of your mind. How can you jump out of your mind? You are mind. To him you are nothing more than mind. And you can see his statement:“If you don’t annihilate the nature of afflictions somehow, and arrive on the path of liberation, even if you ascend to the rank of sovereign of a nation, great minister, deity, spirit, or wizard, it is still evanescent as lightning and morning dew, lasting only for a while.When conditions meet, everything surely seems to exist; but when the conditions disintegrate – emptiness.”You are just a certain combination of conditions. When those conditions meet, you are. When those conditions disintegrate – nothingness. A buddha can also say the same thing, but he says it because he knows nothingness is not nothingness, because he knows you have entered into your inner sky – which looks to the outsider like nothingness.But when a teacher says this, not knowing anything about it, there is every danger that he will create people who will become materialists. If everything ends then what is the point of being virtuous, what is the point of prayer, what is the point of donations, what is the point of service to the poor? Why waste time? Just enjoy life – drink, dance, do whatever you want to, because death will come. And it comes to everyone, the saint and the sinner, in a similar way; it does not make any categories.“This body is gained through the relationship of father and mother,”This type of thing can be told only by a teacher. Everybody knows this body is gained through the relationship of father and mother. And then more stupid things he goes on saying:“…and comes from their conditions. Solidity becomes skin.”How can solidity become skin? If I had met this fellow…I have every respect for his learning but I would put him to task, to turn solidity into skin – or skin into solidity, that would do.“…flesh, ligament, and bone; fluidity becomes spittle, tears, pus and blood; heat becomes warmth and flexibility; air becomes breath and movement.”Great philosophy! And he is talking as if he is stating some scientific discoveries.“When these four conditions suddenly are exhausted, the body gets cold and the breath stops – “Great contemplation!“…there is nothing called “me.” At that time this body is really not our own; it is only a temporary inn. How can we be so greedily attached to this temporary inn that we ignore eternity?“Contemplating these four transcendences – impermanence, suffering, emptiness, selflessness – seeking the way of enlightenment is called, “the teaching of four realities for disciples.” This is the essential gateway to beginning entry into the way for all enlightened ones.”This is the problem with the learned scholarship. They see that the enlightened one shows in his every action non-attachment, impermanence, because the enlightened one never suffers; in his consciousness he is beyond suffering. The scholar watches all these qualities from the outside and then he creates his great ideology: if you contemplate impermanence, non-attachment, suffering, you will enter into the gateway of the buddhas.He himself has not entered. These are not the words of a buddha, these are the words of a great teacher who has collected fragments of teachings from here and there. And he is not honest, either – no scholar is. It is very difficult to find a scholar who will say that what he is saying is not his knowledge. He pretends that what he is saying, he knows, that he is saying it only because he knows.Every scholar, almost without exception, is a pretender. And because of these pretenders, it becomes very difficult for people to figure out who the authentic masters are. The scholars speak of the gateway of the buddha, they speak about eternity, they speak about emptiness. Their words are perfectly right, but the men who are speaking them are not right, because these words are borrowed.Once you borrow a truth it becomes untrue. Truth can arise only within you; it cannot be adopted – you have to remember this. In life you will meet many people who appear to know so much that you are overwhelmed by their knowledge. But inside there is nothing, no experience.A great psychologist, head of the department of psychology in Varanasi University…I was only a student and one of my friends had gone from the college to study in Varanasi. He came into contact with this psychologist, Professor Laljiram Shukla, and the professor became so much interested in him that he married his daughter to the young man.The young man was continuously talking about me to him: “You should meet my friend.” Continuously mentioning me, he became obsessed.He started writing to me saying, “I will pay all the fare and you will stay with me in the university. You come, just be a guest for one week, because I have heard so much about you from my son-in-law that now it is becoming a disturbance in me.” So I went.In the morning, nearabout twenty-five professors of the university had gathered to meet me. The professor of psychology, Laljiram Shukla, was perhaps the only great psychologist in India; people were very respectful about him. We all waited because he was worshipping the monkey god, Hanuman. When his worship was over he came and he greeted me, and he said, “I have been waiting. How long are you going to stay?”I said, “That will be decided within ten minutes.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “Just sit down. You think you are a psychologist and you worship a monkey! Do you believe in Darwin – that man is born out of the monkeys? Perhaps you are worshipping your forefathers?”He said, “This is very insulting.”I said, “That’s why I said that just within ten minutes I will decide how long I have to stay here. I can stay here my whole life, but I don’t think that even for one hour you will be able to tolerate me.”I questioned him directly. I said to him, “You are worshipping for what? There must be some desire. Some desire perhaps to be the vice-chancellor or to be the education minister or to be the prime minister of India? For what are you worshipping? Because a man who has no desire has no need to worship. Do you think a monkey can manage what you cannot manage? Why are you putting yourself into such humiliation before a monkey?”He said, “Don’t refer to my god again and again by the name ‘monkey’.”I said, “What can I do? He is a monkey. And it is not a question of whether he is your forefather or not. The question is, a psychologist is still primitive. Have you seen God?”Those professors who had gathered became very uneasy. They had come to see if some discussion will happen which will be profitable to them, but there seemed to be no way to discuss with me. I said, “Non-essentials aside, just remember the monkey god and tell the truth: have you ever seen God?”He became so angry, he called his son-in-law and told him, “You idiot! You have been harassing me again and again, and now he is disturbing my belief system.”I said, “A man of your understanding should not remain with belief systems. He should have something which he knows, not only believes, and you don’t have anything that you know. Or if you know just tell me, we can discuss it. What is the point of discussing something which you don’t know?”The ultimate result was that he told his son-in-law to pack my suitcases and take me immediately to the airport. “I don’t want such a man; in seven days he will destroy my whole life’s religiousness.” And because all the professors came down to say good-bye to me, he was very angry. Later on his son-in-law wrote to me, saying that he was so angry with all the professors: “You left me alone and you went with him to say good-bye to him. It seems you agree with him.”They said, “There is no question of agreement – you misbehaved. If you don’t know, you should have said, ‘I don’t know.’ That would have been more dignified. You had been inviting him, he had not come on his own; now you have thrown him out of the house. Still, he was not angry, he was just laughing.”I said, “I knew it. That’s why I did not give the time, how long I would be there. I know myself.”But later on he felt very guilty. And he also felt, how is he going to face all those twenty-five professors in the university? He wrote to me a letter of apology. I answered him that “There is no question of apology. You have not insulted me, you have only insulted yourself. You have been insulting yourself your whole life – by your worshipping, by your so-called religiousness, by all kinds of belief systems. And not knowing a single thing. It is good that I accepted your invitation and created a chaos in your mind. Perhaps, seeing the chaos, you will come out of the mind. And that is the world I had come to discuss with you – the world beyond mind.” But for the scholars mind is all.When all the conditions collapse, Torei is saying, nothing remains. This word nothing has very strange connotations. When a buddha says nothing he means no-thing, and when a scholar says nothing he simply means emptiness. When a buddha says nothing he says there is no-thing anymore: pure space, utter silence…We all speak the same language. The master has also to use the same language but he gives new meanings to words, new fragrances to words, new poetry to words. They go dancing into your heart, the same ordinary words, with such extraordinary radiance, penetration. But one has to be a knower himself.This gathering is not for those who are interested in studying religion. This gathering is only for those who are interested in experiencing what religion is all about. It is an existential, experimental lab. It is as scientific as any science. No question of belief – you are not asked what you believe. No question of your mind – whatever kind of mind you have, just put it aside.You may have a great learned mind; that is perfectly okay, put it aside. You may have a very ordinary mind, uneducated; no matter, just put it by the side of the great scholar’s mind. Mind has no value here. The value arises only when mind is no more there. Then you start growing into a different dimension which can only be called existential.Before we do our meditation, a few words from some authentic masters.A haiku by Isa:Listen,all creeping things –the bell of transience.Nothing to be done, just listen…everything is changing. What is the point? The point is that the listener is never changing; the watcher is always there. That is the only permanent thing in existence.Listen, – or watch –all creeping things –the bell of transience.Now, any scholar can repeat that, there is no problem – the words are very simple. But Isa knows it.Sengai says:What mind do you punctuate?The past, present, or future?The candle is blown out,and the diamond turns to ashes.He is saying the same thing: What mind do you punctuate? The past is no more, the future is not yet, and if there is no past and no future, how can there be any present?What time…What mind do you punctuate? Neither the mind is there, nor time is there. When mind and time both disappear, The candle is blown out.That is exactly the meaning of the word nirvana: The candle is blown out. Now can you find the flame of the candle? Even if you look through the whole universe you will not find it. It has simply become one with the universe. The moment the candle of mind, which is equivalent to the candle of time, is blown out – utter silence…Nothing is found, but tremendous peace, a feeling of coming home….Maneesha has a question:Osho,Can it help to contemplate on a concept? If the concept is just one's intellectual understanding, or someone else's insight, what is the value? And even if it is out of one's own insight, what is the point? – if you have known it, you have known it.Maneesha, this not a question – this is the answer. There is nothing to contemplate and there is nobody to contemplate. When you disappear with all your mind and not even a trace remains behind, just a pure sky…you have found. I will not say what, because the moment you say what you have found you defile it. It is inexpressible ecstasy.Thousands of buddhas have tried to bring it down to words; nobody has succeeded. It is just not in the nature of things that the ultimate ecstasy can be brought into words.Before we enter into, not contemplation, but meditation, I don’t want you to be serious. I am so against seriousness – it is a spiritual sickness. Laughter is spiritual health. And laughter is very unburdening. While you laugh, you can put your mind aside very easily. For a man who cannot laugh the doors of the buddha are closed.To me, laughter is one of the greatest values. No religion has ever thought about it. They have always been insisting on seriousness, and because of their insistence the whole world is psychologically sick.“Hey, listen to this, man!” says Starlight Butterfly, the aging hippie, passing a reefer to his friend, Golden Buffalo-Grass.“These guys at Ectoplasm Arcade are offering Astral Projection Tours.”“Really?” says Golden Buffalo-Grass, puffing madly. “What does it say?”“It says,” replies Butterfly, “if you are an average occult freak off the street, you are probably pretty good at popping out of your body and staring at yourself. Like acid, man – you only do it so many times, then you get bored.“Wouldn’t it be great if you could put your ability to some greater use than just hanging out in Nowhere’s-Ville? How about a trip to the divine Deep-Space Disco, or the Big Dipper Dance Hall?”Coughing on his reefer, Butterfly reads on, “Now we introduce Astral Projection Tours. We get you to those far-out scenes where the physical body just can’t make it. Pop out of your skin-bag, and cruise to outta-sight places and meet strange beings.“Astral Projection Tours offers individual or group tours to the seven hells of Horowitz. Experience the mindless wanderings of Baba Rum-Raisin and space out for fun on Allah-Hoo Bandstand! – all for only twenty dollars.”“Wow, man! This is cool,” shouts Buffalo-Grass, lighting another reefer. “This sounds far-out. I’m packing right now. I’m gonna drop my body and tune into the Cosmos!”“Hey, man!” shouts Butterfly, in a cloud of smoke, “where are you going?”“Going? I’m halfway there!” shouts Buffalo-Grass, swallowing his reefer and standing on his head. “I’m gonna take my astral ass and jog with Jesus, mule ride with Mohammed, and go bowling with Buddha!”Big black Leroy is trying to get religion, so he goes to a Holy Rollers meeting in a small southern Mississippi town.Sister Sara, a beautiful and shapely black girl, suddenly leaps to her feet and shouts, “Praise be to the Lord! Last night I was in the arms of Satan, and tonight I will be in the arms of Saint Peter!”“Sister,” says Leroy quietly as the girl sits down, “so what are you doing tomorrow night?”When Madam Fifi’s whorehouse is raided by the police, the whole place is in confusion. Somehow Pinky, the talking parrot, escapes and flies away. She lands in the graveyard and is immediately captured by the preacher’s wife and put in a cage.“Polly wanna a cracker?” asks the preacher’s wife, as Pinky sits in the cage above the piano. But Pinky says nothing.The days go by and Pinky sits silently in the cage wondering what has happened. One day there is a gathering of the church women’s club, and amongst all the girls present, the discussion turns to silk underwear.“Look at this wonderful slip!” says Mrs. Jones, turning up the corner of her dress.“Ah! And look at these wonderful panties!” says Mrs. Foster, pulling her skirt all the way up.“Thank God!” sighs Pinky, eyeing Mrs. Foster. “Welcome home, girls! Anybody got a cigarette?”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Mind you have thrown out.Close your eyes.Feel the body to be completely frozen.Look inwards.At the very center of your being,is the door of the buddhas.Deeper…and deeper.Without any fear, go in as far as you can.You will not meet anybody on the way except yourself. And meeting with oneself is the meaning of being a buddha.One who has encountered himself, realized himself, has become centered into himself, is a buddha. This is the potential of everyone.Just a little going in.The way is very short:from mind to no-mind.To make it clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax. Feel the body to be completely dead.The head has fallen somewhere else and you are simply a watcher, not a doer; not a thinker, but just a witness. And the evening becomes beautiful. And you will come out completely drunk with the divine.You have to carry this silence, this suchness in every action, around the clock. There is no greater ecstasy, no greater blessing, than to have found your inner being – the buddha.This moment you are all buddhas.This moment you are not separate from each other.It is an ocean of consciousnessin which you are all dissolved.Let it sink deep in youthat you are not separate from existence.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back. But come back as buddhas,without any hesitation,in silence, in grace, in beauty.Just sit like buddhas for a few moments – remembering, collecting the experience you have passed through. Slowly slowly it is going to become your very heartbeat. That day will be the most fortunate day in your life.Can we celebrate the gathering of the buddhas?

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The Language of Existence 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Language of Existence 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,A monk asked Bankei,“The ancestral teachers since ancient times were greatly enlightened through difficult and painful practices. I have heard that you, too, accomplished the great teaching through various difficult practices. But for people like me, who don’t cultivate practice, and are not enlightened, just realizing that my very state is the unborn, enlightened no-mind does not really settle anything.”Bankei replied:“It is like the case of travelers who cross the peaks of high mountains where there is no water, and become thirsty. Someone seeks out water in a distant valley, breaking his back searching here and there. Finally, he finds water and brings it back to give to the others to drink.Even though they have not struggled so, those who drink are refreshed, just the same as the one who went through the trouble before. As for those who are doubtful and will not drink, there is no way for their thirst to be quenched.“Because I didn’t meet someone with enlightened eyes, I mistakenly wore myself out. I finally discovered the buddha in my own no-mind, and am telling everyone about the buddha of their own no-mind, without them having to do anything difficult – just like drinking water and having their thirst quenched.“Using the enlightened no-mind inherent in everyone, just as it is, having found peace and bliss, without the difficulties of confusion – is this not a sacred true teaching?”At another time someone asked Bankei, “Is the complete illumination of the eye of reality accomplished with time and season, or is it realized even in one day?”Bankei replied, “It is not a matter of time and season; it is accomplished only when the eye of the way is clear, without any gap. It is accomplished by the practice of single-minded devotion to nurturing it.”Maneesha, Bankei is one of my most favorite Zen masters, but that does not mean that I agree with him on every point. With the essentials I am in absolute agreement, but with the non-essentials I disagree. And it has to be remembered by you that to love a man does not mean to agree with him or to disagree with him. Agreement and disagreement are far below the world of love. I love Bankei just for his own sake. He is a unique enlightened man with a tremendous vision of reality, but on the non-essentials I don’t agree with him.Perhaps the times have changed. Perhaps I am a different kind of person, and perhaps the people who are hearing me are a totally different world. I respond to Bankei according to you, I see Bankei in the context of you; otherwise Bankei has no meaning. We are discussing him for the simple reason that he may give some light to you on the path. Even if a slight glimpse of the ultimate is attained through him, it is more than enough.I will tell you where I agree and where I don’t agree, but as far as my love is concerned it is absolute. I love the man and respect him. But it is natural that as time changes, language changes. Symbols change, metaphors change, and everything that was said a thousand years ago cannot be repeated exactly, except by parrots.Bankei had a great school of his own. He is still followed by thousands of people. I have met a few of Bankei’s disciples, and when I told them that I agree on the fundamentals but I don’t agree on the non-essentials, they could not believe me. They said, “If you love the master, if you have some feeling for him, then how can you disagree?”My position is totally different. If you love a person only then do you have the right to disagree. If you don’t love a person, what right have you got to disagree? Only love gives you the freedom of agreeing or not agreeing. Without love there is no freedom. You are forced to agree as all the religions of the world are doing – forcing people in psychological ways to believe in certain things and not to believe in certain other things.Their ways of forcing are very subtle, they are using your whole unenlightened unconscious mind. Your greed is expanded up to heaven. What is heaven or paradise except your greed multiplied by thousands? And what is hell except your fear? And what are all the priests of all the religions of the world doing? They are doing the same thing whether they are Mohammedans or Hindus or Christians or Jews. They are giving you a consolation in your misery, in your suffering; they are consoling you that it is not going to last forever – this world is miserable but beyond this world open the doors of paradise and eternal pleasure, so just have a little patience. Karl Marx was not wrong when he said that religions have functioned as the opium of the people. I am not a Marxist but this statement I cannot deny, he is absolutely right. Religions have proved to be opium.In Indian villages where women go to work in the fields, or somewhere where a road is being made, or a bridge is being made, and the women working have small children…. One day I was just walking by the side of the river, a bridge was being built and there was a small child under a tree, so happy, so joyous, so ecstatic. I could not believe…what could be the cause of it? So I waited by the side of the tree. His mother was working on the bridge, and she came back to give some milk to the child. I said to her, “You have a really great child. I have never come across such a psychedelic child in my whole life.”She said, “It is nothing. We poor people, what can we do? We cannot afford somebody to take care of the child, so we give the child some opium. Whether he is hungry or thirsty, whether it is hot or cold, it does not matter. In his opium, he is enjoying paradise.”All the religions have been giving opium to their followers and hell to those who don’t follow them. But it is not the way of authentic religion to use people’s psychology – their fears, their greed, their ambitions. It is not the way of love. It is very cruel because if you use people’s greed you are not going to transform them. And you will be afraid if somebody else tries to transform them, because you cannot afford that they should drop their greed and their fear.Very few people in the whole of history have been able to drop their fears and look directly into reality. There is no hell and there is no heaven, but there is a beautiful existence, so beautiful that your dreams cannot dream it. You have to realize it.The authentic experienced master will not ask for your belief or disbelief, he will ask only for your inquiry. He will tell you that the well is not far away, so don’t remain thirsty. If you are clinging to your suffering, nobody except you is responsible. You can drop all your suffering, all your misery, if you can just drop your mind. It is all mind phenomena.I love Bankei. He was asked:“The ancestral teachers since ancient times were greatly enlightened through difficult and painful practices. I have heard that you, too, accomplished the great teaching through various difficult practices. But for people like me, who don’t cultivate practice, and are not enlightened, just realizing that my very state is the unborn, enlightened no-mind does not really settle anything.”For centuries there have been seekers divided on this point. There are seekers who say that enlightenment comes gradually. You have to work for it, you have to do many kinds of practices for it. It is a faraway star and the journey is tedious, and you almost have to pass through self-torture in the name of disciplining yourself. The other school says that enlightenment is always sudden. It is not a question of traveling anywhere or going anywhere, it is simply a question of awakening to your own self.Perhaps in the night, in your dream you may have been visiting a faraway star. But as you wake up, you know you have not gone anywhere, you have always been here. Your mind feels misery, suffering; it feels all kinds of emotions, attachments, desires and longings, but it is all the projection of the mind. Behind the mind is your real self which has never gone anywhere. It is always here and here.So the question of enlightenment, whether it is gradual or sudden, is a very complicated one. Those who say it is gradual, they make steps, procedures, disciplines to be followed. And in this way, perhaps, after many lives you may become a buddha. The people who believe in sudden enlightenment have no discipline, no rules, except for a simple thing – wake up, don’t remain a somnambulist. Don’t act out of sleep, act out of awakening!So on the path of sudden enlightenment all that is needed is to go withinwards, to look inside and to find the point which can be aware twenty-four hours. And the point is there, you are just keeping your back towards it. Wherever you go, it is always with you. It is the very center of your existence; without it you cannot exist for a single moment.The question is not of some gradual attainment or achievement. The question is of a great turning in. Our eyes look outside, our desires reach for the stars. Turning in means no desires, no greed, no paradise, no God – just looking into your own space, what is hidden in you. From where comes this life? From where comes this consciousness?As you go deeper within yourself, you will find the center, and not only of yourself. It will be the center of the whole existence. At the center we meet, on the periphery we are separate. We are separate only in our bodies, in our minds, but beyond body and mind we are just an ocean of consciousness. There is no ‘I am’, there is simply pure awareness with no distinctions, no divisions.In the moment of enlightenment even the trees and the birds and the mountains – everything becomes enlightened. There is a saying of Gautam Buddha, “The moment I became enlightened, the whole universe became enlightened.” It could be disputed, because we can see that we are not enlightened, but his meaning is totally different. He is speaking for himself. From that moment everything becomes enlightened because he has seen the very root from where life arises and goes on eternally arising, with no beginning, no end.Bankei was asked, “In the ancient times sages used to practice difficult and arduous disciplines and then finally after many years, after many lives, they became enlightened. But in your case it seems to be different. You have not practiced any discipline, you have not tortured yourself by fasting. You have not distorted your body by yoga. How did you become enlightened?”Bankei replied: “It is like the case of travelers who cross the peaks of high mountains where there is no water, and become thirsty. Someone seeks out water in a distant valley, breaking his back searching here and there. Finally, he finds water and brings it back to give to the others to drink.“Even though they have not struggled so, those who drink are refreshed, just the same as the one who went through the trouble before.”I don’t agree on this point. Everybody has to find his own enlightenment. Nobody can give it to you.Bankei is saying that somebody else can bring the water. About water it is okay, it is something objective and outside. Water can be brought, but nobody can bring enlightenment to you.It has to be very deeply understood that enlightenment is an individual revolution. Somebody can give you a challenge, somebody can provoke you to the search, somebody’s presence may infect you, but nobody can give you enlightenment.If it was something that could be given, it would have been very easy to make the whole world enlightened. It could be patented, marketed – then you just go to the M.G.Road and have a little drink of enlightenment; then the rich will gather great amounts of enlightenment and the poor will suffer.At least as far as enlightenment is concerned, don’t make it a material, quantitative phenomenon. It is a subjective, qualitative experience just like love. Can you give love to somebody? There is no way. You can love somebody, but you cannot give love to somebody.Love is your inner experience, so deep that you cannot even define what it is. All the poets, all the philosophers have been trying to define what love is. And thousands of years of search and inquiry have resulted only in the simple statement that love is indefinable. You can sing it, you can dance it, but you cannot define it. Exactly the same, on a higher level, is enlightenment.According to me love is the lowest rung of the ladder and enlightenment is the highest. They have a similarity on many points. They both happen suddenly – you fall in love and if somebody asks you why, you simply shrug your shoulders. You cannot answer why. Love is not something to be questioned. You don’t know yourself, it just happens.Enlightenment is the same kind of phenomenon on a higher peak. It just happens. It happens when you are silent, looking inwards. Just like lightning, you suddenly become aware, full of light, luminous. It is not an answer to any question. All questions and all answers dissolve into the luminous splendor of your own inner being.I differ from Bankei in saying that nobody else can give it to you. If somebody has found it, perhaps he can inspire you – not by his words, but by his very being, by his every gesture, by his every look. You can see that a different kind of presence surrounds the man, a different kind of silence radiates from him. You can have a taste from somebody else, but nobody can give it to you.It used to happen that seekers would come to Gautam Buddha. A great philosopher of those times, Maulingaputta, came with his five hundred disciples. He himself was a well-known teacher, and he had come to challenge Gautam Buddha to a debate; that’s why he had brought all his disciples.In India it was a common phenomenon that has now disappeared…it was so beautiful – but now to challenge somebody seems to be a way to create enemies. For centuries it was not considered that way in India; challenging was simply a matter of coming face to face, with inquiring, penetrating questions, and finding out who has gone deeper. The one who went deeper was victorious. It was a very loving phenomenon, very friendly.Maulingaputta said to Gautam Buddha, “I have come here to pay my respects to you and also to challenge you.”Buddha said, “I love your challenge. But you will have to fulfill a condition which I have been keeping my whole life. I cannot make any exception.”At that time there were ten thousand monks, disciples of Buddha. Maulingaputta said, “Any condition, and I am ready to accept it.”So Buddha said, “The condition is that you have to sit by my side for two years, silently – no question, no answer. After two years I will tell you, now you can question.”Bankei’s lineage comes from Mahakashyap. Mahakashyap was a rare being, nobody had ever heard him speak. He never asked any question, he never answered anybody, even a hello was too much. People simply passed by his side as if he was not. He had a special tree where he used to sit whenever Buddha was speaking. When Buddha said to Maulingaputta, “You have to sit for two years silently by my side and then you can have any inquiry, any debate, any discussion, any question,” there was suddenly a great outburst – Mahakashyap laughed loudly.The whole assembly felt very strange because this man had never talked to anybody, and there was no special reason that he should laugh. But he must have been a reincarnation of Sardar Gurudayal Singh, or vice versa. Sardar is the only man in the whole world who can laugh before a joke is told. It does not matter, what matters is the laughter. Why not enjoy it, why wait? It is a deep trust that something good will be coming.Maulingaputta said, “Why is this fellow laughing?”Buddha said, “You can ask him yourself. He is a rare person, he never speaks. In the twenty years he has been with me he has never asked any question. It is for the first time that suddenly he has exploded in laughter.”So Maulingaputta asked Mahakashyap, “Why did you laugh?”Mahakashyap said, “I laughed because this fellow Gautam Buddha is a tricky guy. He tricked me with the same trick; he told me to sit for two years and I have been sitting for twenty years! Now the desire to question or to debate has been left miles back. So if you want to ask, ask now; otherwise you will be sitting just like me. And there are many other monks who will be witnesses to what I am saying.”Buddha had a lotus flower in his hand. At that moment he called Mahakashyap and gave the lotus flower to him with the words, “What I have been able to say, I have said to everybody. And what I have not been able to say, I transfer it to you.”This is called in Zen the transmission of the lamp. Nothing is said. But in twenty years of silence one becomes enlightened oneself. It is not something that Buddha has given. Buddha has simply created a situation.Maulingaputta remained silent for two years and he even forgot the time, that two years had passed. It was Buddha who had to remind him, “Maulingaputta, now two years have passed. Come on and confront me.”He came and touched Gautam Buddha’s feet and he said, “I am sorry, I was arrogant. I did not understand what enlightenment is. Now don’t make me more ashamed. Just being in silence for two years all thoughts have disappeared. A deep silence reigns inside and I have found myself and the beauty and the truth and the good – all together in my own being. Now there is no seeking, no search. Mahakashyap was right.”After touching the feet of Gautam Buddha, he touched the feet of Mahakashyap. It is on this account that Mahakashyap is thought to be the first Zen master. He was a disciple of Buddha, but he started a new tradition, of people who simply sit silently for years.You remember Basho – and today there are many poets here, they will understand Basho – perhaps one of the greatest poets the world has produced.Sitting silentlydoing nothingspring comesand the grass grows by itself.The whole philosophy of Zen is contained in this simple statement, this small haiku.Sitting silentlydoing nothingspring comesand the grass grows by itself.You don’t have to do anything. Enlightenment is not your doing. And it is not a gift. You already are enlightened, just you have not looked in the right direction. The difference between the enlightened being and the unenlightened is not much; it is negligible. One has looked into himself, the other has not looked into himself. This is not much of a difference. At any moment the other can also look into himself. Perhaps when your eyes are tired of looking outside, you close them in utter boredom and tiredness and look inside.You have searched much and found nothing outside. You look in and suddenly all that you were seeking is already there. You have come with it into the world, it is your intrinsic quality.Bankei is saying that someone else can bring the water, but it is not a right way of explaining it.He says:“As for those who are doubtful and will not drink, there is no way for their thirst to be quenched. Because I did not meet someone with enlightened eyes, I mistakenly wore myself out. I finally discovered the buddha in my own no-mind, and am telling everyone about the buddha of their own no-mind, without them having to do anything difficult – just like drinking water and having their thirst quenched.”On this point I am in absolute agreement. Bankei himself became suddenly enlightened although he had been trying. I have to remind you of Gautam Buddha himself. For six years continually he tried all the methods and all the disciplines available in those days, but nothing happened. He became so tired, so utterly bored, that one full-moon night sitting under a tree, he dropped even the desire for enlightenment. He had dropped all other desires. The only desire that he had been carrying for six years – on that full-moon night he dropped that too. Utterly desireless he slept a tremendously deep sleep. And as he woke up in the morning, the last star was setting, and as the last star disappeared, he became enlightened.It was not those six years of training that made him enlightened, it was that relaxed night, that utter let-go. There was no desire, no ambition, the mind had no function at all. When you don’t have any desire, any ambition, any longing, mind disappears, because mind is nothing but a combination of all these things. It is not an entity in itself, it is only a combination, just like my fist. A fist is not an entity, it is just the five fingers closed. You open the fingers and the fist has disappeared.Mind is not a reality. It is not a fact, it is simply a combination of all desires. Even a single desire is enough to keep it breathing. But when the last desire drops, and that can only be the desire of enlightenment…in the morning he woke up without a mind. In the morning he was a no-mind, so silent, so peaceful. Watching the last star disappearing, he also watched himself disappearing. He remained just a watcher.This state of watchfulness is your pure consciousness. And it is not yours, it is the universal consciousness. You can call it awakening, you can call it buddhahood, you can call it enlightenment, names don’t matter.“Using the enlightened no-mind inherent in everyone, just as it is, having found peace and bliss, without the difficulties of confusion – is this not a sacred true teaching?”At another time someone asked Bankei, “Is the complete illumination of the eye of reality accomplished with time and season, or is it realized even in one day?”Bankei replied, “It is not a matter of time and season; it is accomplished only when the eye of the way is clear, without any gap. It is accomplished by the practice of single-minded devotion to nurturing it.”He is making a great statement. He is saying that it is not a question of time, it is not a question of season.In my village one old priest was very much respected as a wise man. I used to go to him. And to any question that I ever asked him, he would say, “Wait. At the right time, in the right season, you will find the answer.”I came back from the university and I went to see the old man; he was dying. I said to him, “You have been deceiving me. I have been waiting for the right moment and the right season. It has not come. And I want to ask you, at least while you are dying, to be honest. Tell me, has your right time come?”He had tears in his eyes. He said, “Forgive me, I used to say that to everyone, just to avoid their question – because I don’t know the answer. I am myself as ignorant as anybody but people think I am a wise man, and by and by they have convinced me that I am a wise man. I too have started believing in it.”I said, “At least now drop that belief. Die as ignorant as you are. Your whole life you have been dishonest, but even a single moment before death, if you are honest, perhaps the right time and the right season may come suddenly.” And actually it happened. He closed his eyes, and I was sitting by his side and I saw the change happening around his energy; there was a freshness, a different fragrance. His old face became so beautiful – wrinkled with age, but now showing a maturity.He opened his eyes and he took my hand in his hand and he said, “I cannot be more grateful to anybody in my life than to you, although you have not done anything. But seeing the fact that death is coming, I closed my eyes and for the first time I looked inwards. It was there, it has always been there.” He died an enlightened man. He lived unenlightened, in misery, in suffering, but he died enlightened, in tremendous joy.He told me, “Nobody should weep or cry; nobody should be sad or serious because my death is an illumination. What life has not been able to give me, my death has given to me. Celebrate! Tell the people that my death has to be celebrated.”And when I told the people, they wouldn’t believe me. I said, “Whether you believe me or not, that old man’s last wish should be fulfilled. If you cannot celebrate I will have to bring my friends, and we will celebrate.”I had to gather people, and they were hesitant because death is not celebrated, death is a calamity. But the death of an enlightened being, and particularly a death which makes a man enlightened, has to be a festival. It is far more valuable than birth. Birth brings you life. Enlightened death brings you eternal life, a timeless ecstasy, a blissfulness that never ends.Daio wrote:The sphere of perfect communionis clear everywhere.The water is alive,the willow eyes are green.Why are people these daysin such a great hurry?In each land,the sphere of perfect communion.Those who go right inare rare.Daio is saying: everything is so beautiful, the stars and the trees and the birds, why can’t you simply sing and dance and join into the cosmos? Where are you hurrying to? Wherever you go you will be frustrated, because the thing that you are trying to find is hidden within you.This very moment can become your illumination. Not a single step has to be taken.In each land,the sphere of perfect communion.Those who go right inare rare.Just go right in, be a rare person! Don’t search it outside. This is the whole teaching of all the buddhas.Maneesha has asked one question:Osho,I have met someone with enlightened eyes who does not just bring us water to drink, but showers us with it. And yet, and yet….Are we so neurotic, so complex, so far removed from innocence, that we can only receive that for which we have suffered?It is the whole wrong training of the religions, of the societies, of the cultures, which says that unless you deserve a thing, unless you are worthy of it, you cannot get it. That is the reason, Maneesha, that if I tell you that you are enlightened, you look here and there. You cannot trust – “My god, I am enlightened! And I have not done anything. I have not tortured myself, I have not prayed. I have not fasted, I don’t know the scriptures.”But I say to you that for everything except enlightenment you will have to work. If you want money, you cannot sit with closed eyes. If you sit with closed eyes, you may even lose money – somebody may cut your pocket. For money you have to work hard. If you want political power, you have to work hard. You have to be cunning, you have to be dishonest, you have to be a hypocrite. You have to use all kinds of right or wrong means to achieve the end. Only enlightenment, in the whole phenomenon of existence, is without any need to deserve it.It is already there. You can deny it as long as you want, you can find excuses as long as you want, but finally you will be tired of excuses and you will have to accept it – “Yes, I am enlightened.”It is just a totally different phenomenon. It is neither money, nor power, nor prestige, nor reputation. You don’t have to learn it, you don’t have to earn it. It is in your very heart, it is your heartbeat. You have just to look into your own being.Now something really serious. You see, Sardar Gurudayal Singh already laughs. And it is a difficult one, Sardar!Before I tell the joke, I have to tell you that if you tell a joke to an Englishman, he laughs twice. Once, not to look stupid; and again in the middle of the night when he gets it. If you tell the same joke to a German, he simply wonders why people are laughing. My oldest sannyasin, Haridas, is here. He is from Germany. He has been with me almost for fifteen years, but even today he asks people, “Why were you laughing?” The German mind has a speciality, it is a very serious mind. Laughing is a non-serious affair.If you tell the same joke to a Jew, he will interrupt you in the middle. He will say, “Shut up. This is an old joke and moreover you are telling it all wrong.” It is very difficult to make a Jew laugh at a joke because almost all the jokes are Jewish. That is their monopoly. And the reason is that they have suffered most in the world. Just to keep going, they have had to find something to laugh at; otherwise life was nothing but suffering.Since Moses left Egypt with his followers to find the holy land in Israel, for four thousand years the Jews have been continuously in suffering. It has not stopped for a single moment. Adolf Hitler alone killed six million Jews. But because of their continuous suffering they had to invent something to laugh at, something to enjoy. There was nothing in their life to laugh about.I have always wondered that there is not a single joke which is Indian. I have been searching for a long time to find a single Indian joke, but it is because India has never suffered. Even in its poverty, even in its slavery, its religion was so much that it kept it patient, like opium. The rationalization is that you are suffering because of your past lives’ evil acts. The explanation is that if you suffer peacefully, your gain in the world beyond life is going to be great.It is certainly a very poor phenomenon. India has been a serious land of seers, of saints. You don’t expect a saint to tell a joke. Can you imagine Mahavira laughing? It will be as strange as meeting a buffalo laughing. You can believe in the buffalo, but you cannot believe that Mahavira will laugh.Mabel is putting her hair up in curlers in front of the mirror in her room at the Dark Shadows Hotel.“Do you realize, George,” she says, “that this room is supposed to be haunted by a blood-thirsty ghost that returns every year on this date at midnight to find a human sacrifice?“George…? George…?”Do you see that Sardar Gurudayal has not laughed? In the middle of the night he will get the idea.Wu, the Chinaman, always eats at Plato Salado’s Greek restaurant, because Plato makes such good fried rice.Every night, Wu comes in, sits down, and orders “flied lice.” And every night, Plato collapses laughing when he hears Wu making his order. Sometimes, Plato even tells all the other customers to be quiet and listen to Wu asking for his “flied lice.”Finally, Wu gets really pissed off and decides to practice saying “fried rice” correctly.The next time Wu goes into Plato’s restaurant, he announces very plainly, “Fried rice, please.”Plato looks up in shock.“What did you say?” asks the Greek.“You heard what I said,” shouts back Wu, “you flucking Gleek plick!”Rainbow Banana-Kiss, the aging hippie, is puffing away frantically on his reefer in complete distress over his failing marriage. Desperate, he picks up the phone, pulls out a phone number that he has been keeping in his pocket, and dials it.“Hello,” says the tape-recorded voice at the other end, “this is Julie Frostbelly of Soulmate Divorce Company.“We know your troubles,” the voice continues. “Your story probably goes something like this…A few years ago, you met someone special. It was wonderful. The honeymoon was ecstatic. You instantly remembered your past lives together. Your sex was true tantric love. Channels and psychics confirmed what you already knew intuitively, that you had found your soul mate.“Now, it is years later,” the taped voice goes on. “The glow is gone. The sex is ordinary, and your soul mate is a pain in the neck. Your partner takes the biggest piece of cake, wants more money, and falls in love with any schmuck that walks by and winks. Face it – the relationship is dead.“Soul Mate Divorce is here to help you. Our attorneys, Boris Babblebrain and Henry Hypojerk, will get you a complete legal divorce in keeping with your cosmic lifestyle.“Through creative therapy, you can make crucial decisions like who gets to keep the water bed, the Tarot cards, and the children.“Come and see us, and for your comfort, our staff psychics will help free you from any karmic stress. Each of you will be given your own personalized divorce mantra.“After all, you’ll probably wind up together again in the next life!”Percy and Peggy Sue get married and go on a honeymoon to the Bahamas. While they are there, Percy buys a beautiful parrot in a cage and takes it back to the hotel room.But every time that Percy and Peggy Sue start making love, the parrot starts commenting on their movements.The cheeky parrot says things like, “Thatta girl, Peggy Sue!” and “Come on Percy, you can do better than that!” and “Oh! Oh! Slow down! Speed up, turn left…!”Finally, the parrot’s descriptions get so explicit that Percy jumps off the bed and flings a sheet over the cage. “If you don’t shut up,” he shouts, “I’m going to send you to the zoo!”That evening the honeymooners are packing to leave their hotel. But Peggy Sue is having some trouble closing her suitcase; she cannot fasten the lock.“Darling,” says Percy, “why don’t you get on top, and I’ll try.” But the suitcase will not close.“Look, sweetheart,” says Peggy Sue, “you get on top and I’ll try.” But that does not work, either.“Listen,” suggests Percy, “why don’t we both get on top, and we can both try.”At this point, the parrot pulls the sheet off its cage and shrieks, “Zoo or no zoo, this I’ve gotta see!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent.You have thrown away your mind.Close your eyes,feel the body to be completely frozen.Look in. The deeper you can go,the closer you will be to your buddha-nature.It is very simple because it is your own space, you are not trespassing in anybody else’s space. You are entering into your own being.Deeper and deeper. You will start feeling a deep silence, a peace that passeth understanding, and a new fresh life energy, a blissfulness that you have never dreamt of.This is your eternity, this is your inner buddha. Those who go in search somewhere else are lost.Those who go in are surprised to find that the whole splendor and treasure of existence is available to them.Being at the center of your life source, you are also connected with the universe. Your heartbeat slowly starts becoming more harmonious with the heartbeat of the universe.When they become one you have arrived home.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax…let go…just watch.The body is there, the mind is there,but you are not.You are the watcher.This watching witnessing self is the buddha.Rejoice in finding it.Let it sink into every fiber of your beingso when you come out you are not the same personas you were going in, you bring something of the buddha with you.Every day it goes on increasing. A moment comes that the buddha is there, whether you are in or out. That is the ultimate fulfillment.The process is very simple. Whatever you are experiencing now, go on experiencing it in your twenty-four hour activities. Just like an undercurrent, just like breathing, just like a heartbeat.You don’t have to remember it, it is there.You know it is there, and this knowing will transform your whole being, all your activities, your whole personality.It will give you a new birth, a resurrection.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back,but don’t come back as you have gone in,bring something from the inner treasure with you.Peacefully, silently, gracefullysit down like a buddha for a few seconds,just remembering,just reminding yourselfthat this is the only experience in the worldfor which nothing special is required,no effort, no discipline.It is already your nature.You are it.Can we celebrate the resurrection of the buddhas?

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The Language of Existence 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Language of Existence 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Tozan said:“The teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by buddhas and patriarchs. Now you have it, so keep it well.“Filling a silver bowl with snow, hiding a heron in the moonlight – when you array them, they are not the same. When you mix them, you know where they are. The meaning is not in the words, yet it responds to the inquiring impulse. If you are excited, it becomes a pitfall; if you miss it, you fall into retrospective hesitation.“Turning away and touching are both wrong, for it is like a mass of fire. Just to depict it in literary form is to relegate it to defilement.It is bright just as midnight. It doesn’t appear at dawn. It acts as a guide for beings – its use removes all pain.Although it is not fabricated, it is not without speech. It is like facing a jewel mirror: form and image behold each other. You are not it, it actually is you.It is like a babe in the world, in five aspects complete. It does not go or come, nor rise nor stand.“Ultimately it does not apprehend anything, because its speech is not yet correct. It is like the six lines of the double split hexagram: the relative and absolute integrate. Piled up, they make three; the complete transformation makes five. It is like the taste of the five-flavored herb, like the diamond thunderbolt.”Maneesha, Zen is more like poetry, like music, like dance. It is not a philosophy; hence, no conceptual thinking can comprehend it. Mind is absolutely impotent as far as Zen is concerned. You have to go beyond mind to have some taste of Zen. Going beyond the mind simply means dropping all thoughts, creating a vacuum – a nothingness. But that nothingness is not empty; it is just like the sky. It is full of nothingness.And when your eyes are without any dust and your mind is without any thoughts, you see clearly, straight into reality. It is not a question of belief. You don’t have to believe what you will be seeing, you have simply to clean your inner eye, your vision, and the reality will appear on its own accord, not according to anybody’s belief. Hence, those who have beliefs never attain to reality.I am making a statement against all religions. They are all based on belief – believe first, then you will know. But once you believe you have closed the doors of inquiry, once you believe you have accepted your ignorance, your blindness. You have accepted that somebody else has known – “What is the need for me to know? I have just to believe in Jesus Christ or Krishna or Buddha.” But when Buddha drinks the water, your thirst is not quenched; and when Jesus eats, your hunger does not disappear. Even these ordinary things, mundane, you have to experience individually – what to say about the ultimate experience? And Zen is the name of the ultimate experience.You cannot depend on anybody. You cannot believe anybody’s experience. You have to drop all beliefs, all thoughts, all philosophies, all religions, and you have to go, utterly innocent, inside your own being.From there the door opens and life takes a new color, a new radiance, a new joy. Your words are no more empty, they contain overflowing significance. Your gestures become meaningful for the first time. Your actions have a poetry of their own. Your very movement is a dance because you have known the innermost blissfulness. It starts overflowing you in your actions, in your words, in your silences. It starts overflowing and reaching to others. You become almost a fountain, showering all around.Or you can say you become a beautiful lotus spreading, radiating its perfume all over the space; whether anybody is there or not is not the point. Even in the faraway forest the rose will spread its joy, its fragrance. Perhaps a passer-by may be enriched by it, but it is not the point, whether anybody gets it or not.When truth is realized, the overflowing of it is intrinsic. This you have to understand before I take up Tozan, because Tozan is one of the great masters. All his statements are just an overflowing of his experience; he is not quoting scriptures, he is simply sharing his experience.And whenever somebody is sharing his own experience it is not a question of belief or not – just enjoy it. Perhaps in your enjoyment you may get some glimpse, very invisible…some click, not available to the outside world. Perhaps for a moment the heartbeat stops, or takes a totally different rhythm.If Zen was a philosophy it would be very easy to convey it. If it was a religion it would not be difficult – there are thousands of scriptures depicting religion. But it is something more miraculous than anything else in the world. You can taste it, you can drink it, you can relish it, you can dance out of sheer joy, but you cannot say it.That is the only difficulty with Zen – you cannot say it. And unfortunately man has become too much language-oriented; he has forgotten other ways of communication. There are many other ways of communication. The idea that language is the only way of communication has made humanity very poor, very prosaic. It has lost the mystery of poetry, it has lost the meaningless, but utterly significant, music of existence. Now dance has become a discipline, outwardly practiced, rehearsed, but not something growing from within you and spreading out.Discussing Tozan, you will have to remember that he is trying his best to say that which cannot be said. Every master has tried to say it; nobody has ever succeeded. One wonders why, if it cannot be said, why people should try to say it. One of the most prominent philosophers of the modern world, Wittgenstein, has written perhaps the most profound book of this century. In one of his books, Tractatus, he comes to the point where he is almost turning into a mystic. He says, “That which cannot be said should not be said.”I was a student – he was alive – and I wrote him a letter saying, “You have contradicted yourself: ‘That which cannot be said should not be said.’ You are also saying something about it.”He must have been a man of tremendous honesty; immediately a letter came with an apology. He said, “It is true. I never thought about it, that even to say that nothing should be said, you have already said something.”One has to understand that all the mystics of the world have been in a tremendous difficulty. They know it cannot be said, but still they say – they try at least their best. My own understanding is, it cannot be said but it can be heard. That is the reason why the mystics go on speaking, knowing perfectly well it is not possible to put it into language, but hoping that somebody may hear it between the words, between the lines, in the gestures, in the eyes of the master, in his presence, in his intimacy.Perhaps just as a flame can jump to another unlit candle if you bring them close enough, intimate enough…The master’s work is to bring the disciple close enough to his inner flame, which is a fire. Because it is a fire, only the daring ones come very close to the master, because it is going to burn you completely and utterly. It is going to be your death – and a resurrection.The old, ancient Sanskrit scriptures say that the master is a death, but that is incomplete. The master is also the eternal life, beyond death. But of course, first comes the death. The disciple comes close to the master and dies into his fire, into his love, and is resurrected in a totally new being: fresh, innocent, and a child of eternity. That’s what Tozan’s first statement is.Tozan said:“The teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by buddhas and patriarchs. Now you have it, so keep it well.”Every word is so full of significance.“The teaching of thusness…”It is a very strange way, particularly for people who are not acquainted with the world of Zen. Thusness is as important, or perhaps more important, than the so-called gods of all your religions. ‘Thusness’ means this moment your silent existence is all there is to discover.Its splendor is great, but you will have to pay for it. You will have to pay for it with your mind, with your personality. You will have to go beyond your facade, your so-called cultured personality, your knowledge cultivated by others and from others. You will have to lose all this garbage…you will have to be utterly empty. In that emptiness you will feel for the first time the experience of thusness.Thusness can also be translated as ‘thisness’. It can also be translated as ‘suchness’. The original word used by Gautam Buddha is tathata. Just being in the moment – no past, no future – just being here, one-pointed, and the door of all the mysteries of existence opens.The teaching of thusness is the teaching of all the great masters, and it has been intimately communicated because there is no other way. I am communicating it this very moment, but not through my words, in the silences, in the gaps. When you feel simply this moment in its utter purity, you have become intimate with all the buddhas – past, present, future.The word buddha is very significant; it means one who has attained to thusness. Just because of thusness, Buddha’s other name is Tathagata. ‘Tathagata’ means one who lives moment to moment, who knows nothing of the past and who knows nothing of the future, who is utterly settled and centered here and now.The moment you are centered here and now you are an intimate of all the buddhas. The moment you are intimate with reality, obviously you are intimate with all the masters and all the mystics.This very moment you are connected with existence, but you go on roaming in the mind and you completely forget that behind the mind and beyond the mind there is a witness which is watching silently. You come across these experiences every day but you don’t take much note of it.For example, I was a student of a Mohammedan teacher and he was very strict; he was known in the school as the most strict person. The first day of his class he entered and said to us, “I want you to remember always, don’t ask me for leave because you are having a headache or stomachache. Anything that I cannot see, I don’t believe.” Students do that continuously: “I have a headache so I want to go home.”That very evening…He used to go for an evening walk, and just in front of his house there were two kadamb trees, very beautiful trees, so I waited in one tree with a big rock in my hand. He returned – it was getting dark – and I dropped the rock on his head. He freaked out.I said, “Shut up! Now do you believe in headaches?”He looked at me surprised, a little bit shocked. He said, “Listen, we can negotiate. If you have a headache just raise one finger and I will allow you to go out, but don’t make it a public thing. I will not say anything about this rock that you have thrown on me. It is a compromise.”I said, “I never compromise. In the first place, I don’t believe that you have been hurt.”He said, “You are strange…”I said, “You are strange. Remember in the morning, at the beginning of the class, you said you don’t believe in headaches? I am going to make this incident public knowledge.”But it is something far more important than just an incident. When you have a headache, how do you know? There must be a watcher behind the head who knows the headache. The headache itself cannot know; there must be a witness, a watcher, who knows the headache, who knows the stomachache, who feels emotions and can watch those emotions.When you are full of anger, if you sit down and watch you can watch the anger clouds all around you, dark. When you are in love you can watch a certain perfume, a certain beauty, a certain blissfulness all around you. Every moment in ordinary life you are coming across the witness but you have never recognized it, you have just not taken note of it. At this very moment I am speaking to you, you are hearing me. Just look a little more back – there is a witness who knows that you are hearing. That witness is your eternity.“By all these mystics, the message has been conveyed intimately” means, they have brought people closer to them. All their words are nothing but fishermen’s nets. Through their words they bring you closer. If their words trigger something in you, you feel pulled, magnetized, and the closer you come the less you are. And when you have become really intimate, you disappear – you, as you have known yourself – and the one who is behind, who you had never taken note of, comes in front. For the first time you know you are only a witnessing consciousness, everything else is a clothing.Your inner center, which is the connecting link with the universal heart from where you get your life, your love, your joy, is to be found in witnessing. The master is a witness. Becoming intimate with him, the fire of witnessing simply jumps in a single, instantaneous moment. Where there was all dark suddenly becomes light; where there was all misery suddenly becomes a tremendous joy overflowing you, and a great longing arises in you.Just as before you wanted more money, more power, more prestige, now there is only one longing – how to spread this fire. Because unless a person is burned completely, all his falsities gone, he will never know the beauty and the truth and the splendor of existence, which was available to him every moment.“The teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by buddhas. Now you have it…”Tozan must be talking to his disciples.I am saying to you, you have it. I am not simply reading Tozan. On my own accord I am saying to you: you have it. Take note of it and don’t forget it. In ordinary life go on remembering that you are a buddha. Nothing else is needed, this very remembrance that you are a buddha is going to transform all your activities.I am reminded of a great mystic, Nagarjuna. He used to live naked, and even kings and queens used to touch his feet. He was absolutely a beggar – he had not even a begging bowl. So while he was visiting the capital the queen presented him with a golden begging bowl studded with diamonds. With tears she asked him not to reject it.Nagarjuna said, “I will not reject it, I will not hurt your feelings, but it will be very difficult for me to keep it for long – a naked man, and I have to sleep also. Anybody can steal it. I sleep under the sky, I sleep under a tree…It is not going to be with me for long.”But the queen said, “It does not matter, I will prepare another better than this. Now it is a question of my prestige. So if it is lost, whenever I see you again you will get another.”Nagarjuna said, “I have no objection.”A thief was hearing all this and said, “My god. A golden bowl worth millions of rupees, studded with diamonds, and this naked man…it is absolutely unsuitable, it does not fit.” So he followed Nagarjuna thinking, “Let this fellow go to sleep…” Nagarjuna was staying in ruins outside the town where doors were missing, where walls had fallen – and this thief was hiding behind a wall.Nagarjuna was watching – “Somebody is following me. Obviously he cannot be following me to these ruins. He must be following for the begging bowl.” Then he saw the thief hiding behind a wall. He threw the begging bowl outside the window and told the man, “Take it. I will not force you to become a thief, I give it to you as a gift.”Do you see how the buddhas behave? “I will not force you to become a thief because that will be my crime, not your crime. I give it to you as a gift. Just take it and run away.” The man could not run away, could not believe it. He was almost frozen. He had never seen such a man, who can throw a thing worth millions of rupees just as if it is nothing, and he is saving him from being a thief. He is giving it to him as he would give a friend a gift.Something triggered in the thief’s heart. He said, “Can I come inside and touch your feet and sit by your side just for a few minutes? I have never seen such a man like you.”Nagarjuna said to him, “That was exactly the purpose of throwing the bowl, to bring you in. Come in, sit down.”He followed everything. He asked Nagarjuna, “How could you manage to throw such a precious thing? I am a thief, to be honest. I cannot be dishonest to a man like you. And you have been so compassionate that you don’t want me to be a thief, but that is my profession.”Nagarjuna said, “There is no harm, you continue to be a thief. Just remember one thing, that you are a buddha.”He said, “My god, I am a thief and you are telling me to remember that I am a buddha!”Nagarjuna said, “This is enough. You just try, and I am going to stay for two weeks. You can come anytime, day or night, to give me the result, what happens.”After the third day he was there with the begging bowl, asking Nagarjuna, “Please take it back; otherwise I will be murdered. Now the whole town knows that I have got it. I have been hiding it here and there but it can be protected only by a queen or a king.”Nagarjuna said, “You leave it here, it is not important. What is important is, what happened to the discipline I had given to you?”He said, “You have given me a tremendous discipline. I first thought, ‘It is so easy just to remember that I am a buddha.’ But you are very clever, because when I went to steal something, just the remembrance that ‘I am a buddha’ and I would get frozen, my hands would not move to take anything. For three days I have not stolen a single thing. This is unprecedented in my life. And I don’t think that again I will be able to steal. This is a dangerous thing you have said to me, because the moment I find an opportunity to steal something, the remembrance that I am a buddha…I simply relax, I escape – it is not right for a buddha. I cannot let you down or let the buddha down.”Nagarjuna said, “That is your problem. But take this begging bowl because somebody will take it, and it does not matter who takes it.”He said, “Forget all about it. Just as you remember, I also remember: I am a buddha.”The very remembrance of who you are is going to transform your whole life. You cannot do anything against your consciousness. You have been doing it because you have been unaware. The only secret is to achieve a recognition that inside you there is a witnessing self. The name of the witnessing self is the buddha. In every act, in every word, just remember your inner being – its blissfulness, its silence, its grandeur, its eternity – and you cannot be the same man.This is called the transmission of the lamp. It happens in the intimacy of the master and the disciple. Nothing is said but something is understood. The very energy of the master, the very presence simply penetrates you and awakens you, brings you out of your dreams and your sleep. That is the meaning of the word buddha: one who is awake.“Now you have it, so keep it well.”“Filling a silver bowl with snow, hiding a heron in the moonlight – when you array them, they are not the same. When you mix them, you know where they are. The meaning is not in the words, yet it responds to the inquiring impulse. If you are excited, it becomes a pitfall; if you miss it, you fall into retrospective hesitation.“Turning away and touching are both wrong, for it is like a mass of fire.”When you go in, you are entering into a mass of fire. Touching it is dangerous. Turning away from it is dangerous. Just remembering it, that your inner world is not dark but is radiant with thousands of suns, is going to transform your life in every detail.“Just to depict it in literary form is to relegate it to defilement.It is bright just as midnight. It doesn’t appear at dawn. It acts as a guide for beings – its use removes all pain.Although it is not fabricated, it is not without speech. It is like facing a jewel mirror: form and image behold each other. You are not it, it actually is you.”When you are facing a mirror, you see yourself in the mirror. Tozan is saying: You are not it, it actually is you.It is a complicated phenomenon. When you stand before a mirror, one ray of light is going towards the mirror, making your reflection in the mirror; another ray is coming towards you so that you can witness that the mirror is reflecting you.But you are neither the reflected one nor the reflection. You are the witness, which no mirror can reflect. A witness is always simply a witness. It cannot be anything, not even a reflection.“It is like a babe in the world, in five aspects complete. It does not go or come, nor rise nor stand.”It simply is. It neither goes nor comes, it is neither born nor dies, it is neither young nor old, it is neither man nor woman. It is simply a pure witnessing, watching.You cannot go behind it, or beyond it. You cannot watch your own watching. That will create a logical regress – what they call in logic ‘infinite regression’. If you say that you can watch your watcher, that means watcher number one is being watched by watcher number two – what about number three? Where are you going to stop? Wherever you will stop…you will have to stop somewhere. You will get tired – millions and trillions, all watching the next. Finally you will have to say that “This is the last.” But why go so far away? The first is the last! You cannot go behind it.Have you seen small children when for the first time they see a mirror? If you have not, you can do the experiment. A small child who cannot stand up yet and moves on all fours, just put a mirror in front of him. First he will be very inquiring – the fellow is there…He cannot think that it is his own reflection; he has never seen his own reflection. He does not know that mirrors exist.First he will try to touch the fellow. But it is strange, the fellow also touches him. He laughs, the fellow laughs; he mimics, the fellow mimics. A strange fellow! And when he touches there is nothing but glass. Without exception, every child is going to have a look behind the mirror – where is the other child hiding? He will crawl around the side and look behind.A Mulla Nasruddin story: By the side of the road he found a small mirror. He looked into it, and he said, “My god, this looks like my father. I had never thought that he is so fashionable.” He could not conceive that it was his own reflection, he had never seen a mirror before – this was the first encounter.And of course it looked…the only way for him to conceive it was, it looked like his father. His father was dead; he himself had become very old. It really looked like his father. But he said, “I have never thought that he is so fashionable. He was a very traditional man, very orthodox. But anyway, it is good I have found it. I will keep it as his memory.”So he came home, but he did not want his wife to know about it. But no man has ever been able to hide anything from his wife. Just by the way he entered the wife said, “It seems you have done something wrong.”He said, “My god, I have not done anything wrong.”She said, “I will see. Your face seems to be that of a guilty man.”He went upstairs and put the mirror in an old trunk. And when he had gone out for work the wife went up, opened the box and took out the mirror. She looked into it and she said, “My god. So, he is having a love affair with some ugly looking, tattered woman. Now let him come back.”If you have never seen a mirror, it is obvious – you cannot immediately think that it is your reflection.A drunkard came home. Not to create trouble, he went very silently into his wife’s room. He had to go to the bathroom, so he went into the bathroom and there he saw in the mirror that his face had scratches and blood on it, because he had been fighting in the pub.He said, “This is going to be troublesome in the morning. When the wife sees it, I will be caught red-handed.” So he tried somehow to hide those scratches, but he could not find anything other than a lipstick. He managed to cover all the scratches and was very happy at his success.In the early morning, when the wife went into the bathroom, she shouted, “Who is the person…? It must be you, you idiot! You destroyed my lipstick and you have destroyed the mirror.” Because he had made all those lines on the mirror, where his face had been. This face was in a drunken state. Even that much was a great intelligence, to find that this is his face.We are all drunk, almost living in sleepiness. Our actions go wrong; our intentions go wrong; our life becomes a misery, a pain, an anguish. But the ultimate reason and cause is that we are not aware of our being. Just a single thing contains all the essence of all the religions: awareness of oneself. And then you cannot do anything wrong.“Ultimately it does not apprehend anything, because its speech is not yet correct. It is like the six lines of the double split hexagram: the relative and absolute integrate. Piled up, they make three; the complete transformation makes five. It is like the taste of the five-flavored herb, like the diamond thunderbolt.”The Zen experience is certainly a diamond thunderbolt. It comes like lightning, and suddenly everything that was dark becomes light. And once you have seen yourself, you cannot forget, even if you want to. Have you tried one thing: can you forget your name? Just try. The more you try to forget it, the more you will remember it, because each time, to forget you have to remember.We have never looked in. Once you look in, a lightning thunderbolt…and the recognition of the face of the buddha within you, your original face. Then even if you want to forget it you cannot. Once a buddha, forever a buddha. It is your essential self. It is not an achievement; it is not something far away, that you have to travel to get it. It is just a question of looking in, where you have never looked before.All our meditations are devoted to a single thing, looking in.A poem by Kanzan:My mind is likethe autumn moon,under which the green pondappears so limpid,bright and pure.In fact, all analogies andcomparisons are inapt.In what words can I describe it?No words can describe the beauty of a moon reflected in the pond.Daio wrote:No longer aware ofmind and object,I see earth, mountains, riversat last.The Dharmakaya’s everywhere.Worldlings, facing it,can’t make it out.Dharmakaya means your body of religiousness. Those who are looking outwards cannot find it; those who look inwards, they immediately jump into it. It is always there.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Those diamond thunderbolts you hurtle around you when you dance with us each evening – at the rate we're going, someone could be knocked conscious!But please, don't stop!Maneesha, I want you all to be knocked conscious. But you are so clever, such accomplished actors that you even act meditation. You follow Nivedano’s drum just like actors. Nivedano drums and you start your gibberish just as if you are a robot, just waiting for Nivedano to push the button. But you are not total. If you are total, it will not be acting anymore.You do, and you try to be total, but trying will not help – you have to be total. I can hear and I can see: people are trying to do, in every possible way, but they know inside that it is all acting. That’s where they miss the point.Make it a reality, throw out all your garbage. Don’t say relevant things; that you are doing every day, the whole day. Just for two minutes, go crazy without any fear. When you are going crazy yourself, you can come back any moment. When Nivedano beats his drum you will become silent.But remember one thing: everything has to be authentic, sincere. Otherwise you will do every day the same thing; it will become automatic. You will become a good actor, but not a meditator. I want you really to be knocked conscious, because that is the only way to find the meaning and truth of life.This evening, don’t act, be real and be as total as possible. Throw out all the gibberish – and you have enough. Don’t be worried that you will miss it, it will come back! When you throw it out, it is just like a thrown ball. It hits the wall or the tree and comes back to you. Here, all around, everybody is throwing his garbage. Once in a while it gets mixed up, entangled; I can see it, that you are getting somebody else’s garbage.But garbage is garbage…and that’s why I warn you, don’t sit silently. Throw everything as fast as possible, because you have to throw yours and you have to avoid others’ coming – because everybody is throwing towards you. If you sit silently, you will collect such a good load of garbage that it will be very difficult for you even to move with that load – a truckload!I go on seeing, when people are throwing their garbage it goes on slipping from Stonehead Niskriya’s head; it falls over it, jumps away. But he is really a stonehead. He remains silent, does not allow anything to enter into him.Don’t remain silent. Gibberish is one of the most scientific ways to clean your mind. And if somebody wants the garbage, he can take it; but here nobody wants it. So when you are throwing, be honest, don’t act. When you are silent, be really silent. When you are looking in, then don’t open your eyes even for a split second just to see what is happening to others. It is not your concern what is happening to them. Let them tackle their problem; you manage yours.And when I say – and Nivedano beats the drum – to relax and let go, just fall like a falling tree; don’t try to make yourself comfortable. That is the point where you miss. I see people making themselves comfortable. From the very beginning they look all around – where will they have to relax? Which side to fall? You just fall as if you are falling dead. And there is no harm if you don’t return. We will miss you, but you will give us another occasion for celebration!Before this knocking out happens, a few laughters just to prepare the way. Even if you have to die, die laughing. And one never knows…everybody has to die. Someday somebody is going to die here, but here death will be a totally different phenomenon. It will be a conscious death. And to die consciously is the greatest achievement in life because then you are never born again, you enter into the eternal sources of life.That’s why I tell a few jokes for you to remember in your eternity. Once in a while you may meet another sannyasin. And you will be able to recognize sannyasins when they tell jokes; nobody else is going to tell jokes. You will meet dry-bone sannyasins, old-type, old-fashioned. This will be your distinction, you will be known by your laughter.Jablonski wants to have a date with Sally-May, so he goes to the pharmacy. Behind the counter is pretty Lucy Go-Good.“Ahem!” says Jablonski, clearing his throat. “May I see the manager or a male clerk?”“I am the manager now,” smiles Lucy, “and we have no male clerks. Tell me what you want.”“Well,” says Jablonski, nervously. “I would like a few condoms.”“Okay,” replies Lucy. “What size?”“Gosh!” says Jablonski. “I don’t know. Do they come in sizes?”“Come back here,” says Lucy, taking him behind a curtain at the back of the store. “Just put it in,” she says, lying back on a couch and lifting her skirt.Jablonski is shocked, but seeing the situation, decides that it is okay. As he inserts his machinery, Lucy smiles and says, “Size seven. Take it out. Now, how many condoms do you want?”Dazed, Jablonski staggers out of the store, with his package in his hand, and wanders down the street. He runs into Paddy.“What do you have there?” asks Paddy, quietly finishing off a bottle of whisky.Jablonski tells Paddy what just happened in the pharmacy, and Paddy’s eyes light up. He dashes off and wobbles into the store where Lucy is still waiting behind the counter.“Excuse me,” slobbers Paddy, “but do you have condoms?”“Yes,” smiles Lucy. “What size?”“Size?” smiles Paddy, trying not to laugh. “Gosh, I don’t know.”“Well,” remarks Lucy, easily, “come with me.”They go behind the curtain, Lucy lifts her skirt, throws herself on the couch and says, “Put it in.” Paddy does, and does and does, until he is done.“You take size eight,” says Lucy getting up. “How many would you like?”“Well,” replies Paddy, “actually, I don’t want any. I just came in for a fitting!”Fergus Fillup makes himself a small distillery and starts to brew some illegal White Lightning whiskey. His whiskey is so strong that Fergus boasts it can burn its way through a steel plate.One day, Fergus drinks a little too much of his home-made whiskey, and he sees so many animals running around his room that he sticks up a sign outside his house which reads: “Fergus Fillup’s Circus.”Police Officer O’Leary and his men go to investigate. Fergus invites O’Leary into his room and puts a large glass of White Lightning whiskey into the policeman’s hand.When officer O’Leary staggers out half an hour later, his men gather around him excitedly, asking him what happened.Officer O’Leary raises his hand for silence.“It is all right, men,” he slobbers, “the worst is over. He has agreed to sell me half of the elephants!”Ivan Ivanovitch is sitting at home in his apartment in Moscow, when he hears a loud knock at the door.“Who is it?” asks Ivan nervously.“It is the Angel of Death!” booms a voice.“Ah, thank god,” says Ivan. “I thought it was the KGB.”Paddy and Sean are out duck hunting. They creep down to the edge of Farmer Banana’s pond and find lots of ducks swimming around near Banana’s cows.“Hey,” says Paddy. “Those ducks are not afraid of that cow.”“I can see that,” replies Sean, “but if you shoot at the ducks you might hit the cow.”“Yes, man,” says Paddy. “But think – what if we were in the skin of the cow?”The next day they go to the theatrical outfitters and hire a cow costume. Paddy is in the front end and Sean in the rear. As they approach the pool, the ducks do not move at all. Suddenly, there is panic in the front end of the cow, as Paddy tries to start running.“Stop that, Paddy,” hisses Sean. “You will frighten the ducks.”“Okay,” says Paddy, “but you had better brace yourself. There is a bull right behind you!”Now, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes.Feel your body to be frozen.Go inside. Look deep,as if you are looking into a deep well.Deeper and deeper…until you find the center of your life radiating, a light unto itself. The moment you feel the light, a great joy and a great silence arise in you. This center connects you with the universe.To be more intimate with the universe, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax…let go. Just watch. The body is there, the mind is there, but you are not the mind or the body.You are just the witness. This witness is the buddha.Remember, around the clock, that you are carrying a buddha within you. Act accordingly, respond accordingly. This small remembrance of the buddha within you is going to transform you totally into a new being:radiant and dancing with joy,grateful to the universe,utterly humble, peaceful and loving.This is the moment when Tozan must have said, The teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by all the buddhas. Now you have it, so keep it well.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back…but not the same as you have gone in. Come back as a buddha, without any hesitation, silently, peacefully, gracefully.Sit down for a few moments just reminding yourself that you are a buddha. And let this remembrance continue around the clock, and you will see a tremendous revolution happening within you and without you.Your every act will become a poetry,your every movement will become a dance,your very breathing will become musical,your very heart will beatin deep synchronicity with the universe.You will not be separate,you will be one with the oceanic consciousnessthat surrounds us all.Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

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The Language of Existence 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Language of Existence 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Bukko said:“It may be asked, how is the self to be approached? By looking into it through this sort of inquiry: forty years ago, where did it come from; and a hundred years hence, where will it have gone to? And right now, who is the person who is making the inquiry? That true face which was before father and mother were born, where is it right now? When suddenly one day the light of life, now so brilliant, will be withdrawn, where does it go to?”“In this sort of way,” continued Bukko, “look into the self. Look when you sleep, look when you sit, look when you walk. When you find you cannot look anymore, then you must look and see how that inability to look appears and disappears. As you are looking at how the sight comes and the sight goes, satori realization will arise of itself.”On another occasion, Bukko said: “The dharma is different from seeing, hearing, perceiving, knowing – seeing, hearing, perceiving, knowing are all dharma.This mountain priest makes a home for the people of the wide earth. Without the dust being raised, they enter the realm of paradise.”Lifting high his staff, Bukko said: “Om, Om, Om! Haste, haste, haste! Quick, quick, quick! Bow, bow, bow!Throwing high, not reaching the sky; laying down, not reaching the earth. All the buddhas and patriarchs find no hold at all. Hold, no hold. Om! – divine streams rushing, rushing!”Maneesha, all the religions of the world are concerned with something objective, a God who is somewhere above the clouds, a heaven, a hell. But they are all outside of you, they are all objective. Zen’s basic difference from all religions is, its inquiry is absolutely subjective. It does not bother about whether there is a God or not, whether there is a heaven and a hell or not. These are all fictitious questions, and all the answers given for or against are going to be fictitious.To the Zen seeker, the only reality is inwards. He does not deny the outside reality, but he does not concern himself with it. That is the work of science, to inquire into the objective reality. The authentic religions should be confined to the inquiry into the subjectivity of your consciousness: from where arises your life, your love, your dance; from where this whole existence arises, and to where you disappear.Now we know even existence does not allow anything to be stable; even the greatest stars, which may have lived millions of years or trillions of years, one day have to die. Every day great stars die, and every day new stars are born – but from where? What is the source of all life? Whether it exists in the poor grass leaves or in the richest and greatest star, it does not matter, the source of life is the same.And the only right inquiry is to go withinwards, to find your roots, to find your center, to go deep into your center as much as possible. Finally you will be surprised to know that as you go deeper you start disappearing. A moment comes when you disappear and the whole universe opens all its mysteries.The individual is a fiction – the whole cosmos is a reality. We are just dewdrops on lotus leaves, very beautiful in the early morning sun. But a small breeze comes and the dewdrop slips into the ocean. It does not die, it simply becomes infinite, eternal. As a dewdrop it was going to die sooner or later. As an individual we are all going to disappear into the universe. Before we disappear, the only way to live a life of joy and blissfulness, a life of gratitude and prayer, is to find your eternal roots. And they are so close within your grasp, you don’t have to go anywhere, neither in time nor in space.This very moment you are breathing the universe, your heartbeat is in tune with the universe; this very moment your roots are being nourished by the universe, just you have never looked within. And you have been unnecessarily begging for small things, while inside you are an emperor. The splendor that you have inside you is unimaginable, the treasure is incalculable. Just a single look inside and a new dimension of existence opens up. And this is your reality, authentic reality. It is so blissful and ecstatic that once you have tasted it you will carry this taste around the clock.In terms of Zen this is called the experience of the buddha. Everybody is a buddha. A few buddhas are looking outward; hence they are not aware of their inner treasure and majesty. And a few buddhas have looked inward and are amazed: what you are seeking outside is trivial, the real treasure is inside. And you were born with it – it is not something to be achieved, it is something to be recognized, to be remembered. It is a forgotten language.Zen can be reduced into a simple definition: it teaches you the forgotten language. It teaches you the language of the inner world. Simple are the steps; there is no complication. You don’t need to have a great intelligence, all that you need is a little courage…a little courage to forget all the desires that lead you outwards; a little courage to look inwards, which is an unknown territory, untraveled. In the beginning it will look very dark and you will be very alone.Most people in life have tried to look inwards, then immediately came back to the outside world. They have become too much accustomed to being a sheep in a crowd. They don’t have the guts to be a lion, and to be alone. They don’t know the beauty of aloneness; they don’t even know the distinction between loneliness and aloneness.Loneliness is always begging for somebody, loneliness is missing somebody. Loneliness is a miserable state. But aloneness is finding yourself in such glory, in such beauty and benediction, that no desire remains. Even clouds are below your feet, even faraway stars suddenly come close to you, because you are getting more and more intimate with the existence.The only richness is to know oneself.By knowing oneself one comes to know that he was only a door to the vast and the infinite, to the eternal and the deathless. It is a very strange paradox that the moment you know yourself, you are not, the whole is. The dewdrop has disappeared, and all around is the ocean.One of the Indian mystics, Kabir, in his youth wrote a small poem, the beginning of which means, “I have been searching my self, my friend. But on the contrary, finding myself, I found no ‘myself.’ The dewdrop disappeared in the ocean, now where to find it? I am no more.”At the time of his death he called his son, Kamal, and said to him, “Correct those lines. As I have become more intimate with reality I see that a correction is urgently needed, and I am going to die. After me nobody will have the courage to correct me.” And in fact those lines are so beautiful, there is no need to correct them.Kamal said, “Those lines are so beautiful – the dewdrop disappearing into the ocean – what more do you want?”Kabir said, “Change it, make it the other way around – the ocean disappearing into the dewdrop. My first experience was that the dewdrop is disappearing; my last experience is that the ocean has disappeared into me. Now I am the whole.”What people like al-Hillaj Mansoor say – “Ana’l-Haq!” I am the truth – is not bragging, they are simply stating an ordinary fact of everybody’s life. You either know or you don’t know – it is up to you. You can delay as long as possible; you have the whole eternity to postpone. But by postponing the truth you are living in utter misery, suffering, anguish, anxiety. Your whole life is just a tragedy – tragedy upon tragedy, failure upon failure. Everybody is trying to hide his tears and failures. Your love is unfulfilled, your desire is incomplete, whatever you have longed for has disappeared as a mirage…You know the ordinary proverb of the ancients: man proposes and God disposes. There is no God, and what purpose will be served by God disposing your desires? He will be getting mad by disposing everybody’s propositions. Everybody is proposing a thousand and one things, and God goes on disposing! He seems to be a head clerk or something, who simply disposes of files without even looking in them.But the proverb carries meaning. God may not exist, but in the very fact of proposing you have disposed yourself. In the very fact of proposing you have asked existence to be according to you, and this vast existence cannot be according to you. If you want it to be according to you, you will have to be according to it.Don’t try to swim upstream, just let the river take you to the ocean. Why make unnecessary effort and get tired? That is one of the essentials of Zen: no effort, total relaxation into the hands of totality; no seeking, but just looking in. Because it is already there, you don’t have to seek.Zen will not agree with Jesus – neither do I agree. The words are very beautiful; one is tempted to agree with Jesus when he says, “Seek and ye shall find” – it is poetry – “Knock and the doors shall be opened unto you. Ask and the answer will be given to you.”It hurts to object, but one is helpless. Jesus has to be criticized on those points, because Zen says, if you seek you will go far away. Don’t seek, just be. In seeking you have to go somewhere, you have to do something, you have to follow some guide. Don’t seek, just be; or don’t seek and find. On whose doors are you going to knock? It is beautiful when you read Jesus, “Knock and the doors shall be opened unto you.” We can forgive him for his poetry, but on whose doors are you going to knock?There are no doors to existence. Don’t waste your time knocking on doors. Just close your eyes and the whole sky of the inner is open; there are no doors, no windows, no locks, no keys. And Jesus says the answer will be given to you if you question. Zen says you are the answer, just drop the question. It is the question that is hindering your finding the answer. Don’t question, just enter inside yourself with grandeur, an essence of birthright. Without any question, you are the answer. Your consciousness, your awareness, your being, reveals all the truths and all the mysteries of existence.Bukko is an important master. He says:“It may be asked, how is the self to be approached? By looking into it through this sort of inquiry: forty years ago, where did it come from; and a hundred years hence, where will it have gone to? And right now, who is the person who is making the inquiry?”That is the most significant point. You are asking a question, but are you aware who the person is behind the question, who is asking the question? The question cannot arise from nowhere, there must be someone hidden inside you who is asking the question. Drop the question and find the questioner. And in finding the questioner, you will find the answer. It is a very strange and paradoxical world. Howsoever difficult it may seem in the beginning, if you just take a single step inwards, everything goes on becoming more and more simple.Gertrude Stein, one of the most significant women poets, was on her deathbed. Her friends had gathered, knowing that her death was close. Suddenly, she opened her eyes and asked, “What is the answer?” Everybody looked at each other, thinking, “It seems she has gone senile…We don’t know the question, how can we say what the answer is?” Somebody gathered courage and asked, “You are being very illogical. You are asking us, ‘What is the answer?’ but we don’t know the question.”Gertrude Stein laughed and said, “Okay, then tell me what the question is!” And she died with a smile.To me, in the West very few people have attained to the state Gertrude Stein attained. In her last moment she certainly became a buddha. She is saying, there is no question and there is no answer. Life is so simple, so beautiful, so honest. There is no place for any question or for any answer. Life can be sung, life can be danced, life can be loved; but there is no question and there is no answer.Bukko is saying:“…who is the person who is making the inquiry? That true face which was before father and mother were born, where is it right now?”You must have had a face before you were born. Or were you faceless? And you will have a face when you are dead. Or do you think you won’t have any face?Zen’s most significant inquiry is to find the original face. This face that you have right now is not your original face, it is changing every moment. Every moment you are becoming older; every moment death is coming closer. Just a few years before you were a child, and just a few years afterwards you were an old man. A few more years and not even a trace of you will be found anywhere. How many millions of people have lived before you?Some crackpot has inquired – because only crackpots inquire into such things – and found that wherever you are sitting, there have been at least eight graves in the past. You are sitting on eight ghosts! And just think of the implication – you will be the ninth. And the tenth ghost will be sitting on your head. Where have all those people disappeared?No. This face, this body, this mind which comes and goes, is not your true being, your original face. You have to find something in you which never changes. In Zen language, that which never changes in you is your original face. All others are masks.Only one thing never changes in you and that is witnessing, watchfulness, awareness. Everything changes. You are aware of the anger, anger will change. How long can you be angry? The hottest person is going to be cool sooner or later, and the coolest person can be driven to be hot. You love, but the moment you say, “I love,” you should remember that love has started dying. Soon you will be carrying the corpse of love, still saying the old words, repeated dialogues. But deep inside you know the love that was a romance, a poetry, a song, is no more there; your heart no more sings, no more dances.But awareness remains the same. At one time it was aware that you loved, now it is aware that love is gone. Seasons come and go, flowers blossom and disappear in the dust, but at the deepest core of your being is the greatest mystery of awareness, which is eternal, which is your original face.“When suddenly one day the light of life, now so brilliant, will be withdrawn, where does it go to?”“In this sort of way,” continued Bukko, “look into the self. Look when you sleep, look when you sit, look when you walk.”And you will be surprised that the awareness remains the same. When you are sitting, it does not mean that the awareness is sitting also. When you are walking, it does not mean that the awareness is walking also. When you are going to your bed, it does not mean the awareness is also going to sleep. Who watches the dreams? Asleep or awake, sitting or standing, walking or not walking – one thing in you is absolutely the same. And to find this is the whole of religion; everything else is non-essential.“When you find you cannot look anymore, then you must look and see how that inability to look appears and disappears.”It is the experience of all meditators that sometimes you are aware, and then you forget and you are not aware, and then again you remember. But behind this awareness, forgetfulness, awareness, forgetfulness, there is a deeper awareness, which always remains. What changes is your mental recognition of awareness. Sometimes it is there, sometimes it is not there.Mind cannot continue remembering a thing forever. It is a flux. Every moment new thoughts are coming, every moment new desires are arising, every moment new longings are knocking on your doors. There is so much busyness without business in the mind that remembering you are a buddha is only a momentary thing. Soon you will forget and you will start behaving in the ordinary way. And suddenly, at some moment you will again remember, what are you doing? You are a buddha and you are smoking a cigarette? It does not look good – a buddha and smoking cigarettes? You may drop the cigarette – nobody can drop buddhahood for a cigarette.But these are mind recognitions which change; otherwise, underneath there is an awareness which knows when you remember and when you forget. That is your original face.“As you are looking at how the sight comes and the sight goes, satori realization will arise of itself.”Satori is the Japanese name for samadhi. Samadhi is the ultimate experience; its very meaning is, everything is solved. Samadhi means everything is solved – no question, no answer. One is at peace with existence, one has come home…a tremendous relaxation which is never disturbed again. Just following awareness, going deeper and deeper from the mental to the non-mental awareness, you end up in realization of satori, or samadhi.On another occasion, Bukko said: “The dharma is different from seeing, hearing, perceiving, knowing.”But he does not include awareness.“Seeing, hearing, perceiving, knowing are all dharma.”But none of them is comprehensive enough to make dharma-nature its monopoly.But he has not mentioned awareness. Perhaps he is talking to people who are not yet meditators; otherwise awareness is dharma. Awareness includes everything, and something more that cannot be said.“This mountain priest,”says Bukko,“makes a home for the people of the wide earth. Without the dust being raised they enter the realm of paradise.”There is no need to make much fuss about your religion. It has to be utterly silent; even your neighbor should not know what you are doing inside yourself. But the people of the earth have been behaving differently. Everybody is proclaiming who he is – a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian, a Jew, a Jaina, a Buddhist. A dharma should be such a secret phenomenon, so intimate that you would not like to talk about it.I have not, in my whole life, voted in any election, for the simple reason that the form that has to be filled in to become a voter has a question in it: to what religion do you belong? That I cannot say. That is my secret, that is my privacy. No government is allowed to enter into my privacy.And when I refused, saying, “I will not fill in this question,” the poor man who was collecting the forms said, “But you are a strange fellow – everybody fills it in. If you don’t have any religion you can say you are an atheist.”I said, “I am not an atheist, but I am not a theist either. I am just myself. And finding myself, I have found the beauty of being natural. It need not be given an adjective – Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian. To give an adjective to nature is to defile a great experience.”But everybody is making so much fuss about religion. Religion should be an absolutely silent phenomenon. In the deepest night, sitting on your bed, you should enter into yourself. Your own wife, or your husband, or your children will not know about it. It is not something which can be done as a crowd, or as a family. It is something which is absolutely individual. Your awareness is only your awareness.Yes, at the ultimate peak, when you will be disappearing into the universal energies, your individuality will also be lost. Then nothing is private, then everything is universal; but there is nobody to declare it.I have just mentioned al-Hillaj Mansoor, a Sufi mystic who was killed just like Jesus Christ – of course in a more primitive and ugly way. He was cut part by part – legs, hands, head…And his only crime was that he had declared “Ana’l-Haq” – I am the truth. His own master, Junnaid, used to calm him down: “Yes, we all know you are the truth, but there is no need to say it.”I have been deeply inquiring into Junnaid, because al-Hillaj Mansoor has become world famous. Junnaid also knew, “I am God, I am truth,” but he was a more understanding, more sane person.He used to tell Mansoor, “If you know it, you need not say it. Your saying simply means that you want a confirmation. But who can confirm it? Only you know.” There is something in the inner experience that nobody can confirm and nobody can certify. No government can give a certificate to you that, yes, you are enlightened. No committee can confirm it, no university can offer a degree in enlightenment – it is absolutely private.I agree very much with Junnaid; he understands the psychology of enlightenment far more deeply than al-Hillaj Mansoor. He is saying, “Your statement means you want others to recognize you, but this very desire for recognition is poor. This desire for recognition simply means you are not certain, there is still some doubt lurking inside you about whether you are enlightened or not.”But Mansoor did not listen to him – he was too young. He was right, but to declare that you are the truth in a crowd means that you are going to offend people. And he did not complete the sentence. If he had said, “Just as I am the truth, you are also the truth,” things would have been different.Jesus was crucified for his proclamation that he is the son of God; Mansoor was crucified for his declaration that he is the ultimate truth. In India thousands of buddhas have expressed this, but they have always expressed it in a way which includes you, which does not exclude you from their experience. They say that they are the buddha, but they also say that you are also the buddha, and the difference between them and you is very slight, not even worth calling a difference. They have opened their eyes to their own reality; you are still a little sleepy – maybe last night’s hangover…Just a little more – another turn in the bed, pulling the blanket over your face. But how long are you going to do this? I don’t think you will be able to do it for eternity. One day you are going to jump out of the bed: “Enough is enough, Ana’l-haq!”Lifting high his staff, Bukko said: “Om, Om, Om!”Om is the silent sound, when the mind stops all chattering and you enter into the world of no-mind. The music of no-mind is something closer to Om. It is not exactly Om, but Om comes very close to that subtle sound.Bukko said: “Haste, haste, haste!”All the buddhas are saying that. Why are you postponing your own blissfulness, your own divinity? Why are you postponing?“Quick, quick, quick!”This is not only Bukko. All the buddhas down the ages have been concerned about your continuous snoring. They make every effort, they throw cold water into your eyes, but rather than getting up, you simply freak out. You become angry rather than becoming a buddha. They have been pulling your legs, they have been pulling your blankets, and you become angry: “In the early morning it is too cold, and this old guy has nothing else to do – he is pulling my blanket.”You become angry, you shout, but you don’t understand that all these buddhas are calling for you to be quick out of compassion.Bukko says:“Bow, bow, bow!”Existence is calling for your gratitude, for your prayer, for your gratefulness. But how can you be grateful if you have not experienced it? You have been sleeping for centuries, for hundreds of lives. You cannot be grateful to existence. It has given you only misery up to now, only suffering. It was not existence’s responsibility, you were creating it yourself.You are a great genius in creating misery! If someday you find yourself untroubled, unworried, unconcerned, you will jump on your rented cycle to go somewhere, to do something. This is not natural, sitting silently; it looks a little weird. Just sit silently like a buddha and the neighbors will start looking at you – “Something has gone wrong; what has happened to this poor fellow? He was running here and there on his rented bicycle, and now he does not even care who is taking his bicycle! He is sitting with closed eyes, undisturbed. Something must have gone wrong.”And you will also think, “Something seems to be wrong. Somebody is taking notes from my pocket and I am saying nothing. Have I gone mad?”All your miseries are your own creations; you cannot live without them. You hug them, you sleep with them. They are very familiar, friendly, well known to you. And you brag about them: how many migraines you have. As if it is something great that you have a migraine, that your stomach…People are talking about amoebas, stomachs, headaches, migraines, and they call it great conversation! It seems the whole world is a big hospital.“Throwing high, not reaching the sky; laying down, not reaching the earth. All the buddhas and patriarchs find no hold at all. Hold, no hold. Om!”He is saying, there is nothing to hold, but don’t be worried – existence will take care of you. It has always taken care.If it was left for you to remember to breathe, do you think you would have been alive? If it was left up to you to remember to keep your heart beating, do you think you would be here today? Long ago you would have been in your grave, or on a funeral pyre. You would have forgotten very easily.If somebody insults you, at that time do you think you will remember to breathe? If somebody is taking away your rented bicycle, do you think at that time you will remember that the heart should continue to beat? There are a thousand and one opportunities in a day to forget.Existence has not left essential functions up to you, it has kept essential functions in its own care. So you can sleep and breathing will continue, you can be angry and breathing will continue, you can fight and still your heart will not stop. You can do everything; the essential things of life are not dependent on you. They are connected, rooted in the universe.The universe is already taking care of you, but you have not been grateful. The only prayer I know of is the prayer of gratitude – “I am nobody and still the whole existence takes care of me.”“All the buddhas and patriarchs find no hold at all. Hold, no hold. Om! – divine streams rushing, rushing!”You don’t be worried. “Hold, no hold,” whether you have any possessions or no possessions, whether you are or you are not, the divine stream is rushing continuously. You are part of it, or you are the whole of it – it all depends on you: to remain a part or to become the wholeI mentioned Kabir. First he was just a dewdrop disappearing into the ocean, but at the last moment of his life he recognized, from the other side, that the ocean had disappeared into the dewdrop. The truth became complete.Daio wrote:The clouds are thin,the river endless.The universal door appearswithout deception.Questioning the boy,he does not yet know it exists.He went uselessly searchingin the cold of the mist and wavesin a hundred cities.There are people who are searching in the mountains, in the cities, in the forest, and they don’t know that it is their own consciousness that they are searching. They cannot find it anywhere – until they fall, tired of the search, as Gautam Buddha fell one night. It was a full-moon night and he dropped the very desire of searching; he was tired and fed up. That very night he became enlightened.When you give up, the universe takes you in its millions of hands. Let-go is the only way to find yourself, and to find yourself dissolving into the ultimate.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Lately I have felt aware that we are just big vacuums, emptinesses, walking around with a facade of personality that does things and thinks thoughts. But Bukko talks of “approaching the self.” Is the self anything other than that sense of emptiness? Are the questions just a means to discover there is no self?Yes, Maneesha. All inquiry in the beginning is to find the self. But when you find it, it is not the self. When you find it, it is no-self. But to tell somebody, “Go on a search for no-self,” he will say, “Are you mad? I am already puzzled and in trouble, and I should go in search for no-self, no-mind, emptiness, nothingness? I am already troubled and you are encouraging me to go into more troubled waters. Why should I search for no-self?”Hence the buddhas say to you, “Go to search the self.” Because they know you will find no-self, so there is no problem. They say, “Go and search inside and you will find everything.” But you will find only a pure nothingness.But that cannot be said. That can be said only to the adepts, to those who are on the path and are able to listen and understand that the ultimate search can only be a dissolution into the whole cosmos, just like a wave disappearing into the ocean, or a stream running fast – according to Bukko – with haste, reaching to the ocean just to disappear.People’s minds are oriented to achieve something. If you say to them, “Search for God,” it is understandable, because finding God will be a great joy, and he will give you all that you had always desired. He will give you a right place to live in heaven, a beautiful palace, where rivers are full of wine, and where young women who never grow old…at least up to now it has never been heard that they ever grow old – they have been at the age of sixteen, fixed, for centuries.My own understanding is that they are not real women but plastic, pumped with air. They don’t perspire – that is significant to understand. The scriptures make it clear that they don’t perspire. Only plastic does not perspire, and only plastic never grows old. And it is very good and transportable. Just take the air out, fold up the woman, put her in your suitcase, and wherever you are going, go. You can even have two or three women in one suitcase.I have heard: Two scientists were going to explore in Siberia. They were in the last village post, and they were collecting everything that they would need in the cold, in the eternal snows. And they were going to live there for almost a year, so they were collecting all the things that they would need .The shop owner said, “Listen, I have been here selling things to scientists, explorers, and I always suggest to them…first they feel shocked, but then finally they agree with me.” Those two scientists said, “What do you mean?”He said, “You take a plastic woman with you – I have very beautiful models.”They said, “What nonsense! Plastic women? What will we do with plastic women?”The old shopkeeper said, “You will miss…don’t take the chance, be on the safer side. And it will not take much space in your suitcase.” And he brought a folded woman, pumped air into it – and it was really a good model, a Sophia Loren. They both thought, “It looks a little weird, but what is the harm?” But one said, “No, I don’t want to be so stupid. Carrying a plastic woman…and I am a great Nobel Prize winner!”The other said, “You remain a Nobel Prize winner, but remember, it is my woman. I am purchasing it, and if I ever find you fiddling with her, you know my temper – then I will not remember whether you are my friend or not. My gun is always loaded.”The friend said, “You are getting unnecessarily hot; let the time come. Let us go – you put the woman in your suitcase.”The man who had the woman enjoyed the woman very much, and the other fellow forgot all about Nobel Prizes; he felt very lonely. One day when the friend had gone out, he pumped up the woman…When the other fellow came back he saw the woman flying out of the window. He came inside and he said, “What happened? Why has the woman flown out of the window?”He said, “I forgot, and I bit on her breast too hard; the air leaked out and the woman simply jumped!” True to his word, the man simply shot his friend immediately.After a year when he came back to the village to collect things again, the old man said, “How are things going with the woman?”He said, “It is a very sad story. You will have to supply me with another woman – but that one was a very rare model.”The shopkeeper asked, “And what happened to your friend?”He said, “I told him from the very beginning, ‘Don’t fiddle with my woman!’ And that idiot bit on her breast so deeply that she flew out of the window. And she flew out just when I was coming back, so I shot the man. Now you can give me another woman and we will live in peace. And I have discovered a great truth: it is better than a real woman, because there is no harassment, no nagging. And whenever you want to fold it you can; it is so convenient. It never says, ‘I have a headache.’ It is always available…”My feeling is that if there is a God and there is a paradise, then those saints must have been playing with plastic women for centuries. Real women anyway are not allowed to go to heaven. No religion allows women to go to heaven, so naturally that is the only alternative, a plastic woman. And the poor saints, they can’t afford a real woman; they could not manage here – how can they manage there?They escaped from the world – in fact they escaped from the woman. ‘The world’ is just the name. When they say somebody has renounced the world, they mean he has renounced the woman. The world? Where are you going? Wherever you go it is the world; nobody can renounce the world.But people call it ‘renouncing the world’ to hide the fact that it is simply renouncing the woman. And without renouncing the woman you cannot be a saint. It is a tragedy that you renounce a real woman, and in paradise you get a plastic woman with a pump.I don’t believe that you should think of any positive achievement through meditation. You won’t get any God, because what will you do with God? You both will feel very awkward. After saying, “Hi!” what are you going to say to God? All the miseries of the world that he has created…This is the worst kind of world that anybody could have created.I had an old Mohammedan tailor. I used to go to different cities, lecturing in different universities. I told the old man – he was a very nice guy – I told him, “I am going in six days, so you have to prepare my clothes; give the priority to my clothes, put everything else away.”He said, “Listen. Do you know that God created the world in six days?”I said, “What has that to do with my clothes?”He said, “It has something to do with it. Look at the world – it is in a mess! If you want your clothes to be made in six days, then don’t complain – they will be a mess.”What are you going to say to God? Perhaps you have never thought about it, that it will be a very awkward encounter. And what are you going to do with your paradise? It is a question of eternity; forever and forever the same plastic women, and the same dirty wine flowing in the rivers. And I know perfectly well that Indians must have reached there, and they will be doing all kinds of nasty things – that wine is no more of any use.So please, settle for no-self.Enough of seriousness. This is not a serious place, it is a temple of laughter.Ace pilot, Captain Cliffski, and his faithful copilot, Captain Kurtski, borrow a small airplane from the main runway of Bombay airport to go for a joy-ride.They are flying around and having a great time, and everything is going fine, when suddenly Kurtski remembers he has a hot date with Gertie, the Polack Airlines stewardess.“Hey, Cliffski,” shouts Kurtski, over the buzzing of the engines, “it is time to land. I’ve gotta pee and I’ve got a date.”“Roger-dodger,” shouts Cliffski, taking the plane into a nose-dive towards the earth.Kurtski is clutching the controls while Cliffski is frantically working the foot pedals, and shouting out readings from all the instruments.They finally get the plane onto the ground, but have to screech to a stop.“Wow!” screams Cliffski, mopping his forehead. “That was a short runway.”“Yes,” pants Kurtski, collapsing in his seat, “but look how wide it is!”Mrs. Benzini, the big Italian Catholic mama, herds her large family into the cinema, and explains to the cashier which of them is entitled to half-price admission.“These-a two,” points out Mrs. Benzini, “are under five. These-a two are under seven. These-a two are under eight, and the older twins will be-a ten next week.”“Mama mia!” exclaims the cashier. “Do you and Mr. Benzini have-a twins every time?”“Not every time,” blushes Mrs. Benzini. “Lots and lots of times we don’t-a have-a any kids at all.”Olga Kowalski enters an elevator on the forty-second floor of the Polack Salami Emporium.It is the operator, Mad Melvin, the escaped lunatic’s first day on the job.Suddenly Melvin, giggling hysterically, throws the switch and drops the elevator through space at a dizzy speed. Then he throws on the brake and brings the elevator to a grinding, shuddering halt.Seeing Olga standing there in the lift with her eyes crossed, Melvin asks, “Did I stop too quick?”“Oh no, Melvin,” replies Olga, wobbling. “I always wear my panties down around my ankles.”Now, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent…close your eyes…Feel your body to be completely frozen.No movement, so that all your energy can gather inside.Look in!Deeper, and deeper…The deeper you go, the more you will feelwhat it is to be aware, what it is to be a buddha.Don’t come back without reaching to the very sources of your life. Be acquainted with this territory, with this space.Remember this silence, this peace, this bliss, twenty-four hours, just like an undercurrent. Soon it will become your very breathing, your very heartbeat.Then there is no difference between you and a buddha. You have reached to the ultimate significance of existence and you have touched the eternity, immortality of your being.To make it clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax…just let the body be there, the mind be there, and you are neither. You are a watcher. Watch the body, watch the mind, and remember: you are simply the watcher.Bodies come and go, mind changes every moment, only the watcher remains for eternity.This watcher is your original face.Let the experience sink deep into every fiber of your being. It is going to transform all your activities. It will radiate in your actions, in your gestures; it will radiate from your eyes, from your words, from your silences.This moment you are inthe very land of the buddhas.This moment you are a contemporaryof all those who have known.Be grateful.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back,but don’t come back as you have gone in.Bring something new with you;bring the buddha with you.Sit silently for a few moments,just recollecting and rememberingwhere you have been, to what space.This has to become your everyday experience.It has to penetrate all your lifearound the clock.Can we celebrate the gathering of the buddhas?

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The Language of Existence 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Language of Existence 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Rinzai said:“Followers of the Tao, I am talking only about that which is distinctly solitary and bright, and is listening to my expounding of the dharma. This one knows no obstructions and is omnipresent in the three worlds of existence in the ten directions of space. It can freely and comfortably enter all the different states, without being infected by them.In the shortest instant, it will penetrate deeply into the dharma-dhatu where it will talk about buddhas, when meeting buddhas; about patriarchs, when meeting patriarchs; about arhats, when meeting arhats, and about hungry ghosts, when meeting hungry ghosts.It will go to all places and journey to lands where it will convert the living. It has never, even for the time of a thought, strayed from omnipresent purity and cleanness, shining through the ten directions of space, where myriad things are in the state of suchness.“Followers of the Tao, men of ability know only now that fundamentally there is no cause whatever for concern. It is just because you do not understand this, that every thought of yours is directed to the pursuit of externals, like one who rejects his own head to look for another; hence your inability to apply the brake to your thoughts.“…What this mountain monk is talking about is just an appropriate medicine to cure a particular ailment of the moment because there is no fixed dharma. The holder of such a view is a true leaver of home, and can enjoy himself to the fullest, as if he were spending, every day, ten thousand ounces of yellow gold on his pleasures.”Maneesha, Rinzai has a special place just as Bodhidharma has. Bodhidharma introduced Zen to China from India, and Rinzai introduced Zen to Japan from China. These two were key figures in creating a whole new approach to reality. You will see, at some points, it is so difficult not to say that this man has certainly seen the original face. He is not philosophizing, although his words are that of a philosopher.It is a strange fate that when a philosopher turns to the world of Zen, he never shows exactly what Zen is. He goes roundabout. He does not show Zen directly, immediately, because of his old training. For an ordinary human being who has not been trained in philosophy it is far easier to understand Zen. Rinzai was unfortunate in the sense that he was professionally a philosopher. So what can be said in a single sentence, he goes on elaborating about, around and around; you have to find that single sentence almost in a forest of words. He cannot forget his old habit of conceptualization – he tries his best.This was not the case with Mahakashyapa who created Zen. He was not a philosopher, he was a very simple, innocent man. And Zen was born out of a laughter – that you should never forget – because Mahakashyapa laughed at the very stupidity of a philosopher asking a question about the ultimate reality. You can ask questions about relative reality, about the outside world, and you can get answers, too. All the encyclopedias are full of those answers. But you cannot raise a question about your inner reality. There is no question and no answer. There is absolute silence; no dust is raised, just a pure, clean sky. What question can you make out of it?Philosophy in a way avoids the inner world because in the inner world there is no place for philosophy. It talks about God and it talks about paradise and it talks about a thousand and one things, just avoiding one thing – yourself. In other words, philosophy is an avoidance of reality, not an inquiry into reality.Rinzai tried his hardest to forget the old training of his mind, and once in a while he succeeded. There was no difficulty for Bodhidharma. He never knew any scripture, he never knew any philosophy. He was a pure, original man – uncultured, uncultivated, absolutely raw. Zen fits with the original, uncultured, unsophisticated very well, because Zen is a gesture. All philosophies are linguistic.Zen has a totally different language of the presence of the master, of allowing his experience to filter into your being, of receiving with joy his song of silence, of being blessed when the master is showering all his blessings…like flowers falling on you with invisible mysteries. Zen has to create a totally existential language. Our ordinary language is good enough for theology, for religion, for philosophy, but not for Zen.I will tell you when he goes into his old habits, and when he remembers to come back to directly pointing to the truth.Rinzai said:“Followers of the Tao…”Now, this is…from the very beginning he commits a mistake. Not intentionally – he is a great lover of Buddha and Lao Tzu, of Tao and Dhamma. Dhamma is Buddha’s finger pointing to the moon, and Tao is Lao Tzu’s finger pointing to the same moon. Only the fingers differ. That’s why Buddhism never came to clash with Taoism when it reached China.This is a rare incident in history. Whenever one religion travels there is immediately conflict with the existing religion – naturally, because their concepts differ. This is the only instance in the whole of history where this did not happen, when Buddhism reached China and was welcomed by the Taoists. It is a phenomenal thing, it is absolutely unique and rare.Do you think Christianity will welcome Hinduism in the same way, or Hinduism will welcome Mohammedanism in the same way, or Mohammedanism will welcome Judaism in the same way? They have all been in conflict, arguing, fighting, killing, burning for fictitious concepts which have no evidence of existence at all. This is the only instance in the whole of history, where the lovers of Tao simply welcomed Bodhidharma. They saw that the finger is different but the moon is the same, and to fight for fingers is absolutely idiotic. They are all pointing to the same moon.Rinzai commits his first mistake because Tao does not allow any followers. You can love Tao, you can live Tao, but you cannot be a follower – because Tao is not an ordinary religion. It is not a church, it has no organized discipline. It is the path of very unique, eccentric people. You cannot fall into the trap of following because there is nothing to follow – no doctrine, no discipline, no special way to reach to the truth.And further on he says that Dhamma is not fixed; Dhamma and Tao are exactly equivalent. If Dhamma is not fixed, how can you follow it? You can follow a thing which is dead and fixed, but Tao is a living phenomenon. It has no scripture, it has only a deep, personal intimacy which is handed down, hand to hand, from master to disciple. The same is true of Zen. It is a transmission, invisible to outsiders, because it is a heart meeting another heart, joining in a dance, falling into the same rhythm.You cannot call these people followers. I cannot call my people followers because there are no rules to follow. You are not here to follow a certain doctrine, as Christians are doing in churches, you are here simply to experience your own self. It is easier when there are so many people engaged in the same search of their inner reality. It creates a magnetic field. In that magnetic field it is easier for you to relax, it is easier for you not to doubt. It is easier for you to enter into yourself, seeing that so many people are entering; there is no fear.Tao is an energy field which is being transferred from master to disciple. And the moment it is transferred, the disciple becomes a master in his own right. Now he has his own field of energy. Energy is invisible; only its effects are visible. You can see light, but you cannot see electricity. Have you ever seen electricity? These lights are just the effects of electricity. Electricity can do a thousand and one things, but nobody has ever seen it and nobody will ever see it.Energy is not something to be seen, but only felt. Have you seen love? You may have seen lovers – even that is very difficult – but to see love…You yourself may even be in love – you can have a subtle feeling of a great change in your behavior. You walk differently, your eyes have a different gleam, you smile in a more understanding way, you relate with other people with grace – but these are all effects. One can act all these effects without having love at all.I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin’s wife drags him to a movie house. And in the picture which is shown the hero hugs and kisses the heroine so gracefully, so sweetly, that immediately Mulla Nasruddin’s wife turns to him and says, “You never do that to me.”Mulla Nasruddin said, “You don’t understand – he is paid. Am I paid?”But the wife was also a rare personality. She said, “Paid or not paid, you don’t know that in real life also they are husband and wife.”Mulla said, “My god! If in real life also they are husband and wife, then he is a great actor. I can certify that he is a great actor.” Showing so much sweetness to one’s own wife – who has ever heard of it?You can act. People have acted as if they are enlightened, knowing perfectly well inside that it is just acting. But followers are not possible. Gautam Buddha is reported to have said, “Watch me, feel me, but don’t follow me.” You have to find your own path alone. And that is a great beauty, that your enlightenment will be fresh and virgin, not second hand.There are no followers of Tao, but Rinzai is a man of philosophy where there are only followers. In Tao, in Zen, in Dhamma, there are only lovers…love at the highest peak, where you open your heart to the unknown realities, to the unknown invisible mysteries of your own being. It is a trust certainly, but not a following.Remember, trust is not a belief. These things I have to remind you of again and again, because all your dictionaries are misleading. I have not come across a single dictionary or encyclopedia which is not mixed up and confused about trust and belief.Belief is in a system of thoughts and trust is the essence of love. You can trust only a living being; you can believe in a dead scripture. Trust simply means that you have already tasted something and you have heard the call of the master…”Come closer, be more intimate. I can show you my inner world in order to help you to see your own inner world.” The function of the master is to provoke a quest in you for your inner treasures.There are no followers of Tao.There are only lovers.Rinzai says:“I am talking about that which is distinctly solitary and bright and is listening to my expounding of the dharma. This one knows no obstructions and is omnipresent in the three worlds of existence in the ten directions of space. It can freely and comfortably enter all the different states, without being infected by them.”This I call philosophical – going round and round. In this whole passage what he is saying is simply, “Look into yourself. The reality of your being is as big as all ten dimensions. Nothing can penetrate it and nothing can burn it, nothing can steal it.” If Bodhidharma was to say it, he would simply hit you with his sandal, and that would be enough. “It is you, there is no need to go on talking about it.” Why not wake you up directly?“In the shortest instant,”says Rinzai,“it will penetrate deeply into the dharma-dhatu,”The poor fellow cannot forget his philosophy. Now, dharma-dhatu is simply a philosophical way to say, enter into your fundamental nature. Rather than saying that – enter into your fundamental nature – he brings in the word dharma-dhatu. To the fools these strange words sound very profound – the man must know, must be a great buddha: dharma-dhatu! And it does not mean much, it simply means your foundation.“…where it will talk about buddhas, when meeting buddhas; about patriarchs when meeting patriarchs, about arhats, when meeting arhats, and about hungry ghosts when meeting hungry ghosts.”Now you can see how philosophy goes on creating great systems of thought and belief. Your very foundation is certainly the foundation of all the buddhas; your ultimate consciousness is the source of all the buddhas. A single sentence is enough, that you are containing a buddha within you.And as far as hungry ghosts are concerned, I cannot agree with him. There are hungry people, but hungry ghosts? There is no reason for them to be hungry, they can eat in any restaurant without paying – and they do it. You cannot see them, so they can enter anywhere; locks and doors don’t matter. This is a stupid idea he must have got from his childhood which is still hanging around – hungry ghosts! To frighten a child just a ghost is enough, but to make it hungry means, “Beware!” A hungry ghost immediately gulps you. One moment you are and next moment you are gone. I know ghosts, but I have never heard…”Poor ghosts, hungry ghosts.” There is no reason for them to be hungry – just something to frighten children….But Rinzai is still carrying his own childhood. There are no ghosts in the world, but all the religions talk about ghosts because their very foundation is dependent on a belief in God. And if people start asking questions about God’s existence, they are immediately repressed: “Even to disbelieve or doubt for a single moment about God you will be in trouble.” The ghosts come in the same line.God lives far away; ghosts live just in the neighborhood. They may be living in your own house. To frighten children with a God who lives far away – no child is so unintelligent to be afraid. By the time the message reaches to him the child will think, “We will see. But first, bring the ice cream from the refrigerator.” But hungry ghosts? They may be in the refrigerator itself enjoying all your ice cream!But a man like Rinzai talking about hungry ghosts simply shows that even if you grow older the child within you remains. And then he became very learned in his scriptures, so the scriptures and the childhood superstitions all got mixed up. Finally he became enlightened, but his whole past was still hanging around him like shadows. And when he starts talking about religion he has to come down to the mind, and the mind is full of those shadows of the past.He says:“It will go to all places and journey to lands where it will convert the living. It has never, even for the time of a thought, strayed from omnipresent purity and cleanness, shining through the ten directions of space, where myriad things are in the state of suchness.”Now he is saying something of experience. He knows that your suchness, your nature, your Tao is immortal, and it is all over the cosmos.It is a very difficult job…and I have suffered so much from these people. Reading their scriptures, I had to sort out what was their childhood, what was their training, what was their scripture knowledge, and what was their actual experience – that was very small. And to search in a mountain for a small diamond, it is really difficult. Now, what he is saying is true but still the language is not of Zen. The language is of philosophy.“It has never, even for the time of a thought, strayed from omnipresent purity and cleanness, shining through the ten directions of space, where myriad things are in the state of suchness.”Just a simple sentence: in your suchness you are the whole. This very moment if you become aware of your suchness, you are not separate from the cosmos. But a small thing philosophers tend to make much fuss about. Philosophy is so much garbage that it is very easy to forget whether the philosopher has found it or not.Rinzai is counted as a great philosopher in the Japanese history of philosophy. He should not be, but his words give the impression that he is a philosopher. I want to say that he is a mystic who does not know the language of the mystics. He is a mystic who knows the language of philosophy, and then everything becomes unnecessarily pompous.Again he says:“Followers of the Tao, men of ability know only now that fundamentally there is no cause whatever for concern.”He is saying a great truth, but again using wrong words. Followers don’t exist in the world of the buddhas – only lovers, only those who are ready to expose themselves to their very core. Otherwise what he is saying is significant. Just change ‘followers’ into ‘lovers of Tao’.…” men of ability know only now that fundamentally there is no cause whatever for concern.”But it has still to be reduced to a more Zen way, to a more Zen language. He is saying that when you become a buddha, you know that there was no cause for concern. Even if you are not a buddha there is no cause for concern. Your not being a buddha is only a small sleep, just a little dream. In the eternity of time it does not matter that you dreamed for few a seconds. Our whole lives are so small in comparison to eternity that nothing matters, but this is known only to people who have come to suchness, who have come to realization of their center of being.Suddenly, for them nothing matters. All judgments drop – nobody is good, nobody is bad; nobody is a sinner and nobody is a saint. All these are different dreams people are having. One person is dreaming that he is a thief, another person is dreaming that he is a saint. When they wake up, both will be the same. And the difference in dreams is not much of a difference; hence his statement is absolutely correct, that men of understanding know perfectly well that there is no reason for concern.“It is just because you do not understand this, that every thought of yours is directed to the pursuit of externals, like one who rejects his own head to look for another; hence your inability to apply the brake to your thoughts.What this mountain monk is talking about is just an appropriate medicine to cure a particular ailment of the moment, because there is no fixed dharma.”Now, this is something very original that he is saying. “…there is no fixed dharma,” so there is no question of following somebody. It may be right for him to do something; it may not be right for you to do the same thing because you are a different individual, in a different context, in a different time. You have to find your own truth and act accordingly – not according to anybody else’s truth. There is no certainty, stability, permanence in the world of existence. But one thing he forgets, or perhaps is not aware of.He is saying:“What this mountain monk is talking about is just an appropriate medicine to cure a particular ailment of the moment.”On a very low level the statement is right, but from the heights of a buddha, the ailment is as illusory as the medicine.You are suffering from illusions. Certainly you need a cure, but the cure has to be as illusory as your suffering; otherwise it will disturb rather than help. Once your ailment is cured you don’t keep the bottle of medicine with you, you throw it away.The people who go on carrying their scriptures are carrying medicines prescribed perhaps five thousand years before to a certain person, who was certainly suffering from an illusory ailment. The prescription you are carrying…the time has changed, so much water has gone down the Ganges. You are no longer living in the world where the Bhagavadgita had a truth, or the Bible had a truth. The whole world has changed, but you cling to your medicine bottles, and you are no longer suffering from those ailments. Now the medicine has become your illness.“The holder of such a view is a true leaver of home, and can enjoy himself to the fullest, as if he were spending, every day, ten thousand ounces of yellow gold on his pleasures.”It is true that a man of enlightenment lives each moment in such bliss and in such splendor –“…as if he were spending ten thousand ounces of yellow gold on his pleasures.”He is not spending a single paisa but what Rinzai is saying is that his blissfulness is far bigger than any emperor. He may be a beggar, but his inner silence and his inner peace and his inner dance is far bigger than any Alexander the Great.Rinzai has to be understood with very open eyes. He is carrying all his childhood superstitions, he is carrying all that he has learned as a student of philosophy, and he has attained the truth. So when he says something it is very mixed up. It is not pure twenty-four carat gold; it has some truth mixed with some falseness.Studying Rinzai is arduous, you have to sift it. But how can you sift it unless you know? My own understanding is that people should read scriptures only when they have attained to the truth. In fact, then there is no need. But that is the only right way, because then they can see what is false and what is right, what is superstitious and what is just garbage. There may be a small truth hidden somewhere, but the problem is that those who have attained don’t read and those who read have not attained.I have read much, but I started reading after my attainment because before that I simply refused…Philosophers, my professors, well-wishers wanted me to read this book, that book. I said, “No. Before that I have to be absolutely certain about my truth. I don’t have any criterion to judge and I don’t want to get confused with all kinds of thoughts.” But fortunately the enlightenment came very early to me, and then reading was an absolute joy because I could separate the false from the true, the fictitious from the real.One of my professors used to say, “Why do you unnecessarily waste your time in reading?” Because he had seen my books. I would make comments on my books – that this is stupid, this is idiotic, this is nonsense carried from their childhood. He said, “Why do you read if you…he is such a great philosopher and you are making such comments.”I said, “Only now am I able to read it.”This is a strange world. When you are able to read there is no point in reading, and when you are incapable of reading you read too much and that goes on creating more confusion in your mind.I have read Rinzai, and I have found that it is very rare to find such a confused enlightened master. He certainly did a great job – others have to sort it out. But at least he carried the message from China to Japan. Those who followed Rinzai, they dropped his philosophy, they dropped his superstitions. They carried only the pure, clean experience of consciousness.Rinzai is still worshipped. He has his own school, one thousand years after he was alive. But the masters who followed really did a good sorting out; almost ninety-nine percent of Rinzai has been dropped. One percent is so true that you cannot drop it. But he was not the man to express only that one percent, he made much fuss about it. It would have been far better for him first to forget his philosophy, drop his superstitions, sort out for himself what is actually his own experience and then give an expression to it. But others have to do this laundry job. He left a mess behind him.A master, Kansan, of the same lineage as Rinzai, says in a few words much more than Rinzai’s big discourses.Kansan says:I climb the road to cold mountain,the road to cold mountain that never ends.The valleys are long and strewn with stones;the streams broad and banked with thick grass.The moss is slippery,though no rain has fallen;pines sigh, but it is not the wind.Who can break from the snares of the world,and sit with me among the white clouds?He is saying, the road is a non-ending road. Your inner world has no limitations to it. Just as the outer universe has no boundaries, your inner world also has no inner boundaries. He is simply describing the whole path he has moved through.I climb the road to cold mountain.Because as you go deeper it becomes colder and colder. All the heat is sickness, it is fever.The road to cold mountain that never ends.The valleys are long and strewn with stones;the streams broad and banked with thick grass.The moss is slippery,though no rain has fallen;Of course, inside no rain has ever fallen, but still the path is slippery.The moss is slippery,though no rain has fallen;pines sigh, but it is not the wind.It is not the wind passing through the pines. It is the pines themselves which are sighing.Who can break from the snares of the world,and sit with me among the white clouds?That one is my disciple, my devotee. This is the language of Zen.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Language is usually about the communication or transfer of ideas; and the understanding of most religions seems to be that one does need to be given something.However, Zen is different in that it appears to be saying one only needs to understand what one already has. Is this why you have called Zen “the language of existence”?Maneesha, you are right. Zen has nothing to give to you, but has something to take away – your personality, your mask, your false identities. Zen has to rip you away, so that only the existence, pure existence remains unpolluted in you. It does not bother about philosophizing. Its concern is experiencing, its concern is existential. That’s why I have called it “the language of existence.” All other languages are man’s languages – for purposes of the mediocre and for purposes of the marketplace. Zen is not a marketplace phenomenon. It needs a tremendous courage to enter into one’s own existence, leaving everything that one values so much.It does not want you to renounce the world, it simply wants you to renounce yourself, and just let the existence express and radiate through you. The Zen master, or buddha, does not speak, he only allows existence to sing its song. The buddha is just a flute, a bamboo with holes. Existence can sing any song that it wants; the flute does not interfere. The flute allows existence to commune with those who are capable of listening to the music that is flowing through it.Rinzai has been a very serious trip. My understanding of Zen is that it is full of laughter and giggles. It is not a serious concern at all.History records many examples of people in restaurants who have found flies in their soup. Professor Dingleberry, a world famous authority, has run a survey on the international situation; his findings are revealing.In America, if a diner finds a fly in his soup, he sends the dish back and complains to the manager.In English restaurants, the fly is carefully removed between finger and thumb, placed on the table, and then politely ignored for the rest of the meal.In France, the fly-finder consumes the soup, but pushes the fly to the side of the plate.In Scotland, the fly is lifted forcibly out of the soup and squeezed over the plate, then dropped to the ground and trodden into the carpet.The Chinese consume the fly with one swallow, and then wash it down with the soup.In Jewish restaurants, particularly in New York, the diner immediately sends for the manager and complains, “Is this all I get, just one fly?”Captain Cartwright Num-Nuts, the astute commander of the latest electronic miracle battleship, the USS. Turkey Shoot, proudly scans the horizon for smoke. He is standing on the deck of his observation tower, on board ship.The Turkey Shoot is floating a few miles from the coast of Florida, and Num-Nuts has just commanded the destruction of a mysterious aircraft flying too nearby.What he does not know is that he has just shot down the latest multi-billion dollar American rocket launched to explore Mars.Captain Num-Nuts strides proudly up and down the deck, sniffing the salt air and whistling the Turkey Shoot battle song, to celebrate his uncanny marksmanship.Suddenly, an aide comes running up to the captain. “Here is a special message from the admiral, sir,” reports the sailor.“Read it to me, my son,” says Num-Nuts, puffing out his chest, and gazing towards the horizon.“But, sir,” says the sailor, “it is addressed to you personally.”“Just read it to me,” snaps back Captain Num-Nuts.The sailor reads, “Of all the blundering, stupid, idiotic morons, you take the cake!”Captain Num-Nuts shifts his gaze to the sailor and pauses. Then he says, “Have that decoded at once!”Luscious Miss Willing starts her new job as a waitress in the Goatburger Cafe.She approaches a table where Kowalski and Zabriski are sitting after just finishing their meal. She leans over and, cleaning away the plates, asks, “What would you gentlemen like for dessert?”“Uh, I would like raisin cake,” stammers Zabriski, noticing her full, white breasts.“Okay,” she says, turning to Kowalski and leaning all the way over, exposing her beautiful tits. “And is yours raisin, too?”“Well,” says Kowalski, looking down at the napkin on his lap. “Yup, mine is raisin’ too!”Now, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes.Feel your body to be completely frozen.Gather all your energy inwards.Look, almost like an arrow,searching deep for your center of being,because your center of being is alsothe center of the universe.One who knows it becomes a buddha.Deeper and deeper…This moment is precious. You are very close to your own being and to the being of the universe. Realizing it is going to transform your whole life.Without any fear…because it is your own territory, it is your own space. Nobody can enter here. It has been waiting for you for millions of lives. Just penetrate it and you will find the greatest blessing showering on you.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax, let go of the body and the mind. You are just a watcher. The mind may be creating some dust, the body may be feeling uncomfortable. You are simply a watcher.Don’t get identified, because this body will change, this mind will change. A thousand times they have already changed. Only this watcher is your treasure, which always remains…eternity to eternity.Lao Tzu calls it Tao.Buddha calls it Dhamma.Whatever the name,this is your pure existence.It opens the doors of all the mysteries – mysteries that you can feel, but you cannot say; mysteries that you can sing, you can dance, you can live, but you cannot say. This is the world of Zen, and experiencing existence is its language.Blessed is this evening.You have all disappeared into an oceanic love,into an oceanic consciousness,dissolving your thin boundaries.Remember this universal experience twenty-four hours, just like an undercurrent. Remain a buddha – walking or sitting, sleeping or waking.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Now you can come back, but come back not the same as you had gone in.Come back much more solid,much more integrated,much more centered,and then sit silently for a few momentsas a buddha.Can we celebrate the gathering of ten thousand buddhas?

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Live Zen 01-17Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Live Zen 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Emperor Wu Asks BodhidharmaEmperor Wu of Liang asked Bodhidharma, “What is the first principle of the holy teachings?”Bodhidharma said, “Emptiness, no holiness.”“Who is this standing before me?”“No knowing.”The emperor did not grasp his meaning. Thereupon Bodhidharma crossed the river and went to the land of Wei.The emperor later spoke of this to Shiko, who said,“Do you in fact know who this person is?”The emperor said, “No knowing.”Shiko said, “This is the Bodhisattva Kannon, the bearer of the Buddha’s Heart Seal.”The emperor was full of regret and wanted to send for Bodhidharma, but Shiko said, “It is no good sending a messenger to fetch him back. Even if all the people went, he would not turn back.”Setcho put it like this:The holy teaching? “Emptiness!”What is the secret here?Again, “Who stands before me?”“No knowing!”Inevitable, the thorns and briars springing up;Secretly, by night, he crossed the river.All the people could not bring him back.Now, so many years gone by.Still Bodhidharma fills your mind – in vain.Stop thinking of him!A gentle breeze pervades the universe.The master looks around:“Is the Patriarch there? – Yes! Bring him to me,and he can wash my feet.”Osho,This verse seems to contain the essence of Zen – “No knowing.” Is this why you have called Zen the only living religion?Maneesha, before you asked the question, the trees have heard it.It is one of the most fundamental things to be remembered by all of you that a religion is living only when there is no organized doctrine, no system of beliefs, no dogma, no theology. When there is just this silence and the trees enjoying the dance in the breeze, in your heart something grows. It is your own, it does not come from any scripture; nobody can give it to you because it is not knowledge.That is the greatest difference between all the religions on one side and Zen on the other side. All religions except Zen are dead. They have become fossilized theologies, systems, philosophies, doctrines, but they have forgotten the language of the trees. They have forgotten the silence in which even trees can be heard and understood. They have forgotten the joy that has to be natural and spontaneous to the heart of every living being.The moment the experience becomes an explanation, an expression, it breathes no more; it is dead – and all over the world people are carrying dead doctrines.I call Zen the only living religion because it is not a religion, but only a religiousness. It has no dogma, it does not depend on any founder. It has no past; in fact it has nothing to teach you. It is the strangest thing that has happened in the whole history of mankind – strangest because it enjoys in emptiness, it blossoms in nothingness. It is fulfilled in innocence, in not knowing. It does not discriminate between the mundane and the sacred. For Zen, all that is, is sacred.Life is sacred whatever form, whatever shape.Wherever there is something living and alive it is sacred.Today we are beginning to discuss a few incidents in the long history of Zen – which are unique because no other religion exists on anecdotes. They are not holy scripture; they are simply incidents that have happened.It is up to you.If you understand them they can open your eyes and your heart. If you don’t understand them nothing else will ever be able to open your eyes and your heart. And what I am saying is categorical, absolute.These small anecdotes in their very smallness just like dewdrops contain the whole secret of the ocean.If you can understand the dewdrop there is no need to understand the ocean you have understood it.Please be very silent and careful.Emperor Wu of China asked Bodhidharma…. Fourteen hundred years before, Bodhidharma had gone to China. He was a unique man: his statements, his actions, his behavior, all contained the pure essence of religion. But he was not a professor, he was not a missionary. He was a man who was ready to share his being with you without holding anything back – but you have to be ready to receive it.Naturally, Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma,“What is the first principle of the holy teachings?”That’s how other Buddhist monks had described it to him. But Bodhidharma was not an ordinary Buddhist monk; in fact, he has nothing to do with Buddhism. He is his own self – he belongs to nobody. It is just a coincidence that his master happened to be a Buddhist. He himself never said that he was a Buddhist; he could not commit such a great stupidity.You will see that the man was almost a lion and his words were just like the roar of a lion. Those who have seen Bodhidharma were blessed people and those who understood him, there is no way to define their gratitude. He was not a man of many words; he was very telegraphic. He did not use a single word more than needed. He did not care about language; he did not care about the emperor…. He cared only about the truth – that it has not to be spoiled by any description, that it should be kept clean and pure.Bodhidharma said, “Emptiness, no holiness.”Do you see the telegraphic language? He has been asked by Emperor Wu the first principle of holy teachings and he is saying emptiness is the first, but don’t call it holiness – there is no holiness. When everything is holy what is the point to call something holy? Categories are possible only when something can be unholy.To the experience of the awakened there is only nothingness so pure, so lovely, so beautiful.But it is difficult to call it holy because that beautiful word has been corrupted by the religions, by creating a fictitious entity: unholiness. Just to make somebody a saint they have made the whole of humanity sinners.The reality is: there is no saint and there are no sinners; there are only people who are asleep and there are only people who are awake. The difference is so small that just a little ice-cold water thrown into your eyes – and the difference disappears.“Emptiness, no holiness” – and Bodhidharma has said all that can be said. In fact he has said even that which cannot be said; his teaching is complete. He has come to the full point in a single sentence – not even a complete grammatical sentence, but just a hint: “Emptiness, no holiness.”Emperor Wu was one of the greatest emperors of China, a very cultured man. It hit him very strongly. He never expected that anybody should misbehave in front of the great emperor. And this man does not even say, “Your Holiness” or “Your Highness.” He does not even address the emperor. All that he says is: “Emptiness, no holiness.”Certainly he must have been angry inside; it is natural – he had been waiting for three years. Bodhidharma took three years to reach – and he had heard so much about the man and the man seems to be a very strange fellow, a little weird. Offended but not showing it, behaving like a cultured, sophisticated hypocrite, he again asked,“Then who is this standing before me?”If the first principle of existence is emptiness and there is nothing holy, then who are you, who is this standing before me?Great was Bodhidharma. I cannot conceive of anybody else in his place when I see his answer. It is simply just his own, absolutely authentic. He does not bother that the emperor is offended – he offends even more. But what he says is such a great truth that he is not responsible.Truth always offends.That’s why truth is always crucified.He simply said,“No knowing.”The emperor had asked, “Who is this standing before me?” and Bodhidharma said, “No knowing.” He does not even use the word I. You simply see the beauty of the man and his utter commitment to truth – that he will not descend even a single step so that he can be understood. Understood or not his commitment is to the truth, not to any emperor.Whenever I have come to this point I feel we need many Bodhidharmas in the world – such integrated people, so uncompromising, so fearless and so devoted to the truth. His truth is that he does not know who is standing before Emperor Wu. He is saying exactly what Socrates said in his last days: “I don’t know anything.” But still Socrates was using the word I, he was not of the category of Bodhidharma. See the difference: he says, “I only know that I know nothing,” but the I remains and this knowing that “I don’t know anything” remains.With Bodhidharma, everything has been dropped. He is saying, “In front of you is standing no knowing, just pure innocence.”The emperor did not grasp his meaning.Obviously it would have been difficult for anybody to grasp the meaning – unless one has already grasped it, but then he would not have asked.Seeing that the emperor did not grasp his meaning,Bodhidharma crossed the river and went to the land of Wei.That was out of the territory of the emperor.The emperor later spoke of this to Shiko…another Zen master…who said, “Do you in fact know who this person is?”The emperor said, “No knowing.”Shiko said, “This is the bodhisattva Kannon, the bearer of the Buddha’s Heart Seal.”The emperor was full of regret and wanted to send for Bodhidharma, but Shiko said, “It is no good sending a messenger to fetch him back. Even if all the people went, he would not turn back.”A man like Bodhidharma never turns back: what is past is past; you cannot bring him back into the past. You miss the opportunity, nothing can be done about it.Another Zen teacher – not a master – has put the anecdote in this way:The holy teaching? “Emptiness!”This is the way of teachers. This is not a lion roaring, this is a schoolmaster, a mouse creaking like the trees…The holy teaching? “Emptiness.”What is the secret here?Again, “Who stands before me?”“No knowing!”He is simply repeating what he has heard; he has not understood it himself.Inevitable – but he makes commentaries on it!Inevitable, the thorns and briars springing up;Secretly, by night, he crossed the river.All the people could not bring him back.Now, so many years gone by,Still Bodhidharma fills your mind – in vain.Stop thinking of him!A gentle breeze pervades the universe.The master looks around…I will not say the master because I cannot agree with him. I can accept at the most that the schoolteacher looks around and repeats something which is fashionable in Zen circles:“Is the Patriarch there?”The Patriarch – he is referring to Bodhidharma. The founders of Zen are called patriarchs…“Is the Patriarch there? – Yes! Bring him to me,And he can wash my feet.”Now he is trying to pretend that he understands the strange ways of Zen. He is also making a strange statement: “Bring him to me and he can wash my feet.”It is simply ugly. Schoolmasters should not enter into the area of truth. Their world consists of small, borrowed knowledge to transfer. They should not speak as if they are lions, because they are not. He has not added a single word to make Bodhidharma’s statement more understandable; he has not given any transparency to it. He has not made Emperor Wu understand what not knowing is – he is a pretender.This man’s name is Setcho. Many times in these commentaries we will come across people who are only teachers but are pretending to be masters. But you should understand that the anecdote is so complete….Only if you look into my eyes perhaps you may find the commentary or if you look into my empty hands you may find the meaning.What Bodhidharma has said is absolute, complete. Nothing can be added to it and nothing can be deleted from it. Even a Gautam Buddha would have been surprised by the flowering of Bodhidharma. He is saying that all is empty and unless you enter into emptiness you will not understand anything of life and its mysteries. And nothing is holy, so don’t be bothered to become saints, discipline yourself, practice this or that.Just enter into your own being.In the silences of the heart nothing is missing.The saint is just pretending – because the reality is already there. It needs no practice, no holiness.All that it needs is awakening.Just wake up and just see who is within you.It does not mean you will come to know great knowledge, it does not mean that you will come to know who you are. It simply means you will come to know that there is pure innocence. That is your essential being, and in it nothing is holy.A beautiful rose is beautiful, but do you think there are saintly roses and sinner roses? Except the priests who have dominated man, the very categories of the sinner and the saint do not exist in existence. All is beautiful, tremendously graceful – but there is nothing holy. And when you enter into yourself, you will even have to leave the idea of I outside. Without leaving the idea of I, you cannot enter within yourself.The “I” is your ego. It is the barrier, not the bridge.That’s why, instead of saying, “I don’t know,” which would have been more grammatical…but a man like Bodhidharma does not care about grammar.Do you think I care about grammar?Bodhidharma simply says, “No knowing” – and he has said everything; he has not left anything.I am reminded of a story…Gautam Buddha is passing through a forest, it is fall time and dry leaves are falling and making great noise dancing in the wind all over the place. Ananda asks him, “I don’t interfere because there is always somebody else who is asking you; it is a great opportunity for me that by chance I am alone with you. I want to ask one thing; I have been resisting but now I cannot resist. I want to know whether you have told us everything that you know, or you have told only some things.”Gautam Buddha bent down; he plucked up a few dry leaves in his hands and he said, “Ananda, do you see these dry leaves in my hand? This much I have said to you. And look at the dry leaves all over the forest: this much I have not said to you. Because you cannot understand even this much, these few leaves in my hand. It will be absolutely a wastage of time to talk about all the leaves of this forest. My knowing is vast; I have just given you a taste.”But if by chance Bodhidharma had been asked, his answer would have been diametrically opposite. He would have said, “I have said everything, I have not been keeping anything to myself” – and that’s why he is not understood. He has said too much. His words are so condensed that just this simple phrase, “No knowing” can contain thousands of scriptures. Still it will remain not understood.Bodhidharma’s uniqueness is that he does not care about anything else, he has no other considerations. Only one other man, George Gurdjieff, would have agreed with him. In the whole history of great masters only George Gurdjieff used to teach his disciples: Do not consider. Do not compromise. Let the truth be as it is; you cannot make it better. You cannot paint it, you cannot give it a little more color, a little more joy, a little more expressibility; you cannot do anything.If you know it your eyes will be just like empty sky. Your hands will not be like fists holding something, but empty indicating that there is nobody inside but a pure nothingness.But this pure nothingness is alive, this nothingness has a heart. This nothingness blossoms in thousands of flowers and rainbows, and dances in peacocks, and sings in birds. This nothingness roars in the oceans and this nothingness is silent in the meditator.This nothingness, remember, does not mean what you ordinarily understand by nothingness. It is better to break the word in two. When Bodhidharma uses nothingness he simply means no-thingness. Just put a little hyphen – and you have made Bodhidharma more understandable. I cannot do more than that. Just a little hyphen: nothingness becomes no-thingness. You are a living entity, not a thing.Emptiness does not have the negative connotation that it carries in our minds. When I show you a room which is completely empty, there are two ways to say something about it. Either you can say that the room is empty or you can say that the room is full of space. Exactly the very word room means space. The more furniture you bring in the less room there is. You can fill the whole room with junk and the room disappears. It is there and it is not there. You cannot throw it out, but you can hide it behind your furniture, behind your refrigerator, behind your television. Take them all out…what remains? Roominess, emptiness; in a positive sense, a pure space.So remember, when Bodhidharma says emptiness, he does not mean your idea of emptiness. His emptiness is immensely full; his emptiness is immensely positive. His nothingness is simply no-thingness; his denying knowing is simply affirming innocence.It is a wonder that in two small statements he has revealed the very heart of religiousness.Osho,Bokushu’s “Empty-Headed Fool”Bokushu asked a monk, “Where are you from?”The monk gave a “katsu” shout.Bokushu said, “This old monk is shouted down by you.”The monk shouted again.Bokushu said, “What about the third and fourth shouts?”The monk stayed silent.Bokushu hit the monk and said,“You empty-headed fool!”Setcho put it like this:Two shouts, three shouts;the knowing one knows well;if going hell-bent,both are blind.Who is blind? Fetch him!Expose him to the world!Osho,I also am an empty-headed fool – I don't understand this sutra at all! Could you give the fifth shout?Maneesha, it is a beautiful koan. Bokushu is one of the great Zen masters.He asked a monk,“Where are you from?”This is always asked by the Zen masters when a new disciple comes. And just by the answer of the disciple it is decided whether he is going to be accepted as a disciple or thrown out. It is immensely important, it is not just a sociability, not a kind of introduction.When Bokushu asked the monk:“Where are you from?”The monk gave a “katsu” shout.Just as you say “Yaa-Hoo!” – it is a shout, without saying anything but making it clear that: “I am here and it does not matter from where I come. What kind of nonsense question are you asking? I can come from anywhere – that does not matter. What matters is: I have come.”The shout is to declare that “I am here and you are asking stupid questions… Ask something about me! Don’t waste time.”But Bokushu was not to be satisfied so easily, because it has now become traditional. So when the master asks – although you don’t understand what you are doing – you can give a shout. It is known; it is written in the scriptures – thousands of incidents. But you cannot cheat a man of the quality of Bokushu.Bokushu said, “This old monk is shouted down by you.”The monk shouted again.Bokushu said, “What about the third and fourth shouts?”Now he has created trouble.He has never heard about the third and fourth. The first and second shouts have become traditional by the time of Bokushu, and a master’s function is to cut through the tradition. So he said, “Okay, okay, these shouts are okay, just tell me about the third and the fourth.”The monk stayed silent.Bokushu hit the monk and said,“You empty-headed fool!”Zen is strange – nowhere else in the world has anything like this happened. The monk, the stranger, remaining silent gave the answer. He could have shouted a third time, he could have shouted a fourth time, a fifth time…what is the problem? But rather than shouting a third and fourth, he simply remained silent. He is saying, “Don’t waste time. As far as the game, the traditional game is concerned, it is enough; now silence is my third and fourth shout.” And only in Zen would it be possible that Bokushu hit the monk and said, “You empty-headed fool!”It is acceptance. He has been accepted as a disciple because of his silence. To hit him is to accept him, and to call him “You empty-headed fool” is a very affectionate expression. It is almost saying, “Sweetheart, my darling.” It is not rejection. In those two shouts he followed the tradition, but he would not go on repeating the tradition; he gave his own shout, and that was silence.Bokushu hit the monk and said, “You empty-headed fool!” In Zen an empty-headed fool is almost ready for meditation. A man full of knowledge is far away from meditation. An empty-headed fool is simply a loving way of saying that you are not far away from becoming wise.The fool can become wise; the knowledgeable never. The empty-headed can become empty-minded, but the man who is carrying scriptures and degrees and the universities and the libraries in his head, he is far away. A master will not unnecessarily waste time on such a person.The anecdote is complete, but the same schoolmaster, Setcho, puts it like this:Two shouts, three shouts;the knowing one knows well;if going hell-bent,both are blind.Who is blind? Fetch him!Expose him to the world!It is sheer stupidity. I am afraid we will have to meet this fellow Setcho again and again. Schoolmasters should not enter into the lion’s den, but this Setcho has entered; now I cannot save him.Maneesha, you say, “I also am an empty-headed fool – I don’t understand this sutra at all! Could you give the fifth shout?”We will – we give it every day! We are going to spread the shout all around the world. It will be heard on every street, in every house.But it is good that you understand yourself also as an empty-headed fool. I don’t hit people, but Niskriya…hit Maneesha. Do it![Niskriya, the video cameraman, is sitting exactly behind Maneesha. He gets up and kisses Maneesha softly on her head.]It is enough of serious thinking – the trees don’t like it! And I always listen to the trees. Look…they have become silent….A young porter in Washington is brought to court for raping one of the maids.The maid alleges that she was leaning out of the window to watch the President of America drive along the street below in a parade. The porter lowered the window on her, trapped her, and had his way with her.“But, Miss,” says the judge, “why did you not start screaming?”“What?” cries the horrified girl, “and have everyone think I was supporting Ronald Reagan?”Olivia Oppenheimer is a very rich widow, who has a parrot called Percy, who can talk and sing in four languages.Percy is a huge hit at parties and Olivia adores him. But Percy has one weakness: he loves to fly over the fence and fuck the neighbor’s chickens.Olivia tries everything to cure Percy of his habit, but with little success. Finally, she gets a pair of scissors and clips all the feathers off the parrot’s head.“There,” she says, “that will teach you. Now all the lady chickens won’t think you handsome anymore!”Two nights later, Olivia has a party. Percy, the parrot, is in his usual spot on the piano as the guests come in.Half way through the party, two bald men arrive.“Hey!” calls out Percy. “Get over here with me, you two chicken-fuckers!”A young Indian brave, son of Chief Running Bear, asks his father one day how he decides what names to give his sons.“Simple,” says Running Bear, “while I am making love, I look around and if I see an eagle circling in the sky, I call the child Flying Eagle, if I see a horse going by, I call the child Running Horse. It is just a question of what catches my attention while I am making love to your mother. So, now do you understand, Broken Condom?”Now two minutes for absolute silence, no movement…closed eyes, just as if you are absolutely frozen.Collect the whole energy inside.Now relax…let go!Now, come back to life.

https://oshoworld.com/osho-audio-discourse-english-l/

Live Zen 01-17Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Live Zen 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/live-zen-02/

Osho,Joshu’s The Real Way Is Not DifficultJoshu spoke to the assembly and said,“The real way is not difficult.It only abhors choice and attachment.With but a single word there may arise choiceand attachment or there may arise clarity.This old monk does not have that clarity.Do you appreciate the meaning of this or not?”Then a monk asked, “If you do not have that clarity, what do you appreciate?”Joshu said, “I do not know that either.”The monk said, “If you do not know, how can you say that you do not have that clarity?”Joshu said, “Asking the question is good enough. Now make your bows and retire.”Setcho says:The real way is not difficult.Direct word! Direct speech!One with many phases.Two with one.Far away in the heavens the sun rises, the moon sets;Beyond the hills the high mountains, the cold waters.The skull has no consciousness, no delight;The dead tree sings in the wind, not yet rotten.Difficult, difficult!Attachment and clarity; watch, and penetrate the secret!Osho,In life one continually has to make practical decisions – about how one will use one's time and energy, with whom one will keep company, what one will eat….Is there a difference between making choices, judging and discriminating?Maneesha, we are reaching to the second greatest Zen master, Joshu. Nothing can be compared with Bodhidharma, but if anyone else comes close to him, that is Joshu. But he just comes close, not to that height, not that Everest, but one cannot do anything about it.Some trees grow very high, some trees don’t. In the world of trees there is no comparison.In the world of real consciousness, authentic realization, also there can be no comparison. But still one should not forget the highest, so that one does not become lost into the thousand and one great peaks.The Himalayas are thousands of miles. Each peak is unique, has something to say, has some beauty to reveal, some truth…stands on its own feet, not dependent, not imprisoned, with tremendous glory and splendor.One can easily get lost and I would like you to remember the highest, because that should be your aim too…. Your arrow should point to the highest.Before I say something about Joshu, I would like to remind you of Bodhidharma’s sutras that we discussed yesterday. In just a very few words he has condensed the whole experience, the whole interiority, the whole kingdom of God: “Emptiness, nothing holy.” And when the emperor asked, “Then who is standing before me?” the answer was, “No knowing.”Yesterday I forgot a very special point to be made to you that will give you the taste of real Zen. He said, “No knowing.” He could have said, “Not knowing,” but he chose, “No knowing,” because “not knowing” implies the existence of I. No knowing does not imply; it simply states innocence. Not knowing is ignorance and no knowing is innocence.Such is the clarity and depth of this man Bodhidharma. Even Socrates said, “I do not know anything.” Even he falls far below the heights of Bodhidharma. He accepts in his statement the existence of I; he accepts the existence of knowledge. He is simply saying, “I am ignorant.”Just a little difference, how small and how delicate: no knowing – not knowing. A small letter “t” and worlds are set apart.In these fourteen centuries that have followed Bodhidharma, hundreds of Zen masters of great clarity, insight, awakening, have happened, but no one even comes close to the depth, the subtlety, the beauty and the immense perception of Bodhidharma. As I look into Bodhidharma, I don’t find any other single individual in the whole history of mankind – Gautam Buddha included – who can be said to have condensed religion into its simplest possibility, expressed religion into its absolute purity. It is obvious that this man is going to be misunderstood, condemned, ignored. The greatest peak of consciousness that man has achieved, mankind has not been kind enough to remember it. Perhaps there are heights our eyes cannot reach, but we should try our best; one never knows.Just a few days ago China discovered a higher peak of the Himalayas than Everest. For centuries Everest was the highest peak; it is no longer so. It is good that Edmund Hillary is dead; otherwise in his old age he would have suffered very much. He has enjoyed the great success of reaching to the highest peak of Everest. But fortunately before China’s discovery he was dead.It is possible that some day someone may reach to a higher consciousness than Bodhidharma. It has not happened for fourteen centuries, but that does not mean it is absolutely decisive. I don’t see any difficulty, because the sky is infinite. Just a little more courage, a little more understanding, a little higher flight and you can reach to the joy that has been up to now only Bodhidharma’s.I would love my people to remember it, that there is no limitation, no boundaries, no hindrances – there are skies upon skies. As long as you want you can fly, you won’t touch the boundary of the universe. There is no such thing, no boundary line.It has been very difficult for scientists to accept the idea that the universe is unbounded. Obviously it is difficult even to conceive of something that has no boundaries. One tends to think that somewhere, very far away, millions or trillions of light years away, but there must be a boundary! Mind can accept any boundary anywhere, but the reality is that by its very nature, existence cannot have any boundary, because what will be beyond the boundary? – again another sky. That’s why I am saying skies upon skies are available for your flight. Don’t be content easily. Those who remain content easily remain small: small are their joys, small are their ecstasies, small are their silences, small is their being.But there is no need. This smallness is your own imposition upon your freedom, upon your unlimited possibilities, upon your unlimited potential.Bodhidharma is a milestone, but the way goes farther, always farther.Joshu says:“The real way is not difficult.”Our minds say that spiritual growth is very difficult. Our religions make it as difficult as possible. According to them it takes many, many lives to reach to your own self – how ridiculous, how stupid! If I am to reach to myself…in fact I will tell Zen Master Niskriya to give a good Yaa-Hoo hit to Joshu.Niskriya…[Niskriya is dressed up as a zen monk and has cut his hair very short. He hesitates over what to do.]Give it without any fear.[Niskriya gets up.]Where is your staff?[To everybody’s astonishment, he produces a long wooden staff.]Right! You have the staff. Good.Whom do you think to hit?[Niskriya hits his own head with the staff. Osho laughs and signals to him to sit down again.]Good.The real way is not difficult, because there is no way. You are already where you have always been and will always be. What nonsense to talk about The Way! That’s why I said that, although Joshu is second in the hierarchy of Zen he has not that magic, that touch. That has been monopolized by Bodhidharma.Even to talk about the way is to make things difficult. I absolutely agree with Joshu that the way is very easy, but I cannot agree with his expression in the way I can agree with Bodhidharma, with absolute synchronicity, as if I have spoken those words myself: Emptiness, nothing holy, no knowing.With Joshu I can only sympathize. I will not say he is wrong, but I will certainly say that the moment you start talking about the way, it becomes difficult. It becomes difficult because from here to here, there is no space for the way. If you are going somewhere else a way is possible – difficult or easy, it depends. But if you are not going anywhere, but simply being yourself, here and now….Joshu needs a good hit.By chance today Master Niskriya is dressed up exactly, but Joshu is not here. But wherever Joshu is, and whoever the people are who believe in Joshu’s enlightenment, Master Niskriya’s hit will reach. I am using Master Niskriya’s hit because I am a very nonviolent person; moreover, so lazy that I have dedicated my whole function of hitting people to Master Niskriya. And he really looks…he is not only dressed up, at this moment he is. It is another matter that the next moment he may forget.This moment you are also just emptiness.No knowing.Pure innocence.But to go on remembering it is the only problem. You don’t have to do anything, except to continue to remember that you are where you are, that you are what you are; that whatever you do, you can never be anywhere else, anybody else; that in this simple acceptance of your being, you have achieved all that has been achieved by the great buddhas.There is no question of way; hence I can say that Joshu has a little understanding, but not much. He says, “The real way is not difficult.”Joshu spoke to the assembly and said,“The real way is not difficult.It only abhors choice and attachment.With but a single word there may arise choice and attachment or there may arise clarity.This old monk does not have that clarity.Do you appreciate the meaning of this or not?”If you accept the basic assumption that there is a way – it is only a hypothesis – then Joshu is right that the only things that can prevent you from reaching it are judgment, choice, attachment. “With but a single word there may arise choice and attachment or there may arise clarity. This old monk…” – he is referring to himself – “This old monk does not have that clarity.” Only on this point does he reach a height, accepting that “This old monk – he is not using the word I – “this old monk does not have that clarity. Do you appreciate the meaning of this or not?”He is asking the assembly of the other monks.Before I discuss the answers of other monks, I would like to repeat again that fundamentally Joshu is absurd. There is no way; hence, the question of its difficulty or easiness does not arise. Because there is no way, there is no question of choice, choicelessness, judgment or no judgment, clarity or cloudedness.So remember – I was not in the assembly of Joshu, unfortunately, but time makes no difference. What I could not say in his assembly, I am saying in my own:The way exists not. You are the very goal.Now have a look to the assembly of Joshu’s disciples…Then a monk asked, “If you do not have that clarity, what do you appreciate?” Joshu said,“I do not know that either.”Again remember Bodhidharma saying that standing before you is no knowing. He does not even by implication allow the existence of an ego. Joshu does not have that penetration. He is far closer to Socrates. He says, “I do not know that either.” He accepts the existence of “I” and he accepts the existence of ignorance. He misses the great peak of no knowing.The monk said, “If you do not know, how can you say that you do not have that clarity?”These are tremendously beautiful dialogues. It is unfortunate that in our times there are no such assemblies; no such dialogues are happening, not even in our great universities. Everything has become so small, so mundane; everything has become so commercial.The monk said to Joshu, “If you do not know, how can you say that you do not have that clarity?” At least you know this much: that you don’t have that clarity. The same would have been the situation of Socrates, but he was surrounded by very ordinary disciples. Joshu may not be right, but certainly he has great disciples.The disciple is saying, “You say, I don’t have that clarity – at least you have accepted that you know something. It is enough to show the contradiction.”Joshu said, “Asking the question is good enough. Now make your bows and retire.”Not a great statement…. The monk, unknown, was far more clear than the master himself. And saying to the monk that, “Now make your bows and retire,” freaks me out! Joshu should have touched his feet and asked for forgiveness. He did not prove his steel.Now again we have to listen to the schoolmaster Setcho.Setcho says:The real way is not difficult.This is what is called parrot thinking. Now what is the point to repeat it?The real way is not difficult.Direct word! Direct speech!Now this idiot does not understand a word and he is saying that what Joshu has said is:Direct word! Direct speech!One with many phases.Two with one.Far away in the heavens the sun rises, the moon sets;Beyond the hills the high mountains, the cold waters.The skull has no consciousness, no delight;The dead tree sings in the wind, not yet rotten.Difficult, difficult!Attachment and clarity; watch, and penetrate the secret!There is no secret. Joshu’s statement is simply without any reality in it, the question of any secret does not arise. But the schoolmaster tries to make it look as if there is some great secret. As a camouflage he writes some beautiful, poetic lines, but they have nothing to do with Joshu’s remark. They are simply an attempt to express, to exhibit that “I am a man of great understanding, I know the secret; now you penetrate….” And there is no secret at all.He reminds me of an old proverb…In ancient Greece, in the times of Anagoras… Anagoras was one of the great predecessors of Socrates, not a great philosopher, but he became great because people poisoned him also. I have never talked about him because there is nothing much about him, but still – by poisoning him, people have put him in the same category as Socrates and Jesus. Anagoras used to say – and from him comes the proverb – that a philosopher is a blind man in a dark night, in a dark house, searching for a black cat which is not there.Maneesha, you are asking: “In life one continually has to make practical decisions – about how one will use one’s time and keep energy, with whom one will keep company, what one will eat…. Is there a difference between making choices, judging and discriminating?”In ordinary life everything that you are doing is all right, but if you want to know the extraordinary livingness of your innermost core, then you will have to drop judgment, choice, discrimination. There is no need. In the inner world there is no marketplace, no shopping mall! In the inner world even you are not! Who is going to judge and what is going to be judged?Again remember Bodhidharma:Emptiness, nothing holy, no knowing.I am not speaking on Bodhidharma, I am speaking of my own vision, which coincides with that of Bodhidharma.It has been a serious evening with Joshu…. You have enjoyed the silence. Now I would like to disturb your silence a little as a preparation for a greater silence.Pope the Polack is wandering through the Vatican gardens one day, when he nearly steps on a toad.“Hey!” shouts the toad. “Don’t pass me by!”“What?” cries the startled pope.“I am a human being,” replies the toad, “who has been bewitched to look like a toad. Whoever saves me will have anything he wants.”“Well,” replies Pope the Polack, “I always wanted to be the most famous pope of all time!”“Simple!” says the toad. “You take me to your bed, let me sleep on your pillow, and in the morning you will have a wonderful surprise!”So Pope the Polack puts the toad under his huge pointed hat and smuggles it into his bed.Just as the cardinal brings in the pope’s early morning tea, the toad changes into a beautiful princess…. At least, this is the story the pope is giving to the newspapers.The express train is crowded with businessmen on their way to the city.In a first-class carriage, Mr. Wong is sitting reading the Beijing Times, when a white-coated waiter comes along the passage with the breakfast trolley.He stops by Mr. Wong, and says, “You for coffee?”“No,” snaps Wong, “I got first-class ticket. You fuck offee!”Miss Goodbody’s class goes for a picnic in the woods.After all the kids have drunk lots of lemonade, several of the girls retire to the bushes to pee and there is trouble with the brambles and the nettles.Little Ernie walks in among them, pulls out his pecker and pees without any trouble.“Wow!” says little Sally, really impressed, “that’s a handy thing to bring on a picnic!”Mrs. Benzini has been visiting her psychiatrist, Professor Potts, for years and feels that she is not getting any better. One day, she decides to confront the shrink. “Doctor,” she says, sitting up on the couch, “I come-a every week for five years. Nothing change-a. What’s-a going on? You gotta tell me. What’s-a wrong with me?”“Well,” replies Potts, “I will be frank with you. You are crazy!”“What?” cries Mrs. Benzini. “Crazy? Crazy? I wanna second opinion!”“Okay,” says Potts, “you are ugly too!”Now close your eyes…Be absolutely still, as if frozen.Now, relax.Now, come back to life.

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Live Zen 01-17Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Live Zen 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Kyosei’s Instructions on Pecking and TappingA monk said to Kyosei, “I want to peck from the inside. Would you please tap from the outside?”Kyosei said, “Could you attain life or not?”The monk said, “If I could not attain life I would become a laughingstock.”Kyosei said, “You too are a fellow in the weeds.”Setcho put it like this:Old Buddha had his way of teaching,The monk’s answer won no praise.Strangers to each other, hen and chick,Who can peck when the tapping comes?Outside, the tap was given;Inside, the chick remained.Once again the tap was given;Monks throughout the world attempt the trick in vain.Osho,This anecdote evokes such a beautiful image of what transpires between master and disciple.Can you talk about the peck and tap that we call our relationship with you?Maneesha, before I talk about Kyosei and his statement, I am reminded of a very significant awakened man. He was a potter; his name was Gora. He uses this image very significantly, because when a potter makes a pot he has to do two things: inside he pecks and outside he taps. That is the whole art of pottery, but that’s also the whole art of the master and disciple relationship.Even though he became enlightened, Gora remained a potter. He inspired millions of people – very rich people, even the kings, were his disciples. And they again and again asked him, “This does not look good. You stop this business of pottery. We feel ashamed.”Gora said, “Even if I drop the visible business of making pots, what about my being your master? What am I doing with you? – pecking and tapping.”Yes, Maneesha, this is the whole art of the master. If he cannot peck from inside when he starts tapping from the outside, he will destroy the disciple. And most of the so-called teachers of the world exactly do that. They don’t even know their own inside – how can they help somebody else’s growth with this art of pecking from inside and tapping from outside?Tapping from outside is very easy, even Zen Master Niskriya can do it. But the real question is the support from inside. Great things can be said to you which will not be of any help, which on the contrary may pollute you and poison you, because they will make you knowledgeable. A master is your enemy if he makes you knowledgeable. But from the outside only knowledge can be given. You become more and more filled with knowledge.The real master has nothing to do with knowledge. He hits deep inside you. His compassion sometimes seems to be very hard, but he goes on showering from the outside, with great love. Inside he has to be a surgeon; outside he has to shower flowers of blessings. Unless a master can do both he is not a master, he is only a teacher.A monk said to Kyosei, “I want to peck from the inside. Would you please tap from the outside?”Kyosei said, “Could you attain life or not?”The monk said, “If I could not attain life I would become a laughingstock.”Kyosei said, “You too are a fellow in the weeds.”Just as I have remembered Gora, the potter, Kyosei is taking up a different dimension to it, the dimension of an egg. You can tap from the outside, but the bird inside the egg has to peck, himself. This takes Gora’s explanation to a far deeper insight. A real master in fact need not peck you from within; your very life energy will do it. That’s why Kyosei certainly and suddenly seems to be asking without any reference or context, “Could you attain life or not?”He is saying, “As far as tapping is concerned, I am ready, but do you have energy enough to attain life? – because the other part, the pecking, you will have to do. You will have to take the risk to come out of the shell, to come out of the egg.” Certainly, Kyosei far exceeds Gora’s understanding.The monk said, “If I could not attain life I would become a laughingstock.”He has understood why the master Kyosei is asking him, “Could you attain life…? Are you full of energy and abundance so that if I tap you, you will not be killed? Are you mature enough, centered, that my tapping from outside will not destroy you, but will give you the open sky, the freedom to fly? It all depends how much energy, how much life force you have. If you don’t have that life, then you are only a fellow in the weeds.”No roses will blossom in the weeds. The weeds don’t give any flowers, they don’t have that abundance of energy that blossoms in a flower. A flower is a mysterious phenomenon. From the earth, you cannot find anything that resembles the rose that is going to grow out of it. Neither in the rosebush can you find anything resembling – even a faraway echo of the beauty, of the color, of the delicateness of a rose. It is not in the earth, it is not in the roots, it is not in the bush…but it has to be there, otherwise the flower cannot blossom.The flower is an abundance of energy. Much energy is used by the leaves and the foliage. Unless a plant has more energy than is absorbed by the foliage, by the branches, by the leaves, a rose is not possible.The monk is right when he says, “If I could not attain life I would become a laughingstock.” You tap the egg and you kill the bird inside by your tapping. The monk is saying, “I would be a laughingstock.” And many disciples in the world…almost the whole world is in some way or other following a certain line of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity without knowing they are disciples. But no roses blossom – they are all laughingstocks.One Christian missionary, Stanley Jones, used to stay with me. He was a world-famous man. Six months he used to travel in the West to teach about Christianity, its theology, in the universities and six months he used to come to India. Whenever he was in my town, he used to stay with me. I asked him one day, “You have been a Christian for almost sixty years, but I don’t see even a faint echo of a Jesus in you. You know much, but knowledge is not the thing. Your heart has not blossomed, your head is heavy. When are you going to grow roses?”He looked at me a little shocked, because this is not the way of talking in any reference other than Zen. In every other religious context things are theoretical, philosophical, they are doctrines. Zen is not a doctrine. It is a very direct approach to the existential problem of why man has not blossomed, why millions of people have not grown roses in their gardens, why they are just weeds, laughingstocks.Setcho comments on this small conversation. For the first time he is a little sensible. He is still a schoolmaster, but perhaps living in the company of the mystics, of the masters, he has learned something. I still suspect that it is only knowledge, but this time he comes very close to the truth. But remember, to be very close to the truth is still to be very far. Unless you are the truth there is no point in knowing how far you are from it. One mile, or one million miles, even a single inch, just a single word, and you have lost the truth.Anyway, he has come very close. For the first time he shows the possibility; perhaps in the end he may turn into a roseflower himself.Setcho says:Old Buddha had his way of teaching.The monk’s answer won no praise.Strangers to each other, hen and chick,Who can peck when the tapping comes?Outside, the tap was given;Inside, the chick remained.Once again the tap was given;Monks throughout the world attempt the trick in vain.Just tapping from the outside is not going to help, unless the inner energy has become a tremendous longing to come out. Then, even without any tapping from outside the bird is going to break the eggshell by itself.There have been many masters who had no masters. Their own longing for the truth was so tremendous they needed no help. Their own overflowing energy gave them the freedom to fly into the sky. The eggshell is very thin; it is not a China wall. You are not imprisoned in something made of steel; you are imprisoned in something made of thoughts. Such a thin rice paper, a Japanese curtain, that you can come out any moment you want. You don’t have to wait for somebody to knock from the outside. And if you don’t have energy, even if someone knocks it is not going to help.There is a very beautiful poem of Rabindranath Tagore, “The King of the Night”:There is a temple devoted to the King of the Night – very ancient, huge, with one thousand priests. The high priest one night dreams that the King of the Night has appeared and said to him, “Tomorrow I am going to visit the temple. Clean it, prepare it. I have not been there for centuries. I have to go to many other temples too.”He woke up, perspiring, although he has been praying every day for just this fact, that “you should appear, you should give us a glimpse of your being, your splendor.”And now the dream has come, but a dream…? In the middle of the night, he called all the priests from their beds and said, “I am sorry to disturb you, but the problem is really serious. I have seen in my dream the King of the Night, saying, ‘Prepare, clean the temple, I am coming to visit tomorrow.’”The other priests started laughing. They said, “It seems you have become too old, senile. Just a dream and you have unnecessarily harassed us.”The old man said, “I understand that you will laugh at me. I thought about it before I woke you up, but there is no harm in preparing. Anyway the temple has needed painting for centuries.”The temple had been completely abandoned by people. It was far away from the habitation of people in the deep forest. And the priests had also by and by become skeptical. Many of them had stopped praying.Many of them had become agnostic: “Who knows if there is a King of the Night? We have been here – we have never seen him. Our parents have been here – they have never seen. Their parents have been here – they have not been able to see him. Centuries have passed and we have been serving these stone statues and now suddenly you want us to believe in your dream?”The chief priest said, “I myself don’t believe in it, but there is no harm. Just think of the other possibility if he comes…There is no chance, I know, but just give a one percent possibility. It is one hundred percent certain there is no possibility that he will come. It is just a dream, but just give one percentage point…if he comes and finds us unprepared, no flowers for him, no sweets for his welcome, no music, no dance, no candles, then we will be in really bad shape. One thousand priests…what are you doing here?“And anyway, if we clean the temple, bring flowers, burn candles as if he is coming and he does not come, there is no harm. It is our temple and we live in it, we have celebrated it. The guest has promised but did not turn up. There is no harm in preparing, but in not preparing there is tremendous risk, and I cannot take that risk.”By that time the night was almost over and everybody gave thought to the old priest – he was reasonable. The temple was cleaned. It had hundreds of statues, so much dust, for centuries nobody has cared. They brought flowers and perfume, and they brought sweets and they prepared special food.Half a day had passed and the suspicion started arising: “Half the day has gone and he has not come yet. We are unnecessarily being bothered by this old fool’s dream. Who has ever heard that any god comes to any temple? It goes against all factuality, all history, and we believed the dream and tired ourselves unnecessarily. And we cannot eat, unless the guest comes.”That is a simple rule in the temple. First the god has to be served and then the priests can share the food.Up to now it had been easy, because the gods were only stone gods. Today was difficult. It was getting late, the sun had started going down and everybody was angry with the old priest: “We have wasted so much money unnecessarily on flowers, on painting…. We had to bring so many servants to clean, because it was almost impossible, it was so huge.”The old priest said, “I am sorry, but what can I say? He may still come.”The day passed and finally they decided, even against the head priest, “Now it is useless to wait – the sun has set. The whole day we have been hungry and working and now we are tired. We want to eat and go to sleep.”The old man said, “It is better just to wait one night more because he is the King of the Night – that we have forgotten completely. He will not come in the day; he will come in the night, if ever he comes.”They said, “Now we are no longer going to be persuaded by this stupidity to remain hungry and awake the whole night, waiting for your dream.”They revolted.The old priest said, “There is no need to revolt. I am myself old and tired and hungry; I will join you…perhaps it was just a dream.”And they all ate the delicacies they had arranged for the god of the temple. They were so tired they fell asleep very soon, early in the night.In the middle of the night came a golden chariot with the King of the Night, the god of the temple. The chariot came on the mud road leaving its marks on the mud up to the great gate of the temple. There were a thousand steps to reach to the temple, and the god of the temple climbed those thousand steps up to the main door.The noise of the chariot on the mud road was heard. Some priest, half-awake, half-asleep said, “It seems he has come, because I hear the sound of a great chariot.”Somebody else shouted him down: “Don’t disturb us now. Enough of all this nonsense! There is no chariot; it is just a cloud passing by.”Somebody else said, “But I have heard the steps – somebody is coming up to the main door.”Out of those thousand priests many jumped upon him and forced him: “Remain silent and quiet. It is nothing but a strong wind striking on the doors. Don’t be deceived; don’t think that the god will knock on the doors.”In the morning they were all crying because there were marks of footprints on those one thousand steps and on the mud road there were marks of a chariot, coming and going back.The god had come – but they were asleep.It is possible to find a master who can tap you, but if you are fast asleep, in your sleep you will find a thousand and one explanations and go on back to sleep. Perhaps it is a cloud, perhaps it is wind…you may find any reason to avoid; you will take another turn and go to sleep…nobody has come.It all depends on your inner energy to be waiting at the door for the guest to come, fully awake, in deep trust, in great love.In fact your trust and your love are the constituents of the guest.Your love creates, your trust creates – nobody comes.Just your trust and your love blossoms and a fragrance surrounds you. Thousands of lights start burning around you.It is your energy, your abundant energy – there is no other God.Maneesha, you are asking: “This anecdote evokes such a beautiful image of what transpires between master and disciple. Can you talk about the ‘peck and tap’ that we call our relationship with you?”In fact, the tap is not inevitable but the peck is inevitable. If you are overflowing with energy then even a man who knows nothing may give you a tap and you will be freed from your sleep, from your darkness, from your unconsciousness.Once it happened with a great Tibetan saint, Milarepa…. He was a simple and innocent person and he followed a master who was not a master at all, but just a great scholar, very knowledgeable, had a great following. But Milarepa was not concerned with the knowledge. He loved the man, he trusted him. Although he was not trustworthy, he was not a master, Milarepa accepted him as a master to such an extent – the story is very beautiful, must be symbolic – that he would walk on water.Other disciples who were older and senior to him could not do it; they tried. They asked Milarepa, “What is the secret?”He said, “No secret; I simply trust my master. I remember him and I say to him that I want to cross this river, that’s all. I don’t know how he manages.”Naturally, jealousy arose because he was a newcomer and he was suddenly becoming the most prominent because of his doings. He would jump from the mountains without being hurt…and the reason he would always give was, “It is my master.”It was reported to his master. The master was very much surprised. He himself would not dare to walk on water. He was a knowledgeable scholar, but that does not make you capable of walking on water. He could not jump from mountains into valleys without being hurt. But now he was in a difficulty. He could not say, “I am not responsible at all, it must be his own trust” – on the contrary he proved to be a very ordinary human being. He said, “Yes, it is my name and the power of my name.”So the disciples asked, “Then you show us: walk on the waters.”He said, “I will.”He thought in his mind, “If my name can manage it, then of course I am going to try it myself.”And after the first step he started shouting, “Help! Help!” because he was drowning. Somehow he was pulled out.The disciples asked, “What happened?”He said, “I don’t know, I had never tried it before. Where is that Milarepa?”Milarepa was on the other side of the river, so he came running on the water.The master said, “My God, you have exposed me. I cannot do it, nor can my name do it; it must be your trust. It does not matter in what – in whom.”So once in a while it has happened that a master who was not a master has helped somebody to become awakened, enlightened. And the contrary has also happened, that the master is fully awakened, he goes on shouting into your ears…but you don’t think that you can fly, that the whole sky is yours, that you can be free from the imprisonment that you yourself have created of relationships, of success, of power, of prestige…thousands are the names of the devil, but the essential thing is that it imprisons you, it chains you.It is in your power to break those chains, because those chains are made only of your imagination.Maneesha, the most essential lesson on the path is of having a loving heart, of trusting the existence – of being in a let-go that if existence takes care of all this vast universe it will also take care of you. And whatever happens must be right because nothing can happen against existence.This immense trust is difficult in the beginning, because you can’t touch existence, you can’t figure out what existence is.The master is simply a very thin thread between you and existence. He can give you a tangible proof of trust and love. If he becomes the proof, the answer, then something in you will start opening up. The master does nothing, not even tapping.So I am not in agreement with Kyosei and Setcho and Gora. What they are saying is significant but not significant enough.The master does nothing.His being a master is enough.His silence penetrates the heart of the disciple.There is no effort; it is just a happening.The very presence of the master gives you the trust that life is much more than you have known up to now, much deeper, much vaster; that life is not just this mundane, everyday routine; that life has an inner world, an inner kingdom, a treasure that you are carrying without knowing anything about it.The master simply provokes you, challenges you.His silence is a challenge, his words are a challenge. His presence is an invitation.Those who are alive and those who want to be more alive follow the path; they are very few, unfortunately. Most of the people decide to remain in their eggs. The egg seems to be very protective – who knows what is outside? The egg is a security – who knows, outside may be insecure, unsafe. The master simply gives by his presence the assurance – not by words, but just by his being: “Come out of the egg, come out of your prison whatever is the name of your prison – and you are capable of it.”Nothing is needed to be done from the outside; it is an inner explosion. The gardener does not open the rose petals; the bud opens the petals on its own. Yes, the gardener helps in many other ways, but the central and the essential experience happens from the inside.I call the man a master who can make you secure in this insecure world, who can give you the courage to come out of your cozy hole, who can give you the insight that you have wings.I have told you one ancient parable…A lioness was pregnant and she jumped from one hillock to another hillock and gave birth to a kid, which fell on the ground in a crowd of sheep.This small lion was brought up by the sheep, although he became a lion. But they became accustomed to him and moreover, he was a vegetarian just as all sheep are. And although sheep or lions don’t have mirrors, they felt that something was weird with this sheep…too long, too big, but there was no trouble.The trouble arose one day when an old lion saw this crowd of sheep going by and, among them, a lion, young, strong – and the sheep were not afraid of him!The old lion could not believe his eyes – it was so absurd! He had to run after him, because the young lion started running with the sheep. He called to him many times, “Stop!”But the young lion had never thought that he was anybody other than a sheep – perfectly vegetarian, eating grass, having friends, love affairs, girlfriends, enjoying life – why should he stop? And this fellow seems to be dangerous!But the old lion could not resist the temptation. He followed and got hold of the young lion and said, “You idiot, have you forgotten that you are a lion?”The young lion started shivering with fear and he said, “Let me go, my people are going. If they are gone I will be lost. Don’t prevent me. Please forgive me; just let me go. They are all going to have a beautiful lunch; just by the side of the river there is such delicious grass. If you want you can come, but don’t prevent me.”The old lion said, “You stupid…you come with me. Have you started eating grass?”The old lion took the young lion forcibly, because he wouldn’t budge. He wanted to go to his own people and this fellow was unnecessarily harassing. The old lion took him to the river and told him, “Look into the river and look at my face and your face!”Nothing was said, nothing was done, and there came a great roar from the young lion. Suddenly, a transformation: he was not a sheep.But nothing was said. Just a mirror was used, the mirror of a silent river.The master is only a mirror.He does not do anything.He simply allows you to look into the mirror of his eyes, into the mirror of his gestures, into the mirror of his silences, and perhaps there may come the lion’s roar.You may wake up to your reality.It is so silent and so beautiful, but I would like a little laughter before we experience a deeper silence. Each laughter brings in the wake a deeper silence, a fresher silence….A young actor has just been hired for his first role in a play being performed on Broadway.“You have only one line,” the director tells him, “but it is an extremely important one. When you hear the sound of guns going off you say, ‘Hark! I hear the cannons roar!’ Do you understand?”“Of course,” replies the actor confidently, “Hark! I hear the cannons roar! No problem, I’ve got it already.”The following night the theater is packed and the young actor is striding about backstage repeating over and over, “Hark! I hear the cannons roar.”Then the audience goes quiet as the play begins. The director signals for the young man to go out on the stage and the curtain raises.Suddenly a loud thundering noise rolls through the theater. The startled actor spins round and shouts, “Shit! What the fuck was that?”A Texan in England enters a crowded railway carriage. He finds that the only spare seat is occupied by a mean looking dog owned by a fat red-faced woman.He asks politely if the dog can sit on the floor instead of the seat.“You leave my dog alone!” snaps the woman.The Texan searches the whole train without finding a seat, so he comes back and throws the dog out of the window.The woman freaks out. “Are you all going to sit here,” she screams at everyone, “and allow an American to treat an English lady like this?”One man in a bowler hat lowers his Times newspaper, “The Americans are all crazy, Madam,” he explains. “They hold their fork in the wrong hand, they drive on the wrong side of the road, and now this idiot has gone and thrown the wrong bitch out of the window!”A Catholic priest in Rome visits a brothel. When he has finished, instead of having to pay he is given ten dollars. The priest rushes off to tell the cardinal about this.Sure enough, the next day the cardinal goes to the same brothel. When he has finished, instead of having to pay he is given one hundred dollars. The cardinal can’t believe his luck. So he runs off to tell Pope the Polack about this incredible deal.The next night the Polack pope sneaks down to the red-light district and finds the same place. When he has finished they give him a check for a thousand dollars.“Just a minute,” cries the pope, “this is unbelievable! How come you pay the customers here?”“Well,” says the madam, “it is like this. We got a great photograph of the priest in action. We made a great movie out of the cardinal. And right now you are appearing live on satellite television.”A young girl who is getting married asks her mother about the wedding night. Her mother is old-fashioned and tells her, “He will take you to bed, tear off your clothes and then he will lie beside you and then…er, scare you! But you will just have to put up with it.”After the first time the young bride looks coyly at her husband. “Darling,” she says, “scare me again.”He scares her several times during the night, and when the sun rises the bride shakes her husband and says, “Darling, scare me again.”The man opens his bleary eyes, slowly takes a deep breath and shouts, “Yaa-boo!”Okay…now for two minutes close your eyes, no movement, just be frozen….Now relax.Come back.

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Live Zen 01-17Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Live Zen 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Hyakujo and a Wild DuckWhen Basho was out walking with Hyakujo he saw a wild duck fly past.Basho said, “What is it?”Hyakujo said, “It is a wild duck.”Basho said, “Where is it?”Hyakujo said, “It has flown away.”Basho at last gave Hyakujo’s nose a sharp pinch. Hyakujo cried out with pain.Basho said, “There, how can it fly away?”Setcho says:The wild duck! What, how and where?Basho has seen, talked, taught and exhausted the meaning of mountain clouds and moonlit seas.But Jo doesn’t understand – “has flown away.”Flown away? No, he is brought back!Say! Say!Osho,Basho is said to have been the first Zen master to use hits, pinches, shouts and pushes to bring a disciple to the present. But such methods leave themselves open to abuse and to becoming simply a tradition.You seem to devise a different method every day to outsmart us.You are always at least one step ahead of us!What do you say?Maneesha, before Zen master Niskriya takes care of you, I would like to answer this beautiful anecdote…. Basho has tremendous respect in my heart. He is not only a mystic, a master, he is also a poet, a painter, a sculptor; he is a creative phenomenon. Nobody can compare with him as far as his multidimensional personality is concerned.Bodhidharma is the greatest peak but he is one-dimensional. Basho is not that great a peak but he has a different quality of greatness that is his multidimensionality. Just as Bodhidharma is unique so is Basho. His statements have to be listened to very carefully. He speaks as Basho should speak – he is the very essence of Zen.If Bodhidharma is the founder then Basho is the flower. He has the fragrance which only a flower can have. That fragrance is manifested in his poetry, in his small statements, in his every gesture. Even in his ordinary talks with people he cannot be other than Basho.This small anecdote would have been forgotten if Basho were not there. There is nothing new in it but Basho gives it new meaning. There is nothing philosophical or mystical in it, but Basho makes it a mystery. You will have to be very silently aware to see what a great master is….Bodhidharma is very raw. He smells of the earth when the first rain clouds come – and a beautiful smell out of the earth. Basho is far more refined, perhaps the most refined Zen master up to now. His refinement is in his cultured, meditative spaciousness. Out of that spaciousness many flowers have showered on the world. It does not matter wherever he is and whatever is going on, Basho is going to make it a Zen state of affairs. That uniqueness will not be found again.Just think of this Hyakujo and a wild duck….When Basho was out walking with Hyakujo he saw a wild duck flying past.Basho said, “What is it?”Certainly the question is not about the wild duck, because Basho is not blind. Hyakujo is far behind in spiritual growth; he is not yet a master. Not even a perfect disciple. He has some intellectual sophistication, but even he missed it. He missed it because he must have thought that Basho had not seen that it is a wild duck.Basho is not asking about the wild duck at all. He is not asking about the form but the essence.“What is it?” He is not asking about the past or the present but that which transcends time.Hyakujo said, “It is a wild duck.”Perfectly factual, perfectly right – but not in the eyes of a man like Basho.Basho said, “Where is it?”He gives another chance to Hyakujo and he again misses it.Hyakujo said, “It has flown away.”Basho at last gave Hyakujo’s nose a sharp pinch. Hyakujo cried out with pain.Basho said, “There, how can it fly away?”So much is implied in this small conversation. First, as we conceive time and as it is in the eyes of the awakened, is not the same.For us time passes by.For the awakened one you pass by.Time is always present. It never goes anywhere.It is always now and here.Have you ever met the past? Yes, you have imagined, dreamt about it. But your dreaming about the past is not the past; your imagination is not the reality. Where is the future? – except in your desires and in your longings and in your passions, where is the future? And these longings and desires and greed and ambitions are part of your mind. They are not part of time.For a man whose desires have disappeared, whose greed is no longer there, do you think there will be even a slight shadow of tomorrow? With the desires and longings going away the future dies, and with the memories and imaginations and the dreams dropping, the past disappears. Then what remains in your hands? You cannot even call it present, because present is possible only if there is something past and something future. In that context the present is the middle, but if the future disappears and the past dies, the present cannot live. The present is also part of your mind.Your mind is time.And when times ceases, your mind ceases.Then you simply are.You have to understand this background, only then will you be able to see Basho’s tremendous insight into things, transforming small experiences into great metaphysical truths.As he saw the wild duck fly past Basho said, “What is it?”He is not asking about the wild duck, he is asking about it – and the it contains the whole existence. But obviously anybody who understands only language and knows nothing about that which is beyond language, will agree with Hyakujo.Hyakujo said, “It is a wild duck.”But he has not understood that Basho would not ask about the wild duck; he can see it himself. He is asking about it, another name of existence. “What is it?” The wild duck is just an excuse to raise the question: What is existence? Existence is not a wild duck, although a wild duck is part of existence – but existence is far bigger.The it of Basho contains the totality; the poor wild duck is not even a dewdrop in the ocean. But he gives another chance to Hyakujo to understand that his question is not directed about the wild duck.Basho said, “Where is it?”Hyakujo goes on committing the same mistake. That is the nature of mind; it goes on committing the same mistake again and again.Hyakujo said, “It has flown away.”The simple word it in the eyes of Basho contains the whole existence; hence it cannot fly away. Where will it go? It contains all, but poor Hyakujo is still concerned with the wild duck. He cannot understand that a great master like Basho cannot ask such a stupid question and if he is asking, then there must be much more than language contains. He said, “It has flown away” – still he is concerned with the wild duck. Naturally Basho could see that Hyakujo will not understand easily.Basho at last gave Hyakujo’s nose a sharp pinch. Hyakujo cried out with pain.Basho said, “There, how can it fly away?”Existence cannot go anywhere. It is always here. How can it fly away and where? It is everywhere. That small it contains the whole.And Basho is the past master because it began with him that he started hitting his disciples, slapping his disciples, pinching their noses.Words have failed…what to do? The disciple has to be brought to his senses! Basho gave a sharp pinch to Hyakujo’s nose. Hyakujo cried out with pain. Rather than sympathizing or being compassionate,Basho said, “There…”Pain brings you here. Pain has a certain quality, the same as pleasure; they bring you here. And a sharp pinch on the nose and Basho asked, “There, when the nose is hurting how can it fly away?”Setcho comments – his commentaries are becoming better every day:“The wild duck! What, how, and where?”In existence everything is formal: today somebody is alive and tomorrow he is gone. Who was he? Where was he and where has he gone? The flower that was dancing in the wind just now is no longer there – all the petals have withered away. From where did that flower come? From where to where has it gone? What was it? Certainly it was not just the petals. It was a certain expression of existence. It was real; it was not a dream.It came out from nowhere.It remained in nowhere.It has gone into nowhere.Nowhere.I would suggest to you again to break that word in two: make it now-here – just a small hyphen. That is the meaning of nowhere. Now-here – put together it becomes nowhere, but looked at deeply, now and here are the realities. Perhaps you cannot see it now. It has entered into its own essence.Again will come the spring and again will come the flower.It has been coming again and again and going again and again back into its invisible house – the essence.The wild duck! What, how, and where?Basho has seen, talked, taught and exhausted the meaning of the mountain clouds and moonlit seas.But Jo does not understand…Flown away?Setcho is using Hyakujo’s everyday name, Jo. Jo does not understand. He sees but he sees only the form. He does not see the formless; otherwise even in the wild duck you will find the same essential soul as you will find within yourself.The whole existence consists of one soul with millions of formulations – but the content of every form is the same.“…has flown away.”Flown away? No, he is brought back!By pinching hard on the nose of Hyakujo the wild duck is brought back. Setcho means that if even now he cannot understand that nothing goes anywhere, everything remains here – like the pain. Then the wild duck is brought back.Say! Say!Setcho has the style of repeating his comments with “Say!” He is commenting in front of disciples. He is asking them, “Say, have you understood it? Is the wild duck back? Say!” In fact it has never gone anywhere, it has been in its essence since eternity and to eternity. For the first time Setcho has made something beautiful, has added something to Basho’s statement.And Maneesha is asking me: “Osho, Basho is said to have been the first Zen master to use hits, pinches, shouts and pushes to bring a disciple to the present. But such methods leave themselves open to abuse and to becoming simply a tradition.”True! That fate has befallen the Zen tradition also; much of it has become dead. Still masters ask, “What is it?” when a wild duck flies over – knowing the whole story, still the noses are pinched – but now it is meaningless. You are right that such methods leave themselves open to abuse and to becoming simply a tradition. Everything outward is going to become a tradition and the moment anything becomes a tradition, it loses meaning.Is it so easy to understand existence just by giving a pinch to somebody’s nose, or shouting, or hitting…? These kinds of strategies can work only once. Basho was very inventive – he never repeated the same strategy again. But even though you are inventive, how many things can you do from the outside? There is a limit.Maneesha, you are asking, “You seem to devise a different method every day to outsmart us. You are always at least one step ahead of us. What do you say?”No knowing!I do not devise. I never know what is going to be my next word. I allow existence to take me over completely. Hence I have been speaking for thirty-five years but I have never felt that I have repeated anything. Every day everything is fresh; every time it has a new dimension, a new meaning, a new significance; every time a new smell, a new fragrance.I don’t devise, I let the universe devise it. It is not a very great quality; it is sheer laziness. I won’t pinch anybody’s nose – not because there are noses which do not need to be pinched, but just because I am too lazy. I am so lazy that my physiologist, my physician, Amrito exercises for me. He takes my hand and he tells me, “Don’t do anything” – and he exercises my hand…. I said, “Okay.”Now he has imported machines which will exercise for me. I will enjoy seeing my own leg being exercised by a machine. For the first time a buddha is in such a situation!But as far as invisible hits and shouts are concerned, they happen on their own. I may just look at you, or I may call Master Niskriya – and he was so beautiful. He functioned exactly the way…even Basho would have felt ashamed! When I told him to hit Maneesha hard he kissed her head. No hit can go deeper than a kiss. And when I said to hit anybody with his staff he hit his own head…. Even Basho would have been surprised.I have my own ways of working, but being lazy I cannot be too physical. I can love you, I can make you laugh, I can make you cry, I can make you wait. That too is not devised, not pre-considered; it just happens.Just now a fly is moving under my robe – and I am not going to do anything. She has got into trouble by herself – why should I do anything?Maneesha, I am not even one step ahead of you, I am with you shoulder to shoulder. But I have found more sophisticated, more conscious ways of working on people then Basho himself. I love him; he is my predecessor – but he has to learn much if he comes back.There is no need to hit somebody’s head, because my understanding is that an idiot’s head will become even harder. An idiot is not a donkey – that you give a hit of the stick on the donkey’s head and you can get the donkey’s attention. The ordinary human man lives in such deep unconsciousness that your hit will be misunderstood.Hyakujo may not understand, but at least he understands that he is missing something. But today, you pinch somebody’s nose and you will get a bigger hit on your nose – and the person will say, “I came here to know about God, not to be pinched on my nose…and what have I to do with a wild duck? What kind of nonsense is this…?”To the contemporary educated man, Zen will appear more mystical than anything. Sometimes not even mystical but pure nonsense, absurd. It was a different climate, a different kind of people – a different air in which Zen was meaningful. Today Basho would be in the Police Commissioner’s office: “Why did you hit poor Hyakujo’s nose? What kind of master are you?”But I hit you in my own way…very legal, constitutional, without moving – I have refined much on Basho.I have told you a story…An emperor of Japan was very much interested in swordsmanship. Every year he used to give huge awards to the winners. One year it happened that three swordsmen were chosen from different areas of the country. They were all masters and they had no idea what test was ahead. Thousands of other swordsmen were present just to watch, because this was a great occasion to see what a swordsman can do.The king said, “Get ready,” opened a small box – and a fly ran out of the box. The first swordsman cut the fly in the air into two parts. Everybody clapped…the fly was so small, and it was flying!The second fly was released and the second swordsman cut the fly into three pieces in the air. There was really great clapping, and everybody was waiting for what happens with the third. Now what more can he do? A fly, so small, flying…and he cut it into three pieces in the air. There is not even enough space to make four cuts; just two was too much! The third fly was opened and the third warrior flashed his sword, but the fly went away. So everybody started laughing, that this is stupid, he could not even kill the fly. Even the emperor could not believe why he had been chosen from a province as a great master.The swordsman said, “Stop laughing! You don’t understand. This fly will never reproduce.”Such a fine cut. My flies don’t reproduce.Now a few laughters before we enter into two minutes of silence. These laughters are simply preparations – hence I call them prayers….One morning at the breakfast table, little Ernie says to his mother, “Mummy, yesterday when you were at work, Daddy took the maid upstairs to the bedroom and….” His mother interrupts him and says, “Ernie, tonight at dinner time I want you to tell this whole story when your father is here.”So that night at dinner his mother says, “Now, Ernie, dear, I want you to repeat what you told me this morning.”“Well,” says Ernie, “when you were at work, Daddy took the maid up to the bedroom and did the same thing you and the milkman did last week.”Gloria is early for her appointment with the optician, so she goes into a shoe store to try on some new shoes.As the clerk bends over to measure her foot, Gloria, who is very shortsighted, sees his bald head, and thinks it is her bare knee showing. Quickly, she pulls her skirt over it.Immediately, there is a muffled cry. “Shit!” shouts the clerk, “There goes the electricity again!”Farmer Hayseed keeps the best bull in the neighborhood and makes money renting its services.One day, Farmer Hayseed and his son, Ned, leave the bull with young Sam, giving him the instructions to charge ten dollars for every cow that comes to visit it. Sam is sitting in the farmyard when an angry neighbor drives up and demands to see Farmer Hayseed. “He’s out, sir,” says Sam, “and so is Ned, but I can help you.”“No, you can’t,” snaps the neighbor, “that Ned has gone and got my daughter pregnant!”“You’re right, sir, you’ll have to see Farmer Hayseed,” says Sam, “I don’t know what he charges for Ned.”Now two minutes of absolute silence.Just melt into this silence.Close your eyes…no movement.Let your whole energy gather within yourself.Now let go…Okay, come back.

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Live Zen 01-17Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Live Zen 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Obaku’s Partakers of Brewer’s GrainObaku addressed the assembly and said, “You are all partakers of brewer’s grain. If you go on studying Zen like that, you will never finish it. Do you know that in all the land of T’ang there is no Zen teacher?”Then a monk came forward and said, “But surely there are those who teach disciples and preside over the assemblies. What about that?”Obaku said, “I do not say that there is no Zen, but that there is no Zen teacher.”Setcho says:Commanding his way of teaching;But he made it no point of merit.Seated majestically over the whole land,He distinguished the dragon from the snake.Emperor Taichu once encountered himAnd thrice fell into his clutches.Osho,Obaku says there is no Zen teacher. It seems to me therefore that there can be no disciples. So who are you and who are we?And the second question:Obaku seems to be saying that one cannot know Zen by experiencing one particle of brewer's grain. But I have heard you say, “Taste one drop of the ocean, and you know the whole ocean.”Can you please comment?Maneesha, Zen is the very principle of existence. Whether there is anyone who teaches it or not, whether there is anyone who learns it or not, it is there. Zen is the very heartbeat of existence. It is not dependent on any teaching, not dependent on any masters, not dependent on disciples. Masters come and go, disciples come and disappear; Zen remains. Just as it is. It is always just as it is.I have made my comment.Now I will take the anecdote:Obaku addressed the assembly and said, “You are all partakers of brewer’s grain. If you go on studying Zen like that, you will never finish it. Do you know that in all the land of T’ang there is no Zen teacher?”Then a monk came forward and said, “But surely there are those who teach disciples and preside over the assemblies. What about that?”Obaku said, “I do not say that there is no Zen, but that there is no Zen teacher.”I hope things are very simple.If there is no Catholic church, no pope, there will be no Christianity, because Christianity has nothing to do with existence’s essence. If there is no shankaracharya and no Hindu monks, existence will just remain the same as it is. Their being or not being does not affect existence. Certainly their doctrines will disappear, their congregations will not be held anymore. Their teachers and their masters and their disciples will not be there. And if these people think Hinduism is dependent on these scriptures, shankaracharyas, then certainly there will be no Hinduism either.Except Zen, no religion has been so intensely clear about its own existential status. The others are only aware about their theologies, their scriptures, their teachers, their masters, their disciples. They are all very superficial – just waves on the ocean. But Zen has never for a single moment identified itself with the waves. It consistently emphasizes, “I am the ocean. Waves come and go; the ocean remains. Many more waves will come and go; it does not affect the ocean in any way.”Obaku was right when he said that there is no Zen. He was talking about the essential experience of Zen: there were many teachers and many followers, but they don’t constitute the reality of Zen.For example, one day I was not and one day I will be again not. The same is true about each of you. But the essence of existence knows no change; it remains. And that essence of existence is called Zen. It is not an ordinary religion like Hinduism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism – I am including even Buddhism – because Zen is the essence; everything else is just commentary. Zen is the experience; everything else is just decoration.Obaku is right: even though there are Zen masters and there are Zen followers, yet there is no Zen in the sense that these teachings are all superfluous and these teachers are only knowledgeable. They know about Zen, but they have not lived it, they have only learned about it. And when the teachers themselves don’t have Zen as a quality of their innermost being, how can they teach anyone? But that does not mean that there is no Zen.Zen is another name of existence – and then you will be able to understand Obaku’s statement very easily.Setcho says:Commanding his way of teaching;But he made it no point of merit.Seated majestically over the whole land,He distinguished the dragon from the snake.Emperor Taichu once encountered himAnd thrice fell into his clutches.Setcho is appreciating the tremendous insight of Obaku, his clarity of vision in making a distinction between the snake and the dragon, his great capacity to be a master:Commanding his way of teaching…But he is so humble that he made it no point of merit.Seated majestically over the whole land…He is just a beggar as far as the outside world is concerned, but because of his insight into the very center of existence he is the real emperor. Even a great emperor – Taichu once encountered him and thrice fell into his clutches.We don’t know what those clutches were. They are not recorded but they must have been of the same quality. For example, when somebody says, “There is no Zen, although there are Zen teachers and Zen disciples,” at the same time he means that these disciples and these teachers make no difference – Zen is.Zen is is-ness. It is in the flowers and it is in the mountains and it is in the clouds. It is in the open sky and it is in the tremendous light of the sun and it is also in the darkness of the night.It is! Everything else is commentary.A master is authentic when he knows it as his own being; a master is unauthentic when he does not know it as his own being although he knows all the holy scriptures. He may be a learned scholar and because of his learning he may find disciples, but both are sitting in a wrong boat.You are asking me, “Osho, Obaku says there is no Zen teacher. It seems to me therefore that there can be no disciples. So who are we and who are you?”Obaku’s statement does not concern this assembly. At least it does not concern me. He was talking only about his land, centuries before: the land of T’ang, a small province of China. He is not talking about eternity – he cannot talk about me or about you!I know Zen – not from any scripture. I do not belong to the tradition of Zen; I belong to these clouds. I belong to existence on my own accord. I have found Zen – not through the scriptures. That’s why I can say, even in Japan there are only teachers and followers, no Zen. I am almost a stranger to the tradition; but I have found Zen on my own accord. It is my discovery, it is not an inheritance from the tradition, an inheritance from Mahakashyapa, Bodhidharma, Obaku. I don’t have anything from these people – I don’t owe anything to anybody.If Obaku were here, then Zen Master Niskriya would have pinched his nose. As his representative, Master Niskriya, pinch Maneesha’s nose.[Niskriya takes a peacock feather which has been perched on his camera, and tickles Maneesha’s nose.]Right…. Good!Maneesha, your second question is: “Obaku seems to be saying that one cannot know Zen by experiencing one particle of brewer’s grain. But I have heard you say, ‘Taste one drop of the ocean, and you know the whole ocean.’ Can you please comment?”As for my statement, I stand by it, Obaku or no Obaku. I repeat again: If you have tasted a single drop you have tasted the whole ocean. Now you know its saltiness. If you have tasted one moment of silence, you have tasted its blissfulness, its benediction. I don’t care what Obaku says. As far as this statement is concerned he is wrong.I agree with his first statement unconditionally. In the same way I disagree with his second statement, also unconditionally – there is no possibility of compromise. And you can see my point is so clear that Obaku unnecessarily becomes a laughingstock. He was doing perfectly well, but he went a little too far. He forgot that there would be coming people of greater insight and deeper clarity, who will condemn his second statement.I am not a man who follows anybody; I am nobody’s disciple. I have tasted existence and I have declared that I have known it. Anything that goes against my experience is wrong.Osho,Basho’s sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha:The great master Basho was seriously ill.The chief priest of the temple came to pay his respects.He asked, “How do you feel these days?”The master said, “Sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha.”Setcho says:Sun-faced Buddha! Moon-faced Buddha!Compared with them,How pale the three sovereigns, the five ancestral emperors!For twenty years I have had fierce struggles,Descending into the dragon’s cave for you.The hardship defies description.You clear-eyed monks, don’t make light of it.Osho,You rarely speak on any hardships you may experience for us, and I know that some of us tend to think you are beyond pain or discomfort because you have the capacity to witness everything.Some have expressed the idea that your illnesses are just devices for us.Could you please comment?And the second question:I have heard you say, “This very body, the Buddha,” and I have also heard you remind us that we are not the body.Would you talk about these seemingly opposing statements?Maneesha, the clouds have come again….Basho’s statement, “Sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha”looks like a puzzle. It is not. It is simply saying that Buddha is Buddha whether he is sun-faced or moon-faced; Buddha is Buddha whether he is sitting, standing, walking or lying down. In the world of Zen buddha simply means your very nature. So whether or not it starts raining, you will be the same, or clouds come thundering – you will be the same. In sickness your consciousness does not become sick; in old age your consciousness does not become old; in death you are not dead. Your buddhahood, your nature, your essence is immortal. This is my comment.The great master Basho was seriously ill. The chief priest of the temple came to pay his respects.He asked, “How do you feel these days?”Just a formal question. But you don’t ask formal questions of a man like Basho, because a man like Basho is going to reply something which you had never expected. The master said, “Sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha,” in response to the priest’s question, “How do you feel these days?” when he was sick.Basho is saying, “Whether I am sick or healthy, alive or dead, it does not make any difference to my essence. So don’t ask such stupid questions.” And Basho is certainly one of the most precious men ever born on the earth.Setcho says:Sun-faced Buddha! Moon-faced Buddha!Compared with them,How pale the three sovereigns, the five ancestral emperors!For twenty years I have had fierce struggles,Descending into the dragon’s cave for you.The hardship defies description.You clear-eyed monks, don’t make light of it.Setcho has improved a little bit, but a schoolmaster is a schoolmaster. It is really very unlikely for a schoolmaster to become enlightened – at least I have never heard of any such incident when a schoolmaster has become a buddha.Setcho is trying and because he is just a schoolmaster, knowledgeable, he is going to have a great struggle in finding the truth. The truth is already found, you are just not looking at it. There is no pain, no struggle as far as knowing your being is concerned. But the pain and struggle comes in when you know too much about your being, your truth, your enlightenment. All that knowledge becomes mountainous, and then you have to struggle out from your own knowledge.It is the greatest difficulty to know and to become innocent. Your knowledge prevents you from becoming innocent. There is struggle and there is pain and there is agony, but it has nothing to do with truth; it has something to do with your knowledgeability.First he is just like a parrot when he repeats: “Sun-faced Buddha! Moon-faced Buddha!” There was no need to repeat it, Basho has said it.For twenty years I have had fierce struggles…I am absolutely certain that he must have struggled hard. But that struggle is not in finding the truth, that struggle is to get out of your knowledge. The struggle is with the mind, not with the being.Once you have erased all your knowledge and you have become only no knowing, Zen is in your empty hands. It has always been there, but because of knowledge your eyes were not capable of seeing it. The struggle is with all those theories, theologies, philosophies which are covering your eyes like dust; hence, I don’t think that he is making a wrong statement, but he is wrongly understanding the reason for his struggle. Struggle has been there – it is almost as if one is descending into the dragon’s cave and then coming out is almost impossible. Knowledge is a far bigger dragon.Setcho is right that he has fought for twenty years, but he is not right that he has come out. He still has to fight a little more. He is on the right track, but even the right track is not the goal.And you are asking, Maneesha: “Osho, you rarely speak on any hardships you may experience for us, and I know that some of us tend to think you are beyond pain or discomfort because you have the capacity to witness everything. Some have expressed the idea that your illnesses are just devices for us. Could you please comment?”Just bullshit, Maneesha, fresh bullshit…!I have not struggled at all. I have not suffered in finding the truth. Yes, I have suffered much in transferring it to you. I have taken every pain possible to make you aware of your reality. In a way you are right that my illnesses or my hardships are for you, not for me.Existence has been immensely compassionate, as far as I am concerned. I have not taken even a single step to find it. The reason was that I never got in the clutches of knowledgeability; I never became a learned scholar, although there is hardly a single man who has read so much as I have read. But my readings could not pollute my consciousness, they could not corrupt my consciousness; hence they were just like signatures on water.I have read all the scriptures, but I have not allowed anything to be accumulated and fill my inner emptiness. That emptiness is absolutely pure and when I speak, I speak from my own emptiness, from my own purity, from my own innocence. Sometimes it coincides, that is another matter, but it coincides only when something matches my experience. Then I can say to Bodhidharma, “I agree – emptiness, no holiness, no knowing.”But when I see a small difference, it does not matter with whom – for example with Joshu, who is considered one of the greatest masters in the Zen tradition, I could not agree, although what he was saying was not absolutely wrong. He was saying, “The way is not difficult.” But even this much difference is enough and I can see that he has missed the point. There is no way; hence the question of its being difficult or easy does not arise. You are already there where you want to be.Maneesha, I have suffered because I love you.Truth has been very easy to me.Love has been very difficult.Truth has been without any struggle.There was nothing to struggle with – just pure emptiness.But to transfer that emptiness to you has been a great struggle. For thirty-five years I have been continuously struggling in this way and that way to approach you – somehow to wake you up.Yes, in that I have suffered much, and I am going to suffer much unless you decide not to hide but to expose yourself, not to remain a seed but start growing. I have suffered because I had to say things which go against traditions, religions, nations. I have made so many enemies in the world that you can call me a great success, a great success in making enemies although I had wanted to be a friend. But this whole business of transferring truth creates enemies easily and friends very rarely.But I have enjoyed this struggle and will continue to enjoy, whatever pain, whatever agony it brings – perhaps a man like me is destined to be crucified. And that’s what the politicians of the whole world and the religious heads of the whole world are trying, but they don’t want my blood on their hands. They are trying in every possible way to silence me.The Attorney General of America, after harassing and torturing and poisoning me said in a press conference, “All that we want is that Osho should not be seen anywhere, not heard by anyone; no news media should report him.” That is equivalent to a modern and sophisticated crucifixion. But they have not been able to be successful and they are not going to be successful because nobody has ever loved you so much as I love you. Jesus loved his “father” – you were just sinners to him. Gautam Buddha was afraid even to use the word love, because it reminds him of imprisonments, of chains which are created in the name of love.I am the first in many senses. I love you and I love you so much that I am certain no government, no country, no army, even if they join together…. Now twenty-four countries have joined together in not allowing me to enter their lands – but I have lovers in their lands.Even my own country has created every kind of hindrance, that I should not be heard by the masses. They don’t allow me to move from my home, and they are trying to prevent people from all over the world coming here. But truth is not weak and love is far stronger than all the nuclear weapons.It may create pain and physical trouble for me, but nobody can put locks on my mouth. They can put chains on my hands – they did; they can put chains on my feet – they did. I am living in a situation which can almost be called house arrest – but I trust in love, that it is going to be victorious.Even if they kill me my voice will be heard around the earth for as long as there is a single living human being.Maneesha, your second question is: “I have heard you say, ‘This very body, the Buddha,’ and I have also heard you remind us that we are not the body. Would you talk about these seemingly opposing statements?”They are certainly only seemingly opposite. When I said, “This very body, the Buddha,” and “This very earth, the paradise,” my meaning was, “Don’t look anywhere else! Don’t look there – look here, look in.”And to make it possible to look in, sometimes I had to say that we are not the body. The first thing is to bring you here. “This body the Buddha,” is just to bring you here, and once you are here the second thing is, “Look within; you are not the body but something that the body contains – the emptiness, the nothingness.” There is no contradiction; they are two steps of a single process.Now a few moments to be devoted to laughter. This evening you have been too serious….The woman was happily showing off her new mink coat to her friend. “It was nice of your husband to buy you that beautiful coat,” said the friend.“He had to,” replied the woman. “I caught him kissing the maid.”“How terrible!” exclaimed the friend. “Did you fire her?”“Not yet,” replied the woman, “I still need a new hat.”A young woman went into a bank and asked the clerk for change of a one hundred dollar bill. She handed over the note but the clerk took one look at it and said, “I’m sorry, Miss, but this one hundred dollar bill is a fake.”“Oh, my God!” cried the woman, “I have been raped.”Giles Winterbottom, the farmer, takes his small son, Jasper, to market one day.Winterbottom goes to look at the cows and strokes them, pulls their skin and generally fondles them. “Why do you do that?” asks Jasper.“Well, you see, son,” says Winterbottom, “if you want to buy a cow, that is the best way to see if she is healthy.”A few days later, Winterbottom is out in the fields when Jasper comes running up and says, “Dad, there is a traveling salesman in the kitchen, and I think he wants to buy Mom!”Three old Jewish mothers meet at a party in New York.“There is nobody like my son,” says the first. “Every winter he buys me a new fur coat.”“That’s nothing,” gloats the second. “My son takes me to the best travel agent in the town every year and arranges the summer vacation of my choice.”“That’s all rubbish!” laughs the third. “My son goes to the most expensive psychiatrist in the whole world and all he does is talk about me!”Now two minutes of absolute silence.Close your eyes, gather your energy in…Now relax.Now, come back.

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Live Zen 01-17Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Live Zen 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Chinso Shosu Comes to Visit ShifukuChinso came to see Shifuku. Shifuku drew a circle in the air.Chinso said, “I have no object in coming here. Why do you bother to draw a circle?”Shifuku closed the door of his room.Setcho says:Perfect the circle, pure the sound,Bright and abundant the encircling jade,Loaded on horses and mules.Loaded on board the iron boats,Given to those who knowThe peace and freedom of land and sea.He put down the tackle to fish the turtle.Setcho comments here:“Monks throughout the world can’t jump out of it.”Osho,I know you will have me hit or pinched if I've got it wrong, but it seems to me that in the same situation as Shifuku you might have drawn a spiral instead.The second question:I recall hearing you say recently that dialogue between an enlightened and an unenlightened person is not possible, and between two enlightened people, not necessary. Zen seems to be an existential dialogue – the ultimate form of communication, whether those on either end of the exchange are enlightened or not.Would you comment?The third question:Some Zen anecdotes are about interchanges between two masters, two enlightened beings. I have heard that this was called doing Dharma Battle.What was the point of those exchanges, or were they just for the joy of the game?And the last question:It seems that the very spirit of Zen is pervading these evenings with you – through your words, your gestures, your silences, and our response of silence or laughter, let-go or Yaa-Hoo!When communication is total, it feels as if the communicators disappear. Thus when communication really happens there is no one left to communicate!Could you please comment?Maneesha, the dialogue between two enlightened persons is just playfulness. It does not matter whether they sit silently together or speak. In that space, words or no words are equivalent.There is nothing to say and nothing to hide but only a sharing, a sharing of the joy, a sharing of the awakening, a sharing of the blissfulness, a sharing of their ecstasy. The awakened one becomes just a child collecting seashells on the sea beach, or running after butterflies, or trying to catch the rainbows.In fact, dialogue in words is not possible. They can play with words, but the real dialogue happens in their silences. And particularly the Zen masters are immensely inventive of new ways how to play, so that it does not disturb the silence but on the contrary, enhances it, deepens it, makes it more sweet, more alive, more dancing.The silence between two enlightened ones is the greatest poetry – poetry without words, the greatest music – music without sounds. But when there were encounters between Zen masters, they really enjoyed it, playing all kinds of tricks on each other. They are rascal saints.That is my comment.Chinso came to see Shifuku.Shifuku drew a circle in the air.Signifying that here everything is as complete as a circle. The circle is the only thing that cannot be incomplete. If it is incomplete, it is not a circle – it may be anything. A circle by intrinsic necessity has to be complete. Shifuku drew a circle in the air to indicate two things: Here everything is complete. Why have you unnecessarily come here? Because the completion cannot speak. It has gone far beyond language. Completion means absolute silence. Why have you come here? That is the question inherent in the circle drawn in the air.And the second thing: a circle in the air signifies that everything in this world, in this existence, is nothing but circles in the air; don’t pay too much attention to it. It is all made of the stuff dreams are made of. Even dreams have some stuff, but a circle in the air is just emptiness. Shifuku has explained his situation so beautifully, so poetically and so truthfully that he cannot be transcended.Chinso said, “I have no object in coming here.Why do you bother to draw a circle?”Both are enlightened persons, so naturally Chinso says, “Why do you bother to draw a circle?” “Do you think I don’t understand? Do you think I cannot draw these circles in the air? And from where have you got the idea that I have come for any special object to be with you?” He is saying, “Is it not possible just to be together out of love, out of playfulness; has it always to be business? Can’t it be simply meeting with no object, no goal?”Both are tremendously insightful, but Chinso is left behind by Shifuku.Shifuku closed the door of his room.It is not unwelcoming. He is saying, “If there is no object in coming, if there is nothing to say, nothing to listen to, I am not interested in playing. I have left those childhood toys far behind.”His closing the door is simply mystifying. He is not a man without compassion and he is not a man who has no respect for others – but he has to close the door. In his clarity perhaps Chinso has had some glimpses, but he is still not fully awakened. This closing of the door may help.Setcho says:Perfect the circle, pure the sound,Bright and abundant the encircling jade,Loaded on horses and mules,Loaded on board the iron boats,Given to those who knowThe peace and freedom of land and sea.Setcho is Setcho. Where he has no business, there too he tries to make some commentary….Now his whole comment is absurd. Just a pure silence would have been enough, but he has taken it upon himself – being a schoolmaster – that he has to explain everything. He himself does not understand and he is trying to explain it to others. This is not only Setcho’s situation, this is the situation of millions of people who know nothing, but who go on giving advice to everybody.It is said that advice is the only thing that is given freely and nobody takes it. A man of real wisdom does not open his mouth unless invited, but the ignorant enjoys advising very much; his understanding is that the more he gives advice the more people will think he is a man of wisdom. But you can fool only those who are already foolish….Setcho goes on saying:He put down the tackle to fish the turtle.Setcho comments here:“Monks throughout the world can’t jump out of it.”In his whole commentary only this statement is significant. How can you jump out of a circle drawn in the air? But in fact, there is no need to jump out of it. The need is to jump in – that is my reply to Setcho.Maneesha, you have asked a few questions….First: “Osho, I know you will have me hit or pinched if I have got it wrong, but it seems to me that in the same situation as Shifuku you might have drawn a spiral instead.”You are right, Maneesha: existence is not a circle but a spiral. A circle is static, dead; a spiral goes on growing, goes on becoming bigger. Now the scientists can measure fourteen billion light-years and they say that a tremendous thing is happening that far away. It must affect us too. Galaxies upon galaxies are running in one direction. We cannot see toward what goal they are running, or if there is any goal – or if the running itself is the goal…. But as far as we can see with our instruments, the whole of existence is running fast. Nothing is static; everything is growing bigger and bigger and bigger.So you are right, I would not have drawn a circle, because I believe in evolution. I believe in no end to evolution, open-ended evolution – evolution for always. I don’t believe in any full point, not even in a comma. But on the other point you are wrong. You say, “I know you will have me hit or pinched if I’ve got it wrong….” There you are wrong.Wrong or right, Master Niskriya, hit! That’s good.[Niskriya takes his feather and tickles her nose.]That’s very fine.Your second question: “I recall hearing you say recently that dialogue between an enlightened and an unenlightened person is not possible, and between two enlightened people, not necessary. Zen seems to be an existential dialogue – the ultimate form of communication, whether those on either end of the exchange are enlightened or not. Would you comment?”Your question is again mixed. Half of it is right: Zen is an existential dialogue, but not between the enlightened and the unenlightened – that is an impossibility. One who knows and one who does not know cannot have any kind of communication. It is just like you are fast asleep and somebody else is talking to you. Now, between the asleep and the awakened, what kind of dialogue…?But between two awakened, two enlightened persons, dialogue – although unnecessary – is possible. Unnecessary, because they have nothing to convey to each other; they both know it. But Zen is a very youthful, joyous approach to reality; they go on playing with each other. Their play is a joy for those who can understand even the playfulness. They may not understand the meaning of it….Your idea that it happens whether those on either end of the exchange are enlightened or not, is not right. The enlightened and the unenlightened cannot even play – there is no possibility of communication. When both are enlightened, all possibilities of communication open, but there is nothing to communicate; hence the drama of dialogue.Your third question is: “Some Zen anecdotes are about interchanges between two masters, two enlightened beings. I have heard that this was called doing Dharma Battle. What was the point of those exchanges, or were they just for the joy of the game?”Maneesha, Dharma Battle in Pali or Dharma Battle in Sanskrit has a certain subtle purpose. If you see two enlightened persons engaged in a playful dialogue one never knows: the seer within you may become suddenly aware of something more that is not available to our ordinary eyes.These Dharma Battles are for the growth of insight in disciples. There is nothing to say and there is nothing to be heard, but those who cannot understand silence…something has to be done for them. Something – however farfetched – but something has to be done. That something is Dharma Battle.Two enlightened masters meet, poke and pinch each other, raise questions which they know are absurd, give answers which they know have no validity…. But in their Dharma Battle the disciples who are the watchers may become aware of something subtle that is not clear in the words.For example, one Zen master is making a circle in the air…. You cannot forget that gesture; you will have to figure out what it means. Another enlightened man has come to see him and he closes the door. The very situation is such that you are bound to be engaged, for the first time thinking about something: What do these fellows mean? Drawing a circle in the air, closing the door on the face of the guest…?It can’t just be what it appears to be; it must be something else. It can trigger off an inquiry in the disciple. That is the purposeless purpose.Your fourth question, Maneesha: “It seems that the very spirit of Zen is pervading these evenings with you – through your words, your gestures, your silences, and our response of silence or laughter, let-go or Yaa-hoo!“When communication is total it feels as if the communicators disappear. Thus when communication really happens there is no one left to communicate! Could you please comment?”Niskriya, could you please act again on my behalf?[Niskriya touches Maneesha’s head with his feather.]It is true, Maneesha, these evenings have been very special and those who are present are very fortunate. The silences, the laughter, my eyes and your eyes meeting, my hands being understood…and we have created a golden age which has disappeared from the world. We have brought back the times of Mahakashyapa, Bodhidharma…. This assembly would have made any enlightened person rejoice.It is true that when communication happens, the communicators disappear – you can feel it immediately. Here you are as if one consciousness, undivided. In your silence you are one, in your laughter you are one. This oneness is the door to the ultimate awakening of your consciousness.We have been one in silence, let us also be one in our laughter. To me a silence that cannot laugh is dead and a laughter that has no silence in it is superficial. When silence and laughter meet they create a dance, and our effort here is to join in this cosmic dance.Just relax into the whole…Don’t keep yourself as a spectator.Don’t remain separate….Gloria and Barbara are chatting together. “What has become of that nice man you started going out with?”“Oh, I gave him the push!” replies Barbara. “He was no gentleman.”“Whatever happened?” asks Gloria.“Well,” replies Barbara, “no sooner were we alone on the sofa at my place, than he put his hand on my thigh.”“Well,” says Gloria, “at least that shows he is interested.”“It might do,” replies Barbara, “but I was brought up properly, and I am not going to tolerate that. Everybody knows that with a real gentleman, it is always tits first!”Myrtle MacTavish is being treated by her doctor for sore knees. The treatment makes no improvement and Doctor Dingle is puzzled.“Something is rubbing the skin off your knees as fast as it heals,” he says. “Is it praying?”“No, Doctor,” replies Myrtle, “it is my husband. He insists on having sex on the floor, doggie style.”Doctor Dingle sends for her husband and tells him, “You know, there are plenty of other positions for sex.”“No, Doc, there aren’t,” replies the man, “not if you both want to watch television.”A young man sitting at a bar sees an attractive girl and offers to buy her a drink.“Did you say a motel?” asks the girl in a loud voice.The man is extremely embarrassed and assures her that he only wants to buy her a drink.“You want to take me to a motel?” she screams.Everyone turns to look at the young man, and even the bartender tells him to behave himself. He is so embarrassed that he goes and sits at a corner table.A short while later the girl comes over to him.“I must apologize,” she says. “I am sorry to embarrass you so much, because you see, I am a psychology student and I wanted to take note of your reactions for my psychology thesis.”“What?” shouts the man. “You must be joking! Twenty dollars!”Now let our laughter become silence.For two minutes no movement, closed eyes, contain all your energy inward….Now relax…Okay, come back.

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Live Zen 01-17Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Live Zen 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Chimon’s Lotus FlowerA monk asked Chimon, “What will the lotus flower be when it has not yet come out of the water?”Chimon said, “The lotus flower.”The monk asked Chimon, “What about when it is out of the water?”Chimon said, “The lotus leaves.”Setcho says:The lotus leaves! The lotus flower!He is so kind to tell you of them!The flower coming out of the water –What difference, before or after?If you wander about, now north of the river,now south of the lake,Questioning Master Wang and the like,As one doubt is settled, others will arise,And you will puzzle over question after question.Osho,Isn't the lotus flower a lotus flower at its conception, when it is floating in the pond, and when it is plucked from the pond?And:I have heard you tell us time and again that the realization of our enlightenment is inevitable – whether it be this minute, tomorrow, or the next life around.Would you talk about where the individual's responsibility lies for what is going to happen anyway?And the third question:What are the prerequisites for being a disciple?Maneesha…What is, is.It is never different.Its forms differ but its being remains the same.To live in the forms is to live in illusions.To see the being is to transcend the world.Only seeing is needed.What you are going to see is already there – has been there since eternity…waiting and waiting and waiting….This is my comment.Chimon is one of the greatest masters.A monk asked Chimon, “What will the lotus flower be when it has not yet come out of the water?”Chimon said, “The lotus flower.”The monk asked, “What about when it is out of the water?”Chimon said, “The lotus leaves.”There ends the dialogue – it seems the monk has understood.Chimon has made an existential statement. Even in the seed the lotus flower is a lotus flower. You cannot see it but its being does not depend on your seeing. If it was dependent on your seeing, then certainly the seed cannot be called the lotus flower, it will be a lotus flower only when floating on the water with open leaves, dancing in the sun.But that which floats on the water, if it is not hidden in the seed, from where can it come? In the seed it was invisible to our eyes. Our eyes have their limitations; our eyes could see it only when it started floating on the water. That is our limitation; it is not a change as far as the lotus flower is concerned.Just a few days ago, in France a woman gave birth to a child. The doctors could not believe it; they were expecting something strange, but not what actually happened. The woman was a scientist working in an atomic plant…for nine months the child was exposed to radiation. The doctors were aware that something strange was going to happen, and something strange happened: the child was born with X-ray eyes; the child could see through your skin into your skeleton. That makes an important discovery, that eyes can be changed into X-ray mechanisms. Then you can see things which are hidden, then you can see things which are not available to other people’s eyes.In the Soviet Union a certain photographer has developed a new kind of photography, Kirlian – that is his name – using very sensitive films. He can see the lotus flower in the seed. You give him the seed and his camera will give you the photograph of a lotus flower. Wait for six months, and then, when the lotus flower comes within the limits of visibility, you will be surprised. The photograph will be exactly the same as the actual lotus flower. The sensitive film, the sensitive lenses, could see what we are not able to see.It simply means that our senses have a limitation, but existence has no limitations.If we could see the whole with all its implications, then the child will also show you the young man he is going to be, the old man that he is going to be…the sicknesses, the health, the intelligence, the death. In a single flash you will be able to see the whole biography of the child.But perhaps it is good that we cannot see that much. To see that much will be very confusing. A man is passing and you see a child passing, a young man passing, an old man passing – and he is dead and on the funeral pyre. It will be so quick that you will not be able to decide what is happening. In a single split moment everything has happened. Life will become impossible.But meditation gives a different clarity and way of seeing. The lotus flower is a lotus flower in all its forms: when it is a seed, when it is a bud, when it is a flower.And again it will disappear from your vision.The petals will go away.There will be no lotus flower.Again the pond is empty as it was before.The lotus flower happened just like a small dream – a glimpse.That’s what Bodhidharma insisted: Emptiness.Everything comes out of it and everything returns to it, and there is nothing holy because there is nothing unholy. This is not knowledge, conceptual knowledge, this is existential experience; hence, Bodhidharma could say, “No knowing.” He is describing himself as no knowing. He is saying, “I am just a mirror. Things come before me, reflect within me, disappear. I remain as empty as ever” – just like the mirror.Have you ever thought that the mirror is empty, utterly empty? It is because of its emptiness that it is possible for it to reflect anything that comes in front of it. The moment the thing has gone out of the area of the mirror, the mirror is again empty; in fact, even when it was reflecting there was no doing on its part. It is just the nature of the mirror to reflect. It was simply functioning in its nature.Chimon’s statement is absolute, unconditional, categorical. It contains the whole philosophy of existence: No beginning, no end, everything just is.Just listen to the clouds…. A moment before they were not there and suddenly they are – and they are going. But existentially they are always: sometimes manifest, sometimes unmanifest.Chimon needs no commentary, but Setcho is bound to comment. He says:The lotus leaves! The lotus flower!He is so kind to tell you of them!It is not a question of kindness. What else can he say? He is simply reflecting the truth. Do you think when a mirror reflects your face it is kind, compassionate? It is simply its nature, the nature of enlightenment that it becomes reflective of reality.But Setcho – as I have told you – is a schoolmaster! Once in a while, perhaps accidentally, he makes some good statement, but otherwise he is a knowledgeable, confused man.The flower coming out of the water –What difference, before or after?If you wander about, now north of the river,now south of the lake,Questioning Master Wang and the like.As one doubt is settled, others will arise,And you will puzzle over question after question.Without any reason or rhyme, he is bringing in Master Wang and criticizing him. Wang is a different type of master, certainly, but he is not wrong, he is simply different. He has a more philosophical approach to reality. His experience is that of a mystic, but his expression is that of a philosopher.But this is no time or place to bring his name. This shows that Setcho cannot see the difference between the personalities of the masters. Chimon is a simple man; he simply says what he sees. Wang is a different kind of master. He also says what he sees, but he is far more sophisticated. He brings more conceptual knowledge to express his experience.Setcho, although making the commentary, does not know what he is saying. Chimon and Wang are two forms of the same lotus: one is a simple villager, the other is very cultured, sophisticated, a philosopher.If he cannot understand this, how can he understand: The lotus leaves! The lotus flower!…The flower coming out of the water – What difference, before or after? What he is saying is true, but he is saying it without knowing, without understanding its implications. And he exposes himself immediately the moment he starts criticizing Master Wang. What difference whether you say it directly or in a roundabout way? The lotus flower is the lotus flower – seen by a simple man or by a philosopher, seen by a simple villager or by a great painter. Certainly their visions will be different, but what they are seeing is the same lotus flower.Maneesha, you are asking: “Osho, isn’t the lotus flower a lotus flower at its conception, when it is floating in the pond and when it is plucked from the pond”No, Maneesha, a lotus flower is a lotus flower. Whether you see it or not, whether it is in the seed or floating in the water, it is simply the change of the form. But the essence – and we are calling the lotus flower the essence – is not its particular expression.You are asleep or you are awake…. Spiritually you are still asleep; perhaps one day you will become spiritually awake too. But all the time it is you – awake or asleep, enlightened or unenlightened. The lotus flower is the lotus flower.Your second question is: “I have heard you tell us time and again that the realization of our enlightenment is inevitable – whether it be this minute, tomorrow, or the next life around. Would you talk about where the individual’s responsibility lies for what is going to happen anyway?”There is no question of the individual’s responsibility. The very idea of individual responsibility will postpone what is going to happen anyway. Why has it not happened up to now? Why is it not happening? If it is inevitable you don’t have to do anything: it is going to happen. All that you can think of doing is to wait with love, trust – in silence – and the guest will come. You cannot manage the guest to come; you can only be just an available host: no responsibility, just a pure awaiting….That’s why I have not given you any discipline, I have not asked you to do this or that. I have only wanted you to understand the fact that enlightenment is your nature, so there is no need to run here and there trying to find where enlightenment is.Just relax in your silence, in your laughter.Let your laughter and silence become one.The moment laughter and silence become one, you create a great alchemical change within you. A dance arises in every fiber of your being, a light, a bliss, a certainty that you have come home.The word responsibility is a little heavy. And whenever people tell you “this is your responsibility” they make you feel guilty, they make you feel burdened. I cannot do that. I want you to be absolutely unburdened, unloaded.Just be.Don’t run after being, because you are already there, where any Buddha has reached. It was his choice to go on a long route of six years and then to come home, tired. And because he was tired he relaxed. He could have relaxed without doing all that he had been doing. The day he relaxed, he became enlightened.It is only a question of recognition, not responsibility. Even this moment there is no one here who is not a buddha, no one here who is not a lotus flower. Yes, a few are asleep, a few are in the seed, a few are floating in the water, but it does not make any difference. Don’t make it hardship; let it remain as light as possible.My contribution to the religious growth of humanity is that you don’t have to do anything, you have just to be at your center – utterly relaxed, no desire, no longing, nowhere to go. Just being here – and the explosion, and the lotus flower.Your third question, Maneesha: “What are the prerequisites for being a disciple?”None at all.An open heart, a loving heart, a deep trust in oneself and nothing else is needed. You don’t have to surrender to some master, you don’t have to worship some God, you don’t have to do some prayer to some hypothetical deity. You don’t have to go to manmade temples and churches to find that which is hidden within you.A disciple is the seed of a master. The disciple is also a lotus flower, it is just that you are looking somewhere else and not within yourself.Let us laugh a little…. The silence should not become heavy, it should not have weight. Unless your silence learns to dance it becomes a heavy weight.A flea rushes into the pub just before closing time, orders three large whiskeys, drinks them straight down, rushes out into the street, leaps high into the air and falls flat on his face.The flea picks himself up shakily and looks all around, “Damn it,” he says, “someone has moved my dog!”Hannibal Hayne is in Doctor Feelgood’s office for his annual checkup.“You won’t live out the week,” says the doctor, “if you don’t stop running around after women.”“But Doc, there is nothing the matter with me,” says Hannibal, pounding his chest with his fist, “I am in great physical shape.”“Yes, I know,” replies Doctor Feelgood, “but one of the women is my wife.”Fagin Finkelstein, the lawyer, is engaged to defend a man in court on a rape charge. A huge black woman is testifying that she woke up one morning to discover that she had been raped and that the accused was lying beside her.“Now, madam, it is very hard to take your story seriously,” sniggers Fagin. “Suppose, for instance, you had woken in the morning and found me lying beside you. What would you think?”The woman looks Fagin up and down slowly and then remarks, “I would think I had a miscarriage.”Pitkin, the absent-minded professor and his family are moving house. Mrs. Pitkin knows how forgetful her husband can be and writes the new address on several pieces of paper, putting one in each pocket of the professor’s clothes.Somehow during the day Professor Pitkin manages to write notes on each piece of paper and then give them away to his students.In the evening when he drives to the old house, he remembers that he has moved, but has no idea where to. Then he sees some children playing in the street and walks over to them.“Hey, little girl,” he calls out, “Can you tell me where the Pitkins have moved to?”“Sure,” replies the girl. “It is just around the corner and three houses along – Daddy!”Now, two minutes for absolute silence.Be still, no moving.Gather your energy inside just as a lotus flower closes its petals.Now, relax…Okay, come back.

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Live Zen 01-17Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Live Zen 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/live-zen-08/

Osho,Kyosei’s Voice of the RaindropsKyosei asked a monk, “What is the noise outside?”The monk said, “That is the voice of the raindrops.”Kyosei said, “Men’s thinking is topsy-turvy. Deluded by their own selves, they pursue things.”The monk asked, “What about yourself?”Kyosei said, “I was near it but am not deluded.”The monk asked, “What do you mean by ‘near it but not deluded’?”Kyosei said, “To say it in the sphere of realization may be easy, but to say it in the sphere of transcendence is difficult.”Setcho put it like this:The empty hall resounds with the voice of the raindrops.Even a master fails to answer.If you say you have turned the current,You have no true understanding.Understanding? No understanding?Misty with rain, the northern and southern mountains.Osho,I wish I could tell Setcho that in our assembly, “An empty hall resounding with the voice of raindrops,” is our master's answer.And question two:You have never failed to answer – or at least whenever I have listened for it, I have always heard a response. What is your comment?And question three:When one's own voice becomes the voice of the raindrops – is that your constant milieu?Maneesha, the sound of raindrops is not there today but the sound of the bamboos is filling the whole being of this assembly. It is the same.It does not matter whether it is the sound of running water or the crackling of bamboos – if you are silent, you are not; only the sound of the bamboos fills the whole sphere.What else remains? – just a pure awareness.You cannot identify this awareness with yourself. It is transcendental to you, it is higher than you, it is bigger than you. It is your intrinsic treasure, but the lotus is still in the seed.This anecdote very beautifully makes the point, never mentioning the word awareness. There are reasons not to mention the word. Because of your old habit of the mind, you immediately grab on to anything – awareness, consciousness, witnessing – and immediately you think, “It is me.”Kyosei asked a monk, “What is the noise outside?”The monk said, “That is the voice of the raindrops.”Kyosei said, “Men’s thinking is topsy-turvy. Deluded by their own selves, they pursue things.”The monk asked, “What about yourself?”Kyosei said, “I was near it but am not deluded.”The monk asked, “What do you mean by ‘near it but not deluded’?”Kyosei said, “To say it in the sphere of realization may be easy, but to say it in the sphere of transcendence is difficult.”Ordinarily, if you had come across such an anecdote, you would have passed without paying any attention to its meaning and significance. Who cares what is the noise outside? It may be the raindrops, it may be birds singing, it may be bamboos dancing in the wind.Kyosei is asking, “What is the noise outside?” The question has a great implication. You can answer it if you are inside, otherwise who will answer? “What is the noise outside?” can be answered only by a consciousness within. If you are asleep you cannot answer, “What is the noise outside?” If you are unconscious you cannot answer, “What is the noise outside?”Kyosei is not really interested in the noise outside, he is interested in: “Are you in? Are you aware?” But the monk missed, because he said, “That is the voice of the raindrops.”Kyosei is not asking anything about the objective world, the outside world, although the question appears to be so. If the monk had remained silent, allowing the raindrops to create the sound, or the bamboos….In this moment, except your silence there is no answer. Silence is the answer. The moment you speak even a single word you have missed: Kyosei said, “Men’s thinking is topsy-turvy. Deluded by their own selves, they pursue things.” Kyosei has not taken note, has not paid attention to the monk’s answer that it is the voice of the raindrops. Instead he says, “Men’s thinking is topsy-turvy.” In this small sentence there is hidden a great secret. Perhaps you may not have ever thought about you.If in this hall there were nobody, do you think the bamboos would still be making noise? Without you, for whom will they make the noise? Noise needs somebody to hear it. If there is nobody to hear it, there is no noise. When everybody has gone in the middle of the night, the bamboos may try hard, but they cannot make the noise because there are no ears! But even if there are ears and the mind is full of thoughts, the poor bamboos will not be heard.You are needed and you are needed in such a way as if you are not. Your presence is needed; your personality is not needed. You are needed – your mind is not needed. Then there is a simple awareness of the rain falling, or the water running, or the wind passing through the pine trees, or the bamboos saying Upanishads….Do you see, in this silence the clouds fill you with immense gratitude; their joy becomes contagious. The fresh breeze comes, touches you and gives a dance to every fiber of your being.…And the rain has come.The bamboos crying for it has not been in vain.Kyosei wanted you; his audience the monk was a poor fellow. He could not understand that it is not the rain and its sound that is important; what is important is your awareness. The monk must have been a little stupid. Instead of understanding what Kyosei has said, that your mind is topsy-turvy, he asked, “What about yourself?”Kyosei was certainly compassionate…otherwise it was time to get rid of the monk. He said, “I was near it but I am not deluded.”This is a very subtle answer. He is not saying, “I am aware of it.” He is saying, “I am very close to awareness, but I am not deluded; I will not say that I am aware”…because the moment you make static statements you start going wrong. Life is a continuous flow; so is awareness, so is the whole existence. You cannot use the word, which makes it static – and language is very dead; it consists only of dead words.Hence Kyosei said, “I was near it, I was just coming closer, but I was not identified even with my awareness. I would not say that I was aware. I can only say, slowly I was becoming aware of it.”It is a delicate point, because Gautam Buddha – who is the source of Zen Buddhism – does not believe that even for a single moment anything is unchanging.A man asked Gautam Buddha a question one day – just in the morning – and Buddha answered. But the man could not understand the answer, so in the evening he asked again. Buddha answered again. The man was amazed, because in the morning it had been something else.Buddha said, “Of course. It was morning and now it is evening, the sun is setting. I am flowing with life and with my flowing my answers will be changing. I cannot give you a static dogma.”Any authentic man of experience is never dogmatic. He cannot say that it is absolutely so because even while you are saying it, it may have changed.One day you will become old – it is difficult to say which will be the day, but certainly it must be one of the seven days. A few people become old on Monday, a few people choose Sunday…but everybody at some point of time becomes old.But remember, you cannot simply jump from youth to old age. It is not possible that on Sunday you are young, and early in the morning on Monday you find you have become old. You are becoming old every moment; every moment the flow of life is taking you toward old age, toward death, and toward beyond-death.How can we say what is the truth?Kyosei said, “I was near it.” In fact one is always coming closer and closer and closer. One never really comes, one goes on coming like waves of the ocean. One wave upon another wave, they go on coming. And they have been coming for millions of years and they have not reached anywhere; they still go on coming. Their life span is not very big, only a few million years; your life span is infinite, from eternity to eternity you are coming, moment to moment, closer and closer.And this is the beauty of life, that you are always coming closer to it, but you never come to a full stop; the full stop will really mean death. What will you do then?Have you ever thought about it? If you become realized, enlightened, awakened, then…back to the kitchen, looking into the refrigerator! What are you going to do after that?Enlightenment cannot be the full point. Buddha had no possibility to open a refrigerator, but in his own old-fashioned way, he immediately starts with his begging bowl – that is not different, just an old version. After enlightenment comes the begging bowl, and he is moving on from house to house.Today it will be different. You become enlightened. You wait a few minutes in Buddha Hall, waiting and thinking, What to do now? And then you start moving toward the restaurant – in a queue…enlightened people!It is so hilarious but so human. What else to do?A few go a little earlier to be just in the front of the line; a few are more patient, a few stay even for hours…but it does not matter, finally you have to go to the restaurant.Life goes on whether you are enlightened or not.Kyosei says, “I was near it, very near it. I had almost found it but I will not be deluded, I will not be identified. I will not say, ‘I have found it.’ I will only say, ‘Almost.’”It was Gautam Buddha’s common habit to start his sentences with “Perhaps.” Certainty is only for the idiots. For those who even come close to truth everything becomes flexible, everything becomes “Perhaps….” The monk asked, “What do you mean by ‘near it but not deluded’?” Kyosei said, “To say it in the sphere of realization may be easy, but to say it in the sphere of transcendence is difficult.”He says, “It may be easy if you are ready to commit a small linguistic mistake. You can say, ‘I have attained,’ but in the true world of transformation it is difficult. You can only say, ‘I have come very close, almost to the point of declaring,’ but there one stops.”And it is better from there to go to the restaurant. Rather than first becoming enlightened and then going to the restaurant…it doesn’t look right…!Setcho put it like this:The empty hall resounds with the voice of the raindrops,Even a master fails to answer.If you say you have turned the current,You have no true understanding.Understanding? No understanding?Misty with rain, the northern and southern mountains.Once in a while this schoolmaster, Setcho, also manages to say some significant things.The empty hall…This hall can be said to be empty if you are silent. It is not your being here that disturbs its emptiness, it is your chattering mind that disturbs its emptiness. If the mind is at ease then it resounds only with the raindrops or the bamboos or the clouds, but the hall is empty: “The empty hall resounds with the voice of the raindrops. Even a master fails to answer.”There are questions which can be answered only by not answering. If somebody asks you, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” you will be shocked for a moment because whatever you say will have some implications. If you say, “Yes, I have stopped,” that means you have been beating. If you say “No” that means you are still beating.One very intelligent philosopher and logician, seeing such situations has developed a word po. When you cannot say yes and you cannot say no, say po. Po means nothing; po means it is not answerable. Po is a new contribution to language. Perhaps rather than po you would like – because it reminds you about the pope and Poland…You can use Yaa-Hoo! That is specially yours.And there are idiots who have started writing articles against Yaa-Hoo – quoting Sushrut, an ancient man of medicine – talking about ayurveda, just creating jargon, that this word, Yaa-Hoo will destroy people’s minds, will break down their nervous systems.I have told my doctors – we have many experts in everything – to give good hits to these two idiots. In the first place neither has Sushrut mentioned “Yaa-Hoo” anywhere nor is it mentioned in any ayurvedic scripture. They are just throwing big names around.The reality is that scientific research in the Soviet Union and in America both support that laughing and crying are immensely healthy, healing and refreshing processes. On scientific grounds from many experiments it has been found that if you start laughing, your whole being vibrates with healing energy. It is still a mystery why it happens, but the same happens with crying.Everybody knows from his own experience that after laughter, good laughter, a belly laughter, you almost feel that you have taken an ice-cold shower. A peace, a silence, a freshness…The same is true about crying, but very few people know the secret of crying because it is more repressed than laughter.Both these people who have written articles – and just today I have seen them – are ayurvedic physicians. It is absolutely certain that they understand that if by laughter people can heal themselves, if by crying people can heal themselves, it goes against their profession. It is not a coincidence that only two vaidyas, ayurvedic physicians, should write the article – and without any experimentation. They should come here and participate in the groups.They must have been afraid that this would be my response, so in their article they say, “We would like to be observers, but not participants.”If you are just an observer and don’t take the medicine yourself, how are you going to know what the medicine does? If you yourself are not laughing, how are you going to know what ripples of health, well-being are created by it? But they must be afraid: if you cooperate and you feel good, you cry and you feel good, and after a whole group you come out more radiant, it is going to destroy your profession. Then rather than giving medicines to people, you can send them here to be healed without any medicines.Medicines have after-effects: they may heal one thing and they may create another process of sickness. Laughter cannot do that, and the only research done has not been done by Sushrut, has not been done by ayurvedic physicians; it has been done in the Soviet Union and in America and the experimenters agree that people should laugh more, should cry more. This will keep them younger, this will give them longer life.But these two physicians have not even been around here to see that just the sound of Yaa-Hoo and a tremendous joyfulness, a silence spreads in the hearts of participants. Not of observers – observers are not welcome, observers will be a disturbance. When everybody else is relaxed they will be sitting like a rock among the relaxed people. Their very presence will be corruptive.I will not allow anybody here to be an observer only. Real observation is within yourself: what happens when you let go, when you relax, when you laugh for no reason at all, or you cry and weep just out of a deep unburdening process – which has been triggered by the word Yaa-Hoo. And when I have used this word, I have not used this word without going through it and all its implications.So I won’t allow any idiot to criticize it without experiment. He can do the experiment in his own home. All the ayurvedic physicians can get together and cry if they cannot come here – that would be better – and if it destroys the mind, so far so good.Setcho says, The empty hall resounds with the voice of the raindrops. Even a master fails to answer. Not that the master cannot answer, but because only silence is the answer.Jesus is standing before the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate. Pontius Pilate feels sorry for this young man. He is only thirty-three, has not seen much of life, has not committed any crime. Crucifying him seems to be absolutely unjust, but the whole crowd, the mass is asking that this young man should be crucified “because he is corrupting the minds of our people.”This is an ancient blame, placed on anybody who brings any insight into life. Howsoever small an insight – to change, to bring the new in, to open new doors, new mysteries, and immediately the guardians of the old are ready to destroy the person.Pontius Pilate was a very cultured man, and being a Roman he was not part of the crowd of the Jews; he was a foreigner, he had no interest in crucifying this young man. He came close to Jesus and asked him, “I know you are innocent and I know the crowd is simply mad, prejudiced; you have in some way offended these people. I have heard many times, particularly my wife has heard you speaking here and there, and she has reported to me. I always wanted to ask, what is this truth that you talk about? Just tell me, what is truth?”And Jesus looked into the eyes of Pontius Pilate without answering.You can say without answering, or you can say he was answering with his silent eyes.Truth is a silent experience.There is no way to bring it into language.So when Setcho says, Even a master fails to answer, it does not mean that the master is ignorant, it simply means the master knows that any answer will destroy itself, will commit suicide itself. There are questions which are fundamental; they can be answered only by not answering them. If you say you have turned the current. If you say you have gone against existence…. You have no true understanding. Understanding? No understanding? Misty with rain, the northern and southern mountains. A real master will simply sit silently, listening to the wind coming from the mountains, listening to these bamboos chitchatting among themselves.Setcho is right.Maneesha has asked: “Osho, I wish I could tell Setcho that in our assembly, ‘An empty hall resounding with the voice of raindrops,’ is our master’s answer.”Maneesha, if you meet Setcho somewhere, some day…and it is almost possible. In eternity we come across the same people again and again; there are not many more people, they just come with changed faces, sometimes growing a beard, sometimes shaved….If you meet Setcho, certainly say what you are saying: “An empty hall resounding with the voice of raindrops is our master’s answer.” It is not only your master’s answer, it is the answer.Her second question is: “You have never failed to answer – or at least whenever I have listened for it, I have always heard a response. What is your comment?”Listen to the bamboos….[Osho waits for the bamboos, but at this moment they sing very quietly.]These bamboos are mischievous fellows! When you are ready to listen to them, they become silent. And when nobody is listening they are telling great truths.[The bamboos answer – very loudly!]Perfectly good!Her third question is: “When one’s voice becomes the voice of the raindrops is that your constant milieu?”Maneesha, when one disappears, leaving behind only a pure consciousness, then raindrops or no raindrops, then bamboos or no bamboos, just a pure awareness of whatever goes on around is certainly my milieu – and I want it to be your milieu too.The very air, your very presence should be a constant silence, because only in this silence blossom all kinds of roses.Now something particularly for the bamboos; a few of them are bananas…A man and his dog are watching a movie. The dog barks for the hero, growls at the villain, and howls during the sad parts.A man in the next seat leans over, “That’s amazing!” he says to the dog’s owner, “Your dog really seems to be enjoying the movie!”“It is amazing,” says the owner, “he hated the book!”Hymie and Becky are celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary by going to see a movie. It is a hot, steaming, passionate film, and it arouses the animal instincts in Becky. When they get home that night, she snuggles up close to Hymie, but he ignores her.“Why is it,” cries Becky, “that you never make love to me like that hero in the movie?”“Don’t be stupid,” snaps Hymie. “Do you know how much they pay those guys for doing it?!”Mother Superior is talking to three teenage girls who are about to leave her orphanage.“You are going into a wicked world!” she says. “Men will try to take advantage of you. They will buy you drinks, take you to their apartments, and do terrible things to you. Then they will give you twenty dollars and kick you out!”“Excuse me, Holy Mother,” says one of the teenagers, “but do you mean these men will take advantage of us and give us money?”“Yes, my child,” sighs the nun. “Why do you ask?”“Well,” replies the girl, “the priests only give us candy.”Kowalski wants to go moose hunting in the wilds of Canada. So he arrives at a small trading post to buy some equipment.The storekeeper advises Kowalski to hire Bruno, the greatest moose-caller in the country.“It is true,” says the storekeeper, “that Bruno is expensive, but he has a sexy quality in his voice that a moose finds irresistible!”“What does he do?” asks Kowalski.“Well,” explains the storekeeper, “Bruno will make his first call when the moose is five hundred meters away. When the moose hears it, he will be filled with desire and approach to two hundred meters.“Then Bruno will call again, only this time, he will make it more suggestive. The moose will rush closer, and then Bruno will make his sexiest call. The moose will become inflamed with carnal desire and come to a point just a few meters away.“And that is the time, my friend, when you shoot!”“Suppose I miss?” says Kowalski.“Ah,” sighs the storekeeper, “that would be a catastrophe!”“But why?” asks Kowalski.“Well,” replies the storekeeper, “then Bruno gets screwed!”Now, two minutes of silence.Close your eyes, be absolutely frozen, contain your energy within yourself…Now relax.Okay, come back.

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Live Zen 01-17Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Live Zen 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Tozan’s Three Pounds of FlaxA monk asked Tozan, “What is Buddha?”Tozan said, “Three pounds of flax.”Setcho says:The golden crow swoops, the silver hare bounds;The echo comes back, direct and free.Who judges Tozan by his word or phraseIs a blind tortoise, lost in a lonely vale.The abundant blossoms, the luxuriant flowers,The southern bamboo, the northern trees.One recalls Riku Taifu and Chokei:“You should not cry, but laugh!” Eh!Osho,Yaa-hoo!Maneesha, not finding any expression for truth, Zen has developed a language of its own; hence, to ordinary logic it looks absurd. But those who have experienced their own being, their consciousness, will find that although the language is absurd it is absolutely relevant.Zen’s case is very special, for example Tozan’s “Three Pounds of Flax.”It is impossible to say what the experience is of being a buddha, of being awakened. Even in your common life you wake up every morning, you go to sleep every night; thousands of nights you must have slept and thousands of mornings you must have awakened – but can you describe what sleep is? You cannot say, you don’t know it. Can you give any explanation to the experience of waking up in the morning? You have known it many times; it is not something unknown to you. But still, when it comes to expressing it you come up against a very adamant wall: the language that we use for communication simply fails. But something has to be done. The question has been asked, an answer has to be given and the language does not allow any answer.In such a situation Zen developed its own language. It can be easily criticized, condemned, described as absurd and irrational, but that is not very intelligent. Intelligence needs to find a way to understand the irrational language of Zen.A monk asked Tozan…Tozan is one of the most significant masters who lived fourteen hundred years ago. He is being asked,“What is Buddha?”The word buddha is from Sanskrit, but now it has been taken over by the Chinese, by the Japanese, for the simple reason that they could not find anything equivalent. The word buddha means a consciousness at its peak. What does it mean – a consciousness at its peak?Tozan said…You must be expecting some philosophical answer, some theological answer, some rational explanation, but what Tozan said is,“Three pounds of flax.”At that moment he was carrying three pounds of flax. In that moment he could not indicate anything else; there was nothing else available other than three pounds of flax. In fact he is saying that the question is wrong and if you ask a wrong question you will get a wrong answer. But he is compassionate and polite. Rather than saying, “You idiot! A question about buddha is not to be asked – it is an experience without any explanation, an experience beyond mind.” Being of a very kind nature, rather than saying that you are asking a wrong question, he simply gives an absolutely absurd answer: “Three pounds of flax.”In that moment it must have come to the inquirer as a shock and also as an insult – not only to himself but to Gautam Buddha – but he knows that Tozan cannot be insulting or derogatory in any sense toward Gautam Buddha, because for Tozan to insult Gautam Buddha will be to insult himself.His answer is indicative that it is not possible for language to contain the experience. It is almost like, “Whatever I say will not be much more valuable than three pounds of flax.”Try to see the point.I will give you an example, perhaps that may help you….Adolf Hitler convinced one of the most civilized, cultured, courageous nations that the defeat of Germany in the First World War and all the problems of Germany were because of the Jews. At first people laughed: “This is absurd! Jews have nothing to do with it; on the contrary, they had given more money to the fight than anybody else, and to make them responsible….” But when somebody continuously repeats a thing it becomes a truth. Every lie can become almost true; it just needs to be repeated with dogmatic, authoritative force.That was the whole strategy of Adolf Hitler. He was not a man of great intelligence, but he made the whole nation convinced that he was right: “If Jews are removed all problems will be solved.”One day as he was coming from his morning walk he met the chief rabbi of Berlin – a strange coincidence. Adolf Hitler asked the rabbi, “What do you think…what is the cause of Germany’s failure, all its problems?”The chief rabbi said: “It is very simple: the bicycles. Unless you destroy all the bicycles there is no chance for Germany to attain to its glory.”Adolf Hitler said, “Are you joking? What kind of nonsense are you talking? How can bicycles be responsible for Germany’s failure?”The chief rabbi said, “I was just saying that – how can Jews be responsible? And if Jews can be responsible then what is wrong in bicycles…?”This answer of Tozan’s is absurd, but any answer will be absurd. So you have to understand the milieu of Zen. In fact Tozan has not answered, he has simply said to the man, “Don’t ask such stupid questions! But because of my kindness, I cannot call you stupid. And all answers possible will be of the same quality as three pounds of flax, which is at least right now available in my hands. I can show it to you.”By his answer he is making all answers useless.Commenting, Setcho says:The golden crow swoops, the silver hare bounds;The echo comes back, direct and free.Who judges Tozan by his word or phraseIs a blind tortoise, lost in a lonely vale.The abundant blossoms, the luxuriant flowers,The southern bamboo, the northern trees.One recalls Riku Taifu and Chokei:“You should not cry, but laugh!” Eh!Setcho is saying that when the golden crow swoops, or the silver hare bounds; the echo comes back, direct and free. That is the buddha: the echo. Who judges Tozan by his word or phrase is a blind tortoise, lost in a lonely vale.Don’t judge Tozan by his word; look into his eyes, feel the dance of his heart. Look at the grace and the compassion and the love of the man.In his comment he reminds me of an incident with Riku Taifu, one of the disciples of great master Nansen.Nansen died…. Riku Taifu stood in front of his master’s coffin and gave a loud laugh. A priest reproached him, saying, “Wasn’t he your teacher? Why do you laugh when you should lament for him?”Riku Taifu said, “Say a word, and if it fulfills the Buddha’s teaching I will lament.”I will repeat: He is saying, “I am ready to lament. Say a single word that fulfills Buddha’s teaching and I am ready to lament.”But the priest could not utter a word. Deploring this, Riku Taifu said, “Alas, our teacher has long gone! Nansen would not have remained silent; he would have said something – perhaps absolutely absurd, but still indicating like an arrow toward a faraway star.”And saying this, Riku Taifu wept aloud. Later, Chokei hearing of this, said, “You should not cry, you should laugh!”Another Zen master, when he heard this said, “There is no reason to cry: Nansen has fulfilled his destiny. It is a time to celebrate. He has not gone anywhere, he has simply become free from the form of body and mind; he has become just pure consciousness like the air surrounding you. He was confined into the body, now he is unconfined. This is not the time for crying. You should not cry; you should laugh.”That’s why poor Maneesha has to shout, “Yaa-Hoo!” That is perfectly good: three pounds of flax or Yaa-Hoo – both weigh three pounds.There is a strange story that developed in the name of Zen. A small group of people, beginning with Mahakashyapa, at the time of Gautam Buddha….Although it is called Zen Buddhism, Zen should not be attached with Buddhism – it has nothing to do with any -ism. It is a pure experience without any theology. Its purity is such that no word can catch it, every word is going to pollute it. Mahakashyapa is the founder, not in the sense that Mohammed is the founder of Mohammedanism, or Mahavira is the founder of Jainism, or Karl Marx is the founder of communism. From the very beginning it takes a strange turn that has never happened anywhere else. It is simply unique; there is nothing else with which it can be compared.One morning discourse Gautam Buddha came with a flower, a rose, in his hand. It was very strange. Even people who had been with him for twenty years had never seen him bringing anything in his hand. What happened…why had he brought this roseflower? But things became more mysterious as time passed.Buddha sat in his place, and rather than speaking started looking at the roseflower…and continued….People’s waiting became deeper and deeper – and he went on continuously looking at the flower. There was immense silence…. It must have been similar to the silence that is here, but it became heavy. A moment comes – you can only have a certain amount of silence; otherwise it will crush you. It has a weight.It became too much of a burden. Nobody was saying anything, Buddha was looking at the flower and nobody had the courage or the guts to ask him, “What is the matter? What has happened? Where is the morning discourse?”Only one man, Mahakashyapa understood. This was the morning discourse: watching silently, saying nothing, just being aware. It may be a roseflower or it may be anything. Watching without being attached – that was the discourse. But seeing that nobody was understanding, Mahakashyapa laughed loudly.That was even more mysterious because Mahakashyapa was an absolutely silent man. He was never mentioned before in Buddhist scriptures. He has never said a single word to anybody. He was not a talkative person. He used to sit under a certain tree when Buddha was speaking; for so many years he had been sitting under that tree, that the tree had almost become monopolized. Without anybody saying anything, nobody sat there; everybody knew that Mahakashyapa would be coming and that place was reserved.This was the first time that this silent man laughed – so loudly that he would have defeated Sardar Gurudayal Singh![From the back of the hall, a tremendous belly laugh from Sardar.]Only here we have Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Perhaps Gurudayal Singh may have defeated Mahakashyapa, because being a sardar, he cannot accept any defeat – Mahakashyapa or no Mahakashyapa – but unfortunately he was not present in that assembly. He is our joy.But this laughter of Mahakashyapa is the beginning of Zen – because nobody else understood. Buddha said nothing and simply gestured toward Mahakashyapa to come close for the first time in twenty years! – and gave the roseflower to him. This giving of the roseflower to Mahakashyapa is the beginning of Zen.Now, language is no longer relevant; now, communication has to find some other way. Buddha’s giving the rose to Mahakashyapa is called the Seal of Zen. Buddha confirmed Mahakashyapa’s understanding that in that vast assembly of monks only Mahakashyapa had understood the silent watchfulness of Gautam Buddha, that only he could hear the unsaid, that only he could feel when others had simply wondered what was the matter.And even now it is being asked in Zen monasteries, “Why did Gautam Buddha give the roseflower to Mahakashyapa?”It is just an indication, that “you have understood.”Here begins a new language – mysterious, irrational, absurd, but tremendously meaningful.There is a great need to see Zen not as a religion, but as a language, a method of communion which is totally different from any other communication method.Zen began in laughter. It will be good to have a few laughters…Paddy and Sean are sitting in the pub having a discussion about their wives.“What do you mean,” asks Sean, “when you say you have to think twice before you leave your wife alone at night?”“First,” replies Paddy, “I have to think up a reason for going out. And second, I have to think up a reason why she can’t go with me!”Mrs. Zambini goes to visit a medium. “Can you talk with the dead?” she asks.“I can do everything!” replies the medium, “card reading, fortune telling, astrology, crystal ball, seances, pendulum…what do you want?”“I want to speak with my grandmother who died in Budapest,” explains Mrs. Zambini.The medium sits her down and turns out the lights. There is silence and then the sound of the wind and the medium goes into a trance. Suddenly there is a voice: “This is your grandmother, darling!”“Oh, Granny,” cries Mrs. Zambini, “How is everything with you?”“It is beautiful here,” replies Granny.“How is Granddad?” asks Mrs. Zambini.“He is very happy,” replies Granny.There is the noise of wind and then Granny speaks again, “I must go now, darling.”“Oh, Granny,” cries Mrs. Zambini, “I just have one more question.”“Yes, darling, ask it,” replies Granny.“Tell me,” asks Mrs. Zambini, “where the hell did you learn English?”Father Murphy, Reverend Philpot and Rabbi Nussbaum are playing cards together and gambling in the back room of the pub. All of a sudden a policeman comes in and they are arrested.In court the magistrate asks Father Murphy, “You are accused of gambling. What do you have to say?”The old priest looks up to heaven, winks and prays silently, “Oh, God! Just one little white lie! I’ll never do it again. Okay?” He then announces to the magistrate, “Not guilty.”“Okay,” says the magistrate, “you can go. And what about you, Reverend? What do you have to say?”The clergyman looks piously to heaven and then bows his head in prayer, “Oh, God! Just one little white lie! I will never do it again,” and then says out loud, “Not guilty.”“Very well,” says the magistrate, “you can go. Rabbi Nussbaum is next. You are accused of gambling,” says the magistrate. “What do you have to say?”“Gambling?” asks the rabbi. “With whom?”Newly-wed Barbara wants to make sure that she is doing everything properly. She goes to church and into the confession box, where Father Sullivan is sitting.“Father,” asks Barbara, “is it all right to have intercourse just before communion?”“Of course, my child,” replies the priest, “as long as we don’t make too much noise.”Now, two minutes of silence…no movement. Let the body be absolutely still, like a statue, frozen…Now, relax…Now, come back.

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Live Zen 01-17Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Live Zen 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Ummon’s “Everybody Has His Own Light”Ummon spoke to his assembly and said,“Everybody has his own light. If he tries to see it, everything is darkness. What is everybody’s light?”Later, in place of the disciples, he said,“The halls and the gate.”And again he said,“Blessing things cannot be better than nothing.”Setcho says:It illuminates itself, absolutely bright.He gives a clue to the secret.Flowers have fallen, trees give no shade;Who does not see, if he looks?Seeing is non-seeing, non-seeing is seeing.Facing backward on the ox,He rides into the Buddha Hall.Osho,Does everyone have their own separate light?I can see that in the physical world it is light that shows us the distinction between two people, and that in darkness, definitions and distinctions are seemingly obliterated.But it seems to me it must be just the opposite in the metaphysical world – that in darkness or ignorance we have the illusion of separateness, while enlightenment brings the awareness that one is not separate from everyone and everything around one.What is your comment?The second question:Feeling myself full of light sometimes, trembling with energy at other times, the mind is happy to grasp hold of these experiences as “something” – after all, it is said, “Something is better than nothing.”Yet when those moments of nothing are there – when there is no cognition of who I am or who you are, when there are no exotic happenings – that is what the mind can make no sense of: I only know that that space is, and that nothing is better than something.And the third question:I seem to imagine that if I am not thinking something, doing something, involved in some project or other, I am as good as dead; to participate in life seems to me to be life itself.But as long as I am doing, I recreate myself continuously, don't I? – when the whole point is to die to oneself.What is your comment?Ummon’s comment about everybody’s inner light is absolutely true. Everybody has his own light. But it is true only as far as we are talking about it, as far as it is only a concept. Once it becomes your experience, everything dissolves, including you. Then there is light, oceanic light, in which everyone has dissolved like dewdrops.Ummon’s statement, “Everybody has his own light,” can be misunderstood. Using such words as “his own light,” is vulnerable to that. I would not have used that; I would say, everybody is part of one light. And the part is not separate nor is it separable, and the part is not smaller than the whole.The part is equal to the whole.The dewdrop itself is the ocean.Ummon spoke to his assembly and said,“Everybody has his own light. If he tries to see it,everything is darkness. What is everybody’s light?”Here he is making a significant point: one has to relax to such totality that one is not. Even to be is a tension. When you simply disappear, there is light – your disappearance is the appearance of light. But if you try to see where the light is, in your very effort you miss it. The very effort to try brings your ego, individuality, you – and you are darkness. As an ego you will not find any light.That’s what he is saying: “Everybody has his own light, but if he tries….” The whole question is whether you relax or you make effort, whether you are spontaneously losing yourself in the ocean or trying, because the very trying keeps you separate. “If he tries to see it, everything is darkness. What is everybody’s light?”Ummon is talking to his disciples. Apparently, what he says seems to be very contradictory. On the one hand he says, “You are the light” – by making the statement that “Everyone has his own light…” his own. And then he says, “If you try to see it all is darkness.” Have you understood what everybody’s light is?Everybody’s light is when everybody becomes nobody.When you simply disappear and nothing prevails all is light.Of course it is your own, but you are not there.Of course it is your own, because you consist, you are made of light and nothing else.And it is not only true about human beings, it is true about material things too.The mystics were the first…. For almost three thousand years before science recognized that matter is not matter but light, energy, electricity – different names of light – mystics have been saying that “when we go in there is tremendous light.” Kabir says, “When I go in I am surrounded by one thousand suns. The light is so much, unbearable. But it is not hot, it is cool; it is not burning, but giving you more nourishment and more life.”Perhaps nobody in the assembly of Ummon was able to answer him, was able to make some sense out of his contradictory statement. I hope it is not contradictory to you.You are light when you are not.You are darkness when you are.The whole question is of the ego.But Ummon’s disciples perhaps miss the point; hence:Later, in place of the disciples, he said……because nobody stood and said anything, the master himself had to reply.“The halls and the gate.”These are ways only Zen has used to express things which are intrinsically inexpressible. When he says, “The hall and the gate,” he is saying, the coming and the going. If you go all is light, if you come all is darkness. But Zen has its own way of saying things.And again he said, “Blessing things cannot be better than nothing.”He is saying, “There is nothing better than nothing – even blessings, blissfulness, ecstasies, cannot be better than nothing.” Again he is saying, “If you are nothing, you are light, infinite light. But even a small idea of ‘I’ is enough to destroy the whole thing.”Setcho comments:It illuminates itself, absolutely bright.He gives a clue to the secret.Flowers have fallen, trees give no shade;Who does not see, if he looks?Seeing is non-seeing, and non-seeing is seeing.Here Setcho comes a little closer to Zen. Seeing is non-seeing because when you see something, your seeing is filled, just as a mirror is filled by the thing it reflects. Then there is no mirror, but only the reflections. But when there are no reflections, the mirror is. Empty it is – full it is not.Seeing is non-seeing. What are your eyes, except small mirrors? When you are filled with objects you are blinded by those objects. When you attain to a state when you can see through, when your eyes are not only reflective mirrors, when they are transparent, reflections don’t deceive; reflections don’t become identifications. The eyes – even seeing – remain non-seeing.Shunyo was asking me one day, “When you speak do you see the people to whom you are speaking?” I don’t want to offend you but the truth is, when I am speaking who is there to see? And if I start seeing someone, my speaking becomes polluted. You are here, I feel your presence, I feel your silence, I feel your heartbeat – but my eyes remain absolutely vacant.Many sannyasins have told me that I look as if I am not looking. It is not “as if,” it is exactly so. I am not looking. I am not blind either.Facing backward on the ox,He rides into the Buddha Hall.That reference concerns the Ten Bulls of Zen. That is one of the most beautiful stories man has ever created. It is a collection of ten paintings….In the first painting, the bull is lost, the owner is looking here and there, and there are trees all around, but there is no sign of the bull.In the second picture, he recognizes deep in the forest just the tail of the bull. It indicates that perhaps the bull is hiding there behind the trees.In the third picture he sees the footprints of the bull, going toward the same direction where he can see the tail of the bull.In the fourth he has seen the whole bull.In the fifth he has caught hold of the bull.In the sixth he has managed to ride on it.In the seventh he is coming back toward home, sitting on the bull. In the eighth he has put the bull in the stall from where he has escaped.In the ninth he is sitting by the side of the bull, playing on the flute. These nine paintings are existent in Zen as it exists in Japan, but the original collection was Chinese….The last painting is missing in these paintings, and the last painting is the most important. It is not just by accident that this painting is missing. It has been dropped deliberately, considering the implications of it. It is a dangerous painting because in the tenth the man is going toward the marketplace with a bottle of alcohol.What are you going to do after you become enlightened? That’s what I was saying to you…after a few minutes one starts feeling thirsty, it is time….The tenth was of immense importance; it says that even when you have found the bull – which is symbolic of finding yourself – it does not mean that you become superior to other human beings. When you have found yourself, rather than becoming superior to others, for the first time you understand humbleness and you start moving toward the marketplace: to the lowliest, humblest, toward the pub where people are drunk. Your buddhahood does not make the drunkards condemned, but you yourself start moving toward the pub to make friends with the condemned, to help them come out of their drunkenness. And that is the only way to help them, to be with them.One Zen master in Japan was continuously being sent to jail for small things…stealing. And a great master – even the magistrates respected him. They asked him, “Why do you do this? You have thousands of disciples; even the emperor comes to touch your feet – and you have stolen somebody’s shoes…!”He simply smiled. And his whole life it continued – three months in jail, then two or three months outside. Then again he would find a way…and finally everybody became accustomed to the fact that he is incurable.But there must be some secret….The day he was dying, one disciple asked, “Don’t leave us before telling the secret. Why did you continue your whole life stealing absolutely unnecessary things? We were ready to offer you anything you wanted; you never asked for anything.”The man, before dying opened his eyes and he said, “The reason was that in the prison are the most drunk, asleep people – murderers, rapists, thieves, all kinds of criminals. I had to be with them to awaken them; there was no other way.”This man must have been of immense compassion.But, afraid it would be misunderstood, when this series of paintings moved from China to Japan the tenth picture was dropped. You will also agree that it does not look good that Gautam Buddha is going toward the pub….A professor used to come to me – he was a professor in the same university as I was, and he said, “I would like to be a sannyasin” – he was immensely impressed – “but the only fear is that after becoming a sannyasin I cannot go to the pub, and you know that I am addicted to alcohol. Wearing the robe of the sannyasin it will look very weird and other drunks will start laughing.”I said, “There is no harm. Drink anyway. Become a sannyasin and give it a try.”He became a sannyasin and the second day he came – “You have put me in trouble. I was thinking there is only one trouble, the pub; there are many. My wife now touches my feet! She says, ‘You are so spiritual!’ Now I cannot relate with her in any other way, except by giving her a blessing.”He was very angry, he said, “You! You must have known and still you did it to me – and I have been your friend for so long. Last night in the dark I sneaked toward the pub, hoping that everybody must have left by this time, but the bartender was there. He immediately fell on the ground, touched my feet and he said, ‘What a great transformation!’ Now I feel like killing you!”I said, “It is strange…you asked for sannyas. It certainly brings troubles, but if you can be a little patient it will also bring blessings, ecstasies, which are far more important than the wife or the pub or your friends.”He said, “I have to be patient because I cannot go backward; that would be very humiliating.”Afraid of this situation, the Japanese masters who had brought the paintings from China dropped the tenth painting. But because it is still called the “ten” paintings of Zen, the “Ten Bulls of Zen,” I became curious because when I counted there were only nine. I had to work for years to find out that they are not Japanese, they are Chinese. They still carry the old title but the tenth painting has been dropped.Just the consideration that if people become enlightened and still go to the pub to drink alcohol, or go to the gambling places…it will be very difficult to protect their respectability. Just to protect their respectability they thought it was better to drop the tenth painting completely: Don’t take it to Japan; only nine are perfectly good. You have found yourself – now play on the flute, enjoy….But just the flute will not do. To enjoy, many more things are needed – and that tenth painting contains many more things.Now, sitting here is Zareen with little Farrokh. She became a sannyasin…. She knew and I knew that even though she has a beautiful husband, a very understanding man, but still the relationship has changed. She has moved to the ashram – now, between the husband and herself the old bridge is broken. Because he is a nice and understanding man, they will remain friends – but husband and wife they cannot be. And the little Farrokh is sitting by her side – Neelam was not allowing him to come to the discourse for so long, and he is sitting so buddha-like….[Osho turns to his very left where Zareen and Farrokh are sitting and smiles at Farrokh who responds by placing his forefinger on his lips.]He has been told not to speak, so he is telling me: Don’t disturb.Okay, Farrokh?The first question: “Does everyone have their own separate light?”No, Maneesha.Everyone has light but it is not separate. We are all one continent. Nobody is an island. We are all together in our innermost being.Maneesha is asking, “I can see that in the physical world it is light that shows us the distinctions between two people, and that in darkness, definitions and distinctions are seemingly obliterated. But it seems to me it must be just the opposite in the metaphysical world – that in the darkness or ignorance we have the illusion of separateness, while enlightenment brings the awareness that one is not separate from everyone and everything around one. What is your comment?”My comment, Maneesha, is that what you are saying is intellectually right – “theoretically speaking” that nobody is separate. Enlightenment brings one and everything into oneness – but this is all intellectual. Even the idea of inseparability is intellectual. So is the idea of oneness.Enlightenment simply means you disappear, you become the whole. There is no question of separation or no separation. There is no question of oneness, because even in the word oneness there hides behind it twoness.What do you mean when you say oneness? – you mean twoness. The mystics have avoided using the word oneness, but you cannot. In the very nature of intellectual understanding you can go a little roundabout – and that’s what people like Shankara have done. They talk about non-duality, no-twoness; they don’t talk about oneness. They want to indicate oneness, but they don’t want to use the word oneness because oneness points toward twoness.One has no meaning if there is not two, three, four…. If all other digits have disappeared, what is the meaning of one? One has a meaning only in the context of ten digits; otherwise, if there is no nine, no eight…there cannot be one. What will it mean? What can you conceive by oneness, if there are no other numbers left?It is better to agree with Ummon: nothing is better than all the blessings. Rather than saying oneness, it is better to say nothingness, filled with light.Your second question is: “Feeling myself full of light sometimes, trembling with energy at other times, the mind is happy to grasp hold of these experiences as ‘something’ – after all it is said, ‘something is better than nothing.’”That is said by idiots! Those who know, will say: “nothing is better than anything.”It reminds me…As I was a growing child, everybody told me – all my well-wishers, my parents, my uncles, my aunts, my teachers, my professors – “Listen, the way you are behaving, you will end into nothing.”I used to say to them, “That is my very goal.”One of my professors was so much concerned that he would beat his head; he would say, “You don’t understand what…. What do you mean by nothing? One has to be something.”I said, “I don’t see any possibility of myself being something. Something is very small and limited; nothing is vast and unlimited. Something is born and dies – is there today and is not tomorrow. Nothing is always, nothing is eternal.”Except nothing, nothing else is eternal.Maneesha, you must have heard a saying thousands of years old: Something is better than nothing. But I say to you:Nothing is better than anything. Not to be is the greatest experience.You are asking, “Yet when those moments of nothing are there – when there is no cognition of who I am or who you are, when there are no exotic happenings – that is what the mind can make no sense of: I only know that that space is, and that nothing is better than something.”Make it a point of remembrance that when the mind can make no sense of anything, you are very close to truth. When mind can make sense of something, you are very far from truth. The mind can make sense only of things which come within its boundary – and it has a very limited boundary. Truth is not within its boundary, it is beyond it. It is transcendental, it cannot make any sense of it. So rejoice! When your mind cannot make any sense of something, just rejoice; you are coming closer to home.And your last statement is absolutely true: “I only know that that space is, and that nothing is better than something.”Now you have come to your senses. Nothing is not only better, it is also greater; it is not only greater, it is the only thing that is existential.Pure isnessnot limited by any word –and the mystic rose opens.The third question: “I seem to imagine that if I am not thinking something, doing something, involved in some project or other, I am as good as dead.”That’s perfectly right.Every day I send Shunyo to find out whether Anando is still alive or dead. Fortunately, up to now she has never been dead. One day she will be.When you are not doing something, you don’t feel yourself. Your feeling is a reflective feeling; it is as if when you don’t look in the mirror, you start thinking, “Whatever happened to my face?” That’s why women carry small mirrors in their bags. In the buses and the trains, once in a while they will take the mirror out and look at the face, to see whether it is there or not – because what other proof have you got?And besides a mirror, all our actions, all our doings make us feel that we are. And the more we do, the more we are.You are asking, “But as long as I am doing, I recreate myself continuously, don’t I? – when the whole point is to die to oneself. What is your comment?”Maneesha, to recreate oneself every moment is not contradictory to what I say to you: Die every moment. Unless you die every moment, you cannot recreate yourself. There is no other way. The old dies and the new arises. The old leaves fall and the new leaves come. To remain a living, dancing flow of energy, there is only one way, and that is to die every moment, to be reborn again and again, fresh, new, innocent.What is happening to you is perfectly right, you have just missed the existential situation of re-creation. The very word recreate means first you have to uncreate. In order to wake up the very first thing is to be asleep.In a small school – just a small school like Farrokh is going to tomorrow, for small boys – the teacher is trying to tell them, “Never commit sin, otherwise you will never reach the kingdom of God without his forgiveness.”After one hour’s harassment of those small children, she finally asked one boy, “Tell me, what has to be done to reach heaven?”He said, “To commit sin!”The teacher could not understand, nor at the first sight will you understand that the boy is right. Unless you sin you cannot be forgiven – and only those who are forgiven enter into the kingdom of God. The boy’s innocent answer is absolutely true. If you are good you are worthless as far as God is concerned. What will he do with you? He cannot even forgive you, you have not committed anything. Just go back home, do something stupid and then come back.So remember it. If you are going to God, make every arrangement so that he can forgive you. Do some stupid things. That is the absolute requirement to be forgiven. God loves to forgive people. The implication is clear: God loves people to commit sin. Unless they commit sin, they cannot become saints. First commit sin, go to the church, pray; slowly, slowly you will become a saint and then torture yourself. Then God, out of compassion that the poor boy is doing too much, will allow you into heaven.Such a roundabout way. And in heaven what are you going to do? You will repeat the same thing. That is all that you know. Hence, every religion has made arrangements. In the Mohammedan conception of heaven, there are rivers of alcohol. Water is impossible to find – just like Pune, pure water is impossible. Pure alcohol is available in Pune too…! In heaven there are pure alcohol rivers; bottles won’t do! They won’t justify the greatness of heaven.And beautiful girls who never grow in age…Mohammedanism is fourteen hundred years old. Those girls are still sixteen. They were sixteen years old at the time of Mohammed – now they have got stuck, they cannot become seventeen or eighteen. They must feel very weird – fourteen centuries and they have not passed even one year.Here too, on the earth women pass time in a different way from men. It is said that one should never ask a woman her age; that is the most irritating thing – and a woman never tells the truth, particularly between the ages of thirty-four and thirty-eight. In those four years, no woman speaks the truth. After thirty-four, suddenly one day they become thirty-eight. This is what in physics is called the quantum leap, or in a more non-scientific way, kangaroo leap! They jump from one station to another station. They have never been in the passage between.In heaven – whether the heaven is Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan or Jaina, it does not matter – they all disagree on everything but about the age of their girls in heaven they all agree. It seems the same girls have been serving old, dead, dirty saints for thousands of years. I simply feel in so much sympathy that I want to dissolve this heaven completely, because it is doing absolute injustice to womankind.Are those girls made of plastic? I think they are, because in ancient scriptures it is said they don’t perspire. Here also women take much care not to perspire, and all kinds of deodorants…but still you perspire. Those deodorants won’t do.Perhaps in the whole world, if there is somebody who never perspires, that person is sitting here! I live in air-conditioning continuously, I move in an air-conditioned car. Here, now, on both my sides there are air conditioners. I can claim to be the only man in history who has not perspired. And I don’t use any deodorant.It is possible that heaven is air-conditioned, but it is not very likely, because air-conditioning is a very new phenomenon and heaven is so old, millions of years old. I don’t think that you can even rent a bicycle there.Maneesha, it is perfectly good. Die each moment to the past and be born again. Each breath that goes out should be your death, and each breath that comes in should be your life. If you can live with so much change, like a river flowing, you are always fresh, you are always original; your clarity is absolute, you are transparent.You have recognized the first part by saying, “I recreate myself continuously.” Now you have to understand the second part, that “I die every moment, with every breath exhaled.”One thing is certain, that no dead person can inhale. Have you seen any dead person inhaling? Only a living person can inhale. But if you only inhale and remain there you won’t be alive long, maybe a few seconds. Life wants to change continuously; that’s why you cannot stop breathing. You cannot take a holiday saying, “I am getting tired. Thirty years of breathing, just one day, one Sunday, let me rest.” But with this breathing you cannot take a holiday. If you take a holiday it is finished, your holiday will become eternity, you won’t come back.Learn to die every moment. Accept that this is what is happening, you just don’t understand it. That is what is happening in your body. If you can understand it and live it lovingly, it becomes a dance.In-breathing, out-breathing, your heart dances. It goes on throwing out all that is dead and goes on taking in all that is fresh and new.Maneesha has asked serious questions, and now I have to think of little Farrokh and tell something so that he can laugh….At a rape trial the young victim is asked by her attorney what her attacker had said before he assaulted her.The girl is too embarrassed to answer out loud, and so she is allowed to write it down.After reading the note the judge passes it along to the jury. Mendel Kravitz, who is last in the line, has dozed off, so the woman next to him nudges him and passes the note.Mendel takes the note and reads, “I am going to screw you like you have never been screwed before.” Mendel smiles at the woman and puts the note in his pocket.“Juror number twelve,” orders the judge, “please pass the note to me!”“I can’t, your honor,” says Mendel, “it is too personal!”The bank robbers rush into the bank and order all the customers and clerks to get behind the corner. Then they tell everyone to take off all their clothes and lie face down on the floor. One nervous female clerk pulls off her dress and lies down, face up.“Turn over, Gloria,” whispers her friend, “this is a robbery not the office party!”Police Constable Perkins is pounding the beat one night along a dimly-lit street.He sees three parked cars, and goes over to the first car which is bouncing up and down, and shines his flashlight inside.“Hello, hello!” he says, rapping on the window with his stick, “What do you think you are doing?”“Oh!” comes a startled voice. “We are doing the waltz!”P.C. Perkins goes over to the second car, which is rocking from side to side. He shines his light and taps on the window.“Hello, hello!” he says, “and what are you doing?”“Ah, we are doing the samba,” comes the reply.Perkins stops at the third car whose springs are squeaking and windows are all steamed up. He raps on the window and says, “I suppose you are doing the ‘bossa nova’?”“No, officer,” comes a girl’s voice, “I am doing the boss a favor!”Dennis Dork goes to Doctor Dingle with a painful case of tennis elbow.“Okay,” says Dingle. “Take this bottle home, fill it with a urine sample and return it to me immediately.”“A urine sample?” cries Dork. “How is that going to help my bad elbow?” “Don’t argue,” says Dingle, “I am the doctor. Just do it!”So Dork goes home, determined to make a fool of the doctor.First, he gets his wife to piss in the bottle, then his daughter. Then he goes to his car and puts a bit of engine oil in the bottle. And finally, he goes into the bathroom and jerks off into it.He returns the sample to Doctor Dingle and goes back the next morning for the results.“Well, Mr. Dork,” says Dingle. “Four things to tell you: first, your wife is pregnant; second, your daughter has VD; third, your car is about to blow a piston. And last, your elbow will never get better if you don’t stop jerking off!”Now two minutes of silence.Close your eyes…no movement, as if you have become a statue.Gather the whole energy inside.Now relax…Now come back.

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Live Zen 01-17Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Live Zen 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Kyozan Asks Sansho’s NameKyozan asked Sansho, “What is your name?”Sansho said, “Ejaku.”Kyozan said, “Ejaku is my name!”Sansho said, “My name is Enen!”Kyozan laughed heartily.Setcho put it like this:Both grasping, both releasing – what fellows!Riding the tiger – marvelous skill!The laughter ends, traceless they go.Infinite pathos, to think of them!Osho,What's in a name?And the second question:It was such a relief when you had Niskriya hit me the other night both for being “right” as well as being “wrong.”The relief at finding that right and wrong have no place here lasted until last night when I managed to label my being intellectual “wrong,” and the whole silly game started up again.How exquisite it must be to live in a world where there is no right and no wrong.Maneesha, name and form are the two most important things to be understood, because we live in the world of name and form. Both are illusory, both are invented. Both are mind-made, man-manufactured. Reality has no name and no form. If this is understood, then this small Zen dialogue will not be difficult to understand.It is very extraordinary of Kyozan to ask Sansho’s name. Both are enlightened, awakened people. It is extraordinary, because to ask the name is to ask about the illusory and the non-essential.To ask about the name is to ask about the invented, not the existent.You were born without a name.Do you have a name?The name is just given to you – you never had any name. It is just a label, you can change it any moment you want. It has no substantiality in it; hence a great master like Kyozan, asking another master of the same category, Sansho, his name, is a very extraordinary dialogue.Kyozan asks Sansho, “What is your name?”Apparently in this dialogue you will not be able to find any great philosophy. Because our whole education is intellectual, is based on name and form, we take it for granted that everybody has a name.Kyozan’s asking the name signifies in the first place, “Are you awakened yet or still asleep in the world of name and form? Have you realized yet that you are nameless, anonymous? Have you found it, that you are no one in particular?” A very simple question, yet it contains immense significance – but only for those who can understand the language of Zen. For others it is very ordinary. Every day you ask people, “What is your name?”Sansho could have said, “My name is Sansho”; then it would not have been a great dialogue. But Sansho said, “My name? – my name is Ejaku!”Rather than denying, saying that “I have no name”…because even to say that “I have no name” is to accept the reality of I, the namelessness of I. But he could not be caught in the net Kyozan has thrown.This is Zen play. When two masters meet, they ask questions, they answer questions, they provoke each other’s lion’s roar. Sansho said, “My name is Ejaku.”Ejaku is not his name; Ejaku is Kyozan’s name. Before he became enlightened, before he was initiated, his name used to be Ejaku. His master after initiation gave him the name Kyozan. Sansho did a good play; he said, “My name is Ejaku.”A Zen dialogue has to be spontaneous, outrageous, sudden, unexpected. Sansho was saying something which Kyozan would not have expected at all. He must have forgotten his own name long ago. Many years before when he was initiated, that was his name given by his parents. Hearing Sansho say, “My name is Ejaku,” Kyozan said, “Ejaku? Ejaku is my name!”Sansho said, “My name is Enen!”Kyozan laughed heartily.Because Enen was also Kyozan’s name. That was his name in his childhood, a nickname. Ejaku was his official name, Enen was the nickname everybody used in the family, with the friends.Kyozan laughed heartily because he could see the great perception and insight of Sansho. Sansho has not answered the question about himself at all. Rather than being straight and saying, “My name is Sansho”…it would have been wrong.No name is true. All names are fictitious.It happened that during a certain year a few years ago, America celebrated Lincoln’s birthday on a vast scale. Perhaps a certain time had passed, a hundred years or two hundred years. In this celebration one man was chosen to play the part of Abraham Lincoln. From all over America many people applied who looked a little bit like Lincoln, but one man was simply amazing. Even Lincoln would have been in a difficulty if he had met this fellow. He was more Lincoln than Lincoln himself. He was chosen.It was a one-year-long celebration and the man had to go with this drama party around the country, in all the great cities, to play the part of Abraham Lincoln. He learned the part so well…he looked absolutely like Lincoln, but that was not enough. Lincoln had a little stutter, once in a while he stuttered. The man learned how to stutter. It is very difficult to learn. It is difficult if you stutter to learn not to stutter, but to learn to stutter when you don’t stutter is even more difficult! But he did well.One of Lincoln’s legs was a little longer than the other, so he limped. And this fellow managed through massage and bodywork and traction to lengthen one leg. He finally managed, and he started limping like Lenin….[Laughter at the sudden change of name provokes a twinkle of an explanation.]I forgot, because Lenin also had one leg long and one leg short. That was the only similarity between these two great….For one year the man played the part every day and when the year ended, the celebration came to a finish, he went home limping, stuttering – everybody thought that he was joking – in the dress which Abraham Lincoln used to wear a hundred years before. One hour passed, two hours passed; then the family said, “Now it is enough, get out of this dress and be yourself!”He said, “I am myself, I am Abraham Lincoln.”They said, “Don’t carry the joke too far.”He said, “I am not joking. Who told you I am joking?”The family was at a loss. They tried to convince him.He said, “You can see my leg, you can see my language, you can see my dress; it is self-evident that I am Abraham Lincoln. Why are you bothering me? You are not losing anything!”They said, “We are not losing anything, but it looks crazy – you were just an actor, have you forgotten?”He said, “What? Who told you I was an actor? I have been president of America!”Then they thought that he had gone cuckoo. They took him to the psychoanalyst. When the psychoanalyst saw Abraham Lincoln entering into his office, he stood up. He was so much Abraham Lincoln that even the psychoanalyst forgot that Lincoln has been shot dead a hundred years before! Then he realized….The man’s family came and said, “He has been acting; now it has got into his mind that he is Abraham Lincoln, and we have been trying in every possible way but he budges not a single inch. So we have brought him to you.”The psychoanalyst tried, but it was very difficult. What can you do? The man says, “This is strange. I am Abraham Lincoln; why are you all after me? Everybody has a name, I have a name, my name is Abraham Lincoln. What is wrong in it? I limp, I stutter, I use the language that was used a hundred years ago…you can measure my height. For one year continuously I have been moving around the country. Nobody has objected.”Just a few years before, scientists had come up with a lie-detector mechanism, to be used in the courts. It is a small mechanism; it is hidden under the chair. The criminal sits on the chair, the magistrate asks him questions and the lie detector which is hidden in the chair goes on making a graph, just like a cardiogram. As long as the person is speaking truthfully, the cardiogram makes a very simple, even and harmonious graph. The moment he lies, the graph goes off the track.The psychoanalyst thought that it would be good to try that graph on this fellow; he had the machine in his office. First, things are asked about which you cannot lie, so that the graph can become adjusted. For example, “What time is it on the clock on the wall?” Naturally, how can you lie? Everybody can see what time it is.The psychoanalyst asked, “How many fingers do you see on my hand?” Naturally you cannot lie. Simple questions in which it is impossible to lie, so the graph can become harmonious, and then suddenly he asked, “What do you think, is it true that you are Abraham Lincoln?”And he said, “Of course.” And the graph went on without any change. Even the psychoanalyst could not believe his eyes that this man has not only become mentally identified with Abraham Lincoln, it has even reached to his heartbeats. He was dragged from this analyst to that analyst. Finally he became tired. He said, “This is stupid, why should I be unnecessarily harassed?”But the whole village became interested. Everybody was saying to him, “You are not Abraham Lincoln. Forget all about it. That was just acting.”Somebody reported to the court that this man was deceiving. He was brought into the court. Seeing the situation…he was getting tired. He was put on that lie-detector mechanism again, and when it was asked, “Who are you?” he said, “I am not Abraham Lincoln, I am tired of it.” But the graph said, “No, he is.” The graph did not accept his denial of being Abraham Lincoln because he was only denying intellectually. Deep down he knew who he was. The graph picks up the very heartbeat, your innermost feeling, not what you say but what you feel.We have all become names, but we were born nameless and we will die nameless. But such is the deceptive way of the world that you will live with a name and even when you die, people will put the name on your grave. There was no such name ever as a reality; it was a fiction. A nameless reality existed, a nameless reality changed its form, but the grave will carry for years, as long as it remains, a name which represents nobody.Kyozan asking Sansho, “What is your name?” is provoking him. If he says, “Sansho,” then he has not realized the nameless reality. If he says, “I am not Sansho,” then the question arises, “Who are you? – You must be somebody.”Even in denying he is accepting somebodiness; there must be some other name: “Just tell it exactly – what is your name?”But Sansho was not to be caught by Kyozan’s game. He was of the same perceptivity and clarity; he reversed the whole process. He said, “My name? My name is Ejaku.”He diverted the whole thing, he got out of the net completely. Kyozan said, “Ejaku? Ejaku is my name!” Sansho said, “Perhaps, then my name is Enen!”Seeing the situation, that it is difficult to get hold of this man in a wrong statement….Both the statements were wrong; according to anybody both the statements are wrong. If he had said “Sansho,” in your eyes that statement would have been right. But in Zen things are different; it is a totally different atmosphere of seeing things.Kyozan, feeling that he cannot be caught – he is throwing the net back on him – laughed heartily. This laughter accepted that Sansho is as enlightened as Kyozan. Nothing was said, but that laughter is the seal of recognition.Setcho remarks:Both grasping, both releasing – what fellows!Riding the tiger – marvelous skill!The laughter ends, traceless they go.Infinite pathos, to think of them!Setcho is making a beautiful statement about the dialogue: What great fellows, provoking each other to fall into a state of ignorance or to make a statement that is not right. And when it could not happen, then there was just laughter. And laughter leaves no trace behind: The laughter ends, traceless they go.Just like laughter we come and just like laughter we go.Maneesha is asking, “Osho, what is in a name?”The whole world, the whole world that you know. But it is all dream stuff. If you remain confined to names, you will never know the reality. Existence is nameless. All names are given by us.There was one man in India…. There were only two persons who were called Mahatma: one was Mahatma Gandhi, another was Mahatma Bhagwandin. I never agreed with Mahatma Gandhi, but with Mahatma Bhagwandin I had a great friendship. He was very old and I was so young, but we both felt some synchronicity. So whenever Mahatma Bhagwandin used to come to my city, he used to stay in our house. He was a great scholar and immensely informed. I have never come across anybody who is so informed about so much rubbish. You ask him anything and he will function almost like the Encyclopedia Britannica.I used to go for a morning walk with him, and he would tell me about every tree: its name, its Greek name, its Latin name, its ayurvedic qualities, its medicinal purposes, its age…. The first time I tolerated it; the next day when he started again I said, “Please! Because of your knowledge you cannot enjoy the walk. These beautiful trees become covered with Latin words, Greek words, Sanskrit roots, and I am not interested to know. It is enough for me that the tree is dancing in the wind, and I can hear the song and the joy. And I certainly can say that you cannot hear, you are deaf. You are a great encyclopedia, but you are not a conscious human being.”He was surprised, shocked. For half an hour he remained silent; and then he started again. As he came across a tree he said, “Look, this is the only tree that exhales oxygen in the night and inhales oxygen in the day.”I said, “My God, I have told you that I am not interested. It is enough for me that the tree is green, full of flowers and looking so beautiful in the morning sun…the dewdrops are still on the leaves. You destroy the whole beauty, you don’t have any aesthetic sense! And you are an old man – you are my grandfather’s friend, you are not my friend; the distance of age between me and you is half a century as far as years are concerned. But if you think of consciousness, the difference between me and you is many, many centuries!”He said, “You are strange; I wanted to make you more informed. In life one needs knowledge, information about everything.”I said, “Who is going into that life where knowledge is a commodity, where knowledge is sold, purchased? Who is going? My interest is not in the world of names. My interest is in the hidden splendor which you are completely forgetting because of your knowledge. You are covered with your knowledge – so thick that you cannot see the light, the joy of anything. Your knowledge becomes a China Wall.”I thought he must be angry, but on the contrary – he was a very sincere man – he reported to my grandfather, “Although he has insulted me again and again on my morning walk I am not angry. I am simply happy that his interest is not in the names but in the nameless. In seventy years nobody has told me” – and he was respected all over India as a great saint – “nobody has told me, ‘You are wasting your life in accumulating knowledge.’ This child has made me aware that I have wasted seventy years. If I live a little longer I will start learning again so that I can have some acquaintance with the nameless, with the formless, with that which is.”It happened by chance, that the day he died I was present. He died in Nagpur; I was passing from Chanda to Jabalpur. Nagpur was just in the middle, so I asked the driver to take me to Mahatma Bhagwandin, “just for half an hour and you can take a rest.”I could not believe it when I saw him. He had become an absolute skeleton. I had not seen him for almost five years.He was dying but his eyes were showing a tremendous light. He had become only eyes; everything else had become dead, just a skeleton.Looking at me he said, “It cannot be coincidence that you have come at the right time. I was waiting, because I wanted to thank you before I leave the body. These years have been difficult in dropping knowledge, information, and finding that which is hidden behind names. But you have put me on the right track, and now I can say all names are false, and all knowledge may be useful but is not existential, is not true. I am dying with absolute peace, the silence which you have been talking about again and again.”I had to delay because it seemed that he was going to die within a few minutes, or maybe a few hours at the most. Within five or six hours he died, but he died with such peace, with such joy. His face was so blissful, although his whole body was suffering from many diseases. But he had already got disentangled from the body; he had found himself.You are asking me, Maneesha, “What is in a name?”Nothing, it is just a utilitarian labeling; otherwise, it would be difficult to find where Maneesha is. If I ask somebody, “Where is…that isness, that reality?” It will be difficult. It is absolutely useful to have a name. The problem arises when you become the name and forget yourself. If you remember that you are not the name, if you remember that you are not the form, the body, if you remember only that you are a pure consciousness, then there is no harm. Use the body, it is a beautiful mechanism; use the name, it has its own purpose; otherwise the post offices will be in difficulty, all the letters are coming to nameless persons. You will be in difficulty finding your own home, finding your own wife in a crowd, where everybody is, but nobody has any name. You may shout, “Hey!” but that is applicable to everybody.Remember: what is utilitarian is not necessarily existential and what is existential is not necessarily utilitarian.One of my professors used to tell me again and again, “What will you do by finding the truth? Find something else – money, power, prestige, respectability. Find something else. What will you do with truth?”I said, “You are right; truth has no utility. It will not make you more respectable; on the contrary, your truth may take you to the cross. It may make you more condemned. Wherever you are, people will avoid you: ‘This man has truth, avoid!’”Truth is a very contagious disease. People have their lies, comfortable lies, and when they come to encounter a man of truth all their lies start falling down. And those lies are their whole life, their earning, their success, their money, their power.The man of truth is avoided, and if he is stubborn then he has to suffer the fate of Socrates: the society poisoned him – or he has to suffer the fate of Jesus: the society crucified him. In India we have not crucified Gautam Buddha because we know better. It is an ancient land, the most ancient land in the world. It has learned that crucifying does not help; on the contrary, it is creating a trouble. By crucifying Jesus, Christianity was created. If they had contained themselves and tolerated – he was not doing anything – if they had allowed him to talk, there would have been no Christianity. But the crucifixion created Christianity; the crucifixion became the sanctification of the truth of Jesus.India knows better. It crucifies in a very sophisticated way: it starts worshipping. It says to Gautam Buddha, “You are God, we will worship you. We will not follow you because we are ordinary human beings. You come as an incarnation of God. We are not of the same category so it is good for you to say great things. We will hear and we will bring coconuts to offer you. We will make your statue, we will raise temples for you.”Nobody thinks that this is another kind of crucifixion: a very sophisticated crucifixion, far more successful, because Hindus accepted Gautam Buddha as a reincarnation of God, but Buddhism disappeared from India. The same brahmins, the same Hindus against whom Gautam Buddha was fighting …fighting against their Vedas, their Upanishads, fighting against their whole ritual…rather than becoming enemies of Buddha, the same brahmins – their sophistication is worth understanding – declared: “He is an incarnation of God. What he is saying, don’t contradict. Worship him, but don’t follow him because whoever is going to follow him will fall into hell.”Hindu scriptures say that Gautam Buddha is an incarnation of God. He is here just to test your trust in Hinduism. Such cunningness, such sophisticated….In Shivapurana, one of the Hindu scriptures, the story is that God created the world, created heaven, created hell, made the devil to take care of hell. But millions of years passed and nobody came to hell. Because people were virtuous, they were all going to heaven. The trains going toward hell were all going empty. Finally, the devil became very irritated and he went to God and said, “You can appoint anybody else as governor-general, I am perfectly disappointed in you. For what have you made me take care of hell? Nobody comes there. I am sitting alone, not even a single soul to chitchat with!”God said, “Don’t be worried. You go back and I am coming into the world as Gautam Buddha to corrupt people’s minds, so that they can start falling into hell.”As Buddha died Buddhism disappeared, because who is going to fall into hell? They will worship Gautam Buddha but they will not follow him. They will make his temples and his statues – and there are more statues of him than of any other man in the whole world.In Arabic even the name of Buddha has become synonymous with statue, budh. Budh is a deformation of Buddha; budh means statue. There are so many statues of Gautam Buddha all over the world…. In China there are temples with thousands of statues of Buddha. One temple has ten thousand statues – the whole mountain has been cut into statues.Hindus proved really cunning. The Jews were simple in the sense that they crucified Jesus and unnecessarily created a calamity for the whole of humanity. Now half of the world is Christian and the Jews are responsible for it because they crucified an innocent young man, just out of his mind, talking great things, knowing nothing. Nobody in the world has said…in all these four million years humanity has been in existence, nobody has dared to declare, “I am a son of God,” or even a faraway cousin. Nobody has even seen God himself. People are searching for God, and Jesus is declaring, “I am the only begotten son. Forget about God, I will take you into the kingdom of God, my father’s kingdom.”Even though these were stupid and nonsense statements, they don’t deserve crucifixion. You could have laughed, you could have enjoyed, you could have entertained yourself: “Look at this fellow, he is the only begotten son of God. Sitting on his donkey, followed by a few fools….” But there was no need to crucify. I cannot conceive that to crucify this fellow can be justified in any way. He may be wrong, but that does not mean that if somebody is wrong it makes two plus two equal to five. It does not mean that you have to crucify him.You have to correct him. If somebody says, “I am the only begotten son of God,” you have to take care of him, take him to a psychiatrist, to a hospital, bring him to his senses. Crucifixion is not the right thing to do with such a fellow, because that crucifixion will create ripples which you will not be able to control.India has seen many, many people of far greater and stranger philosophies, declaring themselves as incarnations of God. But India has said, “Perhaps – no harm, enjoy the idea!” But nobody has been crucified.Just those who believe only in language and don’t see the reality behind it, they make the name too important; otherwise a name has no importance.Second question: Maneesha says, “Osho, it was such a relief when you had Niskriya hit me the other night both for being ‘right’ as well as being ‘wrong.’”First I have to correct you. I had told you – but I am a man who forgets things, my memory is not good – so I had told you that Niskriya will hit you. Whether you are right or wrong does not matter because in the world of pure existence nothing is right and nothing is wrong, everything simply is. So I had said it, but I forgot actually to order Master Niskriya to hit you. So what has not happened yesterday, will happen today. What does it matter?Master Niskriya![Niskriya wants to take his feather, but…]No! Not your peacock feather, Maneesha needs a real hit. Stand up! And where is your staff?[Niskriya, embarrassed, shows his empty hands.]Now find out some way to hit her.[He takes Maneesha’s microphone and taps her head with it.]Right.It is true, Maneesha, right and wrong are our ways of religion, morality, they are our own inventions; otherwise, existence knows no distinction between right and wrong. Right and wrong are our mind distinctions. And because of these distinctions humanity cannot become one and has to suffer wars, has to suffer unnecessary misery.For example, someone who has been born into the religion of Jainas cannot accept Ramakrishna as a right man, because he goes on eating fish. In Bengal, the only food people use is rice and fish. But to the morality of Jainism to eat fish, a living being, is immoral and wrong. Jainism cannot accept Mohammed or Jesus or Moses or Krishna for the simple reason that they are all non-vegetarians.The whole world is non-vegetarian and in fact, even Jainas thinking that they are vegetarians is wrong. They are also non-vegetarians, because trees have life. When you cut a tree you kill a living being. Whatever you eat has come from something living, growing. It may be wheat…. There is no distinction in existence between wheat and fish; both are living beings of different forms. In the whole world there is nobody who is really vegetarian. You cannot be, because the vegetable itself has life of its own.Either you have to be hungry…but then too you are not vegetarian. Jainas are very angry with me, because I said in their conferences, “Even you are not vegetarian because everything is living. It may be cauliflower or cabbage, it may be fish…everything has life.”And they said, “If we don’t eat and go on a fast…?”When I said, “On a fast you are eating your own flesh. Where does your weight disappear to every day? On a fast you lose at least two pounds per day in the first seven days, then one pound per day. Where is this flesh disappearing? You are eating it. Your body needs it, otherwise you cannot live. It is your energy. The body needs a certain energy to move, to breathe, to walk, to talk. From where is that energy going to come?”If you are a car then you can go to a gas station, but you are a man. We have not yet been able to find some petrol-type thing which is lifeless, so that you have a gas station and you just order how much gas, and a hole in your head…. Even if I move my hand, I am using energy. That energy is coming from where? From your food, from air, your breathing.If a man goes on fasting, the healthiest man will die in ninety days – that is the healthiest man, which is very rare to find. You won’t last that long. The healthiest man simply means one who has so much flesh accumulated that in an emergency he can go on using it without eating. That’s why women become more fat than men. But not before marriage, after marriage. They have to become a little fatter – they don’t have muscles, just pure flesh, very edible – because they are going to be mothers. To be a mother means to feed a child. For nine months in your womb the child is supplied by the mother’s flesh. So the mother is supporting herself and the child, and she needs some emergency reservoir. And even when a woman is not becoming a mother, the tendency of her body is to collect more flesh.Man is more of a skeleton. The woman has less bones and more flesh; the man has more bones, less flesh. That’s why women can fast very easily. For man it is more difficult. The woman has enough of a reservoir. She can feed a child for nine months, she can fast without difficulty, but she is also eating her own flesh. There is no way of being non-vegetarian.But these concepts create difficulty. Jainas think they are the purest people in the world, because they are vegetarians. Brahmins think that the purest food is cow’s milk. And milk is a formation of blood…. That’s why when you drink milk you immediately start gaining weight. It is really blood, but according to Hindus it is the purest food, and those who kill cows to eat are wrong. But what are you doing? You are keeping the cows alive to eat. The difference is not much. Somebody is killing the cow to eat; somebody is keeping the cow alive to eat.And in fact, except man no animal in the world drinks milk after a certain age. Milk is for very small children of any species, because the small child cannot chew anything hard. You will not find a bull drinking milk from his mother, but you will find a great saint, seventy years or eighty years old, drinking milk. This is violence, because that milk was for the cow’s own calves, not for Hindu saints.And more difficulty arises if you understand the chemistry. That cow’s milk has a different chemistry from the woman’s milk. Cow’s milk has a different chemistry. Because it is going to be in the body of a bull it is more sexual. And to drink cow’s milk and then try to be celibate….You can see Hindu mahatmas, they look like bulls and pretend to be celibate. None of them is celibate, because celibacy by itself is impossible. It is as impossible as somebody saying, “I never urinate.” He may not be urinating in public urinals, in public places; he may have his private ways, but in some way…if he is drinking water, then it has to come out of the body – unless he is Morarji Desai, who recycles it. Morarji Desai has the oldest urine in the world! And just as old wine is precious, he goes on drinking his own urine, the same urine again and again. It becomes more and more intoxicating. It would be better to drink somebody else’s urine; at least it will be fresh! Drinking one’s own, continuously…it is so dirty. But you cannot do anything. In this country such people are thought to be great moralists. They need brain operations; something has gone cuckoo. And Morarjibhai is angry with me, because I told him face-to-face, “You are the dirtiest person in the world. Everybody has fresh urine and you have eighty-year-old urine. Recycling…what kind of nonsense is this?”But Hindus drink cow urine and it is thought to be very religious. Strange! They will not drink the bull’s urine. And I have asked them, “When you call the cow your mother, then why don’t you call the bull your father?” They were angry with me, and I was simply saying a simple thing, that if you make such a relationship that the cow is your mother, then the bull is certainly your father whether you accept it or not. It is true that the bull is not a very moral father, a very immoral fellow, but whatever is the case, once you accept the cow as your mother, you have accepted the bull as your father. And do you think this makes you religious, spiritual, or animal? All these distinctions in every country, in every religion, in every race are just man’s projections, his own mind.Just as your mind becomes silent, there is nothing right, nothing wrong. Everything simply is. Those distinctions of morality simply disappear.Maneesha, as you say, “The relief at finding that right and wrong have no place here lasted until last night when I managed to label my being intellectual ‘wrong,’ and the whole silly game started up again. How exquisite it must be to live in a world where there is no right and no wrong.”Don’t think that there is some other world. You can live in this world. I have lived in this world and I don’t have any idea of right and wrong. Yes, I have my likings and my dislikings, but that does not have any moral connotations to it. If I don’t eat meat that is my question of liking. If I don’t drink wine that is a question of my liking. Those who drink, that is their liking. My liking does not make me superior to them. I am following my liking; they are following their liking. We are both on the same ground.There is no world somewhere else, where right and wrong does not exist.It is your mind, here!If you can drop your mind right and wrong disappear.Then you simply live according to your natural likings, and you don’t impose your likings on other people. That is a crime against humanity. Just as you are free to enjoy your liking, everybody else is free to enjoy his liking, and to live his life in his own style.Maneesha, there is no other world, but there is a possibility of having a different mind, the mind of a meditator. Then this very world is the lotus paradise.Now a few very serious things…Randy Musthaver picks up Polly, the prostitute, on the street and asks her, “How much?”“Ten dollars,” she replies, “unless you want it Spanish style, but then it is ten dollars extra.”Randy goes for the Spanish style, so they go up to Polly’s room and have a great time.When they are finished, Randy gets dressed and is heading for the door, when he stops and says, “Well, I really enjoyed that, but tell me, what was Spanish about it?”“My God,” says Polly, “I nearly forgot!”She then stands up on the bed, raises one arm, snaps her fingers and shouts, “Olé!”On a full moon evening, Count Dracula walks into a men’s store and asks to see some ties.When the salesgirl looks into his eyes, she becomes hypnotized. Dracula sinks his sharp teeth into her throat and takes a deep drink.As she wakes up, the girl remembers nothing, and Count Dracula buys a silk tie and leaves the store.The next night he is back.“Would you like to try something different tonight?” asks the girl, innocently.“No,” chuckles the vampire, “I want something in exactly the same vein!”Hymie Goldberg is on a business trip and finds himself having to use a pay toilet in a public building.He is making himself comfortable, when he notices that the toilet paper has run out.Seeing a pair of shoes in the next booth, he calls out, “Excuse me, friend, but do you have any toilet paper in there?”“No,” comes the reply, “I am afraid there is not any here either.”Hymie pauses for a moment. “Listen,” he says, “do you happen to have a newspaper or a magazine with you?”“Sorry,” comes the reply, “I don’t.”Hymie pauses again.“Well,” he says, “how about Ronald Reagan’s postal stamp?”Becky Goldberg comes home from shopping and is horrified to find Hymie in bed with a beautiful young girl. She is about to storm out of the house, when Hymie stops her.“Before you leave,” he says, “I want you to hear how all this came about. I saw this young girl, looking tired and worn out, so I brought her home and made her a sandwich.“She was wearing worn-out sandals, so I gave her a pair of your shoes that you never wear, because they went out of fashion.“She was cold, so I gave her the sweater I gave you for your birthday, that you never wear because the color does not suit you.“Her jeans were also worn out, so I gave her a pair of yours, that were perfectly good until you gained a few pounds.“Then as she was about to leave, she stopped and asked, ‘Is there anything else your wife does not use any more?’”Now two minutes of silence.Close your eyes.Be absolutely still, frozen.Now, relax…Now, come back.

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Live Zen 01-17Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Live Zen 12 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Seppo’s Grain Of RiceSeppo addressed the assembly and said, “All the great world, if I pick it up with my fingertips, is found to be like a grain of rice. I throw it in front of your face, but you do not see it. Beat the drum, telling the monks to come out to work, and search for it.”Setcho says:The ox-head disappearing, the horse-head appears;No dust on the mirror of the Patriarch Sokei.You beat the drum and search for it in vain.For whom do the spring flowers bloom?Osho,Why is the nature of the mind such that it doesn't know its own limitations, that it thinks it is indispensable?And the second question:The words witnessing and awareness do not seem to appear in Zen very much. Is it that witnessing is the ability to watch the mind running along its track without being identified with it, while Zen jolts the mind off its track into the gap of no-thought?And the third question:I often have had the feeling that if I could really hear just one word of yours, really see just one gesture of yours, really fall into one small gap of your silence, I would have understood you at last.Is that so?Maneesha, it is questioned by many, why the words awareness, or watchfulness, or witnessing do not appear in the Zen anecdotes. The question is relevant…it does not appear in the words and the anecdotes are written in words. You will have to find it between the words, in the silences that happen between masters and disciples, or one master and another master.Awareness is not something Zen talks about because Zen is awareness.Zen has nothing to do with any “about.”Philosophy can talk about awareness, thinkers can talk about watchfulness, teachers can teach what is witnessing, but Zen is awareness.You have to get hold of it; it is always there in every anecdote – but not so visible, not so tangible, not available to language. If you are trying to find it you will not find it, because every finding is by the mind.If you forget all about finding awareness and just be silent, you have found it.Zen is pure awareness.But certainly it is not mentioned, because it cannot be mentioned. Zen wants not to talk about it, but to transpire your heart, to aflame you; to bring you to the tune, the harmony, the music…where awareness will not be something of an object – where you will be awareness.In your absolute silence, when the mind is not there, what remains?The mind is only ripples of the ocean.When the ripples are gone the ocean which was not visible because of the ripples…suddenly you realize you are it.Where are you going to find it?Seppo’s grain of riceSeppo addressed the assembly and said, “All the great world, if I pick it up with my fingertips, is found to be like a grain of rice. I throw it in front of your face, but you do not see it. Beat the drum, telling the monks to come out to work and search for it.”We live in such a limited way, our eyes don’t see much and our ears don’t hear much and our hearts don’t feel much. We live at the minimum, just a small candle flame. The universe is vast – in fact its vastness is almost inconceivable by the mind, because the mind cannot conceive anything limitless. There is no beginning and there is no end; there is no boundary anywhere where the universe ends, where you come to a board which says, “Here ends the world.” It does not end anywhere.Hence all our words – even words like vastness, infinity, eternity – are very small efforts. In the words of Seppo, the whole world that our mind can conceive, compared to the whole real universe, is just like a grain of rice. So small that he says: If I throw it in front of your face, you will not see it. Beat the drum, telling the monks to come out to work, and search for it.So small…he is saying, “Our conception compared to the reality is so small that because of its smallness we cannot even get hold of it.”I have told you one story of Bertrand Russell, the only story he has ever written. He was not a storywriter. My own understanding is that this story has come out of one of his dreams. He was a great philosopher.The story is that the archbishop of England dies and finds himself at the pearly gates of heaven. Naturally he is expecting a great welcome, angels with harps singing Hallelujah. What he finds is just the opposite: a big gate, so big that he cannot find how high it is; he cannot find its height nor can he find its boundaries. He himself looks at himself and a great trembling arises in him – he looks like a small ant standing in front of a vast door which is closed. He knocks on the door and he knows that his knocks will not be heard. For the first time he recognizes that even though he is the archbishop of England, that does not matter. Before the gate of God he is just a small ant.But he tries hard, he goes on beating on the door. Finally, a window opens and St. Peter looks at him with one thousand eyes. He shrinks. Just the glare of one thousand eyes is enough to make anybody shrink in deep fear. He wants to say something but he cannot find the words. St. Peter says, “Don’t be afraid, whoever you are, wherever you are, because I cannot see you. I have been hearing a small knock continuously for many days, so I thought it was better to look. You just stand up, wherever you are hiding.”Even the archbishop of England thinks, “This is God…one thousand eyes!”He says, “Father…” and St. Peter laughs. He says, “I am not God, I am just St. Peter! I am a doorkeeper, but who are you?”He answers as loudly as possible, but it appears as a whisper in that vast space, “I am the archbishop of England.”“England?” St. Peter says. “Never heard of it. Talk sensibly. To what solar system do you belong?”“Solar system?”We know that we belong to this sun. This is our solar system, all the planets, the moon. So he said, “I belong to the only solar system there is!”St. Peter laughed. He said, “He does not understand! There are millions and millions of solar systems and trillions of planets. You will have to give me the index number of your solar system.”The archbishop was a very learned man, but he had never heard that there is an index number!St. Peter said, “I cannot help. Without recognizing you, from where you have come, who you are, and what is your purpose…. The index number is needed because then I can run to the library of God and ask the librarian whether this index number shows there is some planet in this solar system where some kind of life exists.”The words index number were enough! The archbishop woke up. He was perspiring. He realized how small we are and how small is our conception.By the way, before he woke up he had asked St. Peter, “Perhaps Jesus Christ may be of help. You ask Jesus; he knows us, I represent him in England.”St. Peter said, “Jesus? What are you talking about, who is this fellow?”The archbishop said, “My God! He is the only begotten son of God!”St. Peter said, “I don’t know anything about…. The fact is, I have not seen God up to now. It is so vast here inside the door…outside is nothing; inside the door it is so vast that you cannot find anybody. I don’t know who this Jesus is, I don’t know who this God is. All that I know is that I am St. Peter the doorkeeper.”Seppo is saying, if you are searching for truth, please stop. Truth is so vast you will be lost. Rather than searching for any truth, just be yourself.In your very being you will find the seed of the whole universe.In your own heartbeat you will find the universal heartbeat.Setcho’s commentary:The ox-head disappearing, the horse-head appears;No dust on the mirror of the Patriarch Sokei.You beat the drum and search for it in vain.For whom do the spring flowers bloom?Setcho is saying, The ox-head disappearing, the horse-head appears…Rather than simply saying that you are a mirror: one thing appears; one thing disappears.No dust on the mirror of the Patriarch – one who knows himself, no dust gathers on him.You beat the drum and search for it in vain – you will not find it. For whom do the spring flowers bloom?Once in a while, Setcho’s commentaries come very close to truth. He is saying that you are just a mirror: things appear and disappear; you keep your mirror dustless, clean. For those who are mirror-like clean, the spring flowers bloom.I have told you the incident of one of Gautam Buddha’s disciples becoming enlightened. Everybody else became aware that something had happened because on the disciple flowers went on showering like rain.These flowers are not the flowers that you see with your eyes, these are the flowers that you feel with your heart. And the more the silence grew, the more the flowers showered.Setcho is right:For whom do the spring flowers bloom?They bloom for you, but you are asleep. They bloom for you, but your mirror is so full of dust you cannot reflect them, you cannot appreciate them – you cannot sing a song in their praise.Setcho has referred to Patriarch Sokei as a mirror. Patriarch Sokei is also known as Eno and Hui-Neng. Hui-Neng is his more well-known and famous name.When Sokei’s master, the fifth patriarch Obai Gunin was growing old, he wished to nominate his successor. Obai’s head monk, Shinshu presented a poem demonstrating his degree of attainment. It ran:The body is the bodhi tree,The mind is like a mirror,Every now and then dust and polish it,And let no dust settle on it.In Zen, whenever a master chooses his disciple, this is the way: anybody who can present a small poetry which contains the truth, will be accepted.This poetry – The body is the bodhi tree – because the flower of awakening blossoms in the body, it has its roots in the body…. The mind is like a mirror, Every now and then dust and polish it, And let no dust settle on it – apparently seems to be very great and philosophical. It seems to be that Shinshu should be accepted as the successor. But he was not accepted. This will show you the depth of Zen and its approach toward life and existence:Sokei said:Bodhi by nature is no tree.The mirror is inherently formless.There is originally nothing.On what then can the dust settle?Shinshu’s poem was beautiful, but has not the depth of Sokei’s poem: Bodhi by nature is no tree…. A tree grows. Bodhi is your nature – it is already there, fully grown. Each one of you is a totally fulfilled buddha. Whether you know it or not, that does not make any difference.And talking about the mirror is not right, because your consciousness is formless; it cannot be a mirror. And because there is originally nothing, on what then can the dust settle?With this poem Sokei became the sixth patriarch, the sixth great master after Bodhidharma.Your first question, Maneesha: “Why is the nature of the mind such that it does not know its own limitations, that it thinks it is indispensable?”It is natural to the mind, just as it is natural to everything. You have never thought why you don’t have four hands. You have never thought why God forgot to put two eyes behind, back lights so there is no need of turning. You simply walk backward, forward….It is said…When Henry Ford died and encountered God, he was very angry with God…the story is very beautiful.God said, “I understand you are a great inventor. I would like to ask you one thing: What do you think about my creation?”Henry Ford said, “Your creation? It is so full of faults. Just look: you have put only two eyes and forgotten about the back lights! You have not given man a reverse gear so he can go backward in time. If you had given him a gear, young men could go into their childhood or into their mother’s womb – or a child could go forward. You have not given man freedom to move in time backward or forward. You seem to be against freedom of movement!”God was shocked and when Henry Ford said this it is rumored that God had tears in his eyes. Ford said, “You have put the pleasure point in man’s body between two exhaust pipes! Is it in any way sensible? The pleasure point should have been put anywhere else, but not where you have put it – it is so stupid!”I don’t know whether the story is true or not, but it seems to be true.It is just the nature of the mind, just as it is the nature of everything. The roseflower never thinks about becoming a lotus; he does not bother that he is so small. The limitation is indispensable, intrinsically. You never ask for a few spare parts so that if one head gets lost, you can put on another head. You never question. Even the question of spare parts does not arise, that this is not a right system; every car comes with spare parts, every small child should come with a bag carrying for himself small spare parts: spare eyes, spare legs…. Fractures happen, eyes lose their eyesight…if you had spare things with you, you could immediately change. We simply accept the situation as it is. This acceptance is natural.That’s why, Maneesha, the mind never thinks that it has any limitations. It thinks it is infinite – what limitations? It can think of as faraway things as possible. And naturally it thinks it is indispensable. Everybody thinks, “Without me, what will happen to the world?” You may not say it to anybody, but deep down you think that without you, the world cannot run. There will be chaos, everything will be topsy-turvy. It is because of your presence that the sun rises every day; otherwise at least on Sunday it would be on holiday.The poor fellow, when the whole world is on holiday – and it is his day, Sunday – still he has to do his daily job: rise again, move the whole circle, set down again…. For four billion years, since the earth has existed – we don’t count the time before it…there was time before it, but for at least four billion years the sun has never been late, never been sick, never been on holiday, never gone on a honeymoon. The poor fellow simply goes on doing the routine work.But at the deepest core of everybody, the feeling is that “Without me, there will be a vacancy which cannot be fulfilled. I am indispensable; nobody can take my place” – and we know already, we have taken somebody’s place!Before you, so many millions of people have come and gone, sometimes the horse and sometimes the ox. Nothing is indispensable, but it is very fulfilling to the ego to feel indispensable.We make ourselves indispensable in small ways. We get married. Now you can say to the world, “Without me, what will happen to my wife?” And everybody knows nothing will happen, she will be simply happy, but you are carrying a great burden. Without you, what will happen to the children? Nothing. They will become orphans and Mother Teresa will get the Nobel Prize. You are unnecessarily hindering Mother Teresa.Because we cannot prove that we are indispensable to the stars and to the moon and to the sun, we create small relationships: father, mother, wife, and husband, and friends. And we make clubs: Lions Club – what will happen to the Lions Club without you? It will be simply a donkey club; you are the only lion! We create the illusion around ourselves that we are indispensable.One of my professors never in his whole life went on a holiday. I became his student just three months before he was going to retire. He was known all over the university as a man who had a great love for students – he would not go on leave. Even if he was sick, he would come to teach.I asked him, “What is the matter? Why have you never gone on any holiday?” I did not expect the answer that he gave to me – he was a very sincere man, Dr. Das – he said to me, “Nobody has ever asked this; everybody just appreciated. You are not appreciating; on the contrary, you are asking, questioning. I have to tell you the truth. The truth is that if I had gone on any holiday, nothing would change, everything would run smoothly and my feeling of being indispensable would be destroyed. I wanted to be indispensable: without me the university will be a chaos. And I knew, it would not be a chaos.”I can understand the poor professor’s problem, because he was a bachelor – old, no wife, no children, nothing else on which he can proclaim his indispensability.He managed it by not going on holiday. The whole university, all the professors felt it, that certainly he was a superior man. Even on Sundays his office would be open. Any scholar who wanted to come on Sunday too, Dr. Das was available. The whole university was closed, just his office was not closed; it was never closed.When he retired I went to see him off at the railway station and I said, “You are going? Are you not worried what will happen to the university?”He looked at me. He said, “Don’t harass me – at least while I am going away. Nothing will happen, everything will be all right. It hurts me so much that I am going and nothing will happen, and you are making me aware of it. Talk about something else.”I could see that this man, who was a very learned man and very simple, sincere would shrink in Calcutta, somewhere alone. And I don’t think he lived more than four or five months. After retirement he became so useless. I know perfectly well that if he had still been in the university he would have lived. There was no sign of death; he was perfectly healthy. But I could just imagine him in Calcutta somewhere in a small room – because a retired professor cannot manage a palace in Calcutta – in some bachelor’s hostel: an old man, utterly useless, nobody even comes to say to him, “Good morning, Sir.”The very day he left, I told him, “Be careful not to die too quickly.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “I am simply saying a psychological truth, which psychology now accepts, that retired people reduce their life span at least five to ten years. When they are not retired they have some utility, some meaning, they are needed by someone.”It is one of man’s greatest needs to be needed. If nobody needs you immediately the question arises: Why go on living? What is the point? There is nobody who will cry tomorrow, there is nobody who will come to your grave to put a few roses there. You will be forgotten as if you have never been. How many people have been in the world? Who remembers them? The same is going to be the situation with you, with everybody.We are just signatures on water. Even before we are complete, we start disappearing.Nobody is indispensable, Maneesha, but the ego will not accept it; it is indigestible. Once you accept it, that you are not indispensable, you will feel a tremendous lightness coming on you, all burden….I have been in offices where on every table of the clerks, head clerks, superintendents, there are piles of files – and I know why those files go on growing into mountains. The reason is whoever has more files on his table is more indispensable; without him nothing can happen. Files move so slowly that I have to make a maxim. Just as Albert Einstein has discovered that light moves with the greatest speed, I have to make a maxim that files, particularly in India, move with the slowest speed. Dust goes on gathering on them, nobody does anything, nobody wants to do, because if there is no file on your table, what are you doing here? Who are you? – you lose your definition.It is good to understand that we are not indispensable, and that our minds are very limited. It will bring you closer to truth.Your second question, Maneesha, I have already answered. You have asked: “The words witnessing and awareness do not seem to appear in Zen very much. Is it that witnessing is the ability to watch the mind running along its track without being identified with it, while Zen jolts the mind off its track into the gap of no-thought?”Maneesha, Zen simply does not give any substantial support to mind.For Zen, mind is not.It is not that the mind has to be dropped.It is not that the mind has to be stopped from functioning. Yes, these things have to be said because you don’t know anything about no-mind. Once you have a glimpse of no-mind you will start smiling…“I was fighting with a shadow – the mind was not there.”Your third question: “I often have had the feeling that if I could really hear just one word of yours, really see just one gesture of yours, really fall into one small gap of your silence, I would have understood you at last. Is that so?”Zen Master Niskriya…[This time Niskriya has his staff with him!]Yes, a good hit on Maneesha.[Niskriya taps her on the head.]Right! This is the seal of being right.Now we can have a few really good things. This Maneesha goes on asking serious questions!Barbara Beanbag has been to market and is walking home carrying a duck.A drunk comes staggering along in the other direction, stops and says, “Hey! What are you doing with that pig?”Barbara looks at him coldly and replies, “This is not a pig, it is a duck!”“I know,” says the drunk, “I was talking to the duck!”Abraham Grossman, the rich young bachelor, is entertaining a gorgeous woman, Gloria, with dinner in his penthouse.As his Chinese servant pours the coffee, Gloria asks, “Wu, how do you make such delicious coffee?”“Me take plenty boiled water,” explains Wu, “and stir in coffee, velly, velly slow.”“Yes,” says Gloria, “but it is so clear. How do you strain it so cleverly?”“Me take master’s silk socks…” begins Wu.“What!” shouts Grossman. “You take my best silk socks to strain the coffee?”“Oh, no, master,” replies Wu. “Me never take master’s clean socks.”Kowalski hears a noise in the garden and goes out to find his dog playing with the neighbor’s pet rabbit.Kowalski manages to get the rabbit out of the dog’s mouth, but finds that it is already dead.He does not want to upset his neighbor, so he sneaks over the garden fence and puts the rabbit back in its pen, so that the neighbor will think it died peacefully at home.That evening, Kowalski hears his neighbor freaking out in the garden.“What is the matter?” asks Kowalski, innocently.“I have just found my rabbit, dead, in its pen,” replies the neighbor.“Oh dear!” sighs Kowalski, sympathetically.“That’s okay,” says the neighbor, “it’s just that I had already buried it yesterday!”Moishe Finkelstein has bags under his eyes and looks very tired, as he goes into the doctor’s office.“Doctor,” says Moishe, “I dream every single night. Last night it was terrible! I was in an airplane, I had my parachute on and we were five miles above the earth, to make a new parachuting altitude record.“I opened the door, took one step forward, pulled the ripcord – what do you think happened?”“I have no idea,” says the doctor.Moishe gazes into the distance and says, “My pajamas fell down.”Now two minutes for silence.Be still. Close your eyes.Collect yourself inward, just as if you are a stone statue.Okay, relax…Now, come back.

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Live Zen 01-17Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Live Zen 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Joshu and The Great DeathJoshu asked Tosu, “What if a man of the great death comes back to life again?”Tosu said, “You should not go by night; wait for the light of day and come.”Setcho comments:Open-eyed, he was all the more as if dead;What use to test the master with something taboo?Even the Buddha said he had not reached there;Who knows when to throw ashes in another’s eyes?Osho,You are one who has come back to life from the great death. Yet we who have not died are not nearly so abundantly alive as you. Would you please talk about this?And question two:You are like an exotic flower or rare species of creature whom I have watched and listened to and tried to find words to describe for the past fourteen years.To hear you talk of the state you are in is to feel endlessly in awe. One of the most intriguing things about you is that you are always so absolutely present and at the same time so totally absent.Would you please comment?And the third:Osho,Okay…I'm going to lighten up.For a master of Yaa-hoo and Yaa-boowhat could possibly be taboo?The death we know is always somebody else. Once we know our own death, pass through it, a tremendous realization arises that death is the greatest fiction.This realization is called “the great death.” Everybody dies, but the small death; only very blessed ones have died the great death. It simply means they die with total awareness, seeing body and mind separating from their consciousness. But the consciousness, the flame of their being is eternal. It goes on moving into new forms and ultimately it moves into the formless.This small anecdote is about the great death. Zen is always special in its expression. Joshu calls it the great death because it is not death. The great death in reality is the great life.Only the small death is death.The difference is of consciousness and unconsciousness. You die unconsciously – this is the small death; you will have a small rebirth. Neither will you know your death nor will you know your birth. If you die meditatively, alert, aware, it is the great death – and great death is followed by great birth.Knowingly you die, and because knowingly you die…how can you die? Your knowing, your consciousness continues – knowingly you are born. There is no discontinuity between your death and your birth.Your realization of this ordinarily would be called “the great life,” but there is some reason why Zen has chosen to call it “the great death.” The reason is that the great death comes first; behind it is revealed the great life. Unless you open the door of the great death, you won’t enter into the space of great life.Joshu asked Tosu, “What if a man of the great death comes back to life again?”Now another distinction has to be made which is not clear in the anecdote and is not commented upon by Setcho either. But without bringing in another distinction the experience remains incomplete; it is not entire.There is death. There is the great death. And there is the greatest death. In death you die unconsciously. In the great death you die consciously, but you are born again. In the greatest death you only die; you are not reborn, you simply disappear into the immensity of existence – you disperse yourself in the wholeness of the cosmos.It is because of this fact Mahavira cannot be born again. There is no way for him to get back into any form; he has become formless. But there are meditators who have not reached the ultimate peak but who have some light, some consciousness, that remains while they are dying. They will be born again; they are not yet ripe enough to disappear into the cosmos. They have not learned the whole secret and mystery of life; they have to go on the pilgrimage a little more.Joshu’s question is, What if a man of the great death comes back to life again?His question seems to be relevant, because there is no precedence in which a third kind of death is recognized. He is asking: “I can understand the great death, that you die consciously, but what about a man dying consciously and coming back to life again?”He is asking about the third distinction, because we have known of many people simply disappearing into air and they never come back again – and there are millions who go on coming back. They never learn their homework; their lives remain mundane and unconscious. But even if sometimes a few people become a little bit conscious, it is better than not being conscious at all. These people will be born – and from their very birth they will show distinctions, uniquenesses, which ordinary children are not supposed to show.But this is not the ultimate death which everybody is seeking. Only in ultimate death do you relax totally into existence, not to come back. This coming back is not something great; it is coming back to the prison.Tosu said, “You should not go by night; wait for the light of day and come.”Slowly, slowly you will be getting the taste of the language of Zen. Rather than saying, “You should not die unconsciously,” he says, You should not go by night – don’t go in darkness, don’t go blind – wait for the light of day…. Wait for consciousness, wait for witnessing. Wait for meditation to grow in you and then you can come.Setcho comments:Open-eyed, he was all the more as if dead.That’s how a great master is. In his being, death and life have become one.There is no separation between death and life.Open-eyed, he was all the more as if dead;What use to test the master with something taboo?Such questions should not be asked – that’s what Setcho is commenting. Such questions are of such a great depth that there is no way to answer them. Why put somebody in an embarrassing situation? Hence such questions are taboo.Even the Buddha said he had not reached there – just to avoid the answer. He must have been asked many times in his forty-two-years-long life of teaching. Rather than putting a lock on their mouths, he said to his questioners, “I have not reached there yet, so I cannot answer it.” But it is not true, because he has not returned and he cannot return. That does not mean that others cannot become as awakened, as enlightened as Gautam Buddha. It simply means that the unique personality of Gautam Buddha will never be seen again in the world of time and space.Who knows when to throw ashes in another’s eyes?Setcho is saying, “Buddha is simply throwing ashes into the eyes of the questioner.” You cannot deceive an authentic questioner, because the authentic questioner himself knows it a little bit – that death is a fiction, that life is eternal.But even Buddha is trying to throw ashes into the eyes of the questioner. It must be out of compassion. He does not want you to think much about death; he wants you to think much about life. He wants you to go deeper into life, and death will disappear on its own accord. The more alive you are, the farther away death is. When you are totally alive, there is no death for you. Of course you will not be in a form, you will be a pure isness spread all over the existence. Not confined in a body of any species, just a white cloud floating in the open sky, unconfined to any form.Have you ever watched a cloud moving in the sky? It has no form, because its form goes on changing. It is free of any bondage to remain in the same form. It is free as far as form is concerned.It is freedom.Maneesha’s first question is: “Osho, You are one who has come back to life from the great death. Yet we who have not died are not nearly so abundantly alive as you. Would you please talk about this?”I have been teaching you nothing else except to be more alive, more loving, more singing, more dancing….My approach is not the approach of Gautam Buddha. His approach is negative. On his path there are no dances, no songs. On his path you will not find any oasis. His path is perfectly right; it reaches, although it is hard.But when there is a choice, why choose the hard? Why not choose the way of dancing and singing and being aware – and move through gardens where flowers blossom. There is no need to move through deserts where nothing grows.It was a historical necessity for Gautam Buddha to move through the desert, but it is not for you. What was the historical necessity for him to move through the desert? For twenty-nine years he lived in beautiful gardens, in palaces, surrounded by beautiful women, song, dance…he was tired of it. It all created a kind of negativity because he knew that this is not life. I was not there to teach him that this in itself is not life, but if you just add a little awareness to it, it is life – more life. There is no need to go on a desert path.I am teaching you to reach to the same goal of ultimate death, but I would rather call it ultimate life. That’s where my expression and Gautam Buddha’s expression differs.I don’t think that his path of negativity has helped humanity very much; in fact, who wants to die? Have you ever asked yourself – do you want to die? An ultimate death, with no possibility of returning? And for this ultimate death making all kinds of disciplines, rituals, following a thousand and one rules – you will certainly think that this is mad. If in the end you are only going to gain the ultimate death…it doesn’t seem right. And that’s why Buddhism has not been of as much help as it could have been.But it was Buddha’s individual necessity. He had lived the life of immense luxury – he was tired of it. If this is life then he does not want to live. He moved in the opposite direction to find the truth. But you have not lived the life of Buddha, the luxury that was available to him. You need not be, and you cannot be negative in your approach. Your approach can only be positive.And if dancing you can reach to the ultimate, laughing, if you can reach to the ultimate, then why unnecessarily go with a British face? There are other faces also! Don’t be serious.But death…the very word makes people serious.I want you even to dance in your death, to dance and celebrate even in the death of your loved ones. Life and death both should be part of a single festival without any discontinuity.Your second question is: “You are like an exotic flower or rare species of creature whom I have watched and listened to and tried to find words to describe for the past fourteen years. To hear you talk of the state you are in is to feel endlessly in awe. One of the most intriguing things about you is that you are always so absolutely present and at the same time so totally absent. Would you please comment?”Maneesha, totality has two sides: the presence and the absence.You cannot be totally present if you cannot be totally absent at the same time, simultaneously – you cannot choose one. Just the very word total includes presence and absence both.Your understanding is accurate. You have felt rightly that I am present – at the same time I am not present. This has to be your state also. Only then – the meeting, the communion.Once in a while you have, for a moment, come to the place where you meet me – but soon your mind takes you away. You come very close to the waters and yet you remain thirsty. Your mind takes another route which goes away from the waters.In this silence you are both: totally present and totally absent.This presence, this absence, this totality has to become your whole life.Just because you could get the feel of an ultimate fact, Zen master Niskriya will have to reward you. Such an understanding should not go without reward.Master Niskriya!Bring your staff…[Master Niskriya gently taps Maneesha’s head.]Right!One hit to yourself also…Good!Your third question, Maneesha, is very simple. I wonder how you missed the simplicity of it. You say:“Osho, Okay, I’m going to lighten up. For a master of Yaa-hoo and Yaa-boo what could possibly be taboo?”Taboo is the Only Begotten Son of Yaa-Hoo and Yaa-Boo! In this small statement is implied the whole Christian trinity, and in a far better way because the Christian trinity has no woman in it. And without a woman, what have these three guys been doing?The father is there – but where is the mother? The holy ghost…this holy ghost is a strange fellow! If he can make Virgin Mary pregnant, certainly he is not a woman. So he cannot be the mother; in fact, he is Jesus’ father. And who Jesus thinks is his father, is his uncle. “Father, uncle and son” – that seems to be more comprehensible, logical.The trinity that you have made is perfect….Yaa-Hoo is the father, Yaa-Boo is the mother, Taa-Boo is the son, the only begotten son. Here is a whole religion!Now some irreligious things….It is a few nights after Christmas. The door of the stable creaks open and three wise men enter.They are tiptoeing quietly across to the manger when one of them steps into a huge pile of donkey shit.Looking down at his ruined golden slipper, the wise man clenches his teeth and mutters, “Jesus Christ!”Mary looks from her baby to her husband, “Hey! Joe!” she says, “that’s a much better name than Albert!”Solomon Liebowitz owns a little pharmacy in New York.One day his assistant, Danny, comes running into the back and cries, “Mister Liebowitz, there is a man in the shop who wants to buy some arsenic to kill himself. What shall I do?”“Is he a good Jew, like ourselves?” asks Sollie.“He certainly is,” replies Danny.“Okay,” says Solomon “tell him that to kill himself he will need twenty dollars worth. He will soon change his mind!”One day Lupo is walking home when he notices a huge gorilla standing on the roof of his house.Not knowing what to do about it he looks in the phone book under Gorilla Removals. Then he calls up Kowalski’s Get Lost Gorilla Service and explains the situation.Ten minutes later Kowalski arrives with a banana, a bulldog, a butterfly net, a ladder and a loaded gun.“Okay,” says Kowalski, “it is quite a simple thing. I am gonna throw the banana at the gorilla, and while he is busy eating it, I am gonna climb up the ladder and push him off the roof.“Then the bulldog is trained to grab him by the nuts, and when the gorilla holds himself in pain, you throw this butterfly net over him.”“Great!” shouts Lupo, with enthusiasm.“But what about the gun?”“Well,” explains Kowalski, “if I miss the gorilla and fall off the roof myself, you shoot the dog!”The Western Australia Old Ladies’ Discussion Group meets each week, but all they ever talk about is cocks and pricks. After a while the ladies get worried because they use the words so much – and they might let them slip out in public. So they decide to substitute the words prick and cock with other words which won’t sound bad if they say them by mistake outside the club.They write to Old Ladies’ Clubs all over the world to ask for advice.The British Old Ladies’ Club writes back and says they use the word gentleman because he always stands up when a lady comes in.The Italians use the word curtain because it goes up when the show begins and comes down when the show is over.The Americans use chewing gum because it goes in hard and comes out soft.And finally, the French say that they use the word anecdote – but with no explanation. So one of the Australian ladies finds a dictionary and looks up the word.“Here we are,” she says to the others: “Anecdote: A little story that goes around from mouth to mouth.’”Now, two minutes of silence…Relax…Now come back.

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Live Zen 01-17Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Live Zen 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Kasan’s Beating the DrumKasan said, “Learning by study is called ‘hearing’; learning no more is called ‘nearness’; transcending these two is ‘true passing.’”A monk asked, “What is ‘true passing’?”Kasan said, “Beating the drum.”The monk asked again, “What is the true teaching of the Buddha?”Kasan said, “Beating the drum.”The monk asked once more, “I would not ask you about ‘this very mind is the Buddha,’ but what is ‘no mind, no Buddha’?”Kasan said, “Beating the drum.”The monk still continued to ask: “When an enlightened one comes, how do you treat him?”Kasan said, “Beating the drum.”Setcho put it like this:Dragging a stone, carrying earth,Use the spiritual power of a thousand-ton bow.Zokotsu Roshi rolled out three wooden balls;How could they surpass Kasan’s “Beating the Drum”?I will tell you, what is sweet is sweet,What is bitter, bitter.Osho,Would you agree with Kasan that there is a state beyond learning?The second question:Is it possible to hear through the eyes and see with the ears? That's what feels to be happening during these discourses.Would you please comment?And the third question:What did the monk mean by his last question? To speak of how to treat a buddha sounds as if one has some control over how one will be in his presence, as if there might be a certain protocol to be observed.Would you please explain?Maneesha, before I talk about the anecdote, I would like… Who is at the drum?Nivedano, beat the drum first.[Nivedano hits the drum hard.](Drumbeat)You will have to do it again and again whenever I say….This anecdote about Kasan’s beating the drum looks so simple from the outside, but from the inside it has tremendous meaning and is multidimensional.The first….You have to understand what a drum is.A drum is emptiness enclosed.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)There is nothing inside the drum. That is our actual state. We are just an outside cover, inside is emptiness. And just as the drum can speak out of emptiness, you are doing everything out of emptiness. This is one dimension of the meaning of Kasan’s beating the drum.The other dimension is that whatever question is asked to him, he goes on saying in answer, “Beating the drum.” It does not matter what question you are asking – there may be millions of questions but there is only one answer:Nivedano…(Drumbeat)…and the answer cannot be verbalized. That’s why Kasan used to keep a drum by his side. You ask him anything – it does not matter what you are asking, he will simply beat the drum. That was his answer.Reduced to your understanding it means, “Be nothing just like the drum and you will find the answer. I cannot give it to you, it is your own emptiness. At the most I can hit you from the outside, but the sound comes from within you.”Kasan said, “Learning by study is called hearing; learning no more is called nearness; transcending these two is true passing.”Kasan is certainly a master as far as finding exact analogies from the experience of no-mind to the world of mind. Nobody surpasses him. You have to understand him slowly: Learning by study is called hearing. Somebody else has written, you have studied it; somebody else is teaching, you have studied him – but it is all only hearing, it is not experience. Knowledge cannot be converted into experience. On the contrary, it is the greatest barrier to experience. Learning by study is called hearing.He says that at the most the studious, the learned can be said to be people who have heard it. Not that they have known it.Every Buddhist scripture starts with the words, “I have heard….” There are thousands of Buddhist scriptures, but without any exception, every scripture begins with the words, “I have heard” – a deep sincerity, a truthfulness. “Buddha may have known, but as far as I am concerned, I have only heard.”Learning no more is called nearness. If you stop this kind of knowledge, if you drop this kind of knowledge, learning no more, Kasan calls it nearness. You have come very close; still, it is not experience. Learning was very far away; not learning is nearness, but even nearness is too far away.Transcending these two is true passing. If you can transcend knowledge and you can also transcend no knowledge…in other words, if you can transcend ignorance and wisdom both, you have really passed to the beyond. This is called true passing.A monk asked, “What is true passing?”Kasan said, “Beating the drum.”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)The monk asked again, “What is the true teaching of the Buddha?”Kasan said, “Beating the drum.”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)The monk asked once more, “I would not ask you about this very mind is the Buddha, but what is no mind, no Buddha?”Kasan said, “Beating the drum.”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)The monk still continued to ask: “When an enlightened one comes, how do you treat him?”Kasan said, “Beating the drum.”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)This “beating the drum” of Kasan is a tremendous device. He says, “All your questions, howsoever great they look, howsoever profound and philosophical, they are all coming out of an emptiness within you.” He is saying, “Just for a moment think of yourself as a drum.”That was his meditation to his disciples. If you can conceive of yourself as emptiness enclosed by the body, you will have understood the absurd action of Kasan. It is not logical; in fact, a logical person will think this man is mad. And by the way, Nivedano is – otherwise, why are you beating the drum?Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Good!Setcho’s commentary is not great, but still good.Dragging a stone, carrying earth,Use the spiritual power of a thousand-ton bow.Zokotsu Roshi rolled out three wooden balls;How could they surpass Kasan’s “Beating the Drum”?Different masters in different ages have used different devices just to take you out of your mind process, just to silence you, just to make you aware of your inner emptiness. Setcho said, “No other master has been able to surpass Kasan’s beating the drum.”I will tell you, what is sweet is sweet,What is bitter is bitter.He is saying, “Kasan is simply concerned with the ultimate truth of your emptiness. Out of your emptiness all kinds of sounds, thoughts, imagination, dreams…but a good hit on your coconut…”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Yeah, it hits well – many people seem to realize the emptiness!Even if nobody else becomes enlightened, Nivedano’s drum is going to become enlightened. That is not a small matter.A few other Zen masters’ statements before I come to Maneesha’s questions:Kyuho said, “Our late teacher said, ‘You should be completely finished up, emptied away; one nen, one eon; you should be like cold ashes and the dead tree, like the incense burner on the deserted shrine, like the frozen lake, like a piece of glazed silk.’ Tell me, what does this mean?”The head monk said, “It means the realm of one color” – that is, great enlightenment.Kyuho said, “You do not understand our teacher’s meaning.”The head monk ordered someone to fetch a packet of incense and said, “If I cannot pass away while this incense is burning, your words will be proved true.” He threw the incense into the burner. A cloud of white smoke rose, and while it still hung in the air, the monk passed away sitting up straight.Kyuho, stroking the dead monk’s back, said, “You could pass away sitting up straight, but you could never dream of our late teacher’s meaning.”This passing away seems to be so miraculous. As the incense will be burned away, the monk is saying, “I will be gone with the smoke.” That is the meaning of inner emptiness: “I can empty out myself any moment” – and he did manage it, sitting straight; as the incense stopped burning he was gone.But Zen is a very strange way of approaching the truth.Kyuho, stroking the dead monk’s back, said, “You could pass away sitting up straight, but you could never dream of our late teacher’s meaning.”This is going to be very hard. He has proved that he can empty himself – so much so that he can die out of his own will. As the incense burns and the smoke cloud moves away, he will be gone. Still Kyuho said, “You have not understood the meaning of beating the drum.”Why is he so hard about the poor fellow who has even died, emptied himself completely? He is hard because he is saying, “You have tried self-will by moving away your consciousness from the body like the smoke of the incense; you have made a great effort of the will, and in fact your will is your ego. You can do this, but you have not understood the meaning of beating the drum. You have emptied yourself, but you are there; you have proved yourself, but you are there.“In your very proving you have proved only your ego, your power of will. You cannot understand the great meaning of beating the drum. It has to be relaxed. It has not to be done by you because it is there. You have not to do anything, you have simply to relax into it. You don’t have to die, you have simply to be aware that emptiness is your innermost reality.”That’s why although Kyuho seems to be hard on the poor fellow who has died, he is right: the man who has died must have had a great willpower.I have told you about Nansen….Before he was going to die, he informed all his disciples to come to partake in the ceremony of his death. He had thousands of disciples and he asked them, “Now please, anybody – suggest to me some original way of dying. I don’t want to be in any way orthodox – I have never been in my life. Why should I be orthodox in dying if I have not been in living?”The disciples looked at each other. Nobody had heard about an original death; death is death. Still, one suggested, “I have heard about a monk dying sitting, cross-legged, in a lotus posture.”Nansen said, “Stupid! So many have done that; it is nothing new. Just try to find something new. You are my disciples and you cannot do even this much for me? – to find an original way of dying? Do you want me to die like everybody else, lying on the bed?”The bed certainly is a very dangerous place. Ninety-nine point nine percent of people die there…so beware! When the light is put off, simply get out of the bed – it is the most dangerous place. Be somewhere else: in the bathroom, on the floor, on the roof…anywhere, but avoid the bed.Nansen said, “I am not going to die in the ordinary way.” Somebody suggested, “Then you can die standing up.”Nansen said, “That seems to be a little better, but still it is not unique, because I have heard about one Zen master dying standing.”That gave a clue to a disciple; he said, “That gives me an idea. Why don’t you try it? Die standing on your head!”He said, “This is great!” – And he stood on his head and died.Now the disciples were at a loss what to do, because there exists no ritual for a man who has died standing on his head….Somebody suggested, “His sister…she is his elder, she is a nun in the nearby monastery; it is better to call her. It is a dangerous case. We should not take any responsibility for it!”The sister was called. She was older than Nansen; Nansen was ninety and the sister was ninety-five, but the sister was in no way inferior to Nansen in her understanding. She gave a hit to Nansen and told him, “Your whole life you have been mischievous; at least in your death behave!”So Nansen jumped up, lay down on the bed, smiled – and died.The disciples could not believe it, whether he is still dead…because first he had deceived them by standing on his head. “We would have burned him alive. Now it is better to wait for two or three days and see if he is really dead.”Nansen opened his eye and said, “I am really dead! There is no need to wait. When I am saying it who are you to dispute it. Is it my death or yours?”They said, “Certainly it is your death.”So he said, “Can I close my eyes?”They said, “It is up to you.”He closed his eyes and the disciples had to burn him, feeling very much worried – perhaps they are burning him alive or…who knows? He looks absolutely dead, but he looked dead when he was standing on the head, he looked dead when he was lying on the bed…!Zen is certainly a very original way of living, of loving, of dying, of expressing its experiences.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Have you got the feel of beating the drum?There is nothing inside, still…it makes so much noise. Just look within yourself. What is there? A heartbeat, breathing coming in and going out…and what else? When you are utterly silent you are pure emptiness. Emptiness breathing…emptiness full of the dance of the heartbeat.This is what is called going beyond, passing beyond – beyond knowledge, beyond ignorance – into the world of no knowing.Maneesha has asked, “Would you agree with Kasan – that there is a state beyond learning?”Kasan is not saying that there is a state beyond learning. Kasan is saying there is a space beyond learning, not a state but a space – infinite, empty.Just watch this silence. Feel it, be drowned in it. And you will have tasted something of Zen.These anecdotes are not ordinary stories. Each anecdote carries a whole scripture.Her second question is: “ Is it possible to hear through the eyes and see with the ears? That’s what feels to be happening during these discourses. Would you please comment?”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)When one is absolutely silent, yes, one can see through the ears and one can hear from the eyes. Then there is no distinction between the senses, one simply becomes one sensitivity. Eyes and ears and nose, they all dissolve into one sensitivity. You see it, you feel through it, you hear through it – and still you remain silent. All this knowing from the ears and all this hearing from the eyes does not disturb your silence.Yes, Maneesha, that’s what I have been trying for years: to create the situation for you – and I feel immensely happy that you have responded with great rejoicing.You have become part of this cosmic silence.This is your true reality.In this reality you are not.And her third question: “What did the monk mean by his last question? To speak of how to treat a buddha sounds as if one has some control over how one will be in his presence, as if there might be a certain protocol to be observed. Would you please explain?”You have completely misunderstood Kasan’s answer. When asked, “When an enlightened one comes, how do you treat him?”Kasan said, “Beating the drum.” It is not a question of any protocol; it is not a question of any control on your part. Kasan’s approach has to be understood. Whatever your question is – this time it is meeting the Buddha – you may have asked, “If a buffalo comes by, how has it to be treated?” His answer would have been the same: “Beating the drum.”By this “beating the drum,” he is saying, “All is empty, even the Buddha – he is far more empty than you. The only difference between him and you is that you think you are not empty, and he knows that he is empty and you are empty.”Try to understand Kasan more existentially than intellectually. He is not a man of intellect. He moved around with his drum, but he is certainly a great master. Language does not work. There is no other way to convey, but Kasan has invented, found a way – in an empty drum. You ask him or you do not ask him, he is going to beat the empty drum.Kasan had thousands of disciples. Very few people can be said to have made more beings enlightened than Kasan, and he never spoke. His only speech was beating the drum.Beautiful were these people and great must have been the people who followed and understood.Golden were the days when even a Kasan could be understood. He was as awakened as any Gautam Buddha.Now, Nivedano, the last beat on the drum….(Drumbeat)Now the drum should be allowed to rest. And specially for the drum, I am going to tell a few stories:Teddy Bearson gets the feeling that his wife is cheating on him, so he hires Mr. E.T. Pickle, the private detective, to follow her. Pickle has instructions to make a video film of all his wife’s suspicious activities.A week later Pickle reports: “Here it is!” He says, “All the evidence in living color – and with your best friend, too!”Teddy and Pickle watch the movie together. Teddy’s wife and his best friend are having lunch, swimming, dancing, walking and laughing in the countryside, making love under the pine trees….“I can’t believe it! I just can’t believe it!” says Teddy.“You better believe it!” says E.T. “The evidence is all here.”“That is not it,” sighs Teddy. “I just can’t believe my wife can be so much fun!”Mabel Mince goes into the police station and tells the police officer that her boyfriend is missing.The cop starts to fill out a report and asks Mabel if she can give a description of the missing man.“Sure,” says Mabel. “He is thirty-five, six foot tall, blond hair, blue eyes, very handsome and well mannered and he plays the guitar.”A friend of hers whispers in her ear, “Hey, Mabel, what are you talking about? Your boyfriend is short, fat and hairy!”“I know,” snaps Mabel, “but who wants him back?”A man in New York is charged with hitting a woman on a double-decker bus, and the judge is asking him if he has any excuse.“Well, Your Honor, it was like this,” explains the man. “She came on the bus and sat next to me downstairs. Then she opened her bag, took out her purse, closed her bag, opened her purse, took out a dollar, closed her purse, opened her bag, put back the purse, and closed her bag again.“Then she saw that the conductor was going upstairs, so she opened her bag, took out her purse, closed her bag, opened her purse, put in her dollar, closed her purse, opened her bag, put back her purse and closed her bag again.“Then she saw the conductor coming down the stairs again, so she opened her bag, took out her purse, closed her bag, opened her purse…”“Stop!” shouts the judge. “You are driving me crazy!”“Right!” says the man, “That’s what happened to me!”Leroy and Liza, the black lovers, are out on a small country road, riding double on Leroy’s old bicycle.Suddenly they get the urge to make love. So there and then they jump off the bike and go for it.After a few minutes a huge truck comes over the top of the hill. The driver sees the black couple rolling around in the middle of the road, so he gives a blast on his horn and frantically steps on the brakes – but Leroy and Liza just carry on making love.The truck finally skids to a halt about three inches from the sweating couple. The driver jumps out of his cab and screams, “You crazy niggers! You could have been killed!”Leroy lifts up his head, looks at the driver and says, “Well, I was coming, Liza was coming, and you was coming. And I figured, Hell, you was the only one with the brakes!”Now two minutes for absolute silence.No movement.Close your eyes and collect your whole energy inward.Now relax…Okay, come back.

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Live Zen 01-17Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Live Zen 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Chokei and Hofuku Discuss the Buddha’s WordsChokei one day said, “Even if you say that the arhats still have three poisons, you should not say that the Tathagata has two languages. I do not say that the Tathagata has no language but that he does not have two languages.”Hofuku said, “What is the Tathagata’s language?”Chokei said, “How can a deaf person hear it?”Hofuku said, “I know you are speaking from a secondary principle.”Chokei said, “What is the Tathagata’s language?”Hofuku said, “Have a cup of tea.”Setcho’s commentary is:Who speaks from the first, who from the second principle?Dragons do not lie in puddles;Where dragons lurk,Waves arise when no wind blows.Oh! You, Chokei Zen monkYou’ve bruised your head on the dragon gate.Osho,With three pounds of drums, she pecks on the lotus leaf. Knowing a spiral when she hears one, she'll be beaten anyway.My mind is coming to the boil! It is compelled to try and decipher these stories, even though that feels like reading the epitaph on one's own gravestone.So I get my mind out, use it, give up, and put it away.Then I get it out again, give up and put it away.Then it gets out, uses me, gives up and puts me away.I'm going insane or going in Zen! Help!No, don't – keep doing it!Or don't stop not doing what you don't do!Osho, I take my head off to you.Maneesha, before Nivedano beats his drum and Niskriya cuts your head, I have to explain a few things of which you may not be aware.First is the word arhata. It simply means one who has overcome the enemies. In a better version, from where it is derived, it is called arihanta, which makes it clear that it has not only overcome the enemies: ari means the enemy and hanta means one who has murdered.And what are the enemies? There are three enemies: covetousness, anger and folly.In India, Hinduism is the sanatan, the eternal religion. One knows not when it started, who started it. Out of Hinduism, as a rebellion, two other religions have been born: one is Jainism, another is Buddhism. Jainism believes only in arhatas. Their word for it is arihanta; they don’t know anything of the bodhisattva. The attitude of Jainism is, once a man has killed all the enemies – greed, jealousy, anger, lust – then there is no point for him even to speak a single word; he has nothing to convey. If anything is conveyed, it is conveyed by his presence. He is just like a well. If you are thirsty you go to the well, the well is not going to go running after you.Perhaps this was one of the reasons Jainism remained a very small religion. Although it has a very refined, sophisticated philosophical understanding, it has had no masters; it had only arhatas. They have achieved and their work was done. Compassion was not compulsory. Why should they bother about anybody’s misery, suffering, darkness? Everybody anyway has to fight it on his own; you cannot force anybody to be enlightened. What is the point?Jainism has created many arhatas, great pinnacles of consciousness, but it has a very dry approach, a very inhuman approach. It does not consider at all those who are still struggling with darkness, blindness, who are still finding the path, who may be even going astray. The moment a man becomes an arhata, he cuts all his relationships with humanity, even the relationship of having a disciple.Gautam Buddha created another rebellion which culminated finally in Zen. It differed from Jainism only on this point: it brought a new concept, bodhisattva. A bodhisattva is one who has realized his being, who has become awakened, but his work has not ended; on the contrary, now his real work begins. Up to now he was struggling for himself, now he will struggle for others.According to Gautam Buddha – and I agree with him totally – a man of enlightenment cannot resist the temptation to encourage others to seek…to enhance, to support, to enrich and to share his own light with others. It is simply impossible for him…. The Jaina attitude seems to be very self-centered: you have arrived, your work is finished.The story will help you to understand better…Gautam Buddha dies and at the gates of paradise there is great celebration, because very rarely…in millions, perhaps one person comes to such a great peak of consciousness that the doors of paradise open for him. It is symbolic. And there was great rejoicing to welcome him, but he refused to enter the gate.He said, “Please, close the gates. I will stand outside. Until every living being has passed inside, I cannot come in. I am going to be the last. Although it is a long waiting, I will wait. My love says I can wait, my compassion says I should wait. It is cruel on my part, when others are just to be awakened, not to awaken them but enter into the luxuries of paradise. I will come, but I will be the last. You please keep the doors closed.” And the story is, the doors are closed; Buddha is standing outside, waiting for every human being to pass by.That is the meaning of bodhisattva. Your achievement is not enough if you cannot share it. The more you can share it, the more you have it; the more you can spread the flame, the more hearts you can put on fire, the greater is your enlightenment. The arhata is compared to a small boat in which only he can sit, the bodhisattva is compared to a great boat in which many millions can be carried to the further shore.There are many names for the bodhisattva according to the dimension in which the word is used. One of the names is tathagata. Tathagata comes from the root tathata. Tathata means suchness, thisness; everything is here and everything is now. There is no past and there is no future; and in your suchness, in your nature, you are already enlightened. Tathagat means one who conceives every being as enlightened: a few are aware of it, a few are not, a few want to play the games of life a little more. A few are attached to their teddy bears, but sooner or later one gets rid of the teddy bear. A tathagata’s approach is to make you aware that what you are clinging to is just dream stuff. If you want to cling you can cling, but remember, there is nothing to cling to.I told you the Jaina proverb that the thirsty will come to the well, but the well is not supposed to run after thirsty people. Gautam Buddha’s statement parallel to it is, “If the mountain cannot come to me, I will go to the mountain! Obviously it is difficult for the mountain to come to me, but that does not mean that the mountain has to miss me. I will go.”This small anecdote is concerned with Buddha’s words, and for centuries – twenty-five centuries – his words have been discussed by great masters. Such beauty has blossomed in those words, such rainbows have come out of those words. Gautam Buddha in this sense is very rare. No other person in the whole of history has been commented on by so many and has been showered with so many new meanings. He is certainly alone.Chokei, another bodhisattva,…one day said, “Even if you say that the arhats still have three poisons…”He is not saying they have, he is saying, “Even if you say that the arhats have still the three poisons…” of covetousness, anger, folly; still…“…you should not say that the Tathagata has two languages.”It has been argued again and again between masters. For the contemporary world these beautiful statements, commentaries, have lost their meaning. But unless they are revived, something in you will remain missing. They are so essential to human spirit and its growth.He is saying that a tathagata cannot be said to have two languages. There have been masters who have said that a tathagata has two languages. So first you have to understand…otherwise, Chokei will not be understood.Those who have said a tathagata has two languages have their own meaning. A tathagata has to speak with those who do not know and a tathagata has also to speak to those who know. Obviously he needs two languages. When you are with one who knows, you use one language, and when you are with someone who does not know, you have to use a different language.But Chokei says, “You can say if you want, that the arhatas still have three poisons – which is impossible, because an arhata becomes an arhata by overcoming those three poisons.” You can say that – Chokei allows it – but you cannot say about the Buddha, about the Tathagata, that he has two languages: “I do not say that the Tathagata has no language, but that he does not have two languages.”Chokei is saying something immensely important. On the one hand he says,“I do not say that the Tathagata has no language, but…”I certainly say that he has not two languages.Hofuku said…Hofuku is another Zen master – and this is traditional in Zen that masters meet and talk and play with words:Hofuku said, “What is the Tathagata’s language?”If you say he has not two languages and you don’t deny him having any language, then what is his language?Chokei said, “How can a deaf person hear it?”This is such a beautiful statement with so many implications. I am speaking to you, but do you think if you don’t have ears I will still be speaking? My speaking needs you absolutely.It is one of the latest scientific discoveries…philosophers have always been discussing it, but their discussions do not have scientific validity. But science has now come to see a point which puzzles the ordinary man. For example: you all have different colors of clothes, but if the light is put off, do you think the white will remain white and the blue will remain blue, the red will remain red and the green will remain green? Once the light is off, all colors disappear. For the colors to be there, the light is needed. And things become more complicated: light may be there, colors may be there, but if there is nobody to see, there will not be any color; the eyes are also needed. These are basic components.So when you leave your room and lock it, don’t be surprised that everything in your room has changed its color! All has become colorless. But if you look just from the keyhole, again the colors will appear. So it is very difficult to find your room without seeing it! Once you see, things are there – and once you stop seeing, they disappear. Your eyes are needed.Just look at it this way. A blind man, do you think that for him there is any such thing as color or light? A rainbow may be there, but it is not for the blind man. The stars may be there in the sky, but they are not for the blind man. Great music may be there, but if you are deaf it does not exist for you – and if everybody else is also deaf – then sound does not exist.You can understand it; our range of seeing is very small, so is our range of hearing. Right now you don’t hear any radio station. All around the earth thousands of radio stations are broadcasting, and those waves are passing by your side. They are available to your ears, but your ears’ range is not so deep that it can catch them.It happened in the Second World War. A man got a bullet in his head, the bullet was removed, but something happened within his brain system that he started hearing the nearest radio station without any radio, perfectly well and correctly.First he was puzzled. There is no radio around and he can hear every statement, the time and the songs and everything. He said to the doctors – he was still in the hospital – that something was strange. Nobody believed him, because it had never happened.But finally they had to try – at least hypothetically try. In another room they put a radio, and one doctor was there taking notes. Another doctor was with the patient taking notes of what was going on in the radio broadcast. They were surprised. He was absolutely accurate.You might think that it was a great thing; he should have enjoyed! Nobody can enjoy it for twenty-four hours, because there is nothing, no way to put it off. He could not sleep, he could not talk, because the continuous radio broadcast was going through his head. He could not hear people properly. He was going crazy. His ear had to be operated on.But that gave an insight that although all kinds of waves are passing by – radio waves, television waves…your net is just small and it does not catch them. Either they are above it or they are below it. What we see is just a small range of things. The blind man cannot see the light, but do you think the blind man can see darkness? Ordinarily it is presumed that a blind man must live in darkness; you are wrong. The blind man cannot even see darkness, because he has no eyes to see. If you can see darkness, there is no problem in seeing light, because light and darkness are one phenomenon. Close your eyes and it is dark; open your eyes and it is light. Don’t think that the blind person is just like you, because you close your eyes and you see darkness. The same is not the situation of the person who is born blind, because he has nothing to compare it with – he has never seen light. How can he say, “This is darkness”?Hofuku said, “What is the Tathagata’s language?”Chokei said, “How can a deaf person hear it?”He is saying that only those who are not deaf know the language of Buddha. Those who are deaf may hear his words but will not understand his language, will hear his words but will not understand the meaning – most probably will misunderstand his meaning.Hofuku said, “I know you are speaking from a secondary principle.”You have to see why Hofuku said, “you are speaking from a secondary principle.” The first principle is: Buddha is speaking; the second principle is: somebody else is listening. If you are speaking from the standpoint of the listener, then you are speaking from the secondary principle. That cannot be accepted. “Speak from the first principle, from the original source. I am not asking about whether people hear Buddha or not, I am asking whether Buddha speaks or not.”Chokei said, “What is the Tathagata’s language?”Again the same question. Unless you speak from the original source, Chokei is going to ask again and again,“What is the Tathagata’s language?” Hofuku said, “Have a cup of tea.”This answer – “Have a cup of tea” – means listen to a buddha or become a buddha. It simply means have a taste of it, don’t talk about it. It is not a question to be discussed, it is something to be experienced like taste: “Have a cup of tea!”This statement, “Have a cup of tea,” comes in many Zen anecdotes from different directions.A professor of philosophy went to see Nansen and he asked about great things: God and heaven and hell, and the ultimate truth, and time and space; he was full of words. Nansen listened and said, “Wait. First have a cup of tea.”The professor felt a little offended. He is asking such great questions and this fellow brings in a cup of tea! Naturally he said, “Don’t change the subject!”Nansen said, “I am not changing the subject, I am bringing you to the subject.” He prepared the tea, the professor sipped the tea and Nansen asked, “Can I ask you how it tastes?”Naturally the professor said, “You can taste for yourself. Taste cannot be discussed.”Nansen said, “You are a nice fellow. Some day perhaps you will understand. At least you are not an idiot. These ultimate truths, the meaning of nirvana and the meaning of enlightenment…you can’t even express the taste of tea and you are talking about enlightenment?”Religion in the East has never become a theology. It has remained very earthly, very grounded, very pragmatic. And particularly Zen never wavers; it brings you back to the experience. Nothing can be said about the experience. All that is being said is only a net to drag you into the experience. What is said is not true, it is just a pointer showing you the way to where you may find the truth.It is said about Mahavira – both he and Buddha were contemporaries – that he never spoke, but there are scriptures in which Mahavira’s words are collected. Still, it is said he never spoke. It looks absurd but you have to understand the intricacy of the thing. Mahavira certainly never spoke. He had no great assemblies as Gautam Buddha had. He had only a very small group of chosen people who could understand his silence.He has not written a single word. Those eleven people whom he selected as his listeners, without his speaking, have written the scriptures. It is a miracle that all those people have written the same thing. Certainly they understood the silence.Silence itself is a language; it just needs a very silent heart, an empty heart to understand it.Mind is not the right mechanism to understand great things. It is useful for the mundane, but for the sacred, for the divine, it is simply a hindrance; hence the emphasis of the East on meditation. Meditation is nothing but by and by dropping the mind and coming to a point when you have no mind at all.In that space of no-mind you can hear a master – who may not be speaking at all, or if he is speaking, then you will be able to understand him. You cannot misunderstand him.Setcho’s commentary is:Who speaks from the first,who from the second principle?Dragons do not lie in puddles.Where dragons lurk, waves ariseWhen no wind blows.Oh! You, Chokei Zen monkYou’ve bruised your head on the dragon gate.Setcho has not been able to say anything special. He is simply saying that just as dragons do not lie in puddles, the great buddhas cannot be found in words.When no wind blows, no waves arise, there is understanding. Then you have come to the first principle, the source. Do not talk about the second principle, because that is irrelevant. There are as many second principles as there are listeners, but the first principle is one.Maneesha has asked…Choosing the sutras for these discourses she is getting a little taste of Zen: “Osho, With three pounds of drums, she pecks on the lotus leaf. Knowing a spiral when she hears one, she will be beaten anyway.”So now two things have to be done: first, Master Niskriya, she has spoken something right so give her a reward.[Niskriya touches Maneesha’s head with his staff and Maneesha bows down to Osho in gratitude.]Good. And now Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Declare to the world with your drum, three times…(Drumbeat)(Drumbeat)(Drumbeat)Good.She is saying, “My mind is coming to the boil! It is compelled to try and decipher these stories even though that feels like reading the epitaph of one’s own gravestone.”You are right, Maneesha, I don’t have here a cup of tea – but still you can have a cup of tea. It will not be visible…but from my eyes, from my gestures, from my presence, have a taste. There is no need to be worried about your gravestone.Walking on the path of Zen is walking toward the greater death, consciously, finding one’s own grave.Everybody dies, but just as people live unconsciously they die unconsciously. Neither has their life any meaning and significance nor their death. But once you start becoming a little aware…just a small awareness, a small candle flame, and you can see your own death every moment. And beyond your death – the eternal life.Death is an episode. It happens millions of times, but it is not able to destroy the living energy that you are.And I can understand your difficulty. You are saying: “So I get my mind out, use it, give up, and put it away. Then I get it out again, give up and put it away. Then it gets out, uses me, gives up and puts me away.“I am going insane or going in Zen! Help! No, don’t – keep doing it! Or don’t stop not doing what you don’t do! Osho, I take my head off to you.”Zen is certainly a very crazy way. Unless you are a little crazy, you won’t come to Zen. It is true, when you come to Zen, your craziness will go through an alchemical change. Your insanity will become your greater sanity, your no-mind will become your tremendous wisdom.But from the outside it is crazy. From the inside it is the only sane thing that has happened on this planet.Maneesha has made you too silent. I would like your silence to be deeper and the only way to make it deeper is to have a good laugh.Little Felix is having a test from a child psychologist.“Now, Felix,” says the shrink, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”“I want to be a doctor, an artist, or a window cleaner,” replies Felix.“I see,” says the puzzled shrink, “you’re not very clear about it, are you?”“What?” says Felix. “I am perfectly clear. I want to see naked women!”Old Mrs. Grumblebum was going every day to visit her doctor. The doctor – a very patient man – humors her, listens quietly and sometimes gives her medicines.One day Mrs. Grumblebum doesn’t show up. The next day the doctor asks, “Where were you yesterday? I missed you.”“I’ll tell you the truth,” she replies, “I was sick!”At the latest summit talks, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev are continually arguing about whose country is number one, Russia or America.Finally, in order not to start the third world war, they decided to settle it between themselves by running a marathon race.The next morning at eight o’clock, the two world leaders start the race. Two and a half hours later, Gorbachev happily passes the finish line, but it is another six hours before Reagan makes it. He is utterly exhausted, but not beaten yet.The following morning the Washington Post runs the story: “In a very dramatic marathon race our great president came in an excellent second. We hear that Gorbachev also participated, but he came in second to last.”An English woman and her young son are traveling in a taxi in New York. As the taxi drives down 42nd Street, the boy is fascinated by the heavily made-up ladies walking along the street, accosting male passers-by.“What are those ladies doing?” asks the boy.His mother blushes and says, “I expect they are lost and are asking people for directions.”The taxi driver overhears this and says in a loud voice, “Why don’t you tell him the truth? In other words they are prostitutes.”The English woman is furious, and her son asks, “What are prostitutes? Are they like other women? Do they have children?”“Of course,” replies his mother, “that’s where New York taxi drivers come from!”Three young Catholic girls want to join a nunnery, but it is a very strict order so the girls have to pass an interview before they are admitted.Mother Superior calls the first girl and asks her, “What would you do if you were stopped by a man on a dark night?”“I would kneel down and pray to Jesus,” replies the girl. “Good,” says the head nun turning to the second girl. “And what would you do?”“I would scream and shout for help,” replies the girl. “Good,” says the Holy Mother turning to the last girl who looks very young and innocent. “And what would you do, my dear?”“I would pull down the man’s pants,” replies the girl. “Ah, dear!” cries the Mother Superior almost in a faint. “And what would you do then?”“I would pull up my skirt,” she replies.“Jesus Christ, save us!” croaks the old nun. “And then what?”“Then,” says the girl, “I would run like hell!”Now, close your eyes.For two minutes just be absolutely still,as if frozen.Relax…Okay, come back.

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Live Zen 01-17Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Live Zen 16 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Tanka’s Have You Had Your Dinner?Tanka asked a monk, “Where are you from?”The monk replied, “From the foot of the mountain.”Tanka said, “Have you had your dinner?”The monk said, “I have had it.”Tanka said, “Is he open-eyed who brings food to a fellow like you and lets you eat it?”The monk could make no reply.Later Chokei asked Hofuku, “To give food to others is surely worthy. How could he fail to be open-eyed?”Hofuku said, “Both giver and receiver are blind.”Chokei said, “Are you still blind, even though you exhaust every means?”Hofuku said, “How can you call me blind?”Setcho’s verse:Exhaust every means, and you will not be blind;You hold the cow’s head to let it graze.The Four Sevens, the Two Threes,The following bandHave handed down the dharma treasure,Raising dust and trouble to make men drown on land.Osho,It seems to me that Zen provokes responses from one's intuition, though I'm not even quite sure what intuition is. Is there a connection between Zen and intuition?I have heard that Gurdjieff used to serve up food to his disciples and watch them overeat and become drunk in response. You are serving up such delicacies in these evenings it feels that we need to refine our palettes and select the right implements before we can hope to savor what you make available.The anecdote, which concerns Tanka’s asking a monk,“Have you had your dinner?”Is a way in Zen to ask someone, “Have you got it? Are you fulfilled? Has contentment happened to you? Are you awakened? Is your being enlightened?” Zen uses ordinary words like dinner and raises them to heights unimaginable.Tanka asked a monk, “Where are you from?…Have you had your dinner?”In Zen you are coming from nowhere and you are going to nowhere. You are just now, here, neither coming nor going. Everything passes by you; your consciousness reflects it but it does not get identified. When a lion roars in front of a mirror, do you think the mirror roars? Or when the lion is gone and a child comes dancing, the mirror completely forgets about the lion and starts dancing with the child – do you think the mirror dances with the child? The mirror does nothing, it simply reflects.Your consciousness is only a mirror. Neither you come, nor you go. Things come and go. You become young, you become old; you are alive, you are dead. All these states are simply reflections in an eternal pool of consciousness.Unless you understand it, these anecdotes will look absolutely absurd.First asking him, “Have you had your dinner?”If you met Tanka – and Tanka is one of the rare Zen masters – what will you answer to him? You will not even understand what he means by dinner. Zen has developed a special language of its own: “Have you had your dinner?”The monk remained silent. Perhaps he could not understand: “What does he mean? – is he asking me, inviting me for dinner?” What kind of inquiry, when you meet someone – suddenly, the first question, “Have you had your dinner?”Seeing the monk, Tanka had asked, “Where are you from?” It is an effort of Tanka to provoke the man to understand the language.“Where are you from?”The monk replied, “From the foot of the mountain.”He missed. He is not asking about the place from where you are coming, he is asking the ultimate question: “From where is your consciousness coming? Do you understand that you are endless, that you are not coming from anywhere, you simply are?”Tanka said, “Have you had your dinner?”Tanka is asking the monk another question to give him an opportunity to understand. Dinner does not mean dinner, it simply means, “Are you fulfilled? Are you complete in yourself? Have you found your center? Are you nourished by existence? Have you found your home?”The monk said, “I have had it.”The poor fellow is still thinking about dinners, but out of his great compassion, for which he is known….Tanka said, “Is he open-eyed who brings food to a fellow like you and lets you eat it?”Encountering a Zen master means encountering a lion. He will hit you from this side and that side, from this point and that point.[Suddenly everyone is thrown into darkness as the power fails. Some timeless moments of silence with Osho before he continues with the discourse.]Now, asking the monk, “Is he open-eyed – is he an awakened person, is he enlightened – who brings food to you? Have you got a master who nourishes you?” But strange language. And strange were those days and strange were those people. “Is he open-eyed who brings food to a fellow like you and lets you eat it?”The monk could make no reply.He cannot understand what is going on. Now he is completely puzzled and confused. All this talk about dinner seems to be about something else.Later Chokei asked Hofuku, “To give food to others is surely worthy. How could he fail to be open-eyed?”An ordinary understanding is that to give food to those who are hungry, to feed them, is a virtuous act. Obviously such a virtuous act can be done only by one who is awakened. At this point the Catholics and other Christians will certainly agree with Chokei, who is saying, “To give food to others is surely worthy. How could he fail to be open-eyed?”In such ordinary statements so much is hidden. It is possible for you to feed the hungry and yet not be awakened. You can feed the hungry for reasons of your own. Most probably it is because of greed – greed for heaven, for heavenly pleasures. If you can accumulate enough virtue, you will be received by God. And if you are not virtuous, a sinner, a hellfire is waiting for you into which you will be thrown for eternity; there is no rescue.Ordinary morality will agree with Chokei, but anyone who understands the meaning of inner awakening knows it perfectly well: to feed someone does not mean a virtuous act because it is coming out of unconsciousness, out of greed, out of a certain motivation, certain ambition, certain fear. How can you be called an awakened person? The awakened also feeds, but not because of any profit to be gained here or hereafter. The awakened also feeds not only the body but the soul, out of pure compassion, never expecting anything in return.Hofuku said, “Both giver and receiver are blind.”These are great dialogues between great people. Chokei himself is enlightened. You might not understand his asking, “How could such a man fail to be open-eyed, who feeds others?” This is a net thrown to catch Hofuku. If Hofuku said, “Yes, you are right,” he would have missed the point, but Hofuku stands on the same ground as Chokei. He makes the statement, “Both giver and receiver are blind” – to think that “I am giving” is ego-centered and to think that “I am receiving” is also ego-centered. There is no difference; both are blind.Chokei said, “Are you still blind, even though you exhaust every means?”Hofuku said, “How can you call me blind?”Before we think about Setcho’s comments, something more about Tanka has to be understood, because this dialogue is about Tanka asking a monk, “Have you had your dinner?” and “From where are you coming?”Who is this fellow Tanka? He stands as high as any enlightened person has risen, ever – and with a uniqueness of his own.Tanka was a contemporary of Nansen, Ryutan, Ho Koji and Yakusan…All great masters, but none of them had the extraordinary quality of Tanka. He first studied Zen with Basho.Just to study with Basho is enough to give you a new way of seeing things. Just to sit by his side is enough to make you unique. Basho is one of the great awakened ones. Basho stands in the history of Japan, just as in the history of India, Gautam Buddha stands; the same height, the same peak, and something more. Basho was also a mystic, a poet, a painter. The very fact that he accepted Tanka as his disciple is in itself a certificate of uniqueness. Basho was not for the masses, he was only for the chosen few.…and then at Basho’s suggestion, Tanka went to Sekito.Sekito was very lonely, without any disciples, a mystic living deep in the mountains. A few times Basho sent a few disciples to Sekito because he could see that they needed a different kind of nourishment. With Basho they would become enlightened, but just to be enlightened is not enough. To be enlightened and still remain unique needs a certain atmosphere, a different kind of air.This is something to be understood about Zen. In no other religion does one master send his disciples to another master, never. In all the religions of the world every master is a competitor to other masters. They are fighting for disciples because whoever has more disciples is a greater master. It is sheer politics, politics of numbers – although their game is religion, hidden behind the word religion is pure politics.Sekito was very averse to disciples. Just to avoid them he had gone far away deep in the forest. But Basho could see in Tanka some similarity, something that can fall in deep harmony with Sekito. There is no competition. It is not a question that you have more disciples, so you are great. Zen masters continually send people to other masters.That is a rare phenomenon: no competition, and on the other hand, a deep understanding of the disciple. If Basho sees that “somebody else can help Tanka more than I can help, because he does not belong to the same kind of energy,” then it is better not to prevent him and waste his time but send him to the right man.Tanka lived with Sekito three years and finally returned to Basho’s temple. Before paying his respects to Basho, he went into the monk’s hall and climbed up onto the shoulders of a statue of Manjushree.Manjushree is one of the disciples of Gautam Buddha, the first disciple who became enlightened; hence, his status is just next to that of Gautam Buddha. The monk I have told you about who became enlightened sitting under the tree, and flowers showered and showered, was no one but Manjushree.Now this was very strange of Tanka, coming back to the temple of Basho where Manjushree’s statue is worshipped. Basho loved Manjushree, felt some synchronicity between himself and Manjushree. Tanka went into the temple and climbed up onto the shoulders of Manjushree.The monks were astonished and went to tell Basho, who came down to the hall. He saw Tanka and said, “My son, Tennen.”Tanka climbed down from Manjushree’s shoulders and made bows to Basho, saying, “Thank you master, for giving me my dharma name.” And thereafter he was called Tennen, meaning son of nature.Tanka is another formation of Tennen.Rather than being angry with him, rather than being offended, “What kind of nonsense are you doing? It is insulting to Manjushree and it is insulting to me!” Instead of saying that, he said, “My son, Tennen.” He has initiated him with such love – “My son” – and has also given him the name Tennen.Tanka climbed down from Manjushree’s shoulders and made bows to Basho, saying, “Thank you master, for giving me my dharma name.”These kinds of anecdotes you will not find in any religious tradition around the world. What was the meaning of Tanka climbing up on the statue of Manjushree? In this gesture he is declaring without saying a single word, “I have reached higher than Manjushree. Do you recognize it or not?”Basho recognized it. He said, “My son, come down. You will be known as Tennen.” To give the dharma name, the name of sannyas, is to accept the disciple.It was also Tanka who features in the story about using a wooden statue of Buddha to burn in a temple one night to keep himself warm.The night was cold, and in Japan there are wooden statues. When the priest went to sleep – Tanka was just a guest; the night was cold – he took one of the statues of Buddha and burned it. Now this would be utter disrespect by anyone anywhere in the world – but not in the world of Zen, and you will see why.The priest was awakened, seeing that in the temple there is a fire. And when he reached, he could not believe his eyes – he was only a priest – he said, “Are you mad? You have burned the statue of Buddha!” Tanka took his staff and started looking into the burnt ashes of the statue for something.The priest said, “What are you looking for?”He said, “I am looking for the bones of Buddha.”The priest said, “You are really mad! This is a wooden statue; wooden statues don’t have bones.”Tanka said, “You are a very intelligent man, you have understood. Just bring another statue! The night is long and very cold, and you have so many statues…and rather than taking care of a living buddha, you are bothering about a wooden buddha. What do you want? A living buddha should shiver in the cold and wooden buddhas should sit on their thrones?”The priest thought that this man should not be left alone – he would burn those statues and they were very valuable. But now he has proved his point: how can wood be a buddha? You can carve it into a statue of a buddha, still it is wood. Buddha is inside you. He was saying to the priest, “Here I am, and you are preventing an awakened man from burning ordinary statues.”The priest pushed him out of the temple and locked the temple door. Tanka said many times, “This is not right. You are not behaving as you should.”He said, “I don’t want to listen to anything, just get out! I cannot leave you alone inside the temple, and I am going to sleep – I am not going to waste my whole life sitting, watching that you don’t do any stupid thing.”In the morning, when the priest opened the door of the temple, he said, “Certainly this man is mad.” Because Tanka was still sitting by the side of the road, where there was a milestone. He had plucked a few wild flowers and put those wild flowers on the milestone and he was worshipping, doing his morning meditation. He said, “In the night you burned a buddha and in the morning you are worshipping a milestone! Have you any sense?”Tanka opened his eyes and he said, “If wood can be a buddha, stone can also be a buddha; it is just uncarved, the buddha is hidden. It needs a sculptor and the buddha can be found. I can see buddha is in this stone. The buddha that I burned in the night must have been just a wooden log and some artist must have carved it. This is raw material; it can become a buddha. And the question is not…I am not concerned about the wood or the stone, I am concerned about buddhahood, which is the nature of everything. I am a buddha, you are a buddha…. In the night a living buddha burned a dead buddha, in the morning a living buddha is worshipping a dead buddha for the simple reason that nobody worships this poor buddha. Out of compassion, at least give him satisfaction that one man recognized his innermost being.”Further, it was noted about Tanka that when he was eighty-one years old, he retired to his temple at Mount Tanka in Hunan province.One day four years later, he said to his disciples, “I am starting on my journey.”He equipped himself with hat, leggings, socks and staff, and put on a shoe. Before his foot hit the ground, he was dead.Can you see the man? What a great man! He is going on the eternal journey, so he is getting ready.This is why Zen masters ask again and again, “Suggest some original way of dying.” Now this is an original way, equipping himself with hat, leggings, socks and a staff, and putting on a shoe. Before his foot hit the ground he had died. He has left everything behind; his consciousness has moved on the great pilgrimage.If you understand Tanka, then it will be easy for you to understand his questioning…“Have you had your dinner?”He was not an ordinary man.“Where are you from?”He must have frightened the monk. He said: “From the foot of the mountain.” Tanka said, “Have you had your dinner?” The monk said, “Yes, I have had it.” Tanka said, “Is he open-eyed who brings food to a fellow like you and lets you eat it?” The monk could make no reply. He is saying, “Have you been a disciple, a learner? Have you drunk from the sources of an awakened being? Have you eaten from the sources of truth and love and peace?”Now Setcho’s comment is:Exhaust every means, and you will not be blind.Once in a while, he comes with a right answer. Exhaust every means; whatever you can do, do.And when you cannot do anything, you will find yourself.Make every effort, exhaust all means, because unless you exhaust all means, a lingering doubt will remain in your mind: “Perhaps if I had gone on this way, I would have reached.” So go on all the ways, exhaust every possibility, eliminate every effort. Come to a point where you can be effortless, where you don’t know what to do. In this non-doing, in this let-go, in this relaxation you will find your own self blossoming in its immense glory and splendor.You hold the cow’s head to let it graze.He is asking, “Do you hold the cow’s head to let it graze? If the cow is there and the grass is there, the cow is going to graze, you just wait. You are there, your longing to know yourself is there, just wait!”The Four Sevens, the Two Threes,The following bandHave handed down the dharma treasure,Raising dust and trouble to make men drown on land.A beautiful statement. The Four Sevens are the twenty-eight Indian patriarchs, beginning with Mahakashyapa – they are called the Four Sevens. The Two Threes are Chinese patriarchs, beginning with Bodhidharma. The following band… after that, in Japan, hundreds of monks became enlightened. Now there is no question of numbers; it is called simply “the following band.”They all have the same experience of enlightenment, but still there are differences and those differences are very minute and very delicate.For example in a dark room with one candle, the room is full of light. With two candles the room is full of light. With three candles the room is full of light. With four candles the room is full of light. You go on increasing the number of candles, the room is still just full of light. What one candle can do will be done by a hundred candles, nothing more, because light may become more and more bright but its intrinsic quality of dispelling darkness is the same.Hence I have said to you, just the taste of a single dewdrop and you have known all the oceans.But Setcho is for the first time making a very loving statement: The four sevens, the two threes, and the band following have handed down the dharma treasure. They have been handing down the experience of truth, raising dust and trouble to make men drown on land.Naturally this will explain to you why Jesus is crucified, why Socrates is poisoned, why Al-Hillaj Mansoor is stoned to death. These people create trouble.I am condemned all over the world. You may understand; you may not understand. Twenty-four countries will not unnecessarily bother about a man who never leaves his room. Still, two years after I left America, their parliaments are discussing whether the law should be withdrawn, or the law should be kept, which prevents me from entering in their countries. Just two days ago the parliament of Germany decided to continue to keep their law – I am still alive….But what is the fear? These people, Setcho says, create great trouble. First they make everybody aware of their ignorance. That is a great trouble. You may have cancer, you are not aware of it. You are perfectly happy going fishing but the doctor creates the trouble. He says, “You have cancer and you don’t have much longer to live.”Where are you going? Are you still going to go fishing? Now the whole desire, the whole joy of going fishing is finished, you return home with a sad face. It is not the cancer that has made your face sad, it is the doctor.When a Gautam Buddha arises, he creates so much trouble in so many people’s minds, in so many people’s families, in so many people’s hearts. He is a trouble-maker because he goes on telling you, knocking on your doors, that you are fast asleep while if you wake up you will find a great treasure hidden in you. All misery and all agony will disappear; ecstasy will be your reward. Blessings will shower on you. But wake up!Anybody who wakes you up seems to be like an enemy, even in ordinary waking. Early in the morning, when the breeze is cool and you would like to have another turn and hide yourself in the blanket and somebody goes on pulling your leg – “Get up, it is time for meditation!” – how do you feel? You feel like killing this man! And if you don’t listen to him, he starts the Dynamic Meditation then and there in your room. Anyway he won’t allow you to sleep.Setcho is right. These people create so much dust where everybody is so peaceful in his agony, everybody is so happy with his troubles – where everybody is living in utter stupidity but without any questioning, without any quest. These people come and they shake you: “What are you doing? You are not meant to do these things. This is not your destiny, this is not what you are keeping hidden within yourself. This is not the flower and the fragrance of your being.”Naturally the category of the buddhas has always been condemned, poisoned, killed. Every effort has been made somehow – these people should go and do their Dynamic Meditation somewhere else: “Why do you disturb us? We are sleeping well – although we are suffering from a nightmare and a migraine. But we are well acquainted with that; we have always suffered with migraine so there is no problem in it.”But these people say, “You are talking about a migraine; we are telling you to drop the mind itself. With the mind the migraine will also go. Without mind you cannot have a migraine.”Nobody has been able to do it up to now, to have no mind and just migraine. But without a migraine it will look so lonely. It has been such a good friend, such an old acquaintance, always with you. Wherever you go it has followed like your own dog, and now somebody says, “Get rid of this dog.” You cannot feel that it is possible. Nobody believes that a buddha is possible.In the presence of a buddha one becomes enchanted, one becomes full of trust that certainly there is a possibility, a new opening of existence and a new experience of life. But as you go home, just on the way, one after another doubts start arising…perhaps that man has hypnotized you. Perhaps with so many people listening so silently, you got caught in their silence. Alone the migraine is back; alone the old doubts are back. People avoid….Just a few days ago I had an infection in the ear and Doctor Jog, the best expert in Pune, was called to see me. He came. He could not believe that here are thousands of people with such a joyful, playful aliveness, caring about the garden, meditating or just sitting silently, doing all kinds of work, but without any anxiety.He told me, “You will have to forgive me.”I said, “For what?”He said, “I had many times passed by the gate. The gate attracts, but the mind says, ‘Beware! Everybody inside is hypnotized.’ Your name is such that if I talk to anybody about you, he looks at me as if I am a little bit crazy.”On the second day he brought his wife. The third day they came to listen, and he told me on the fourth day, “I told the people of my profession outside, the other doctors, that our conception is absolutely wrong, and they should go and see with their own eyes what is happening here: a great experiment in consciousness. It is so tangible; the silence is so expressive, and the bliss. You can almost feel it in the air, in the atmosphere.” They all said to him, “Jog, you are lost. Don’t go there again! You are hypnotized, we can see.”And he told me, “The people of my profession started avoiding me just because I have been treating your ear.”And when he came with his wife he asked me, “My wife wants to see you alone for five minutes.”I said, “Perfectly okay” – and I am waiting. Both have disappeared. Jog must have been afraid that if the wife becomes too much interested in my caravan then she is gone! And there are examples of people…Another doctor, Dr. Modi has lost Zareen. Zareen is here; Dr. Modi is sitting alone in a vast house. A nice and good man, he comes to the ashram – and a man of understanding. He has not created any trouble for Zareen. She wanted to come to the ashram; he allowed her, and he still comes to the ashram. But everybody in his profession must be telling him, “Look, that is what happens. You have lost your wife. Why in the first place have you taken her there? Whoever goes inside the gate somehow disappears.”I do nothing at all, and parliaments in different countries are discussing for hours whether I should be allowed into their countries and I have never asked them! I don’t want to go anywhere. I have made it clear to everybody, “Don’t be afraid. I am not going anywhere” – but who knows…?They are keeping a law that I cannot even step outside at their airports; entering the country is out of the question. I cannot even step out at the airport! What is the fear? Certainly, I must be creating some trouble in their minds.I am creating trouble. Their lives are settled and whatever I say is going to unsettle their lives. Nobody wants to be unsettled, nobody wants to be left alone by the crowd. Such a fear exists that even my own centers…Jayantibhai must be here; yesterday he was. Ahmedabad center has asked, “Can we drop your name from the center’s name, because your name creates trouble.”It is my center, but because of my name nobody wants to come there. So I told them, “You drop my name. Let people come. My name is not important; my message is important.”Tanka has created the right silence. I will take Maneesha’s question some other day. Today there is just a little time for having a good belly laughter. We receive and welcome this silence with our laughter – and our laughter helps to open deeper doors of silence and mystery.A black man is having a conversation with God: “Tell me, Lord,” he says, “how come I am so black?”“You are black,” replies God, “so that you can withstand the hot African sun.”“Tell me, Lord,” continues the black man, “how come my hair is so short and kinky?”“So that you will not sweat in the hot African climate,” replies God.“Tell me, Lord,” implores the black man, “how come my legs are so long?”“So that you can escape from the wild beasts that roam the jungles of Africa,” replies God.“Then tell me Lord,” shouts the black man, “what the hell am I doing in Chicago?”“Noah!” booms the voice of God.“What?” shouts Noah looking around. “What do you want?”“You have got to take one of those elephants out and bring in another one.”“What for?” shouts Noah.“Because,” booms the voice, “you have got two males and you need one male and one female.”“I’m not bringing nothing in!” shouts Noah. “You just change one of them.”“Come on, Noah,” booms the voice, “you know I don’t work like that.”“Well, I’m sick and tired,” says Noah, “I have had enough of this. I have been working for days. I am through with it!”“Noah?” asks the voice“Yeah!” shouts back Noah.“Noah,” comes the voice, “how far can you swim?”Hamish MacTavish goes salmon fishing and at the end of a long day he catches a tiny fish, not even big enough for one mouthful. Hamish is just about to kill the fish when it speaks to him.“Hamish MacTavish!” gurgles the fish, “I am a magical fish, and if you spare my life I will grant you three wishes.”“That’s great!” says Hamish.“But,” continues the fish, “because you are such a mean old Scotsman, remember, everything you ask for, your worst enemy Fergus MacPherson will get the double.”“Okay!” agrees MacTavish, “I would like a fortune in gold!”“Done!” gurgles the fish, “But MacPherson gets the double.”“And,” continues Hamish, “I would like a dozen beautiful women for my pleasure.”“Agreed!” gurgles the fish, “But MacPherson gets two dozen!”“Okay,” says MacTavish, grinning, “and my last wish is for you to painlessly remove one of my balls!”It is a closely guarded secret that the Vatican has a weekend resort for senior church members.The nuns who live in this special resort are sworn to silence, but they have worked out their own coded language.One weekend, the resort is graced by His Holiness Pope the Polack, along with a cardinal and a bishop. After dinner the three men of the church retire to their rooms where they are entertained by their hostesses.The following morning at breakfast, Sister Margaret, who has been entertaining the bishop, picks up a piece of toast and with a great display butters it four times.Sister Gloria, who has spent the night entertaining the cardinal, takes her toast, and with a satisfied smile, butters it five times.Sister Theresa has spent the night in Pope the Polack’s room, and looks a little pale and tired. Slowly, she reaches for her toast. She takes some butter, and spreads it three times.The other two nuns start to giggle. But then, Sister Theresa turns her toast over, and butters it three times on the back.Now close the eyes.Be absolutely still – no movement.Just gather all of your energy within.Now let go.Okay, come back.

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Live Zen 01-17Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Live Zen 17 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho appears tonight after an illness of many days – one of several periods of weakness and ill health he has suffered since his incarceration by the American government.During the last two weeks, a new meditation therapy has been launched, with “Zen Master Niskriya” leading the pilot group. It is called the “OSHO No-Mind Meditation,” and consists of a week-long process, lasting two hours per day. The first hour is for gibberish: going consciously crazy, allowing any sounds which come from inside, in any language except a language you know – emptying the mind of all garbage. The second hour is for sitting silently, doing nothing – allowing a great silence to arise from within. Tonight, Osho brings the No-Mind Meditation to the assembly in Gautama the Buddha Auditorium, establishing a new format for the nightly meditations at the end of each of his talks.My Beloved Ones,I am introducing you to a new meditation. It is divided in three parts.The first part is gibberish. The word gibberish comes from a Sufi mystic, Jabbar. Jabbar never spoke any language, he just uttered nonsense. Still he had thousands of disciples because what he was saying was, “Your mind is nothing but gibberish. Put it aside and you will have a taste of your own being.”To use gibberish, don’t say things which are meaningful, don’t use the language that you know. Use Chinese, if you don’t know Chinese. Use Japanese if you don’t know Japanese. Don’t use German if you know German. For the first time have a freedom – the same as all the birds have. Simply allow whatever comes to your mind without bothering about its rationality, reasonability, meaning, significance – just the way the birds are doing.For the first part, leave language and mind aside. Out of this will arise the second part, a great silence in which you have to close your eyes and freeze your body, all its movements, gather your energy within yourself.Remain here and now.Zen cannot be understood in any other way. This is the last part of the series Live Zen.In the third part I will say, let go. Then you relax your body and let it fall without any effort, without your mind controlling. Just fall like a bag of rice.Each segment will begin with the drum of Nivedano. Before Nivedano gives the drum, there are a few more things I have to say to you.I am extremely sorry that I have not been physically here for many days, but I am also extremely happy that you never missed my presence.I was in your heartand I was in the wind and in the rainand the thunder of clouds.I was in your tears,in your nonsense utterances….I was absolutely present here with you –and those who are present know it perfectly.I was absent only for those who themselves are absent. At least today, don’t go anywhere.Nivedano, give the first drum…[Drumbeat][Gibberish][Everyone bursts into a sea of sound, volume and tempo, clashing and crashing in one great crescendo – a tidal wave of mind.][Osho motions to Nivedano for the second drumbeat][Drumbeat][An instantaneous silence falls over the whole auditorium.]Now the third drum…Relax…[Drumbeat]The fourth drum…Come back![Drumbeat]This begins and ends the series called Live Zen.What I could say, I have said to you.What I could not say, I have given to you.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Greetings from the Indian “Rajneesh Times” family and everyone at the Rajneeshdham Neo-Sannyas Commune. There are many sannyasins both in India and abroad who have never seen you, but their love for you and their commitment to your vision is awe-inspiring. How exactly does this happen – this much love, this much trust?It is in fact easier if you have not seen me, and yet the love has happened, the commitment. It will be far more pure, far more unconditional, far more impersonal. Seeing me, being with me, and yet loving me totally, is more difficult.The reasons are that our minds are brought up in such a way that we are always full of expectations. If I fulfill your expectation, it is good; but if I don’t fulfill your expectation, then your dedication, your trust, start wavering. And as far as I am concerned, I cannot fulfill your expectation. If I fulfill your expectation, then I will not be the person to help you grow. Your expectation fulfilled, you remain as you are – no new openings.I am not here to support your mind.I am here to take it to ultimate heights.But your expectations are a problem. In small things, unconsciously, throughout your whole life you are expecting. And whenever something goes against your idea, you never think that your idea can be wrong; then certainly the person is wrong.It happened in one Jaina family I used to stay with…. It must have been six in the evening. A very old man, the father of the woman in whose house I was staying, came to see me. Now, in Jaina families, six is almost the last limit for the evening supper. As the sun sets, you cannot eat.I was just going to take my bath and then to take my supper, but because the old man had come from far away and he must have been almost ninety-five, I said, “Wait, there is no hurry. I can take my bath a little later on and the supper can wait – there is no problem in it. First, let me talk to him about why he has come.”He was a ninety-five-year-old man and he had been living in a Jaina monastery for thirty years: he had renounced the world. He was recognized as a saint, but just to come to see me was still to be in the Jaina community, so many Jainas had come following him. He told me…the first thing, he touched my feet. I said, “This is not right, because you are ninety-five; even my grandfather is not ninety-five.”He said, “I have wanted to touch your feet for so long. I was afraid that death might spoil everything, and I might not be able to touch your feet. I have read only one of your books – Path To Self-Realization, and that was it. It changed my whole life. Since then, you have been my master. If it was in my power….”Jainas have twenty-four tirthankaras, twenty-four prophets, in one period of creation. That means that after millions of years, when this creation dissolves and a new creation starts, then again there will be twenty-four teachers.He said to me, “We already have twenty-four tirthankaras, but if it was in my power, I would have declared you the twenty-fifth, because what the twenty-four have not been able to do for me, you have done.” He was just all praise.Just then, a servant came and said, “Your bath is ready and the supper will become cold.”The old man was in a shock. He said, “What? In the evening you take a bath?”The Jaina tirthankara does not bathe at all because that is decorating the body, making it non-smelly. It is in the service of something that is lower than you; it has to be sacrificed for the higher. So Jaina tirthankaras don’t bathe.I said to him, “Yes – one in the morning, one in the evening. I take two baths.”He said, “Moreover, the sun has set, and you have not taken your supper yet?” In the first place, the Jaina tirthankara eats only once – there is no question of supper. And even if you are eating twice, at least you should be understanding enough to see that it has to be before sunset.He forgot all his praise – I was no longer a tirthankara. I had been for years, and just because of a single expectation which I had never promised him I would fulfill…. That was his mind.But he said, “Then I have been completely wrong. For all these years I have praised you, I have read your books – but you are not the right man to follow.”I said to him, “Understand a small thing. I never told you to follow me, I never said to read my books. I never told you to make me a tirthankara. I never asked you to have any expectations of me. It was easy because you had not seen me, you had not known me. A book is dead, and the book you are reading is my first book; and I have gone far. If you had started reading my second and third and fourth books, they would have spoiled all your admiration.”But he was so angry that when he left, I said, “Won’t you touch my feet again? – because you are so old, and next time…we may meet, we may not meet.”He said, “I have made the mistake once, I cannot make it twice.”So it is not a problem for people who have come to me through books, tapes, videos, films. It is easy for them to carry on in their old mind. I don’t disturb their old mind: they can interpret my books according to their expectations.The real difficulty is to be with me.Every day you will find me saying things which are inconsistent. You will see me doing things which I should not be doing, behaving in a way which is not suitable for a prophet, for a messiah, for an incarnation.So the real problem is for those who have been living with me, because they have had to drop, chunk by chunk, their minds, their conditionings – themselves. They have to choose continuously every moment between me and themselves: either I exist or they exist; both cannot exist at once. Otherwise, they will be in constant trouble, anxiety. So either they will have to leave me just to protect themselves, or if they are courageous, they will pass through a process which is almost like death, and they will be reborn.The people who have not come to me are having a very fancy trip, imaginary. Their trust, their love, their commitment is to their own minds. I am only a figment in their minds, not a reality outside, not a reality with which they will have to shatter themselves the way the ocean shatters itself continuously on the rocks. And that will be the only test.But ordinarily we think it very strange that people who have only heard my voice on the tape or have only seen me on video, have fallen in love. This is one of the reasons why people love dead saints – why they are ready to die for Jesus Christ, not even knowing whether he ever existed or not.There are people who think that Jesus Christ never existed, that it was a Jewish drama that was played every year – just like, in India, every year we play Rama’s life. Nobody knows whether Rama really existed. All that we know is the drama which we have been playing for five thousand years. Our playing the drama for five thousand years continually has given Rama a certain reality.And it is easier to devote yourself, dedicate yourself to Rama because Rama is only a figment of your mind. You can shape him; you can make him the way you want. You can interpret according to your own thought processes, and he cannot interfere.It is a known fact that all the religions that you see in the world were born after their founders were dead. Strange! Then why do you call them “founders”? They never founded anything. They were hunted, tortured – you did everything nasty to them – and when they died, a great religion arose; and great admiration, because now you could manage them. It is all a game of your imagination.To accept any man who is contemporary with so much love that your commitment becomes total is a superhuman task. But it transforms.To recognize Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus Christ changes nobody. Half of the population of the world is Christian, but we don’t see anything that can make us feel that Jesus is alive in half of humanity. Millions of churches, millions of priests, but you cannot see in a single priest the glimmer, the shine, the authority that come from one’s own experience. All that they can have is an imaginative dedication.Gods are made by man. But when somebody is alive, it is very difficult to make him a god because he will continuously disturb your idea of a god.For example, Jainas think that Mahavira never perspired. Now, I cannot manage that, and I know that neither could Mahavira manage it, because perspiration is a natural process – without perspiration the person will die.Perspiration keeps you at a constant inner temperature. When it is too hot you perspire. The glands all over your body are full of water. In the case of it being too hot, they will release the water. They will deceive the sun. The water is released, and the sun starts evaporating it. The sun does not penetrate inside you; it has been prevented by the perspiration – completely befooled. It becomes engaged in evaporation and your inner temperature remains exactly the same.If it is cold you don’t perspire; if it is cold you shiver. Shivering makes you hot – it is a movement against the cold. Shivering keeps you at the same temperature. So whether it is hot or cold, your body is capable of maintaining the same temperature, because its life is very limited: it can survive only within twelve degrees of temperature, from 98 to 110. Below 98 you die, above 110 you are finished. The temperature has to be kept constant – it is immensely necessary for the life process.But if you are writing a story or creating an imaginary idea, you can put anything in it – like Mahavira never perspires. And then that becomes the criterion for the Jainas. They cannot accept anybody as really realized unless they see that, standing naked, he is not perspiring in the hot sun.It is very easy to create gods out of the past. There was a time when Mahavira was a contemporary man. His contemporaries never recognized him as a god. Buddha and Mahavira were contemporaries. Neither of them recognized the other as a god – what to say of other people? They had their definitions, and no living being can remain limited within your definitions.So it is easier for people who are far away, for whom I am almost not a contemporary. They can create any kind of qualities they want in me; they can hallucinate any ideas around me. They have a free choice to dream about me. Their dedication and their love and their commitment is a dream phenomenon. And they will feel very good, very centered, very happy that they have found a man who fits absolutely with their idea of how a man should be. They have not found him; they have created, they have invented him.But to be near to me, you will have to drop your expectations – which everybody has in very subtle ways – and particularly with me because I am persistent that I should not fulfill anybody’s expectation; because that would mean I am against him, I am helping his poisonous mind. I have to shatter it, even at the cost of making him my enemy – but I have to shatter it and I have to live in a way, speak in a way, say things which he has to accept, understand, even against his whole mind.It is a struggle to be with a master: the struggle between your mind and the master.And if the master is a real master, he will not allow your mind to win. Either the master wins or you are free to leave, but you cannot be allowed to win in the game.This is a very strange game in which the master always has to win. And to be constantly defeated – and yet be in love with the same man who is defeating you, and yet be committed to the same man who is destroying you – needs guts. Ordinarily, people can’t understand it, but this is the reality.Osho,The mediocre people create much fuss and fervor, misinterpreting the loving, silent, soft and meditating sannyasins as brainwashed. What do you say about this state of affairs?In fact, tell those mediocre people that it is not only a brainwash, it is a mindwash – far deeper, from the very roots. Brainwashing is just pruning the leaves, which will come again. In fact, if you cut one leaf, three leaves will replace it. The tree is not going to be defeated so soon.Tell them, “It is a mindwash. And you are on the right path; whatever you are saying is right, but not the total truth, only a fragment. The total truth is, that we have decided to drop the mind completely because the mind has given nothing but misery, suffering, torture and nightmares. You can have it.“You can see our people – they are simple, they are innocent, they are rejoicing, they are loving. If brainwashing can give you this much, it is worth it. What is wrong in it?”And tell them, “Our master does not stop at brainwashing because that is just superficial. He wants to destroy the mind completely and make us no-minds. That’s what he calls meditation.“But what is the problem for you? You remain happy in your misery, you remain happy in your suffering, you remain happy in all your tortures that you are giving to yourself and others. Why can’t you leave a few people who don’t want to be miserable and who want to rejoice in life?”In fact, we should learn to face the mediocre people exactly on their own ground. They say it is mindwashing, they say it is brainwashing. Tell them, “It is. Why are you waiting – not being washed? It is absolutely dry cleaning. What have you got to save? For what are you afraid?”Take them – whatever they say, take them at their own word. If they say it is hypnosis, accept that it is. “But what is wrong in it? You are not happy, you are not rejoicing in your life. You are suffering. You are waiting for a paradise after death – we have found it here. And if you want to label it as hypnosis, we have no objection. But it is worth it. Come and try! Perhaps you may also like the taste.“We have tried both: your life we have lived and we know it is hell; and our life, which you call hypnosis, we have also lived. We choose hypnosis against hell.”Those people simply throw words at you. They think just by throwing words they can condemn a certain phenomenon. They are stupid. And rather than fighting about words – that it is not brainwashing, it is not hypnosis…. You are getting caught by those idiots in their trap.It is better to shock them and say, “It is.” But make it clear: “We know both – we know your life, we have lived it; and we know this life, we are living it. You don’t know both so you cannot say anything about our life.“Have a little courage. Experience our life too, then you will be able to compare. And if you find that the brainwashed life of a sannyasin, the hypnotized life of a sannyasin is not so great as the old hell was, you can always go back to your hell. We will all support you – we will throw you out of the ashram!”I have found that it is easier to accept their label and not to make any unnecessary argument about the label – the label does not matter. On the contrary, make it a point: “You should experience it – you are talking without experience. You don’t have any way to compare. We can compare, and still we are not coming to your hell.”Osho,It seems that the US authorities and government – and the governments around the world – are more shocked by your sannyasins' togetherness and courage than we ourselves were by their brutal mistreatment of you. Osho, do you feel we have missed something; or what else may we learn from such extreme situations?No, you have not missed anything. It was so new for you that you could not figure out what was happening; you were in a state of confusion. But you showed your strength perfectly well, and you made the American government aware that they cannot do anything to me without destroying their own image of democracy. It was a high-risk thing.One of the sheriffs of a jail I was in – the first jail I was in – became very friendly and he told me, “I should not tell you, but thousands of telegrams, thousands of phone calls, thousands of flowers from all over the world, thousands of protests…the government is shaken.“They had not expected that, in touching a single man, they were playing with fire. So one thing I can tell you – they cannot harm you. They will not even touch your body. On the contrary, instructions are that you should be given absolute security, that nothing should happen to you; otherwise we will not be able to show our face to the world.”And it was strange that they had to give me the same kind of security as they give to the president of America: five cars following me, five motorcycles following, and the roads blocked. They were afraid that anybody could do any harm to me under their protection – they would be responsible for it.This man said to me, “This is for the first time in my life that we are not concerned about your escaping. We are concerned that nobody harms you, otherwise that harm will be on our heads.”On the first day – just two or three hours after I had arrived – somebody from Australia called him: “You must be worried because so many phone calls will be coming, telegrams coming.”The sheriff said to the man, “No, we are accustomed…this is a very special jail and we have had people of importance, of cabinet standing – that is, from the highest political structure. So there is not much of problem.”But after three days, with tears, he apologized to me. He said, “What I said to that man will remain heavy on my heart. I don’t know his number; otherwise I would have apologized to him. You had been here only two or three hours, so I did not know about you. But now, after three days, I can say with absolute certainty that we have never had such a man in the jail. The whole jail is for you! Five hundred inmates are for you, the whole hospital department is for you – I am for you. And the whole world is focused on you. If something happens to you it will be really dangerous for America’s image.“So I want you to forgive me for telling that man that we have had many very important people. That was wrong. We have never had such a person, about whom the whole world is concerned. We have had people of cabinet standing; they were, at the most, of national importance, but nobody who had any international importance, and so much love.”The second day he asked me, “What are we going to do with the flowers? So many flowers are coming, and in this big jail, we don’t have space.”So I told him, “Send the flowers to all the schools, colleges and universities, from me.” He did that, and the response was immense. When I was taken from the jail to the airport again, all along the way were students throwing flowers.In fact, the government must have been repenting that they made a stupid mistake. They unnecessarily made our silent movement a world-famous phenomenon. Now it is a household name around the world, in all the languages.Those twelve days in jail have been of immense help to the movement. They could not do anything because there was nothing that was in their hands to do; they simply became fools. What have they gained?We had changed their desert into an oasis; again it will be a desert – that is their gain. But we have gained much. Those four years will now become the foundation of a new commune – naturally, far superior, far better. Then, we were not so expert, and it gave us many ideas….For example, now I am not going to make a commune in a country under any government. I am trying for an absolutely independent island, so you don’t need any visa, you don’t need anybody to tell you how long you can stay.We are not going to create a government there, we are not going to make it a nation – because I am against nations and against governments. And we have to prove in that commune something more now: that people can live without government, and people can live without a nation, and people can live without armies; that people need not have jails, they don’t have to have the police, they don’t need any judges.So, it has been tremendously helpful, and to the whole community of sannyasins around the world it has brought life. They started realizing that they were doing something significant which could disturb the greatest power of the world.It is not without reason that America was disturbed. It was disturbed because we were creating something that would disturb every government and every politician.So now sannyas is no longer just your meditation, your peace, your silence, your life. Now we have become involved, in a very strange way, in the destiny of the whole world. They have forced us. We were going silently on our own; we were not troubling them.They have provoked us, so now it is for us to prove that they were right!Now it is not only going to be an individual revolution in a person’s life. We will create a place which will become a model for the whole world – if this can happen with five or ten thousand or more people, why can’t it happen everywhere? We, for the first time, are entering into problems which the world leaders have failed to solve in thousands of years; we can solve them within five years. And the spirit is high.Certainly sannyasins suffered because I was in jail, and they felt helpless that they could not do anything. But they should not feel that way. They did everything that was needed. All that was needed was the world opinion, and they changed the world opinion. We have now more sympathy than we ever had. More of the intelligentsia than ever is now interested. All the news media of the world…we have been covered for almost two months continuously, and still there is a demand from every country: they want to come and want to know more about it.In the light of all that has happened, we have been immensely victorious. Who cares if they destroy the houses and the streets? We are not houses and we are not streets. And if we could create that commune, then we can create many communes anywhere.And this time it will be the focus of the world. It will not be just for the people who want to separate from the ordinary world, recluses. This time we are going to make it a point that it remains the focus of the world, that the whole world has to learn something from it. They have provoked us – now we have to take the challenge. And I love challenges. And I love changes – so there is nothing to be worried about.We are in a far better condition than we have ever been. It is always difficult situations which bring out the best in you. When the situations are not difficult, the human tendency is to relax, to be lazy. If the house is on fire, immediately you will see everybody at his best. Nobody will bother about the snow or the cold or anything.America has provoked its own death by attacking us. It will take a little time, but that’s how I see it.Osho,Once you said that two hundred enlightened people would create an energy that could nullify the forces that can start a third world war. How close are you to finding the two hundred?I am very close. But many things have changed in the meantime.One thing is certain, that we will be able to produce two hundred enlightened people and prevent the third world war. The question which has arisen in the meantime – that is where I become unpredictable – is whether we would like to prevent the third world war. Is it worth preventing these idiots continuing? Will it not be better that the idiots fight and destroy each other and very few people are left in the world to start from scratch?Nobody has thought about it, but my feeling is that it may be an existential necessity: humanity has arrived at such ugly, inhuman, and poisonous ways that it is better then to let it be finished. Why bother to protect Ronald Reagan? I don’t see the point.So this is something of great importance – why not start afresh? Humanity is so much burdened with old, rotten stuff, that to go on protecting it and protecting it…. That rotten stuff is also protected, those conditionings are also protected. It will be good that Islam is gone, Hinduism is gone, Christianity is gone, the pope is gone, the Vatican is gone.Certainly a few people will remain. Those people will be the aboriginals who had no religion, who had no politics, who had no education, who are living as naturally as possible. It will be far better, once this Soviet Union and USA are gone, to begin the new man – because he will not have any past. All past will be gone. The new, the remaining few, will have only a future and the experience of what happened to the past; not to repeat it…to find out new ways of living.So I am trying to search for an island so far off that it will remain unaffected by any war that happens between America and Russia – let them have it, they deserve it – and we can create a society there. If the world is finished, then we can spread around the world the people that we have saved, to start absolutely fresh. Perhaps existence is tired of man and the ways he has turned to.So those two hundred people are close by, but I may prevent…I may tell them just to wait a little. First let the third world war happen and then you can become enlightened and go around the world finding people, because then there will be no passports needed, no visas needed and the whole world will be available to everybody for the first time.It looks dangerous, the idea….But I like dangerous ideas.Osho,Why do Indian journalists only record and publish your critiques of India? I never remember reading about your beautiful discourses on the real India.The reason is simple: there is no such thing as free Indian journalism. Either the government is keeping a hold on the latest news media, television, radio, directly…and particularly in a country like India, where most of the people cannot read – but they can see, they can hear. So the government is being really cunning in keeping the radio and television in their own hands to approach eighty percent of India and just fill those minds with their own ideas.Only the newspapers are there. They look free, but they are not. The government has indirectly curtailed their freedom as much as possible. Any newspaper that goes against the directions given to it has its quota for newsprint cut.Newsprint paper is not available on the market, it is in the government’s hands. Now, this is a subtle strategy; “You write what we want; otherwise you don’t have anything to write upon.”The Indian newspapers live mostly on government advertisement. The moment they start writing anything that the government does not want, those advertisements are removed. Those newspapers die automatically without anybody directly killing them. All the newspapers belong to a few super-rich people – just four or five families.Those four or five families are basically for the government because they need licenses; they need every kind of support from the government, and it is a deal that their papers should remain according to the government policy. So in fact, looking at the whole picture, India has no free journalism. They write only what their owners want them to write.Now as far as I am concerned, they have to write only things which create antagonism against me in the Indian mind. To me, life is both day and night, life and death, and I have spoken on it from all possible angles. But a paper which is owned by a Hindu owner will not publish anything that creates sympathy towards me in the masses.I have spoken on so much that no Hindu has ever spoken on. If they choose to, they could convert the whole of India for me. But that is what they are afraid of, so they choose only those parts where I have criticized.And I am not a politician. My whole life, politicians have been advising me, “You could become an immense phenomenon in the country, millions of people could stand with you; you just have to be a little careful. You speak so beautifully about Hinduism – then why do you sometimes start criticizing it! You speak so beautiful about Jainism; then on some small point you criticize it.“You have spoken so much on Buddhism – nobody has spoken so much – and still no Buddhist is sympathetic to you because you go on criticizing it. Ninety percent of your talks explain to them the beauties of Gautam Buddha and his teachings, so if you can avoid the ten percent….”I said, “That is impossible. That will be cheating people. I know that that ten percent is there; it will be cheating the people not to say anything about it. And it will be a heavy burden on my heart that I have not been completely open: that I have been looking at the people and saying to them what they want to listen to, rather than talking to people about what I have to say.”So I told them, “I have decided to remain alone – I don’t want your millions of people with me. But I will say the whole thing. I will bring out the beauty but I will not neglect the ugliness that is there, because the beauty is something that only a few, rare, intelligent people can understand. So even Buddha has talked about it, but it has gone over people’s heads. But the ugliness, which is only ten percent, has affected people’s lives.“The ninety percent has not affected people’s lives at all, but the ten percent has. Now you are telling me not to also talk about that ten percent which has caused all the misery, all the poverty, and all kinds of stupidities in the country. I cannot accept your advice.”For example, it is beautiful that Buddha talked about nonviolence, but then who is going to be responsible for the two-thousand-years’ slavery of the country? His teaching of nonviolence is incomplete. People accepted it, that it is perfectly good; and the teaching made people not brave but cowards. They were talking about not killing people, but basically what was in their minds was that they should not be killed. So if you are not to kill, you will be saved also.That is not necessary. Buddha never told them, “Your not killing others does not mean that they will not kill you.” Nor did Mahavira tell them that. Then what will you do when people want to invade your country, take your possessions, take your wives, kill your children, rape your women, burn your houses and cities? Then what is the nonviolence going to do?According to me, a really nonviolent person is one who does not kill anybody, does not harm anybody, because he is against killing and against harming; but if somebody starts harming him, then too, he is against killing; he won’t allow it.He will never initiate any violence, but if violence is initiated against him, then he’s going to fight tooth and nail. Only then can the nonviolent people remain independent; otherwise they will be slaves, and poor, and continually robbed.For two thousand years, how many people have been robbed in India? Who is responsible for it? Buddha and Mahavira are both responsible for it. Now, to say that will mean that immediately the Jaina newspapers will take it, the Buddhist newspapers will take it and antagonize the Buddhists and the Jainas. But I cannot prevent myself from saying the whole truth.So it will take a little time.In fact, the way our movement has spread is phenomenal. None of Jesus’ disciples were educated, none of them were cultured, civilized. They were fishermen, farmers, woodcutters – of the same category as Jesus himself was. He was uneducated, he could not read or write. All that he could manage, altogether, was twelve disciples. Not a single rabbi was his follower, not a single professor was his follower. Not a single man of culture, understanding, intelligence, was his follower.Our movement is phenomenal. Just within fifteen years it has already taken over the world. Just ten years more and there will be no problem: all these idiots who are trying to provoke antagonism – they will all be running after you.This happened when I was in jail. The whole American news media turned immediately sympathetic, because they could see that America was torturing an innocent man who has done no harm, who has not committed any crime. His only crime is that he has created a beautiful commune, a lovely place: whoever visits it comes out dreaming, “Someday I would like to join.” This was my only crime.We have the most intelligent people around the world as sannyasins. So all these mediocre people and journalists don’t matter at all. And these are slaves. You will see: as the Western press and news media are turning sympathetic towards me, these idiots will follow them. They have that mentality, of slaves.It happened that when Rabindranath Tagore was given a Nobel Prize, only then did India come to know that they had a great poet. And universities started inviting him to accept doctorates. The first was Calcutta University – and he had lived in Calcutta his whole life, and he has written his best things in Bengali. He got the Nobel Prize for a small book which he himself translated. The major part of his literature, which remains untranslated, is far more important.But Calcutta University had not bothered to give him a doctorate, and now, because he had gotten the Nobel Prize, all Indian universities…. But Rabindranath was a man I love. He refused Calcutta University. He said, “You are giving a doctorate to the Nobel Prize, not to me. I have been here my whole life; you have never even asked me to come to the university to recite my poetry to people. Why should I accept your doctorate? It is an insult.”But this is how this country is. For remaining slaves for two thousand years you cannot condemn them. They just look towards the West – whatever happens there, soon they are bound to follow. And the West – its press, its news media – is becoming very friendly and very loving. So these people should be following soon. There is nothing to be worried about.And what harm can they do? My experience is that nobody harms me, whether he writes for me or against me. He should just go on writing.I will use both ways. You can’t have the whole world as your friend – and it would be monotonous. Enemies add some spice.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,These questions are from a center in America, and they say, “We are starting a new newspaper in America dedicated to your vision for humanity. We would like to call it, ‘Vision International.'“ Their first question is: Do you like the name?Yes, absolutely yes.The second question: Do you have any message for us in this new beginning?Just remember one thing: the sannyas movement has entered a critical stage. It is a good sign; it will bring maturity, strength, togetherness.What is to be remembered is that this strength, this togetherness does not become an organization. It remains the movement of individuals who are together because their experience is similar. They are not part of a religion, they are not a church; their individuality is absolutely intact….Because that is one of the most difficult things: in times of difficulty one tends to become organized because that way you can fight better, you can oppose the enemy better. But my emphasis is that in opposing the enemy you create a bigger enemy within yourself: the organization, the church, the religion. The whole thing is defeated.So remain continuously aware and make your readers remember in different ways in different times, that my message is for the individual, and I stand for absolute freedom, individuality. If we are together and if we are fighting together our aim is to fight for individuality and freedom. We are not going to become unconsciously a church, an organization.That has happened to all the religions in the past. It was a calamity. Avoid the calamity.Almost two years ago Sheela told us you wanted your sannyasins to leave California and close the centers there. But now that the ranch is ending, thousands of sannyasins have gone there to live. Would you like to say something to them?It was simply a device to call people to the commune in Oregon. Now that the commune exists no more, the sannyasins in California should start their centers – if possible, communes. But remember that Oregon’s commune was the model, and in California no compromise should be made.California is in a strange kind of mind – everything there is fashion. So within four, five years, it dies; a newer fashion takes place. Within the last thirty years many things have happened in California with a predictably great future, but they all died within two, three years. So make centers and communes in California, but avoid the Californian tendency of taking everything as a fashion.Sannyas is not a fashion – it is one of the most eternal things in existence. It will be there always, it has been there always – because it is the search for the truth, it cannot be reduced to a fashion.Osho,When we are scattered throughout the world, most of us far from you and living in small groups. Then what is the meaning of the second gachchhami: Sangham sharanam gachchhami?Now it has more meaning than it had before. Let me tell you about all the gachchhamis.The first is: Buddham sharanam gachchhami: “I go to the feet of the awakened one.” It is an approach of humbleness, openness, non-resistance. Without such an approach no master can function. The disciple has to give way for the master to enter the innermost core of his being. And that’s what he is saying: Buddham sharanam gachchhami – “I go to the feet of the awakened one.” He is saying, “I am no more.” He is saying, “Now you can do anything you want to do with me. I am absent and I want your presence in me.”The second gachchhami is Sangham sharanam gachchhami – “I go to the feet of the commune of the awakened one.” The question has arisen about the second because now the commune in America is no more – but there are sannyasins all around the world. In a very subtle way, now our commune exists all over the world.So don’t take it that the Oregon commune’s disappearance is just a disappearance; it has appeared everywhere where a sannyasin is alive and breathing. So the second gachchhami does not lose any meaning, it gains more meaning. It becomes universal.It is easy to go to a master and to surrender. It is the simplest thing to do because the awakened person functions almost like a magnet. You are not doing anything, you are simply being pulled by the magnet. The second gachchhami is difficult, and hence more important than the first.Now you are not only magnetically attracted by the charisma of the master…. You have tasted his love, his compassion, his awareness, his being. In his disciples it will not be so strong, it will not be a magnetic force…. But you have tasted the very being of the master in your surrender: you can recognize that anybody who has surrendered to the master has become in a very deep sense your brother or your sister. A love, because of the master, has arisen amongst the disciples. I call it love, I don’t want to call it any kind of organization. And to surrender to these simple people who have not yet arrived will make you more humble, will take your ego completely away from you.The commune is now all over the world. Wherever a sannyasin exists, the commune exists. And when you are saying, “I go to the feet of the commune,” you are surrendering to millions of people. It is a tremendous experience of being egoless.With a master there is a difficulty: you may surrender to a master because he is worthy of that – it is almost a demand from his very being. He is not saying anything to you, but his every breath is a demand. And the height of the man and the flight of his consciousness, on the one hand will help you to go to his feet; but on the other hand it may give rise to a subtle ego, that you have found a great master. In finding a great master, unconsciously you think you have become a great disciple.But when you are doing the second gachchhami that possibility does not exist at all. You are simply being humble, you are simply showing your love – through the disciples – to the master.The third gachchhami is Dhammam sharanam gachchhami: “I go to the feet of the ultimate realization of the master.” It is possible only after these first two gachchhamis that you can meaningfully say, “I go to the feet of the ultimate experience” – because it is abstract. The master was very tangible. The commune was not so tangible. And now particularly when you say, “I go to the feet of the commune,” you cannot even visualize or imagine it, because there is no commune as such, but individual sannyasins all over the world. But the third is the most difficult in the sense that you are entering abstraction – the religious experience, the experience of truth. You don’t know anything about it.You have seen the man who has visited the land, you have felt his vibe, you have smelled the fragrance that he has brought, you have seen the light that is still lingering around him. In your deep surrender you have felt that this man is not what he looks; he is much more. He is carrying something invisible within himself.This has been only a vague feeling, but it gives you an impetus to surrender yourself to the ultimate experience that has created the master, that has created the commune and that has become a star of attraction for you, a deep inspiration for you.In the beginning the third gachchhami will be vague, abstract, but as you go on deeper in your surrender, with the first two gachchhamis, the third starts taking on more of a reality. It is not a dream, it starts becoming a truth.All those three gachchhamis are deeply interconnected so none of them can be dropped at any point.Osho,If national boundaries and visa restrictions continue to separate us from you and from each other, what is best for us to do about it?They will not. It is for me to find a way that they don’t restrict you from seeing me, from being with me. I am working on it, and I don’t think it will take a long time to find a way; perhaps a month at the most. So nobody need worry about it. We will soon have our own place which will not be under any country’s rule.And I want a totally new experiment that has not happened in history. There have been anarchists – their philosophy is one of the best. But it is so good that it becomes impossible to make it real; it remains utopian. Prince Kropotkin, Tolstoy – these people dreamed of a humanity which one day would drop all governments.They thought that governments are the causes of all the evil that exists on the earth. To some extent they are right, but only to some extent. I cannot agree with them totally, because I know that if governments are removed, it will not be a beautiful world; it will be simply a chaos, full of evil – and much more than it was before, because all restrictions will have been removed, and all ugly instincts in man will still be there.Just by removing a government you cannot change a murderer, and you cannot change a thief, and you cannot change a rapist. The government is not the cause but the effect. That’s where I differ from Prince Kropotkin, who has the clearest vision of anarchism. The government is there because man is not able to remain ungoverned. He needs somebody to keep him in control; otherwise he will be violent and he will do every nasty thing that is possible. The government exists because man needs it. The government is ugly; it should not exist, but what can be done?If you have cancer then somebody has to do the surgery. We don’t want surgeons in the world, but if cancer continues to exist, we will need surgeons for it. The surgeons are not creating the cancer, the cancer is creating the surgeons.This is one philosophy which has for centuries dominated the most highly intelligent people – the idea of absolute freedom, no restriction, no nation, no government. The other idea that has dominated human mind – and which has already tried to become a reality – is also very important. That is communism – that all men should be equal, there should be equality.Inequality is ugly. Some people have all the riches, some people have nothing. In America, thirty million people are dying because they don’t have any food. And exactly the same number – thirty million people – are dying because of overeating.Now, this must be a mad world! Things can be figured out very easily: these people should not overeat. They are eating those thirty million people’s lives, and they are destroying themselves in that effort. They can all live – sixty million people can live peacefully, but the second thirty million are eating the food of the first thirty million. These will die of starvation and the other people will die of obesity.Communism has a tremendous appeal, but to me there is a very basic flaw in it. That is, that men basically and psychologically are not equal, neither physically nor mentally nor…in any way. Equality can be forced, but anything forced cannot remain forever. The moment the force is removed the equality will disappear.In Russia now seventy years have passed since the revolution and they go on increasing the force to keep people equal. Now what kind of equality is this? The whole country has become a concentration camp. And whenever you try to make people equal by force, a strange thing is bound to happen: the lowest denominator will be the determining factor. You cannot make an idiot Albert Einstein, but you can make Albert Einstein an idiot. If you want equality then the lowest will be the norm – and that is absolutely unacceptable. So to me equality is not a value.But I understand communism in a totally different way. I think of communism as an equal opportunity for everybody to be himself – not to be equal but to be unique. Equal opportunity to be unequal – that is my definition of communism. And I want, in the place that I am searching for – and I am very close to finding it – that we create a small commune for the first time in history, which has no government and which has no classes like the rich and the poor; still, equal opportunity for everybody to be himself.Somebody is going to be Yehudi Menuhin and somebody is going to be Rabindranath Tagore and somebody is going to be Albert Einstein. And it will be ugly to destroy these people – because they are the very salt of the earth – just to create a society of idiots, retarded people. They may be equal but that society will not be worth living in.And in the commune in Oregon I became aware of a simple method to do it: just remove money from the commune. Anybody can donate to the commune but nobody can purchase anything with money. Yes, whatever is anybody’s need, the commune should fulfill it: each according to his need. And if you just remove money as a method of exchange, a miracle happens. You may have millions of dollars, and I may not have a single dollar; but you are not richer and I am not poorer – because you cannot use your millions of dollars. In fact I am freer than you. You are carrying a load, a burden, unnecessarily; and I am not carrying the load of a single dollar. And my needs are fulfilled by the commune as much as your needs are.There are still islands which are absolutely without any control by any government. A few are very undeveloped, so it will be a difficult job to develop them. But there are three islands which are fully developed; one has even an airport – it belongs to an individual who is willing to sell it.The situation is such – there are five miles of land which is lush green with big trees…immense beauty. It is almost an oval-shaped island. One part is above sea level. It has the greenery and on it the owner has made small houses.From the outside they look like the houses ancient, primitive people used to live in, so they do not stand apart from the trees and from the greenery; they are part of it. But from inside they are air-conditioned and with all modern equipment. The island has twelve bungalows, one hotel for eighty persons, one airport where, morning and evening, the plane comes; we can have our own planes.And the other part of the island is five, six feet under the sea. The owner has not done anything on that part, and to me that part seems to be the most important, because we can make a five-mile row of houseboats – like Kashmir – on that. And it will look far better than Kashmir because on Kashmir you can see the land; the boat is attached to the land, the land is underneath the boat.You can see water all around and there can be boats for five miles. We can accommodate thousands of sannyasins in those houses. They are beautiful houses, and we can improve upon them. And between the two – the forest in front, the houseboats at the back – between the two is a big lake. So small boats can move in the lake to provide small things for people on the boats. It is something absolutely ideal.And the person is in a hurry to sell it. Perhaps he is financially broke, perhaps he is too old and now he has no energy for it. So most probably we will get it.And the most historical thing will be…. Communism and anarchism have remained enemies, because anarchism says no government, and communism says a very strict government is needed; otherwise you cannot destroy the divisions between classes of the rich and the poor.So communism says, “We need a dictatorship; even democracy will not do. We need an absolute totalitarian dictatorship.” On this point these two beautiful philosophies have such a disagreement that there is no possibility of agreement: “Government is the evil and you are making the evil more evil – you are making it a dictatorship. Even democracy is an evil. No government is the only way for humanity,” according to the anarchist.But we can manage very easily because for seventy years, although communism has tried, it has failed: it has not been able to create a classless society. Yes, the rich have disappeared – they destroyed them. They killed one million people after the revolution, so the rich have disappeared. Only the poor are still poor. But the poor feel a certain satisfaction because now there is nobody to compare themselves with. There is nobody who is richer than them: everybody is equally poor.This was not the idea; everybody should be equally rich. Then only there is some point; otherwise this is sheer stupidity. These people were poor before; a few people were rich and were enjoying the riches. You have not evolved the society; you have destroyed those people – their culture, their music, their literature, their dances – and you have created a society which is equally poor. And to keep them equally poor…because there are people who are creative, and if the government pressure is removed, soon you will see, within four years, there will be richer people and there will be poor people in Russia.For seventy years they have been repressing and within four years all their repression will be gone: the rich will be rich and the poor will be poor…. Because richness is also an art. For example, you can see in America – before three hundred years ago, American Indians had lived for millions of years, poor. The same country, the same land, the same potentiality of the country, and for millions of years they have been the most poor on the earth.And then three hundred years ago, as Columbus discovered America and the people from the West reached there, America became the richest country. Strange! The American Indians could not make anything out of America, and these people made it the richest country in the whole history.So there are people…and there is an art how to create wealth. Russia is poor, and it will remain poor because it is not allowing its creative people, who can manage, to create wealth. It is repressing them and keeping them equal.In my conception we can, for the first time, manage anarchism and communism both together. Just remove currency within the commune, and without any enforcement, without forcing people to be equal, we have brought a classless society. They will remain unequal; they will remain unique; they will remain themselves. And the commune’s function is to fulfill their needs. Their needs are different: somebody who plays on a flute needs a flute, and somebody who wants to play on a guitar needs a guitar.In every dimension people should remain themselves, but the dignity of humanity will be equal because they have equal opportunity – and no government, because government is not needed.There can be only a functional organization, just like the post office. Nobody knows who is the head postmaster of India – there is no need and the post office is working perfectly well. It is a functional organization. The railways – now, who knows who is the chief of the board of the railways? It is a functional organization. So we can have functional organizations without having any government.There will be no need for any visas for anybody to come for as long as he wants to stay; there will be no need for any passport. At least we can create one place in the world where no nationality is recognized, no religion is recognized, no political boundaries are recognized. And perhaps that may give the idea to other people, that it is possible – and these are the same human beings, they have come from us. Just an absolutely clear-cut model is needed.So there is no need to be worried. It is only a question of a few weeks…. And soon we will have our own place, and I will call all my people to start working. And we can absorb as many people as we want, because we are not thinking of making houses, we are thinking of making houseboats. Then the ocean is unlimited; then there is no problem about it. Why bother about land? Just a small piece of land will be enough for the functional things – the hotel, the airport. Otherwise we can go on spreading on the ocean.And about the ocean the laws are such that around any island or land, two hundred miles of ocean is yours. So around the island for two hundred miles we can spread as much as…. And it will be a more mobile society. All those boats can move, all those houses can move. It will be more alive; it will not be a dead society, fixed, where everything remains where it is.Man has not tried to live…otherwise water can be a far more beautiful place to live. Freedom to move – otherwise you become attached to the house, to the land. And I know of methods in Japan: they float gardens on the water. They mix straw with earth and float it, and then you can put any seeds on it; you can have roses and you can have all kinds of flowers. Japan has tried floating gardens for thousands of years; it is a perfect science.And we have our sannyasins who can come and make floating gardens all around, so you don’t miss anything. One sannyasin has reported that one of his friends, a scientist, has made a house under water, fully air-conditioned with everything palatial, and on top he has made a beautiful garden. So you see only the garden; the house is underwater. And from the garden is the door to enter into the house. And he has found a special glue to mix with cement so that water cannot disturb it.And he has succeeded in it. He has made it – it is now a successful experiment. We can call that man and we can give him all the opportunity to make houses underwater. An underwater house has a totally different beauty. You can make it in glass all around. Just as you can see the sky, you can see the ocean and the fish. And they are so colorful and they have such a beauty. Many of them have their own torches. In the night it is a procession of torches – those fishes flash light.I have been reading about one man who has made a small experiment, which is successful, so that houses…. If the earth is shrinking because of the population…he has made houses in the air. It used to be just a proverb, “Castles in the air,” things to be rejected; but now he is ready to make real castles in the air. Just a big balloon, and inside you can make a whole city – and it will be floating. You can direct it in any direction, and you can send people from it to the earth.Just, people remain orthodox about everything, so whatsoever has been done, they go on doing it. My hope is that in our commune we will try everything new; and drop the whole idea of how people have lived. And we will start not only on the economic, the psychological, the spiritual, but on the physical – on everything…fresh and new, and make it a model for the whole universe. You will have so many tourists that it will be enough to feed your whole commune.And these Japanese who float pieces of earth on the ocean, on the river, on the lake – they grow flowers; they can grow food also. It is only a question of accepting the unknown and exploring it.So no sannyasin has to be worried about it. Within a month we will have our place, and within a year people will start coming. And my idea is: perhaps on earth we cannot make a commune of one hundred thousand sannyasins, but on the ocean we can. And we are going to do it!Osho,Can you say something to us to help us remember you as our friend, and not get caught up in our conditioning which tries to make you an authority figure?Everything that I am saying to you is the answer to your question. Why the fear? – I am not an authoritarian figure. I don’t claim to be the only begotten son of God, an incarnation of God, a messiah, a prophet. How can you make me an authoritarian figure?These people who have become authoritarian figures – they themselves were responsible; nobody made them. In fact the whole of Judea was trying to convince Jesus Christ: “You are not the only son of God – drop this nonsense!” But he was insistent. He was so insistent that they got fed up with the man and crucified him.All these people were trying to become authoritarian figures. But a small distinction has to be understood: to be an authoritarian figure is one thing, and to be an authority is a different thing.The authoritarian says, “Whatever I say, you believe, because it comes directly from God and I have a direct communication line – which you don’t have. It is none of your business to doubt. Doubt will be punished – faith will be rewarded.”But to be an authority is a totally different thing. It means that whatever I am saying, I am saying on my own authority; it is not within quotation marks. It is not that I am representing God, that I am representing Jesus Christ, or Krishna, or Buddha. It is not that I am simply a successor to any authority figure.To be an authority simply means that it is my own experience, and I am speaking out of my own authority. It does not require you to believe, it requires you to inquire. But I can say authoritatively that you will find it, because I have found it. There is no reason why you cannot find it.So anybody who speaks on his own experience is an authority, but he is not an authority figure. He is not authoritarian; he is simply an authority. You can doubt what I say – you will not be punished. You can believe what I say – you will not be rewarded. All that you have to do is to inquire and follow the path and find it out yourself. One thing is certain, that when I am saying it to you, it is not borrowed, it is my own experience.Osho,Will you describe for us what your daily life is like?It is the same as it has always been! – and it will be the same always. I never miss anything. Even in jail I enjoyed it; although it was absolutely a different world. In twelve days I took only one shower! – and that too because Vivek persisted. She used to meet me in court and her only insistence was, “You should take a shower!”And I told her, “I am enjoying resting in my bed twenty-four hours a day. And when I come out I can take a good shower for all the twelve days – don’t be worried!”In the jail they were asking me…because as I was being moved from one jail to another the press would ask many questions. One question was: “How are you feeling?”I said, “Great – as I have always felt.”They said, “This is a jail!”I said, “This may be a jail but you cannot imprison me. Yes, my hands are chained, my legs are chained, but that does not imprison me; I am simply watching the whole scene. And for years I have not rested twenty-four hours a day with closed eyes.”Even the inmates would come and say, “Bhagwan, are you sick or something?”“I am not sick, I am really feeling very good!”And exactly that’s what happened: when I left the jail the jailer told me, “You are the first person in my life who is leaving jail better than he had come in! You look so rested.”I said, “What else to do in a jail!” And this is my whole philosophy: to make the best out of the worst.Osho,Indian people particularly ask the question again and again, that just as you have dropped the religion of Rajneeshism – freed the sannyasins from the mala and red clothes – are you one day going to drop the title of “Bhagwan” too? It prevents many people from coming to you.It has been raised in many articles and many books written against me, so it is good to go into it in a little detail.First, “Bhagwan” is not a title. Nobody can give that title. Nor is “Bhagwan” a degree, that you can pass an examination and the degree can be conferred on you. Nor is “Bhagwan” some position that can be appointed by a committee or by some people. Nor is “Bhagwan” an elected post, that you fight an election and whosoever has the majority of votes becomes Bhagwan.The critics who have been writing against me, they have always made it a point that I am “self-appointed” Bhagwan. And I have always wondered, do they have anybody – Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Mohammed – appointed by somebody else?If Rama is appointed by somebody else as Bhagwan, then certainly the appointing authority is higher – and if you can be appointed, you can be dis-appointed too.This is absolutely stupid! Basically, they have not understood the idea: “Bhagwan” is a state of experience – nothing to do with an appointment, an election, a title or degree. It is the experience of bhagwata, of godliness, that the whole existence is full of godliness, that there is nothing other than godliness.There is no God, but in every flower and in every tree, in every stone, there is something which can only be called godliness. But you can see it only when you have seen it within yourself; otherwise you don’t know the language.“Bhagwan” is simply a state of being, the highest state of being; you cannot go beyond it.The second confusion in the critics has been because they don’t understand that in India there are three religions. Hinduism uses “Bhagwan” for God. Buddhism uses “Bhagwan” for godliness, Jainism uses “Bhagwan” for godliness – they don’t have any God, both the religions are godless.But Buddhists for centuries have been calling Gautam Buddha “Bhagwan,” and Jainas have been calling Mahavira “Bhagwan.” And very strange – nobody has objected that “you don’t have a god in your philosophy, then how can you call Buddha a god, or Mahavira a god? It has not been raised because neither Buddha nor Mahavira ever claimed themselves to be God; they simply said that they have experienced godliness.Now, it is a state – and even if I want to drop it, I cannot drop it. It is me.I dissolved the organization that was becoming a religion. I allowed my sannyasins the freedom to choose their clothes, to have a mala or not to have a mala; and now it is more beautiful. If you have a mala, it is your choice; if you are using red clothes, it is your choice. It is nothing imposed on you, it is not against your will.It was easy to drop the organization because I have always been against organizations. It was created while I was in silence, it was not created by me. I told you to burn the book of Rajneeshism because it was not written by me; I have never written anything.It was in my silence that people collected my sayings from here and there according to their understanding, and mixed them with their own ideas to create something equal to other religions’ holy books.I told you to burn all the books.Red clothes don’t mean anything – they were used as a device. I wanted my people to be courageous enough to stand in society – aloof, alone. I had given them the mala so that they become associated with me, they become associated with all my ideas, which are against all religions, all political ideologies. That point has been made. Now my sannyasins are around the world.It is perfectly easy to drop the color, the mala – there is no problem. Now you have to be more…I have not made things easier for you, remember – I have made things difficult. Now only meditation remains for you.And now, only through meditation will you be recognized as sannyasins.Meditation has to change you so much that you become a different species, that even in a crowd my sannyasins can be picked out. They will have a radiation of their own, a silence of their own, a peace of their own. Their eyes will show it, their bodies will show it, their gestures will show it.Meditation I cannot drop because that is what is going to transform you and bring you one day to bhagwata, godliness. Meditation is the way to godliness.It is impossible for me to drop “Bhagwan.” If it was a title it would be very easy to drop it. If it was anything other than an experience, an existential state, it would be possible to drop it. It is impossible to drop it because now there is no distinction between me and it, so who is going to drop whom?Secondly, even if it was possible to drop, I would not drop it. In your question you say, “because many people are prevented because of it.” That is the reason why I will not drop it: I don’t want those people to come to me who cannot come to me just because of a word. And for what do they need to come to me? In India there are nine hundred million people who are not Bhagwan – they can go to them.Why do they come, or think of coming, to me? It is strange that they can go anywhere – everywhere they will find millions of people who are not Bhagwan and they can enjoy meeting them. If they want to meet me, they want to meet me because of “Bhagwan.”But their ego is hurt. I will not drop it because I want them to understand that it is their ego that is hurt. If they want to come; they will have to drop their ego.They will have to drop their ego. I have not to change myself for them to come to me – they will have to change themselves if they want to come to me. I don’t need them to come to me, I have no necessity. It is their desire to come to me, so they should pay for it.It is a very strange demand, that I should change myself because they want to meet me; they should change themselves if they want to meet me.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What do you have to say about darkness?I have much to say about darkness, because nobody has taken notice of the mystery that darkness is.Much has been said about light, almost nothing about darkness. But darkness is a much deeper phenomenon than light is. Light comes and goes – darkness remains; it never comes, it never goes. Light is not eternal, because it needs fuel, some kind of fuel, and the fuel will be exhausted sooner or later. Darkness needs no fuel, no cause; hence darkness is not an effect and can remain eternally there.In the morning, you see the sun arises and there is light; in the evening the sun sets, the light disappears, and suddenly all over there is darkness. It does not mean that when the sun disappears, darkness comes in. It has been there all the time; just because of the light you could not see it. How can one see darkness while light is there? The light prevented your vision.So anytime just close your eyes and darkness is there. Anytime just blow out the candle and darkness is there.Gautam Buddha is perhaps the only man who, for the ultimate state of consciousness, has chosen a word which can be interpreted as darkness; otherwise all the religions have talked about light, forgetting completely that light is not eternal, and if you are light, you are also not eternal. Light is dependent on something, it is caused by something.Gautam Buddha has called his ultimate state of being, nirvana. Even Buddhists have not thought of it as darkness, because the very word produces bad associations in us. But nirvana means exactly “darkness”; literally it means blowing out the candle. So for twenty-five centuries Buddhists have been using the literal meaning “blowing out the candle.” But what does it mean? Blowing out the candle, what remains then? Eternal, deathless, abysmal darkness.Feeling yourself full of light may be again an ego trip. Feeling yourself identified with light, you may be simply changing your identity – but the ego remains. But blowing out the candle is blowing away the ego; and the vast darkness is bound to create in you a similar vastness of humility, humbleness, egolessness. So I love the word.I always see light as a disturbance, and darkness as silence. But centuries of continuously fearing darkness…because it became associated with the time when man was living in jungles. The night was the most dangerous time. In the day somehow he managed to protect himself from the wild animals; he managed to kill them for his own food. But in the night he was absolutely helpless. Darkness all around, he was a victim. Any animal was capable of destroying him. In the day he could have managed to escape, to climb a tree or do something, but in darkness he was simply in the hands of wild death. So it was very easy to get a deep association between darkness and death.All the religions depict death as darkness and life as light. It is simply the experience of man in the past when he lived in the jungles. That experience has molded his language, given it meanings. And he has not yet been able to clean those words again – because now he is not living in jungles, but still there is a certain reason why he continues to be afraid of darkness.When there is light you are not alone, you can see everybody else. If suddenly the light goes off, the others may be there still, may not be; one thing is certain, you feel lonely. You are no more associated with the crowd. The crowd gives you a certain security, safety, a certain warmth, and you feel that you are not alone. Any danger – so many people are with you. But in darkness suddenly you are lonely, nobody is with you.And man has not learned yet to know the beauties of his loneliness. He is always hankering for some relationship, to be with someone – with a friend, with a father, with a wife, with a husband, with a child…with someone.He has created societies, he has created clubs – the Lion’s Club, the Rotary Club. He has created parties – political, ideological. He has created religions, churches. But the basic need of all is to forget somehow that you are alone. Being associated with so many crowds, you are trying to forget something which in darkness suddenly is remembered – that you were born alone, that you will die alone, that whatever you do, you live alone. Aloneness is something so essential to your being, there is no way to avoid it.You can befool yourself and deceive yourself; you can pretend that you are not alone – you have a wife, you have children, you have friends – but it is all pretension. You know and everybody knows that the wife is alone as much as you are alone, and two alonenesses joined together do not change the situation; instead they make it worse.As I see it, why lovers are continuously fighting – there may be thousand other reasons, but those reasons are superficial. The basic reason is that they had chosen the other as a beloved, as a lover, to destroy their loneliness – and it has not happened. On the contrary, the presence of the other makes them more aware of their loneliness.I used to have a very rich friend – he had a beautiful wife, children…all that one needs, perfectly comfortable, so much so that when I asked him, “Now you are fifty, and you have enough money – retire from the businesses,” he did not hesitate for a single moment. He just informed people that he is no more an active participant in any businesses, he has retired.I was going to Mount Abu; I told him, “It is a beautiful place – “sometime you and your wife should go there. And now you are retired, you have enough time. Be there for a few weeks or months.”He said, “You are right, we have time, but you don’t know what you have done to me. I was also thinking that when I am retired I will feel relaxed for the first time in my life. My father died when I was young, and since then I have been working continuously, becoming richer and richer. And I had a hope that one day I will retire and relax and will not have any worries of the world. And when you told me, ‘Now it is time – you have enough…. What more do you need? Your girls are married, you don’t have a son – for whom are you earning now? You may live twenty years, thirty years – for that you have too much. You could live with what you have for three hundred years. You retire!’”He said, “I understood, because I have been deep down always hoping to retire, and when it came from you, I said, ‘This is the moment to take the jump.’ But you have created a trouble; now I am lonely. I have never felt it before. And I am so utterly lonely that I am angry at you. How can I relax in such loneliness? And if this loneliness continues, I don’t think I can survive twenty or thirty years. It is becoming colder and colder, and darker and darker. And I am feeling absolutely cut off from the world.”“But,” I said, “you have your wife.”He said, “That is another trouble. I had never felt so lonely in her presence as I feel now. I was so busy in my businesses that I would come home late and she was always quarreling, nagging, asking for this and asking for that. There was no time to feel each other. Now the whole day I am sitting at home, and when I see her I know: just as I am alone, she is alone. And two alonenesses do not help in any way; on the contrary they make each other more clear.”He said, “I will come to Mount Abu, but I would like some friend to be with us; otherwise three weeks or three months, just living with my wife” – and he loved the woman – “will be too much, intolerable.”I realized his situation and I told him, “Now, you have listened to my first advice which has created the trouble for you; but it has not created the trouble – the trouble was already there. Your businesses were just keeping you occupied so you were not aware of it – now you are aware of it. Now take my other advice: go deeper into it rather than escaping. It is your reality – there is no way to escape from it.“It is just like your shadow – the faster you run, the faster your shadow runs. Wherever you go, the shadow goes. It is simply stupid to fight with the shadow. Rather, sit silently and let the whole feel of being alone envelop you. In the beginning it may be fearsome. You may feel you are falling into an abysmal depth. It will be dark, and you may feel that it may become darker if you go deeper into it.“But I say from my own experience that the more you know it, the more you love it. It is your privacy, it is your individuality. It is something which cannot be trespassed by anyone. It is your privilege. And there is nothing wrong in being alone.“But never use the word lonely because lonely automatically suggests the need for somebody else. Lonely is a sick word. Use the word alone; alone has a health of its own.” I told the man, “And if you can do that then there is no need for any other meditation, this will be your meditation – just be alone. Even in the crowd remember that you are alone, don’t forget it. Your whole life you have tried to forget it; now remember it.”The man was immensely courageous. He tried it – he succeeded, and he was immensely grateful to me…because the moment you feel you are absolutely alone, that is the time you start feeling that you are not the body, it is only a cover; that you are not the mind, it is only a mechanism; that you are not even the heart – that too is a mechanism of a different sort for different purposes.Behind all these layers there is a space, crystal clear – nobody else has ever passed through it; its purity is absolute. To enter that space is to enter in meditation. Feeling that aloneness, you will feel the whole existence is alone.There is no God – that was the need of the lonely people. Those who have tasted aloneness have discarded God, hell, heaven, and every other nonsense. You are alone, the whole existence is alone: aloneness is the only reality.Yes, it is immensely dark, but darkness has a silence and darkness has a depth. And darkness has peace, and darkness takes away all your knowledge, takes away everything that you thought belonged to you. It leads you absolutely into the unknown and into the mysterious. So to me, darkness is one of the greatest mysteries in existence – far greater than light.And those who are afraid of darkness will never be able to enter into their own being. They will go round and round, they will never reach themselves.And it has to be darkness, not light, because light comes and goes; once you have discovered the spot of darkness in you, you have discovered something that is eternal, something indestructible, something which is more than what you know of life. It is the basic substance existence is made of. But they are just two names of one thing – aloneness or darkness.Osho,More than anything else I want your vision to happen. When I am not with you, and I am out in the world, alone, what part can I play in helping your vision to happen?Just be yourself, utterly yourself.And never think in terms of how you can help my vision to happen in the world, because that’s what makes a missionary – and I am against missionaries. They are the poisoners. Their intention is good, they want to spread something which they feel is immensely valuable, but a missionary does not know that what he is trying to spread is not his own experience.So I would like to make it clear that you just be yourself, and that will be the way of spreading my message to people, because that’s my message – to be yourself authentically, sincerely. It is not a question of saying something to somebody; it is a question of being somebody in a way that the vision radiates from you…that the people feel that something has happened to you that has not happened to them…that there is something in you that they are missing…that you are full and they are empty…that you can give and yet you will not be losing anything. And they are only beggars; they cannot give, they can only take. And whatsoever they take also disappears soon because it is not their own.I would not like my people to be like Christian missionaries.I was in an American jail one morning…the jailer must have been a very fanatic Christian, and he came with a Bible, thinking that I am a religious man. And he said, “I would like to pray for you and I would like to present God’s word to you.” And before I could say anything, he started praying for me loudly, with closed eyes: “Jesus loves Bhagwan, Jesus will help Bhagwan. Jesus will save Bhagwan.”I said, “Wait! You have gone too far!”He opened his eyes; and he said, “Have I said anything wrong?”I said, “Everything wrong…because Jesus could not save himself! And you are putting everything wrong: ‘Jesus loves Bhagwan.’ That’s not right. Put it: ‘Bhagwan loves Jesus, and Bhagwan will save Jesus.’”He said, “I have prayed for many prisoners – what are you saying? You are in jail, you need to be saved.”I said, “I am not in any difficulty. This whole world is a jail, so what difference does it make whether you are outside or inside? And you don’t understand anything of religiousness – you did not even ask my permission to pray for me.“A prayer is trespassing my being. And to whom are you praying? I don’t have any god, so all your prayers are just stupid. And I don’t think that Jesus or anybody else can save anybody else. It is enough if you can save yourself. Without asking me you started praying! And who told you that this book is the word of God?”He said, “It is written in the book itself.”I said, “But it is written in so many other books too. It is written in the Vedas, and Hindus believe the Vedas are written by God. It is written in the Gita because Hindus believe it is spoken by the perfect incarnation of God himself. Mohammedans believe the Koran is the word of God.“What criterion have you got to choose which one is right? And I can write a book in which I can say, ‘These are the words spoken by God.’ Just because it’s printed, will you believe it?”He was silent for a moment, and then he said, “I will think it over and I will come back to you. Because I used to think…I am a missionary and I always have five hundred prisoners in the jail, changing every day. So I have been preaching and helping them becoming real Christians.”I said, “Are you a real Christian? Was Jesus Christ himself a real Christian? What do you mean by ‘real Christian’? Jesus never behaved like a Christian. He was a very angry man. He teaches to love your enemy – and he curses a fig tree which is out of season. And it is not the fault of fig tree that it has no fruits! And he curses it in a very ugly way because it has not welcomed him and his disciples with fruits.“Now, what can the fig tree do about it? And this man you think is a Christian, and this man you think can love his enemies! He cannot even be loving to a fig tree which has not done any harm to anybody. And the fruits come only in the season and it is not the season, so it is not the tree’s fault. This man is insane!“And you are spreading his word. Have you tried to live his word? That would be the right way – live it! When somebody hits you on one cheek, give him the other cheek. Should I try,” I asked him, “hitting you on one cheek, and will you give me the other cheek? And I would like to do it before all five hundred prisoners.”He said, “You are a dangerous man!”I said, “I am not a dangerous man, I am simply saying that to be a missionary is something ugly. You are trying to interfere in somebody’s being, his thought processes, his existence, without ever trying all that you want others to be on yourself. And my feeling is, if you try it on yourself, there is no need to spread it – it will spread on its own.”So I would like to say: Just be yourself. Be meditative, be loving, be human, be respectful, be accepting of everybody; don’t be judgmental. And something will start radiating from you, and that will be my word. And it will not be just an empty word, it will be full of meaning and full of fragrance.Osho,When I am far away from you, I often feel very close. And when I see you again, I am sometimes startled to find us almost strangers. How can this be?It is very simple to feel close when you are far away, because then I am not present to you; it is only your own imagination about me. And naturally you are very close to your imagination, and you can make that imagination the way you want. You can make it according to your ideas – it is your imagination – and you are bound to be very close.But when you come to me, you will have to drop your imagination. And the moment you drop your imagination immediately the second feeling will arise: “Perhaps we are strangers.” You were not a stranger to your imagination; it was yours. To me you are a stranger. We are all strangers to each other.We try in every way to drop this strangeness; that’s how we have created all kinds of rituals. One man gets married to a woman…. What is marriage? – just a ritual. But why? – because they want to drop that strangeness and somehow create a bridge. The bridge is never created; they only imagine…now that one is husband, the other is wife. But they remain strangers. Their whole life they will live together but they will not be anything else than strangers, because nobody can penetrate into the other’s aloneness.You can be not a stranger only if you can penetrate into my aloneness or I can penetrate into your aloneness – which is not possible, not existentially possible. We can come as close as possible; but the closer we come, the more we will become aware of the strangeness, because the better we will be able to see, that “The other is unknown to me – and perhaps unknowable.”It is a known fact: you fall in love with a man; you don’t fall in love with the real man, you fall in love with the man of your imagination. And while you are not together, and you see the man from your balcony, or you meet the man on the sea beach for a few minutes, or you hold hands in a movie, you start feeling, “We are made for each other.”But nobody is made for each other. You go on putting more and more imagination on the man – unconsciously. You create a certain aura around the man; he creates a certain aura around you. Everything seems to be beautiful because you are making it beautiful, because you are dreaming it, avoiding the reality. And you both are trying in every possible way not to disturb the other’s imagination.So the woman is behaving the way the man wants her to behave; the man is behaving the way the woman wants him to behave. But this you can do only for few minutes or few hours at the most. Once you get married and you have to live together twenty-four hours a day, it becomes a heavy burden to go on pretending something that you are not.Just to fulfill the imagination of the man or the woman, how long can you go on acting? Sooner or later it becomes a burden and you start taking revenge. You start destroying all that imagination that the man has created around you because you don’t want to be imprisoned in it; you want to be free and just yourself.And the same is the situation with the man: he wants to be free and just himself. And this is the constant conflict between all lovers, all relations.The reality is, we are alone, we are strangers, and the world will be far better if we accept the basic truth that we are strangers.And what is wrong in falling in love with a stranger? What is the need that before you fall in love with a stranger, the strangeness should be destroyed? His caste should be known, his nationality should be known, his religion should be known, his astrology should be known – when he was born, the date of birth, the time of his birth. All these are efforts to destroy the strangeness, and to create some kind of illusion that you are not strangers.But no illusion can stand against reality. The reality is going to crush it sooner or later.So remember: away, you can think about me the way you want, because my reality is not going to give any trouble to you – your imagination is free. But when you are with me, then you have to put your imagination away, and without imagination, immediately we are strangers.We may have known each other’s name, we may have seen each other’s face many times – that does not matter. Our beings are so hidden and so deep that there is no way that I can touch anybody’s being, or can see anybody’s being – and that is where the whole strangeness is. But I don’t feel that it is a catastrophe; on the contrary I feel it is a blessing.If we were not strangers we would have been just robots, just machines. Our strangeness gives us individuality, uniqueness. And because it is impenetrable it gives you your strength, your dignity.But humanity has lived with illusions of all kinds in every sphere.My effort is to help you to live without illusions, to live with reality as it is.Then you will not be frustrated, then you will not be miserable, then you will not be tense and worried, because you had from the very beginning accepted the fact that everybody is a stranger.The society does not like strangers. The society wants everybody to be just like everybody else, because the society is afraid of the stranger. Even people casually meeting – for example in a train.I was traveling for twenty years continuously; once in a while there was another passenger in the coupe. The first thing the person will start asking, “What is your name, where are you coming from, where are you going, what is your business?” I was surprised: why should one bother about these things? So I started…before the person will ask. I will enter, I will say, “This is my name and this is my father’s name and this is my father’s father’s name, and this is my business, and this is where I am coming from and this is where I am going…” And the man will feel a little afraid.He will say, “But why you are telling me?”I will say, “Because you will ask sooner or later. Let it be finished. Have you any more questions? – because after this I am going to remain silent. For twenty-four hours we will be together, so I have said everything that you wanted to know.”And then I will be silent, just watching the man. And it would be such a beautiful experience! He will be fidgety, tossing and turning, opening the suitcase – for no reason. He would know, I would know, that there is no reason. Then closing it, then trying to read a book – which he is not reading, just looking. Then putting it away, then calling the servant, then going to the bathroom, then coming up….Just something is disturbing him: a very strange man has entered. You had not asked his name, and he tells all the names of his fathers and grandfathers and what they did and how many brothers they have and how many brothers he has and how many sisters, and who is married and who is not married….The stranger has become more strange by this introduction. And now he is sitting silently watching you and you have to do something; otherwise it looks stupid – just sitting there and…. I would go out and tell the conductor, “Soon that other person will call you and say that he wants to change the seat to another compartment. You have to tell him that no seat is vacant.”And I was traveling so much that almost all conductors knew me. They said, “But why again and again do you disturb people so much? Now we know that for twenty-four hours he is in trouble. He cannot sleep, he cannot sit, he cannot do anything!”I said, “Let him learn something.” And actually that is what he will do. He will ring the bell, call the conductor, and tell him that he wants to change the room. And the conductor will say, “There is no other seat vacant, this is the only seat. But why do you want to change?” That he cannot say: why he wants to change.“Has the other passenger disturbed you? Or has he done anything to you, touched your body or anything?”He said, “He has not done anything, but just to be here feels very strange.”People meeting each other try to make some bridges; otherwise it is difficult.Once it happened in Bombay, I entered the compartment – one man was there already and he saw that hundreds of people had come to see me off, so I must be a Hindu saint, because those people outside all look like Hindus. So he simply fell at my feet.I helped him to stand up and I said, “You have done something wrong. I am a Mohammedan.”He said, “Mohammedan? And I have touched your feet!”I said, “You didn’t give me any chance – you immediately jumped and touched my feet!”“No,” he said. “No, you are not a Mohammedan, you must be joking!”“Why should I be joking? Do you think religion is a joke? It is not a joke, it is a serious affair. This is a serious affair.”He said, “But the people who had come to see you were all Hindus.”I said, “Yes, I have a great Hindu following too. But you can see my face is Mohammedan.”He said, “Perhaps. But now I will have to take a bath, because I am a brahmin, Bengali brahmin; and I have not even touched a Mohammedan in my life – and I have touched your feet!”I said, “If a bath is needed, you take a bath.” And he took a bath and he came out. And I said, “I was just joking! – I am really a Hindu saint. But what kind of brahmin are you that you cannot recognize a Hindu saint?” And he touched my feet again, and I told him, “Now you will have to take the bath again!”And the man said, “You will drive me crazy. Why don’t you say who you really are?”I said, “Really if you ask, I don’t know, because when I was born I had not come with any identification – whether I am Hindu or Mohammedan or Christian – so as far as reality is concerned, I don’t know. But as far as social conditionings are concerned, I am a Mohammedan.” And it was a cold night, and he had to go and take another bath!And the conductor came to me and said, “This is too much! That man will die. You will have to keep him taking baths the whole night….”And I said, “I will not keep him, I will do many other things. But why, in the first place, should he bother to touch my feet? – I had not asked him.”And he came back, repeating a mantra and trying to avoid looking at me. I said, “Don’t avoid! I had to force you to take two baths, because I allow people only to touch my feet after two baths. I am not an ordinary saint.”He said, “My God! Then why did you not tell me before? I would have taken two baths before and would not have gone into such agony that I had been touching the feet of a Mohammedan!”I said, “Now you can touch them.” But he was hesitant. I said, “If you are hesitant, don’t touch because it is a question of faith. If you have real faith, and you are a real brahmin, only then can you touch.”He said, “I am a real brahmin and I have faith, and I had faith in you from the very beginning; I had touched your feet, and I am going to touch – and he touched my feet.And I laughed. He said, “Why are you laughing?”I said, “Don’t ask; otherwise you will have to take a third bath, and the night is too cold. You just cover yourself with a blanket and go to sleep.”He said, “You will kill me!”I said, “I am not doing anything; I am simply sitting here. It is you who are doing all these things – touching my feet, taking a bath. Why are you bothered with me?”I have experienced thousands of times that people are trying to figure out who you are. That gives them a certain kind of solace that you are not a stranger: you are a Hindu, you are a Mohammedan, you are a brahmin…. That gives a certain consolation that something is known about you. But the reality is that nobody is a brahmin, and nobody is a Mohammedan, nobody is a Hindu. And it is not that I am a stranger to you; everybody is a stranger to everybody else.It is our imagination that creates all kinds of ideas about people. Sooner or later they are disturbed. Against the reality, they cannot stand.So your question is exactly the description of reality. Far away you can feel me very close, very much known, because that is just the figment of your imagination. Close to me it is impossible. You will have to be absolutely certain that all imagination is dropped and you look at me, whatever the case – whether it turns out to be a stranger…. It is going to turn out to be a stranger.But my experience is, it is one of the beauties of life that we are all strangers and there is no way to change this reality. It is beautiful to have strangers love you, to have strangers your friends, to have strangers all around the world. Then the whole world becomes a mystery – it is a mystery. Our mind is continuously trying to demystify it, but the mind cannot succeed. Against reality there is no way to succeed. And it is good that the mind’s failure is recognized, so even when you are far away, you don’t allow your imagination and mind to play games with you. You don’t start dreaming, you remain clear that strangeness is nature. All that we can do is apply labels.There was one very famous man in India, Mahatma Bhagwandin. There were only two people in India who were called mahatmas; Gandhi and Bhagwandin. Mahatma means the great soul.He loved me very much. He used to stay with me whenever he passed my town. He was a very knowledgeable man. He was very old, must be seventy-five, eighty…very knowledgeable – a great scholar in many ways about strange things you would never think….I would take him for a morning walk, and he would start describing every flower – its name, its Latin name, its qualities, its medicinal use…anything. And he was so full of all these things that he would destroy my morning walk.So I told him, “Do you think by knowing the Latin name of the flower you know the flower? Do you think by knowing its medicinal use you know the flower? Do you think a poet looking at this flower will think of the Latin name and its medicinal use? Do you think a painter looking at this flower will think of anything other than colors? And even if you know the Latin name and you know the colors, and you know the medicinal use and you know everything possible about the flower, still the flower remains an unknown reality; it is mysterious.“Just its being there is mysterious. Its fragrance is mysterious. Why it exists, why existence needs it, we don’t know. There must be some necessity it fulfills; without it, existence will be a little less, incomplete. We can never know the relationship of the flower with existence, and that is its reality. That will always remain a strange phenomenon. But why not leave it as strange?”It is said that once Picasso was painting on the seashore. For two hours a man was watching him paint – two hours is a long time to watch somebody paint. Finally he ran out of patience; he asked Picasso, “I did not mean to disturb you – for two hours I have been waiting for the moment when you will put the brush down for a moment, and I can ask just one question: ‘What is it that you are painting?’ In two hours I have not been able to figure it out.”Picasso said, “This is strange! Nobody asks nature, ‘Why did you make these mountains, why did you make this ocean? What does it mean? Why do you go on making so many birds, so many flowers, so many people? What it is all about?’ And I am a poor painter – just on a small canvas I am doing my own thing, and the whole world is on my head asking, ‘What does it mean?’ Why should it mean anything?”The man said, “I did not want to offend you.”Picasso said, “I don’t feel offended, I simply feel that people think everything has a meaning, everything has to be known. I don’t know what it is, but I loved painting it. I still don’t know what it is, but I am immensely happy that I have painted it. It was within me for days; all these colors that I have spread on the canvas have been in me. I don’t know why, but I don’t want to know either.”And that is a significant point to understand: why should we be concerned about knowing each other?When I was in the university they used to have ‘Getting-to-know-you’ meetings once or twice a year. I never went there. The vice-chancellor said to me, “You never come to the ‘Getting-to-know-you’ meetings.” I said, “Because one thing is certain for me, that nothing can be known. So all that nonsense that you call ‘Getting-to-know-you’ is just a waste of time. I go into the hills, I go to the river – which is far better. What is this need to know each other? What are you going to know?”In this sense I respect the poets, the painters, the musicians, the dancers. You cannot ask a dancer, “What does it mean?” You can enjoy it, you can love it, you may start dancing with him, but you cannot ask, “What does it mean?”It remains a mystery, and the best in art, the best in music, the best in literature, the best in philosophy, the best in religion – all are mysteries.And I want to bring to my sannyasins all of life’s mysteries.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,You are at once such an incredible strength and sweetness seeping through me. Why do I feel there is a need to protect you?It is one of the fundamental laws of life that everything that is higher is very vulnerable. The roots of a tree are very strong, but not the flowers. The flowers are very vulnerable – just a strong breeze and the flower may be destroyed.The same is true about human consciousness. Hate is very strong, but love is not. Love is just like a flower – easily crushed by any stone, destroyed by any animal. And as you reach higher into consciousness, the ultimate blossoming which we call enlightenment is the most vulnerable thing in the whole of existence.So you will feel love, you will feel my compassion, and you will feel behind each of my words and gestures, strength. That strength is coming because whatever I am saying and whatever I am, it is my own experience. I am my own authority; I am not within quotation marks.The strength that you feel is the strength of truth.The flower dancing in the wind does not look weak. In the sun, in the rain, it looks immensely strong. So these two sides which seem contradictory to each other are not contradictory to each other. The strength comes to the flower because it has roots in the earth, its own roots. The strength comes to the flower because the juice that is flowing in it is its own juice. The flower has not borrowed it from anybody, it is authentically itself.And it can dance in the wind, in the rain, in the sun; but on the other hand, because the flower is the highest expression of the tree, it is vulnerable. Even with all its strength, you can destroy it very easily.Just imagine Socrates speaking to the people of Athens. His strength behind each word is tremendous: a man alone against the whole world. But there is no weakness. He is not afraid. Even the judges are affected by the strength, because anybody who is speaking a borrowed truth cannot have such authority.To the chief judge Socrates says, “You can kill me, but remember one thing: your name will be remembered in history for just one thing – that you decided to kill Socrates; otherwise you have nothing to contribute. And all these judges and all these people who are going to decide about me will be forgotten as if they had never existed. You can kill me, but you cannot kill my spirit.”They decided to kill him, but they were certainly impressed because they could not give any counter-argument; and whatever he said was so clear, so truthful, there was no way to put him in the wrong – he remained always in the right in court. Still, it was a democracy – truth was being decided by a majority. And the idiots who made the majority may not have even understood what Socrates was saying; it may have gone above their heads.Perhaps because of that reason itself, they decided that he should be killed by giving poison, as was the custom in Greece. They could not tolerate such a man, who was so far above them and so much higher than themselves. His beauty, his truth, his sincerity – all were making them feel inferior. He was stronger than the whole crowd that was going to decide his fate.You can see the strength. The judges were affected by the strength. They had to concede to the majority but they made a few conditions, just to help Socrates. They said, “If the majority decides to kill you by giving poison, we cannot do anything. But we can suggest a few alternatives – that is within our powers. One is that you can leave Athens and promise that you will not return.”Socrates says, “That is impossible, because wherever I am, I will be faced with the same situation.” And Athens in those days was at the peak of culture, education, civilization. Perhaps no city has ever been at such a peak. “If Athens cannot tolerate me, I don’t think there is another city which is ready to tolerate me.“If you are throwing me out, who is going to welcome me? And I don’t want to leave Athens – I love it, and I love its youth, and I love the few intelligent people in this city who have been able to understand me. I don’t care about the crowd, I care about those selected people with whom I have a certain heart-to-heart communion. No, I cannot leave Athens. That will be worse than death.”The judges said, “The second alternative is that you can remain in Athens, but you stop speaking, you stop teaching.”Socrates, for the first time in the whole trial, laughed. He said, “You are asking more and more absurd things. What is Socrates without his teaching? What is Socrates without his truth? That’s my life and my being. Please don’t try to be kind to me – death is more respectful than to concede to, and compromise with, anything that goes against my heart.” He accepted death. The alternatives were available.Certainly there is a strength, a tremendous strength in the man. But just a glass of poison kills the man, because the poison does not take any note of who you are – an idiot or a Socrates. Faced with poison he proves to be very vulnerable.So these two things are not contradictory.You feel my love, you feel my strength – it is there. I can stand against the whole world…in fact that’s what I have been doing my whole life. But those who have hearts will certainly feel my vulnerability. Just a bullet is enough. It won’t see whether it is killing an animal, an idiot, or a buddha.So the idea to protect me arises in your heart from the second possibility. All my sannyasins feel exactly the same. They feel both – they feel my strength and they feel my vulnerability. And all my sannyasins around the earth are in the same dilemma you are: “When there is so much strength in the man, what is the need for us to be worried about protecting him?”The strength is coming from one source, and the danger of destroying such a man is coming from a different source. There is no contradiction in it.And it is natural for the sannyasins to feel immensely protective towards me, for the simple reason that they know the light of a candle is strong enough to fill the whole room with light, but it is so vulnerable: just a small breeze from the window may put it out.There is no contradiction in it. Both are coming from different sources.Osho,Washing your clothes, cooking your food, helping those who come to you with questions, spreading your words to the far corners of the world, yearning from thousands of miles away for just a glimpse of you – why are these things so dear?Why is the mystery of this night sky filled with you so precious?The moment you feel something authentic in a world which is absolutely insincere; the moment you feel something as pure love in a world where even love is polluted, where you cannot find anything that is worthy for human beings…. And suddenly you come across a man who seems to be coming from another world, talking another language, showing ways to reach to faraway stars, making every effort to help you for no motivation, just because he enjoys helping people to reach the stars.Naturally to do any small thing for such a man makes you feel a great joy. What you are doing does not matter.I am reminded of an incident in Gautam Buddha’s life. His cousin-brother who was older than him wanted to be initiated, but he said to Gautam Buddha, “Listen Siddhartha” – that was his family name – “before I take initiation I want to put a few conditions on you, because once I am initiated, then I cannot say anything to you: then you are the master and I am simply a shadow. So it has to be decided before initiation because right now I am your elder brother, and you are my younger brother.” And traditionally in India the elder should be respected.So Buddha asked, “What are your conditions?”He said, “Not very big…very small. One, that I will be always with you. So you will not be able to tell me after initiation that, ‘Ananda, you go to a certain place to spread the word – travel.’ No, I am going to be with you, so you have to remember it after initiation.“This is absolute…because I want to wash your clothes, I want to take care of your body, I want to massage your feet after the whole day’s walking from one village to another. I want to take care that you are getting the right food, enough food. I want to take care that on cold nights you are not cold; that on hot days you are not in a space which is hot. Just small things…. I am not asking this for me.“Secondly, whenever I want somebody to meet you, you cannot refuse. It may be in the middle of the night…and that too is not for me, because I know there are people who come from thousands of miles with great love just to touch your feet, just to listen to a word from you, just to see you to believe that such a man really exists. I cannot refuse. Your guardians look very cruel to me.“And thirdly, whenever you are talking with somebody I will be constantly present there. Nobody can say that he wants to meet you alone. And this is also not for me, because I know that the more you become known to the world – the more you are gathering friends and lovers – you are also creating enemies.“I don’t want to leave you alone, because who knows? – the man may not be a friend. And you are so vulnerable that anybody can kill you very easily. To follow you is very difficult, to kill you is very easy; because in following you one has to kill one’s own ego – which is a difficult task – but to kill you…a fragile man, so delicate: I will not leave you alone in privacy with anybody, without exception.”When an elder brother asks these things – or anything – in India, the younger simply accepts. And a man like Buddha simply laughed. He said, “That’s perfectly okay. Your conditions are accepted.”Only once, just one time in his whole life of forty-two years with Ananda, Buddha had to ask him to relax just a little bit about one condition, because he had gone back to the palace which he had left twelve years before, and he wanted to see his wife.“And I know her – she is a very proud woman. In front of you not even a single tear will come from her eyes. And she will welcome me as if I had just gone the other day for some business. But for twelve years she must have been boiling, angry. Not that I left her…because I know her perfectly. Her anger is not that, it cannot be.“I know her quality. She comes from a warrior family where every girl is taught that one day the husband has to go to war: then tears should not come to your eyes; then you should not be a hindrance. Then you should touch his feet and help him to go completely at ease that he is not leaving behind a weeping, crying wife.“So it is not a question that I left her, the question, I know perfectly well, is that I did not say it to her, that I did not trust her. That will be her wound; and your presence will not allow her to open up whatsoever in twelve years, she has gathered about me.”Ananda said, “I can understand – and I can make an exception.”And actually that’s what happened. The moment Buddha went in to see his wife, the first thing she said was, “I am not disturbed by your search for truth – it is really my pride that my husband is a seeker of truth, that he has dedicated his whole life to it. But one thing hurts: why did you not tell me? Do you think I would have prevented you?“Do you think me so uncultured that I will prevent my own husband who is going on a pilgrimage in search of truth? That’s the only thing I cannot forgive and cannot forget. These twelve years that wound has been there, that you did not trust me. And I was worried that Ananda, your constant companion, would be with you, and I may not be able to say this – because he is not only your elder brother, he is also my elder brother because of your relationship. I could not have said it. It is very compassionate of you that you have come alone.”The day Buddha left, his son was only one day old. He was born just twenty-four hours before. The wife brought the son – now he was twelve years old – and said, “He consistently insists on seeing his father, how he looks, why the whole world is mad about him – either for or against – and why he does not come home. Now, this is your son, and I want you to give him an inheritance. What inheritance have you to give to your son?”Buddha had only his begging bowl. And he gave it to his son, whose name was Rahul, and initiated him into sannyas.His wife finally burst into tears, fell at his feet, and she said, “Only you can do it. What strength you have! You left me without saying a word, you left me with a child who was only twenty-four hours old. And now as an inheritance you are giving your begging bowl to the child! No father has done this ever. You are making him a beggar! But it makes me happy to have such a strong man.“Please initiate me also, and initiate your father also – he is old and for twelve years he has been waiting for you. He is very angry. You are his only son. Who is going to take over the throne after him? So please don’t take any note of what he says – he loves you. But he will be angry, he will shout at you.”Buddha said, “Don’t be worried about that. I know him.” And his father shouted and was very angry, and he said, “You betrayed us!”And Buddha listened silently. When his father was finished, Buddha said only one thing: “Please just look into my eyes, into my face. Do you think I am the same man who left this palace? You are angry with somebody else! And you are unnecessarily throwing all your anger on me. I am not the same man – that man is dead long ago.”The father looked at his face, in his eyes. There was great silence for a moment. Then the father said, “Certainly you are right. You have changed. You are a new man, you are completely transformed. I am on the point of death; is it possible for me also to have the same eyes you have, the same strength you have? Help me, an old man who is just going to the grave any moment.” The father was also initiated into sannyas.All the people who lived near Buddha knew his strength and at the same time they were all very protective of him. For an outsider it becomes very difficult to understand.And this has been the case with me and with you. For the outsider it becomes very difficult – almost impossible – to understand why you are so protective of me. They cannot understand; it is not their fault. They have not known in their life a man who has a strength which transcends the strongest powers in the world – and yet who is so vulnerable. Just a little poison, a bullet, a cross, and he is gone.The higher values of life have to be protected. The lower values have a certain protection of themselves. A stone need not be protected, but just by the side of it the rose in the bush has to be protected. The stone is dead, it cannot be more dead. It does not need protection.But the rose is so alive, so beautiful, so colorful, so attractive. That is the danger – it is its strength, but it is inviting danger. Somebody may pluck it. Nobody will take up the stone, but the flower can be plucked.So it is very natural – don’t feel any contradiction in it. And the people who see the contradiction, let them understand the situation. They have never come in contact in such a way with a person whom they love because of his strength; and yet because of his strength and his truth, they feel very protective because he is constantly in danger – every moment the whole world wants to destroy him.And it does not need you to take guns to protect me; just your desire to protect me is enough.The US marshal in America, in the first jail, told me, “You have been an experience for us, because the whole world seems to be protective of you! We have become enemies of the whole world. We are receiving threatening phone calls: if anything happens to you, America’s whole image will be damaged.“For us there are only threatening calls, and for you they are sending flowers and telegrams and phone calls, and all the news media are surrounding every jail, wherever you are.”They had to change jails – five jails in twelve days. It was absolutely unnecessary; every jail was the same. Why unnecessarily take me to five jails? They wanted to avoid the news media people – people who had never known me but who had come to know me for the first time – because America had illegally, undemocratically attacked an innocent man without any reason, without even an arrest warrant.In those twelve days, not a single man I came across was against me. Even the criminals in the jails were very protective. Wherever I went they were protective. They said, “We have seen you, Bhagwan, on the television, but don’t be worried about those dogs – you are going to win because they are wrong.”And this US marshal told me, “This is for the first time in my life…thousands of people from almost every country are watching what is happening to you.”Finally they decided to use a device: in the middle of the night they brought me to a jail so that nobody would know where I was. They told me that I should not write my name on their form, I should write “David Washington.”I said, “This is absolutely illegal. And you are forcing me to do something criminal. But what is the reason for it? – just so that nobody knows that I am here in this jail; so that whatever you want to do to me…. You can do any harm, you can even kill me. And there will be no trace where I disappeared because there is no entry for me – in this jail I never entered – and you can just fill out a bogus form that David Washington is released.”So I told them, “You write – I cannot write with my own hand anything illegal. You fill in the form, I will simply sign it.” He filled the form, and I signed my own name.He looked at it and said, “What is this?”I said, “It must be David Washington.” And I told him, “You should remember that this is my name and it is known worldwide. Tomorrow morning you will have to face the press: ‘Where is David Washington?’ Produce him and let him sign my signature, or produce the man who can make the signature.”Already, at five o’clock in the morning, they changed me again to another jail. I was only three or four hours in the previous jail because they understood that they had done a stupid thing; they would be caught at it. And I had told them, “Tomorrow morning it will be shown on every television.”Coming from the airport there was one young woman who was going to be released. I told her, “You just do me a little favor.”She said, “Bhagwan, I will do anything you want.”I said, “I don’t want anything – you simply sit in the corner, because they will process me first. You just listen to the whole talk and release it to the press who are waiting outside the door. The moment you are released, just tell all the television and radio and the newspapers whatever transpires in the talk between me and the marshal.”And that’s what she did. With the six o’clock news it was all over America. And they were so ashamed; the whole of America was ashamed of this bureaucracy. And strangely, people who were not concerned with me, who had not even heard my name, were immensely protective – everywhere.My feeling is that if you have something which authenticates you and makes you an embodiment of truth, people are going to be protective towards you.And certainly those who are close, they are going to be very protective, too protective. In fact Vivek had made it so difficult – I realized in these twelve days – because she has been so protective about everything, I had completely forgotten how to do anything.Even putting toothpaste on the brush I had not done for years…or changing the bed sheet, or carrying a towel to the bathroom. In twelve days I took only one shower – and that too because Vivek was continually insisting in court when she met me, “Have you taken a shower?” That was her first question.And I said, “I will take one, but it looks so strange to carry my own towel, my soap, that it is better for twelve days that I simply lie down with closed eyes.” For twelve days I didn’t change the sheet or the pillow cover. Even the nurses became protective!They said, “Your blanket has to be changed; your clothes have to go for washing.”I said, “Forget all about it. It is only a question of a few days, then I can have as many baths, and as many new robes and new sheets…don’t be worried.” But they really became protective, seeing me, that I am almost like a child. The head nurse started forcing me to go in the morning to brush my teeth!She would say, “I will not give you your breakfast! If you want your breakfast, first you have to brush your teeth!” And she would stand there!And I said, “I will do it.”She said, “You are a strange man – people are harassing us that, ‘we need this, we need that.’ You are the only man who has no complaint, who has not asked for anything. On the contrary, we are worried that you don’t do anything. You simply lie down with closed eyes!“Perhaps the bathroom is not clean, so you can come to our bathroom; and we will not let anybody know because it is not allowed. No prisoner can come to the doctor’s bathroom, but you take it for granted, that it is yours. You just use it – but don’t lock it from the inside. We will not allow anybody to enter.”I said, “Why?”They said, “We don’t trust you. You may lock it and if something happens to you, if you fall down or anything happens to you, how are we going to enter? And then the whole thing will be exposed, that we were allowing you in our bathroom – which is against the rules.”And they were bringing fresh clothes every day. They were trying in every possible way. And the day I left, all the nurses – there were five – they were all crying.I said, “This is strange! Why are you crying?”They said, “We don’t want you to go.”I said, “This is something! But my people are waiting there; otherwise I would have remained here.”They said, “We can understand. Just in these few days you have become so much part of this institution that we can understand how much your people, who have lived for years with you, must be feeling. But we will never forget these days.” And they had all the pictures from the newspapers. Because they had no other way but from newspapers…they asked me to just sign my name.I said, “You could have found a photographer.”They said, “It is not allowed – even this is not allowed. Just sign silently so we can keep it as a memory.”You just have to be yourself, and you will find protection from every source. Because the more you are yourself, the danger to your life becomes more, but in the same proportion the protective forces, the loving forces, the friendly forces also increase. It is always balanced.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is there any relationship between gnosticism and anarchy?The word anarchism has tremendous implications.It means that the people are so inwardly disciplined that they don’t need any government. They are so deeply in order within themselves that no order outside is needed.Anarchism is basically the transformation of the individual in such a way that the government becomes superfluous. He lives in the light of his consciousness, fully aware of what he is doing, fully aware of its consequences, aware that it is not his right to interfere with any individual’s life, or to trespass – even in very subtle matters like conversion. Making an effort to convert somebody to your ideology is a trespass of that individual’s consciousness. Unless he invites you, it is aggression.So individuals have to be so conscious that no aggressive activity on any level – bodily, mental, emotional – is possible for them. Then the government is absolutely useless, a burden. And certainly the idea is that, if people can live without a government, then only are they people. If they need a government that means they are still coming out of animality. They have not yet become human. They need masters, governors, they are not capable of being on their own. They are basically asking to be slaves. The existence of a government of any kind means that the people are asking for slavery; and to ask for slavery and then to ask for democracy, freedom, freedom of expression, and individuality, becomes contradictory.So the governments go on promising all these things but in the very existence of the government they are denied. Hence all governments are frauds. They can only promise but they cannot perform. It is existentially impossible. If they can perform then they are not needed. If they cannot perform that is why they are needed. So every government is more or less symbolic of the fact that human beings have not grown up to their full height, to their full potential.You are asking, “Are gnosticism and anarchy in some way related?” They are…because gnosticism means knowledge of your own. There are two kinds of knowledge. One is borrowed, either from books or from teachers, or from parents, or from the environment, the society in which you live. Unconsciously you go on absorbing so many things.This is not knowledge in the sense of gnosticism. This is a false substitute for true knowledge, and it is a hindrance. True knowledge is the discovery of truth, of love, of compassion, of all that is great in human life – by yourself.Every Buddhist scripture begins: “I have heard Gautam the Buddha say….” It is a hearsay, it is not knowledge. You may have heard Gautam the Buddha say something – that does not mean that you have come to know it. It may become part of your memory, you may be able to repeat it like a parrot…. That’s all that your priests, your pundits, are doing all over the world – simply repeating exactly the way the parrot repeats, without knowing what he is saying.The pundits don’t know what they are saying. They have heard, they have memorized; their memory is good, but their intelligence does not exist.True knowledge means your own experience, your own search – and when you know yourself there is no need to believe in anything. Every belief is poisonous because every belief will hinder you in searching for the truth.Now the whole world believes in something or other. You ask anybody about God – either he believes that God exists…and there are a few who believe that God does not exist; but both are beliefs. The communist believes that God does not exist, but he has not explored, he has not gone into his own consciousness – what to say about the whole existence? He has not explored his own small being.And there are millions who say, “We believe in the existence of God.” But your belief cannot create a God – if he does not exist your belief makes no difference. And if you believe in a God, naturally your seeking stops. Why should one seek and search when he believes? That’s why all the religions emphasize faith, so that they can stop your search.Faith is a block.Search means you are still doubting, you are still not certain. Faith means you are absolutely certain that God exists. Now there is no question of inquiring. And if man goes on believing in such things which imply many absurdities….For example. Galileo was told by the pope, “In your book you have to change the statement that the earth moves around the sun, because it goes against The Bible”. The Bible says that the sun goes around the earth, and that’s everybody’s experience too. Certainly it appears so. In the morning it rises, in the evening it goes down – it looks as if it is going around the earth.Galileo was seventy-five years old – he was almost dragged from his deathbed to the court to give an apology, because anything that is said in The Bible cannot be disbelieved. It is the word of God; no inquiry is possible.Galileo said, “Such a small thing which has nothing to do with religion at all…. What does it matter whether the sun moves around the earth or the earth moves around the sun? It has no religious significance.”The pope said, “It is not a question of religious significance. The question is that if one thing is wrong in The Bible, then the faith is shaken – perhaps other things may be also wrong. If God has some stupid idea, then what is the guarantee that other things that are said are not of the same quality? So not a single word can be questioned.”Galileo must have been a man with a great sense of humor. He said, “To me it makes no difference. I will change it in the book, I will write that the sun moves around the earth, but my statement will not make any difference at all. The earth will go on moving around the sun, in spite of my statement. How can my statement make any difference to the earth?”And that’s what he did. He changed his statement and in a note, a footnote, he wrote: “It makes no difference to the earth or to the sun – they go on their way. I am changing it because I don’t want to be unnecessarily harassed in my old age.”And it has been so continuously since Galileo: everything that science comes to discover goes against The Bible. Again and again the same problem arises. Because science has been progressing in the West, the struggle has been between science and Christianity.But if we look, the same question is valid about every religion. Hinduism believes that the earth is flat, not round. But no Hindu makes a point of saying that the idea should be discarded, it goes against our researches. In the Hindu scriptures it says that the sun is smaller than the earth, which is absolutely nonsense – the sun is sixty thousand times bigger than the earth. But no Hindu even bothers.And most fundamentally, in the first place these things should not be in the religious scriptures, because religion has nothing to do with the size of the sun or the size of the earth. We should take out everything that is not religious from the religious scriptures.Religious scriptures will need, every ten years, a new edition, because science will go on progressing, inquiring. And the way science inquires and progresses is exactly the way of man’s inner search. He also doubts, questions, is skeptical, tries to find the truth himself. He becomes a lab unto himself.Gautam Buddha could not find any God within himself. He searched to the very ultimate core of his being and he found no God. And if God is not existent in human consciousness, then God cannot be existent in the mountains, in the trees, which are far lower.And the people who have come to the idea of God and have been preaching it, how have they found it? Where have they found it, and what is their method of finding it? Nothing is said about it in any scripture – you simply have faith. But why should one have faith in anybody else, who may be lying, who may be disillusioned himself, who may be insane?I cannot conceive that Moses encountered God, because God is not a person. So if anything happened, it must have been an illusion, it must have been a projection. And projections are very easy. Just go on a three-week fast, and your mind starts losing the capacity to ask questions. Your mind starts coming to a point where you cannot divide what is dream and what is real.It is just as it happens to small children. They were dreaming of a beautiful toy and they wake up: the toy is not there and they are crying – “Where is my toy?” And you cannot convince them, “You were dreaming, and this is reality. You have changed the whole dimension. That was your fiction, your idea, your mind and your imagination, and this is reality. It has nothing to do with your mind and your imagination.”All the religions have been teaching fasting. Nobody has bothered to ask why all the religions are agreed on fasting. My own understanding is that the reason is that after a certain time of fasting…. Your intelligence needs protein continuously to remain functioning. After three weeks the reservoir of protein in your brain is exhausted – then you are again in the state of a child. You don’t know what is dream and what is real.It is those moments when people have realized Jesus Christ, Krishna, Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, or whatever has been always conditioned in their mind; it becomes projected. And they don’t now have intelligence enough to feel the distinction between the real and the unreal.The people like Moses or Jesus who have said that they have encountered God face to face must have been in such a state – which can be experimentally created. And things are very clear: a Christian never comes to see Krishna; a Hindu never comes to see Christ because a Hindu mind is not being continuously conditioned to Christ – he sees Krishna. The Buddhist never sees Krishna, the Jaina never sees Krishna.You will be surprised that according to Jaina scriptures, Krishna is suffering in the seventh hell because he was the cause of the greatest war this country has suffered, of the whole violence. And in fact there is some truth in it.Arjuna was not willing to fight. He wanted to retire from fighting; he wanted to go to the Himalayas to meditate. He said, “It is better – the others can keep the throne. Anyway they are my brothers. And what is the point of killing all these people?” – because it was a family struggle and both parties were connected in many ways.Arjuna’s own master, who had made him the best archer in the world, was on the other side because he was also the master of his brothers.Krishna was fighting on the side of Arjuna, and his own army was fighting on the other side because both parties had approached Krishna to join them.He said, “Now this is difficult. I am alone – how can I join two parties? You are both friends so you can choose: I will fight from one side and my army will fight from the other side.”It was a very strange war in which everybody was related. The grandfather of Arjuna, whom he loved and respected, was on the other side. The people with whom he was fighting were his cousin-brothers – whom he had played and grown up with. Millions of people would be killed.And his argument was absolutely valid: “After killing all these people, sitting on the throne on all these corpses is absolutely meaningless. I will not be happy, I will be miserable my whole life. What will I gain? I won’t even have people to celebrate with. Killing my own people with my own hands does not seem worthwhile. It gives me a clear idea that it is better to go to the mountains and to meditate and to forget all about this.”But Krishna persisted. When he could not continue to argue he brought in the last argument: “It is God’s will. Now you cannot disbelieve in God’s will, and it is God’s will that you should fight.”Now this has been the strategy of all the priests all over the world – “God’s will.” But I am surprised that a man of the intelligence of Arjuna did not ask, “If you know God’s will, why is he not speaking directly to me? If it is God’s will, you fight. But as far as I am concerned, I feel this is God’s will – that I drop out of this chariot and go to the mountains.”In his place, that’s what I would have done. “Then that’s perfectly good: if that is God’s will for you…to me this is God’s will. And if I have to choose I will choose my own rather than choosing yours.”But it has been used to simply destroy your arguments, your intelligence, and create fear. If you don’t believe in God then there is hell. If you believe, then you have paradise and all the pleasures.The Christian goes on seeing Christ, the Hindu goes on seeing Krishna, the Buddhist goes on seeing Buddha. And to see these people, simple psychological methods have been used: you should continuously pray. That makes you gullible.A man waking up in the morning starts praying to Krishna the first thing – or to Christ; goes to the church, listens to the priest, reads The Bible or the Gita, which all preach, “Have faith.” And it is repeated thousands of times his whole life.There are people who become monks and move to a monastery – they are the most prone to experience God because twenty-four hours a day they have nothing else to do except go on repeating a certain mantra, a certain name. They become hypnotized with the name, with the figure.And all the religions teach that fasting purifies you. I don’t understand how hunger can purify. If hunger purifies people then why should we try to destroy poverty? We are destroying pure people, spiritual people! We should make everybody hungry!Hunger cannot purify. And look deeply into it: while you are hungry you think that you are not eating, but your body is absorbing your own flesh. That’s why you go on losing weight; otherwise where does your weight go?I have been condemned by Jainas because I said, at their conferences, “To fast is almost equal to meat-eating – and you pretend to be nonviolent people, vegetarians. But fasting means non-vegetarianism – you are eating yourself.”A very healthy man can live through a fast of three months; but after three months he will be just a skeleton, and then death is certain because now he has no more reserve to absorb. He cannot absorb bones.But all these people have stopped their following from thinking. I said, “My challenge is, that it is a simple fact that you lose weight – I simply ask where your weight disappears. You absorb it.“Your body needs some energy every day. Working, walking, sitting – whatever you are doing, your body needs energy, and food is simply fuel. If you are not giving it fuel, then the body starts eating itself – it has a dual system just for emergency purposes. There may be a time when food is not available, you may be lost in a forest; the body accumulates some flesh for such times.”But you cannot raise such questions.And secondly, if you fast you are depriving your intelligence.There is a hierarchy – just as in every household there is a certain division; that if you are hungry you won’t purchase a television, you will purchase food which is a more basic necessity. But if you have enough food you are not going to go on purchasing food. You will start thinking of purchasing something else – better furniture, a better house, a television, or radio or literature or music. You will start, but if suddenly your money is gone then the first things to go will be the higher things. The television will go first, the radio will go. You will retain your basic needs to the very last.And that’s how it happens when you fast. The first attack is on intelligence because that is the highest in you, and not a basic factor – for life can exist without it; all the animals exist without it. So your intelligence starts disappearing.If you remain hungry your love, which you have always thought such a great quality, will start disappearing. A hungry man cannot be loving. To a hungry man you cannot give beautiful literature to read, or beautiful music to listen to. That will simply be an ugly joke. He needs food.So if you fast for three weeks – I have fasted, and I talk only about things which I have tried – after three weeks it becomes difficult to figure out whether you are dreaming or whether it is a reality. You just cannot make the distinction. The faculty that used to make the distinction is no longer there.That is the reason that all the religions insist on fasting. They disagree on everything else, but they don’t disagree on basic elements – fasting, praying, continuous chanting, going to the church or the temple or the mosque, remaining absolutely faithful to the holy book – it may be the Koran, it may be the Gita, it may be The Bible, it does not matter. But if you see, then the basic things are similar and their function is similar.Gnosticism is a very revolutionary concept, and it never became a mass phenomenon. It always remained a very small stream of chosen people who had dropped all the nonsense the masses had been following, and who had tried on their own to reach into the inner core of their being.Faith does not change you, you remain the same, but a Gnostic experience transforms you. And that is the only criterion to be used – whether your knowledge is true or your knowledge is borrowed, whether it changes you or it simply becomes accumulated in your memory. You can become a good teacher, a good priest, a good leader, but you cannot become a good man.It happened that just in the last part of the last century, Rani Rasmani built a temple in Calcutta, in Dakshineshwar on the bank of the Ganges. But Rani Rasmani was not a high-caste Hindu, she was a sudra, she was untouchable. So no brahmin was ready to worship in her temple, although she was immensely rich and she was ready to give as much money as you wanted. And she explained to the brahmins, “I have not even entered the temple; I simply go up to the steps and bow down from there. I have not entered the inner shrine; I have not even seen the statue of Krishna that is inside the temple. It is made with my money, but money cannot be sudra because money is continuously changing hands from sudra to brahmin, from brahmin to chhatriya. So you cannot call the temple a sudra temple.” But no brahmin was ready to be a priest in her temple – all over Bengal she searched.Ramakrishna agreed. He was uneducated. There are only two classes of Bengali, and he was very poor. The whole village tried to prevent him but they all knew he was a little eccentric: if he decides, then he decides.They talked much about it, that it was built by a sudra. He said, “All the temples are made by sudras because the labor, the craftsmen – they all belong to the sudra. Every temple is made by sudras. Can you show me a temple which is made by brahmins?” Not only are they made by sudras, but the most beautiful parts are made by Mohammedans because they have a traditional craftsmanship in marble. What they can do nobody else can do.So Ramakrishna said, “All temples are made by sudras, there is no question about it. And money does not matter – money goes on moving. And I cannot refuse her because it is a question of Krishna being there, unworshipped. You have made Krishna also a sudra, an untouchable. The rani herself cannot enter. I am going.”He went. The rani was happy but alerted because the man looked a little eccentric. But someone was better than no one, so she accepted Ramakrishna. And then complaints started coming about Ramakrishna.The complaints were that sometimes he fights with Krishna. Rather than worshipping him, he shouts at him, fights with him. He uses vulgar language before him – he came from a village. Sometimes just to punish him he does not give Krishna food. And sometimes he dances the whole day from morning to evening, praying to Krishna.The rani asked Ramakrishna, “What is going on?”He said, “Everything is going well. When he is good to me I am good to him, and when he is nasty to me I am nasty to him. Sometimes I am praying for hours and he does not appear; then I punish him the next day: I don’t give him food. That brings him to his senses. Certainly I also don’t eat that day. I cry the whole day because I have not given food to him, I have not even opened the door – I have let it remain locked.”One experience of Ramakrishna will show you how illusions can be created. In the beginning – it was the birthday of Krishna – he told him, “You have to appear today. It is no ordinary day, it is your birthday. I will dance and sing the whole day and the whole night. And if you don’t appear” – a sword used to hang there in the temple – he said, “I will take the sword and cut off my head.”He danced the whole day; the evening came, the night came. It was in the middle of the night – everything was silent. The temple is in a lonely place on the Ganges. Hungry the whole day, dancing the whole day, tired, utterly tired, he was continuously singing and praying, “Appear to me!” Then he pulled out the sword and was going to cut off his head when, at that moment, Krishna appeared. The sword fell from Ramakrishna’s hand when he saw Krishna.Now, it is so simple – a psychological matter. If you do such things you lose the balance of your mind. And Ramakrishna was childish in his behavior, in his living. He was praised as a saint because he was childlike, but because he was childlike he was experiencing Krishna face to face.One of the great masters was passing through India…. There is a tradition of many masters: they go around the Ganges, all the way to the source, and then back along the other bank to where it falls into the ocean. One master was simply passing by and he came to know about Ramakrishna – that he sees Krishna. He laughed. He said, “The man must be innocent but gullible. He must be innocent but childlike.”He remained in the temple; he talked to Ramakrishna. He explained to him what was happening: “What you are doing is all your creation. It is your imagination. Rama does not appear to you, Vishnu does not appear to you, Shiva does not appear to you. There is no question of Christ and Moses and others. Why does only Krishna appear to you? It is your imagination. And if you put so much pressure on your mind that you are going to cut off your head, naturally the mind is going to do anything to save your life.”Ramakrishna said, “Then you help me to get rid of this illusion.”The master said, “I can help, but the real thing has to be done by you. You sit silently, close your eyes, and when Krishna appears before your eyes, just cut him into two pieces and he will fall apart. There is nothing in it.”Ramakrishna asked, “From where do I bring a sword to cut him?”And the master said, “From wherever you have brought this Krishna! If you can bring Krishna, from the same imagination you can bring a sword and cut him in two.”Ramakrishna tried three or four times, but the moment he saw Krishna he would start swaying and he would forget the sword and the cutting and the master and all his teaching.The master said, “You are impossible! I am wasting my time. When you see Krishna appear in your mind you don’t cut him; rather you start swaying. And I can see on your face that you are enjoying the experience.”Ramakrishna said, “I know that I am wasting your time, but what am I to do, because when he appears I simply forget myself.”So the master said, “I will bring a piece of glass, and when I see that you have started swaying and your face is looking ecstatic, I will cut exactly in the middle of your forehead with the glass to remind you that this is the time. You do the same: take the sword and cut Krishna in two.”He actually cut the forehead of Ramakrishna, and Ramakrishna gathered courage and cut Krishna inside. He remained for six hours in absolute silence, and when he opened his eyes, his first words were, “The last barrier has fallen…the last barrier has fallen.”Our own imagination is our last barrier. Once we are without imagination then reality is there face to face. It is not Christian, it is not Hindu, it is not Mohammedan.Gnosticism simply says this much: Each individual should follow his own inner being, dropping thoughts, imagination, emotions, sentiments – anything that comes in the way. It is not you. The simple principle of gnosticism is that anything that you can see as an object is not you. You are the seer, so you cannot be the seen. “I can see the furniture, then I am not the furniture. Whatever I can see, I am not it.”So go on dropping all that you can see inside yourself until you come to a space where you cannot see anything. Just the seer remains in its utter purity, innocence. And that is the moment of a great revolution – perhaps the only revolution there is, because the seer cannot see anything, there is nothing to obstruct it.That is the meaning of the word object. Object means “that which obstructs you.” There is no object there – all is empty. It can go as far as…but there is nothing. Then it turns upon itself, then it becomes its own object.When the subject itself becomes its own object – in other words when the observer is the observed too, when the knower is the known too – you have arrived home. And that is the meaning of gnosticism.There is a certain relationship between anarchism and gnosticism because both depend on the individual. And anarchism will be impossible without gnosticism, because only gnosticism can transform people and can bring such quality and energy in them that they don’t need any government at all.A man of awareness does not need anybody else to tell him what to do, what not to do. He does not need the moral teacher, the priest, the policeman, the judge. They all become meaningless.And it will become one of the greatest days in the history of man when government becomes useless and is to be dropped. That means man has transcended all animality in him – violence, anger, hatred – all that needs a government to control people; otherwise there will be so many rapes, and there will be so many murders. There will be so many thefts, and nobody will be safe.The government is simply an agreement of the society. “We are not capable of controlling ourselves – we need a central control, powerful enough so that individuals cannot dare…or if they dare to do something, then they can be punished.” Even with the government crime goes on growing, the jails go on growing, the judges go on growing, the criminals go on growing, the laws go on growing.So if you simply remove the government, there will be chaos, and all that is repressed in man out of fear…because both government and religion, the two powerful institutions, use fear and greed to repress your animal. They don’t change it. If you are caught the government will send you to jail to be punished. If you are not caught, then the religions will send you to hell to suffer.It is a basic agreement that if your action is found out, it becomes a crime; if it is not found out, it remains a sin. But on both bases the fear is there that you will have to suffer. And on the other hand, if you remain good the government has rewards. You become padmashri, you become bharat bhushan, you have a Nobel Prize, and so many awards around the world for people who have proved…who have repressed everything that can be objectionable – they are rewarded. And if they are not rewarded here, they will be rewarded in paradise with all the pleasures of the world.But this is only a strategy to keep man’s animality somehow repressed. It does not bring any change.Gnosticism means a change in your very being.Then you don’t need any fear; you don’t need any hell, and you don’t need any awards. You don’t need any heaven, because to transcend your animality is the greatest reward possible. It is so blissful and so ecstatic to become really human that there is no need for anything else to be added to it. So gnosticism has no God, has no heaven, no hell – those are religious types of government.So I can see a relationship between anarchism and gnosticism. But gnosticism is more fundamental, has to happen first; only then can anarchism have a chance. Up to now it has remained a utopia.To single individuals it has happened, but it has to happen to the whole of humanity. And when it happens to single individuals, it is very strange: the governments are not happy. And now you can understand why they are not happy.The very happening of the transformation of the human being so that he has no animality in him, creates a fear in government and in the religious hierarchy because that man shows that it can happen to all. And the moment it happens to all, governments and religions both will be useless, discarded. And nobody who has so much power would like to be discarded. No government wants to be discarded, no religion wants to be discarded.So a very strange thing – they go on teaching people to be good, but deep down they want you to remain the same because their whole existence is dependent on your being they way you are.I have been talking to politicians, to religious leaders, and I have pointed it out: “Are you really interested in man becoming absolutely good? Then the saint will not be a saint, because everybody will be so good. What is the point of somebody being a saint?“We remember Gautam Buddha as a great saint because the whole society was not good. So he stands out. But if the whole society was good he would be lost in the crowd – there would be no need to remember him. Why do we go on remembering only a few names in the whole of history? For the simple reason that they stood out.“Everybody has the capacity to stand in the same position as Gautam Buddha. The governments, the politicians, want people the way they are. They may talk about change, but nobody wants any change because change in the people means change in the vested interests.“Now, if nobody commits a crime what will happen to all your courts? What will happen to all your jails and your police and all your law-enforcement agencies? They will simply be out of employment.“And if people are good and nobody wants to fight, nobody wants to kill anybody – if people refuse, and say, ‘Why should we kill any Pakistani or any Chinese?’…Or a Pakistani refuses to kill, and says, ‘Why should we kill a Hindustani? There is no reason, because this man has done nothing to me. He has children and he has a wife and he may have an old mother, a father to look after. I am not going to kill him. There is no reason for me to kill.’“What will happen to your governments, your armies?”They are all against me because I have been saying things like this which can cut them from their very roots. They have no arguments against me – then the only way is to create any lies, any allegations and anything they want to say about me. But nobody answers the question.So it is a very strange state. The government exists to keep people good – but that is not true. It exists to keep people as they are, not to allow them to go through a revolution.A better kind of people will need a better kind of government, a better kind of religion. And if people are really perfect they don’t need any government, they don’t need any religion. They are their own government and they are their own religion.So the perfect man is continuously being killed.You killed Socrates because he was a perfect man. That was his only crime. He has not done anything wrong in his whole life, and he asked the court, “Why are you going to kill me? What crime have I committed except that I have not committed any crime?”But he was dangerous. A simple man, a very perfect man, is looked on as dangerous by the society, by the religious people, by the government, by all the authorities, because he creates a situation in which every man can think, “If it can happen to Socrates, why can’t it happen to me?” He can become an example. He can trigger a certain consciousness in the whole of humanity.He has to be destroyed before he becomes a wildfire and people start being just like him.Socrates was blamed by the court; they said, “You have been corrupting human beings” – a strange allegation. “Corrupting human beings, particularly the youth.” To teach the youth to become perfect human beings is seen by the authorities to be corrupting them, because it means death to the authorities; whether they are religious or secular, it does not matter.So on the one hand these people go on trying to make a show that they are trying to create a better society. On the other hand they go on killing the examples of perfection.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/light-on-the-path-06/

Osho,Everything in life is so extraordinary, so beautiful – snow crystals, a bird, the movement of my own hand. Why then do I lose myself in idiotic things?One of the most difficult things, but one of the most fundamental things in life, is not to divide life into beautiful and idiotic things – not to divide life at all. They are all part of one whole.It needs just a little sense of humor. And to me the sense of humor is very essential for a person to be whole.What is wrong in some small idiotic things? Why can’t you laugh and enjoy them? All the time you are judging what is right, what is wrong. All the time you are sitting in the seat of a judge, and that makes you serious. Then flowers are beautiful, but what about the thorns?They are part of the existence of flowers. The flowers will not exist without the thorns. The thorns are protective; they have a function, a purpose, a meaning. But you divide: then flowers are beautiful and thorns become ugly. But in the tree itself it is the same juice that goes into the flower and into the thorn. In the existence of the tree there is no division, no judgment.The flower is not favored, the thorn is not tolerated. They are both accepted totally.And this should be our approach in our own life.There are things, small things, which if you judge, look stupid, idiotic. But it is because of your judgment; otherwise they also fulfill something essential.For example, many people have asked me, “Why do we go on smoking cigarettes, cigars, when we know perfectly well that they are dangerous to our health, that they will reduce our life span, that we will suffer. The doctors are telling us…but we are so idiotic that we go on smoking.”And I have asked those people, “Have you observed your doctors?”They said, “That too is true – they all go on smoking!”Nobody looks into small things very deeply without any judgment. If you observe…that is not judgment; you are simply a witness while smoking – if you observe, you can see a few things: What are the situations when you smoke? What are the situations when the urge comes to you? And you will be surprised that those are the situations when you are tense, worried, nervous…you don’t have anything to do. And we have been brought up by the society to believe that the empty mind is the devil’s workshop.Something has to be done – you are not to be empty. You have to fill yourself. A cigarette comes in handy: it gives you something to do, and something really significant – because it relaxes you. It has nicotine in it which helps you to become non-tense. It helps you for the moment to forget your worries.For the moment, the cigarette gives to a simple, ordinary person a little space you can only call contemplative. He knows it harms, so later on he judges, then condemns it, condemns himself: “I am stupid, doing something that is not good for me.”But he never observes the whole process. If he observes the whole process then he should not condemn it; rather he should learn how to relax, how not to be nervous, how not to be tense. And he will find fewer and fewer opportunities for smoking. And when these superficial opportunities are dissolved, he will come to the rock bottom of the fact: smoking is some kind of substitute. It is the mother’s breast.Every child has been taken away from the mother before he wanted to be taken away. For example, in aboriginal tribes, smoking is not a problem because children go on using the mother’s breast for feeding themselves as long as they want. It is only up to them to decide when they want to change and go to solid food.But in civilized societies…the more civilized a society, the more there will be smoking – for the simple reason that every child is taken away from the breast too early. The reason is clear: if the child goes on feeding from the mother’s breast, the breast loses its shape, the woman loses some beauty; she starts looking older before she is old.The very modern women simply never feed the child from the breast. Now, the breast is not only just giving milk – because milk can be given by a bottle. It is also giving warmth, love, concern for the child.Humanity has forgotten a few very basic things; for example, touching and its tremendous importance in your life.If the mother has not taken you close to her body, to her warmth, you will remain cold your whole life; you will not be able to give love and warmth to any woman, because you never received any. You don’t know that anything like that even exists. The breast keeps you close to the mother’s warmth, makes you feel one with the mother’s body.In nature, the break between the mother and the child does not come drastically-the child is not taken away from the mother when it is born. No, the break comes very slowly and very naturally; it comes only in its own time. When the child is mature enough he will not be interested in smoking.Smoking is very similar to breast-feeding. The cigarette represents the nipple of the mother, and the warm smoke represents the warm milk flowing through the mother’s breast. So you may be even fifty, or sixty, or seventy, but somewhere, in some corner of your being, you have remained retarded. The day you were taken away from the mother’s breast…something in you is still ungrown and wants to be fulfilled.To many sannyasins I have suggested that whenever you feel like smoking, just try a bottle of milk, warm milk. They laughed at the idea. I said, “You can laugh at the idea, but just try and enjoy it.”They said, “But what will people say? In the office we cannot use a small child’s bottle.”I said, “You can start trying it at night, in your bed. But give it a try and see how it changes your smoking pattern.”And they were surprised, they loved it! And their smoking was reduced; slowly, slowly it disappeared. A certain need – -but you judge it as idiotic. It looks idiotic on the surface, but nothing is idiotic. Somewhere there must be some existential reason for it.So don’t judge anything; rather, change your approach from judgment to observation. Howsoever stupid a thing it may be, just observe it without any prejudice. Not with the idea that it is stupid – then you cannot observe. Without any judgment and without any prejudice, simply observe it. Go deeper into it, find reasons why it is there. You will find one day the rock bottom, and the whole thing will disappear.Awareness is magic. It can make things disappear – you just have to be very persistent in not judging but just being aware. Go deeper and deeper into it, whatever it brings, and then things will be clear to you, what has to be done.The doctor is not telling you how you can drop your smoking, he simply goes on telling you to drop smoking, otherwise you will suffer. You know it, everybody is saying it – in the magazines, in the papers, on the radio, everywhere you are hearing it. Now even governments have passed resolutions around the world that on every cigarette packet there should be a warning that it is dangerous to health.In the beginning, the manufacturers of cigarettes around the world were naturally against it. This is a strange thing, that you are selling something, and rather than advertising it, you are putting a label on it saying that it is dangerous to your health. But you will be surprised: it has not affected the sales of cigarettes at all. People read it, but it is not new; they have heard it so many times before. It is the same old stuff.Take any small thing that you go on doing, approach it with awareness to its very roots, and it starts disappearing. The basic thing is learning not to judge, because the moment you judge, your observation is clouded. Then you can never see clearly; you have already concluded. You have not been scientific, you have been already carrying a belief.In my childhood I asked my father – that was my way – “You have to give me money because now I am going to smoke.”He said, “This is strange. No boy of your age can have the courage to ask his own father for money, and that too for smoking.”I said, “It is up to you; otherwise I will steal, and it will be your money. You will be forcing me to commit two crimes – smoking and stealing. And then I will have to commit a third crime, lying, because whenever you ask, I will say, ‘No, I don’t smoke.’“I am making things simple. Just give me the money. I want to smoke just to see why people are smoking and what they find in it, because I see people all around smoking against the warning of teachers, parents, doctors, priests – everybody. There must be something if they don’t listen to anybody and still go on.“And they are paying for it, for their sickness, for their death to come earlier, to have tuberculosis, or cancer of the lungs. I cannot make any judgment before I experiment. Now it is up to you. You want me to do three wrong things or just one?”He looked at me and said, “You are just impossible! Now I cannot even prevent you from smoking. You are asking money from me…but you are right, you would have to do three wrong things, so take the money.”And I said, “I am going to smoke in the house, not hiding somewhere behind the house. I am going to smoke in my own house.”He said, “Don’t do that! Because my father is still alive; your uncles are there, your aunts are there” – it was a joint family of fifty people. “They will all condemn me – they won’t say anything to you – they will say that you gave him money for smoking and he is smoking just sitting in the middle of the house so everybody can see!’“I said, “It is better that everybody sees it; otherwise they will hear it from somebody and they will have to ask me. Why waste time unnecessarily?”I smoked sitting in the middle of the house. Everybody was angry with my father, that this was going too far. But the first cigarette was enough; it was my last cigarette because tears came to my eyes and I started coughing. I said, “It is all nonsense. Even if somebody pays me to smoke, I am not going to smoke.” The remaining packet I returned to one of my uncles who was always smoking, hiding.He tried to say, “I don’t want….”I said, “Why be afraid? You have seen me smoking in the middle of the house – why do you hide here and there? I know, everybody knows that you smoke. Keep these cigarettes; otherwise I will have to throw them out. They are costly because I had told my father that these may be my first and last, so I want the best ones.”When anything that you are doing makes you feel that something is wrong, don’t be too hasty to call it wrong; there must be a long chain of causes. You have to watch the whole thing. And until you reach to the basic root, it is going to remain.And this is what I call the magic of awareness: the moment you reach the basic root of anything it disappears, it simply disappears. You don’t have to drop it, you don’t have to take a vow, “I will not smoke again.” It simply drops of its own accord because you have become aware of the whole process. Now you will rather try to learn something that makes you relaxed, helps you not to be nervous.I have seen people strangely…I used to know one of the speakers of the state assembly. He must have been seventy, and he must have been speaking for fifty years at least. He was the speaker of the assembly, but each time he stood to speak, he was so nervous that he used to keep his hands in his pockets. Those hands were just trembling.He was also the vice-chancellor of my university, where I was teaching. One day he was inaugurating a new library building, and as he started speaking with his hands in his pockets, I approached with a piece of paper with some note on it. He had to take his hands out, he had to take the paper, and the paper went like this…and the whole audience was laughing. And there was nothing on it, just unreadable scribble.He was very angry. He called me after the meeting into his office, and he said, “What was the need to expose me?”I said, “It was absolutely necessary. You are seventy, you are a public speaker – forty years or more you have been speaking – and your hands tremble. Do you think nobody knows? Your hands are trembling in your pockets also. Anybody who has a keen observation can see that they are inside and trembling. I simply wanted you to be aware that hiding won’t help. Why are you so nervous?“You are not an amateur. A new person facing an audience may feel afraid perhaps, may wonder perhaps whether he proves up to the standard of the people and their expectations or not. But you are a well-know speaker. You have proved yourself; now there is no need to be afraid. But you have been hiding your fear for these fifty years – not from other people but from your own consciousness, from your own awareness. What is the problem?“Next time you try it: let your hands tremble but let them come out, they should not be in your pocket; otherwise I am going to come with a piece of paper again, and you will have to receive the paper, either with your mouth or with your hands.“If you receive it with your mouth, you cannot speak; if you receive it with your hands the whole audience will see. It is better, if I am present that your hands are out of your pockets. But I would like you to go deeper into this stupid habit.”He became silent. He had been angry, but now he was not angry because I had not done any wrong to him; I had brought something to his notice which he had been denying to himself and to the whole world. Now he was seventy and soon he would be dying.I said, “You think about it. I am available to help you – I can come anytime you want – but first you go through it from the very beginning, how it started and why you have not been able to change it your whole life. And it doesn’t look right for a well-known speaker, the speaker of the assembly.”I said, “I will be coming tomorrow. You just look into it. Rather than avoiding it, face it! Don’t condemn it. It is condemnation which has caused the whole problem.”And the next day when I reached him, he said, “You are right. It was my father: because when, for the first time, in my high school days, I went to speak in a competition between two schools, I was preparing my speech, and my father was a man who wanted everything to be perfect – a real perfectionist.”Perfectionists are always neurotic, because in life nothing can be perfect, and they are always miserable because life is never as they want it. So he told the boy, “You repeat your speech again and again. Go to the bathroom, stand before the mirror, repeat your speech, and see that no nervousness is there.”The vice-chancellor said to me, “Even in my bathroom, although there was nobody, I could feel great nervousness coming to me, and particularly to my hands. I tried again and again, but the more I tried, the more my hands were trembling. I went to my father and told him – he was a very prominent military officer. He said, “If your hands tremble, keep them in your pockets. Nobody should know about them; otherwise you will become a laughingstock.”I said, “If I had been your father I would have told you to use your hands and their energy as gestures, because there are things which cannot be said by words but can be indicated by the hands. In fact, to keep your hands in your pockets cuts off almost half of your communication, because words are not complete; they need much support from your hands, your eyes, your voice, your tone. Even the silences between your words are expressive.“So rather than using the energy of the hands in gestures, you have been repressing it – and energy cannot be repressed. Your father had no idea that your hands are joined with your mind. Hands are extensions of the mind: your left hand is the extension of the right side of your mind; your right hand is the extension of the left side of your mind.“If the mind is functioning perfectly, then your hands are certainly going to move with the movement of the mind. Stopping the hands, you are cutting off your own possibility of expressing more clearly, more penetratingly, more emphatically. You will remain a poor speaker. And you may be hurt,” I told him, “that although you are the speaker of the assembly and a well-known speaker, I want you to know that you are a poor speaker.“Your speech has no juice in it, no gusto in it, no emphasis in it. It is flat, as if you are reading – there are no gaps. You are not communicating with people, you are really avoiding the people. You are saying things but there is no joy in saying it, there is no music in it. Release your hands.”It happened in America in the first jail where I was – the sheriff of the jail immediately fell in love with me. He was a really nice and beautiful old man. And when the court denied bail to me he said to me, “This is absolutely unjust – to keep somebody in jail whose crime is not proved; whose crime is not even tried: there has been no trial. And to refuse bail – it is just political, unjust.”I asked him, “Would you help me a little?”He said, “I will help you all the way. What do you want me to do?”I said, “I would like a press conference in the jail.”He said, “It has never happened in history – a press conference in jail by a prisoner.”I said, “Then let it happen, let it be a precedent! And if you feel it was unjust, then do something.” He agreed. The press conference was called, but my hands were cuffed, and I told him, “It will be impossible for me to speak with my hands in chains.” And not only were they in chains; they put a chain belt around my waist, and they locked the handcuffs to the belt, so you could not move more than this….So I said, “I will not be able to speak at all. You have done a great favor to call the press conference” – and almost one hundred press people were there, all the television and radio stations and all the big newspapers. “Now, do me a favor – because I am not going to escape. I have chains on my legs; you can keep the chain on my waist. You can put chains all over my body, but leave my hands free. It is impossible for me to speak a single word without my hands being in harmony with what I am speaking.”He understood. He said, “I have seen you on the television, and I have loved your hands and I have loved it that they certainly express something.”I told that vice-chancellor, “You give freedom to your hands – that will give freedom to your mind. Your speech will become alive. There is no harm in the fact that you are now seventy years old; it is never too late to begin. And you will be immensely joyous for the first time because all your speeches…and you have to speak almost every day, and it is a torture to you. If you are nervous, speaking is a torture to you, it is not a joy.”He agreed with me. The first day he spoke with his hands out of his pocket, the whole university wondered what had happened because nobody had seen him like this. And there was no trembling, the trembling became gestures.He called me again – there were tears in his eyes – and he said, “Fifty years of speaking have been hell to me. You released me from that hell. Nobody ever told me that I am the cause of the whole nervousness, that I am repressing an energy that can be transformed.”Most of the things that you think are stupid, idiotic…if looked at deeply, it may turn out that you have just not used the energy rightly. Simple observation, and you will be able to change.I never tell anybody to change anything by force, because anything changed by force is never changed. And the more you use force to change things, the more you are imprisoned by your own force.My approach is absolutely nonviolent.Just watch, and watch to the very root cause. And you will be surprised that what was looking like stupidity has changed into something intelligent, something beautiful. The whole life can be an organic whole of beauty.You can ask your second question.Osho,Do you agree with the choice Socrates made? Would it have been your choice?It is very difficult to answer for the simple reason that I am not the same type of person as Socrates. If the choice was given to me, I certainly would not have chosen death by poisoning, because to me it is simply suicidal, against life. And my whole approach is life-affirmative.I would not have chosen to die, but somewhere deep down there must be a suicidal instinct in Socrates himself. The choice is coming from him. I am not a lover of martyrs – I think they are insane.I would have chosen just to be outside Athens, just close to the boundary of Athens, where my people could reach. I don’t think…what was the problem? The judges were saying, “Just get out of Athens.” Socrates is more insistent on his own egoistic stand of “Either I will have all or I will not have anything – all or none.”I don’t see life in those terms. You never have all, you cannot have all. There is no need to make such a division between all or none. Have as much as you can, squeeze every moment to its totality – but what is the hurry to die?Athens was a city state – he could have moved just out of the boundary of the city, and his people would have been perfectly willing to come there. In fact it would have been far easier there, outside the city, to have a beautiful school where he could teach silently only to those who really wanted, than to have a school in the main part of the city with all the hustle and bustle.And the question is not of Socrates, the question is of the truth. Socrates sacrificed not only himself, he also sacrificed his truth. He also sacrificed the people who loved him, the people who wanted to listen to him, the people who wanted him to live.That would have been my choice. And in fact that has been my choice in America. They had no crime against me. They knew it – the judge knew it, everybody was aware that they had no crime against me. And all the crimes that they are talking about – there were mainly two. One was that I helped people to get married, and those marriages were just to get residence in America.It was absolutely false because for three and a half years I had been silent and I had not been meeting with any sannyasin. It was true that people had married just to remain in America, but it was not my arrangement; I was not guilty of it. I had not told anybody, not a single person, to get married to somebody. I was not seeing people at all; I was in isolation and in silence.And the whole house – twenty people who were taking care of me – they were witnesses that nobody entered in the house and I didn’t go anywhere. So it was absolutely absurd.Their second charge was that before coming to America I had an intention to remain there forever. I told my attorneys, “This is absolutely absurd, because unless they can read somebody’s mind, I don’t think the judge or the US attorney or anybody…. I am standing here in the court: can they say what I am going to do next? Then I will hit the US attorney.“If he cannot see my intention right in front of him, on what grounds can he say that I had that intention? You can talk about actions because actions can have witnesses; but intentions don’t have witnesses. Intentions cannot be punished.“You may intend to kill the whole of humanity. That does not mean that you should be crucified. You did not kill a single ant – you just intended to. You can enjoy intending to kill the whole humanity, to create a third world war, but it cannot be a crime.“On these two grounds you have arrested me without any arrest warrant – which is illegal. You have not even shown me what the cause of my arrest is, which I am absolutely entitled to know. You did not allow me to call my attorney, which is my birthright. You have been committing all kinds of sins and crimes against me.”They knew that in a trial they were going to lose the case. They had made the case “The United States versus Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.” If they lost the case it would be really very damaging to the prestige of the nation – that a single individual wins against the whole nation. And it is their folly that they have named the case in this way – I have not named it.At the last moment they understood that they were in trouble, that they were going to lose. They asked for negotiation with my attorneys, and the negotiation was exactly the same as the situation was in the case of Socrates. The negotiation was – they said it clearly – “We don’t have any factual grounds to prove anything, so we are ready to negotiate before the trial begins.“Only one thing is needed: Bhagwan should accept in court that he is guilty. Then we will withdraw the case, and he will not be allowed to enter America for five years. If he insists, that “I am not guilty,’ then we are not going to allow bail for him at any cost – five million dollars, ten million dollars. No, no amount of money. The United States government is not ready to give him bail.And we will prolong the case as much as we can – five years, seven years, ten years. So in those ten years he will be harassed, in those ten years his work will suffer, in those ten years his commune will suffer, in those ten years millions of his people around the world will suffer. Of course he will win in the end. But these ten years will be a nightmare for millions of people, so the choice is yours.”Certainly Socrates would not have said, “I am guilty.” Even my attorneys were afraid to tell me what the government wanted. There were tears in their eyes when they said, “We have come to ask you something which is absolutely absurd, but the question is, if you insist that you are not guilty – which we know you are not, and which we proved that you are not, but it is out of our hands…. The bail, the pressure of the government is too much. They are not ready to give bail to you, and they may prolong the case for five, seven years. That will destroy your whole work; your people will suffer.”In just twelve days hundreds of people around the world were not eating, were fasting, crying, weeping, feeling absolutely helpless, “What to do?”“So they want you simply to say, ‘I am guilty.’”I said, “Don’t be worried and don’t cry. I am a totally different man than Socrates. To me compassion and love are far higher qualities than my own ego. I don’t have any. I will say to the court that I am guilty, and then my whole life I will prove to the whole world that I was not guilty, and I was forced by the government, under oath, to lie.“On one hand you put me under oath: ‘You will speak only truth and nothing else but truth,’ and on the other hand you make a situation in which I have to lie.”And I told my people, “Don’t be worried, I will say I am guilty. My saying it does not make me guilty. And once I am out, there is my whole life to prove that I was not guilty and the American government is guilty. The whole thing is criminal: to put me under oath and then to force me to lie or be ready to suffer in jails for any period of time; and to let my whole movement be destroyed.I love my people. For them I can speak not one but one thousand lies. I love my work, so this is nothing; you don’t be worried.Certainly my choice would have been different. Just outside Athens would have been my commune!

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/light-on-the-path-07/

Osho,In these times of uncertainty, the best – and the worst – seems to be coming out in those of us who are around you. Would you comment on this?There are no “times of uncertainty” because time is always uncertain. It is the difficulty with the mind: mind wants certainty – and time is always uncertain.So when just by coincidence mind finds a small space of certainty, it feels settled: a kind of illusory permanence surrounds it. It tends to forget the real nature of existence and life, it starts living in a kind of dream world; it starts mistaking appearance for reality. It feels good to the mind because mind is always afraid of change for the simple reason: who knows what change will bring – good or bad? One thing is certain, that change will unsettle your world of illusions, expectations, dreams.Mind is just like a child playing on the seashore, making palaces in the sand. For a moment it seems that the palace is ready – but it is made of shifting sands. Any moment just a small breeze, and it will be shattered to pieces. But we start living in that dream palace. We start feeling that we have found something which is going to remain with us always.But time continuously goes on disturbing the mind. It looks hard but it is really very compassionate of existence to always remain with you. It does not allow you to make realities out of appearances. It does not give you a chance to accept masks as your real face, your original face.So whenever time strikes one of your cherished illusions, it feels that it brings out the worst and the best in peoples’ lives. It simply brings out what was hidden behind the false permanence, behind a dream that you had taken for granted to be real. It simply takes away your mask. It has nothing to do with good or bad, better or worse – it simply takes away your mask. It simply exposes you, it brings you to face yourself, so whatever you have been repressing starts surfacing. It can be the worst, it can be the best.Time has nothing to do with these categories. It simply allows your repressed to surface, it brings you to yourself.Most of the people are hiding the worst. It is very rare to find a person who is hiding the best – why should he hide the best? People are even pretending to show themselves in the best of colors – why should they hide the best? People simply hide the worst, thinking that it is ugly.A change – and your mask slips. A change – and you are for a moment…suddenly you find yourself naked. You have lost your clothes and the whole reality becomes a mirror: from everywhere your nudity, your nakedness is reflected.Yes, very rarely, very exceptionally it also happens that the best comes out. But the best comes out only in those people who don’t have a mask, who are already naked, and who have already accepted their nudity as beautiful and natural. So the change in time cannot destroy anything in them; on the contrary, it enhances. It brings to light something which they may have forgotten, others may have forgotten. We tend to take things for granted.So, only in a few exceptional cases where a person has been living innocently, without any hypocrisy, where a person is living knowing perfectly that nothing is certain here, and nothing is permanent…. And to expect these things is to create grounds for your own frustrations in the future – it is sowing seeds of despair, of anguish, of anxiety.If you accept that change is the nature of reality, and everything is going to change; if you know it moment to moment, that the next moment may bring something totally new and whatever is so real in this moment will disperse like a cloud – which was here a moment ago and now is no longer here…. If this awareness is there, then any change does not create difficulty, then every change is acceptable.You do not resist it, you do not want it to be otherwise. Even if it takes you and your beautiful dreams, your cherished desires, your half-finished palaces, there is no frustration because it was accepted from the very beginning that this can happen at any moment. So there is no conflict, there is no frustration in reality. You are at ease.Hence I say there are no times of difficulties, no times of uncertainties. Time is change, is always changing. It is just that we go on making permanent things. Against time, we are going to be defeated – and we are at fault. And when we are defeated, naturally we are angry, we are frustrated with existence itself. We lose our trust. It seems that everything is against us, and we start living in paranoia, in fear – a certain spiritual trembling enters into our being.But this happens because we have been expecting something which is not part of reality. Existence has no obligation to fulfill our expectations. And then mostly the worst comes out, because that is what we had hidden behind a certain idea of permanency. We were living with the idea that this was going to last forever; now there is no need to change. And then suddenly the whole earth disappears from under our feet – and naturally the worst comes out in people.The best is also possible, but it is possible only if you have been living in tune with life, existence, without asking any favors. And we are always asking favors. If we are not asking any favors then there is no frustration, no anger.For example, many who have been with me have felt great frustration with life itself because they worked hard, they put their whole energy into creating a beautiful dream, and as they were almost getting it finished – just the finishing touches were to be done – suddenly the whole thing disappears. They will feel angry, disgusted, against the whole of existence – but it is simply our own doing.I am not frustrated – I have not even looked back for a single moment. Those were beautiful years, we lived beautifully, and it is the nature of existence: things change. What can we do? So we are trying to make something else – that will also change. Nothing is permanent here. Except change, everything changes.So I don’t have any complaint. I have not felt even for a single moment that something has gone wrong…because here everything has gone wrong, but to me nothing has gone wrong. It is just that we tried to make beautiful palaces out of playing cards. You were just finishing and a breeze comes in without knowing that you were making palaces out of playing cards, and those palaces are scattered all around.Perhaps except for me everybody is frustrated. And they feel angry at me too because I am not frustrated, I am not with them. That makes them even more angry. If I was also angry, and I was also complaining, and I was also tremendously disturbed, they would have felt a consolation. But I am not.We enjoyed whatever we were doing, and we will be enjoying whatever we will be doing – and things will go on changing always. If this remembrance is always there as a lighthouse, then it will never make you feel in such a state that a difficult time, an uncertain time has brought the worst. We had never planted the seeds for it in the first place.That’s why I am amongst you, but still something of me remains a stranger, an outsider. For the simple reason that I look at things in a totally different way; to me it is all acceptable.Now it is going to be difficult to make another dream come true because many of those who worked to make one dream come true will be in a state of defeatism. They are defeated. They will feel that reality or existence does not care about innocent people who were not doing any harm, who were simply trying to make something beautiful. Even with them existence goes on following the same rule – it makes no exceptions.So many sannyasins will be in a state of defeatism, will find it very difficult to make another effort again. They will feel, “What is the point? We will put in our energy, our expectations, our hopes, and who knows? – tomorrow everything is destroyed just by any small thing.” They will feel it is better not to hope, it is better not to dream. It is better to get lost in ordinary life where people don’t dream, where people don’t hope, where people don’t create, where people go on living a day-to-day life.In that life you don’t come across such frustrations. Such frustrations come only when you try to reach the moon. And when you have almost reached, suddenly the moon disappears and you are further away from it than you have ever been: further away than before you had started the journey.I can see that it is painful, but we are responsible for the pain. It feels that life is not just, not fair, because it has taken a toy from our hands. One should not be in such a hurry to come to such great conclusions. Wait a little more. Perhaps it is always for the good – all the changes. You should just be patient enough. You should give life a little more rope.And always remember, the joy is not in completing something; the joy is that you desired, that you desired it with your total intensity, that while you were making it you had forgotten everything, the whole world – that it was the only focus of your whole being. And there is your bliss and your reward – not in the completion, not in the permanence of anything.In this changing flux of existence we have to find in each moment its own reward. Whatever we were doing, we did our best, we were not half-hearted; we were not keeping back something: we were putting our total being into the act. That’s where our bliss is.Then what happens to those dreams…they are really dreams, and it is a great challenge to make dreams into realities. But you should never forget it is a dream after all. It is a joy to make it a reality, but don’t forget that it remains a dream – and sooner or later it disappears.If this awareness is there, then after each change in your life you will find yourself becoming sharper, more intelligent, more mature; becoming more alert to the very delicate nuances of existence – and with tremendous acceptance of whatever happens.My whole life I have seen many things disappearing. I have made more friends than perhaps anybody has ever made. But somebody is a friend today – tomorrow it is finished. He finds some path on a crossroad and separates. But I have always taken it for granted that we are only travelers – one never knows how long someone is going to be with you. While someone is with you, give as much love as you can, share as much as you can. Tomorrow perhaps you will have to say good-bye to the person.My whole life I have been going from one place to another place because something has failed. But I have not failed. Thousands of dreams can fail – that does not make me a failure. On the contrary, each dream disappearing makes me more victorious because it does not disturb me, does not even touch me. Its disappearance is an advantage, is an opportunity to learn to be mature. Then the best will be coming out of you. And whatever happens will not make any difference – your best will go on growing to higher peaks.But never try to succeed against time, against life, against existence. Always remain in a let-go. Then one is never defeated, is never in a state of failure. And there is nothing to hide because there is no clinging to anything to make it permanent – any relationship, any friendship, any activity, anything – there is no desire to cling to it as long as things happen which you enjoy. You open yourself, you allow the juice of those moments to fill your being, and when those moments are gone you are always grateful, never complaining.If the disappearing dreams leave you in gratitude, then the best is going to grow in you. I have never looked back.Just the other day at evening darshan time a few people were very happy and enthusiastic, and they said, “Osho, we have come from Jabalpur.” And the only thing that came to my mind was that my time there has been left so far away and so far back that not even a memory has remained. Yes, I lived a dream there also, and just as all dreams fail, it failed.And I have been doing that my whole life – I’m still doing that. I will go on doing that until my last breath, undefeated. That undefeatedness I find to be one’s victory. In that undefeatedness – that every time you make something, time changes it, life starts flowing in a different direction, things start happening that you had not expected….The unknown is continuously entering your known world and disturbing it. But it disturbs only because you don’t welcome it. If you can welcome the unknown, and you can leave the known…. It is always the known that is disturbed by time – it is not the unknown. The unknown cannot be disturbed by time or by anything.If you are ready to welcome the unknown, you know the secret of remaining victorious in all the defeats and all the failures.Those dreams do not matter. What matters is how you come out of those broken dreams, those great expectations that have disappeared into thin air, you can’t even find their footprints.How do you come out of it? If you come out of it unscratched, then you have known a great secret, you have found a master key. Then nothing can defeat you, then nothing can disturb you, then nothing can make you angry and nothing can pull you back. You are always marching into the unknown for new challenges. And all these challenges will go on sharpening the best in you.Osho,What is home?There is no home, there are only houses.We try to make homes out of houses, but in fact, home is projection – there is only a house – it feels cold. We need a home: we want something cozy, something that belongs to us, something to which we belong. Something which is an extension of our being, something which we can make part of us; something which is not just a place where you live, but which becomes alive with you. A house is a dead thing; a home is a living entity, but it is a projection.So those who are searching for a home will find themselves frustrated again and again because they will find again and again that it turns out to be only a house. Home was their idea. It was their illusion, their hallucination. It was their poetry, their romance. They have been weaving and spinning something invisible around the house which nobody else can see – only they can see it. But it is just a mind game.Man is born homeless, and man remains his whole life homeless. Yes, he will make many houses into homes and he will get frustrated. And man dies homeless.To accept the truth brings a tremendous transformation. Then you don’t search for a home – because home is something there, far away, something other than you. And everybody is searching for a home. When you see its illusoriness, then, rather than searching for a home, you will start searching for the being that is born homeless, whose destiny is homeless.There is no way to make a home. And this is a miracle: the moment that you realize that there is no way to make a home, then this whole existence is home. Then wherever you are, you are at home; because now there is no question of making a home – now there is no question of creating an illusion. You have accepted your homelessness, not with any unwillingness, any resistance, but joyously, because it is good that you are born without a home; otherwise that home will be an imprisonment.Just think, if people were born with a home, they would be born imprisoned. To be homeless is to be free. It is freedom. It means there is no attachment, no obsession with anything outside; that you are not in need of getting some warmth from the outside, but that your warmth is within you. You have the source of warmth inside; you don’t need it. So wherever you are – without a home – you are strangely at home.The people who are searching for a home are always getting into despair, and finally are going to feel, “We have been cheated, life has cheated us. Somehow it gave us the desire to find a home – and there is no home at all, it simply does not exist.”We try in every possible way: one finds a husband, one finds a wife, one brings children into the world…. One tries to create a family – that is a psychological home. One makes, not a house, but tries to make it almost a living entity. He tries to make a house according to his dreams – that it is going to be a fulfillment of warmth, that in this coldness…. And it is vast, the coldness of existence. The whole universe is so cold, so indifferent, that you want to create a small shelter for yourself where you can feel that you are taken care of, that something protects you…that it is something that belongs to you – you are an owner, not a homeless wanderer.But in reality this kind of idea is going to create misery for you because one day you will find that the husband you have lived with, the wife you have lived with – is a stranger. Even after living together for fifty years, the strangeness has not disappeared; on the contrary, it has deepened. You were less strangers on the first day you met.As time has passed and you have been together, you have become more and more strangers to each other, because you have come to know each other more and more – and now you don’t understand at all who the other person is. The more you have known, the less you know. It seems that the more you have become acquainted with the person, the more you become aware that your ignorance about the other is absolute…there is no way to destroy it.Your children – you have thought they were your children, and one day you find they are not your children. You have been just a passage they have come through. They have their own lives – they are absolutely strangers. They don’t belong to you. They will find their own ways and their own lives.Who is with you? Nobody is with anybody. You are in a crowd always, but alone. Either alone or in the crowd makes no difference: either in a home or just a wanderer – it makes no differenceI have never had a home. When I left my father’s house for the last time, I told him, “I will not be coming back again, because this was only a commitment to my maternal grandmother. She had a promise from me that I would come back at least at the time of her death. So just to keep the promise, I have come. Now there is no longer any commitment.”My father said, “You always say strange things – this is your home!”I said, “That’s where we differ. Neither is it my home nor is it your home. But you continue to live in an illusion and one day you will understand that this is not home.” And I told him a famous Sufi story I have told many times.The king heard one night the sound of footsteps, somebody walking on the roof of his palace. He could not believe it. The palace was so well guarded – how had somebody reached the top?He shouted, “Who are you?”And the man on the roof shouted, “You should ask it of yourself first: who are you?”The king rushed out and called the guards to catch hold of the man, but he was not found. And the next day, again there was a stranger. But the king recognized the voice – it was the same man. And the strange behavior that he had shown the night before…to walk on the roof and then to talk in such a way, and to say to the king, “First you should ask, who are you? You don’t even know that and you are worried about me! You do your business – I’m doing mine.”The man was fighting with the guard at the gate of the palace and saying, “I want to stay in this caravanserai for a few days.”The guard was saying again and again, “You seem to be an absolute idiot; this is not a caravanserai! This is the palace of the king, his home!”And the man said, “Then I would like to see the man who lives in such an illusion.”The king was listening: he recognized the voice. He called the guard and said, “Bring that man in.” And he asked him, “Are you the same man who was on the roof?”The man said, “Yes.”“And what were you doing there?”He said, “My camel was lost, so I was searching for it.”He said, “You seem to be really mad! Your camel was lost on my roof? Has anybody ever heard of camels getting lost on the roofs of houses? And now you are fighting with my guard and calling my home a caravanserai! This is very disrespectful to me: I am the king, and this is my home, and you have to learn how to behave!”And the man started laughing. He said, “Strange! You are telling me to learn how to behave, and you don’t know at all what behavior means! Because I came here once before, and I found another man in your place. He was also saying that this is his home. I had come before that too, and there was another man and he was also saying that this is his home. Now you are saying this is your home!”The king said, “That man was my father, who has died. And the first time you came you met my grandfather.”The stranger said, “That is what I wanted to make clear to you, that they called this their home, and then they had to leave it behind. They could not take it with them. It is a caravanserai. This is an understanding, that many people have been here who thought it was their home, and they are all gone. You will be gone when I come next time! When so many people stay here and come and go, this is a caravanserai!”“And I also wanted to stay for a few days, so what is wrong? You will stay a few days, your father stayed a few days, his father stayed a few days, and this has been going on for centuries. But I am not illusioned: to me it is a caravanserai.”I told my father, “One day you will also understand that this is not home, because in this world we are born and the day we are born, we start dying. You can call your homes your graves, but you cannot call them homes, because you are only dying in them, you are not living!”And since then I have been in many houses which people thought were my homes, and I have been telling them that they were not, that there is no possibility.It is good to understand that we are wanderers, gypsies – searching for something, certainly. But the search can either be for a home…that means some security, some warmth, some coziness, some love from the outside, from somebody else – and that is the wrong way. That is the way of the worldly man – and he always ends in misery.A sannyasin basically recognizes the fact that the search is not for a home, the search is for: who is this being? – the being who is born homeless, and will remain always homeless.Don’t search for the home, because there is none. Search for your self, because there is one! And finding that one, suddenly, miraculously, the whole existence becomes your home. And you don’t create it, you don’t project it, you don’t make it. Suddenly it is a revelation. You cannot believe how you have been missing it up to now. The home was always where you were.The gypsies have a better name in the Indian language. The gypsies are basically from Rajputana in India. They got the name “gypsy” because they first went out of India to Egypt and from Egypt they entered Europe. It is Egypt that gave them the name “gypsy” – from Egypt. But they are really people from India, and in India their name is “khanabadosh.”That name has tremendous beauty. It means a person whose home is on his shoulders; so wherever he goes, he is always at home. The word khanabadosh is tremendously significant: khana means “home”, badosh means “on your own shoulders”.It is not visible, it is there, but it is revealed only to those who can find who this wanderer is, who this seeker is. Rather than going after the sought, search for the seeker. And finding the seeker, you suddenly find the whole existence is your home; wherever you are, you are at home, even in a hotel. Because every house is a hotel and every place is a caravanserai.So it is a question of how you look at things.When I was in India, I was at home; when I was in America, I was at home. When I am in Nepal, I am at home. And tomorrow I don’t know where life may take me, but wherever it takes me, I will be at home. That, nobody can take away from me for the simple reason that I am not making any projection which can taken away.Just finding yourself, you find that the whole existence is your home.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I love to hear you call us your friends. Why is it both exciting and challenging?It has many implications.It was twenty-five centuries ago that Gautam Buddha said as a departing message to his disciples before he died: “I will come back after twenty-five centuries. My name will be Maitreya.”Maitreya means the friend. And why should it be the name of Buddha? – because the spiritual evolution of man has passed through many stages. Its ultimate stage is where the master and the disciple should be just friends…because the whole idea of the master and the disciple is based on a subtle spiritual slavery. The disciple surrenders. The master provides all kinds of devices so that the disciple disappears as an ego. But there are dangers.The danger is – and it is not only theoretical; the danger is very practical, and it has happened almost all over the world throughout the centuries – that instead of the ego disappearing, the individual disappears and the ego remains. Instead of disappearing, it becomes very subtle; it becomes holy, it becomes religious, it becomes spiritual.The individual disappears in surrender – and that was not the purpose. The individual has to become more individual, more independent, more himself. The ego has to disappear – it is a false entity deceiving everybody as your true self. And unless the false is discredited, the true cannot appear.In the death of the false is the beginning of the true. Surrender is simply a device so that the ego can be dropped and you can become yourself. But this is the trouble, that with humanity you cannot be very predictable. There is almost a possibility that everything will fail, so deep is the ignorance of man, so deceptive is his own mind. And he is so caught up with his own chains that he thinks they are ornaments; he does not want to throw them. They have been with him so long that he has become identified with them.Man has forgotten who he truly is. He has almost become autohypnotized with a certain idea about himself, and he carries that idea his whole life without knowing that it is not he but only his shadow. And you cannot fulfill your shadow. A shadow is nonexistential – you cannot make anything out of it. Your effort will simply destroy your whole life; hence the device of surrender.But again man’s ignorance is there: he surrenders, but he surrenders the wrong thing. He saves the ego, which was to be surrendered, and he surrenders the individuality, which was to be saved. And he starts feeling himself to be a spiritual being just by becoming a disciple, an initiate. And if by chance he has come across a great master, he starts projecting himself as a great disciple of a great master.Gautam Buddha’s whole life’s experience was that finally the device of surrender has to be dropped, because in the majority of cases it has not been of any help, it has been a hindrance. This was his whole life’s experience – seeing people changing the color of their ego. From a worldly ego it becomes an otherworldly ego; from a materialistic ego it becomes a spiritualistic ego – which is far more dangerous. The first one was very gross; it was easy to see it and to catch hold of it. The second is more difficult because it is more subtle, it will elude you.Hence Buddha’s last message was: “When I come back again, I will come not as a master to you, and you will not be a disciple to me; I will come as a friend. And you have to rise to the standard of being a friend of a buddha.” A great challenge to the whole tradition of initiation, to the whole relationship of master and disciplehood. He could see that it has helped once in a while but in most cases it has blocked people’s growth.And we can see that he was right. There are millions of people in the world who think they are religious, they are spiritual, they are saints, they are great spiritual beings. All that is nothing but feeding the ego. They have gone far away from their real being.One thing is to be remembered: Gautam Buddha cannot come back. He has said, “I will be coming back.” That’s purely symbolic – he cannot come back. A man of that stature, a being who has reached to the ultimate experience of existence cannot come back; it is just not possible in the very nature of things. He cannot take another form, another body. He cannot be born again in the womb of a mother; he cannot become again flesh and bones. Once you have reached the state of being where you realize yourself as pure consciousness, it is no longer possible for you to be born again.So when Buddha says, “Next time when I come back…” it has to be understood only symbolically. All the Buddhists of the world have been waiting – they are waiting unnecessarily. They will never find Gautam Buddha back in the body again. And if they can find him back in the body again, then he was not a real buddha in the first place. This is the dilemma: he can be born again only if he was not a buddha, if he was not yet awakened.Once you are awakened, you cannot dream again; you can dream only in sleep. You cannot dream again – and all our lives are just dreams and we are fast asleep.The Buddhists have missed the symbolic meaning. When Gautam Buddha said, “When I will be coming back,” he simply meant the next time when there is an awakened man – and the quality of two awakened men doesn’t differ. There is not even a bit of difference. So he is perfectly right in saying, “I will come back.”In fact, each time a man is awakened, Buddha will be coming back in this sense – that it is the same consciousness again. Again the same flower has blossomed, and the same fragrance and the same message! He sees it, that within twenty-five centuries man will be capable of taking the buddha as a friend.It is a great challenge, because when you accept the buddha as a friend, there are two possibilities: either you have to pull the buddha down to the state where you are, or you have to rise to the state where the buddha is. The challenge is that you cannot pull the buddha back down to the state where you are; that is simply impossible. You cannot in any way bring him down to the darkness and to the depth and to the blindness where you live. You will have to rise to his sunlit peaks. It is a tremendous challenge.And in rising to become capable of really being a friend of the awakened one, you will have to drop many things on the way – those same things which were expected to be dropped by surrender. You will have to drop all kinds of burdens. The higher you go, the less burdened you will have to be. At the highest peak of consciousness you reach just naked, like an innocent child – not even with clothes. Even that is too much of a burden.I have called you my friends…the same challenge.And exactly after twenty-five centuries, Gautam Buddha is not back in one sense, but is back in another sense. Whenever, wherever anybody becomes awakened, it is the same taste, the same sweetness, the same joy, the same bliss, the same silence.Can you tell any difference between the light of two candles? Light is simply light – to which candle it belongs is immaterial. Its function is to destroy darkness – that’s the only meaning of light.So whoever becomes light has now the responsibility to raise humanity from the old, traditional way of surrendering to a master, because that has created many kinds of spiritual slaveries around the world. It has not enlightened man, it has darkened his soul.The very effort of becoming a friend…and something starts changing in you, because you are trying to reach the moon. The moon cannot come to you, but you can reach the moon. The moon can give the invitation. The moon can call your very being – provoke you, challenge you, inspire you – but it cannot come to you. You have to travel the whole path.And it is easier and it is simpler when the master is a friend, because now between you and the master the relationship is of love.Friendship is the purest love.It is the highest form of love where nothing is asked for, no condition, where one simply enjoys giving. One gets much – but that is secondary, and that happens of its own accord.To create a state of love between the master and the disciple means we are avoiding the device of surrender; instead we are making the disciple responsible. Surrender becomes, in most of the cases, an irresponsibility…because the disciple thinks, “I have surrendered to the master – now it is his responsibility to change me, to transform me, to take me to the heights where he belongs.” He starts thinking in terms of the master as the savior, that “I have found the savior; now I will believe and have faith in him and he is to save me.”That’s what all the religions of the world are doing. They have found the savior, and they have dropped all their responsibility. Now it is the duty of Jesus or Krishna or Buddha to take you in their arms and carry you into the highest state of being.Now, this is not possible. Nobody can take you to the ultimate; you will have to go on your own, alone. The master’s function is not to save you: his function is to show you the path. You have to save yourself.Except for you there is no one who can become your savior.People have never thought about it: The moment you think somebody else can save you, you are becoming dependent on somebody else. And dependence is not the right way to reach to the high peaks of consciousness, independence – total independence – freedom. You are cutting your wings with your own hands, and now you will not be able to fly to the moon.The moment you think of your master as a friend, you save him from the responsibility of being your savior, and you save yourself by becoming responsible, by taking the whole path – its difficulties, its beauties, its anguishes and its ecstasies…accepting everything with tremendous responsibility.You are alone, and alone you have to seek and search. And only in your ultimate aloneness will you find it. The master can only show you the path. He is only a finger pointing to the moon. He is certainly a great friend because what he is indicating to you is the greatest bliss in life.Existence moves in two ways. One is the horizontal way, like a straight line moving from A to B, from B to C, up to X Y Z. You start becoming more and more alive.Perhaps at point A you were just a stone. Yes, there is some kind of life in the rocks too, because they grow. The Himalayas are still growing higher, every year one foot. They are still young and still full of energy to go higher. They are the highest mountains in the world – seem to be inexhaustible in energy, as if they want to touch the stars.I was born near a mountain which is the oldest mountain in the world, Vindhyachal. It came out of the ocean at the very beginning – the first mountain in the world. It is the oldest; ancient…it has stopped growing for millions of years. It is so old that there is a beautiful story about it.One great sage was going to deliver his message towards the south – Vindhyachal is just in the middle of India – and for the old sage to cross the mountain was really difficult. Seeing the difficulty of the old sage, Vindhyachal bent down, just as if somebody were touching your feet, and allowed the way to the sage. And the sage said, “Remain as you are, because I will have to come back again, and by that time I will be even older. So please wait for me!” But the sage never came back; he died in the south, so Vindhyachal is still bent.I have been to the place where the sage went; it is still bent like an old man. But it is the most ancient; nothing grows, it has come to a full stop. But it did grow sometime in the past.The Himalayas are the newest mountains, the latest mountains in the world to have come out of the ocean. They are still growing, becoming higher and higher.Even rocks grow, so don’t think they don’t have life; but the life is very dormant, very deeply asleep – not even a dream, just darkness and deep sleep. But it is still life, maybe the most primitive – at point A of a horizontal line.So there in the horizontal line is man. And there are men ahead of you, but they are not higher than you. There is Albert Einstein – he is ahead of you, you may perhaps be miles back, but it is the same line…a linear progress. The difference between you and him may be miles, but it is the same road. Even if somebody reaches the very end of the line, reaches Z, then too he becomes at the most Zorba the Greek.I have loved the name “Zorba the Greek” for so many reasons. One is because Z is the last letter in the alphabet. He is the Z; he is the end of the line. He is more alive than any man, but his aliveness does not make him higher than you. His aliveness is more like a wild animal – innocent but ignorant; full of energy, vitality, but blind, with no eyes to see. Yes, he can dance, but his dance will not have anything of divineness in it. It will be tremendously powerful but it will remain earthly.The horizontal line moves on the earth. You can become at the most Zorba the Greek, but your unconsciousness will still be your life; you will still be groping in darkness. You will still be unaware that there is another dimension also – the vertical dimension.The vertical dimension moves from A to a higher A. It goes on moving higher, but it remains the same energy, A becoming purified, becoming more conscious, becoming more alert; ultimately becoming fully conscious. It does not move from A to B, from B to C; it simply moves from A1 to A2, to A3, to A4. At point A4 something happens that we call the awakened one.Life moving horizontally remains simply life; life moving vertically becomes consciousness.It becomes consciousness, it becomes a new phenomenon. Horizontal life always has a goal to it, it is goal-oriented. When you are at B, your eyes are focused on C. When you are at point B, you are not there at all; either you are thinking of point A that you have left behind – your past, all your yesterdays, your memories – or you are projecting into the future: B, C, E…up to Z, a whole long line of goals.Your mind is either in the yesterdays or in the tomorrows, but it is never herenow. You are never where you are; you are always somewhere else, where you are not.This is the whole tension of the human mind, that it is always absent where it is actually present, and it is present where it is not actually present – and cannot ever be present in any possible way.If you are at point B, you are at point B: you can only think of C, you can imagine it. You can have memories of the past and you can have imaginations of the future – but you are in the present.The vertical line moves from the present. First you have to be herenow. Wherever you are, you have to be exactly there – no memories, no imagination – and suddenly there is a transformation, because when there is no memory, no imagination, all your energy is accumulated in this small moment. And this moment is so small, it cannot contain it. That’s what brings transformation.It brings an explosion, like an atomic explosion. The present moment explodes: suddenly life becomes consciousness. You start moving upwards, from consciousness to superconsciousness, from superconsciousness to the collective superconsciousness, from the collective superconsciousness to cosmic superconsciousness. And that is A4: cosmic superconsciousness is the state of the awakened person, the buddha.To be the friend of the awakened master means to transform the very quality of your life, to change its dimension from the horizontal to the vertical. It is a beginning of living in the moment – suddenly you will find Buddha is not so far away, he is just very close to you – only three steps, and he is the fourth.In the East we have called that state “the fourth.” We have not given it any name; we have given it a number, not a name. We have called it turiya; turiya means the fourth. This is the only experience which has not been given a meaningful name but only a number. It is significant.Why did they give it a number? – because no word can explain it. It is such a mysterious experience that all words fail, all explanations become meaningless. Nothing can be said about it; only silence can give you a taste of it. Hence no specific name has been given to it, but only a number to indicate that in this world names cannot enter.Wherever you are on the horizontal line, there are millions of things ahead of you to achieve, and whatever you can achieve, still there will be millions of things to achieve. So everybody remains a beggar – everybody without exception. Wherever he is, he remains a beggar, for the simple reason that he is never fulfilled. There is much more that is ahead of him, there is much more that others have.Even the greatest king, even the greatest rich man, even the greatest, most knowledgeable person cannot claim everything because there are millions of things. The king may be the greatest king, he may be Alexander the Great, but in many things he is a poor man.When Alexander the Great met Diogenes, a naked sage – just looking at Diogenes, he felt jealous. Alexander the Great, who has conquered the whole known world, feels jealous of a naked man, for the simple reason that that naked man seems so contented, such a peace surrounds him! He has nowhere to go, he has nothing – and yet it seems he has everything. And Alexander cannot forget Diogenes – he remembers Diogenes again and again.He cannot forget, because that man was far richer, and there is no way…you can conquer the whole world but you cannot become Diogenes. And Diogenes laughed when Alexander met with him, and he told him, “You are unnecessarily feeling jealous, because whatever I have got, you can have it – just drop this race of conquering the world. You will die exhausted, spent, and you will die a beggar.”And Alexander died when he was only thirty-three – spent, because continuously fighting, he burned himself out too quickly. And the day he died – because he remembered Diogenes saying, “You will die a beggar” – he told his prime minister and his generals, “This is my last will, and take care that it should be fulfilled. My hands should be hanging out of the casket. When you carry my dead body to the graveyard, my hands should be hanging out.”“But,” they said, “this is not done! A strange kind of thing you are asking. And people will ask us, ‘Why are his hands hanging out?’ – because it has never been done before. What are we going to say to them?”Alexander said, “Tell them that my hands are empty. I came with empty hands and I am going with empty hands – I am dying a beggar. Diogenes was right. Let the whole world know that I spent myself, burned myself out, unnecessarily rushing after shadows.”Yes, he became a world conqueror but he could not have even the peace and the silence of a naked beggar who had nothing. Gautam Buddha at least used to have a begging bowl….Diogenes also had a begging bowl, but one day he was rushing to the river – he was feeling thirsty – with his begging bowl, to fill it with water and drink it. Just by his side a dog was running; it got there before Diogenes and started drinking directly from the river.Diogenes said, “My God, this dog is far ahead of me! He does not even need a begging bowl; he has defeated me – I am finished with my begging bowl!” He dropped the begging bowl in the river and started drinking water the way the dog was drinking. That was his last possession; after that he never possessed anything.A man who had nothing in the world, not even a begging bowl – which a beggar is allowed to have – still he made emperors jealous. Just looking at his eyes, just the light in his eyes…the very sparkle of the man was stunning. The silence of the man and his small statements, but with such great meaning….Alexander, leaving him, asked, “Can I do anything for you? I am really impressed, I have never come across a man like you. I would love to do something; you say anything and it will be done.” And Diogenes said, “Just stand to one side because I am taking a sunbath and you are blocking my sun.”Diogenes was sitting on a bank in the sands, naked, taking a sunbath. And he said, “It would be very kind of you if you can just stand a little to one side – that’s more than enough. What else do I need? I have got everything.”The man who says, “I have got everything,” is not speaking of the things of this world – because Diogenes had nothing of this world. He is speaking of another dimension, of another richness, of another kingdom: he is talking about “the fourth.” He is talking about a vertical growth.To be a friend of the awakened master is a great challenge. But the distance is not far; you have just to change your dimension. If you go on moving on the horizontal line, then you will be moving farther and farther away from the master and his state of mind, his consciousness. To be a friend you have to turn and become vertical-just the way a tree grows: vertical, higher – not flowing like a river, which is horizontal.Every person has the potential at every moment to change the dimension of his life. It is simply a decision, a commitment – not to anyone else but to your own self. It is just a decision: that “I have accepted the master, the awakened being, as my friend – now I have to prove it.” Nobody else can do it for you, only you will have to prove it.It is certainly a most exciting experience…to come closer and closer to the master’s being, and to come to the experience of the fourth state of consciousness. Then suddenly all the mysteries of existence are available to you. All the questions disappear. Then suddenly you are the answer.There is no question mark, there is no quest; you are not going anywhere anymore – you have arrived. It was so close; it was within you – and you have been carrying it all along for many, many lives; you had just never looked at it. It was your treasure, and it was for you only. It has been waiting for many lives within you. It will wait for eternity because nobody else can claim it.Any moment it is yours – you have just to decide to turn from the goal-oriented, ambitious world where you are always looking for more and more. And you are capable of getting more and more, but your dissatisfaction remains, your desire for more continues. There never comes a point when you can say that now the desire for more has disappeared. The more you have, the more you want, the desire goes on growing more.An ancient parable is that a king had a massagist, a poor man, who used to come to massage the king every day; he was the best massagist in the capital. He used to get just one gold coin every day, and that was more than enough. He lived like the richest man in the world. In those days, a gold coin every day…no care for tomorrow. He was the happiest man, the king never found him sad – and the king was always sad because there were so many problems and no way to solve them, and they were continuously increasing, and the enemies and the wars…problems upon problems.And this man had nothing but…he gets only one coin every morning, and that’s all. And he does not go anywhere else – his work is finished in the morning, then the whole day he enjoys. He used to play on the flute – he used to live just in front of the king’s palace in a small hut. In the middle of the night when the king was overburdened with all his worries, the massagist would be playing on his flute. In the full-moon night when everything was beautiful, the king was just anxiety and nothing else.He was very jealous of this massagist, because this poor man got only one coin every day from him and he was enjoying life like a king; and the king could not even enjoy life like the massagist.He asked his prime minister, who was a wise old man, “What is the secret? I can’t understand why he is so joyful, always singing, playing the flute, and always happy. And whenever he comes I have never seen any sadness in the man, not even the shadow of it.”The prime minister said, “You wait just a few days.” In the night the prime minister threw a bag full of ninety-nine gold coins into the massagist’s house.In the morning, when he was getting up and getting ready to go to the king, the massagist found the bag. He was puzzled. He counted the coins and he said, “My God, ninety-nine coins! What am I going to do with so many coins? – one is more than enough.”But he became worried. That day he was not so happy as every other day. The king said, “What is the matter?”He said, “Nothing; it is just that I have got into trouble. Somebody has thrown a bag of ninety-nine coins into my house, and since I counted those coins in that bag my whole life is destroyed. It is just this morning that my whole life has been ruined, because I am worried. I have never been worried.”The king said, “But why should you be worried?”He said, “I am worried because I am thinking that it will be good now to save one coin today; I am going to try to make one hundred exactly. Today I am going to remain hungry because I cannot eat, I cannot purchase my food. And today you will not be listening to my flute because a hungry man cannot play on the flute. And the idea persists, that it will be good to make the number exactly one hundred.” And since that day the man was a different man.The old prime minister told the king, “Now do you know the secret? Up to now he had no desire for more; now there is a problem. When he has one hundred he will think that now if he can save one more, he will have one hundred and one. And now he is in a vicious circle; he will never be out of it. Those ninety-nine coins have destroyed his whole life; he will remain miserable. Now you will see him every day becoming more and more miserable.”The world of “more” is the world of the ordinary man. The world of not going after the more, not going after any goal ahead of you but just looking in the moment where you are, who you are, and taking a plunge into the presentness of your consciousness – this is the only revolution, and the only religion, and the only spirituality there is. And it is so close, only three steps. And it all depends on you.To be the friend of the master means you have accepted the challenge: that you will rise above yourself, and you will go on rising until you reach the point where you are synonymous with the consciousness of the master. Only then is the pilgrimage of the friendship with the awakened one fulfilled.It is the greatest challenge, but once accepted, it brings you to the greatest blessing possible to human beings.I would love not to be your master, but just to be your friend, and give you the challenge. I cannot come to the valley of darkness, but you can come to the world of stars and light.I can call you, invite you, challenge you, provoke you. I can show you the way – but you will have to walk. Nobody else can walk on your behalf. And that’s what for centuries we have been hoping: somebody else will do it for us. That’s why it has not happened; it has happened only to a few people who have walked themselves. The whole humanity has remained in misery because they have been waiting for the savior to come.The savior never comes. He is always there at the sunlit peaks, calling. It is not the same person always; the person goes on changing, but there is always someone on the sunlit peaks calling you forth. It is the same voice. The face may be different, the body may be different, but it is the same source. All the buddhas are the same; their message is the same, their mission is the same. Their language may differ but their indications are always to the same path.Move from the past and the future to the present. Bring your whole energy to the present moment; and the present moment is so small that you need not do anything else – just that much energy in that small moment is bound to explode. That explosion becomes light, and you are suddenly moved one step ahead, from conscious to superconscious. Then you know – because it is the same step and it is the same movement.If you have taken one step…. The ancient sages of China have a proverb: “One step is half the journey” – because if you have taken one step, the journey is finished really, because you know now the secret of how this one step has been taken. Now go on gathering your energies more and more in the present, again and again, and there will be bigger explosions.The fourth explosion and you are no more – and you are for the first time, both together. You are no more as an ego, and you are for the first time as an individual. You are no longer a separate personality in existence; you are no longer a dewdrop, you are the whole ocean. And each step is such a joy that the very joy goes on taking you further and further.Only the first step is difficult; then there is nothing difficult. You have the master key in your hands.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is there a possibility that a saint can be a rascal?The question reminds me of a small story – it happened in a Christian monastery. Two monks were discussing in the garden of the monastery – every day they were given one hour to walk in the garden and meditate on God…. They were discussing, “Is it possible to smoke while walking in the garden?”They were not in the church, they were not in the monastery; they were outside the church, outside the monastery. Both decided it would be better to ask the abbot of the monastery. Next day, the first was sitting under a tree very dejected, very sad, and the other came along, smoking a cigarette. The first could not believe it.He said, “It seems you have not asked the abbot, because I asked, and he was very angry, and he refused me absolutely. How is it that you are smoking?”The second monk said, “What did you ask the abbot?”The sad man said, “I asked simply, ‘Is it possible to smoke while contemplating God?’ And he said, ‘No, absolutely no!”The second man laughed, and he said, “That’s why! I asked him, ‘Can I contemplate God while smoking?’ And he said, ‘Yes, of course!”It is absolutely impossible for a saint to be a rascal – but a rascal can be a saint.It is absolutely impossible for a saint because the very definition of the saint does not include any possibility of being a rascal. The saint is thought to be a simple, truthful, sincere and very serious seeker of truth. He is one-dimensional.To find the truth he abandons everything, he renounces the world; he renounces his own body, his own feelings, his own emotions. He becomes almost bodiless. He is in the world but he belongs to the world no more. He has turned his back upon the world.This has been praised for centuries, but there is something which has been overlooked – that this type of person is flat. He has no colors, he is like a very ancient, antique, faded painting. He is just surviving, not living. He has chosen an anti-life attitude. He rejects life to gain spirituality.Necessarily, rejecting life, he rejects everything that is implied in life – all its colors, all its songs, all its beauties, all its joys. It is a tremendous phenomenon. He becomes dry, juiceless – just a skeleton, waiting for death so that he can be released from the body completely.Of course, he cannot be a rascal.But there have been rascals who became great saints: Chuang Tzu in China, Hotei in Japan, Bodhidharma in India; and in this very century, George Gurdjieff in the West…just to mention the very great and very significant people of tremendous importance as saints. But you cannot include them in the ordinary concept of the saint.They are very colorful people, very alive, living intensely. They have not renounced the world; they do not see the need to renounce it. Because God has not renounced the world, why should they renounce the world? And God loves all these colors and these flowers and these birds and these songs and these people. Existence is multi-dimensional. It accommodates, it is very compassionate. It will not prevent a rascal from becoming a saint. Of course the very quality of the rascal’s being will be totally transformed.Chuang Tzu remained an enigma to all the religious people in China for centuries because of his behavior, his statements, his absurd stories which nobody can think of as being holy in any way. They certainly contain something holier than the so-called holy books, but to perceive it one needs great insight.One morning Chuang Tzu was sitting, very sad, by the side of his bed. His disciples had never seen him sad, and they asked him what had happened.He said, “I am in such trouble that I don’t see how I will be able to solve it in this life or ever.”Everybody was eager to know about the problem that Chuang Tzu could not solve. He was one of the greatest philosophers, and whenever they came with great problems, he had never said that they could not be solved; he had answers for every question. So what could be the problem?Chuang Tzu said, “The problem is, in the night I dreamed that I have become a butterfly.”They all laughed; they said, “It was just a dream! Where is the problem?”Chuang Tzu said, “You have not heard the whole thing. Now I am wondering: perhaps the butterfly has gone to sleep and is dreaming that she has become Chuang Tzu! Now, what is the truth? Did Chuang Tzu become a butterfly in the dream, or did the butterfly become Chuang Tzu in the dream? Who am I?”It is perfectly logical. If a man can become a butterfly in a dream, there seems to be no contradiction; a butterfly can become a man in a dream. What is reality?And he has written these kinds of parables – absurd. You cannot solve them, they are basically unsolvable. He was asked why he goes on writing such stuff – “Because we have never heard religious people writing such things. They write about God, they write about heaven, about hell; they write about how to live your life. And you write things that disturb us! They don’t help us.”And he said, “Unless you are totally disturbed you will not be reborn. Unless you are so disturbed that nothing of you remains undisturbed, you will not find yourself; you will not find that space which nothing can disturb. I go on writing these stories to disturb you.“I am not here to give consolation to you. For consolation you can go to ordinary saints. I disturb, and I disturb totally, to the point where you have a nervous breakdown, because unless you have a breakdown, you can’t have a breakthrough.”Very few people had the courage to remain with Chuang Tzu. He was creating situations which were very embarrassing. Saints are not supposed to do such things. For example, he was found one day in the capital sitting on a donkey, his disciples following him, and the whole town laughing. And the people are gathered on both sides…because he is not sitting in the right way, he is sitting looking at his disciples and the donkey is going forward and he is looking backward! The people are laughing and the disciples are feeling very embarrassed.Finally one disciple said, “Why are you doing it? You are making a fool of yourself! And with you we are becoming idiots unnecessarily – people are thinking we are idiots!”Chuang Tzu said, “There is something great implied in it. I have thought it over and over: if I sit the way people sit on donkeys, then my back will be towards you, and that is insulting. And I don’t want to insult anybody, not even my own disciples. There is a possibility that you can be in front of me, but then you will be insulting me – and that is not right at all, disciples insulting the master.“So this is the solution that I have found. Let the fools laugh – but I am facing you, you are facing me. That’s how a master and disciple should be; and I am respectful towards you, and you are respectful towards me. And the donkey has no objection – why should we bother about the people?”Now this kind of man is rare, unique, difficult to find. But he attained to the highest clarity, consciousness, love, compassion – but he remained a rascal to the very end.I mentioned the name of Hotei. He was just on his deathbed, and he asked his disciples, “Can somebody suggest to me a way to die which has never happened before? – because I don’t want to die in the ordinary and common way. For example, most people die lying in their bed.“And,” Hotei said, “that’s why I never lie in bed because that is the most dangerous place: ninety-nine percent of people die there! So I have been sleeping on the floor my whole life to avoid that place.“But I would like to die in my own way, just the way I have lived my life in my own way: not caring at all what others say but simply living spontaneously, out of my own being, out of my own insight. Whether I am condemned or whether I am disrespected – that I have never cared about. But I am worried – I need some suggestion from you.”Somebody suggested, “You could die standing.”He said, “The idea is good!”Then one of the disciples said, “But it is not very original, because I have heard of a great rascal saint just like you who died standing. So it will not be very unique and original.”Somebody suggested, “Then the best way is, die standing on your head! We don’t think that anybody has done that before. It is going to be unique – never done before and perhaps never in the future.”Hotei said, “I like the idea!” Even at the point of death he stood on his head. And it is said that the disciples were at a loss to figure out what to do now. Because they knew what to do when a person dies in the bed, but what to do with the master who has died standing on his head?Somebody said that his sister, who was older than him – she was a nun, just as he was a monk, and she lived nearby…. “It is better to ask her; we should not do anything before asking somebody who is in a better position and is a better authority.” The elder sister was called.She came up and she said, “Hotei, you rascal! Your whole life you have been this way – but at least behave at the point of death! Get up and lie down on the bed!”Naturally, when the elder sister says so…. Hotei jumped up, laughed, lay down on the bed and died!But this kind of saint is a very unique phenomenon. Tradition would not accept him, religions will avoid mentioning him. Even after death he continued to be himself. Before dying he said, “Remember, I am not a traditional man, so please don’t give me a bath”. It was a traditional thing, that before taking him to the funeral pyre he should be given a bath. He said, “I have taken my bath in the morning so there is no need to give me a cold bath again. I hate it!” “But,” they said, “you will be dead!”He said, “Dead or alive, I hate it! And remember that you are my disciples and my will should be followed; don’t remove my clothes.”Traditionally, a bath is given, and new clothes, food…because we are sending the person on a new pilgrimage, on a new journey. But he insisted. The traditional people were not even willing to participate in his funeral because they said, “This is not right – he should be given a bath, his clothes should be changed.”But his disciples said, “We cannot deny our dead master – and he never cared about you anyway. And we don’t think he will care whether you come to the funeral or not.”They had to put his body on the pyre in his clothes…and only then did they recognize that that man was really something, one who comes only once in a while. The whole crowd of disciples started laughing, because he had hidden in his clothes fireworks! So, many things started exploding. He made a joke even of death! He created laughter even at his funeral.So I cannot say that a saint can be a rascal, but I can say certainly that existence is very accommodating: a rascal can be a saint, and perhaps a greater saint than your so-called ordinary saints. Your ordinary saints are ordinary human beings. They fulfill your expectations; a rascal saint never fulfills your expectations. On the contrary he goes on destroying your expectations. He functions in such a way that you cannot define him, you cannot explain him. You cannot make sense of many things in his life.George Gurdjieff, who died only in 1950, was a contemporary man but perhaps the most rare man in this whole century. One of his disciples, Nicoll, remembers traveling with him on a train in America, when Gurdjieff started behaving as if he was a drunkard. Nicoll knew that he had not touched any drink for years – he had been with him – but he started behaving like a drunkard…shouting, throwing things, disturbing the whole train.Finally the conductor came, the guard came, and Nicoll was very embarrassed. He was trying to prevent Gurdjieff – “What are you doing?” – but Gurdjieff wouldn’t listen. He was making a fool of himself and making a fool of Nicoll.Nicoll was even more embarrassed…because at least people thought Gurdjieff was drunk: “But you should take care of your master, and if he is drunk then you should not travel in the middle of the night. He has awakened the whole train!“And he is not only throwing out his things, he is throwing out other people’s things. You stop him; otherwise we will have to call the police at the next station.”Nicoll was trying to persuade Gurdjieff, and said, “Stop this game! Why are you unnecessarily…. I know perfectly well you are not drunk.”And Gurdjieff said into Nicoll’s ear, “I know it too – don’t be worried! I have my own ways of working. You have to learn not to be embarrassed – whatever the situation. If you are to be with me, you have to learn one thing: not to be embarrassed. It is a teaching for you; I made this whole train a teaching class for you. Why does one feel embarrassed?”And people gathered and started listening. Suddenly Gurdjieff was not drunk, and he was talking on embarrassment and its implications. If you can drop embarrassment, there is a certain spiritual growth in you. Why is one embarrassed? – because one wants respectability, deep down one wants everybody to think of one in nice ways, good respectable ways. When something happens which goes against respectability, there is embarrassment. It is the ego that is embarrassed.And Gurdjieff said to Nicoll, “If you can drop embarrassment, you have dropped the ego. Now we can go to sleep.”The whole train was wondering about the man. Whatever he said was absolutely right. Many people in the morning came to visit in his compartment. They said, “Forgive us, but you have made such an impression. We had never thought that a teacher, a spiritual master, will behave in this way just to give a lesson to his disciple. But we could not sleep the whole night – we thought about it again and again. It is true, we feel embarrassed. It is not our true self, it is just our idea of our prestige, of our status; of how people should see us, how people should know us.”We all have masks. And whenever somebody takes the mask away, suddenly you are embarrassed, because you have been hiding your original face from the whole world and suddenly you are exposed. Suddenly you find your clothes have disappeared and you are standing naked!But only a man like Gurdjieff would do that. Once he called one of his most important and the greatest of his disciples, P.D. Ouspensky. This man, P.D. Ouspensky, was a world-famous mathematician. Nobody knew about Gurdjieff before Ouspensky became his disciple; it was his becoming initiated by Gurdjieff that made Gurdjieff’s name world-famous.Ouspensky was a world-famous mathematician. He has written one book which is thought to be one of the three great books in the whole world. He himself in that book…. It is on mathematics, higher mathematics – but not only on mathematics, it is also on spirituality. And he is the only mathematician known up to now who has made some basic bridges between the highest flight of mathematics and spirituality.His book’s name is Tertium Organum. It means “the third canon of thought.” He writes in his introduction: “The first canon of thought was written by Aristotle; it is called Organum. The second canon of thought was written by Bacon; it is called Novum Organum – the new canon of thought. Both have been tremendously decisive in scientific growth.” Ouspensky has called his book the third canon of thought – Tertium Organum and he says, “Although my book is coming third, it existed before the first ever existed.”And certainly it is more fundamental than both Bacon’s and Aristotle’s. And it is now almost half a century old, but no other book has come which can be the fourth…perhaps it never will come. He has done such a perfect job.This man was a professor at London University in the times of the Russian revolution, and Gurdjieff was in Russia, far away in the interior in a small place, Tiflis. Gurdjieff called Ouspensky to come immediately. And it was very dangerous: the whole of Russian life had been disturbed, the czar had been killed. Although the revolutionaries had overturned the old regime, the new regime had not yet come into existence; it was just chaos all over the country – and it is a vast country, one sixth of the whole earth. The army was scattered and nobody knew what was happening. Trains were running on their own, or not running; there was nobody to control anything. Everything was on fire; and to move, everybody was at risk.Gurdjieff called Ouspensky immediately, and Ouspensky dropped his well-paid job, his very respectable professorship, and went into a dangerous Russia. He was afraid that he might not be able to reach; he might be killed – people were being killed and butchered like anything. But somehow he managed. It took three months for him to find the village of Tiflis, but anyhow he reached there and he was happy that he had managed it.When he entered the house of Gurdjieff, Gurdjieff said, “Good! So you have come. Now you can go back and rejoin your job.” Ouspensky could not believe that Gurdjieff would do such a thing – putting him at such risk unnecessarily. And Gurdjieff had not even said a single word! He had not even asked Ouspensky to sit down and rest a little before he left to go back. He said, “Now you can go back immediately.”Even other disciples who were there with Gurdjieff became very suspicious: this was strange! One of the disciples said, “We cannot believe what you have done! What is the meaning of it?”Gurdjieff said, “This is the last fire test of trust – and I don’t think he will be able to pass it. I have seen on his face that he has failed; I have seen frustration. He could not go gracefully. If he had gone gracefully he would have been born anew, he would have become a new man.“I had given him the opportunity to be reborn – he missed.” And certainly Ouspensky missed, because he became so angry that he disconnected himself from Gurdjieff.Even such a great thinker, mathematician, scientist, could not see that when a man like Gurdjieff does something – howsoever absurd, meaningless – there is bound to be some meaning in it. You should not take it at face value, you should give it a chance to sink deep. Many of Gurdjieff’s disciples left him at one point or another because they could not conceive logically what the man was doing.A rascal saint will not behave logically, his behavior will be very illogical. But still, if you can figure out the deeper implications of his illogicality, you will be simply surprised that he is a miracle man.For example, Gurdjieff would make the vegetarians eat meat, force them to eat meat. The person who was not drinking he would force to drink as much as possible – till he was flat on the floor, saying things which you could have never thought that the man would say. And Gurdjieff would be listening to him.He said, “I never believe what people say unless they are unconscious. Only in their unconsciousness do they say the truth. In their consciousness they go on saying things which are respectable, which have to be said, which are expected to be said. Only when they are unconscious are they true. Then you can see their original face. And only the original can be changed, you cannot change the false. The false does not exist, how can you change it? You can change only the real, but first you have to find it.”Gurdjieff had his own ways of finding it. But these ways are not common; hence neither Chuang Tzu nor Hotei created a religion, nor Gurdjieff, nor Bodhidharma.Bodhidharma perhaps is the greatest of all these four. He was born in India and went to China. And his fame went ahead of him; the great Chinese emperor had come to receive him on the border. And the emperor had done great service to Buddhism – he had made thousands of temples and thousands of monasteries, and he had thousands of scholars translating all the Buddhist literature from Pali to Chinese.He had put all his treasures in the service of Buddhism. He changed the whole of China to Buddhism – his name was Emperor Wu. And naturally, every Buddhist who had come before Bodhidharma had told Emperor Wu, “You have earned great virtue. You will be born in the seventh lotus paradise, the highest paradise in Buddhist mythology. You have done such great work that there is no comparison – even Ashoka is left far behind.”Emperor Wu, gracefully bowed down, touched the feet of Bodhidharma and asked him, “What is my virtue?”And Bodhidharma said, “None!”The emperor was shocked. He said, “But I have made so many temples, and I have made thousands of Buddha statues, and I feed thousands of Buddhist monks. I have changed the whole of China to Buddhism. And you say that my virtue is nil? Will I not be able to be born into the seventh lotus paradise?”Bodhidharma laughed, he said, “You will be born in the seventh hell!”The emperor had never seen such a man; he was accustomed to courtesy, grace – he was a great emperor. And this man is simply hitting him so hard. He asked Bodhidharma, “Why are you so hard on me?”Bodhidharma said, “Because I love you, and whoever I love, I am hard on him; otherwise, who cares? The people who have been telling you that you will be born in the seventh paradise don’t love you, don’t understand you; they are simply cheating you, because you are serving their purpose. They are giving you great promises to be fulfilled in the other world. I cannot give you any promise unless I see the transformation happening here and now.“You may have made thousands of temples, but you are not a temple yet. And you have made thousands of Buddha statues, but you are not a buddha yet. And the seventh lotus paradise is not for statue-makers; it is for those who have become a buddha themselves. I can make you a buddha, but I am going to be a hard man. You will have to forget completely that you are an emperor. With me no nonsense can be tolerated.“So you go back home and think about it. If you are ready, I am always ready. But don’t be befooled by these so-called Buddhist monks – who are good people, who are simple-hearted, who are not doing any harm to anybody. But they are not masters who transform, who create a new consciousness.”And he said, “I will wait outside the town, I will not enter your empire. You will have to enter into my empire. I will wait outside. Tomorrow morning at four o’clock, before the sun rises, if you have decided that you are ready to travel the path whatever the consequences, you can come; otherwise I will move.”The whole night the emperor could not sleep…whether to go to this man? – because he looked dangerous. And to go alone at four o’clock, in the dark…. And Bodhidharma had warned him, “Don’t bring your guards or others, because you will have to go alone on the path.”Who knows? – the man might be a little insane or something. Certainly he was dangerous! He was not the common run-of-the-mill saint. But his eyes, his gestures…! Although he was very rude, still behind his rudeness there was great compassion. And the king thought about it again and again: To go or not to go? But he could not resist – he had to go. The man was irresistible.Fearing, trembling inside, still the emperor went to the temple – Bodhidharma was staying outside the boundary of his empire. Bodhidharma said, “I knew you would come. I knew because although I was hard and rude, and you were shocked, you were not angry; you were understanding. You were puzzled – you have never seen such a man, a very strange type of saint! But I knew that you would not be able to sleep.“I have also not slept the whole night. I have been waiting for you. I was certain that you would come because whatever I had said was said with immense compassion and love.”This man, Bodhidharma, had very few disciples, but whoever had the courage and guts to be with this strange man was certainly transformed.Now, Bodhidharma is not accepted by the traditional people. But this is the beauty of life: there is a traditional crowd, but there is also a small untraditional path, trodden by the rare. It is almost like walking on a sword. But these few rare people have done more as far as transformation of consciousness is concerned than millions of ordinary saints.They are good – but good for nothing. These people may not seem the right kind, but to meet such a man is the rarest opportunity in life. They are dangerous. It is playing with fire, but unless you are ready to play with fire, you cannot expect something miraculous to happen to you.From ordinary saints and priests and theologians, you can get only an ordinary kind of religiousness. If you get satisfied with it, you are unfortunate. It is not enough – not enough for any man worth calling himself a man.I am certainly in favor of all those rare beings – extraordinary, untraditional, strangers, outlandish – because they can change you so quickly. Just to be near them can create a new fire in you. It is there; it just needs a little work to remove so many conditions, thoughts, conventions, which have covered it. Otherwise, everybody is carrying the fire.But you need a surgeon, you can’t just depend on simply good people to help you. You need somebody who can cut through and through and reach to your heart.And certainly these strange people will have strange ways, because to reach to the human heart is not simple. To reach to the human mind is very simple, but to reach to the human heart is very difficult, and to reach deeper than the human heart – to the very soul of the man, to his being – you need rare surgeons, rare physicians. Their methods will be outlandish.So it is a blessing to the earth that there have been a few rascal saints too. They are the very salt of the whole evolution of human consciousness.Go for the rare, search for the unique. Only then may you be able to find a door to the unknown.The ordinary saint is good if you want just to worship and touch his feet and give him some flowers and get his blessings. He is good – he does no harm, he is a consolation. In a troubled society where everybody is miserable he gives you consolation. Where everybody is suffering he provides you with a certain kind of opium. He keeps you contented in a very discontented world.But the rare saint you asked about creates discontent in you – discontent for the divine. Your ordinary discontentment is nothing, he wants more discontent in you. He wants you to become aflame with discontent. Your very discontent will become such a fire that it will burn everything that is not necessary in you, that is not really part of you, and will bring out your radiant being in its utter beauty and nakedness.I love the rascal saints!Nobody has talked about them, nobody writes about them. Nobody even dares to call some saint a rascal saint. But I cannot be untruthful.I simple call a spade a spade!

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,How is it possible that you just walk past a person and you set them on fire? I have seen even people who don't know that they love you burst into flames.The question is great. Life is not synonymous with logic, particularly the logic that Aristotle has given to the world. It has an appeal to the mind – it is very simple, very obvious, very mathematical, scientific. But the appeal to the mind of Aristotle’s logic is not that it fits with existence, that it represents life. On the contrary, mind is overwhelmed by it because it fits with the split mind, and it fits perfectly. Naturally the mind is convinced.But life is not logic. So first we have to understand the split of the mind which makes it so much impressed by a wrong logic, a logic which is not representative of existence itself.Mind has a double split. The front of the mind and the back of the mind – that is the first split.The front of the mind is active, and the back of the mind is inactive. The front of the mind thinks;, the back of the mind simply lives. The front of the mind is the base of all our activities, of all our achievements, of all our scientific, technological progress. The back of the mind is absolutely silent, and only meditators have known it; others have it but they are unaware of it. Unless you become inactive, so much so that there is not even the subtle activity of thoughts or emotions, you cannot enter the back side of your own mind.The front side of your mind is very limited; action has to be limited. Inaction is enormous; it has no limits, it is vast. Action can be defined, reduced to explanations, to theories. But the beauty, the experience of the inactive, stays with you, is beyond words. But it is there whether you know it or not, it does not depend on your knowing, it is always there. I will come to it later on when I am answering your question exactly. Just now I am creating the space in which the question can be answered.The second split is between the right side and the left side. Our hands are representative of the right and the left sides, but in a strange way: the left hand represents the right side of the mind, and the right hand represents the left side of the mind. And because we have used only the right hand and the left hand is very secondary, somewhere deep in our minds the right is right and the left is wrong.So anything that is wrong we condemn as leftist, and anything that we want to appreciate – the tradition supports it, the orthodoxy is behind it, the masses are absolutely for it – is rightist.In India the wife cannot sit at the right side of the man, she has to sit at the left side. She is a condemned being. At the most she can be the left hand, but never the right hand – that is preserved for the man.But strangely we were not aware for centuries that the right hand represents the left side of mind; it is joined crisscross. So the left side of the mind has developed because the right hand is active. Its action is an extension of the side of the mind it is connected to. And because the left hand is ignored, the right side of the mind has also been ignored.So there is a cross in the mind of man, dividing it in two ways. Front and back, that is one division; then right and left – another division. If the cross can have any significance, this should be the significance.Every man is on the cross, not only Jesus Christ.And the cross is not outside you, the cross is within you. It is far heavier than the outside cross, and it is far more murderous. It has destroyed so enormously, so devastatingly, that it is almost incalculable. And all the traditions of the world have been supporting it.The left side of the mind has its qualities…. For example, it can be used by the front of the mind without any difficulty. It has a certain affinity with the front of the mind. The right side of the mind has a certain affinity with the back side of the mind. So as the meditator moves into the unused parts of his own mind…if he moves to the back part he becomes absolutely silent.Many mystics have never spoken, for the simple reason that they had no idea…that if they wanted to speak, they had to move to the right side of the mind, they had to use the right side of the mind.Before they ever entered into meditation they had used the left side of the mind – they knew only it. When they moved into meditation suddenly they found that there is no connection between the left side of the mind and the back of the mind. They became disconnected. Their silence was not willed; simply, they could not find a way out of it. They tried the left side of the mind, to which they were accustomed, and they could not reach it. From the back of the mind there is no way to the left side of the mind. They never said a single word.Very few mystics have done the tremendous job of searching and seeing the fact that the left side of the mind is used by the front mind for thinking and for all kinds of activities. It is a natural deduction that perhaps the right side of the mind may be the way to express silence, to let it become a song. These are the few mystics who became known as great masters.All mystics have not been masters. They had realized, they had come to the ultimate peak of experience, but they remained isolated and cut off from the larger humanity. They could not contribute anything. They knew it – but suddenly they found they were dumb. They have tasted it, but by tasting it they have lost their tongue, they cannot speak about it.One of the greatest philosophers of the contemporary West, Ludwig Wittgenstein, has made one of the most pregnant statements. He is the only man in the contemporary world who writes only maxims, who does not even make a paragraph – just lines, each line separate and individual.One of his lines is: “That which cannot be said should not be said.” Now, this man is aware that there is something which cannot be said. He is not denying it, he is not saying that there is nothing mysterious; it is there. But he is making a statement that that which cannot be said, should not be said. Why? Because whatever you say is going to be wrong. That is the situation of a person who has somehow come in contact with the back of the mind.Now, this man was a trained philosopher, and trained under the greatest minds of this age. He had fortunately, Bertrand Russell as one of his teachers, G.E. Moore as one of his teachers – and both these great philosophers, G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, have said about him, “Although he was a student, we felt like pygmies before him.” And these were the great philosophers, Nobel Prize winners.What was it about Ludwig Wittgenstein that made them feel like pygmies? – he was just a student and it was at the suggestion of Bertrand Russell that Wittgenstein published his notes that he was taking in Russell’s class. They were not notes of what Russell was saying, they were notes of what Wittgenstein’s reactions were to Bertrand Russell’s statements.When Russell looked at Wittgenstein’s copy book he said, “My God, I thought you were writing about my speeches, my lectures. But you have written original things, you have done a great job.” He was reacting…. Bertrand Russell had a developed front part of his mind, and that man Ludwig Wittgenstein was in contact with the back of his mind.Scientists say we don’t know what the purpose of the back of the mind is. They have not been able to figure it out, why it is there, because it is half of the mind but it seems to have no purpose. It helps in no way, it has no function. Scientists perhaps will never be able to understand this abysmal depth, darkness, and the mysterious part of their own minds.Whatever Wittgenstein had noted down as reactions in his notebooks, Bertrand Russell persuaded him to publish. Wittgenstein said, “but these are simply notes! You were talking, and when I heard something and I felt it was not the right thing, I simply wrote down notes, just for my own purposes.”Bertrand Russell insisted, “the notes should be published as they are; and don’t edit them, because they bring something which is not known to the thinker, the philosopher; they bring something which is known only to the mystic. It is just a coincidence that a mystic has come to study philosophy.”But Wittgenstein could not find the connection between the mysterious side of his mind and the left side of his mind. There was no bridge. He tried hard – he was a trained philosopher, logician, so naturally he worked very hard. He wrote his books again and again, revised them, tried hard, and finally decided that that which cannot be said, should not be said, because whatever you say is going to be wrong. It will not represent the actual experience.He could not find the real passage from the back of the mind. It is not the left side of the mind. The left side of the mind is in the service of the front of the mind, it is part of the world of activities. The right side of the mind is in the service of the inactive, of the silent, of the unmoving. We are carrying this cross continuously. Aristotle’s logic fits with the left side of the mind and the front of the mind, but it leaves great spaces outside. The front of the mind and the left side of the mind are very small. The back of the mind is just endless; it is an opening into the mysteries of life.Once in a while it has happened that somebody has found the link and has been able to say something significant. That’s why there are so many mystics in the world but very few masters. A master is a mystic who has found that the right side of the mind is the way to convey the illogical, the mysterious, the unexplained and the unexplainable.Your question is: What happens to people sometimes? – People who are not even acquainted with me, who may have come just out of curiosity to see me, who may just have happened to be there accidentally when I was passing by…. But something transpires, they are aflame. You can see from their eyes, from their faces: within a second they have moved miles. And they were not expecting it, they were not desiring it. They were not even aware of it, that this was going to happen. They become aware of it only when it has happened, and there is no way to undo it.It happens because of a few things. First, because they were not expecting it, so there was no barrier. They were not there desiring something, so there was no barrier. They were not in any kind of relationship with me, so they were simply present, with no hindrance, with no expectations.Just being there is one of the most significant things, and a person who loves me will find it difficult to just be there. Some unconscious desire, expectation…just a very small expectation that I should recognize him – that is enough.But the stranger, the tourist, the curious, the accidental has no expectation, even this much. He just happens to be standing there, and I pass by. And because there is no barrier, the mysterious part of his being is available…not that I have to do something, it is just that he is available. And as the flame can jump from one candle to another candle – you just have to bring them close enough….He is there, silently waiting, without expectation: that brings him closer. The bigger the expectation, the bigger the distance. And from my mysterious world just a small flame has to take a jump. All that is needed is a certain closeness so that you catch it.Once it has happened, perhaps he may come tomorrow again, but it is not going to happen, because the next day he will come with the expectation – the same man. In fact ordinary logic will say that now it has happened to him, there is more possibility of it happening. But life does not follow the ordinary logic. It has its own way, which is very illogical. At least it is certain it does not follow Aristotle’s divided logic, it does not follow our mind’s divided approach to reality.Mind sees things in black and white, nothing in between: day and night – nothing in between; life and death – nothing in between; love and hate – nothing in between. Mind simply divides, splits, cuts a thing into two separate polar realities, makes them so contradictory that it seems impossible that there could be a way for them not to be separate, for them to be one reality.The mind has only taken the two ends of one reality. That’s how it is. Logically, love and hate are opposites, contradictory. But existentially, that’s not true. Love can move easily into hate without any barrier. Hate can move into love just like waves moving into other waves with no barriers anywhere.It is our idea that light and dark are two contradictory realities. That’s not true. There are animals who see in the night, and in the day they cannot see. The light is too much for their delicate eyes; it blinds them. In daylight they see only darkness because their eyes are closed and they cannot open them. They can open their eyes only when the calmness and the quiet and the peaceful night descends. Then they can open their delicate eyes, and the night is all full of light. They have more sensitive eyes than us. Our night is their day; our day is their night.There is no opposition. At the most we can say that light is less dark, and darkness is less light. But we have to use something which makes only a difference of degrees and does not create any contradiction.And every day we see life moving into death so calmly, so quietly, without making any fuss. You cannot hear even the footsteps of death. There cannot be any contradiction. And those who know, know the other side also – that death goes on moving into new forms of life. All distinctions are man-made – existence is distinctionless.Once we start thinking of one reality, distinctionless – not dividing into dualities or dichotomies – the cross can disappear from the mind. Nobody else has crucified you – you yourself are responsible, because you can put the cross away from you, and your whole mind can become one.In the oneness of your mind you have tremendous powers. Not that you become powerful over other people, but suddenly you find things are happening through you, not by you. You have become a vehicle of a vast existence; and this is what creates such kinds of happenings.You can see it: a stranger is standing close by, and suddenly becomes afire. He will never be the same man again because he cannot forget what for a moment had become reality. It will haunt him, it will follow him like a shadow. He will have to do something; otherwise he will be haunted by the memory of it. What has happened is that the back of his mind, which may have remained dormant for millennia, has suddenly become alive.This is what I call synchronicity. And this is the only symbol of whether you are with a master or not.People have wondered down the ages, “What are the qualities of a master? How to define the master? How to decide who is the right master? Who is just pretending to be a master and who is really and authentically a master?” They have come to many definitions and many qualities and many attributes – and they are all of the logical mind. None of them is of any significance.I would like to tell you that only one thing decides a true master, and that is that his presence can make your dormant mind suddenly alive; it can put you on fire.It can make you blossom into thousands of flowers in just a single moment. The moment becomes so intense that it is almost equal to eternity. This is the only way to decide-everything else is meaningless.Each religion has its own definitions of a true master. They all differ in their definitions – obviously – because they have found those definitions by following a certain teacher, who may have been a master or may not have been a master. They have simply collected all his attributes – what he eats, what he wears, how he walks, how he sits, how much he sleeps….But each master is unique, so you cannot define him by these things. Mahavira is naked, Buddha is his contemporary, and he is not naked. Now, Jainas cannot accept Buddha as an authentic master for the simple reason that he is not naked: a true master has to be naked. Buddhists cannot accept Mahavira as a master for the simple reason that Buddha’s whole teaching is to remain always in the middle; all extremism is egoistic, the extremist is always an egoist.Now, there are people who go on collecting all kinds of things – this is one extreme. And there is another extreme: there are people who, as far as possible, go on renouncing everything. If it were possible for them to take off their skin, they would take off their skin too. They have to stop at the clothes because more than that is impossible to do, they have come to the end.So according to the Buddhist, Mahavira is an extremist. There is no need to be naked. Perhaps when it is too hot you can be naked; but when it is too cold you need a blanket – and there is no harm in it, you have to take care of the body. You just remain in the middle, you don’t go to the extremes. You don’t start collecting blankets; nor should you remain naked in the cold, unnecessarily torturing yourself.The Buddhists cannot accept Mahavira as a master because their definitions are from the outside. They are just watching a man from the outside, they don’t know the inner reality of the master. There is only one thing that defines – everything else is casual, an individual choice.Mahavira, as far as I understand, was such a beautiful man – perhaps in the whole history of men there has never been such a proportionate body with such an exquisite beauty. I don’t accept the Jainas’ idea that he is an ascetic, that’s why he is naked. No. My own understanding is that he loves beauty, and he is so beautiful that any clothing on him will simply destroy his beauty. Naked, he is just pure beauty.In fact, clothes have been discovered by people to cover their bodies so they don’t show their unproportionate bodies. Clothes have other purposes too, but the basic purpose is not only the climate; the basic purpose seems to be to keep your body looking as beautiful as possible. Naked, it is not so beautiful; naked only very few people will be beautiful – most of them will look ugly. With clothes most of them look beautiful because only the face shows.I don’t think Mahavira is an extremist. I simply conceive that the man is so beautiful he does not need clothes; and he is so healthy that the changing seasons make no difference to him. It is because of his health and his beauty. But that does not decide anything as to his being a master or not.For that, there is one, and only one, criterion: whether he puts people on fire – particularly those who are strangers, particularly those who have come only as curiosity-seekers, just to see what kind of man this is who attracts so many people.They have not come with a spiritual desire because desire as such is always unspiritual.So there cannot be any spiritual desire. They have not come to gain anything, they are just onlookers. And this is the criterion: if the master passes by such people and something transpires in those people – who are not ready in any way, who have not prepared for it, who have not even dreamed about it, who are as much surprised as anyone else seeing them….In fact they feel a little embarrassed because this was not their idea: they had come just out of curiosity to see the man. And now something has happened in them, something which is so unique, and so valuable…. A gift that they had not asked for suddenly has been thrown into their hands.And this is a difficult phenomenon, because then they would like to come again and again, but now there is desire, now there is expectation; now they are not coming in the same innocent way as they had come for the first time. And now it will not be happening.Let me remind you of the divisions of the mind. The first time they were there, they were simply interested to see the man. Seeing the man, for a moment their thinking stops. For a moment they are engulfed by the energy the man carries around him; unknowingly they are pulled into something for which they are not ready. Something in them has changed, and changed forever, and will not leave them at rest.But they should understand the simple process; otherwise they will get into the very troubled journey millions of people are in. And then they will be angry at the master: “Why is he not doing the same thing to me again?”He had never done anything, he had simply passed by your side. He is passing every day by your side – only the first time you were clean, you were open; you had no hindrance, you had simply allowed him to come in. But now you are tight, tense, you are demanding; you want it to be happening again and again, more and more. Now you have got into a vicious circle: the more you demand, the more you expect, the less is the possibility.All demands come from the front of the mind, all desires come from the front of the mind, all expectations are in the front of the mind. The back of the mind is absolutely innocent, that of a child.So you have to understand your first experience; how it has happened, where you were, what your space was. That is more significant. So if you can keep your space intact and don’t fill it with expectations and desires and demands; remembering that the master never does anything…it is beyond doing, because all doing is of the front of the mind. All action is of the front of the mind, and the master lives at the back of the mind, the dark side of the mind, the mysterious side of the mind, the illogical side of the mind.If you come to him with the front part of your mind, then there is an unbridgeable gap between you and the master. You have to come to the master without the front part of your mind, allowing him the availability, the receptivity of the back part of your mind.Neither the master does anything nor are you expected to do anything. It is simply a happening.That’s why I call it synchronicity.It is just that the master is full of it, and you are silent and available: That fullness is going to fill you. But you have to be empty. All that is needed of you is that you have to be empty.And remember, I repeat again: the master cannot do anything. Yes, much happens in his presence – he is a catalytic agent. It can happen while he is speaking, it can happen while he is silent, it can happen in any moment.All that is needed is your availability.In my own life’s experience this has been a continuous problem. The people who have felt something changing in them have remained with me – but with a desire. Then they are angry because it seems as if I have forgotten them, as if I am no longer working on them, as if I am no longer interested in them. No, I am the same. Neither my interest can do it nor can any action on my part do it.How it happens is something that you have to understand. It is not a question of being virtuous, it is not a question of being very scholarly. It demands nothing.It simply happens to those who can be in the presence of the master simply, innocently, who can just enjoy the presence itself – whether anything happens or not is irrelevant, then it will come with more and more force. It will become a tidal wave, and it will be coming more and more often. And soon it will start coming even at a distance from the master.You may be thousands of miles away, but you just have to be in the right posture – I mean the inner posture – and it starts happening…because the presence was only a triggering of something which is already yours. Just the presence made it clear to you that it is there within you. And once you become certain that it is within you, then wherever you are, just getting into the right inner posture….See how things go wrong with man. It is the inner posture that is required – and people are practicing yoga postures around the world, which have nothing to do with it. It is not how you are sitting, whether in a lotus posture…. It does not matter, it is something within you.So just always remember your first experience because that is the most significant experience, and it gives you the whole secret. And the secret is that you were completely innocent. And once you know that, you can be anywhere, just in the same posture, and it will come and you will be afire, aflame.The distance makes no difference.Even if the master is dead, that makes no difference because the reality is within you; the master was only a triggering point.Now it is up to you not to misunderstand, and to be clear how it happened, and to just go on being in the same position.Looking at the sunrise or sitting by the side of a tree, watching the stars, just get into the same posture, and you will find your master is everywhere.The people who started worshipping the sun, the moon, the stars, the trees, were not idiots. Because they found that the whole existence provides you with your master in different forms. And the whole thing depends on you.It happens even with those who are not masters but mystics only. But the difficulty with mystics is, it may happen to you but they cannot explain to you the how and why of it. And because they cannot explain it to you, you are going to remain in the wrong posture you whole life.The master’s function is to give you the experience, and then to explain to you that you are responsible for it, that you are the source of it, that the master was only a certain situation, a certain device that triggered your dormant mind, moved it, made it alive.Now it is for you to get deeper and deeper into the same posture of synchronicity with the master and then with this whole beautiful existence, with anything.And unless the whole existence becomes your master, your master has failed.So don’t let me down!

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is a buddhafield? Just living together, running businesses, doesn't seem to be enough, it is not satisfying. It feels like something deeper – something more challenging for the collective and the individual, in which both grow – is needed.A buddhafield is one of the most mysterious phenomena in existence. It simply means whenever someone becomes awakened, his consciousness radiates a certain aura around him. Whoever is receptive, available, can be transformed by the radiating energy from an awakened being. The very presence of the awakened person can hit you so deep that your dormant energy starts awakening.It has been described as a sleeping serpent being awakened. It was lying coiled, looking almost dead, and when provoked, it uncoils itself. Because of the similarity of the phenomena, in the East the uncoiling energy in the presence of the awakened person is called Kundalini. Kundalini simply means the serpent power.The buddhafield can become a network. In the hands of a skilled master it need not be confined to a small area; hence I have introduced the communes. It is as if you put a mirror in front of a light. The mirror has no way of producing light, but it can reflect light. A single light surrounded by thousands of mirrors can create a light of immense quantity.In India there is a temple made completely of small pieces of mirror. When you enter the temple you are suddenly surrounded by yourself from every side, in thousands of ways: from the ceiling, from the floor, from the walls. Each piece represents you in your totality. It is not that the piece of mirror is going to reflect only a certain part of you; it reflects you totally, your whole personality. And those thousands of mirrors all reflect you.Just take a burning candle inside with you and you will be surprised at the effect: just one candle suddenly becomes thousands of candles, and all the reflections create tremendous light.The man who had made the temple was one of the richest men in India. He simply loved to make unique things. He loved me very much. I asked him – he had taken me to the temple to show me – I asked him, “Do you know the meaning of this temple?”He said, “Meaning? I have simply created a unique piece of beauty, architecture, and something which has no parallel in the whole world.”I said, “That’s true, but there is meaning also in it, and you must know it, because it is very embarrassing that you created the temple and you don’t know the meaning of it. The meaning is, this temple represents in a material way the fabric of a buddhafield.”One buddha can create thousands of seekers around him. They are not awakened but they are willing to be awakened. They have not yet reached the goal, but they are very receptive, open, available. In the presence of the master they can at least function as mirrors very easily; then one buddha becomes millions of buddhas.I had made the communes so that five thousand people could live together and learn to reflect me. Not to imitate me, remember – these are two totally different things. The mirror never imitates you; the mirror simply reflects you.Now I have dissolved the communes, because now I want the whole world to be my commune.Wherever there is a sannyasin, he has to be a mirror. And time and space make no difference: If he is available to me, he is as close to me as you are. And from the farthest corner of the earth he can reflect me.And now I have millions of sannyasins around the world. I have withdrawn all conditions that can hinder people from becoming sannyasins. These millions of people are going to create a network of energy enveloping the whole earth.Just one sun rises in the morning, but it is being reflected by all the oceans, all the lakes, all the rivers, all the ponds. Small ponds reflect the same sun as the biggest ocean. Just one sun rises, and millions of places start reflecting it. And it is not only the ocean, lake, river, ponds – there are other reflections too, which are more subtle.Even before the sun comes above the horizon, the birds suddenly start singing. They are awakened, something has happened to them, and something tremendously beautiful; otherwise from where will the song arise? And they are so full of life! The flowers open their petals…these are also reflections. There is no obligation on their part; they can remain buds. There is no obligation on the part of the birds; they may decide not to sing, but something irresistible which is beyond their control….When the sun is rising, something is rising in them too: their life energy, their kundalini. Of course a bird cannot become a buddha, but he can at least sing, dance, fly in the sky just out of sheer joy, open his wings as an indication of freedom, aliveness. He can claim the whole sky as his own.And all the flowers – from the smallest grass flower to the biggest lotus – they suddenly all fall into a symphony. They forget their differences; they forget that there are poor flowers and there are rich flowers, that there is the proletariat and there are the bourgeois; suddenly all classes disappear. And in their flowering, in their opening, they release whatsoever they have.They give back to existence as a gift whatever existence has given to them. They don’t keep it, they don’t hoard it. They give it back a thousandfold, they multiply it, because what was – apparently – not in the seed, what was not in the roots, what was not in the tree, in the branches, in the leaves…has suddenly come to blossom in the flower: all the colors, all the fragrance. But they waited long in the dark night for the sun to rise.The presence of the sun suddenly gets reflected in millions of ways and creates a network of light, life, joy, fullness, overflowing ecstasy. That’s what I mean by a buddhafield.One man getting awakened means the sun has risen. It is the declaration that the dark night of the soul is at an end.But it is possible only if there are millions of people spread all over the earth to create a connectedness. With this net of energy we may be able to transform many people who had no idea, who had never dreamed that there is something more than a mundane life.So you are right – just working together, creating a commune, creating finances to run it, is not enough. It has nothing to do with the buddhafield. Seeing the fact that in communes you will get entangled in so many unnecessary things, that there is a possibility to forget for what you had gathered there in the first place…. Now I don’t want big communes but small groups, more intimate, or individuals doing their ordinary work in the world. That takes only five hours, five days a week, and leaves you immense time and energy to become part of a great, ecstatic experience.In the commune I found it is difficult, because you are trying to create an alternative society – which takes too much time, too much energy. People were working for twelve hours, fourteen hours, and had no energy left. Even if the sun rises, the bird has no energy to sing. The sun rises, but the rose has no energy to open its petals and release the fragrance.And because you are creating an alternative society, the ordinary world is going to be antagonistic to you. You are strangers and you are trying something which their tradition and their experience prohibits. And they are in the majority; they have governments in their hands, they have the law in their hands. So creating takes your time and energy; and then fighting with the society – which is too big for you – that also takes your energy.I was thinking that humanity had progressed since the days of Socrates, but I was wrong. It is still where it was, it has not progressed at all. Civilization has not yet happened, culture is still a dream, and democracy a faraway utopia.So whenever you come in conflict you will see the barbarous, the primitive, the animalistic, coming up to destroy you. And naturally you cannot survive against the vast masses, the blind people.I am reminded of a story – not a story but a real fact; it is so strange that it looks like a story. In South America in a hidden valley deep in the mountains, it was found that there lived a small community of people, not more than three hundred – all blind. It was strange – what had happened to these people? What calamity had fallen on them?One man, very adventurous, a scientific inquirer, wanted to know what had happened to these people…because people were afraid to go into the valley, it was dangerous. If three hundred people are blind, perhaps there is something wrong in the air, something wrong in the water, something wrong in the food – who knows what is wrong? You may go blind!But this courageous young man entered the commune and was surprised…he did not become blind. He figured out what was happening: there was a certain fly in the mountains…. Every child was born with eyes, as every child is born everywhere else, but within three, four months – if the fly bites the child – he will go blind. Three or four months was too great a time, and the fly was a common fly, all around, everywhere.So everybody was born with eyes, but nobody ever remembered that once he had eyes because he had lost them so early in life – when he was two months old, at the most four months old. But that fly’s bite was not capable of destroying a young man’s eyes. So anybody who had passed at least one year was beyond the reach of the fly; it needed only the very vulnerable child.The man wanted to help them because he had found the cause; the cause could be destroyed and those common children could be saved. While he was working on the plans of how to destroy the fly, the whole commune of those primitive people used to laugh at the madman. They used to laugh because they could not believe that he had eyes and they didn’t. And of course they were three hundred and he was alone and there was no way to prove that he had eyes. Those three hundred people had never heard about eyes – he was just a poet, a dreamer!But living with them he fell in love with a girl of the community. He wanted to marry that girl, but the community had a condition: “You will have to drop this illusion that you have eyes. And to make certain, we have our elders who will check you. If they find something that you call eyes, they will destroy them…because you have something which you should not have. No human being has eyes – something is wrong with you.“You can marry the girl of our community, but the condition is that you have to become part of our community. You have to become blind. You can choose. Either you have to leave – leave us alone and don’t disturb us. Since you have come it has been a continuous disturbance. You have been corrupting our youth, putting in their minds the idea of eyes – which we have never heard of from our elders, our forefathers. We have always lived this way. And we don’t need eyes. What will we do with eyes? – we are perfectly happy and content.“You have disturbed our peace and now you want to get entry into our community. You will have to choose: you will have to lose your so-called eyes if you want to get married, or you forget all about this love affair and leave this valley and never come back again.”The young man thought for the whole night. He really loved the woman, but this was stupid, the condition was simply idiotic, that he had to lose his eyes. In fact he loved the woman because of his eyes. She was so beautiful, and all those three hundred people were not aware of her beauty and they would never be aware of her beauty. It was his eyes that had given the glimpse of the beauty of the woman.He had seen so many women, but he settled for a blind woman. Although she was blind, she had something indescribable, something otherworldly. But to lose one’s eyes to get that woman seems to be a very strange bargain, because in losing your eyes you will be also losing that woman; you will never be able to see her again. Then all women are equal. To a blind man what difference does it make that you have a homely woman or a Cleopatra? It doesn’t matter.No, he could not manage to convince himself to lose his eyes, because his eyes were the source of the experience of the beauty. In the middle of the night he escaped from the valley.And this is not a story, it is a historical fact.So when we created communes, I was thinking humanity has progressed, has come a long way from the days of Socrates and Buddha. But I was wrong. They have not moved a single inch! They have changed their masks, they wear better masks than their ancestors, but behind the mask is hidden a barbarous soul – uncivilized, uncultured.It is not able to accept the stranger. It is not vast enough to absorb the new, the unknown, the inexperienced. It becomes irritated, it becomes annoyed. It wants to destroy your eyes, because it is blind and your eyes will remind it about its blindness.Seeing the situation, I have dissolved the communes. I would rather rely on individuals. In that way I can spread my message far and wide. I have even allowed you, if you feel it difficult, not to use the red color, not to use the mala, so no blind man is annoyed by you…. Because I want to protect your eyes – and they are very vulnerable because you are in the situation of a child and just a fly can destroy your eyes. And these people are not flies, they are monsters.The buddhafield has expanded its area, but its strategy has changed. Now I will depend on the individuals – and individuals can move around the world, to faraway corners; still there will be a connecting link with me. Wherever there is a sannyasins of mine, I am there. He will be my mirror, he will reflect me and my light. He will transmit my energy, my understanding.So you are right: just being together and working hard and running a disco and making money and doing all kinds of things does not seem enough. It is not enough. It is not only not enough, it is a sheer wastage.So you work in the world; and it is a simple thing – whenever you feel a deep urge to be with me, I will be available. You can always come to me.To make it a reality, now we will not be having any celebrations; now the celebration will continue all the year round – three hundred and sixty-five days of celebration! And I will be living somewhere, soon – my people are searching for the right place for me to be. And all the year round you can come to me, whenever you have time. So there will be always three to five hundred people coming and going. And I would like a more intimate contact with you because now I am going to depend on the individual.You cannot understand how painful it has been for me that people longing for years to come, would come to the commune but then there would be twenty thousand people and they would not be able even to see me while I am speaking. I will not be able to see their faces, I will not be able to look into their eyes – and they have come from far away. Waiting for years, earning money, somehow they have managed to come. But with twenty thousand people gathering I cannot manage individual intimacy.So my new format of work is going to be an all-year-round festival. So you are welcome any moment, because the festival will be continuous, so we don’t collect twenty thousand or fifty thousand people at one time. We distribute people all over the year, so I can sit with you on the lawn, I can sit with you under the trees, I can sit with you under the stars, and I can talk to you or I can be silent with you. So when you go back you are full of me.And this is going to be the new order of the buddhafield.Osho,Meditation is the key. Why is it so difficult to live a meditative life without your physical presence?It is difficult because you have not yet been able to find your own source of meditation.Being in my presence you need not meditate. Just being in my presence, a silence descends on you. Your heart has a different rhythm, your being feels a tremendous contentment.But this is just a reflection. You should not be deceived by the reflection. Enjoy the reflection, let it penetrate as deeply in you as possible. But this is only an example, that if it can happen in my presence, why cannot it happen in my absence? – because it is happening in you. I may be functioning as a catalytic agent, but the source is within you; you just have to start trying it.For example, you are in my presence and you feel meditation comes so easily; in fact you need not think about it, it is there. Just try sitting in your room. If it helps, remember me, visualize me, that I am sitting in front of you, and allow the same experience to happen again. You will be surprised; you don’t know how capable your consciousness is. Just think: you had enjoyed a certain perfume….Sufi mystics have even used it as part of their strategy; you will enjoy this certain perfume. Perhaps twenty years have passed: you can sit silently remembering it, bringing that experience of the perfume closer to you, bypassing the twenty years. And you will be surprised that suddenly the perfume is there. You can still smell it; twenty years have not been able to destroy it. It has remained somewhere deep in your consciousness, you can never forget it.Sufi mystics have used it, although no Sufi has ever said so. Why? When you go to a Sufi master the first thing offered to you is perfume, and each Sufi master has his own perfume. He associates himself with that perfume because he knows the functioning of the consciousness: that a perfume cannot be forgotten. And whenever you remember the perfume you will have to remember the master; they become associated.And every day it happens: you come to the master and the first thing is that he offers you the perfume. His place is full of the same perfume. The moment you enter you are engulfed in the perfume. Month by month, year by year, you live with the master. The perfume goes on penetrating into the deepest layers of your consciousness – and with the perfume, the master is also entering you.Whenever you will be far away the instructions are: remember the perfume. And you will be surprised that whenever you remember the perfume, suddenly the presence of the master is there. And all that has been happening in the presence of the master starts happening in his absence. The source is within you.These are just strategies. I have not been using anything like that, for the simple reason that I trust more in your love than in any association with something mundane.If you love me, you can materialize me anywhere you want.And no perfume is higher than the perfume of love. No music is more musical than the music of love.I have not used anything. In a few schools of mystics, music is used – the same tune, so that whenever you hear the tune or remember the tune, you will be transported from your actual surroundings into those surroundings that you always wanted to be in.But these are very mundane strategies. I would like to be more straightforward. I would not like anything to stand between me and you – even to remind you. I want immediate contact. I want, categorically, immediacy, no mediator, because nothing works more miraculously than love.All those old masters had to use other things because about love, they were afraid. Their own fear of love made them choose third-rate things to help you. I am not afraid of anything – particularly of love.So in my presence remember: meditation is easy because in my presence love is easy.So wherever you are, be loving.Be loving to the people you are with, be loving to the sky you see. Be loving to the trees you move by.Just be loving – and whenever you are thrilled with love you will find I am walking by your side, sitting by your side, that my hand is in your hand – who says that I am far away? And you will immediately have the proof because mediation will be coming from all sides running, flooding you.And once you have found it, that it can happen anywhere, then the last dependence has ended. Then my presence is no longer a need for you. That does not mean that you don’t love me anymore; in fact, just the contrary. How can you love totally when there is some kind of dependence? You can love totally only when there is no dependence.One of Buddha’s intimate disciples, Sariputta, became enlightened in Buddha’s lifetime. But he would not say it to Buddha, he was trying hard to hide it. He was doing things which only an unenlightened person can do.Finally Buddha had to call him, and say, “Sariputta, you can’t deceive me. You stop all this nonsense of doing things, saying things just to hide the fact that you have become enlightened. Why are you so afraid? Why don’t you simply say what has happened?”Sariputta said, “I am truly afraid. I was postponing this enlightenment as much as possible because I knew when I became enlightened you would say, ‘Sariputta, now you go, reach the people, help the people. Now you don’t need me, so why do you go on hanging around?’ I did everything to avoid it but what was to happen, has happened, and now you have found out – please don’t send me away.”Buddha said, “But you don’t need me anymore. Your excuse to be with me for so many years was that without me you cannot become enlightened; now you have become enlightened, your excuse is no longer valid.”Sariputta’s statement is very significant. He said, “Yes, my excuse is no longer valid, and I don’t need you. But I am going to stay with you because it is you and your love that has made me so independent – even independent of my own master. Just to show my gratitude, just to touch your feet every day…. I refuse to go anywhere else.“I was with you up to now with a need; now I am going to be with you without any need. For the first time my love is simply pure – no motivation, no desire…just pure gratitude.”When the need disappears, the gratitude arises. When dependence disappears, a tremendous feeling, that what you were and what you have become…the distance is so vast that unless the presence of the master was a miracle, it is not explainable.So whenever you feel that it is difficult to meditate without me, remember my love for you, remember your love for me.Love immediately destroys distances.And you will find me as much present as I am here – or even more. And once you have found it, then there is no problem: wherever you are, meditation is your own, it is your own energy. Still you can go on coming.I am not so hard as Gautam Buddha. You must have seen Gautam Buddha’s marble statues. He was just like that – cold as a marble statue, even when he was alive. A beautiful man, an immensely miraculous man, but he was very cold.I am a totally different person. My compassion is not of somebody who is higher than you; my compassion is very human, because I understand the days of the dark nights. I have been through those dark nights – I know how you must be suffering in those dark nights. But it is all up to you: you can prolong the dark night, or you can end it and bring the sunrise immediately into your life.I have called you my friend. Remember that word.I promise you to be with you whenever you need me. Just need me!Osho,The German Ministry of Internal Affairs doesn't allow you to enter Germany. Do you want to say anything about it?It seems that no government will allow me in any country. It is a good sign. It means they have started recognizing me.I cannot be recognized by winning a Nobel Prize. I can be recognized only by the way America has treated me, India is treating me, Germany is treating me. But I am surprised about Germany. I have never been to Germany; naturally I cannot commit any crime in Germany under German law. It must be something unprecedented, that a person who has never been to your country, has not done any harm to your country – you have to decide beforehand, in case he comes, that he should not be allowed to enter.It shows a great recognition of a single individual who has no powers – governments are so afraid. They must be wrong, there must be something that they are afraid of which my presence can expose.I say it is a good sign – I love it. I will refuse a Nobel Prize because that is bourgeois but I cannot refuse such a beautiful recognition; that simply fits with me.One thing I would like to tell you is that Germany can prevent me from entering the country but it cannot prevent me from entering the heart of the German people, particularly German youth. And of course they cannot prevent me from allowing the German youth to enter into my heart.And my work is invisible – I need not go to Germany. But those who love me can come to me wherever I am. And if their love is strong enough then they can find me amongst them. I need not enter the country; still I can be with my sannyasins.My presence depends on their love, not on the visa that the government issues.But it simply shows the poverty of your so-called great powers. You should be happy and rejoice the day I cannot find any place to stay anywhere in the world. You have to dance and sing and rejoice that this is happening for the first time….Because Socrates was condemned in Athens, and Athens was only a city state. The judges had told him, “You can leave Athens and there will be no punishment for you. And there is the whole world – why should you unnecessarily get poisoned? Just leave Athens.”Jesus was crucified in Judea – a very small place. Nobody had heard about him while he was alive. And he did not die on the cross either. Not that there was any resurrection; he was simply brought down from the cross within six hours – and on the Jewish cross it needs twenty-four hours, sometimes forty-eight hours, for a person to die.It was a negotiation between Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, and one of the influential men who wanted Jesus to be saved. So this was the agreement: on Friday Jesus should be crucified – but as late as possible so he is not too long on the cross. Jews stop all work as the sun sets on Friday, and Saturday is the day of Sabbath; they don’t do anything. So it was delayed as long as possible; only in the afternoon when the sun was going down was Jesus crucified. And before the sun set he had to be brought down because of the Jewish tradition.Now he had to wait in the cave. He would have to be crucified again after the Sabbath ends – and that was the time when he was stolen. He was taken out of Judea. He lived in India up to one hundred and twelve years – a very ripe age. He died in India – I have been to his grave in Kashmir, and a strange coincidence: Kashmir has the graves of Jesus and Moses too.But nowhere was he hindered, nowhere was he persecuted, nowhere was he crucified again. In India he lived a long life. He was thirty-three when he was crucified in Judea, and he lived up to one hundred and twelve years without any persecution.So this is something to rejoice about, that I may be the first man in the whole of history who is being persecuted around the world. But this is not bad news, it is good news. It means I have threatened all the powers of the world – religious, political, social. A single man, single-handedly has been able to prove the impotency and poverty of all great powers, great theologians, great organized religions. What more reward can I receive?And this is going to help the movement. It means you have got a master, not just a goody-goody saint!

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I have been trying to say what an enlightened master is. I try from each angle, and every morning, when I sit at my piano, I try to sing the song from another perspective, with another tune, another melody.But my people in the West have never heard such stories, and I can see that my words never reach the target. I can't keep my mouth closed, and I go on trying to find the words to say it.If I have to give a title to this book, it will be, “The Words to Say It” – because I can't give up, I can't show my silence – neither my tears, neither my laughter. Please, help me to find the words to say it, to explain to my people in the valley what enlightenment is, what an enlightened master is.It is not only your difficulty, it is as old as man himself. The efforts that you are making have been made down the centuries by thousands of poets, painters, musicians, sculptors – all kinds of creative beings – trying to say that which cannot be said. They all have known it – that it cannot be said – but still, there is a tremendous longing in the heart of man to say it, to express it, to convey it to those he loves, to those he wants to understand.There is a great challenge, perhaps the greatest…one experiences it, one feels it, one is almost very close to expressing it – but still, the target is missed. Because the target is continuously missed, the challenge becomes greater, bigger.So I can understand your problem, but you will have to understand that there are things you can try to say but you will not succeed. One should not long for success either; just the effort is enough success. You tried your best, you put yourself totally into it. You were not half-hearted. But if, in the very nature of things it is impossible, what more can you do?The experience of enlightenment happens when there are no words, no thoughts. The mind itself is left far behind. You cannot even hear the heartbeats; it is an absolute emptiness.It is not light, it is not darkness. It is something beyond both.What it is does not exist in the world we know. So there is no parallel, not even a far away symmetry which can give some indication about it. And whenever we want to say something about it, we will have to bring the mind in – which was not present in the experience. We will have to bring words in – which were absent.This is the whole absurdity, that you are making eye-witnesses of those who were absolutely absent. They can try, but they are groping in the dark. All their efforts are so small, and the experience is so vast – no word can contain it.Whenever I close my eyes, and I see, it is utter emptiness…not even a flicker – unlimited, something belonging to eternity. Mind belongs to time; it has no idea of eternity. It can make one up, but its idea of eternity will be nothing but time stretched as far as the mind can go. But it will still be time; and it has two ends to it, the beginning and the end. It is not eternity.What can mind do? – it can only stretch time; that is its experience. It can make it longer and longer, but however long it is, it has a beginning, it has an end; it is not eternity.The mind thinks about truth. It thinks about truth only because it knows not. Thinking is the blind man’s game. It is only the blind man who thinks about light. When you have eyes, you simply see it, you don’t think about it. And what can you think about it? When you are facing the light, seeing it, knowing it, there is nothing to think about it.And when the light is not there and you are blind, what can you think about it? Whatever you think is going to be wrong. It cannot even be a far-fetched similarity to the experience of light.In the West you will find it even more difficult to explain to people what it is. It is of tremendous importance to note that in India there has never existed anything like philosophy – never, because philosophy is a thinking process, it is of the mind; it does not go beyond mind. It is logic, but it is not an experience.What has existed in the East is a totally different thing: we have called it seeing, not thinking, not philosophy.Gautam Buddha said of himself that, “I am not a philosopher, I am a physician. Don’t ask me what light is. If you don’t have eyes, come to me and I will cure your eyes – that I can do, but don’t ask me what light is. I cannot answer. I can cure your eyes and then it is up to you to know what light is.”In the West there has never been anything like darshan, seeing, which is beyond thinking. So it is more difficult, and you will find it almost impossible, in every step a failure. The best of music still falls short because even the best of music is nothing but sound – and the experience is silence, not sound. And you are trying to express silence through sound.The best of poetry may give people who do not know great flights into the unknown, glimpses. But to those who know, the question is not flights into the unknown, but entry into the unknowable.The unknown can become known any moment. Science tries to make the unknown, known: what was unknown yesterday is known today; what is unknown today will be known tomorrow. And the scientific mind thinks there will come a time – it is very logical – that we will have claimed all that is unknown within the boundaries of the known. That will be the victory, the ultimate victory of science – that no unknown is left anymore.But they are not aware that there is something more than the unknown, and that is the world of the unknowable – which cannot be reduced to the known.So poetry, painting, may sometimes bring you very close to the unknown. But enlightenment is not of the unknown, it is of the unknowable. You can experience it but you cannot explain it. And it is not your failure, it is just the nature of how things are. It is something existential.Still, I will not say, don’t try to say it. I will say, continue trying to say it. My purpose is different: not that you will be able to say it, but in the very effort of saying it, something in you will be changed, something in you will be transformed. Every failure in expressing it will bring you closer to the silence that can only be experienced. So every failure can become a stepping stone.And don’t be worried that people cannot understand what you are trying so hard to explain to them. Go on trying. It is not that your explanation is going to succeed, to reach the target – that is out of the question. But your very effort, your desperate effort, your tears, may be able to move those people’s hearts.Your words cannot do anything, but your sincere effort is going to create a quest in those people…that there is something, certainly, that the man is trying to explain – and is not able to explain. But his tears are proof, his constant effort in spite of all the failures is proof. His finding new ways, new angles every day, is proof that the man has something; perhaps it is the nature of the thing that it cannot be explained.And they know things which cannot be explained in their ordinary experience too. They cannot explain love. Even the greatest scientist falls in love, knowing perfectly that he cannot explain what it is. And what he can explain he knows it is not that. He can explain the hormones, the attraction between female and male hormones, and the whole biology of it. But he knows it is not that. He cannot explain it; he cannot bring it to the level where things can be explained.Even in ordinary life – you taste something, but you cannot explain the taste. You smell a fragrance but is there any way to explain it? – and particularly to those people who have lost their sensitivity to smell. They may not be convinced by your words, but they will be convinced by your effort – and that may trigger an inquiry in them…perhaps you are right.And that’s what, down the ages, people have tried. If they have come in contact with a master, they have come in contact with a living experience of enlightenment. They know it is there; it has become almost tangible to them. They have felt it in their very heartbeat, in their very breathing. They have seen it; and naturally, they would like to communicate it.They are burdened with a tremendous experience, and they want to wake people up: “What are you doing? There is something more to life – don’t waste your life this way! I have seen it. I have lived moments in the presence of some mysterious experience.”Perhaps they will think you crazy, they will think you mad. Don’t be worried about it – it has always been so. But if your madness is total, it is going to leave a deep impression on them. If your madness has a joy in it, a blissfulness around it, it is impossible for them to ignore it.They would like to ignore it, for the simple reason that you are driving them onto a dangerous path: perhaps they will become just as mad as you are. They would prefer that nothing like the experience you are talking about exists. It is an effort to defend themselves. In fact their very attempt to ignore you, to condemn you, to call you a madman, shows you have already made some way into their heart.These are defense measures. They are creating a wall between you and themselves – but that is the beginning of their defeat. Defense is the beginning of defeat: they have already become afraid, frightened.So I will say, go on saying it. You will never be able to say it, but many things will happen in the effort of saying it. People are searching, knowingly or unknowingly, for something which is not part of their mundane life. They are tired and bored, but they want to be clear before they enter into any inquiry. That’s why they want exact descriptions, explanations; they ask all kinds of questions.It is simply for safety. They have lost their life; now a very small part is left, and they are afraid to gamble it. So you should be compassionate towards them. Don’t get angry that they do not understand you. Don’t stop trying to say it because they are not hearing you, because you are not succeeding in reaching them.Life’s ways are very mysterious.You want to say something about the unknowable. You will not be able to say it, but in the very effort, you can change the life pattern of the person. You can give him new dreams and new hopes.That’s what I have been doing my whole life – selling dreams…hopes.Neither you can say it, nor I can say it. My whole life I have been trying to say it, knowing perfectly well it is an impossible task. It has never happened and it is not going to happen. And it is good that it is not going to happen…so something remains above mind, always in absolute purity, unpolluted.I have been setting people on fire.I don’t succeed in saying it, but as a by-product – of my arduous effort to say it – putting my whole being put at stake in saying it – there are other things happening on the side. The person is set on fire. He starts looking for something which cannot be said.I have failed in a way. I have succeeded in another.In fact, failing in saying it is not important. Succeeding in setting a man aflame is the real success. You have not missed the target. What helps is not your words but the way they are said, the authority with which they are said, the living quality of your words – that they are coming from the very center of your being. You are not playing a mindgame; what you are saying is not just part of your thinking…the quality of your words will give the sense that they are part of your living. And that quality goes on making an impression.So it is a very strange phenomenon: you cannot say it, and still you have to continue to say it. Words may fail but there is something which will transpire.Just be total. Don’t hold anything back. If tears want to come, let them come. Everything is significant.Every gesture is significant. Even gaps are tremendously meaningful. No one knows what is going to leave an impression on the other. So you have to make a total effort.Something is going to happen; it has always happened.The story is about Gautam Buddha: the night he became enlightened, he remained silent for seven days, for the simple reason that what is the use of saying it when it cannot be said? And it was absolutely clear to him that it is not possible to say it. Then why unnecessarily waste your time and other people’s time?The story is very beautiful. In Buddhist mythology there is no God, but there are gods. Gods are the people who are living in heaven. Heaven is just a holiday place. Those who earn virtue, those who live religiously, are rewarded – a weekend; these people are called gods. But they are not higher than an enlightened being; they are far lower, because once their virtue is finished and their account is closed, they fall back to the mundane, ordinary world again.The same happens to those who are committing all kinds of sins: they will be thrown into hell. When their punishment is complete, they come back to the ordinary world. So even heaven and hell are just reward-and-punishment systems.The enlightened person does not go to heaven because he is freed from all sin, from all virtue: he is free from the mind itself. He simply dissolves into existence; he becomes one with the ocean.So the gods in heaven became very much worried that Buddha is not going to speak – and in centuries…it is rarely that somebody becomes a buddha. So seven gods representing the whole of heaven came down to Buddha, touched his feet, and asked him to speak. “Because for centuries the earth waits, and if you remain silent, we will not be benefited by your enlightenment. You have to share it.”Buddha said, “That which cannot be said, how can I say it? You know perfectly well it cannot be said, so what is the point in saying it? In fact, by saying it, you are distorting it. The moment truth is said, it becomes a lie. So please forgive me – I cannot do it.”The gods were very much puzzled. They talked amongst themselves…what to do, how to convince him – what he is saying is right, but he has to be convinced to speak. Truth cannot be said, no, we have heard for centuries it cannot be said; but while a man of truth speaks…it is not only the words, there are many more things – his eyes, his hands, his whole being. The words may not be able to say it, but they create a ground in which people can be pulled. And they can see his eyes, they can see his being, they can see his silence. They can see his blissfulness, they can see his contentment. That’s what convinces them – not his words.So they said to Buddha, “We understand: ninety-nine percent of the people perhaps may not understand you, but why are you forgetting the one percent? And even if one percent of the people understand you, it will bring a transformation in the whole consciousness of man.”Buddha said, “Those one percent I have not forgotten, but those are the people who will attain to enlightenment whether I speak or not – maybe a few years later or a few lives later. But that one percent you are talking about who can understand me, they can not be prevented from enlightenment any longer.“So what is the point? They will get it. And in this eternity of time, what does it matter if you get it today or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow?”Again the gods insisted; they said, “We understand you, but there may be a few who are just on the verge, and they need only a little push, a little conviction that they are not going to risk everything for nothing. Your presence will convince them that it is worth risking everything. And they are just on the verge: only one step, and they are holding back the step because they don’t know what is in the unknown, what is in the unknowable. They can’t see anything; so why lose whatever you have got for that which is uncertain? It may be, it may not be.“Your presence will give them courage to take the last step. And you know perfectly well they can remain hanging on the verge for millions of lives – the same fear. Your presence will take away the fear. They will know that going into the unknown and the unknowable is not a risk; it is the only thing that is not a risk.“In life, everything is risky. That is the only thing which is absolutely certain. Your presence will give them that certainty, and the courage to take the last step. You will have to speak.”Buddha pondered over it, and he said, “Perhaps you are right, because I remember my own situation: that last step was the most difficult, because I had nobody who could convince me by his presence that ‘You are not going to simply disappear into nothingness; you will come out of it radiant, with eternal life.’“I know how many lives I have been hanging at the last step. I will speak. I will speak for those who are just on the verge.” And he spoke for forty-two years – still he has not been able to say the truth. But he helped hundreds of people to attain truth.So don’t be worried that you are not succeeding in saying it. Nobody succeeds in saying it – but success comes through other ways. Saying it creates a situation.Even if a few people can start moving, that’s enough. And in their movement, you will find yourself moving. When you see a conviction arising in somebody’s eyes, you will be convinced a thousandfold. So it is not only for others – it is for you too. Say it in as many ways as possible.So one thing has to be remembered: say it with your totality, because that is what is going to change the other person, his perspective. And when you say it with your totality, your words start having a life of their own.I don’t know even the abc of oratory…. Once I was taken to a Christian theological college. The principal was my friend, and he was insisting that some time I should come and see how they prepare their missionaries.And I was simply amazed: they were teaching people everything – when you have to speak loudly; when you have to speak very softly, almost in a whisper; when you have to raise your hands – at what point of your sermon which gesture has to be made….I said to the principal, “This is simply stupid! This is not education – you are destroying these people. This is all false, phony. You should not call it a religious institute; you are teaching acting.”I have never learned anything about oratory – there is no need. What you need is some authentic experience, and then it starts finding its own ways. And I have been speaking to millions of people, just talking to them heart to heart. I myself don’t know what is going to be my next statement. I don’t know what my hands are doing, what gestures are coming; I don’t know what my eyes are doing.I simply know one thing, that when I am saying something, I am saying it with my body, with my mind, with my soul – with my everything put at stake. And when you have something to say, it finds its own way.Of course you will never be able to say the truth, but by saying it you may be able to approach peoples’ hearts. You may trigger some pilgrimage in them – and that is more than one can expect.So go on saying it; go on making the effort, knowing perfectly well there is no way to say it.For centuries people have understood this, and yet they went on saying it, because they became aware that between the words, between the lines, something goes on transpiring – and that is the real thing.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,A Zen master said, “Sitting silently, doing nothing, and the grass grows by itself.” Buddha said, “Be a light unto yourself.” I agree in toto. So what is the need for a master? Cannot an intelligent and courageous man walk alone?How to explain what a master is in a country where “master” only means “one who owns people”?There is no need for a master.An intelligent and courageous man can walk alone – but he will have to walk many lives before he comes to the point. With a master the long journey can be cut short.Walking alone, you don’t know where you are going. You know where you want to go, but there is no map. And there are not paved roads to the truth. As you walk you make the path; it is not already there. And there are thousands of doors.The person who is walking alone will have to knock on each of the doors; and all the doors don’t lead to the truth. There is only one door in those thousands of doors which leads to the truth. A man walking alone will have to depend on some coincidence that he happens to knock on the right door; otherwise he will have to eliminate all the wrong doors by knocking on them, finding that they are not the right one, until finally all wrong doors are eliminated, and only the right one is left.This can take thousands of lives. The journey will be infinitely long – so long that the courageous man may lose courage, the intelligent man may get fed up with all that. And rather than reaching the goal, he may turn his back on the whole pilgrimage.Yes, it is possible without a master, but the difficulties are tremendous. The master does not lead you to the truth because he has already traveled the path: he has already found the right door, the right method. He can help you to eliminate the wrong doors.In other words the function of the master is not to give you the truth but to make you aware what is false, to make you aware what is not truth. He cuts your journey down to the shortest possible way.And a master is not a person who owns people. One who owns people is not a master at all: he is a politician. He is on a power trip.A master can only be a master if he does not own people, but loves them.Love never owns. Love gives without asking anything in return. Love makes no conditions. Love has no expectations.A master is only a friend. He is not higher than the people he is leading towards a certain experience. He has no superiority complex. He does not create any guilt, any inferiority, any kind of spiritual slavery – because these are the barriers to finding the experience he is teaching.Only an independent, totally autonomous being, living in freedom, can attain to the experience of truth.So how can the master own the people? He makes every effort to help – and this help does not create any obligation on those who are being helped. On the contrary the master feels obliged that you accepted his help. You could have rejected it; there was no necessity to accept it.It is just a theoretical thing that the master is not needed. Practically it is almost impossible to find the way without the master, because there are so many ways, and they don’t all lead to truth.And you don’t have unlimited courage. It will soon be finished. After wandering on a few paths and finding nothing, you will be discouraged. Each failure is going to become a discouragement. Soon you will start wondering whether there is any truth at all. “Am I searching for a hallucination, searching for something that does not exist?”Your intelligence, howsoever sharp, will start losing its sharpness when you come again and again against failure.Whatever man has, needs nourishment. His courage needs nourishment. His intelligence needs nourishment – and nourishment comes through success. If you are succeeding, you will become more and more intelligent, more and more courageous…getting ready to take a quantum leap into the unknown. But if on every step there is failure, darkness, the courage will disappear. The intelligence will start losing its sharpness, its brilliance.It is mostly going to be the case that soon you will forget all about truth, the search. You may even become an enemy of all those who are talking about truth and the search for it. You may start saying that it is all nonsense, it is just groping in the dark…just like the definition of a blind philosopher looking in a dark house in the dark night for a black cat which is not there. How long can you keep your courage?Buddha has a beautiful story about it. He says there is a palace of one thousand doors, and a blind man is trying to find the right door to get out of it. All the doors are open. He goes on searching for the right door; he becomes tired – such a tedious thing that each door proves to be just a facade. It is not a door; behind each door there is only a wall. The door is open – but when he enters he hits his head against the wall.He starts becoming discouraged, although he has been told there is one door, certainly one door, which will take him out – and all doors are open. And by the time he reaches the right door, he is so tired, so fed up. He has passed nine hundred and ninety-nine doors, and they all have proved wrong doors. It is a natural conclusion that this door is also going to be one of them. He does not try it – he passes by it.He has tried enough. You cannot blame that man, he is blind – and hitting his head on nine hundred and ninety-nine doors and finding they are all walls…. You cannot blame him if he decides to leave this one and save at least one hit more. He moves on and starts knocking again on wrong doors.Buddha used to say that you cannot condemn that man. You have to be compassionate – he is blind and his experience of so many failures discourages him. And he misses the right door. He simply does not try – he is tired. Perhaps one round more and he may drop the whole idea of getting out.Perhaps it is just a fallacy that there is a door that opens towards the world of light, sun, flowers, and sky and stars. Perhaps this is all there is. And those who have been telling him about the right door may have been simply deceiving him, perhaps they are deceived themselves.What is theoretically possible is not necessarily practically the right thing. Every master will say you can go alone, you can find the truth on your own; there is no need of a master. And only a master will say that. But he will also make it clear to you that you are choosing a very long journey. You may be tired, you may drop out of the search; you may turn your back towards truth. You may even become antagonistic to the very idea. The master is a practical necessity.And the master is only a lover. He loves truth, and he loves to help people to reach that wonderful experience.He is just like a gardener. Whenever there are flowers coming to the plants it is not only that the flowers blossom, something in the heart of the gardener also blossoms with each flower. The same is true about the master. Each time a disciple reaches the goal, attains his potentiality, blossoms, something in the master’s heart also blossoms. With each disciple becoming enlightened, the master becomes again and again enlightened.That is the master’s reward. He does not want anything from the disciple. His reward is in the success of the disciple.So always remain aware of the distinction between what is theoretical and what is practical.You have quoted Basho, an authentic master: “Sitting silently, doing nothing, and the grass grows by itself.” This is the theoretical position, and every great master will agree with it – that all that is needed is that you sit silently, don’t do anything. On your part doing is not needed. Don’t start pulling the grass in order to make it grow. You simply sit silently, the grass grows by itself.But this is a theoretical statement. Who is going to teach you to sit silently? That is the most difficult thing in the world. You can do everything very easily, and the easiest thing – to sit silently – seems to be the most difficult.You will need a master for many reasons. First, as an example; otherwise soon you will find that you cannot sit silently. That’s how the mind works, to console itself: “It is not my fault that I cannot sit silently; it is just human nature. Nobody can sit silently. I have never seen anybody sitting silently doing nothing.”The first function of the master is to prevent you from drawing such a conclusion. You know at least one man who sits silently. There is one man, at least, who is capable of not doing anything, just being. And if it is possible for one man, it is possible for all men.And secondly: you will need some method, some strategy, to help you to sit silently and not to do anything. Each master develops devices – sometimes very strange, sometimes very obvious. It all depends on what kind of disciple he is going to help.This haiku is from Basho, but he himself helped many people, helped the grass to grow – in spite of his statement which has become world famous. Nobody has bothered that he has helped much grass to grow.He has given a certain kind of meditation to one disciple: to listen to the sound of one hand clapping. The disciple knows that there cannot be any sound from one hand. Whatever you do, sound needs at least two things to clash; one hand won’t do. But the master says, “Try. Sit down and try, and when you find something that is the sound of one hand clapping, come back and report.”And every morning the disciple comes. The night before, he heard the wind passing through the pine trees, and he thought, “Perhaps this is the sound of one hand clapping.” In the morning he rushes to the master, and he tells him, touching his feet, “I have heard it! It is the sound of the wind passing through the pine trees.”The master gives him a good slap and says, “You idiot! I have told you to find the sound of one hand clapping. The wind and the pine trees are two hands. Go back and start meditating.”The disciple comes back again and again. Sometimes the sound of the water running…and he thinks, “Perhaps this is it!” But the master is difficult: the disciple is tired, and all that he gets is a slap on his face. He tells the master that he heard the sound of running water.The master says, “You won’t listen to me!” He simply takes hold of him and throws him out of the window! It is a three-story house, and they are on the top floor. And not only does the master throw the disciple out of the window, he jumps after him, on top of him, and asks him, “Have you heard it?”For a moment there is absolute silence. The disciple cannot believe what has happened. He had never thought that Basho, such a gentle man, will do anything like this. He is simply shocked. And now the master, sitting on his chest asks him, “Have you heard it?”The shock, the situation – and for a moment time stops, mind stops, and the disciple smiles. And Basho says, “That is it! But you forced me to do something which I don’t do ordinarily. You were harassing me every morning with all kinds of nonsense things.”Yes, the grass grows by itself. But man is not grass. He needs a guide, he needs a benevolent master. He needs a friend who at times can be really hard, a friend to create devices around him. This disciple would have waited for lives to hear the sound of one hand clapping.And this is a spontaneous act on the part of Basho. It is not a considered act, he has not thought about it. It is just that the moment he feels it, he does it. The disciple has a few fractures, but those fractures will heal; they don’t matter. What matters is that the shock of getting thrown out of the window, and the master jumping onto him was something so unexpected that the mind had to stop.Mind can only function with the expected, with the known. When there is something unexpected, unknown, then it has to stop. And the stopping of the mind is the sound of one hand clapping. It is silence.Now the disciple knows what silence is. Now he can sit in silence doing nothing and letting the grass grow by itself. But the first taste of silence – who is going to give it to you? Only one who has tasted it.It is of immense importance not to be lost in theoretical assumptions, and to always remain in the world of the practical, because it is there that things happen. Once they have happened then the theoretical seems to be perfectly right – but only once they have happened.A master is only a support when you are not able to walk on your own.If a child is not helped by the mother to start walking on his own feet…. She is very protective. She takes care that he does not fall into a ditch, she takes care that he does not get hurt. She provokes the child, she challenges the child: “You can do it. I am here, you will not fall – I will support you.” But the first steps of a child – for the child it is entering into an unknown world.If left alone, no child will stand up on his feet; he will walk on all fours all his life. This is a proven fact, because many times children have been found in jungles, in caves, living with wolves. Some motherly wolf has taken the child from the city, and she has been feeding the child…. But because all the wolves are moving on all fours, the child also walks on all fours. Nobody has challenged him to stand up on two legs: “Change your position from the horizontal to the vertical.”A few years ago one boy was found near Lucknow in India. He was fourteen years old, but he was not able to stand up. It took six months for doctors to help him to stand. Then too, whenever he was left alone, he would walk on all fours. It was only under compulsion that he would stand on his two feet. It was too difficult, and he was very hesitant, afraid, nervous.Theoretically, man is capable of walking on two legs, but practically a mother is needed, a motherly milieu is needed, in which he can feel supported and unafraid – even if he falls, he will not get hurt. And sometimes he will fall, but slowly he will get the knack. Then the mother is not needed. Then for the whole of his life he will not remember at all that he is walking because of a mother; otherwise he would have not been walking on two legs.In the spiritual world it is a little more complicated and a little more subtle. The master is playing many roles. He is a friend, he is a guide, he is a mother. And in every way he is trying to give you the first experience. That first experience triggers a series of experiences. And then you can sit alone, silently.And the real master never wants you to remain dependent on him. He wants to make you independent as soon as possible…the quicker the better.So he finds all the shortcuts. And he is aware of the whole area – he has traveled on all the paths. He has seen it from all the angles. He knows where you are, and he knows where the truth is. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line; and that is the function of the master – to create a straight line between you and the truth.Just the other day an old man was asking me – he is the private secretary of the king of Nepal – “I don’t expect that, in this life, I will be able to experience anything you talk about.”I said, “Why? Why are you so discouraged? What I am talking about can be experienced within a second. All that you need is to listen to me carefully and just to make an effort. There is no need to wait for another life. Perhaps you have been doing it in your past lives too, and you are just repeating an old habit, that it cannot happen in this small life. You are thinking, ‘Now almost two-thirds is gone, one-third is left: how can I manage such a big experience?’”And as I talked with him and I gave him a meditation – to just witness his breathing – I understood what the difficulty was. He was not listening to me. While I was talking to him, giving him a method, he was preparing in his mind what he had to say after I stopped.And as I stopped, he did not continue with what I was saying to him. He immediately jumped to something which had no connection with what was said to him. Just to give the appearance that it was connected, he said, “Except for witnessing the breathing…I have been sleeping very soundly – I don’t have any dreams.”I had told him that if you go to sleep watching your breath, you will wake up watching your breath. And that is an absolute proof that you have got the method, you have got a grip on it – because whatsoever is the last thought when you go to sleep, continues to be there the whole night, and is always the first thought in the morning. It waits eight hours.So he said, “Except for watching the breath…. This is my experience, that whatever thought I sleep with is the first thought in the morning. Driving on a silent road in the faraway parts of Nepal, I feel so overwhelmed with blissfulness that tears come to my eyes and I have to stop driving because I cannot see.”I asked him, “Who has told you to do these things?”He said, “No one. I have been trying on my own.”I said, “Then I can understand why the fear is there that you are not going to make it in this life. Perhaps you aren’t going to make in this life. These are just fragments – you don’t know the whole. And you don’t know how to put these fragments together to make the whole.“You have not been with a master. You are just doing – in a haphazard way – anything that you may have read somewhere, heard somewhere. But spiritual experience is an organic unity. You need a man who has the vision of the whole before him. He can give you the key from where to start, so you don’t end up with fragments here and there. They will not be of any use. They will be simply deceiving you that you are on the path.”Practically, the master is an absolute necessity. But remember that the master does not own people. The master is not the master of people; the master is the master of himself.People are attracted to him because of his mastery. They are not to be enslaved. If anybody is enslaving them – and that is what your so-called religions go on doing – then that man is pseudo, and he is going to destroy you rather than create a new man in you.So this is the basic indication of who a master is: he does not enslave you. On the contrary he gives you total freedom. And if you choose to do something, you choose. It is not being forced upon you, it is your choice.The master can make things available to you, but the choice is always yours. And the master will not have any kind of superiority over you. His emphasis will be continuously, “I am just a human being – not a prophet, not a messiah, not a savior of humanity. I am just a human being as you are. If there is any difference, it is very little. The difference is that I am awake and you are still asleep.”But the very phenomenon that you are asleep is an indication that you can be awake. A dead man is not asleep, so he cannot be awake. Being asleep or being awake is the same energy.The perfect master convinces you that you are as capable as he is of having all the experiences that can uplift you from the ordinary, mundane world into a spiritual paradise, herenow.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 16 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,You have been using the key word “deprogramming” to describe your work. The techniques that you have suggested during these years, go from chaotic and Dynamic meditation to the modern therapeutic school.I would like you to explain in brief why you had to create new meditation techniques like Kundalini meditation or Dynamic meditation, even though there is a tradition already including hundreds of techniques from Yoga, Sufism, Buddhism etc.What is also surprising to the West is that you are using therapies such as Gestalt, Primal, Encounter, in your commune. Is it really necessary?The suspicion is that your secret intentions are nothing but to brainwash people's minds, and that cannot be tolerated because you are touching the most precious thing they have.The ancient methods of meditation were all developed in the East. They never considered the Western man, the Western man was excluded. I am creating techniques which are not only for the Eastern man, which are simply for every man – Eastern or Western.There is a difference between the Eastern tradition and the Western tradition – and it is the tradition that creates the mind. For example, the Eastern mind is very patient – thousands of years of teaching to remain patient, whatever the conditions may be.The Western mind is very impatient. The same methods of technique cannot be applicable to both.The Eastern mind has been conditioned to keep a certain equilibrium in success or in failure, in richness or in poverty, in sickness or in health, in life or in death. The Western mind has no idea of such equilibrium; it gets too disturbed. With success it gets disturbed; it starts feeling at the top of the world, starts feeling a certain superiority complex. In failure it goes to the other extreme; it falls into the seventh hell. It is miserable, in deep anguish, and it feels a tremendous inferiority complex. It is torn apart.And life consists of both. There are moments which are beautiful, and there are moments which are ugly. There are moments when you are in love, there are moments when you are in anger, in hatred. The Western mind simply goes with the situation. It is always in a turmoil. The Eastern mind has learnt…it is a conditioning, it is not a revolution, it is only a training, a discipline, it is a practice. Underneath it is the same, but a thick conditioning makes it keep a certain balance.The Eastern mind is very slow because there is no point in being speedy; life takes its own course and everything is determined by fate, so what you get, you don’t get by your speed, your hurry. What you get, you get because it is already destined. So there is no question of being in a hurry. Whenever something is going to happen, it is going to happen – neither one second before nor one second after it.This has created a very slow flow in the East. It seems almost as if the river is not flowing; it is so slow that you cannot detect the flow. Moreover, the Eastern conditioning is that you have already lived millions of lives, and there are millions ahead to be lived, so the life span is not only seventy years; the life span is vast and enormous. There is no hurry; there is so much time available: why should you be in a hurry? If it does not happen in this life, it may happen in some other life.The Western mind is very speedy, fast, because the conditioning is for only one life – seventy years – and so much to do. One third of your life goes into sleep, one third of your life goes into education, training – what is left?Much of it goes into earning your livelihood. If you count everything, you will be surprised: out of seventy years you cannot even have seven years left for something that you want to do. Naturally there is hurry, a mad rush, so mad that one forgets where one is going. All that you remember is whether you are going with speed or not. The means becomes the end.In the same way, in different directions…the Eastern mind has cultivated itself differently than the Western mind. Those one hundred and twelve methods of meditation developed in the East have never taken account of the Western man; they were not developed for the Western man. The Western man was not yet available. The time that Vigyan Bhairav Tantra was written – in which those one hundred and twelve techniques have come to perfection – is nearabout five to ten thousand years before us.At that time there was no Western man, no Western society, no Western culture. The West was still barbarous, primitive, not worth taking into account. The East was the whole world, at the pinnacle of its growth, richness, civilization.My methods of meditation have been developed out of an absolute necessity. I want the distinction between the West and the East to be dissolved.After Shiva’s Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, in these five or ten thousand years, nobody has developed a single method. But I have been watching the differences between East and West: the same method cannot be applied immediately to both. First, the Eastern and the Western mind have to be brought into a similar state. Those techniques of dynamic meditation, kundalini meditation, and others, are all cathartic; their basis is catharsis.You have to throw out all the junk that your mind is full of. Unless you are unloaded you cannot sit silently. It is just as if you tell a child to sit silently in the corner of the room. It is very difficult, he is so full of energy. You are repressing a volcano! The best way is, first tell him, “Go run outside around the house ten times; then come and sit down in the corner.”Then it is possible, you have made it possible. He himself wants to sit down now, to relax. He is tired, he is exhausted; now, sitting there, he is not repressing his energy, he has expressed his energy by running around the house ten times. Now he is more at ease.The cathartic methods are simply to throw all your impatience, your speediness, your hurry, your repressions.One more factor has to be remembered, that these are absolutely necessary for the Western man before he can do something like Vipassana – just sitting silently doing nothing and the grass grows by itself. But you have to be sitting silently, doing nothing – that is a basic condition for the grass to grow by itself. If you cannot sit silently doing nothing, you are going to disturb the grass.I have always loved gardens, and wherever I have lived I have created beautiful gardens, lawns. I used to talk to people sitting on my lawn, and I became aware that they were all pulling the grass out…just hectic energy. If they had nothing to do they would simply pull the grass. I had to tell them, “If you go on doing this, then you will have to sit inside the room. I cannot allow you to destroy my lawn.”They would stop themselves for a while, and as they started listening to me, again unconsciously, their hands would start pulling at the grass. So sitting silently doing nothing is not really just sitting silently and doing nothing. It is doing a big favor to the grass. Unless you are not doing anything, the grass cannot grow; you will stop it, you will pull it out, you will disturb it.So these methods are absolutely necessary for the Western mind. But a new factor has also entered: they have become necessary for the Eastern mind too. The mind for which Shiva wrote those one hundred and twelve methods of meditation no longer exists – even in the East now. The Western influence has been tremendous. Things have changed.In Shiva’s time there was no Western civilization. The East was at its peak of glory; it was called “a golden bird.” It had all the luxuries and comforts: it was really affluent.Now the situation is reversed: the East has been in slavery for two thousand years, exploited by almost everyone in the world, invaded by a dozen countries, continuously looted, raped, burned. It is now a beggar.And three hundred years of British rule in India have destroyed India’s own educational system – which was a totally different thing. They forced the Eastern mind to be educated according to Western standards. They have almost turned the Eastern intelligentsia into a second-grade Western intelligentsia. They have given their disease of speediness, of hurry, of impatience, of continuous anguish, anxiety, to the East.If you see the temples of Khajuraho or the temples of Konarak, you can see the East in its true colors.Just in Khajuraho there were one hundred temples; only thirty have survived, seventy have been destroyed by Mohammedans. Thousands of temples of tremendous beauty and sculpture have been destroyed by Mohammedans. These thirty survived; it was just coincidence, because they were part of a forest. Perhaps the invaders forgot about them.But the British influence on the Indian mind was so great, that even a man like Mahatma Gandhi wanted these thirty temples to be covered with mud so nobody could see them. Just to think of the people who had created those hundred temples…each temple must have taken centuries to build. They are so delicate in structure, so proportionate and so beautiful, that there exists nothing parallel to them on the earth.And you can imagine that temples don’t exist alone; if there were a hundred temples, there must have been a city of thousands of people; otherwise a hundred temples are meaningless. Where are those people? With the temples those people have been massacred.And those temples I take as an example, because their sculpture will look pornographic to the Western mind; to Mahatma Gandhi it also looked pornographic.India owes so much to Rabindranath Tagore. He was the man who prevented Mahatma Gandhi and other politicians who were ready to cover the temples, to hide them from people’s eyes. Rabindranath Tagore said, “This is absolutely stupid. They are not pornographic, they are utterly beautiful.”There is a very delicate line between pornography and beauty. A naked woman is not necessarily pornographic; a naked man is not necessarily pornographic. A beautiful man, a beautiful woman, naked, can be examples of beauty, of health, of proportion. They are the most glorious products of nature. If a deer can be naked and beautiful – and nobody thinks the deer is pornographic – then why should it be that a naked man or woman cannot be just seen as beautiful?There were ladies in the times of Victoria in England, who covered the legs of the chairs with cloth because legs should not be left naked – chairs’ legs! But because they are called legs, it was thought uncivilized, uncultured, to leave them naked. There was a movement in Victoria’s time that the people who take their dogs for a walk should cover them with cloth. They should not be naked…as if nakedness itself is pornographic. It is the pornographic mind.I have been to Khajuraho hundreds of times, and I have not seen a single sculpture as pornographic. A naked picture or a naked statue becomes pornography if it provokes your sexuality. That’s the only criterion: if it provokes your sexuality, if it is an incentive to your sexual instinct. But that is not the case with Khajuraho. In fact the temples were made for just the opposite purpose.They were made to meditate on man and woman making love. And the stones have come alive. The people who have made them must have been the greatest artists the world has known. They were made to meditate upon, they were objects for meditation.It is a temple, and meditators were sitting around just looking at the sculptures, and watching within themselves whether there was any sexual desire arising. This was the criterion: when they found there was no sexual desire arising, it was a certificate for them to enter the temples. All these sculptures are outside the temple, on the walls outside; inside there are no nudist statues.But this was necessary for people to meditate, and then they were clear that there was no desire; on the contrary those statues had made their ordinary desire for sex subside. Then they were capable of entering into the temple; otherwise they should not enter the temple. That would be a profanity – having such a desire inside and entering the temple. It would be making the temple dirty – you would be insulting the temple.The people who created these temples created a tremendous, voluminous literature also. The East never used to be repressive of sexuality. Before Buddha and Mahavira the East was never repressive of sexuality. It was with Buddha and Mahavira that for the first time celibacy became spiritual. Otherwise, before Buddha and Mahavira, all the seers of the Upanishads, of the Vedas, were married people; they were not celibate, they had children.And they were not people who had renounced the world; they had all the luxuries and all the comforts. They lived in the forests, but they had everything presented to them by their students, by the kings, by their lovers. And their ashrams, their schools, their academies in the forest were very affluent.With Buddha and Mahavira the East began a sick tradition of celibacy, of repression. And when Christianity came into India, there came a very strong trend of repressiveness. These three hundred years of Christianity have made the Eastern mind almost as repressive as the Western mind.So now my methods are applicable to both. I call them preliminary methods. They are to destroy everything that can prevent you from going into a silent meditation. Once dynamic meditation or kundalini meditation succeeds, you are clean. You have erased repressiveness. You have erased the speediness, the hurry, the impatience. Now it is possible for you to enter the temple.It is for this reason that I spoke about the acceptance of sex, because without the acceptance of sex, you cannot get rid of repression. And I want you to be completely clean, natural. I want you to be in a state where those one hundred and twelve methods can be applicable to you.This is my reason for devising these methods – these are simply cleansing methods.I have also included the Western therapeutic methods because the Western mind – and under its influence, the Eastern mind: both have become sick. It is a rare phenomenon today to find a healthy mind. Everybody is feeling a certain kind of nausea, a mental nausea, a certain emptiness, which is like a wound hurting. Everybody is having his life turned into a nightmare. Everybody is worried, too much afraid of death; not only afraid of death but also afraid of life.People are living half-heartedly, people are living in a lukewarm way: not intensely like Zorba the Greek, not with a healthy flavor but with a sick mind. One has to live, so they are living. One has to love, so they are loving. One has to do this, to be like this, so they are following; otherwise there is no incentive coming from their own being.They are not overflowing with energy. They are not risking anything to live totally. They are not adventurous – and without being adventurous, one is not healthy. Adventure is the criterion, inquiry into the unknown is the criterion. People are not young, from childhood they simply become old. Youth never happens.The Western therapeutic methods cannot help you to grow spiritually, but they can prepare the ground. They cannot sow the seeds of flowers but they can prepare the ground – which is a necessity. This was one reason why I included therapies.There is also another reason: I want a meeting of East and West.The East has developed meditative methods; the West has not developed meditative methods, the West has developed psychotherapies. If we want the Western mind to be interested in meditation methods, if you want the Eastern mind to come closer to the Western, then there has to be something of give and take. It should not be just Eastern – something from the Western evolution should be included. And I find those therapies are immensely helpful. They can’t go far, but as far as they go, it is good. Where they stop, meditations can take over.But the Western mind should feel that something of its own development has been included in the meeting, in the merger; it should not be one-sided. And they are significant; they cannot harm, they can only help.And I have used them for the last fifteen years with tremendous success. They have helped people to cleanse their beings, prepared them to be ready to enter into the temple of meditation. My effort is to dissolve the separation between East and West. The earth should be one, not only politically but spiritually too.And you say that people think that this is a clever way of brainwashing. It is something more: it is mindwashing, not brainwashing. Brainwashing is very superficial. The brain is the mechanism that the mind uses. You can wash the brain very easily – just any mechanism can be washed and cleaned and lubricated. But if the mind which is behind the brain is polluted, is dirty, is full of repressed desires, is full of ugliness, soon the brain will be full of all those ugly things.And I don’t see that there is anything wrong in it – washing is always good. I believe in dry-cleaning. I don’t use old methods of washing.And yes, people will feel cheated that their mind has been taken away, and that was the only precious thing they had. This will be only in the beginning. Once the mind is taken away, they will be surprised that behind the mind is their real treasure. And the mind was only a mirror, it was reflecting the treasure, but it had no treasure in itself. The treasure is behind the mind – that is your being.But a mirror can deceive you. It can give you the idea that what is reflected in it is a reality. So unless the mind is taken away – and that’s what meditation is, it is a state of no-mind. It is taking away the mind and giving you a chance to see not the reflection of the treasure of your being, but the treasure itself.It is at this point that the master becomes a tremendous help, because to lose the mind is the most difficult thing. I can understand, because that is the only thing you have, and to lose it means to lose all. And we know when somebody loses his mind he goes mad. So everybody clings to the mind – nobody wants to go mad.It is here the master is a practical necessity, because you have a person who has lost his mind and yet is not mad. In fact by losing his mind he has become the sanest person possible.This is the moment when you need encouragement to take a jump, to risk it all. This is the moment when you need somebody you love and somebody who loves you, and somebody whose love is more precious than your mind, so that for his love’s sake you can lose your mind.And love is something that people can give their whole life for, what to say about their mind. If you love someone you can give your whole life – you can die for your love. So the mind is nothing. And the master grows the seeds of love slowly, slowly – seeds of trust. He will not do anything unless he feels the time is ripe; unless he sees that the time is ripe and your love is capable, has come of age, and it can be asked to throw the mind away.It can happen very easily in love and trust. And when you have a living example before you and you have lived with the master for years and seen him in different situations, seen him from different perspectives – and always found him the same unflickering light, the same joy, without any change – then deep down in your heart love and trust go on growing.And finally, when the heart is so strong with love and trust, you can risk the mind. It is not more valuable than your heart. And the moment you drop the mind, suddenly you open the doors of the real treasure. That’s what you have been seeking all your life, but the mind was a barrier.Osho,Is that true that you have declared your therapists to be the best in the world? And what makes the difference between them and the famous therapists of the Esalen institute?Yes, my therapists are the best in the world, for the simple reason that other therapists are only therapists, they are not meditators. My therapists are meditators too.Therapy is a superficial thing. It can help to clean the ground, but just to have a clean ground is not to have a garden.You will need something more. Therapy is negative; it simply takes away the weeds from the ground, removes the stones from the ground, prepares the soil for the garden. But there its work ends.Western therapy is still in its very primitive stage. It has to go a long way. And unless it becomes associated with meditation, it may help a little bit superficially but it cannot really help the person to grow.And it takes so much time. There are people who have been in psychoanalysis or in other therapies for ten years, twelve years. They have been changing therapists, but their problems remain the same. They have been digging deep in their dreams; they have been finding new analysts – Freudian, Jungian, Adlerian, Assagiolian – and those explanations seem significant for a moment. But they don’t change anything. In fact people become addicted to therapy.It has become a luxury in the West…just as in the old days women used to talk about each other’s clothes, their diamonds, their paintings, the decorations of their house, and how much it cost; now ladies are talking about who their psychoanalyst is, and how much one session costs. It has become something to be proud of that you have the best, the most expensive psychoanalyst in the world, and you have had him for ten years.And you have to look at one thing: the people practicing psychoanalysis and other concerned professions of therapy, these people themselves are not healthy. They know the technique, they have learned the technique, but they themselves are not healthy people – healthy in the sense that they have any integrity. Twice the number of psychotherapists go mad than any other profession. And twice the number of psychoanalysts commit suicide than any other profession.This is very strange…because these people should not go mad and should not commit suicide; otherwise how are these people going to help others?Not a single meditator has committed suicide down the ages. You cannot think of Gautam Buddha committing suicide. You cannot think of Bodhidharma going mad. It is simply inconceivable. So something very fundamental is missing.So when I say my therapists are the best in the world, I simply mean that my therapists are not only therapists, they are meditators too. Other therapists are only therapists. If you look into their lives you will be surprised: you will find what I am saying.Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, was so much afraid of ghosts that you cannot believe it. You cannot say this man was mature: he was retarded. He was so much afraid of ghosts that even at the word “ghost” he went into a fit, fell from his chair, and started foaming from the mouth. And this is the founder of psychoanalysis!Carl Gustav Jung was going to be his successor – Freud himself had chosen him – and he was a man of great intellectual possibilities. But he was too interested in ghosts – that was the reason he was thrown out of the psychoanalytic movement. Freud tried to prevent his talking about ghosts. He said, “Don’t bring up that subject.” He could not even mention the name of the subject – “that subject.” But Jung was so interested that once in a while he would bring up the subject and the whole scene would be repeated.Finally it was thought that Jung should be removed from the movement, and he was expelled. But he himself was not in a better position. He wanted to go to Egypt to see the old mummies of ancient queens and pharaohs – three thousand years old, four thousand years old. He was very much interested in how they were preserved, how they looked. He was interested in death – that’s why he was interested in ghosts.On the one hand he was interested in the mummies, and on the other hand he was afraid. It happens always: things you are very much fascinated with, you are also afraid of – because too much fascination means you are getting caught in something which may prove beyond your capacities, and you may end up in something you never wanted.Ten times Jung booked a ticket to go to Egypt, and every time he would find some excuse not to go. He would fall sick, he would have a fever, and the ticket had to be canceled. And he knew perfectly well – he was a very keen observer – he knew perfectly well, “Why does it happen only when I book a ticket? Otherwise I am perfectly healthy – no fever, nothing. As the time comes closer, when I have to leave the next day, I cannot sleep the whole night, and in the morning I have fever. Just an excuse so nobody can say that I am postponing it.”But he became aware, “It is me,” so the tenth time he said, “Whatever happens, I am going to go.” He went to the airport, had a nervous breakdown, and was brought back home. Then he dropped the idea of going to Egypt.Now, are these people going to help? And these are the greatest names.I say my therapists are better than Freud and Jung and Adler for the simple reason that they are not only therapists, they are meditators. And they do not have such hang-ups, such idiotic ideas in their minds. For that, the meditations I have devised are enough: they will cathart all these ideas. For example, if Freud had done Dynamic Meditation, I can guarantee it: his ghosts would not have had any power over him.By the way, it happened that I used to live outside Jabalpur, near a graveyard of Mohammedans. Mohammedans believe that when a man dies, his soul remains in the grave till the last judgment day. Then God will come and wake up all the souls from all the graveyards and decide who is good and who is bad.I had found a house just near the graveyard for the simple reason that the house was very beautiful and nobody was ready to purchase it or rent it – because people were afraid of the graveyard. So many souls are there, so many ghosts! The bungalow that I had rented was called a ghost bungalow.I approached the owner; he said, “If you simply live there, there is no need for any rent. Just take care of my bungalow, because it has not been maintained. I have put so much money into it, but I had never thought that this graveyard would create trouble.”So he gave me the bungalow free. I started Dynamic Meditation, and it was the right place because no neighbors, only ghosts! So nobody was disturbed. But I was surprised: after two or three days, a group of Mohammedans with a Maulvi – a Mohammedan priest – reached me and they said, “You cannot do this Dynamic Meditation here.”I said, “What is the problem? – because here is no neighbor, nobody is disturbed. You don’t live here.”One said, “It is not a question of neighbors – you are disturbing our graveyard! And the way you do Dynamic Meditation, the souls may escape from the grave. Then at the last judgment day how is God going to find them?”I said, “This is really a problem! I have never thought about it, that Dynamic Meditation would frighten the ghosts and they would escape from their bodies and the graveyard, and God would have difficulty finding where they had gone….” So I had to stop because they were very angry.They said, “It is a religious question, and it is not one soul – so many souls. And from where have you got this Dynamic Meditation? We have never heard about it. It can wake up any sleeping soul.”I said, “It is true – it can wake up!”If Sigmund Freud had done Dynamic Meditation he would have dropped his sickness. If Jung had done it, he would have dropped his sickness. They are good people, but they are doing only half the work – and the remaining half is far more important. They simply clean the ground and wait for the garden to happen. It never happens: then they get frustrated.You will be surprised to know that Sigmund Freud never went through psychoanalysis – his own method. His disciples were insisting, “You should go through psychoanalysis. We are trained, you have trained us – now you can choose anybody you like and he will psychoanalyze you.”But Freud refused point-blank. Why was he so afraid? And if the founder himself is afraid of going into psychoanalysis, it has great meaning. It means he knew that his dreams will reveal all that he has been condemning. His dreams will show that he is carrying in his heart all that he is telling other people – that they are repressing sex. His dreams will show that he himself is repressing sex.He never agreed: the founder of psychoanalysis was never analyzed. Now, this is strange. It is as if the founder of Vipassana – Gautam Buddha – never did Vipassana. And if he never did Vipassana, what right would he have to say to others, “You do it and it will be good for you.”First one has to experiment on oneself, and unless one finds that it works, and works for the better, one has no right to say to anyone, “Do it.”So I repeat: my therapists are the best in the world. And any therapist in the West, if he wants to become a real therapist, has to come to me. He has to come to meditations, and he has to create a synthesis between therapy and meditation. Then only will he be a real therapist; otherwise he is just doing half a job – which is very dangerous.It is like doing partial surgery on a person and leaving him with an open wound. It would have been better if you had not touched him. If you have opened his wound, it is better you do it completely. And that’s what is happening in the West: the psychotherapists and other therapists are opening people’s wounds and leaving them incomplete. They are creating a very dangerous situation for the person. He will find himself in more anguish than he had ever been.Now is the time that psychoanalysis should come to meet with meditative methods. East and West, unless they meet and merge with each other, will remain half and half. They are not complete in themselves. Together they can be complete – and completion of anything has a beauty of its own.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 17 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Once you described your work as a search for the psychology of the buddhas. You explained that Freud established only a psychology of pathology. Then came Maslov, Janov, Assagioli, Perls and the people who elaborated on the psychology of health.You added that your work was going further – trying to establish a psychology of the awakened one, a psychology of the buddhas. You said that you were studying us in order to find out which are the difficulties that a seeker finds on the path towards the realization of the self, towards his own awakening.Now, you've been studying us for fifteen years, and I would like you to give us some hints on what you find in your living experiment.The first thing: all the psychologies are of the mind. The psychology of the Buddhas will be of the no-mind. It is going to be diametrically opposite to the ordinary psychologies in every aspect, in every direction, because it is a totally new dimension – never touched before, never even thought about before.It is easy to study the mind. It is very difficult, almost impossible, to study the no-mind.The no-mind reminds me of a modern painting.One modern painter was exhibiting his works of art. A man was standing before a painting for almost half an hour. The painter was moving around the exhibition, explaining to people when they had any questions about a painting.This man was absolutely absorbed by the painting, and the painter came many times, but felt it was not right to disturb him. But finally he had to, because the painting was nothing but an empty canvas. He asked the man, “Are you interested in the painting?”The man said, “I am certainly interested, because I am wondering, where is the painting? It is an empty canvas, but if it is being exhibited there must be a painting, somewhere, in some way. Are you the painter?”The man said, “Yes, I am the painter and I am here to explain it to you: this is a painting of a cow eating grass.”There was no cow and there was no grass. The man said, “But I don’t see the cow.”The painter said, “She has eaten and gone home.”The man said, “But I don’t even see the grass!”The painter said, “The cow has eaten the grass and gone home, so there is no cow and no grass. That’s why I have left the canvas empty.”The study of no-mind is just the study of an empty canvas. The thoughts are gone, the emotions are gone, the sentiments are gone, the moods are gone. Nothing is left except a pure, empty space.So we have to study this empty space in a different way than we study the ordinary mind – because the ordinary mind has contents, and this empty space has no content.It has a certain quality, but it has no content. It has a certain fragrance, but it has no content. There is nothing objective; it is pure subjectivity.All scientific studies are objective; they need something to study. In this empty space there is no object; you don’t have anything to study. So a new dimension has to be explored with totally different approaches.So first, let me say a few things about ordinary psychology – what it has discovered, where it is – because that will help you to understand the emptiness, the spaciousness of the no-mind.Sigmund Freud was the first man in the West who came to discover the unconscious mind. In the East it has been known for centuries, so it was not a discovery – Sigmund Freud was just not aware that it had been discovered long before. He is not really the founder. It was discovered so long ago that we don’t even know the name of the person who discovered the unconscious mind.Freud came to the unconscious mind via dreams. He found that people say things when they are awake which are not true: they say things which they are supposed to say, they behave the way they are expected to behave. They are not sincere, they are not authentic. Their whole conscious mind is hypocritical – because for centuries they have been told how to be, what to say, what to do, what is respectable; their conscious mind has been conditioned by the centuries.Listening to them you cannot discover the real content of their being. You can simply reach to the surface of their mask, but not to their original face. Because the person says one thing but does another, he’s continuously lying – and each lie needs more lies to protect it.That gave Freud some idea that it would be better, perhaps…. Man cannot deceive in his dreams because he has no control over dreams, and the conditioning of the society has not reached to his dreams.You may see a beautiful woman, and you may behave like a perfect gentleman with her, but that is not your truth. In a dream you can rape the woman, you can make love to the woman. You will not bother that she is not your wife, because dreams don’t believe in your social codes and mores and behavior patterns.Dreams don’t know that marriages exist. Dreams are not aware that the woman is not yours, she is somebody else’s wife. In a dream you simply do what you feel like doing – you are true. That’s why Freud started studying the dreams of people.And he was surprised that dreams contain tremendous treasures to help to understand the real man, to take away his mask and to see something real.But there is a difficulty with dreams – they are pictorial. The conscious mind is linguistic. The conscious mind is educated, cultured, civilized; the unconscious mind, in sleep, is primitive. Civilization has not touched it at all.And who cares what you dream? You may murder somebody, you cannot be caught for the crime….Only in one society, a small aboriginal commune in Thailand…of which Sigmund Freud was not aware, otherwise his theories about dreams would have been different.For centuries that tribe has accepted dreams as part of reality. If you misbehave in your dream, in the morning you have to go the person you misbehaved with, and you have to make an apology. You have to bring fruits and sweets to offer him, and say to him how nasty you have been in your dream: “Please forgive me. Until you forgive me, I will not be able to feel right again.” Naturally, he is forgiven, because the person has not been harmed, he knows nothing about your dream.But that is the only society in the whole world which takes dreams seriously, as being almost parallel to reality. And everything that happens in the dream has to be told to the elders of the society the first thing in the morning, whatever it is. You may have raped a woman – you have to say it. You have to say who is the woman, and you have to apologize to the woman, to her husband, to the family.Strangely enough, this is the only tribe in the whole world which dreams very rarely – because they don’t repress their dreams. On the contrary, they express them and they settle them, so nothing remains hanging. They have done whatever they could do; they have offered an apology, they have presented some gift, whatsoever they could manage, and they have been forgiven. The dream thing is settled – that dream is finished. So it is very rare in that community for people to dream, very rarely will a person dream.But in Western society where Sigmund Freud was working, out of eight hours of sleeping, you are dreaming six hours. Only for two hours here and there are you not dreaming.Six hours is a lot of time – and dreams have their own chronology, so in six hours you can dream of sixty years. In six hours you can manage to dream as much as you want. Dreaming does not follow the same time scale.So sometimes it may happen that you have just fallen asleep for a few seconds, and you are awakened by some noise or something. And you wonder that only a few seconds have passed on your watch but you had such a long dream – in a few seconds such a long dream is not possible.It is possible because the dream does not follow the same time scale. So in six hours you are going through so much garbage, and that garbage is accumulated by our repressions.That aboriginal community in Thailand has no repression. Even the dream has to be given expression, so you are free of it. It is psychologically healthy. Nobody has ever gone mad in that community. Nobody has ever murdered anybody in that community. Nobody has ever committed suicide in that community.And the last and the most emphatic thing to remember is that that is the only community in the whole of history which has never fought a war. It does not know that wars exist.Perhaps wars have something to do with your repressions. After each ten, twenty years the whole humanity is so full of repressions that a great explosion into a war is an absolute necessity; otherwise you all will go mad. War is a civilized way to go mad and yet retain the idea that you are sane.Listening to people’s dreams, Freud came to see that people are living an absolutely false life. And this false life is created by your religions, by your moralities, by your educational system. They have not given you any method of transformation – they have simply given you a false face to cover your original face.In dreams people are doing all kinds of things. They are embarrassed, when they are awake, even to accept what they did in their dreams. So Freud discovered a layer within and below the conscious mind – he called it the unconscious mind, because you are not aware of it. And his whole life’s work was concerned with how to sort out dreams and how to make those dreams conscious.It is one of the great findings of Freud that once a dream becomes conscious it loses its grip on you; hence psychoanalysis became of great importance. Nothing else has to be done; the dream just has to be brought fully to the conscious mind.You have to accept in all its minute details, that it is your dream, that you are carrying such thoughts within you. You should not deny it. If you deny it, it will remain within you. If you accept it, it evaporates.The idea is that if all the dreams evaporate, your unconscious becomes clean, without garbage; and that gives you a tremendous feeling of well-being. You are not carrying something against yourself. You are not creating a division between your conscious mind and the unconscious mind; you are no longer split.When there is no dream left – which Sigmund Freud did not succeed in doing…. He helped people to lessen the quantity of dreams, but he was not able, even with a single patient, to make him completely free of dreams.So there is not a single person in the whole world who is fully psychoanalyzed. There are people who have been in psychoanalysis for fifteen years or twenty years, and still they go on digging and more and more rubbish goes on coming.This was the reason why Carl Gustav Jung got an idea that perhaps below the unconscious mind there is another mind which goes on supplying more and more dreams. You go on analyzing, dispersing, but something keeps welling up and the unconscious is never clear, never clean; hence he came to the idea of the collective unconscious.The idea of the collective unconscious is very important. It means that there is a point in your mind where you are connected with all the minds around you. This mind is collective, it is not just your own.And there is constant traffic within the collective mind: so you may get rid of dreams in your unconscious mind, but the collective mind goes on supplying more and more junk.And the collective mind is like a continent. Everybody else is involved in it; not only the present people, but centuries that have passed and the people who have lived – all have left impressions on the collective unconscious.There is a possibility Jung never explored – that perhaps the collective unconscious has something to do with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Perhaps you are carrying the collective unconscious mind of many lives…since the first life was born in the ocean as a fish and then developed through many forms up to the ape, and from ape to man. All those memories are there.Somebody has to work with the collective mind through Charles Darwin’s approach. And that will also give a tremendous insight into Eastern religions and their idea of rebirth – that you had many births before, and not necessarily only human. You have been in other forms of life.Gautam Buddha says in one of his lives he was an elephant, and he relates many stories of his past lives in which he was different animals. Perhaps all three – Carl Gustav Jung, Charles Darwin, and the Eastern idea of rebirth – are significant as far as the collective mind, the collective unconscious, is concerned.And it is so full: from so many dimensions so many rivers are filling it; it is oceanic. And unless it is cleaned, you can never have a clean unconscious mind because this collective mind will go on supplying new stuff.Jung stopped at the collective unconscious. The East has not stopped there. The East has these ideas – the unconscious mind, the collective unconscious mind – and it has one more mind, the deepest, the very base: it can be called the cosmic collective unconscious.It is not only concerned with life, it is concerned with existence itself. There, the whole existence is supporting you. The whole existence is giving energy to the collective unconscious, which is a smaller thing; and the collective unconscious is giving to the unconscious, which is smaller still.But this is all in darkness. Western psychology has gone only into the darker part of the mind, and in that too it has not reached yet to the cosmic unconscious.This is going below, into the basement. The Eastern psychology has a similar pattern above the conscious mind. Just as there is an unconscious mind below the conscious mind, above the conscious mind there is a superconscious mind. Western psychology has not even dreamed about it.Above the superconscious mind there is the collective superconscious mind, and above that there is the cosmic superconscious mind. It seems very logical, and very mathematical that if there is a basement, a foundation in the dark, then there must be something above. Things are always balanced in nature.If a tree has roots and you only study the roots and forget the tree, you will be utterly wrong. The roots go downwards, deeper and deeper in the darkness; the tree goes upwards. It is strange that the roots go downwards and the tree goes upwards – in different directions.At a certain point where the roots and the tree join there is a meeting point, and a departure point too. You have to learn about the tree, its foliage, its flowers, its fruits; otherwise just studying the roots will be incomplete. Unless you know the tree too, you will not understand the meaning of the roots.The meaning of the roots is in the flowers, it is not there in the roots themselves.Just as through dreams Freud reached to the unconscious mind, through meditation man can reach to the superconscious mind. And as meditation deepens he can reach to the collective superconscious mind – which joins us again, but on a conscious level. At the highest point of meditation you reach to the cosmic superconscious. That joins you with the whole cosmos.But as you are going higher you are losing your ego. With the cosmic superconscious mind you are, but you are no more an ego. Nothing separates you from the whole.This is the point where Al-Hillaj-Mansoor said, ana’l haq: I am God, myself. Or the Upanishads say, aham brahmasmi: I am the whole. I am the ultimate. I am the absolute. The emphasis is not on the “I,” the emphasis is on the absolute, the ultimate. The “I” has to be used only because of the language.These are the seven stages of the mind: three below the conscious mind and three above the conscious mind. Only one thing remains which is beyond all these, and that is the state of no-mind. That comes only when you become an observer of the superconscious, of the collective superconscious, of the cosmic superconscious. You are simply a witness.Things are becoming more and more beautiful, more and more majestic, miraculous – there is every danger you may be lost. You may become too attached to the beauties that you are coming across.Here again, I remind you that the master is a need: to push you, to tell you that this is nothing, there is something more ahead.When you become a witness of the cosmic superconscious mind, mind disappears with all its seven forms. The whole tree disappears as if it had never existed, and there is pure space. This pure space is not empty. It is full, overfull with all the potentialities. It is the very source of all creation. Everything has come out of it and one day will go back into it.Buddha has called it nothingness. That word “nothingness” gives a certain negative color. It is better to call it pure space, which is natural. It does not give you any idea of the negative or of the positive, just spaciousness.I will tell you two stories. One is a Sufi story of a mystic who used to see a woodcutter going to the forest every day. The woodcutter was old, very old, but there was no other way: he had no son, no family, all had died. He had survived longer than he needed to. Just for his needs he had to continue to cut wood and sell it.He always came to the mystic to touch his feet and go into the forest, and in the evening he would return with the load. It was really heavy for him, and every day it was becoming more and more difficult.One day the mystic said, “Wait! You have become too old, and now this work is not for you. I will show you a simpler way. Today don’t cut the wood, just go a little farther, and soon you will come to a mine of copper. Collect some copper, and that will give you enough money to live at least for seven days; you need not come again for seven days. So once a week you can come and collect copper.”The man went, found the mine, and thanked the mystic. He was immensely happy because the burden was too much, and he was becoming so ancient, weak, old, and he could not see well.After a few days the mystic said, “You are a strange man! I was thinking that finding the copper mine you would think – you would become curious to go a little farther…. Perhaps there is something more. But it seems you have lost all curiosity, all adventurousness.“So I have to say to you again, go a little further and you will find a silver mine. You can collect silver, and that will be enough for a whole month. No need to come every week, you are getting too old, once a month you can come.”The man went ahead, found the silver, thanked the mystic and said, “Your compassion and grace is so great, I cannot repay it in any way. I am a poor old man.”The mystic said, “Don’t be worried about it. Just remain curious about finding something more.”The old man said, “What? Is there more, too? But this is enough – once a month.”The mystic said, “No. If you go ahead you will find a gold mine. That will suffice for the whole year.”Next day the man came, and he went and found the gold. But the mystic said, “My life is going to come to an end. I will not always be here to tell you to go ahead. So I should rather tell you now not to stop at the gold, because just a little further there is a diamond mine. And that will suffice not only for you, but for a few of your relatives and friends. You can feed the whole neighborhood. But don’t stop there.”The woodcutter said, “But what can be worth more than diamonds?”The mystic said, “Can’t you see me sitting here? There must be something more than diamonds; otherwise I would not be sitting here, I would be simply carrying diamonds to the market. Don’t you want to reach where I have reached? It is beyond the diamonds, just a little further.”The poor woodcutter could not understand – what can be more than diamonds? But he went a little further, and he was surprised: he found the same mystic sitting under a tree!The mystic said, “So you have come! Now there is no need to go back. You can also sit under the tree.”In Eastern mythology there is a tree called kalpavriksha. If you sit under that tree, whatever you desire is fulfilled immediately. It is a symbol. It is a symbol of the contented mind, that really never desires anything so there is no question of discontent.The old man sat with the master and was surprised that he had no desire, that he did not want anything – diamonds, gold, silver, nothing – that all was fulfilled, that suddenly he had come to a place where nothing was needed.The mystic said, “How does it feel?”The woodcutter said, “But you are a tricky man! Why did you not say it in the beginning? Why did you make me go from one place to another, from one mine to another?”The mystic said, “If I had told you in the beginning you would not have believed me. It was to create trust. Because I proved trustworthy about the copper, the silver, the gold, the diamonds – that’s why you have been able to follow my instruction to go further. Otherwise, everybody argues, ‘What can there be beyond diamonds?’“You trusted: ‘If the man is right up to diamonds, there must be something more. And if he is saying so, I am going.’ This is the same tree I have always been sitting under. I could have told you anytime but you would not have listened.”This is the first story; to remind you that man has to move through meditation from consciousness to superconsciousness, from superconsciousness to collective superconsciousness, from collective superconsciousness to cosmic superconsciousness. And then only can the master persuade him to take a jump.And the master has been right up to now – your distrust has melted away. And if he says, “Walk on,” you will take the risk. The trust is now deep enough that you can jump into pure space.That is no-mind. And to attain to no-mind is to attain all. There is nothing more than that, because it is peace, it is silence, it is blissfulness. It is godliness, it is immortality, it is eternity. No-mind is all that is possible.The other story that I wanted to tell is about a very rich man who had three sons and was puzzled about whom to make his successor. They were all intelligent, and that was making the choice more difficult. Each was more intelligent than the other.He asked a visiting mystic, “What should I do?” And the mystic gave him a device: The rich man gave to each of his sons a bag full of golden coins and told them, “Within seven days you have to fill your houses completely with whatsoever you want to purchase with this money. But the houses should be full. And whoever succeeds in filling the houses totally will be my successor, so be careful!”They all had their palaces and they were very much worried because with such a small amount of money…. Their palaces were big: how were they going to fill them?The first son thought that the cheapest thing would be just to go to the municipal corporation and ask them, “Bring all your trucks that throw out the rubbish and fill my house – I will pay you money for it.”It cost nothing, and they had to throw the garbage away somewhere anyway, so the first son filled his house with all kinds of rubbish, not leaving a small spot empty. But it was stinking so badly that even on the road the traffic stopped. People would not move on that road because the house was stinking so badly.The second son thought, “This is stupid! What my brother has done, my father is not going to like.” He had to find something better, but with a small amount of money how can you find something better? But he worked it out: he brought beautiful candles, and the day his father was to come, the son put all the candles in the house and the house was full of light.The third son looked at the two brothers: the first was certainly stupid; the second was far superior. But there is a strange thing about candles or lamps: whatever you do…they will spread light all over, but just underneath them there will be darkness. That darkness remains without light – that is empty. Something better had to be found….The day came when the father arrived with the mystic. In the first house they could not enter. They said to the first son, “You are a super idiot, you are just mad! If this is the way of your thinking, then your whole life you will collect rubbish, and your whole life will stink like this palace. A marble palace, and you have filled it with all kinds of rubbish, rotten things! I cannot even enter your house. You have lost.”The father entered the second house. He could not figure things out, because it was empty. There was just light but the house was empty. He asked the mystic, “What is the matter with my second son? – he has not filled it.”The mystic said, “He has filled it. Now you need a little more intelligence to understand: he has filled it with light – the whole house is full. But he is not going to be your successor either, because under each candle there is a spot which is dark; the condition is not completed.“Although he is far more intelligent than the first one, he has missed, missed by just a little miscalculation. He has not looked under the candles and seen that there is darkness. The whole house is not full of light.” They told the son, and he understood: it was right.They reached the third house. There was no light, it was dark. As they entered, the third son returned the money. He said, “I can fill the house without wasting the money. I have filled it with darkness. It is completely full, not a single corner is empty. And I have filled it with something which is eternal.”Light comes and goes – darkness always remains. Light needs fuel; if the fuel is exhausted the light is finished. Darkness is the only thing that needs no cause – it is not an effect of any cause, so you cannot destroy it. It is always there – when the sun rises and there is light all over, darkness is still there. It is just that you cannot see because the sun covers it, distracts your eyes. It does not destroy darkness. The moment the sun goes down, suddenly the darkness is there. It does not go, it does not come; it is always there.“So you can take the money back – I don’t need it, I can manage it without wasting money.”The house was full of silence, full of space, full of darkness, full of depth, full of mystery – and in a way completely empty. He had removed everything from the house, all furniture, everything. The whole house was empty, and yet full.I wanted to tell this story because the ultimate state of no-mind is both, empty and full. Because of its being empty, Gautam Buddha called it nothingness. Because of its fullness, the Upanishads have called it the ultimate, the absolute. But both are saying only half the story. I would like to say the whole story.It is emptiness and fullness together. It transcends all logic. It is sheer transcendence of all duality.The state of no-mind is the psychology of the Buddhas.And only a man who has tasted the state of no-mind is really sane, is really healthy and whole. Others are different only in degree from an insane person; there is no qualitative difference. Somebody who is sane today may become insane tomorrow.In fact most of the psychologists have been insane once or twice in their life. Most of the Western artists have been insane some time or other. Great musicians, great sculptors, great dancers – wherever there is greatness, somehow insanity comes in.It is very strange: it has never happened in the East, but it has happened in the West, and it is happening every day in the West.Nijinsky, one of the greatest dancers of all the ages, died in a madhouse. Vincent van Gogh, in the last year of his life, was in a madhouse, and just after he was released he committed suicide. And the same is the story of great philosophers.It seems the greatness somehow makes them unbalanced. One part goes on becoming great, and their whole mind lags far behind. They are stretched by the tension between their whole mind dragging them backwards, and just one small part dragging them forwards. It creates a situation which leads to madness.It has never happened in the East. No dancer has ever gone mad, no musician has ever gone mad. On the contrary, it is a well-established fact that if a madman is brought to a great musician – just listening to his music, his madness disappears. Just the music is such a solace, so harmonious, that something that is disturbed in him settles – just listening to it.No man who has been meditating has ever committed suicide, has ever gone mad, for the simple reason that he is going towards more balance, towards more inner harmony, and finally towards absolute harmony – that is the harmony of no-mind.We have to bring the psychology of the Buddhas to the world. It is the whole psychology. All the seven-storied house of mind has to be transcended.Western psychology is still wandering around the roots. It has not even touched the foliage, the flowers, the fruits. There is no question of it going into no-mind – it has not even been able to take note of the whole mind. And without knowing the whole mind you cannot jump into the no-mind.No-mind is realization.No-mind is enlightenment.No-mind is liberation.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 18 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I loved the introduction about the psychological universe that you gave me yesterday. And yet I would like to repeat the question.You say that you were studying us in order to find out which are the difficulties that the seeker finds on the path towards realization of the self, towards his own awakening. Now you have been studying us for fifteen years, and I would like you to give us some hints on what you find in your living experiment. Or, in other words, what are the patterns the seeker gets most entangled in, and what is the function of the master in that?There are patterns the seeker gets entangled with.The first thing is: most of the seekers are lost in an illusory feeling that they have arrived. It is a kind of dream in which you feel you are awake. You are still dreaming – your feeling of being awake is part of the dream.The same kind of thing happens to the seeker. The mind is capable of creating the illusion that now there is nowhere to go, you have arrived. The mind is a deceiver, and the function of the master in this condition is to make you alert that this is not the reality but only a dream; you have not arrived.This can happen at many points, again and again. And one can get very irritated and annoyed with the master for the simple reason that whenever you feel you have got it, he simply takes it away and puts you back into your ignorant state.For example, it was happening to a German sannyasin continuously. Whenever he was in Germany he was living in a beautiful castle of his own – he was very rich – meditating; and then he would get the feeling that he had become enlightened. And the force of the illusion was so much that he could not keep it to himself, he would tell others. Not only would he tell other fellow sannyasins, he started writing letters to the presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens around the world: “I have become enlightened, and if you want any advice on any matters that concern the future of humanity in the world, I can help you.”He was so certain. This happened three times, and because of his certainty he came to India to get my blessings. Naturally, it shows his certainty that he came for my blessings. One can think that the first time perhaps he was not aware that I would destroy his illusion, but the second time, he came again after two years; and a third time, after two years again he came.Each time I had to tell him, “You are just being deceived by your own mind. Nothing has happened to you, you are simply the old man – the new man has not arrived. And all that you are doing – writing letters to the UN, to other governments – are just ways of the ego. And you are in the grip of the ego.”Close to me, he understood. Three times he became enlightened and I had to make him unenlightened. Now, that is not a good job. The fourth time he never came back; perhaps he is afraid I will make him again unenlightened. Now he remains in his castle and remains enlightened!It is very easy to live in a beautiful dream. It is hard to see your dreams shattered by reality.In the ancient scriptures of the East it is called the power of maya. Mind has the hypnotic power to create any illusion. If you are after a certain thing, desperately, it is one of the functions of the mind to create the illusion to stop your desperateness. It happens every day to everybody in their dreams, but people don’t learn things.In the night you go to bed hungry. In the night you are going to have a dream about eating delicious food. The mind is trying to help you so that your sleep is not disturbed; otherwise you are hungry and you are bound to be awakened by your hunger. The mind gives you a dream that you are eating delicious food of your choice, which satisfies your mind. The hunger remains but sleep is not disturbed, The hunger is covered by the illusion of the dream; it is a protection of your sleep.You feel in sleep that your bladder is full. If the mind does not create the dream that you have gone to the toilet, come back and gone to sleep again, then your sleep will be disturbed – and sleep is a great necessity for the body. The mind is taking care that it is not disturbed again and again; you can have a long sleep, rest, so in the morning you are rejuvenated.This is the ordinary function of the mind; on a higher plane the same thing happens. It is an ordinary sleep, an ordinary awakening that mind prevents. On the path, it is an extraordinary sleep and an extraordinary awakening. But the mind is programmed – it is just a mechanical thing. It simply does its work without bothering, because it has no way of checking whether it is ordinary sleep or spiritual sleep, ordinary awakening or spiritual awakening.To the mind it is all the same. Its function is to keep your sleep intact and create a barrier for anything that disturbs your sleep. If you are hungry it gives you food; if you are desperately in search of truth, it gives you truth, it gives you enlightenment. You ask for anything, and it is ready to give it to you.It can create the illusion of the real thing – that’s its intrinsic power.Western psychology has not yet been aware of the dream’s actual function, what function it has.Sigmund Freud thinks that its only function is to bring up your repressed desires and allow them a certain illusory reality so that you don’t go insane. The dream is an outlet so the steam that you go on repressing is released. That seems to be the whole understanding of Western psychology about dreams – that it is an outlet. While you are asleep, your dreaming helps you to get rid of many aberrations.You had seen a beautiful woman while you were awake, but you had to maintain your civilization, the civil code, manners, morality, religion, respectability, and you behaved that way. You could not behave like an animal. That’s actually what you would have liked to do, but all these barriers prevent you.In the dream you have the freedom to be an animal again, with all the freedom of an animal. You can do whatsoever you want to do with the woman. Nobody is preventing you – no priest, no policeman. Nobody is ever going to know what you did in your dream. Even you yourself will forget in the morning what you did in your dream.But this is not the only function, this is a very small function of dreaming. In fact Western psychology has not divided mind’s different stages the way the East has done. In Eastern psychology the most superficial state is the waking state – very thin, very artificial. It is a social by-product.You cannot live alone, you have to live with the society; you have to follow the rules of the game. This thin layer is created by the priests, by the parents, by the pedagogues, and by all kinds of influences on you. And you are given tremendous respect for it, you are rewarded for it.The second layer is dreaming, which is far truer, far more natural – out of reach of the crowd, society, education, morality, religion. You are more authentic, you are not a hypocrite in your dreaming.The third stage is sleep mixed with dreams. That is even deeper. A few dreams float in it, and these dreams are far more important than the dreams of the second stage because the second-stage dreams are more or less reactions of your waking state. Whatever you have repressed creates them.The third stage of sleep with dreams…these dreams have nothing to do with your waking state. These are more like visions. And if you can remember them, they can be of tremendous help for you for your spiritual growth. They show you the direction where to go, where the right way is.These dreams should not be called dreams, and they are not called dreams in the East; they are called visions. And they can happen only when you have reached the sleep of the third strata of your mind. You are far away from your waking world, miles away. The waking world has no effect on it.These visions are caused by the fourth stage – which is dreamless sleep. This is the fourth stage, when dreams disappear completely – no visions, no dreams; you are simply asleep. This is the deepest in your being. You are at the very bottom of your mind.Patanjali, one of the most authentic seekers of the mind, and one of the oldest, ancientmost people, in many ways very rare…. For example, there are very few people who have created a whole system alone.Yoga is the creation of one single man, Patanjali – the whole system. And he created it to such a perfection that for five thousand years nothing has been added to it, nothing has been taken out of it. He has exhausted the whole field. It is very rare; it takes centuries for any science to become complete, and many people have to contribute to it.There are only two cases: One is Patanjali who created a whole science of Yoga; and the other is Aristotle, who created the whole science of logic. And for two thousand years there has been no change, no improvement. But just in this century, Aristotle has lost his ground. Non-Aristotelian logic has come into being – which is absolutely against Aristotle. But Patanjali stands like a peak of the Himalayas – still unchallenged, still perfect and complete.Patanjali says that the deep sleep, dreamless sleep, is exactly the same as samadhi, superconsciousness, the ultimate experience of being. It is the same; the only difference is you are not aware of it. Dreamless sleep plus awareness is equal to enlightenment.One has to start with the first layer of waking, and make it alert. It is a very thin layer, very superficial, but it can be used as a preface for greater things to happen. Meditation begins with wakefulness. You start becoming aware of the moments when you are awake.Walking, eating, doing your work – anything – you have to make it a point that it is done in awareness, that it is not done like a robot, not mechanically. Even breathing has to be joined with awareness, so you know when the breath is going in and you know when the breath is going out.The smallest things you have to try – even the blinking of the eyes. The smaller the thing you try, the better, because those are the things which one ignores, and those are the things which will give you a deeper penetration into the thin layer of wakefulness.Buddha has said that the meditator has to walk keeping his eyes only four feet away, looking at the ground, not looking all around everywhere, reading the posters on the walls, looking at people and what they are doing. He has to keep his eyes focused four feet ahead, and remain alert that he does not move from that posture.And while he is looking four feet ahead, he has to be continuously aware of each step that he is taking. He has to walk very slowly. He has to remember the breathing, that it is going in, coming out. He has to remember the blinking of the eyes. He has to be aware of each small thing that is happening.Being awake plus awareness will lead you to the second step: you can dream with awareness – and that is a tremendous experience. Then dreaming cannot deceive you; you are alert. If you are hungry, you know you are hungry, and you know the dream is trying in every way to provide delicious food, but it is just dream-food, it is not the reality. You can see both the hunger and the food. You know the hunger is true and the food is false.As you become more and more aware of subtle nuances of dreaming, a great surprise is waiting for you. Dreams become less and less because they don’t need awareness. They are very shy; they don’t want to face awareness. They come only in the shadows of sleep.But if you are alert, then naturally they stop coming. And when dreams stop coming you fall suddenly into the third state, which is sleep with visions. And there is a clear-cut distinction between dreams and visions.Dreams disappear when you are aware, visions become more clear and solid when you are aware; they are not shy. They are part of reality, they are predictions, they may be glimpses of your future. Dreams belong to the past, visions belong to the future. They are opening doors of the unknown. And if you can see clearly, your path is made very simple. So they are of a great help.But remember the distinction, that awareness makes them very solid, real; they don’t disappear, they become perfectly clear. And soon you start discovering that what you have seen in your visions comes to be true in life.Dreams are simply repressed parts of life.They are intuitive, and once you have become aware that you have seen them before…. For example, in the vision you see a man that you have never seen, and the next morning you open your door and the man is standing there. The vision has prepared you for something. The man is no ordinary man, there must be something significant. He is a guest to be honored and respected. Your intuition has made you already aware of it, that he is carrying a treasure for you. Something is going to happen with this man, something is going to transpire between him and you.In fact, most of the people find their master through visions. Thinking is of not any help. What can you think about a master?And the people who go to a master through thinking always go to a wrong person, because thinking is a by-product of the society.You are born in a Hindu family or a Christian family or a Buddhist family – those families have given you a certain idea of what a saint is. Your thinking cannot go beyond it, and if you go through thinking to find a master, you will end up with somebody who is trying to be a saint according to the expectations of the society. He is not really a saint; he is just rehearsing a part that he wants to play in life.Only through visions do you come across beings who are not according to your expectations. In fact, they have nothing to do with your mind. It is through the tremendous sensitivity of your intuition that you start seeing something of the future. It is through the height of your awareness that what is future for others becomes present for you.For example, it is like this: A man is standing by the side of a tree, and he looks at the road – the road is empty. He looks behind him, at the road that he has traveled – it is empty. He looks ahead to the future, the road that he is going to travel – it is empty. But at exactly that same moment, another man is sitting in the tree. He has a bigger perspective, he can see more of the road.He sees a horseman coming closer to the tree. That horseman is present to him, but that horseman is future to the man who is standing by the side of the tree. So what is future to one man can be present to another: it depends on his height, on his perspective, on his alertness.It is a known fact that thousands of saints down the ages have predicted their death – the exact time, days before, sometimes months before – because in the old days their disciples were miles away; they had to be informed that the master is going to leave the body. They have to come because the master cannot leave the body without saying good-bye to them, or maybe there is a last message.So disciples from faraway places will start traveling – it will take time but they will all reach and the master will die exactly at the time he has declared. It is part of the vision – he knows when death is going to happen. To him it is already present; to his disciples it is future – maybe three weeks, maybe four weeks. He has seen it already.So the vision is a tremendous help to the seeker – where to go? with whom to go? whom to trust? It is not a question of the mind deciding. The deepest part of your consciousness has already decided, and there is no question of doubt about it.I am reminded of a Sufi story. A king was told by his prime minister, “In your whole kingdom there is only one beggar, and it is within your powers – you can easily make that beggar a rich man. And that is the only blemish on your kingdom. Your kingdom can be free of beggars, it is already free – there is only one beggar.”The king said, “I know it. I have tried, but my visions are not in agreement with my mind. That man will remain a beggar; whatever we do is going to be futile.”The prime minister was a man of intelligence, intellect – he said, “I don’t believe…why should he remain a beggar? If we give him some money, a good house to live in, he will not be a beggar.”The king said, “Wait for tomorrow morning. Let me check.”The prime minister said, “With whom are you going to check? I am the person, your adviser – you have to check with me. About whom are you talking?”The king laughed. He said, “You may not understand. I always have to check my visions, because I have noticed that when my vision has said, ‘Don’t go to war,’ if I went, I was defeated, even though I was mightier than the enemy. And there were times when the enemy was mightier and I was weaker, but my vision said, ‘Go ahead,’ and I was victorious. So it is there that I have to check: what my vision says about this beggar.“And this is my method, that I go to sleep thinking about a certain thing, for example this beggar. I will fall asleep thinking about this beggar. Slowly, slowly it settles to the point where visions happen.”And the next morning the king said, “It is not possible, but I will give it a try, just to show you that it is not possible.” The beggar used to pass along a bridge. Just in front of the palace there was a river, and he used to pass over the bridge and sit on the other corner of it to beg the whole day.The king, in disguise, and the prime minister, in disguise went on to the bridge early in the morning when the beggar used to come, with a big pot full of gold coins – enough for the beggar to live his whole life luxuriously. There was nobody on the bridge – it was too early in the morning and it was too cold.The king put the pot with the gold coins in the middle of the bridge, and they both went away to the other corner to see what happened.The beggar was coming. He was not blind, and on the whole bridge there was nothing except the pot, but the prime minister was surprised that the beggar was coming with closed eyes. He passed the pot full of gold coins with closed eyes, groping his way.When he reached close to the king and the prime minister, they asked him, “What is the matter – you are not blind, and you have never done this before. Why are you walking with closed eyes?”The beggar said, “Just as I got onto the bridge the idea occurred to me: what if I go blind, then how would I manage to walk along the bridge? So I closed my eyes and tried to walk along the bridge as a blind man. And you should be happy that I managed it.”The king turned to the prime minister: “What do you say? I had seen this whole scene in my vision – that the beggar will pass the pot with closed eyes, and he will have a reason, he will give an argument. It happens to everybody, once in a while, to want to walk with closed eyes to see how it feels – but exactly on that day?”Once you have become aware of the reality of your visions, you are safe from your dreams, from your mind. And you are in a state where trust is possible. Not that you have to do anything, just your visions will make you trust.The real masters are found through visions.And then you can give yourself up totally into the hands of the master. Below this stage, if you go on with awareness, visions will not be happening every day. Once in a while, only when something is very important that existence wants you to be alert about…. It is your connection with life, with existence, with the cosmos.So visions will happen only once in a while – not an everyday affair – but whenever they happen they are going to materialize in reality soon. You have been warned beforehand.If you remain aware you will reach the fourth stage – dreamless sleep. The word of Patanjali is sushupti – dreamless sleep. And he says sushupti and samadhi, dreamless sleep and the ultimate awakening, are exactly the same. The only difference is of awareness.If you can go with awareness into dreamless sleep, it explodes. There is an explosion of light, suddenly you are full of light. Your whole mind – dreams, sleep, everything is gone. There is only pure awareness.On the way, the disciple can first be misled when he is trying awareness in the waking mind. If you just put a watch with a second hand in front of you and keep your eyes on the second hand, you will be surprised: you cannot continue to remember even for one minute completely. Perhaps fifteen seconds, twenty seconds, at the most thirty seconds, and you will forget. You will get lost in some other idea – and then suddenly you will remember that you were trying to remember.Even to keep awareness continuous for one minute is difficult, so one has to be aware that it is not child’s play. So when you are trying to be aware of the small things of life, you have to remember that many times you will forget. You will go far away into something else. The moment you remember, don’t feel guilty – that is one of the traps.If you start feeling guilty, then you cannot come back to the awareness that you were practicing. There is no need to feel guilty, it is natural. Don’t feel repentance. It is simple, and it happens to every seeker. Accept it as natural; otherwise you will be caught in repentance, in the guilt that you cannot remember even for a few moments and you go on forgetting.Mahavira is the first man in history who has actually worked out that if a man can remember, be aware, for forty-eight minutes continuously, that’s enough – he will become enlightened, nobody can prevent him. Just forty-eight minutes…but it is difficult even for forty-eight seconds – so many distractions.No guilt, no repentance – the moment you remember that you have forgotten what you were doing, simply come back; simply come back and start working again.My emphasis is, simply come back. Don’t cry and weep for the spilled milk, that is stupid.It will take time, but slowly you will become aware that you are remaining alert more and more, perhaps for a whole minute, perhaps two minutes.And it is such a joy that you have been aware for two minutes – but don’t get caught in the joy.Don’t think that you have attained something. That will become a barrier. These are patterns where one is lost. Just a little gain and one thinks one has come home. Go on working slowly, patiently. There is no hurry – you have eternity at your disposal.Don’t try to be speedy. That impatience will not help. Awareness is not like seasonal flowers that grow in six weeks’ time and are then gone. Awareness is like the cedars of Lebanon which take hundreds of years to grow; but they remain for thousands of years and rise to one hundred and fifty feet, two hundred feet high in the sky. They are really very proud people.Awareness grows very slowly, but it grows. One has to just be patient.As it grows you will start feeling many things which you have never felt before. For example, you will start feeling that you are carrying many tensions in your body of which you have never been aware because they are subtle tensions. Now your awareness is there you can feel those very subtle, very delicate tensions.So wherever you feel any tension in the body, relax that part. If your whole body is relaxed, your awareness will grow faster because those tensions are hindrances.As your awareness grows even more, you will be surprised to know that you don’t dream only in sleep; there is an undercurrent of dreaming even while you are awake. It goes just underneath your wakefulness – close your eyes any moment and you can see some dream passing by like a cloud in the sky. But only when you become a little more aware will it be possible to see that your wakefulness in not true awakenedness.The dream is floating there – people call it daydream. If they relax in their chair for a moment and close their eyes, immediately the dream takes over. They start thinking that they have become the president of the country, or they are doing great things – or anything, which they know at the very moment they are dreaming is all nonsense. You are not the president of the country, but still the dream has something in it, that it continues in spite of you.Awareness will make you aware of layers of dreams in your waking state. And they will start dispersing, just as you bring light into a dark room and the darkness starts dispersing.Awareness functions almost like a light. If you can disperse your dreams in the waking state, your waking state will have a clarity, your intelligence will have a newness to it. These will be the by-products.You will be able to see things which you were not able to see before. You will be able to reason, argue. You will be able to see your conditionings, which you were never able to before; you had accepted them in your childhood when there was no argument, no reasoning.Then you will see that your god is a lie, your heaven and hell are lies; that you have been fed with lies and at the same time all these people have been telling you to be true, to be honest.When I entered the university, on the gate of the university there was written: “Truth is God.”Just on the main gate – that was the motto of that university – “Truth is God.”I had one other friend with me who had come to join the university.I told him, “First I will see the vice-chancellor, and then I will think about whether to join this university or not – because from the very gate they have started lying. They cannot even wait for the person to enter the university.”The university is almost two miles away from the main gate. Then there are professors’ houses, then botanical gardens, then the departments, and then at the end comes the vice-chancellor’s office.I went to the vice-chancellor and I said, “I want to talk with you about this sentence, ‘Truth is God.’ I had come to join the university but that sentence prevents me.”He said, “What! Why should that sentence prevent you? Don’t you think truth is God?”I said, “No. Truth has nothing to do with God – truth is simply truth. Why are you managing to bring God behind truth? Truth is not God – God is a lie. This is the truth. You will have to prove to me that God is not a lie; otherwise I will have to find another university. This one seems to be from the very beginning based on lies.”The old vice-chancellor was in shock. He was a believer in God; that’s why he had written that sentence: “Truth is God.” But he said, “It is difficult for me to prove that God is not a lie because I have never experienced God.”Then I said, “I will enter the university only on the condition that that sentence is removed from the main gate. And if you don’t remove it, I will remain here – I will not enter the university but I will approach every student, every professor and ask the same question that I have asked you. And you are inviting unnecessary trouble. The best way is just remove that sentence.”He said, “I will have to think about it. People will ask, ‘Why are you removing it? It has been there since the university has been founded.’”I said, “That is not my concern. If it is a lie, the sooner it is removed, the better. And what can you think about it? You don’t know God. How are you going to think about something you don’t know? Do you know truth? What are you going to think about these things which you don’t know? Better you remove that sentence.”He was really a gentleman, he agreed to remove it. And he said, “You join the university. I love your straightforwardness, and I love your sincerity. Perhaps you are right, but you have disturbed not only the board, you have disturbed my whole life. I have been worshipping God every morning – now tomorrow I will hesitate. Even if I worship, the old faith will not be there.”I said, “Faith is not needed at all. What is needed is a trust that arises out of your visions, out of your awareness.”So as you become aware, your conditionings will start falling this way and that way. Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism – they will start disappearing from your wakefulness. You will start discovering your own identity, which has been covered with so many labels.In the second step, dreams can delude you. That is where the master will be of immense help. He can tell you that you are dreaming, that you are awake. The Zen master in Japan has developed a staff; he moves amongst his disciples who are meditating with his staff. So whosoever he feels is dreaming, he hits him on the head…because when you start dreaming, you start dozing. Your face immediately changes. When you are awake, your face has a certain quality; when you start dreaming, it has a different quality – and immediately the hit comes.Suddenly you are awake and the disciple is expected to bow down and touch the feet of the master in gratitude for his compassion that he did not allow him to fall into the trap of dreams.In the third stage the master will be helpful in making it clear to you that what you are seeing now are not dreams. Listen to them, follow them – they are indications of your destiny. If you go astray, you will miss fulfillment. These visions are showing you the right path to follow.But still there is a danger – the danger of getting very egoistic because you can know the future. Not only can you know your future, if you try a little harder you can start seeing other people’s futures. It is in this stage that all astrology has been born. It has nothing to do with stars – that is just a facade to deceive you. It has nothing to do with the lines of the hand.It is a visionary who can manage to look into your future. But that can give him the role of a prophet. The word prophet comes from prophecy. Only in India have there been no prophets – you will be surprised. In Judaism there have been prophets, in Christianity there have been prophets, in Mohammedanism there have been prophets. It is only in India that there have been no prophets, which is strange because this is the most religious part of the world, and the most ancient in religion, deep in religion.What happened to the prophets? Why did they not appear here? – because every disciple was made aware by the master that these visions are not to make you a prophet, that you are not to move in that direction, that it is a false direction. Use these visions to go deeper, to the fourth. Don’t start using these visions to play around and show your power.This is the greatest trap that waits for the disciple, because the attraction is immense – to tell somebody his future, that “tomorrow this is going to happen to you.”One man came to see me in Bombay. He is a film actor; once he was famous, now he has faded away. That’s what happens to every film star. But he has been interested in predictions, prophecies, astrology, palmistry and all kinds of things of that sort.His wife was interested in me, so she brought him to see me. And he told me, “I can tell you what is going to happen in your future.”And I could see that the man had some visionary power, but I told him, “Give it to me in writing for only one year, and I will do exactly the opposite that you predict. If you say that I will die, then I won’t die. If you say I will live, I can even try to die.”He became so afraid…I said, “You just write it down precisely, and after one year I will see you. And whatever you write will not happen. I know that you have a certain capacity of vision, but you are using it wrongly. You don’t have a master. I am asking you to write one year’s predictions about me so that after one year you can have a master.”The man said, “I will have to think about it; this is risky.”He never came back. The next day his wife came and said, “He is not willing to write anything, because he feels you can do just the opposite, and after one year you will prove him to be a failure. And you have said, ‘after one year you will get your master.’ And he is so egoistic; because he has certain visions, he does not think he needs any master – he himself is a master.”So this is one of the greatest traps, because as power grows you are closer to being trapped. And this is the last trap.It happened in the life of Vivekananda in Ramakrishna’s ashram, in Dakshineshwar, in Calcutta, Bengal…. There were many disciples, and Vivekananda was one of the most intellectual disciples of Ramakrishna. There was a very simple man who was also a disciple – his name was Kalu, a poor man. He was so faithful, religious, emotional, that he had in his room hundreds of statues of different gods, because in India the traditional number of gods is thirty-three million. So he had hundreds of statues, and it was such a long affair to worship all those gods that it was only in the afternoon that he was able to take his breakfast.Early, at four o’clock in the morning, he would take a bath in the Ganges, and then the worship would begin. And of course each god had to be worshipped equally; otherwise somebody may get angry, somebody may feel offended. So the whole day was lost and everybody was laughing at Kalu: “What are you doing? Just one god is enough!”But Kalu said, “I have become so attached to these hundreds of gods – whom to reject? And whoever I reject will become annoyed. So in this life it is impossible; I have to worship these hundreds of gods and I have to give equal time to each.”Vivekananda was the most prominent in making a fool of Kalu. He said, “You are simply stupid – these are just stones! And you are wasting your life.” But Kalu would not listen to anyone; he continued his way.One day Ramakrishna gave Vivekananda a certain method of awareness to practice: “Go into your cell, close the door and practice it.” When Vivekananda came to a certain stage of awareness he felt himself so full of power that the idea came to his mind, “If I say at this moment just within myself, to Kalu, ‘Take all your gods and throw them into the Ganges,’ he will do it.”He was so certain of it. And he did it, he said to Kalu, in his own cell, just within himself, “Kalu, just collect all your gods” – and this was the time when he was worshipping the gods – and throw them all into the Ganges.”And Kalu collected all his gods into a big bag and was dragging the bag down the steps when Ramakrishna ran after him, stopped him and said, “What are you doing?”He said, “Suddenly I heard a voice – it must have come from God himself, because there was nobody in the room – saying, ‘Kalu, collect all your gods and throw them into the Ganges.’ It was so powerful that I could not doubt it.”Ramakrishna said, “Come back. Take your gods back and I will show you from where the voice has come.” He knocked on Vivekananda’s door. Vivekananda came out and Ramakrishna was very angry. He said, “Vivekananda, this is the last thing I had ever expected of you. I had told you to be aware – not to destroy a poor man’s life. This is his whole life, and he is no harm to anybody. He is so simple-hearted, so loving, such a beautiful man – how could you do it to him? Awareness is not for such things. And from now onwards I will keep the key of your awareness; you will never attain to the same power again.”It is a very significant story. And it is said Vivekananda died without attaining enlightenment because the key was kept by the master. He never showed Vivekananda the way to go deeper. He tried hard in his own way but always went round and round, could not enter within himself. Although he became Ramakrishna’s successor because he was the most intellectual – a great orator, a very powerful personality, had a certain charisma, influenced people – he himself died a poor man, knowing nothing. And the reason was that he disturbed a simple-hearted man because he got just a little power and he immediately used it – not for the benefit of somebody, but to harm somebody.There are traps and traps.And the master is needed in many ways: to keep you aware not to use your power in any harmful way to others, not to use your power in any way harmful to yourself, not to use your power as an ego-trip. And he has to go on reminding you that you have to transform your sushupti, your dreamless sleep, into samadhi, into superconsciousness.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 19 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I have a few questions that are connected to each other. The first is: Yesterday you spoke on the function of the master. I would like today if you could speak on the function of the disciple and, if the disciple needs the master, does the master need the disciple? And also, you continuously emphasize the guts and the courage that are needed by the disciple. I have no experience of that. I would like you to explain it. And finally, I have heard that it is not the disciple who chooses the master, the master chooses the disciple. Please comment.It is certainly the master who chooses the disciple, but his choosing always remains indirect. He always gives a chance to the disciple to choose.The disciple is not even aware that he has been already chosen. But without the master choosing the disciple, there is no way for the disciple to choose the master; his choice comes second. But the master never imposes, he makes it always free for the disciple to choose.The reason is clear. The disciple is asleep; he has no idea who is awake and who is not. He is dreaming – how can he choose? Whatever he chooses is almost certainly going to be wrong. It is a rare coincidence that he may choose the right person, simply because he is unconscious, he is asleep.Just think of this room – a few persons are sleeping and one person is awake. Now, can the sleeping persons choose who should wake them up? That is impossible. If they can choose that, then what is the need of the master? – they can wake themselves up. They are already awake if they can choose who should wake them.The whole burden falls on the master to choose whom to wake. He has certain ways to know who is very close to awakening. Even if you are watching a few sleeping people you can decide who is very fast asleep, deeply asleep, snoring; and who is sleeping very light – a thin layer of sleep, and is already on the verge. If somebody can wake him up, it is not going to take time. But there is every possibility, if nobody wakes him, he may slip back into deep sleep, turn over again and pull the blanket over himself.Spiritual sleep is not very different from ordinary sleep – just a little more complicated and more subtle. It is one of the functions of the master to choose the disciple but never to let the disciple know that he has been chosen. That is disturbing his independence, that is taking away his freedom.As far as the disciple is concerned the master allows him to think that he is the chooser. That is out of his compassion. Even when the master does something, he makes it appear as if it has been done by the disciple.You are asking…I have talked about the functions of the master – what are the functions of the disciple? The functions of the disciple are very simple. Condensed to one single word it is receptivity, non-resistance, availability, saying with a full heart “Yes!”There should be no shadow of “No.” That is the barrier. The master cannot function with a “no” standing between him and the disciple, because he cannot be violent, he cannot destroy the “no.” He cannot remove it because all that will be interfering with the disciple’s innermost life.So it is the function of the disciple not to put the master in such a situation where he cannot work. His yes, total and unconditional, gives the whole scope to the master to work. And now there is no question of interference: you have allowed the master to be a guest in your innermost being, you have become a host. And it is one of the greatest joys for the disciple to experience that the master has come within him and he has not resisted.His whole life he has been resisting. He has never allowed anyone a total yes – not even his lovers, not even his parents, not even his friends, not even his children. To no one has he ever said an unconditional yes, it has always been conditional. And conditional means mixed with no. It has never been pure.He has always been guarding himself – not only against enemies but against friends too. In fact one does not need to guard himself against enemies too much because they are always far away; they are not that dangerous. The real question is of those who are very close to you, very close to your being. They can stab a knife in your back very easily. You have to be constantly on guard.There is an Urdu poem with a statement which is very significant. It says, “I will take care of my enemies, God, but you please take care of my friends. I am not in danger from the enemies, I know them – I am on guard. But about friends I am confused. And to be on guard with friends is painful. So you take care of me against my friends.”It is only with the master that for the first time you put all your guards away. That’s the only function of the disciple – great, arduous, but single. It implies everything: openness, readiness to go wherever the master is leading him. It is a way of becoming part of the being of the master – allowing him to be within you – now there is no fear.This is the place that you have been guarding your whole life. You have never invited anybody to be a guest.This is the conflict between lovers, the eternal conflict. All others are simply excuses. The basic and fundamental conflict is that the woman or the man wants to be at the innermost center of the being of the person he loves or she loves.But it cannot happen as far as lovers are concerned because both are asleep; both are full of egos, both are capable of changing any moment. Their love can become hate, their friendship can turn into enmity. It cannot be opened for a sleepy person, so no lover has ever opened it.And I don’t see that there is anything wrong in it; it can simply not be opened. It can be opened only to a person who is awake, who cannot harm you, who is beyond harming you. The woman you love can harm you, the man you love can harm you. Not that they want to harm you, but they are unconscious beings. They may have no intention of harming you, but still, without any intention to harm you, harm can happen.In sleep they can stumble, in sleep anything is possible. And this is the conflict that goes on. They don’t know even why they are continuously quarreling. They feel sometimes that they are quarreling about stupid things, petty, meaningless, and they wonder why they go on fighting about such stupid things. But they never discover that the foundation lying underneath what they want, is that they want to become one with the lover or the beloved.Even the act of making love is nothing but an effort to become one, somehow to become joined; rather than being two bodies, to become one body. But it is not going to satisfy because the need is to become one soul, not one body.So love, strangely, frustrates people more than anything else in existence, for the simple reason that it goes on giving you the hope that perhaps – because this is the biggest and the greatest thing that you know – there may come a moment when you may become one. But at the most you can become one with the body, and then you are stuck; your souls are as apart as ever. There is no meeting of the souls.After making love to a woman you are not happy, the woman is not happy. Something unknown has been missing in it – nothing that can be pointed out by them, but it was not what they were hoping for, it was not the goal of their desire. It fell short, and each time it falls short, frustration gets deeper, boredom gets deeper, hopelessness settles. One starts thinking, “Perhaps we are not made for each other. Perhaps it is time to change partners, to find somebody else.”But the same will happen with everybody. There is no way to make it a reality at that stage, where you are both asleep.So the relationship with the master is unique.You withdraw all your barriers, you destroy all the walls, you make all possible bridges, and you are just a welcome. And you wait patiently, trusting that when everything is ready, and even the shadow of a no is not there and yes is all over the space, the master is bound to come in. And that is the greatest gift the master can give to the disciple. You lose nothing and you gain immensely, incalculably.So all that is needed on the part of the disciple is not to repeat old patterns of many kinds of relationships with the master. Let it be a new relationship which you have never lived. Let it be absolutely untouched by your past. Let it be unique. And that’s why I insist again and again, that the disciple needs guts, courage.To leave oneself unguarded after many, many lives of guarding, protecting, not letting anyone in, has become almost second nature. To break through this whole structure, to rise above it – certainly courage, great courage is needed.Courage simply means risking everything – whatever the consequence, not thinking of the consequence – risking your very life. It is a gamble; you don’t know what is going to happen. You have never experienced anything like that before – how can you know?So you are putting at risk, at stake, everything that you know, for something that you know not; hence I have said many times: the path of truth is only for gamblers.I am reminded of a Japanese film actor. He lived in America, in Hollywood, before the second world war, earned much fame and earned much money…so much that now he had no need to work. He could live for lives in luxury. So he went back to Japan, but he wanted to see Paris first, so he went via Paris.He was staying in one of the most luxurious hotels, on the topmost floor. And there was a casino in the hotel. He went there – it must have been late evening – and he staked everything that he had earned, not even saving money for the ticket to reach home. He lost everything, and he went back to the room. There was complete silence because never before had anybody staked such a vast amount of money.Kings had been there, emperors had been there – he defeated them all. And they all had sympathy for the man because he lost everything on just one stake. In deep silence he simply moved all around.The next morning in the newspapers, it was announced that a Japanese had committed suicide by throwing himself under a fast-running train. The hotel manager, the hotel staff, and everybody who had seen what had happened the night before, immediately thought that this Japanese could not be anyone other than the man who had staked everything.They all rushed to the room of the Japanese actor. They knocked, he opened the door. He asked, “What is the matter – why this crowd?”They said, “We are sorry, really very sorry, but we thought, looking at this newspaper…. The body was almost crushed into so many pieces that they could not even recognize the face; just from the passport they understood that he was Japanese. So we thought perhaps you were the person, because last night you staked everything and you lost everything, and these are the moments when people commit suicide.”The actor laughed. He said, “I am not the one. I had earned, I had staked, I have lost. But it was only money; I have not lost myself. I can earn again; and believe me, if I earn again, I will come again and stake again! I am not such a coward as to commit suicide – for money? – which any idiot can earn. It does not matter; if I had won the money I would have remained the same. I have lost the money – I am the same.“Before I became an actor I was with a master who taught only one thing: Remain the same in every situation, good or bad, success or victory, failure or loss – everything, as long as you are there, only a witness.“I had a good sleep, and just now I was thinking from where to start again. But it has not scratched me.”Staking everything, knowing that you are gambling with the unknown…you may be victorious, you may be a failure, but it does not matter. You are not hoping for victory, because that will become a misery if you don’t succeed. You are not afraid of losing because then again you will be miserable if you lose. Having no conditions you stake.And being with a master, the beauty is that, although you are staking everything for something unknown, yet just in front of you there is someone who knows the unknown, who has been through the same process and has come back.This is true resurrection. There is no other resurrection except this – dying, not knowing whether you will be resurrected or not.But if you are with a master and you see, you feel the flavor of resurrection, that gives you a tremendous impetus to be courageous. It makes your dormant courage dynamic, alive, functioning.It is something like a small child walking by the side of his father, holding his father’s hand. The father may be worried – there are a thousand and one problems for him – but the child is enjoying the morning sun, the beautiful breeze, the flowers, the butterflies and he is asking question after question. He has no worry. He is certain – his hand is in his father’s hand – and that’s enough.To be with a master is to be in a tremendously trustful atmosphere so you can easily withdraw your guards, barriers, protections; you can be vulnerable, you can be open – open to the very end. And if the master becomes a guest within you, your whole life is transformed.You have also asked: “I say the disciple needs the master; does the master also need the disciple?”Yes. In existence everything is interdependent. In existence there is nothing like dependence, nothing like independence – which are just extremes, just ideas. Reality is always in the middle of the extremes. It is an interdependence.Here, everything depends on everything else; although no pseudo-master will accept this, that he needs disciples. He will try to prove that he is absolutely independent, he needs nothing. And that is simply nonsense.We are not islands, we are part of a vast continent.The master needs the disciple in the same sense as the raincloud needs somewhere to pour its water. It is heavy. The master is heavy with his experience. It is a beautiful ecstatic experience, but still, it is too much: he wants somebody to share it. And the beauty of sharing is, the more he shares, the more he finds that his experience goes on becoming bigger and bigger. It is inexhaustible.So it is not only a question of needing one disciple; he can have millions of disciples and still he is in need of disciples. There is no limit to it. The disciple needs only one master; the master needs millions of disciples for the simple reason that something is continuously growing in him.Enlightenment is not the end. Yes, it is the end of sleep, it is the end of darkness, it is the end of unconsciousness. But it is also a great beginning, a new flowering, an endless growth.The master will have to share it. He cannot contain it within himself. He will die if he tries to contain it within himself. His experience will kill him.It has happened thousands of times that people become enlightened and die immediately, almost simultaneously. Their enlightenment and death come together. The reason is that they have not created before enlightenment a certain capacity to be articulate, a certain skill to be a master – a totally different art which has nothing to do with enlightenment.There are many people who are enlightened but not necessarily masters. A master needs expression, a master needs a certain charisma. A master needs to be so articulate that he can manage within words that which cannot be managed within words, that he can find new ways of indicating the truth, that he can impress and influence. Even people who are fast asleep – he is even capable of reaching them.Even in their sleep he manages to talk with them, to persuade them to come out of their sleep. It is a great skill, and one has to learn it before one becomes enlightened, because afterwards there is no time.So if you are ready to be a master and become enlightened, then you can remain alive because now you know how to share it, how to spread it far and wide, how to give it to people who have never thought about it.Ordinary economics has a principle. Ricardo was the founder of the principle – it is that wherever there is demand, there will be a supply.In the world of enlightenment it is just the reverse. There is no demand and the master has something – the supply comes first; then he creates the demand. The Ricardian principle does not work. We will have to say, “Wherever there is a supply, there will be a demand.”But then the person who is supplying something has to be very masterful, because people don’t want it. Who wants enlightenment? Who wants the ultimate experience? Who is seeking the truth? And the master has all the commodities for which there is no market, no customers.And all his commodities are invisible – he cannot place them before you. He cannot give you some experience, some taste, before you are ready to be a customer. Selling invisible things, one needs tremendous preparation.So only once in a while there is a master; otherwise people become enlightened and die. The experience is too much; it simply stops their breathing; it simply stops their heartbeat. Out of sheer joy they forget to breathe, they forget that their heart has to continue to beat. And it is so much, so big, and they are so small. They have always thought of themselves as small, and now suddenly a whole mountain has descended over them – beautiful, ecstatic, but it brings death unless they are capable of immediately sharing it.The master needs disciples; otherwise he cannot even live. The disciple can live without the master – although he will be asleep, which is not much of a life. But still he can subsist, survive. The master cannot even survive. His need for disciples is far more urgent than the disciple’s need of a master. It is not just a coincidence that Buddha walked on for forty-two years continuously searching for disciples.I am reminded of one instance: Buddha is coming to a village – it is just time for the sun to set. And a girl not more than fourteen years old is rushing towards a field where her father is working and may be working late into the night.She tells Buddha, “Wait until I come – don’t start speaking! I am going to take food to my father; he is going to stay late working in the field. But remember, you should not speak until I get back!”Buddha reaches the town. The people are waiting there; thousands of people from all the neighboring villages have come, but Buddha says, “You will have to wait a little because I have promised someone that I will wait. And the person I have promised is the only person for whom I have come here, the only person who has the capacity to listen. So if I speak now, it will be useless.”It takes almost an hour and people start getting upset by the whole thing: “He is waiting for one person, and thousands of people are here. We don’t have any value in his eyes – just one person?”And then the girl appears, and that is a shock to the whole crowd; it is not even a person! Just a small girl. What can she understand?And as the girl approaches, she says to Buddha, “You are a man of your word. I was worried, but you waited. Now you can start. And trust me – the way you have waited for one hour, I have been waiting for years to listen to you, just to see you. I have heard so much about you, I am full of you, although I have not seen you before.”Buddha speaks, and exactly what he has said, happens: the girl takes initiation and becomes part of his commune. Those thousands of people just listen and go back to their homes, saying, “He is a strange fellow! He says things which are against tradition, but the way he talks – at least when he is talking, it seems that he is right. But when you start thinking about it, when you remember your tradition, your scriptures, then things are no longer clear. He confuses us.” But the girl became a sannyasin.For forty-two years Buddha was running. Even at the age of eighty-two when he was so old, he went on. The day he died, he asked his disciples, “I am leaving my body. Do you have any questions?” Certainly that was not the time for questions, and he had answered almost all the questions for forty-two years continuously.They said, “We don’t have any questions – you can relax. You need not worry about it, we will follow the path, we promise you. We will miss you, but we will not move away from what you have made us. Our search will continue in the same direction you have indicated.”So Buddha closes his eyes, relaxes his body, relaxes his mind – and at that very moment a man from the village comes running, and he says, “I want to ask something.” Ananda, Buddha’s chief disciple, says, “Be silent. Where have you been for forty-two years? Buddha passed your town dozens of times.”He said, “I am sorry. I am stupid, but it was always some excuse that prevented me. Sometimes it was that customers were there at my shop. So I could not close the shop, and I could not reach Buddha’s sermon. Sometimes my wife was sick and she insisted that I should sit by her side. Sometimes I myself was sick; sometimes there was no excuse but I simply thought, ‘He is always coming and going. I can go anytime.’“I had started taking him for granted. I had forgotten that even a buddha has to die. Don’t prevent me, because it may be many lives before I meet a man of his caliber again.”This quarrel is going on between Ananda and the villager, and Buddha opens his eyes and says to Ananda, “Ananda, let him ask the question, so for the future generations it becomes something of a remembrance that, even dying, a master is willing – with his very last breath – to accept a disciple.“And please don’t stop him; otherwise it will remain a blemish on me, that I was still alive and a disciple returned empty-handed. And he has come sincerely. All those years, it would not have been of much use even if he had come; it would have been simply a formality. But today he has come – with tears in his eyes – afraid, trembling, because it is questionable whether he will meet another awakened man for many lives; and he does not want to miss the chance.“And don’t let history say that Gautam Buddha was alive, and yet somebody went thirsty from his door. I will answer him.” And before his death he initiated the man.The master has a need, a tremendous need, of sharing. But it is a strange need, because with the word “need” we think you want to get something.The master’s need is not to get something, his need is to give something. With the master even the quality of the need changes to its diametrically opposite meaning.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 20 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,These questions are from the Dutch Rajneesh Times. The first question is: Now you are making a world tour, for the first time the well is going to the thirsty. Is the world ready to receive the well?It has been ready for a long time – not the whole world but just the chosen few.The whole world perhaps may never be ready. It is unfortunate, but unavoidable, because the world has no awareness of the present or of the future; it lives only in the past. It walks ahead but looks backward. That is the fundamental cause of all accidents – all the wars, and all the blood that has been shed on the earth.People are looking back and walking forward.Why do they look back? Their psychology has to be understood: They have lived the past, they are acquainted with it. It may not have been blissful – it was not. It may have been painful, miserable – it was, but human mind clings to the known. It has a certain logic; the known may be painful, miserable, but at least it is known. Who knows? – the unknown may be more painful, more miserable. And we know how to deal with the known; we don’t know how to deal with the unknown.We have become accustomed to the known; it is painful, but because we have been living in it for so long even the pain has become part of us. The misery has become our way of life. Slowly, slowly we have accepted it; now it no longer hurts.In fact the mind is afraid that if all this pain, misery and suffering is taken away, it will find itself in a space with which it is absolutely unacquainted; and that is frightening.The greatest fear in the world is the fear of the unknown – and mind is a coward. Hence, the world at large perhaps may never be ready. Not that it does not feel the thirst; it feels the thirst, but it has not the guts to recognize it. Even to recognize it is dangerous. That means the beginning of a search, the beginning of a seeking, again moving into the unknown.The moment you start searching, you become alone.If you don’t search, you are surrounded by a crowd, a vast crowd of believers, of people who have faith. The crowd gives you a certain warmth, coziness. It makes you feel that you must be right because so many people, millions of people, are on the same way. You can be wrong, but so many people cannot be wrong. And if they are all moving in the same direction, it brings you a certainty.That’s why people want to belong to a church, to a religion, to a dogma, to a creed, to an ideology – political, religious, social; but they want to belong to a crowd, they don’t want to stand alone.To stand alone…the fear arises: Who knows whether you are right or wrong?To stand alone, you stand in coldness.To stand alone, you lose the coziness of the crowd. To stand alone, you lose the faith of the fanatic. To stand alone, you lose the authority of a long tradition.But if you recognize your thirst, you have to stand alone and you have to walk alone, because the truth is never found by the crowd. It is never found on the superhighway. There are not even footpaths which lead to it. As you search for it, as you walk, you create your footpath yourself. It is a very strange phenomenon. You don’t have a footpath ready-made, waiting for you, which will lead you to the truth, to the temple; you have to walk, and just by walking you have to create it.Each step is full of hesitation, fear, trembling. You cannot be certain because you don’t have any map – there exists none. You don’t know where you are moving – are you going towards the truth or away from it?That’s why I say it needs guts, courage. It needs the courage of the gambler who can stake everything, not knowing what is going to be the result. He may lose all or he may win all. All or none – that is the choice facing you on each step, every moment. One who accepts this situation becomes more and more integrated, becomes more and more independent, becomes more and more together, centered, rooted.And as all these tremendously significant things are happening to his being, he finds a new warmth which comes from his own innermost source, a new coziness which is not dependent on the crowd, on anybody else. He finds a new clarity, a new vision, new eyes to see.Things become easier as he proceeds, but the first step is the most difficult. To go out of the crowd is a drastic step.The world has lived for millennia in the same rut – being born in misery, living in misery, dying in misery…at the most a few moments here and there of entertainment, not of ecstasy.Entertainment is not ecstasy, entertainment is just an opium. You become so absorbed in looking at something – a movie, a circus, a football match, a boxing competition – that you forget yourself and your pains. Entertainment is a way of forgetting yourself and your misery. It can be only for a few moments; again you will be back. And your pain is not going to forgive you so soon. You deceived it – it is going to be revengeful. So after each entertainment you will fall into a deeper ditch of darkness and misery, just to compensate.But this has been the way the world has lived. Only once in a while somebody has rebelled against this whole order. It needs tremendous intelligence.I am going on a world tour….I am aware of my people who have already taken the first step; they have already separated themselves from the crowd. They are no longer Christians, no longer Jews, no longer Hindus. They have done a great job, something rare, something unique – never done by such a vast number of people before.There are only two ways: either they should come to me…which the vested interests are going to make more and more difficult. They would like to isolate me from my people – they have already started doing that. I have my own way to respond to their fascist strategy.Rather than calling people to myself, I will be going to my people.Yes, it is true, the thirsty have always come to the well; but it is an old proverb, it is not contemporary. Now you can have water coming to your home, wherever you are. Of course in ancient days the well could not go to the people, but now tap water can reach everywhere, anywhere. And I am absolutely contemporary, so I say, for the first time the well will go to the thirsty.This is the only possible way to prevent governments, religions, the political parties from preventing my people reaching me; I will be moving around the world. This way I can reach more people, new people also who may not have come to me, who may not have ever thought to come to me.There are millions of people who love me, who are in deep sympathy with me, who would like to be with me but circumstances prevent them. Their commitments to their families, to their countries, to their professions prevent them. And there is also something more fundamental than all these things.That is, the negative person is always very active, articulate. Just a single negative person will make so much noise and so much fuss that he may create the illusion that many people are negative.Why does the negative person make so much fuss, so much argument? Why is he so loud? Ordinarily one would think that the negative person would be inactive. That seems to be in tune with negativity. But it is not the case. There must be some reason behind it.The reason is, the negative person is afraid of his own negativity. If he remains silent his negativity is going to burn him. The negativity is part of death, destruction; if he remains silent he will shrink and die within himself.To avoid this death he jumps, he runs here and there, he shouts loudly; he makes noise and he protests, argues, and almost creates single-handedly a phenomenon that makes it appear to the onlookers as if there are many people who are negative. He is simply trying to save himself from his negativity. He is vomiting it, he cannot keep it inside – it is fire.The positive person who loves me, who is sympathetic, who dreams one day to be with me, remains silent because love is something which one wants to keep in the secretmost part of one’s heart. Love is something that one does not want to shout about. In shouting it will die. In making a fuss about it, he will kill it. It has to be protected; it is a very delicate phenomenon. It has to be kept silently within, so that nobody knows about it.So there are millions of people who love me but have never said it to anybody. It is just their own private secret. And love grows in this way; the deeper you hide it, the faster it grows. Lovers know it – not very clearly because their love is not of a conscious state, but they have a certain glimpse of it.When you really love someone you cannot even say to the person, “I love you.” The words seem to fall too short…in fact, seem profane. They don’t express your experience, they don’t express your heart. They are dull and dead. They don’t have the radiance, the fragrance of your love.It is very difficult for the lover to say, “I love you.” Words are miles away from what is growing in his heart. People start saying to each other “I love you” when love is dead. Husbands and wives say to each other, “I love you.”Dale Carnegie in his book, How To Win Friends And Influence People, suggests that every husband should say at least three times a day to his wife, “I love you.” Now, this type of nonsense can be written only by an American.This man knows nothing about love – he is simply a businessman. What he is talking is business, not love. He would have been far more successful as a salesman of secondhand cars rather than being a philosopher of love. He has never loved anybody.But what he is saying makes some sense. When love dies you can express it. When it is alive, you can live it, but you cannot express it; your whole being may say it, but not your words. Your eyes may be full of it, but not your words; they are empty, and there is no way to fill them.This is a tragedy in a way: that love cannot be said but hate is very articulate; that the best has to remain unexpressed and the worst is loudly expressed; that the best has no logic to support it and the worst has all the logic to support it – it can argue, it can protest.I am going around the world for all those people who are already with me; also for those people who would like to be with me, but their love is silent. I will also be going for those who have been sympathetic. Sympathy is not enough, but it is an indication that they can take a few steps and become part of my lovers. Sympathy in itself is not enough, but it is a good indication of where the wind is blowing, the direction.There are people who are just indecisive. They have not yet decided for or against. If I don’t reach them soon there is a possibility they may decide against, because those negative loudspeakers are continuously bombarding their ears. All the yellow newspapers, magazines; the governments, the religious leaders – they are all trying hard to convince them to be on their side. I don’t need to convince them. I have just to be close to them, and that will do it.They don’t know me, yet without knowing me they have not decided against me. The moment they know me, there is no question of their deciding against me – because they have been continuously fed arguments against me, and still they have remained undecided, open.All these categories together can make millions of people…. And the strangest thing of all is that the people who think they are enemies of mine have no argument against me. They are fighting a losing battle. They know it. I have touched precisely their life nerve.It has never happened in the past for the simple reason that religions have criticized each other, but their criticisms were always half-hearted. They could not go the full length, because to go the full length they would have had to criticize themselves too. A Hindu can criticize a Christian, but only up to a certain limit, because beyond that limit he himself is vulnerable.For example, one very much respected Hindu saint, Karpatri, happened to travel with me once. We knew each other – he had even written a whole book against me. And he was talking about Jesus Christ’s crucifixion.He said, “According to Hindu philosophy, a man who is enlightened is finished with all his evil karmas; he cannot be crucified. Crucifixion is possible only if in your past life you have committed a very grave, evil act.”Within the Hindu framework it looks logical, but I asked him, “Would you like to stretch your logic a little bit more? Do you think Krishna was enlightened?”He said, “Certainly.” He was not even suspecting where I was leading him to – because Krishna died while he was resting under a tree, and a hunter, by mistake, shot him with an arrow.I said to him, “It is not a crucifixion, but Krishna dying from a poisoned arrow…. He may not have committed as grave a crime as Jesus Christ in his past life, but he must have committed something; all his karmas are not finished.”He had never thought about it, that his argument would spoil his own philosophy. So I said, “You should first look into your own home before you start criticizing anybody. I am not protecting Jesus Christ, I am simply making you aware that when you make an argument you should go the whole way, and you should look into your own religion to see whether there is something that goes against your argument. This proves it.”Religions have been criticizing each other. It is very easy because each religion is based on certain superstitions – of course on different kinds of superstitions, so it becomes easy to criticize the other. But you should be aware that your own religion is based on superstitions, which may be different but they also are illogical, as much as any other religion’s.It does not matter what form the illogicality takes; a superstition is a superstition. And every religion has, at its base, something that it cannot answer. So they have been arguing, but their argument was always half-hearted.With me the situation is different. I don’t have anything to protect. I don’t have a religion, I can argue the whole way. They cannot use my argument against me – because I have nothing.That is their basic difficulty. Because I don’t propose any philosophy, any program, they cannot fight against me. I can fight against all of them without bothering at all that my argument may go against myself, so that I have to stop at a certain limit. There is no question of that, because I don’t have anything – a proposal, a program, a philosophy.This is making them almost mad. Otherwise, by and by they have become polite to each other, seeing that everybody has their loopholes. What is the point of bringing the loopholes of the other into light? – because he will bring your loopholes into the light and you both will be exposed. It is better to be polite, nice to each other.For the past two centuries they have started making some kind of synthesis of all religions. Even in the universities all over the world now they study different religions not as independent bodies of thought; they study them under one department, “comparative religion.” So they can compare the best of all the religions, ignoring the loopholes.Right now no Hindu is criticizing Mohammedans philosophically, no Jaina is criticizing Hindus or Buddhists. They have calmed down, seeing the fact that they are sailing in the same boat. Making holes in the boat is going to be against each other, against all. It is better to keep the loopholes hidden, unexposed.I don’t have any religion so there is no question of any superstition, there is no question of any loopholes. I am not traveling with them in their boat – I don’t have a boat because I am not going to the other shore. This shore is enough for me. Only idiots think of the other shore, only idiots think that the grass is greener on the neighbor’s lawn. To me this shore is enough, and the grass is green enough. If it is not, we will make it green.My moving around the world will help tremendously to bring together these different categories of people who are somehow interested in me. It may also create new troubles for me from the vested interests; but I never think of them as troubles. The more they become afraid of me, the more they are losing ground.And it is better to fight all over the world simultaneously than to fight in different countries at different times, because the fight is the same; why not make it a concentrated effort all over the world?German sannyasins have been asking me, “Should we go to court against the government? – because there is no reason, no law that says they can prohibit you from entering Germany. You have not committed any crime in Germany. There is no reason why a person who has never been in Germany should be prevented from entering. And to make a law out of it, to decide it in the parliament….”I have been telling them, “Just wait. When I am in Europe then you go into the courts, because then the atmosphere will be more supportive from all the countries, the news media will be more supportive. And it is absolutely illegal. You are going to win, but we want to win it in such a way that it becomes a precedent so that no other country can do it. Otherwise they can start doing it in every other country to prevent my movement; I will not be able to travel.“But let me come to Europe, and then make a really great attack on the German government, that it is against the constitution, against human rights that an absolutely innocent person who has never been on your land should be prevented from entering.”The reasons that they have given are so bogus. The reason is – one simply wants to laugh at the stupidity of your great politicians – the reason the parliament has given is that I am not going to be of any help to Germany, why should I be allowed in? But if this is the case then it should be applicable to everybody who enters Germany, to every tourist. If this is a crime – that I am not going to be of any help to the nation of Germany – then all tourists should be prevented; then nobody should enter Germany! And the people who are living in Germany, if they are not of any help to the nation of Germany, they should be turned out.This is a strange reason that they have provided. No court can accept it. They may start bringing other barriers to prevent me – and it will be a good battle, a good challenge.We have to fight now worldwide.We have to make the movement a household name around the world. It is already a household name, but we have to get sannyasins, lovers, sympathizers from every house, so the fight can be from the basic unit of society, the family.The world is not ready, but a part of the world – the cream, the young and the intelligent – is absolutely ready. The moment they heard that I am going for a world tour…immediately I received invitations from Greece, from Italy, from Spain, from Portugal, from Switzerland, from New Zealand, from Austria, from Australia, from Costa Rica, from Paraguay, and from many more other countries.Even three governments have invited me, knowing perfectly well that America is against me and is pressuring governments that I should not be allowed there. Three governments have been courageous enough…. And those countries are not rich – poor countries, South American countries. But they want to show to America, “You don’t have the monopoly over the world.”So going around the world will help us to find who is our friend and who is not. And my own experience is that one of our friends is equal to one hundred enemies…because they don’t have anything, just old, rotten ideas which are out of date. Just a little push and they will fall apart.They are fighting for the dead.We are fighting for the unborn.And the decision of existence is always for life.Osho,Some people are interested in you, some people appreciate you, others recognize you, and some fall in love with you. Please speak about the journey to the master and also the journey with the master.It is natural that there should be many categories of people. And there will be categories within categories.For example, you say, “There are some who are interested in you.” This is not a single category, because there may be people who are intellectually interested in me because they feel a deep intellectual rapport, a logical affinity, but their hearts are not involved. They will remain only students, and to them I will be only a teacher, a philosopher, a thinker – but never a master, never a friend.There may be a few others who are interested just out of curiosity: “Who is this man? Why out of all religious people, is he being followed by millions, condemned by millions?” They may be just curious. Curiosity is of no spiritual significance. They will not even become students. It is a superficial thing, it never goes deeper than gossiping.But there may be a group who is interested neither just intellectually nor just out of curiosity, but who feel a certain unknown, mysterious link. They are not aware of what it is, but there is a pull, a magnetic pull. These people have the possibility of becoming disciples. These people can find in me a master. That’s why I said there are categories within categories; and it is natural that there will be a wide range of people interested in me for different reasons.The second category you call the lovers. There are only two possible categories of lovers. One is the man, the other is the woman. The man first finds an intellectual conviction, a conversion on theoretical grounds; philosophically he wants to be absolutely satisfied. Logic comes first, then only can he open his doors of love. Logic is his god.This type may enter into the world of love but can fall out of it; just as he can fall in, he can fall out – because I am a continuously growing man. That is one of the differences to be remembered.Buddha stops at a certain point when he is forty years of age, and then for the remaining forty-two years he simply repeats consistently the same discipline, doctrine, argument, which he had found at the age of forty. As far as I am concerned, he died at forty.The forty-two years that he lived afterwards were posthumous, a ghost life. And certainly ghosts can only repeat; they are very consistent people. They cannot say a single new word. They are not inventive, they are not discoverers; they are just shadows of the past. And the same is the case with all the religious masters of the past.It is not true with me.I will be alive to my very last breath.I am not going to die before my death.So there is every possibility that what I am saying today, tomorrow I may contradict. Nobody can expect consistency from me. You can expect growth, but to grow you have to be moving into new lands, into new discoveries, into new ideas; and naturally the past cannot contain them. You are continuously widening. The past was very narrow.It is just like the river Ganges. It is born deep in the Himalayas. The place where it originates is so small that it seems unbelievable. They have made a marble face of a cow, and from the cow’s mouth originates the Ganges – just a small, thin current. And then it goes on gathering immense experiences in the mountains, in the forests, and goes on becoming bigger and bigger, wider and wider. By the time it reaches to the plains it is oceanic.And it continues, growing. New experiences…because it is one thing in the mountains, and it is a totally different thing on the plains. In the mountains there were trees, there were animals and birds, but no man. On the plains it finds a totally different world: millions of men, temples, worshippers; it goes on gathering experience. It goes on gathering new rivers, new waters. Great rivers go on merging with it.By the time it reaches to the ocean…the place where the Ganges meets the ocean is called Gangasagar. Sagar means ocean. Before meeting the ocean, the Ganga itself has become an ocean. It is so vast that, from one bank, you cannot see the other side. In fact it has earned its meeting with the ocean. From a small current that falls from the mouth of a stone cow to Gangasagar, it is a totally different thing. The same is true with me. I am growing every moment. I am absorbing new currents, new vibes, every moment.There is a tremendous harmony within me, there is no inconsistency within me. But to the logical mind it will be difficult to see the inner harmony. He will see only from the outside – that I go on changing, that I am not consistent. So the man who has first intellectually convinced himself that he is in tune with me falls in love, but can fall out of love – any moment.One thing has to be remembered: when I say “man,” I do not exactly mean masculine. A woman can be in the same category if she moves with intellectual conviction, and then enters into love. So it is not a differentiation between man and woman as such, but most probably ninety-nine percent will be males in this category; perhaps one percent may be women.The second category is of the woman, who falls in love first, and because she is in love she starts being converted to the ideology, to the philosophy. She has one thing – that she cannot fall out of love just because I have changed some idea, I have said something which is inconsistent, because her love is not based on that. Her love is first, everything else is secondary.It does not matter to her whether I am saying the same thing or changing it. Her love makes it possible for her to see the inner harmony which the intellectual man misses. So ninety-nine percent in this category will be women, one percent will be men. But whoever is in this category only falls in love and cannot fall out; it simply is irrelevant what I say.Love is capable of seeing a harmony in all kinds of inconsistencies.Love is vast enough to see contradictions as complementaries.This is one of the most important categories. Those who are in this category are the most fortunate because nothing can distract them from the path. The heart only says yes once, and never moves away from it. The mind’s yes is conditional; the heart’s yes is unconditional.The mind says, “Yes, because what you are saying agrees with my logic.” Remember the difference: the mind says, “Yes, because you are agreeing with my logic, with my understanding, with me.” The heart says, “Yes, because I am agreeing with you, I have found where to dissolve myself, where to lose myself.”There are admirers. Most of them will remain only admirers. They will not come in contact with me in a living way. Their admiration is really hiding their jealousy.I have known people who have come to see me…I could see immediately that their admiration is just a cover-up. One man had come to Manali – a journalist, very intellectual, a nice person – and he told me, “In such a small life you have become an international figure. I admire you.”I said, “You should think about it – whether you admire me or you are jealous of me. Would you like to change places? Would you like to become an international figure? I am ready: I can become the journalist, you can become the international figure. I will be freed from all the trouble!”He was shocked, but he understood the point. He said, “Perhaps it is jealousy; perhaps I am unable to say that I am jealous, and I am saying that I admire you.”People admire only those whom they would have liked to become. Their admiration is an ego trip.So from this third category, ninety percent of admirers will belong to the jealous group. Only ten percent perhaps may not be jealous, may be simple-hearted, non-egoistic, and their admiration will be simply a heartfelt feeling. But that’s where it stops.They admire a novel of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, they admire a painting of Picasso, they admire the music of Mozart – they admire me. But what can admiring the painting of Picasso give you? That’s where it ends. It is a nice, heartfelt feeling, you are overwhelmed – but then what? Your admiration is not going to change your life, it is not going to become a transformation.And what is your fourth category?Others recognize you.Right. The fourth category – of the people who recognize me – also consists of two types of people. One, which will be the majority…. It is again an ego number. By recognizing me they are trying to put themselves above me, to show that they understand me, that they understand my enlightenment, that they recognize me as a master.But it is almost like a blind man recognizing a man with eyes just to deceive himself, just to create a belief in his own mind that he has eyes.The major part of this category will be of that sort. I have come across such people. The king of this country recognizes me as an awakened being. But he thinks of himself as a man of great spiritual realization, which he is not. It is very easy for him to be supported by his puppets, his paid servants, who say, “Yes, you are a great spiritual leader.”But if he recognizes me as an enlightened person, he should come to see me at least. I’m a guest in his country and he should know the tradition of the East.There is a story in the life of Gautam Buddha. He is entering Shravasti – one of the most beautiful and rich cities of his days – but the king of Shravasti, although recognizing Buddha as an enlightened being, refuses to allow his prime minister to go to the gate of the city to receive him.He says to the prime minister, “He is enlightened – I recognize the fact – but still he is just a beggar. And I am a great king: why should I go to receive a beggar? If he wants to see me he can come to the palace and ask for an audience.”The prime minister is as old as the king’s father. He was his father’s prime minister too – the father is dead. The prime minister has tears in his eyes, and he says, “My son, you don’t know the way of the East; you don’t understand at all what you are saying. If you recognize him as the enlightened one, the question does not arise that he is a beggar, that he has to ask for an audience and come to the palace.“These things show that you don’t know at all what enlightenment is. This is absolutely ugly. And I cannot serve a man like you – this is my resignation. Either you come to welcome Gautam Buddha at the gate, or accept my resignation. I cannot serve an idiot.“This always has been so, that when an enlightened person comes – and you recognize him – then you have to go to receive him; otherwise withdraw your words that you recognize him. That is simply your ego – you want to prove that you have such understanding, such wisdom that you can see that the man is enlightened. You have no such understanding, no such wisdom.“And my tears are for your dead father, because Buddha used to come here in the time of your father, and I remember those beautiful days when your father would go to the gate – not on the chariot but walking barefoot, because Gautam Buddha is coming. Barefoot – how can he wear shoes? How can he go in a golden chariot? And he would go and fall at the feet of the beggar.”The majority of people who say that they recognize me are, deep down, simply putting themselves higher by their recognition.But there is a minority also which says, “We recognize…not that we know exactly what he is, but one thing is certain: he is something far above us.”This is a totally different kind of recognition. They are not putting themselves above, they are putting themselves where they are. They recognize the person’s height, depth, wisdom, in a humble way. They can see that something has happened to him. They cannot make a clear-cut statement about what has happened, but something has happened and the man is totally different. He is no longer the same man as he used to be.This happened to Gautam Buddha’s father. He was very angry when Gautam Buddha came back after twelve years. The father was furious, very angry. Buddha was his only son, and his father was getting old; any day he could die. Who was going to succeed him? Who was going to be his successor in the big kingdom?Then Gautam Buddha came with his begging bowl like a beggar, and the father was simply mad. He screamed, shouted, and abused Buddha. He said, “You betrayed me in my old age. I had depended on you. Rather than helping me, you escaped from the house without even asking my permission!”Buddha listened to the whole thing. As the father cooled down, Buddha said, “You are right – your son, Siddhartha, has hurt you badly. On his behalf I ask your forgiveness. But please look into my eyes: I am not the same person.”And the father for the first time wiped his tears, looked into the eyes of Gautam Buddha, and he said, “My God, you are my son who had left twelve years before, but I can see that something has happened. You are no longer the same.“Forget all my anger and forget all those twelve years that I have been continuously furious with you, because what you have gained is far more precious. I can see you have gone far away. I am old, but be compassionate enough to initiate me on the same path.”This is also recognition, but the recognition of a humble heart who can see the light, the depth, the faraway stars, but is not claiming, “I am above you and I can recognize you and I can certify you.”And you have asked about going to the master, and about being with the master…. What is the difference? – is that your question?The journey to the master, finding the master; and also the journey once you've found the master, traveling with him.They are two steps of the same process – going to the master and then being with the master.Going to the master is far more difficult than the second step. The first step is always more difficult, because going to the master means leaving your ego, leaving your mind, leaving your expectations, putting everything aside, traveling very light, with no load, no burden.All those things you have cherished all your life – maybe for many lives – and to detach yourself from them is difficult. And who knows? For whom are you leaving all your cherished things? You are risking for an unknown person. So the first step is difficult – more difficult if you are going to the master with intellectual conviction, less difficult if you are going with a heart full of love.The heart can do miracles. It can see where mind is blind, it can understand where mind fails. It has its own way of reaching to the mysteries of life. If you are going as if you have fallen in love, then you can leave everything.Just by the way, all over the world, whenever a girl marries she has to go to her husband’s house. Strange – nowhere have they tried the other way, that the husband goes to the wife’s house. But there is a tremendous wisdom in it – because man thinks from the intellect. He may not be able to leave behind his family, his father, his mother, his brothers. That may be difficult.But the woman loves from the heart. She can leave the father, she can leave the mother; she can leave everything of the past and go into the unknown with the man she loves.So this is a folk wisdom prevalent all over the world. Logically the conclusion would have been different. Because man is stronger, he should leave his family and go to the girl’s family – she is more delicate. But no, that has not been done.The same is true when you go to the master. If it is a heart-to-heart connection, you can leave everything aside, and even the first step becomes light, easy. Otherwise it is difficult, it takes time. For the intellectually converted person it sometimes takes years. He may hang around, think again and again, go a little further and come back.The second step is not difficult. Once you have reached the master, for both – those who have come from the mind and those who have come from the heart – for both the second step is easy. The first step you were taking alone; the second step you are not alone, the master is already with you. In fact the second step is being taken by the master – he simply gives you the appearance that you are taking it.To be with the master is in fact something totally different. The master is with you, and only when the master is with you, is there revolution. Just your being with the master will not do anything.There are many people who think they are with the master, and nothing happens to them – for the simple reason that the master is not with them; they are not yet ready.But the last thing again to be reminded of: if a person has come to the master with love being the first thing and logic the second thing, he will find that to be with the master is absolutely easy. And the master will find that to accept the person to his innermost being is without any difficulty.But the person who has come with logic – the master has to wait. He has to see whether he drops his logic and remains with love; then only can he be taken with the master on the journey. Otherwise he can back out from any point, and the whole work and the whole effort would have gone down the drain. And no master wants to waste his time, his work, his energy.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 21 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Sometimes I realize how much I am afraid of the unknown. I have experienced moments of total trust and moments of bliss.What are the tricks of the mind to avoid these beautiful experiences again and again?The tricks of the mind are very simple. One: when the moment of trust and bliss has passed, the mind starts thinking of whether it was true or illusory. However long you may have been in a blissful state, as you come out of it the mind questions it: “It is not reality because you are not always in it. So it was a dream, an illusion, a hallucination; it cannot be otherwise.” The argument of the mind is based on doubt.Mind is in such a low state – so miserable, so suffering, so much in anguish – that from that state, to conceive a moment of bliss is almost impossible.We are brought up as mind – and these divine moments just happen. In fact they happen only when we are not prepared. They come just like a breeze – and they are gone. Before the breeze came there was suffering, anxiety; after it has gone there is again suffering and anxiety.It is very natural for the mind to conclude that anguish is its nature; doubt is its quality, and these things that happen once in a while are not part of it. And they are not part of it. When they are there, they are really strong; but when they are gone, just to think that you had a moment of trust and love becomes impossible.The mind is you, and this is your day-to-day reality; you have to face it moment to moment. And those rare moments are so rare, that compared to your mind – standing in your mind with all your conditionings – it is very natural that they will look illusory.Almost everybody in the world gets those moments once or twice in life. But because the mind is such a long process, those moments are not only thought to be inauthentic, they are thought to be nonexistential…as if you have imagined them. They have never been there; it is just that your memory, tired of all the anguish and anxiety, has imagined them.It is like when you are in a desert – hot, burning, thirsty – and you see an oasis far away. It looks absolutely real. You want it to be real, you cannot afford to think that it is unreal. You move towards the oasis and you find nothing there.The same happens in such moments. Later on they go on fading; the mind takes its grip back and starts telling you that it is just a trick of your own memory: you wanted those moments – the memory created them. But they have no reality; otherwise why have they gone? – the reality is that which persists.And mind’s logic looks very valid.Still, it is wrong. Those few moments are real – and the mind is unreal. The mind has been trained, conditioned from the very beginning. It is a miracle that in spite of this mind you can get some of those moments.The mind is not yours, it is a social product. It is society within you.Those moments are yours – society has not given them to you. And if you can put the mind aside, you will see: those moments are not momentary, they are your permanent reality. Mind was covering them; just in certain circumstances they make themselves felt by you. They are trying to assert themselves – but the layers of the mind are thick and will not allow them to assert themselves.So keep this in your consciousness:Nature is not anguish, it is blissfulness.It is not anxiety, misery, suffering:It is love, it is rejoicing.It is a constant celebration.We come out of this nature, we are part of this nature; we inherit the same qualities in our consciousness. But the society does not want you to be rejoicing. Society does not want you to be blissful, loving, silent, peaceful. That goes against the structure of the so-called society that man has made.It wants people who are full of anxiety, anguish, tensions, miseries, sufferings – because they are the people who can be enslaved. They are the people who can be sent to war. And they are the people who can be goaded into any stupid job: Anyway they are suffering – it does not matter to them what work they are put to.But a man of blissfulness has his tremendous freedom – it comes with it. A man of love cannot be enslaved. Freedom, love, joy create the real individual you are. They are the qualities you are made of.And the society tries to hide that individual, repress that individual – and creates a phony individual which it can manipulate. But nothing is perfect in the world. The society does everything, but still there are loopholes. There are moments when your real nature asserts.Soon the mind catches hold of you, convinces you that it was illusory: “You are just imagining. It never happened – I am the reality.” So you have to be conscious of this strategy.The mind is not yours, it is your enemy. Don’t listen to it. Whatever it says goes against you. Listen to something that comes not from the mind – that’s why it looks as if it is from the unknown. Not only listen to it, but get more and more acquainted with it, allow it more and more space in you. Give it as many chances as possible.This is the whole work of the seeker: what the society has made of him, he has to undo, and recover his natural being. And these moments are part of his natural being. Make them come more and more. Welcome them, relish them, and they will be coming more, and they will be staying more – because after all they are the reality.And if the mind becomes clear that it is not your friend, it stops creating a rift between you and your real nature. A day comes when the mind simply drops because now its function is no longer there. And then your life – those twenty-four hours a day – are of love, are of peace, are of silence, are of great joy.Mind is the worst creation that society has put in every individual.People ask me why I am against society, why I am against religions, the status quo, the establishment. I am against them because these are the people who have been destroying millions of people for thousands of years, giving them a mask and telling them, “This is your real face.”And millions have lived on the earth and died without ever encountering their own face. They have not known what they were supposed to be; they have not known what potentiality they have to actualize. They have not known that they are part of an ecstatic existence – not part of a rotten society.So pay more attention to those moments, and don’t pay any attention to the mind. And slowly the mind will become weaker, because it is unnatural, forced; it has no roots in you. And that which is natural and has roots in you will come up automatically; just the mind has to give space.Neglect the mind.Ignore the mind.And it becomes a tremendous meditation.Osho,Is it never a violation to gaze into your eyes? Sometimes it feels like an intrusion, and I pull myself back – even though I would like to jump right in.It is a strange phenomenon.The psychologists who have been working on it have come to know that if you gaze into somebody’s eyes for more than three seconds, he will feel offended. Just to have a look and go on your way is acceptable, but to look more than three seconds means you have taken a certain interest in the person, and it is an intrusion. It is interfering with his very private world. And the eyes are the most living part of his body, and most expressive part of his body.A man can look with lust in his eyes, a man can look with anger in his eyes, a man can look with sadness in his eyes, a man can look with all kinds of emotions. The eyes are very sensitive. So in the society it has not been thought right.But to be with a master is to go against the society. And looking at the eyes of the master is neither lust nor anger not sadness; it is a pure looking.Secondly, the master is there to be available to you. There is no question of intrusion, you cannot interfere.The master has no secrets to hide from you, no private world of his own that he would not like anybody to know. He is an open book – you can read it from the first page to the last. And his eyes are also different from other eyes.The people who have known nothing of meditation cannot understand that eyes can be just a mirror, not projecting anything – no emotion, no sentiment. And in a mirror, what you see is your own reflection.The master’s eyes are empty. You can jump into them without any question, because the whole world of the master and his friends is a world apart. It does not belong to the ordinary world.I myself forget to blink if I am involved deeply in talking to you. Then the very natural process slows down…long gaps. And the eyes are the most significant contact points. So there is no question of fear as far as I am concerned.My eyes are your eyes. And finally I would like that when I am gone, your eyes become my eyes. But this will be possible only if you have nourished a certain deep relationship with those eyes.Somebody was asking me, “Now that you have allowed freedom to sannyasins not to compulsorily use red clothes or mala – it is up to them – how are we going to identify them?”I said, “You don’t be worried – my people will be identified not by their clothes and by their mala, but by their eyes, the way they talk, the way they walk, the way they behave. I am spreading myself into my people.”So there is no problem in it.Osho,Being homeless, the caravanserai is finally at home. I love the moment-to-momentness of my life these days. I'm so beautifully surprised! What else do you have up your sleeve?Don’t ask that! – because if you know beforehand you will miss the joy of being surprised. I certainly have many things up my sleeves – that’s why I keep them closed; nothing comes out!But it has been really a great experience living moment to moment, not being certain of the next moment. Life is such. Having no home brings you to a great truth: there is no home and there is no certainty about the next moment. Everything is possible.These few months have been very beautiful. It was a practical exercise of what I have been teaching to you.And I have many more things in my sleeves…. You will come to know at the exact time!Osho,From birth onwards, time seemed to me to go faster and faster. But since we left America, just over two months ago, it feels to me like whole lifetimes have passed. Osho, what have you done to time?I have not done anything to time! – but you have realized a certain quality of time. When you are in a certain stable situation, you will feel the movement of time differently, on two counts. One is that when you are in that false, permanent state, time will go slower, that is your feeling. But when that state is no more, remembering it, you will be surprised that it looks as if time went fast.And when you are in a state of moment-to-moment living, time may feel just the opposite of the first: it will look as if it is going so fast that you cannot believe it. But looking backwards, it will look as if lives of time have passed – and perhaps only months have passed. This is part of the relativity theory of Albert Einstein, and I feel that he has come very close to the truth.I have not done anything to time; just the situation from being in a commune which looked stable – everything unchanging, tomorrow was certain, it will be just like today – the time moved slowly. But looking backwards you will be surprised at those four and a half years, just how long they were.And when the commune is dispersed and there is no home, each moment has got a tremendous reality, because the next moment nobody knows what is going to happen. So you start living in the moment, and when you live in the moment, it is big, it is deep. Moment to moment it will look as if you are living a long time, but looking backwards you will be surprised that you have been in this position only for two or three months.What has happened? When you feel a kind of permanent state, you don’t go deep into the moment. You just touch the surface and move on to another.When you are living moment to moment, you have to go deep into the moment, live it totally, squeeze the whole juice of it, because the other moment may not be there – this may be the last moment. In this way you make time a tremendously deep phenomenon, but when you look backwards, you will not think that it was a long time.Albert Einstein was asked again and again about his theory of relativity, and he used to give this example: If you are sitting on a hot stove, time seems to be too long; and when you are sitting with your girlfriend, time seems to be too short. The whole night has passed and you wonder – how quickly! Time is the same – just our attitudes, our experiences change the perspective.And being homeless is a great experience of freedom, of no boundaries, of no shelter, of no security. The home is, on one hand, a cozy place, secure, safe; but on the other hand, it is a kind of imprisonment. And you have to make so many compromises to be in the home, with the wife, with the children, with the parents – everything. You are not free; you have compromised on so many things, you cannot feel that you are yourself.Homeless, you are yourself: no compromise, no security. And in fact life is insecure – that’s a reality. It is not safe – that’s a reality. Whatever you do is not going to help you.I am reminded of a story…. A king was very worried about security and safety. He made a special palace with only one door so nobody could enter. And at the door there were guards: guards upon guards. There were seven lines of guards, so nobody from among the guards could do anything.One of the neighboring kings heard of this; he came to see. He loved the house, and when they were departing, the visiting king said, “I would also like to make such a palace – this is really safe, secure.” At that moment a beggar sitting by the side of the street started laughing.Both kings asked, “Why are you laughing?”He said, “It is a long story, but to cut it short I will tell you the most essential part of it. I was also a king once, I was also worried about safety and security. Then I lost my kingdom and I lost my home, and since then I have been a beggar, and I am not worried about security or safety. By being a beggar I found what I was missing in being a king.“And thirdly, I have a suggestion for you. Your palace is beautiful – I have been watching it being built; you have made every possible effort to make it absolutely safe – just one thing is wrong with it.”The owner of the palace asked, “What is that?”The beggar said, “You do one thing: you go in and tell your people to remove the door, and make a wall. Then you will be absolutely secure, one hundred percent…because these seven lines of guards are not one hundred percent sure.”The king said, “You seem to be mad! If I enclose myself only with walls – no way to go out, no way to come in – it will become just a grave.”The beggar said, “That’s what you have made it – a grave with a door, nothing much. Just look at me: there is no grave. And I am happy that I lost my kingdom and I lost everything that I had, because it was hiding my moment-to-moment reality from me.”Life is unsafe, insecure – you can die any moment – so why be worried about it? All that you need is to live as totally as possible while you are living.There are people on the earth – gypsies. That is a strange group that never makes a home. It is always on the move, lives only in tents, and absolutely free. Whenever it wants to change the city, it starts moving its tents, bullock carts.In my village many gypsies used to pass, and I had asked many of them…. You may be surprised that gypsies are Indians; eighty percent of their language is Hindi, so it was not difficult to talk with them. They became known as gypsies because first they went to Egypt, and from Egypt they spread into Europe. From “Egypt” they got the name “gypsies.”I used to ask them, “Why don’t you stay in one place? What is the point of troubling yourself by continuously moving?”They all laughed and they all said, “You don’t know the beauty of movement. When the river is flowing, it is alive. But a tank is dead – it is stable. The river does not know where it is going – that is its surprise…moment to moment the new. Why get caught up with the old?”All the governments have been trying to provide them with houses so they can stay in one place, so there is no need for this constant movement. But they are not willing. It seems that, in this movement, they have known a certain beauty, a certain freedom.And I was surprised: they are the most strong people. Their women are so strong, you cannot believe it. All their business is done by their women – their women will sell things on the market. And if you even ask the price of a knife, you get into trouble!The gypsy will say, “Five rupees.” Naturally, you have to give some offer. You say, “Two rupees.” She says, “Okay, take the knife.” And if you don’t give her the money, she will take hold of your hand – and the gypsy woman is so strong that even a man will not be able to get rid of her.And they are so beautiful! I have seen so many women, but no comparison with gypsy women. They are beautiful, they are strong; and the men are beautiful, they are strong. Perhaps their continuous wandering, facing new difficulties, new challenges, has created a certain stamina which people living in houses in one place – being a clerk in the office – have lost. These gypsies don’t want to lose it, and they can see the difference.Losing the home…it is a beautiful experience to be homeless, because all the animals are homeless, all that exists is homeless. Only man has created out of his cunning mind some safety measures, which don’t help – they simply make him weak, they make him ugly. He is in constant paranoia; and to get rid of that paranoia brings a new upsurge of energy.So I am in favor of going around the world, moving, so you forget the whole idea of a home. You start having the freedom of a homeless person, and you drop the idea of safety and security…because they don’t exist: they are just fictions.Osho,You always say the transcendence of sex for men may happen at the age of forty-two. I haven't heard you give an age for women. Is there one?It is exactly the same – forty-two. If everything goes naturally – if the girl is allowed freedom when she becomes sexually mature, and is not hindered by any law or society to change her partners, so she lives only through love – then the age will be exactly forty-two.There is no difference in men and women. Recently they have come to discover that even men have a monthly period – although, because there is no outward sign, for centuries nobody has thought that men could be having a monthly period.If a man keeps a diary, and notes every day what his overwhelming mood was – sad, indifferent, happy, blissful, angry…. If he just keeps the diary going for twenty-eight days, then a second month, then a third month, and then compares them – he will be puzzled: There are three, four or five days, which are similar in all the three diaries, when he is angry, miserable, sad, destructive. Those are his periods.He does not have any physical symptoms – that’s why, for centuries, nobody bothered – but he has certainly a period. The symptoms are more mental, and the reason is clear: the woman is more body, more earthbound, and the man is more mind. But the man will have the same kind of trouble as the woman has. Every month, after twenty-eight days exactly, it will be repeated.And if you have taken note of one year you will be surprised that it was not that you were simply angry, miserable, suffering, ready to fight with anyone; it was a certain period that you were going through.Men and women both become sexually mature nearabout the same age; that is fourteen. Then the transcendence cannot be different; it will be forty-two. But these times are dependent on the natural course. If the man has repressed his sex, then forty-two will not be the end of it, then he will continue up to his grave. If the woman has not been fully and totally in it, then forty-two will not be the time. Otherwise, at forty-two her monthly periods will disappear and her sexual desire will disappear.Man and woman are made of the same fabric, the same structure, the same biology. The only difference is, man is the positive pole of the energy, and woman is the negative pole. And this is one of the reasons why I am against homosexuality or lesbianism…because two homosexuals are both positive poles. Perhaps AIDS is just an outcome of these two positive poles.You cannot create electricity with two positive poles; neither can you create electricity with two negative poles. That opposition of negative and positive is absolutely essential. It is not a contradiction, it is complementary. And when the negative and the positive meet with deep love, there is every possibility that it will become a further step in their spiritual growth.And forty-two years is enough time to experience what the body can give, and then to go beyond it. A natural urge will be there…if the body can give this much, there must be some way to get more.Orgasm is the first experience of samadhi. It is far below it, but still, a first step.And if you miss the first step, you will miss the whole ladder.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 22 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,In your experience, is there any connection between the qualities of the invented self, and those of the real self? Is the ego like a shadow or a distortion of the authentic being; or is there a total discontinuity? Looking back, do you see any traces in the one you are now of the man you once were?The ego is not a shadow of the self, because in even being a shadow it will have a certain reality, a certain connection with the real self. It is not a distortion of the real self either, because the self cannot be distorted; there is no possibility of that.The ego is simply false, a substitute created by society to give you a feeling that you have a center, that you have a self, that there is no need for any search – you have already got it. To prevent you from reaching the real self, this is the most cunning device. It is completely made up – from the very beginning, the child is being fed with things which will make its ego. They will appreciate you, they will say you are beautiful, you are good, you are nice – but only when you don’t assert your real self. You are obedient.That word is very central in creating the ego. Obedience means that whatever your parents are saying you have to listen, to follow; you are not to listen to any voice that is coming from your own being. In the beginning that voice is there; till the ego is strong enough you continue listening to your inner voice.Obedience is the method to kill your inner voice. Hence all the societies, all educational systems, all religions praise obedience.The biblical story in this reference has to be remembered: Adam and Eve are not punished because they have eaten the fruit of a tree; they are punished because they have disobeyed. They did not listen to God, they listened to some other voice. This is their great sin, the only sin. And they are thrown back out of the garden of Eden for a simple thing – that they have disobeyed. It seems that people have not paid enough attention to how all the religions depend on obedience.They may call it different names – belief, surrender, trust, faith – but look into all these words: they are simply saying one thing, that you have to follow the dictates which God has given. And they have the holy book and they have the messiah and they have the prophet; now you need not listen to any voice – particularly your inner voice. That will be again committing the same sin.The story uses the serpent to persuade Eve, but that is just a metaphorical way of saying it. The reality is that because God has prohibited them from eating from the tree of knowledge, he has already created a great curiosity in Adam and Eve. He could have created it in any children – there was no need of any serpent.And this is the religious condemnation of woman. They never forget that the woman should be condemned. In every story, in every holy scripture, it is the woman who hears it – the serpent talks to the woman. But to me it has a great psychological significance: the woman can hear the inner voice more easily than the man, for the simple reason that she is not too hung up in her head. She still lives in her heart. It is not a condemnation of the woman, it is really a compliment – she has more capacity for inner growth than the man; she can hear her heartbeats more clearly than the man can.But a strange thing is that all the religions are founded by men – a woman is not respectable enough to found a religion. And when a man founds a religion, it is going to be intellectual; it cannot be of the heart.There is a beautiful story I have always loved…. One of the great women of the world was Meera. She was only four or five years old when there was a great procession, a marriage procession. She asked her mother, “What is happening?” The mother explained, and the little girl said, “When will I be married?”The mother said, “These are not questions to be asked! You are too small.”Meera said, “I may be too small but I have already fallen in love.”The mother said, “What do you mean?”She said, “In the temple, when I go with you – the statue of Krishna is so beautiful. I have fallen in love with that statue; so whenever you want me to be married, marry me to that statue.”The mother said, “You are just mad! Just go out and play.” She did not take it seriously.Meera belonged to a royal family. She finally married into another royal family, but she did not forget to take a small statue of Krishna with her.The man she was married to must have been a very compassionate man. The first night, when he was going to meet his wife, he heard her talking, so he looked in through the window. She was sitting before the statue of Krishna and saying to him, “My lord, so finally I got married to you!”It was a shock. Meera was an immensely beautiful woman…but the husband was certainly of great understanding. He turned back, he did not go into the room – Meera remained a virgin. And just to avoid embarrassment, he went to war as the commander in chief. He won the war, but he died in it.Meera left the house with the statue, singing and dancing in the streets. People thought she had become mad because of the death of her husband. But she would show the statue to them: “My husband cannot die, my husband is always with me. And the one who has died, he was never my husband.”She became famous. I don’t think anybody has sung such beautiful songs, danced so beautifully, so ecstatically.She reached the birthplace of Krishna…. And that is the point I want to be emphasized: at the birthplace of Krishna there is the biggest Krishna temple in India. The priest of the temple had taken the vow of celibacy, so no woman was allowed in the temple.A guard was standing there with a naked sword to prevent women. But when Meera came dancing, ecstatic, he forgot why he was standing there, and she entered the temple. She was the first woman to enter the temple in the forty years since that man had become the priest.The priest was worshipping Krishna. He could not believe his eyes; the things he was holding in his hands for worship fell on the ground. He was really angry. He said, “Woman, you have some nerve! Everybody knows – nobody who is not a man can enter this temple. You have destroyed my forty years’ austerity!”And Meera laughed, and she said, “I was thinking there is only one man, and that is Krishna, and we are all his lovers; we are all women. I am glad to see that there is another man also in the world!”The way she said it just penetrated the man’s very heart. He fell at her feet to be forgiven. He said, “I have never thought about this – what I said is simply absurd. Only Krishna, only God, is the man – we are all his lovers; naturally we are all women. You are right and I was wrong.”Meera’s saying that only the woman has a heart-to-heart contact with the divine is of great importance.But all the religions are founded by men. They are great intellectuals, philosophers, theologians; they spin great, complicated theories – but nothing in them gives the sense that they have experienced. They are only thinking, they are not living.To think is a very superficial thing.To live is the deepest.And love is the way to go deeper into it.But the man-dominated world has made everything heartless, stony. They can be of great use if they use their intellect only for the objective world, and leave the subjective world to be led by women.So this is what I take from the story of Adam and Eve. I don’t think it is an insult. It was intended that way: man is such an intellectual giant that the serpent will not be able to persuade him, the woman can be easily persuaded. And once the serpent persuades the woman, then the woman can persuade the man. But to me it is a compliment that the woman was the first to disobey.To me, disobedience is the beginning of destroying the ego. Obedience is the matter ego is made of. The parents will say, “Obey,” and whoever obeys is appreciated.In my family there were so many children. My father had brothers and sisters, and most of the sisters used to come and visit with their children, and uncles were living together, so it was a big, fifty-member family. And they were always praising someone or other.I told my grandfather, “Sometimes you have to praise me too.”He said, “You? For what?”I said, “For my disobedience. You praise these children because they obey you. Indirectly you are simply praising yourself. If you have the guts to praise, praise me, because I disobey you. And on any point where I have disobeyed you, I am ready to argue that I was right and you were not.”He said, “This is strange! This is the first time I have heard somebody asking to be appreciated for his disobedience.”I said, “If there had been many people of the same type I am, the world would have been different. It is these obedient puppets who have created a phony world. And these puppets will create other puppets; and generation after generation the same spiritual slavery continues. You give it a good name – obedience – but it is spiritual slavery.”Disobedience is the assertion of individuality.Disobedience is the beginning of rebellion.The same is the situation in the schools; from the kindergarten to the university it is obedience that is continuously hammered into your minds. And it pays, too.If you are obedient to a certain teacher, professor, you can trust that he will help you. He will give you a higher percentage for being present. If he has the paper in his hand, he may reveal the contents of it to you. If he is going to be the examiner of the paper, he will give you higher marks than anybody else – because you have been obedient.And this is the way that your ego is indirectly being created. In the army, obedience becomes the absolute thing. In political parties obedience becomes absolutely important. Wherever you look, your whole world is moving around a single word: obedience.In one of my colleges, even the professor called me into his private room, and told me, “You are intelligent – you could come first in the whole department, but you will not.”I said, “Why?”He said, “Because you are continuously being disobedient – not only to me but to all the staff members.”I said, “I would prefer to fail, but I cannot obey anything against my intelligence. And in the long run, I tell you that your obedient people will be lost in the crowd.”He said, “I can understand your standpoint, but you are not practical.”I said, “Because of this practicality you have destroyed all that is beautiful but non-utilitarian. Love is not practical, nor is intelligence practical. And all that is practical is absolutely mundane. At least I cannot be practical at the cost of losing my being. To me that will be committing suicide.”He was a good man. He said, “I will try to help you in every way, but what can I do about others?”I said, “Don’t be worried. If I can convince one man of your caliber” – he was the head of the department – “I will try to convince those people also. And to me it is not a question of bargaining, of compromising; it is not a business. I am not for sale. I can still maintain myself without all your education; in fact I will never use your education. But I cannot breathe a single breath if I feel that I have been against my own self, if for something small, I have betrayed my own being.”Up to my graduation I could never get a first class, and everybody was puzzled, the principals were puzzled: “What is the matter? Why are you not getting a first class?”I said, “It is not a question of my first class; I am not getting first-class teachers – they are all third-rate. They want to reward their puppets – and I am nobody’s puppet. They are all irritated with me, angry with me, and the examination is the only time when they can take revenge.”It was only for my master’s degree that I could top the university, because my vice-chancellor was absolutely in agreement with me. The head of my department was absolutely in favor of me, and my other three teachers supported me in every way. They said, “It is a rare opportunity to find a person who wants to remain himself. We will help you.”One of my professors, Professor S.S. Roy gave me ninety-nine percent marks out of one hundred. He called me in, showed me the results, and he said, “Please forgive me – I wanted to give you one hundred percent, but that would look like too much of a favor.“I am sad that I am cutting off one mark just to say that I am not giving you any favor – you deserve it – but I wanted to ask your forgiveness because I am feeling guilty. You have done such a great job on the paper. Perhaps somebody else may not have given you even third-class marks, because to understand it needs great intelligence.”There was a question whether the absolute god is perfect or not – naturally, God has to be perfect. Two of the persons in the history of philosophy – Shankara in India and Bradley in England – have worked on the idea very deeply, and both have come to the conclusion that the absolute, the ultimate, or whatever name you give to it, is perfect. And Professor S.S. Roy’s doctorate was on Shankara and Bradley, so he was deeply interested in the question.In my paper I said, “The absolute cannot be perfect for the simple reason that if he is perfect then he must be dead: perfection means death. He cannot grow, he has nothing else to do. There is no point in being. Perfection simply means death – and I don’t want existence to be dead. And it is not dead, you can see all around: it is so living, so intensively alive, that I am ready to say that the ultimate, the absolute is imperfect because it is alive, it is growing. And it will remain always imperfect…moving towards perfection but never reaching it.”Only this much was the answer – just a few lines. And S.S. Roy said, “You have destroyed my whole thesis! This is the first time I have thought in this way, because I was thinking in the terms of Shankara and Bradley, and they had impressed me so much that I never thought on my own.”The moment you think on your own, you come very close to truth.All the religions teach, “Think according to Jesus, think according to Moses, think according to Krishna, think according to Mahavira.” No religion teaches you to think according to yourself. Theirs is the way of creating the ego.Ego is not a shadow, ego is not a distortion; it is a separate entity – artificial, but created with such great ingenuity that it takes the place of the real. It covers the real, and befools almost everyone: “I am the real.”And the real remains silent; the reality is silent.Unless you destroy this structure around the real, you will not be able to understand its silence, its sensitivity, its intelligence.And that is my work. I call it deprogramming. I want to deprogram the whole ego structure and leave you alone with yourself – wild, natural, in absolute freedom.And that is true life.Osho,Sometimes it seems as if you are more surrendered to us than we are to you.Please comment.It is true.I am not surrendered to you, to my people particularly. But because I have got rid of the ego, I am simply surrendered to the whole of existence – and you are part of it. So it can be felt that I am more surrendered to you than you are to me.It is a truth. But it should be so. I should be more loving to you than you can be to me. I should be more understanding towards you than you can be towards me. In every sphere you are still growing, still finding the way, struggling with all the nonsense that has been forced upon you. And I am free of it. So my love will be purer than yours, my trust will be greater than yours.It looks very absurd – that’s why the question has arisen – because the disciple should surrender to the master, not the master to the disciple. The disciple should trust the master, not the master trust the disciple. But these things must have been said by people who were not masters; otherwise the master is in a state of surrender – it does not matter to whom.The master is in a state of love – it does not matter to whom.The master is simply a pure understanding.You are searching for it – he has found it.But there is no need to feel any guilt that you are not more surrendered, that you are not more trusting. It is a natural thing; there is no question of guilt.In my life I have trusted so many people, and so many people have deceived me. But my trust is the same. It is not that their deception has made me withdraw my trust in humanity. Even if the whole humanity deceives me, then too, I will be in a state of trust.It has nothing to do with the person who deceives; that is his problem. And I don’t have any condemnation either: he did what he could, and I am doing what I can. So do not even for a moment feel guilty that you are not up to standard.You will be able to surrender to the master in the same way as the master has surrendered only when you become the master – not before that. And that is the only thing every authentic master wants – that every disciple of his becomes a master and brings all his uniqueness and all his flavor to the phenomenon.Osho,In all the best folk stories from around the world, the man of power has always sought guidance from the man of wisdom.Why and how did this change?First, these stories are not historical; these stories are our desires for how things should be. They are our hopes, our dreams, our utopias, that the man of power should seek advice from the man of wisdom. But it has never happened. Even in stories which seem to be historical it was not true.For example, there were great kings who used to come to Gautam Buddha for advice. But nowhere in any scriptures is it mentioned that they followed that advice; so it was really a strategy to gain more power over the people – the people who loved Gautam Buddha. The king comes to Gautam Buddha’s feet, touches his feet, offers his presents, sits with folded hands and asks Buddha’s advice…. It is a strategy, it is pure politics.He is not concerned with what Buddha is saying. He is concerned with what impression he is creating on the masses, because these masses have to be kept under his power. And if they see that their king is not only a political head but a man of wisdom, humble, then there is no possibility of revolution. There is no possibility of the people becoming antagonistic to the king, because then that would be becoming antagonistic to Gautam Buddha.So there are stories in the past when kings have come to people of wisdom – but nowhere is it mentioned that the kings ever followed what they said. And the same thing is being done today. Tomorrow it will become a story, and then you will think….For example, Indira Gandhi, the prime minister of India, wanted to come to me. At least five times she made appointments, and each appointment was canceled just one day before because of an emergency; she had to go somewhere. But this was not true, because after Indira had lost her power, her secretary came to visit the ashram.She said, “It was not true. There was no emergency that meant she had to cancel the appointment. The reality is that to come to Osho is to take a risk, a political risk. Osho has no power over the masses. Hindus are against him, Mohammedans are against him, Jainas are against him, Christians are against him. To go to him can be dangerous; all these people can drop out of Indira’s camp.“Indira really wanted to come, so she again made an appointment – but again, the same problem. Her cabinet did not allow her to reach you. And now that she is no longer in power, I was thinking, ‘Now she can come.’ But now a new problem has arisen. Now to come to you is even more dangerous because to come back to power she needs the support of the people you are continuously condemning.”She came to Pune. Laxmi went to see her, and Indira told her, “There are so many appointments that it will be difficult to come.”Laxmi said, “I have not come to ask you for an appointment, but because you were so eager – and five times you have decided to come – I thought perhaps that now you are in Pune and the distance is only five minutes…. But we are not asking you to come; if you want to come, you can come.”She said, “It is very difficult, Laxmi. The time is too short and there are too many engagements.” And then she went to Kolhapur, which was three hours away, to see the head of the Hindus, the Shankaracharya, just to touch his feet – because this Shankaracharya…. Hindus have eight shankaracharyas for the eight directions, one for each. This Shankaracharya was from the south, where Indira was going to fight a by-election to enter parliament, so he was immensely important.And thousands of South Indians were in Kolhapur just to have a darshan with the Shankaracharya. She was not interested in the Shankaracharya, she was interested in the masses seeing that she is a religious woman, spiritual: that even though she has been such a powerful figure, she touches the feet of the Shankaracharya. And she remained there for one hour.The Shankaracharya was in silence so he would not speak. But still she remained there for one hour so that thousands of people who were coming to touch his feet could see her sitting; photographs could be taken, publicity could be made….Three hours going, three hours coming, one hour sitting: seven hours she took to meet the Shankaracharya. In history it will be said that she was a woman who had power, but she always sought wisdom from wise people.Now, both things are suspicious: first, whether she got any wisdom or exploited the wise people; and secondly, whether these wise people were really wise, or they were also just a different kind of power head…. They have their own power.And you will be surprised to know that the Shankaracharya had taken the vow of silence for that day only because Indira was coming. So he did not have to make any statement that might go wrong. Because Indira would ask for a blessing: she was standing for election in his own constituency. If he did not give the blessing and she came into power, that would be dangerous. If he gave his blessings and she did not become victorious, then people would think his blessings were impotent, meaningless.While she was fighting for the election, Indira went to all the great, famous temples of India, to all the great saints of India. And I was the only man who blessed her – and she had not come. I was the only public man who openly blessed her – that she should win the election, that she was needed by the country, that not only should she try for the election, but once she was in parliament she should try to get back as the prime minister…because Morarji Desai had proved that he was absolutely useless.None of the saints she had gone to said anything, made any statement. I was the only man who made a statement. And she had not come to me. She told her secretary, “Osho is really a courageous man, and I would like to thank him. But publicly I cannot do it. Thinking of him and myself, I feel so small.”The secretary came because she belonged to Pune. She told Laxmi that Indira had felt deeply hurt that she had gone all over India, and even Vinoba Bhave – who was her political master – was also silent when she came, just not to have to say anything.Do you think these people are wise? They are as political as anybody else.And what wisdom did they give to her?Only I behaved non-politically, because I understood completely that she wanted to come, but her situation, the people who surrounded her, the people on whom she depended for the election, would not allow her to come. She was almost a prisoner.But that did not change my attitude. And when nobody had spoken for her – this was so ugly…. I spoke – in the same statement – for Indira, who had no power yet, and against the man who had all the powers.These folk tales are hopes that one day it may be possible. There is great understanding in them, but it has not happened. And I don’t see it ever happening, because the man who is in power has to think of how to remain in power. And the wise man will say only the truth: whether it destroys your power or supports it is not his concern. Most probably it will destroy it, because where can truth and politics meet?If truth and politics cannot meet, then it is almost hoping against hope that people of power will one day go to the people of wisdom.Hindus will say that it was happening in ancient India – that when Rama was in any political trouble he would go to Vashishtha, his spiritual teacher. This is true, but the problem is that whenever Vashishtha was in difficulty, he would go to Rama. And as I have looked deeper into their lives, my finding is that Vashishtha was only a missionary who was spreading the gospel that Rama is an incarnation of God – and for this he was paid well.So what is on the surface is one thing, and what goes on inside is a totally different thing.Now you can see that President Ronald Reagan goes to the pope – and you think this is power going to wisdom? First you have to decide whether this pope has any wisdom. Secondly you have to decide what motive Ronald Reagan has for going to the pope.His motive is to turn America into a very fanatic Christian country, for the simple reason that America has been fighting against Russia, and it is a losing battle. Russia has been gaining new lands, new people; America has been losing friends; it has not been gaining new people. Even inside America there are thousands of communists and thousands of communist sympathizers.One of the problems has been that America has no philosophy against communism. Communism has a great philosophy, with great intellectual arguments, with a great humanitarian background. America has none. It does not appeal to the intelligent people in the world. All the intelligentsia of the world are impressed by communism, but not by America; so America has been in search of a philosophy.And this is the effort: if Christianity…because half the world is Christian and half the world is communist – the division is almost equal. If America can become the head and herald of all the Christian masses in the world, then Reagan could have a philosophy, a religion, a two-thousand-year-old tradition and millions of missionaries, monks, nuns and Jesus Christ behind him.This is the strategy behind his continuing to meet the pope. The whole idea is that if America can stand with Christianity, then America can give a better fight to Russia. But Reagan is wrong. Christianity has no argument strong enough to encounter communism.The Christians may have a formal belief in Christ, in the Bible, but it is not of the heart: it is a Sunday religion, a kind of sociality.Communism is different. If Ronald Reagan really wants…then he should not have destroyed our commune. We would have given the answer, point by point, to every communist argument.Christianity is old and rotten. To face communism, something is needed which is more contemporary than communism itself. Now communism is one century old; and within this century so much has been discovered that can be counted against communism.For example, communism is materialism – and now physicists say there is no matter. Matter simply does not exist.Rather than going back to Christ, Ronald Reagan should have come to me. I could give him the idea that materialism could be thrown out completely, because modern physics has proved experimentally that there is no matter. So materialism has no base to stand on.Modern psychology has proved that equality is nonsense: no two individuals are equal, so the very idea of all people being equal is not workable. And if you try to work it out then you will have to force people; and every enforcement will be in favor of the lowest.You cannot make an idiot into an Einstein. Even by forcing him, what can the idiot do? But you can force an Einstein to remain an idiot, or at least not to assert anything beyond the limits of an idiot.Equality is possible only at the lowest denominator. But that will destroy the whole of humanity and all progress. So my proposal is not equality of all men, but equal opportunity for all men to be unequal, to be unique and to be themselves – equal opportunity to Einstein and to the idiot. The opportunity should not be different. Now it is up to the Einstein where he wants to move.Something newer than communism itself is needed; something higher than communism itself. But Ronald Reagan will go to the pope, for the simple reason that the pope has six hundred million Catholics.I don’t have; I have millions of enemies around the world. No politician can dare to come near me; if somebody comes to know that he has been to see to me, then his credibility, his respectability is finished. But they don’t understand simple historical logic: that Christianity, which is two thousand years old, cannot fight with communism, which is only one hundred years old.Communism can be fought by something which is absolutely new, against which communism cannot find any argument. But of course a man who brings something absolutely new will not have traditional support; he will not have millions of people and millions of churches. But only such a man has the potential to create the fire that can destroy communism completely.So there have been politicians, people of power, who have been going to the wise. But that was also a part of their politics. It was not genuine search.These stories are just hopes, beautiful hopes, which perhaps are never going to be fulfilled.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 23 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,As most people in modern Europe look at their landscape, they find that the cities they live in vary from inhospitable to frankly dangerous; that the jobs they do (if they are “lucky” enough to have one) are dull, boring, and meaningless; that the relationships they have are tolerable at the best, and love is a rarity; and that the future holds very little to look forward to. How long will it take for people to realize that one of the root causes of this stupid catastrophe is that the systems of life that they so avidly support have no leaders who are capable of bowing down to wisdom?It won’t take long for them to realize the catastrophic situation they are in.There is a limit to everything. People can tolerate up to a point, but if it becomes a question of life and death, then there is a sudden outburst of intelligence in ordinary people. You would never have expected it.The people who are in power are not going to the people of wisdom, ever. Power corrupts so deeply and gives such a big ego that even to ask advice becomes impossible.The revolution is going to happen not through the powerful people but through the common people – and they have tolerated enough. And it is coming to a climax. The climax is on one hand very painful; but on the other hand it is a new beginning, a fresh beginning.It is true that people’s lives are loveless. They don’t have any joy in their work. They are bored, they don’t feel any meaning in their life. They are just running like robots. Their cities are no longer places of beauty, and nature has been destroyed very deeply.All these things together come to one point, the central point; and that is that the people have depended too much on people who have power. It has been almost a kind of slavery.It is time to revolt and throw out these people who have power, and to destroy the whole system of power. There is no need for them, because they are not doing anything except destroying more and more qualities which make life worth living.Secondly, people have to understand that the people they have been thinking are wise are not so. In fact most of their misery is because of those “wise” people and the powerful people; they both need to be overthrown.The common man has to assert himself and common sense has to prevail. It does not need great wisdom, it only needs common sense.For example, people’s lives are loveless – there is no need to ask any wise man why, because they are the people who have made it loveless. Just common insight is enough.Men and women are not naturally made to live their whole life together. It is not only a question of men and women; it is that the same thing continuously repeated creates boredom – the same husband, the same wife, the same quarrel, the same argument, the same tantrum – exactly the same! It goes on being repeated again and again. It destroys the very possibility of love. Instead it creates boredom – it has created it.The common-sense thing is that there should be no marriage and there should be no divorce. Any two persons loving each other can live together, that is their private affair – nothing to do with society, nothing to do with the state. The law should not come between them.There should be no promises except that, “We will love each other as long as existence allows it. The moment we feel that love has left – that it is no longer there connecting us, no longer there nourishing us – we have to part quickly, before it becomes bitterness, a quarrel. And we have to depart in gratitude, with all our heart’s blessings full for the other – that she or he will find a better man or a better woman.” And boredom will disappear; life will become a series of excitements.Boredom is in getting stuck at one point – repeating, repeating, repeating. Joy is in exploration – finding new people, new spaces. It is simple common sense.People are bored in their job because they allowed others to decide their job; their parents wanted them to be a doctor, so they are a doctor. They never had any inner urge to be a doctor, and they never listened to their inner voice.It is never too late; they can start listening to their inner voice. And it is better to drop a job and do the thing they always wanted to do. It may be a loss in salary; economically it may not be good, but spiritually it is going to take away the boredom. And what are you going to do with the money, with all the facilities that the job gives you, if you are utterly bored? It is better to be a beggar but not bored, than to be an emperor and be bored.These are common-sense insights.The cities are becoming bigger and bigger. The villages are disappearing, and with the disappearing villages the pure air, the unpolluted atmosphere – that is disappearing.People should just see it; they should start moving towards the villages. They should start doing farming, gardening; and there are thousands of other things. It just needs a little courage.The city has no future.Small villages can convert themselves into communes, which would give them a new structure, which would make people free of children and would make the children free of parental power. And they could have more fresh food, fresh water, fresh air.There were all running to the city for one thing – because it gives money, and the villages cannot give money. Why have villages been disappearing, and big, monstrous cities coming up? The reason is that everybody is after money, not understanding a simple thing, that money cannot buy anything that makes life a beautiful, blissful pilgrimage. It can buy many things, but they are useless if the man himself loses his soul.If the cities disappear into villages, much of the pollution will also disappear. The cities are almost like a canceric growth, that goes on growing bigger and bigger. The people in power cannot do anything because their power needs money – not love, not blissfulness, not joy – just money.And your so-called wise people are nothing but politicians in another garb of religious heads; their whole interest is also in power. It is a different kind of power, more subtle, but all the same it is power. They would not like the cities to disappear.Their power depends on the boredom of man, his loveless life, his meaningless life, his anguish, because these are the things which bring people to their feet – to the churches, to the temples, to the synagogues. They may say great things, but basically they don’t want these things to disappear. If these things completely disappeared, churches would be empty and nobody would go to the synagogue – there is no reason to go…you go to the physician because you are sick.There is a certain vested interest that the physician has in your sickness. I have heard of a young man who had just come home from medical college. His father was not feeling well. He said, “I would like to rest for a few days. And now you are back fully qualified…I am proud of you, that you topped the university – now you take care of the dispensary.”After three days the son came and told the father, “You must be proud of me! That old woman – the richest in the city, whom you have been treating for thirty years – I have treated her in three days. Now she is perfectly okay.”The father said “My God! She is the woman who has paid all your fees and all your expenses at medical college. She is also paying the expenses of your younger brother in college. You have destroyed half of my business!“You idiot, don’t you know that when a poor man comes you should cure him immediately, because he is going to be an unnecessary harassment. When a rich man comes, take time – there is no hurry. If one illness disappears, let another appear. A really rich man should be a lifelong patient. This is a basic rule of the profession. You have learned medicine, but you have not learned the medical profession.”The priest has a vested interest in man’s misery.And it is really unbelievable, but it is the truth: the magistrate has a vested interest in criminals, the advocates have a vested interest in criminals. They are supposed to do justice, they are supposed to be fair; but basically their profession is based on these poor people. If everybody is a nice, good gentleman and there is no criminal anywhere, what are all your magistrates, all your jailers, all your advocates, and all your legal professionals going to do? They will have to commit suicide – their whole profession will be gone.The common people have to understand this simple thing. They should move back to the villages because money has not given anything…more gadgets, but gadgets don’t create love, don’t create freedom, don’t create joy. Go to the villages, make small communes.And to work with nature is a healthy thing. All the jobs that the city provides are unhealthy, because people are sitting the whole day in chairs. Man is not made for that; his body is made for at least eight hours’ physical labor. Basically he was a hunter, running after wild and fast animals. And that was his food. He managed for thousands of years, and naturally he had a certain health that modern man cannot afford. If you don’t use a certain part of your body, that part slowly becomes useless; then you cannot use it.People have to move back to the villages, to the forest, to the mountains. It will be a hard life, but it will be natural, it will be beautiful, it will have a joy. And they should make small communes, so love need not be a forced thing.Ordinarily marriage is nothing but licensed prostitution.This is ugly.Except for love there should be no other thing between two persons.In the villages, in the mountains, in the communes, the woman will have a similar kind of work to the man. She will not be financially dependent on man; she will be producing, she will be creative.And let the cities die. It happened many times in the past – it can happen again. There is no necessity for anything to live forever.I have seen a few places in India…. In one place I was staying in a government guesthouse. Now it is just a small hill station, the population of the city today is only ninety. These are the people who serve the visitors, the tourists. There was a time that the city had a unimaginable population, looking at today’s population of ninety: it had hundreds of thousands of people.It was one of the biggest cities, Mandu. And you can find the proof in the ruins. There are mosques where ten thousand people can pray together. There are caravanserai – just ruins – where thousands of camels could have an overnight stay. And if you look from the top, all over the mountain there are ruins as far as you can see.I asked a man who was my friend and was living there…there is a great palace and other small palaces and a beautiful lake. I said, “What happened to the city? This big city suddenly disappeared without any war.”He said, “This city was the camels’ route, and in that day camels were the vehicles that carried the goods from one place to another. So from Kabul to Indore this was the only route. Thousands of camels moved through here continuously, and the city was flourishing. But then things changed….”The camel was found to no longer be an adequate means to take goods from one place to another, so bullock carts replaced the camel. But the route that goes through Mandu is a desert; only camels can go on that route, bullock carts cannot. They had to find a new route. Bullock carts were cheaper; naturally camels were abandoned. With their abandonment, the route that passed through Mandu was abandoned.Mandu lost its source of money, and people had to go away. What could you do there? On that mountain you cannot grow anything – they lived only on the constant traffic. Such a huge city simply disappeared! People left their houses and moved to places where they could earn something.It is only a question of a simple understanding: cities are now killing people with pollution, with AIDS, with other diseases. It will be good if people move into the open air, with nature.And the needs of man are not so many, the needs of man are very limited – just his ego has an unlimited desire for more and more and more. The ego has created the whole problem. And on the way it has destroyed many human qualities.In a big city you are in a crowd, but still a stranger. And everybody is in such a hurry: everybody is running from job to home, from home to job, and it may be miles. He has to catch his train, his bus. Nobody has time for strangers, nobody even says hello to a stranger.In a small village everybody is known to everybody else. Everybody is in some way related to somebody else. There is a friendship – in a real sense a commune, because there is a communication. People are not islands. If somebody falls ill the whole village will come to inquire. If somebody is not in good enough health to work in the fields, then the whole village will help him. This is simply human. Because he has helped others, others will help him – it is a simple phenomenon.And with my idea of love not being a static thing, the village can become a paradise, self-sufficient. And man has to choose – he has come to the point where he will have to choose: Do you want love? Do you want a meaningful life? Do you want blissfulness? Or you can choose to have dead gadgets, new mechanisms.And the answer is simple. What will you do with machines? Man needs human energy.I am not against machines. But I am saying that the emphasis should be on human relationship. Machines can be used if they are not against human relationship, if they are not against ecology. If they are against ecology, if they are against human relationship, then they are not to exist at all.Neither the people in power are going to do it, nor are the so-called saints and wise people going to do it. They are both conspirators. They both depend on your pain, misery, meaninglessness. They cannot do anything.They also depend on the industrialist, because in their elections the industrialist will be the one who will give the money. So they cannot go against the industries that are polluting the air, cutting the trees, destroying the ecology, poisoning the water, the rivers, the lakes, even the oceans. They cannot do it, because if they do it, their own money that they will need at election time will not be available.For the first time the common man has to stand on his own legs and depend on his own common sense. And these are simple, common-sense things – they don’t need great wisdom.This whole life on the planet can go through a great revolution without any bloodshed.Just a pure understanding will become the revolution.And if people start moving away from the cities, deserting them, they will cut the people of power off from their money sources – because who is going to run their industries and factories? They will cut the power of the religious heads – because who is going to gather in their cathedrals and synagogues?And my understanding of religion is that it needs no synagogues, no temples, no churches. It is a simple heart-to-heart communion with nature. You can sit by the side of a river and meditate, you can sit in the mountains and meditate. And as you become aware of the knack of meditation then you can continue to work and meditate. Then there is no conflict, and no question of time.And meditation is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan, nor Christian. Meditation is simply a science. Just as science is not Christian, and science is not Hindu, and science is not Buddhist…. It would be a mad world if there were Buddhist chemistry and Hindu chemistry and Christian chemistry – people would simply laugh because the laws of chemistry are the same.The same is true about the inner science – which has been known up to now as religion. The methods of reaching to your innermost center are scientific; there is no question of any adjective, they are the same. It is absolutely unnecessary to call them Christian or Hindu.The common person has a tremendous power in his hands. If he moves into small communes, deserts the cities which are dying, which are nothing but citadels of crime…. If he moves away, he takes the power of the powerful and the wisdom of the so-called wise.And it is beautiful to have a small commune where everybody knows everybody else, understands everybody; where everybody is ready to help, is always available in times when there is need.In a city you are absolutely alone. You may be living in the same building and you may not yet have been introduced; in one building thousands of people are living. And the city life is so speedy that there is no time to sit and gossip, to play cards or to play music, or to have a communal dance. All those beautiful things have disappeared. In small communes we can revive everything that was of beauty.I have been to aboriginal tribes…the whole day they will be working in their fields or in the mines. But by the evening, after their meals, they will all gather in the middle of the village with all their instruments. They will have music and they will have dance – and it will continue late into the night.It was so beautiful to see that they have not become mechanical. They do the work which is needed for their food; otherwise they enjoy their time. They will play cards…and in a small place, where maybe fifty people, a hundred people are living, they will all gather together gossiping. There is something human in it.The city has made the human being inhuman.But the revolution that has to come, has to come from the common people themselves. The powerful people – whether in wisdom or in political power – are too involved in this system. They cannot change it; they will go on making it grow. And the common man will be crushed – he is being crushed.Houses have become just boxes – boxes upon boxes. They don’t have the beauty of a house. They are no longer houses; the space has gone on shrinking. Small rooms which perhaps are not natural…they are claustrophobic. And every being, man or animal, has a territorial imperative – an area of big space around himself where he is totally free to move.Scientists have discovered that the most difficult thing for animals in zoos is that they lose their territory. If you go to a zoo and see a lion, you will be simply surprised: he is simply going round and round, round and round in his cage. What is he doing? He is trying, by traveling so much, to deceive himself that he has his territory.All the animals, lions…and we know about dogs because they are more common. You may never have thought about why they do it – dogs will go on pissing on this pole, on that pole, on this stone…. If you watch, the same dog will do the same thing on the same pole, on the same stone every day – because animals are very, very sensitive in their smell. He is creating a boundary: “Beware, this area belongs to me!”He is creating a fence of smell. You may not smell it, but other dogs smell it: it is dangerous to enter. And it has been observed that if another dog comes, he immediately stops at an invisible barrier and thinks twice, whether to enter or not. And the dog inside looks at him, but he is not agitated or ferocious or angry because the other dog is still outside his territory. One step in and he will go mad. He knows where the territory is, the outside dog knows where the territory is.And in jungles, all animals make their territories the same way, and most of their territories are respected by other animals. But you put them in a zoo, in a small cage, and you destroy their freedom. Perhaps something of their soul is crushed.What about man?If all animals have a territory, a certain territory, a determinable territory – if lions have only that much territory, all the lions – then what about man? It is not possible that he has no territorial imperative. He also has it. But in the crowds of a city how can he manage a territory? And if he cannot manage a space around himself, perhaps he is losing something of his inner being too.So it is not strange that when you go out of the city, in the open – in the forest, near the ocean, or in the mountains – suddenly you feel an expansion of being. That expansion of being is a very scientific phenomenon – nothing poetic. It is your territory; there, you can have it.The world is big enough still – people can move. They have moved to the cities because they are center of money. If they understand only one thing – that money cannot buy anything of value, and you have lost everything, running after money….Go back! Go to the world where you belong – to the trees, to the animals, to the rivers, to the mountains.Osho,Is it okay to have a secret?It is a complicated question.For a man like me it is not okay to have a secret. There is nothing to hide. Everything should be made available to people, everything should be shared. So the awakened person cannot have a secret.But the unawakened person is bound to have secrets, for the simple reason that he is living in a mad world – he has not been able to raise his consciousness above it. If he opens his secrets to other people, they may exploit him, they may take advantage of it – they are certainly going to take advantage of it.So for the unawakened it is okay to have secrets; otherwise he will be creating so many troubles for himself that he may not be able to manage them.Just one thing he has to remember: if he loves someone he should not have any secrets with the person he loves, because every secret is a barrier. If you love a person, then there should be nothing in you that the person is not allowed to know. Between the two of you there should not be anything private, secretive. That is part, an essential part of love.But that is only between two persons who love each other. In love they have become almost one – there is no question of keeping a secret. But to the world at large it is not needed to open your secrets. Nobody is asking, nobody is bothered; and why should you open your secrets? And your secrets will give them power over you.The Catholic church has a tradition of confession: every Catholic has to confess to the priest what sins he has committed. This is a very cunning strategy, because the priest knows all your secrets, all your sins. You cannot leave the fold, otherwise he can expose you.You have given your power into his hands.Just a few months ago, the pope announced to the Catholics that one of the greatest sins is to confess to God directly. You have to confess through the priest, otherwise it is a sin.Why should it be a sin if somebody confesses to God directly? But the pope’s concern is that if people start confessing directly to God, then who is going to confess to the priest? It is embarrassing. And then the priest’s power over people will be lost. So you have committed one sin; you are committing a greater sin if you confess to God directly. A mediator, a priest is an absolute necessity.In politics it is an everyday affair. In India, the first prime minister remained in power long enough to know everybody’s weaknesses, everybody’s crimes; and he had maintained a file. That file was power: You cannot betray him, you cannot go against him; otherwise you will be in very great difficulty. He knows some secret that he can expose about you.When he died, the file went into the hands of his daughter. That was her power; otherwise she had no power. She was not a politician; but even without being a politician she maintained a tremendous power – more than her father. And the file went on growing bigger and bigger.About every politician in India they had every secret. Whatever they had been forgiven for had been reported; it could be exposed any moment, and the man would be finished. They may have been chief ministers, they may have been governors, they may have been cabinet ministers – but they were all puppets because of the file.And you will be surprised that when Sanjay Gandhi, Indira’s son, died in an accident just close to their house in an airplane, everybody rushed there. As Indira was informed, she rushed there. The most amazing thing is that she was not concerned about what had happened, how he died. What she was concerned about was: “Where are those two keys he was carrying?”The son has died – can you think of a mother asking about two keys that he was carrying? And first she got hold of those two keys; only then she did make other inquiries.I have been told, those two keys were the keys to all the secret files against the politicians of India – because that was her power. If those two keys are lost then it will be a difficult job – first those two keys…. Perhaps one key was concerned with the files and the other key was concerned with the money they were keeping in hiding. And this was a constant fight between Sanjay and Indira: he wanted those two keys.I don’t know exactly, but people who knew their house and their inner workings say that he even slapped his mother once because she was adamant and would not give him those two keys. And finally she had to give them to him because he was creating too much trouble for her. Just to console him, she gave him those two keys.And I don’t see that she was very much hurt by his death. Perhaps deep down she wanted it. He was not the man she wanted to replace her; her elder son was the person that she wanted to take her place. But whoever had all those secrets would be the prime minister. This is how, for forty years, one family has been ruling the whole country in the name of democracy – but it is really a dynasty. And if they go on keeping those secrets they may be able to continue.So I will not say that you have to tell your secrets to everyone. In the first place, what is the need? But yes, if you love a person then don’t keep any secrets. It makes you closer, more intimate.But if you become awakened, enlightened, then of course you are available to all, with no secrets. You should be an absolutely open book. Anybody can read it – because now you exist for others, your own existence is fulfilled. And nobody can exploit you, nobody can take advantage of you in any way.The enlightened person is in a position to open himself totally, but nobody else is in that position.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 24 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I have had a strong feeling of sex and death over the last few weeks.Is it necessary that I understand why?It is always necessary to understand how your mind is functioning, how your heart is doing, what is happening to your interior world. Trying to understand it will give you a certain distance from those things, and an awareness that they may be there but you are not identified with them. That is the great alchemy of understanding.Try to understand everything within yourself.In the very fact that you are trying to understand, you become separate from it; it becomes an object. And you can never become an object, you are always the subject; it is not possible to change your subjectivity into an object. So that gives a good distance between you and your feelings, whatever they are. That is one thing.The second thing: this distance will give you a possibility of understanding what is happening to you.Nothing happens without any cause. And sometimes there are things which are very fundamental. For example, the question is one of the most fundamental questions – the connection between sex and death. And if you can see it clearly, slowly the distance between death and sex will disappear and they will become almost one energy.Perhaps sex is death in installments.And death is sex wholesale.But there is certainly one energy functioning at both corners. Sex is the beginning of life, and death is the end of the same life; so they are the two ends of one energy, two poles of one energy. They cannot be unconnected.There is only one living being, the amoeba, which has no sex life; but then it has no death either. It can go on living for millions of years; it dies only accidentally. Death is not intrinsic, because there is no intrinsic sex. The way the amoeba recreates itself is very strange: it simply goes on eating, becoming bigger and bigger. And there is a certain limit at which it cannot go on becoming bigger; then it splits in two. That is the way amoebas go on growing. Both will go on living, giving birth in the same way, but there is nothing like sex in that life.The point to note is, there is not any natural death either. They can live, given the opportunity, forever.Death and sex remind me of one spider found in Africa, where death and sex come very close to each other. In man there is a distance of seventy years, eighty years; but in that particular species of spider there is no distance. The male spider makes love only once in his life. While he is making love, the moment he comes to an orgasmic state, the female starts eating him. But he is in such an euphoria, he does not care that he is being eaten. By the time his orgasm is finished, he is also finished.Death and sex are so close…but whether they are close or distant – they are not different energies. So one can feel them arising together.It is good to see them together, it is a great understanding – because people don’t see it. People are almost blind, they never connect death with sex. Perhaps it is an unconscious fear that prevents them connecting the two, because if they start connecting death with sex they may become afraid of sex itself – and that is dangerous for its biological purpose. It is better for biology that they don’t connect them.It has been noted that whenever people are beheaded – there are still a few countries where this happens – the strangest thing observed is: the moment the man is beheaded, he ejaculates – without exception.It is strange, because while his neck is being broken, is this the time to ejaculate? But it is not within his capacity…. When death is happening to him, when life is leaving him, it is natural that his sexual energy also leaves. It was part of the whole phenomenon. There is no point in it remaining in his body.The question is significant. It does not mean that you are going to die. It simply means your sexual energy is coming to its highest peak; hence you are feeling death also. It would not be felt if the sexual energy was being released.Whoever has asked the question must not be making love. Energy is accumulating, coming to such intensity that it is automatic to remember death. Death, if you die consciously, brings you the greatest orgasm you have ever had in your life.It is meaningful to understand why religions have been against sex, for many reasons. Basically the idea was that if you can remain celibate you can prolong your life as long as you want. That idea is still present.Mahatma Gandhi in India became celibate – he was nearabout forty – because he wanted to live up to the age of a hundred and twenty-five to fight the freedom struggle and to bring it to a conclusion. That was the reason to go into celibacy – to prolong life.There is a possibility that if by some scientific means a man’s sexual energy is absorbed in his own body, the body will go on renewing, rejuvenating itself for a long time. But ordinarily these so-called celibates are not celibate. The energy is released in some way or other. Even at the age of seventy, Mahatma Gandhi was having nocturnal emissions. And he died with the idea that he had failed in being totally celibate, that’s why he was dying before the time he had decided.The idea has a great potentiality in it. But as far as man is concerned, he cannot do anything directly; it is something that biologists have to do – to change the sexual energy that accumulates, to revitalize the body rather than being released from the body. Perhaps a scientific celibacy may help man’s life to be longer.But remember, I am talking about scientific celibacy. It has nothing to do with religious celibacy – that is simply stupid. You cannot do anything with your biology; you don’t know anything about your biology or how it functions.By the way, woman lives longer than man lives, is healthier than man, is more resistant to disease, does not go mad as easily as man, does not commit suicide so easily. The reason may be that her sexual energy is negative. The positive energy is the active force; the negative energy is the absorbing force.Perhaps because of this negative, absorbing energy, she has a healthier body, is more resistant to disease, and lives longer. And if biology could manage to get her free from her monthly periods, she could live even longer and healthier. She could really become the stronger sex.So the idea of sex and death arising together, simply shows that the sexual energy is accumulating – positive or negative. And negative energy can be accumulated longer.In fact, I have been watching Jaina monks and nuns, who are perhaps the most sincere people in what they are doing…. It may be stupid, but their sincerity is beyond doubt. The nuns seem to take it quite easily, remaining celibate. But the monks get into tremendous difficulty – the same difficulty as Christian monks or any other monks.Negative energy simply means it is more silent, waiting for the active energy so that it can absorb it. But it has no active force of its own. These are the reasons why I am against things like lesbianism. It is simply stupid – two negative energies trying to reach to some orgasmic peak. It is simply that either they are pretending, or what they are calling their orgasm is only clitoral, it is not vaginal. And clitoral orgasm is nothing compared to the vaginal orgasm. Clitoral orgasm is just a kind of foreplay. It can help to bring the vaginal orgasm, but it cannot replace it.It is really very amazing that such an intimate thing as lovemaking has remained in darkness. I am making the statement – and this is for the first time in the whole of history that anyone has made this statement – that clitoral orgasm can be of immense help as foreplay; otherwise the psychologists have been at a loss as to what to make of it, because it has no biological function. To avoid the question, many psychologists even have denied that there is any vaginal orgasm, there is only clitoral orgasm.Man’s orgasm is so quick that he cannot create the vaginal orgasm in that small period of time – a few seconds. But if clitoral orgasm is created just as foreplay, it is creating a situation for the vaginal orgasm to happen. It has already started: the clitoral orgasm has triggered the process in the body.But men pay no attention to the clitoral orgasm, because their orgasm can happen easily only with vaginal contact. They are interested only in their own orgasm, and when they are finished they don’t think about the woman at all.Lesbianism is spreading in the woman’s liberation movement because it is giving them clitoral orgasm; but that is another stupidity because it is simply foreplay. It is as if you had the preface of the book but the book is missing. So you go on reading the preface as long as you want, again and again, but you don’t go into the book at all.If the woman is waiting and waiting, she also accumulates a negative energy which she absorbs. If it is too much, then the idea of death can come, because having love in this state, and having a really beautiful orgasmic feeling, will give her an insight into what happens at death.There is nothing to fear in it; nothing is destroyed. It is the ultimate peak of your life.If you have lived your life unconsciously, in misery, in suffering, then before death comes, you are bound to go into a coma. So you don’t experience the orgasm, or the awareness that death is not happening to you, to your being, but is happening only to the body, to the vehicle that you have been using up to now.If the question is from a man, the same is to be understood. But very rarely can a man come to such a peak that he can start thinking of death. His energy is so dynamic, active, that before he comes to such a peak, the energy is released. So my feeling is the question is from a woman.And nobody has listened to the woman. Nobody has even taken care about what she feels, how she feels. One thing has been understood by man for centuries – in India we have paintings, statues, depicting the phenomenon – that man has felt in woman a certain kind of death. That is a misunderstanding. It is not in the woman, it is in your sexual energy itself.But that’s how men always project things; they cannot see that their own sexual energy brings them close to death. And they cannot see very clearly because their sexual energy never comes to such a peak that it reminds them of death. But women, if listened to, have many things of wisdom to say about the phenomenon.The wise woman has been destroyed by Christianity. They were burned in their thousands in the Middle Ages. The word witch simply means a wise woman, but because it was so condemned, even the word has become condemnatory; otherwise it is a compliment. It is equal to the man of wisdom. All over the world there were wise women, and there were matters into which only a wise woman could give an insight.These statues in India, and the paintings, are very strange if you don’t understand the phenomenon. For example, Shiva is lying down, and his wife, Shivani, is dancing on his chest with a naked sword in one hand, and with a recently-cut head in the other hand; she has a garland of heads, blood is oozing out of all the heads and she is in a mad dance. It seems she will kill Shiva. That dance is so mad, and the woman is in such a mad state, there is no hope for Shiva.What I have been saying is related to such experiences. In the East, the woman has been listened to. There has never been anything like what happened in the West – killing and burning women. Women of wisdom have always been listened to, and their wisdom has been absorbed – because they are half of man. Man’s wisdom is half; unless the woman’s wisdom is also absorbed, the wisdom cannot become a whole. She has to be asked what the experience is from her side.The woman, in many orgasmic experiences, particularly in the East, has felt death very close, almost hovering around. I say particularly in the East, because in the East in the ancient days, before repressive ideologies started making people split and schizophrenic, love was not to be made until the urge came to its peak.It was not that you have to make love every day. Both the partners should wait for each other to come to a state where it is no longer possible to hold on. Naturally, those people were far more wise. They might have been making love once a week or once a month, but their love yielded tremendous experiences which everyday love cannot yield.You don’t have enough energy for that great experience to happen. It needs to be at the peak of your control, throbbing with energy, and then it is really a dance, a merger and meeting of two energies. And at the highest peak, then man may also feel death surrounding him.One fact has to be remembered – that nobody in the whole history of man has died making love. That is strange! People have died in all kinds of situations, but nobody has died while he was making love. The feeling of death is there because it is all one energy, but as the sexual energy is released, the feeling of death disperses.Only lately has medical science accepted one fact, that the people who go on making love do not die of heart attacks. But they should ask: Do they die of anything else? They live longer, and remain younger. But you can make love at the lowest point…that’s where people are making it. It is not satisfying, not gratifying; it does not give you any contentment, it simply leaves you in despair.Love should be made at the highest peak, and that needs a certain discipline. People have used discipline to not make love. I teach discipline to make love rightly, so that your love is not just a biological thing, never reaching your psychological world. And it has the potential to reach even your spiritual world. At the highest peak it will reach your spiritual world.Why – at that point – is one certainly reminded of death? Because you forget your body, you forget your mind; you remain just a pure consciousness, merged with your partner. It is very, very similar to death.As you die – if you are dying consciously – you will forget the body, you will forget the mind…just consciousness, and then suddenly the consciousness merges into the whole. That merging with the whole is a thousandfold more beautiful than is possible through any orgasm. But both these things are certainly deeply related. They are one. And anyone who wants to understand death, has to understand sex – or vice versa.But strange – people like Sigmund Freud or Carl Gustav Jung, who are trying to understand sex, are so much afraid of death. Their understanding of sex cannot go very far. And as far as death is concerned, nobody thinks about it, nobody even wants to talk about it.If you start on the subject of death people think you don’t know your manners. It is something that has not to be talked about; death has to be simply ignored. But by ignoring death you cannot understand life. They are all connected: sex is the beginning, death is the end. Life is just in between, the energy that flows from sex to death. All three have to be understood together.The effort has not been made. The experiments have not been made, particularly in the contemporary world. In the East, way back, before Buddha and Mahavira, they must have looked into the phenomenon very closely. Otherwise, what is the need to make Shiva’s wife dance on his chest with a garland of skulls and in her hands…one hand is holding a recently-cut head, blood is flowing, and in the other hand is a naked sword? She looks absolutely mad.This is just a pictorial illustration of the deepest state of orgasm; this is how the woman can be depicted. And the man is just lying under her as she dances. She can cut off his head or he may die just from the dance on his chest. But one thing is certain, that death is there. Whether death happens or not, that is another thing.Perhaps this is one of the reasons – unconsciously…because in the West they have always been afraid. They chose only one posture to make love in – that is, with the man on top, so that he is in control and the woman cannot go absolutely berserk, the way Shivani goes on Shiva’s chest.And the woman has been taught for centuries that she must not even move, because that is not lady-like – only prostitutes move. She has to lie down almost as if she is dead, unmoving. She will never attain any orgasm, clitoral or vaginal. But she is a lady, and the question of reputation, respectability…. She is not allowed to enjoy, she has to be serious in the whole affair. It is only the man who can make movements, not the woman.My insight is that this is because of the fear. In the East the common position for love is with the woman on top, not the man. The man being on top is absolutely ugly. He is heavier, he is taller, and he is just crushing a delicate woman unnecessarily. And it will be scientifically right that he is not on the top so that he cannot move much, and the woman has more freedom to move – to scream with joy, to beat the man, to bite the man, to scratch his face, or whatsoever comes to her.She has to be a Shivani. She does not have a sword, but she has nails, long nails; she can do much with those nails. And if she is on top she is faster, the man is slower, and that can bring them together to the orgasmic peak. With the man on top and the woman under him it is impossible to come together to the orgasmic peak. But the man has not cared; he has simply used the woman.The ancient Eastern wisdom had a totally different attitude. In the time of the Upanishads, the woman was respected the same as the man. There was no question of inequality. She read all the religious scriptures, she was allowed even to go to great discussions.In one of the great debates called by a king, all the great philosophers and scholars had gathered. He had one thousand cows with gold covering on their horns for the one who was victorious. The debate continued, and about midday Yagnavalkya, one of the most logical minds, came in and told his disciples, “Take the cows to the ashram because they are tired, standing in the hot sun. And as far as the debate goes, I will take care of it.”So confident was he that he was going to win, he took the award before winning! – those cows were going to be given to the person who was victorious. But he was proved wrong – and he was proved wrong by a woman. Those must have been beautiful days, when even a woman was allowed to discuss the highest and the most complex questions of life in the court.The woman did not ask Yagnavalkya many questions. She said, “First I want to ask you: Who created the world?” And Yagnavalkya said, “Everybody knows! Do you think this is a big question? God created the world!”She laughed – the name of the woman was Gargi. She said, “You don’t have great insight. I said I was going to ask only two questions and this was the first. Now I want to ask: Who created God? If you answer it, you fall into infinite regress.”That is a logical term meaning that you cannot come to any conclusion. You say, “Another god,” and it will be asked again, “Who created him?” You say, “Another god,” and the question remains the same; so it is absolutely foolish to bring the first god in – because it solves nothing; the question remains.Yagnavalkya became very angry. He was so respected, and the woman had put him in a corner, and the whole meeting of scholars was giggling and laughing. Somebody said, “Send somebody to bring those cows back!”In his anger, Yagnavalkya said, “Gargi, don’t ask such questions; otherwise your head will roll” – meaning “I will kill you!”Gargi said, “It would be a great pleasure for me to be killed by the greatest scholar in the country. But I am not going to ask anything else; you simply bring those one thousand cows back.”They had to be brought back, and Gargi took away those one thousand cows.The king was very happy. He said, “It is perfectly right.” And he said to Yagnavalkya, “You should behave. That woman was more cultured than you. Telling her, ‘Your head will roll’ is not the way of a wise man. And the woman did not retort.”If this kind of thing had continued – continual discussion and understanding between man and woman – we would have been far more ahead in everything.It was the worst day when man decided that woman was second-grade and had simply to follow man and his dictates. She is not even allowed to read scriptures, she is not allowed to discuss the great problems of life. And there is no question that she should be asked what the situation is from her side. Her side is half, and this rejection has kept man split, schizophrenic.It is time that we should bring man and woman wholeheartedly together. Their experiences, their understandings, their meditations, should make one whole – and that will be the beginning of a real humanity.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 25 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,How can I find out which of the many voices inside me is the one which comes from the real self to guide me? How can I be sure it doesn't come from the unconscious?It is very simple: none of the voices come from the inner self. All voices come from the mind. When all voices are absent, the inner self inspires you in silence towards a certain action, direction. It does not come in words – it is just a silent indication. Otherwise it would have been absolutely impossible to find out which one is the voice of the inner self.It is easy because no voice is of the inner self. So when all voices have died down and there is utter silence, the inner self is capable of taking your hand and moving you. That is the moment to be in a let-go, and allow it to take you wherever it takes you.In language we have to use words which do not apply to the inner reality – for example, the “inner voice.” There is no voice – it is simply the inner silence. But if we use the words “inner silence,” you will not get the idea that there is some inspiration or some direction which is being pointed to. Hence the words, “inner voice” have been used. But these are not the right words.Osho,In Europe today there is a disintegration of traditional values and an ideological void. The younger generation is called the “no-future generation.” Can you help?I am certainly helping – helping the older generation to disappear as quickly as possible, helping the old generation to be finished fast.And when they call, in an abusive way, the younger generation the “no-future generation,” to me it is not a condemnation. It is man coming of age.To live without future is the greatest courage. Only cowards live in the future.Man’s past has been very cowardly. It was living, not in the present, but in the future: all that has to happen is to happen tomorrow. And in that hope they lived, and they died. And what they were waiting for never turned up. It proved to be waiting for Godot.The younger generation will have to pass through a very painful experience, because for centuries man has lived either in the past or in the future – never in the present.The present has remained unexplored, unlived.And that is the only reality there is.The younger generation will find it a little difficult to detach itself completely from the old hang-up, and not to be worried that there is no future. On the contrary, rejoice that now there is no future, and we can live in the present. Nobody can live in the future. Future is only a word to keep you going, dragging on. Future does not exist.So it is a maturity. The disintegration of the past traditions and traditional values is a blessing. They need not be restored. And the younger generation facing a “no future” is a tremendous revolution in consciousness.Individually we have been talking about meditation as living in the present – and a few people have lived in the present and reached to the optimum consciousness. But it has happened to only very few individuals. And the greater humanity may have worshipped these people, but it has never believed in them, because it was not their experience – and they were millions against one man. He may be cheating them. He may be himself delusioned, living in a hallucinatory world.But because this type of man had certain beautiful qualities which were lacking in the ordinary man, it created a suspicion in their minds: “Perhaps he is not mad – perhaps he is right.” But there was no other proof except those few attributes of love and compassion, of no anger, of no greed.If a whole generation faces “no future,” it is immensely important, because there is no other way for it to live other than meditatively – because to live in the present, meditation is the only way.So first there will be pain and anguish. The old safety is gone, the old security is gone, the old hope is gone; the new generation is being uprooted from the past. But soon it will feel tremendous freedom, a great unburdening; and a realization that the future had never existed – it was just a mind game.And we have been befooled by the mind for centuries.Now the present is there – whatever you want to make of it you can. And the present is so fleeting. You don’t get two points together; just one single point, one single second, and when it has gone, then the second second…. The time is very small. You have to be very intensive and very total to use it. When time is vast, you need not be total, you need not be intensive. You can spread yourself all over time. There is no urgency, there is always future.But when there is no future, you have only one moment. You cannot afford to waste it in thinking, in planning, in memories, in imagination. You cannot afford it. You have such a small time that you would like to live it. And the smallness gives you intensity and totality.So the “no future” generation is going to be the beginning of the new humanity I have been talking about.The new man is not going to have any future – but the present is more than enough.Osho,I have done so many therapy groups in order to deprogram myself; and above all I have the greatest fortune in existence to be so close to you. Still, sometimes I feel like having moved miles from where I was stuck a few years ago, and sometimes I feel I haven't moved one inch. Then I feel so desperate that everything seems to be futile. I can watch this happening but still there is suffering.Please give your advice.It happens to everybody, because both the experiences are still of the mind. The beautiful space and the despair, the suffering – they are not opposite to each other. They are part of the same mind, because mind exists in duality.It is just like a bullock cart: two wheels are needed. You cannot have a bullock cart with one wheel. The mind is even older than a bullock cart – it is the mind that invented the bullock cart.The trouble arises when you start identifying yourself with the beautiful moments, then you are getting ready for trouble. Then soon the other thing is going to happen: you will be suffering, you will be desperate.So the first thing to be understood is that both things are of the mind. That will give you a little distance from both the experiences. And secondly, don’t bother about the suffering and the despair. Concentrate when you are feeling beautiful, when you are feeling that you have moved miles from where you were stuck. That is the moment to remember, “It is a mind game, and I am not going to participate. I am going to remain simply a witness.”Not identifying with the beautiful moment will automatically destroy the other part: the suffering, the despair.People always do vice-versa; and that is not possible in the nature of things, because the second part is the other side of the coin. When you are feeling beautiful, you get identified; you feel, “It is me, this is my real self.”Now you are preparing the ground – digging the ditch to fall into it. And when you are in despair and suffering, then how can you say, “I will be simply a witness”? You cannot be a witness.Nobody wants despair or pain, all those negative feelings; everybody wants to get rid of them. But the way to get rid of them is to get rid of them through the beautiful spaces that you come across.So whenever you are again feeling in a silent, peaceful, blissful state, remind yourself – don’t fall asleep – remind yourself, “This is not me. I am just seeing something far away there on the screen. I am just consciousness, awareness. I am taking note of it, what is happening there.”Keep aloof. It will be a little difficult – one wants to jump into it, it is so beautiful – but if you can keep aloof from the beautiful moments, you have won a great victory, because the person who is capable of keeping himself just a witness of beautiful moments and does not get identified…. It will be child’s play for him to witness depression when it comes.Both the extremes, witnessed, start disappearing.Witnessing is almost the finest fire you can find. Witness anything and that thing soon disappears. And don’t be afraid that beautiful spaces will disappear. You don’t know yet what is really waiting ahead of you – when beautiful spaces and depressive moments both have gone, when that duality is no longer there.You are not aware of what is going to happen to you. It is so profound and so deep that those who have found it have remained silent. They will not say a single word about it. There is no word in any language to express it. All these words – “beautiful,” “blissful” – fall too short. And the greatest thing is that there is no duality, that you have come to a point which remains with you always; there is no opposite to it.This is something to be remembered, that whenever you experience something of which there is no opposite, you have come home. While the opposite exists you will be torn apart continuously.Between those two experiences you will be just a football – sometimes feeling happy, sometimes feeling miserable; but never knowing yourself, that there is something beyond both the beautiful and the depressive. That’s why it cannot be brought into words, because all words are dualistic; otherwise they won’t have any meaning.This is the nature of language: you cannot have a word without having its opposite. If you don’t have the opposite, then the word won’t have any meaning.If somebody asks you, “What is light?,” you can say, “That which is not darkness.” How do you define light? – by its opposite; otherwise you don’t have any definition. How do you define health? – just by saying that it is opposite to sickness. How do you define life? – by saying it is opposite to death. Without the opposite you cannot even have meaning for any word.So just try to reach into a wordless space.Begin from the beautiful space, because in those moments you are more full of energy, and it is possible to get out of it. When you are depressed, all your energy is so dull, so sad, that you cannot get out of it.So use those beautiful moments just for a jumping board into the wordless, non-dual experience of your own being. Once you have succeeded in doing it from the beautiful space, you will be able to succeed in the depressive part also, because now you know the way, now you understand that those were not anything significant. You were simply getting identified with fictions.Now you have touched reality – and reality is strength, power. And then slowly the other spaces will disappear and you will remain in this wordless experience without falling out of it.You can call it true meditation, the authentic experience of life. It only looks difficult if you have not tried. Once you have tried, it is a very simple experience.Osho,The feeling of being even a little bit open is so fantastic that it feels irrelevant whether there is anything to be open for or not.I know this is not a question, but I just wanted to say it.It is a question, and a meaningful question too.Opening to something is really a device. There is nothing to open for: the real thing is opening.But people are such that if you say, “Just open,” they will think it crazy. They want to open for something. Their minds always function through motivation. They want to love someone. You simply say to them, “Love,” and it will be very difficult for them. It is absolutely certain they will ask, “Who?” That has happened with meditation for centuries.Even the word “meditation” is not right, because in the English language there is no word which can really describe the Sanskrit word dhyan or the Japanese word zen. Japanese had no word, Chinese also had no word; the Sanskrit word dhyan became zhan because Buddha was not speaking Sanskrit, he was speaking Pali. In Pali the word becomes zhan, and from Pali, in China, it became ch’an. And in Japan, ch’an became zen. But it is the same word – dhyan.In English it never happened. There are three words: concentration, contemplation, meditation – but none of the three is relevant because concentration immediately reminds you: “On what?” Contemplation immediately reminds you: “On what?” And meditation also reminds you: “On what?” You tell somebody to meditate, and the immediate question will be, “On what?” Just to meditate seems to be madness. How can you meditate without an object? How can you love without an object?And the same is the situation about opening up. So devices which are false have been used: “Open to the master,” “Open to existence,” “Open to God” – but open to something. That makes sense to the mind. Just to say to the mind, “Open!” makes no sense. Why should I open myself? For what? Mind is essentially a motivated mechanism.So what you are saying – that just opening a little bit is so beautiful that it seems irrelevant for what you are opening…. It is irrelevant. There is nobody, there is nothing for which you are told to open. It is just to manipulate your mind, to speak in a language that it can understand, knowing perfectly well that when it opens it will understand why a false device was used.All devices are false.The real question is your opening.The more you are closed, the more you are in darkness; the more you are closed, the more you are dead. The dead person is completely closed.In all countries, in all traditions, when a person dies…if his eyes are open, they immediately close them, for the simple reason that it doesn’t suit a dead man to have open eyes: “You please keep them shut!” Now everything is closed.I was concerned about it from my childhood when I saw that dead people’s eyes are immediately closed. I used to ask my father, my grandfather, “What harm are they doing? Let them see the world a little more. What is this taboo that you immediately close their eyes?”They had no answer, they simply said, “This is the convention – it has always been done.”Only later on with my own experience of opening did I understand something: that opening is life; to be fully open is enlightenment. Closing is death – to be completely closed. And then I remembered why people close the eyes, because that is the only part that remains open; everything is already closed. The man is dead – it is better to close his eyes.Life is in opening – becoming broader and broader, becoming vaster and vaster – to a point where nothing in you remains unopened. It has nothing to do with anything else – why you are opening, for what you are opening. These are all nonsense. But tell people to do anything, and they will immediately ask, “For what?”So there is no harm in giving them a false device if the false device can help.Their opening will make them aware that the device was false, but they will be grateful to you that, for their sake, you even lied. And all masters have lied on many significant points. They had to lie; otherwise they could not help anybody. But the lie was just so that your mind could understand there was something to gain; and to gain it, it can allow your being to be open.You are right: even just a little bit of opening is a great experience, and it does not matter at all that there is nothing to open to.In the same way, the lie of God was created, the lie of paradise was created, the lie of heaven and hell was created, because your mind will not function, will not listen. The simple truth will not be challenging enough for it: just to open for nothing?So that is the truth: opening for nothing…because the joy is in the opening, not in anything else; the ecstasy is in the opening, not in any object for which you are opening.Osho,It occurs to me that the beauty of having a master is not so much that you find in him someone who really loves you, but that you have found someone who will let you really love them.Do you have anything to say about this?It is true in a way, and it is not true in another way.The question has two parts. First, the real beauty of being with a master is not that he loves you. And the second: the real beauty is that he allows you to love him.The second is certainly significant. That’s the function of the master, to create an atmosphere – or to be exactly right, a lovesphere – in which you can love, where love becomes almost like breathing, where love is not a problem, where love is not a business, where love is not a law…where love is just playfulness, with no guilt, with no motivation, with no end to be gained beyond it: Love for love’s sake.That is really the function of the master: to create a lovesphere. And I call those masters fake, who have done just the opposite: they have created a hatesphere instead of a lovesphere. This can be a criterion to judge whether there is a real master or not: what kind of sphere is created around him?But to create this sphere the first part is absolutely necessary.You cannot say it is not important that a master loves you. It is absolutely important that a master loves you; otherwise he cannot create the lovesphere. It is created only by loving. If the master himself is not loving you, he cannot be capable of creating a sphere around him.The same thing has to be remembered: when I say, “The master loves you,” I am talking to your mind mechanism. The truth is, the master is love. To say that he loves you is not the right thing – he is love.So whoever is with him is showered with his love. If he is open, he will get more of it; if he is closed, he will not get any of it – because the love of the master is not addressed to somebody in particular. It is unaddressed: to whomsoever it may belong. Whoever is open will get it.So the first part is also very essential; otherwise the second part will not be possible. The master is love, and in being love, he creates a certain sphere around himself. Those who come under his sphere, they will be loving. Slowly, slowly their love will also become unaddressed.That is the perfection of love.First they will love each other, their love will be towards a certain person. The work of the master is not to let them become attached to individuals, because he is not teaching them love for particular individuals, he is teaching the quality of love, the energy of love. The particular persons they love are just experiments for growing, maturing.Slowly, slowly they will come to a point where they are just love – not addressed, but available.Just as in the other question about opening – that just a little bit of opening is so ecstatic that it does not matter for whom you are opening – the same is true about all spiritual qualities. Love…it does not matter for whom, it does not matter at all whether there is anybody, but your heart is radiating with love. That will give you the greatest experience of love.And they are all joined; all spiritual qualities are joined. The opening without any object, the love without any object, are exactly the same; they are not different. As the opening will grow, the love will grow – or vice versa. All spiritual qualities grow together in the same proportion.It is not that one quality – truth – grows ahead, and then comes love and then comes compassion. No – in fact they are not different things, just different expressions of one, ecstatic experience. You can call that ecstatic experience any name. “Opening” is perfectly good; so is “love” – and all other qualities will be there.It is not that first you have to practice this and then you have to practice that. If you can simply manage being loving and not being attached…it is attachment that kills love, because it is attachment that destroys freedom, and love cannot exist in a state of bondage.Love can exist only in total freedom.Freedom is also part of the spiritual qualities; you cannot separate them. But in the beginning one has to start from very raw material, so that if one is alert one can sort out what is wrong. If people are not alert, they start doing very stupid things.Seeing that love brings a certain kind of bondage, rather than destroying the bondage and its causes, they start becoming afraid of love. After a few experiences of getting into love and getting caught in bondage, they become certain that love is going to create chains for them, an imprisonment; it is better to live without love.They harden their hearts. But they have misunderstood the whole thing. It was not love that was creating the bondage; it was attachment, it was jealousy.If you can love without jealousy, if you can love without attachment, if you can love a person so much that his happiness is your happiness…. Even if he is with some other woman and he is happy, it makes you happy because you love him so much: his happiness is your happiness. You will be happy because he is happy, and you will be grateful to the woman who made the person you love, happy – you will not be jealous. Then love has come to a purity.This love cannot create any bondage. And this love is simply the opening of the heart to all the winds, to the whole sky. It looks a little strange; but we have been taught continually that love is a relationship, so we have become accustomed to the idea that love is a relationship. But that is not true. That is the lowest kind – very polluted.Love is a state of being. So a master can sit silently in his room; nobody is there. That does not mean that he is no longer loving because there is nobody whom he can love.Love is his heartbeat.Love is his song.Love is his silence.Love is his radiation – whether there is anybody to receive it or not does not matter.So your question is good; the second part is perfectly right – but you are not aware that without the first, the second will not be possible. The master has to be pure love; then only can he create a vibe around himself to purify you, to raise the level of your love, and to make love your only religion.Osho,Whenever you talk about Western psychology, you describe the failings of psychoanalysis in detail. Many modern psychologists and psychiatrists distance themselves from this tradition and claim to be doing something different. For example: the current fashions in this field are Neuro-linguistic programming and Ericksonian hypnosis. At root, don't your main points still apply? That these techniques are still ways of manipulating the mind and enhancing the ego, with no understanding of the possibilities of transcending both?Yes, my basic criticism still applies. Because hypnosis is not anything new, it is far older than Freudian psychoanalysis. Just the name has changed. It was known as mesmerism. Because the man who was the first in the West to practice this, his name was Mesmer. Freud himself had gone to learn the methods of hypnosis, in fact he came to the analysis of dreams through his studies of hypnosis.He found that in hypnosis a man falls asleep to the whole world, except to the person who has hypnotized him, who has suggested to him to go into deep sleep. He has been receptive to him. Even in his sleep when he cannot hear anybody else, he remains open to the person who has hypnotized him and whatever that person asks, he answers, and those answers are more pure than the answers the man gives while he is awake. This gave the idea to Freud that why not look into dreams, if in sleep created by hypnosis the person is more truer, more sincere, less a hypocrite, then perhaps there is no need for hypnosis. We can directly go into his dreams. If he relates his dreams, that will be far better, because we don’t know what to ask him. We are not aware what is lying down in his basement of the mind, but in his dreams those things surface by themselves and that is a more natural thing. It was hypnosis that gave him the idea of dream analysis and he found it very successful.But it is…if anybody else is practicing hypnosis, and many are practicing hypnosis, it does not go deeper than the unconscious mind. Even if it goes into the unconscious mind – only to the extent that the person is willing to participate.I had a cousin-brother and he was a very good hypnotic medium. There are thirty-three percent people, one-third of the population, who are the best hypnotic mediums. The others take much hard work and a long time – and very frustrating. But one-third of humanity simply slips into hypnosis without any difficulty. Just for two or three minutes you have to give the suggestion. I have been hypnotizing him for years, and he has been telling everything as truthfully as possible. When he was awake he will not say anything of it. He will simply forget, he will say, “I don’t know.” But what he was saying under hypnosis was found true by other means too.After his masters degree he became a head clerk in a company. The owner was my friend, and he said that we will give him as good salary as possible and he will be almost the chief of the whole staff. I allowed him, but I found that the work was too much. He was a very sincere boy. He will work the whole day in the office, then he will come home with files and he will continue late night working. I said this is not right. And I will ask my friend that “He cannot work in this way, office hours are okay…” But he prevented me, he said, “No – the salary is good and the man is good, and everybody respects me because I am connected with the owner.”This was his basic habit: any change was very difficult for him, to change the job…. And I was telling him that “I have found a better job, to be a head clerk is not very creditable, I have managed a lectureship for you in a college. You will be getting more salary, less work, almost half the year are holidays, you have to teach only five days in the week. At the most, the maximum is four hours per day, but that is maximum. Nobody teaches four hours every day. Three hours, two hours….”But he will not listen, he will not resolve…. Finally I thought it would be good to hypnotize him, and then give him the idea to resolve, because he has done many things before which were said in hypnosis. I hypnotized him, I took longer time…he was perfectly under hypnosis. I asked other things and he was perfectly right, and the moment I said “Tomorrow you have to resign from your post,” he simply sat up. He said, “I was afraid you are going to do that.”Then with many other experiments I became aware you can, with the participation, with his willingness, you can have an acquaintance with his unconsciousness, but finally he is still the master. His conscious mind can still censure. Of course, when somebody is sick he is willing to participate, to get rid of the sickness. And many sicknesses are just mind creations, so hypnosis can be helpful.There are other therapies, other schools who in some way are different from the founders of psychoanalysis – analytical psychology and others – but the basic point remains the same. They are still working with the unconscious mind which is just an everyday recidium – repressed parts, continuing, collecting, and they are still working below the conscious. More psychologists have come off with the idea that just as there are steps below the conscious, there are steps above the conscious. And to have the full spectrum of the mind – conscious mind and three steps below it which are darker and darker and darkest; and three steps above it which are more light, still more light and then full light – but still all these seven steps are the mind.The witness which is your real being is not even touched, not even thought about. That witness remains behind these seven layers. And that witness is capable of witnessing all the seven layers at any time; but it is an exercise in futility. If you can get to the witness, the mind with all its circus simply disappears. It loses its grip over you.Gurdjieff used to tell a storyA very rich man had a very great palace. He told to his servants that “I’m going for a pilgrimage, it may take years,” and those were dangerous days, “perhaps I may come back, I may not come back, but you have to keep the palace ready as if I’m coming tomorrow. It has to be maintained exactly as it is, the garden, the palace, everything.”There were fifty servants in the palace, they said, “We are here, you need not worry, we will keep everything as you are leaving.”Then years passed. Those servants slowly started thinking that “He must have died. Now he is not going to come back.” This idea became slowly slowly stronger and stronger. Whenever somebody knocked on the door and asked about the master – any servant opened and he would say “ I am the master. What do you want.”But the man will say, “I know the master.”And the servant will insist, “He is dead, I am the master now, what do you want.”And this was happening with all the servants. Whoever was on the duty at the door became the master for that day.One day the master appeared. They were all very much embarrassed. All fifty were standing with their eyes looking down, ashamed. The master said, “Why are you feeling so sad, so ashamed; you have kept the palace beautifully, you have even made the garden more beautiful.They said, “Master, we want to be forgiven, because a very wrong idea entered into our minds. When you did not come back for many years, we started thinking you must be dead and we were happy, that now we are the owners, not the servants. And we decided that whoever’s duty is on the gate – and it was in rotation – that day he is the master. Whoever calls, he should tell him, “I am the master.” So it was a rotation. All fifty servants were getting their time of being a master for twenty four hours.They said, “We have committed a crime and we have betrayed you. We need punishment.”The master laughed. He said, “Don’t be worried. Now I am here, just go on and do your duty.”Gurdjieff used to tell this story, that mind has become master, because we have completely forgotten the real master. So the question is not to settle things with mind. You can go on settling…nothing will be settled because they are servants, they don’t have the authority to settle. They can only pretend; and they are in a rotation. One day one idea is the master, another day another idea is the master. One day sadness is the master, another day happiness is the master. This is absolutely meaningless work. All the energies should be put to discover the real master. And he is inside you, just behind the mind.So meditation does not work with mind, and all psychoanalysis and psychotherapies work with the mind. They are working with servants, thinking they are masters. Meditation directly works with the master and once the master comes into the palace, all the servants start behaving rightly. Otherwise you cannot manage them. One servant may be trained, but there are still forty-nine servants. And tomorrow, when you come for training, that man is no longer master, somebody else is there. You go on rotating with these people, by the time the first man’s time will come, he will have forgotten about you and your training and everything. So much time has passed.Meditation’s whole approach is that to work with mind is wasting time. Go directly to the master, and the moment the master comes in all the servants will be found immediately ashamed, asking for apology, ready to do their work perfectly. Just the presence of the master is needed. And that presence is meditation.So my basic points remain the same. The therapies may be different, but their differences are very superficial. One thing fundamental remains, they all go on working with the mind. And they don’t even think that there is anything beyond mind.That is where the East differs from the West. It starts with the master. And I think that is a right start. Why waste time with stupid servants. Go directly to the master. And the miracle is, just his presence; once it is felt by the mind and the body, things change. What you wanted to change for years and could not, simply disappears.All those diseases that psychoanalysts are trying to remove – they are fighting with shadows, and you can never win with shadows. If you want to do anything with a shadow, then find out the person whose shadow it is. And then you can manage the shadow to do anything. If you want the shadow to dance, the man dances and the shadow dances. You cannot do vice versa. The shadow cannot dance; howsoever you persuade, hypnotize, analyze, the shadow cannot dance. The mind is simply a shadow. Its existence is not very solid. We should start with the master.It is a strange thing that for five thousand years the East has been working on the mind, but has never bothered about psychoanalysis. It is not that it was not aware of dreams, dreamless sleep, it was aware of all the layers, but it never bothered about it. It simply tried to reach to the being. And once you are centered in the being, all these things have no power over you. They will simply disappear. This is the most short-cut and the most practical way.And the East managed to create many awakened people. The Western psychology has not even been able to create a fully psychoanalyzed person. It is beyond the question that it will ever reach to being successful in discovering the awakened man. There is no possibility. It will go on shifting the rubbish of the mind from here to there. It is great work, it pays well. And my feeling is that psychoanalysts and therapists will be the people who will fight against meditation, because meditation means their profession is finished. Now they are the highly paid, perhaps the highest-paid profession in the world. And they are doing nothing, just befooling themselves and old ladies; whoever has money has to end up with a psychoanalyst.And you will be surprised, these psychoanalysts go for their own psychoanalysis to other psychoanalysts, because they are having the same rubbish in their own heads. The East, without going into this, has managed to create the most awakened people – with no mental sickness, no schizophrenia, no madness. My feeling is that if we make a great effort to bring to the notice of psychoanalysts that what they are doing is wrong and the starting point should be meditation, they will be the one to fight against meditation. They will a thousand and one reasons to fight against it. For the simple reason, because their whole profession, which has become a big profession all around the world…. Jews are very good in founding professions. Jesus founded Christianity, Sigmund Freud founded psychoanalysis. But Jews have a quality, to create a profession out of nothing. Neither Jesus has anything to offer, nor Sigmund Freud. Now half the world is behind Jesus and most of the intelligentsia is behind Sigmund Freud.My basic criticism remains the same.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 26 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I have heard you say that seeking the truth is as ecstatic as finding it. Does that not eliminate the search?It does not eliminate the search. On the contrary, it enhances the search because it makes seeking as important as finding.It is a very fundamental question. Finding the truth is naturally thought to be ecstatic, even intellectually. But no one has paid attention to the search, the seeking. I am saying that seeking the truth is even far more ecstatic. All the failures, all the small successes, little glimpses, small open spaces, the few moments of ecstasy coming and coming….Seeking is a very courageous phenomenon; it is growth. Finding is, really, fulfillment of seeking. The finding is the last point in your search, the fulfillment. Fulfillment has ecstasy, but it is now going to be permanent; it is going to be eternal. Soon you will become accustomed to it, it will be just natural.And then only you will be able to understand those few moments, far and wide, on the way, when you had seen just a little glimpse. It was very fleeting, but it was tremendous excitement. That excitement has brought you farther and farther…closer to the truth.Attaining to the truth, the first moment of fulfillment is of enormous blissfulness; but soon it becomes a natural phenomenon. It is with you twenty-four hours a day – and it is with you forever.Only the person who has found the truth can say that seeking is far more important. It is not eliminating the search; it is making the search more beautiful, more challenging, more juicy than the truth itself – as if truth is just an excuse and the search is the real thing.I am saying “as if”; it is not so. Truth is the real thing. The search is just a means, the truth is the end. But the means are not less important than the end. They should be given more importance than the end, because without the means you cannot find the end.And on the way there are many spaces of great rejoicing. And because you are still moving between misery and joy, between despair and contentment…because of the contrast you can experience the contentment more clearly.It is as if something is written on a blackboard with white chalk. But when you have arrived it is something written on a white board with white chalk: there is no contrast.I made that statement in order to make it clear…there may be persons who have the courage to go without the master. It is arduous – still they have to be encouraged. It is going to be difficult. It is going to be a long, long journey. Their journey has to be made as lovely as possible.If it is simply a misery for many lives and nothing else – just hard work, and no glimpses and no joy – then it will be inhuman to ask anybody to go on that journey. Then it will be better to suggest he follow a guide who has the map, who knows the right routes; who knows on each crossroad where to move, where not to move, which road leads to the goal, and which roads there are that lead nowhere.But I had not made the statement just to encourage them. That was just one part of it – it is true also. The journey is long, perhaps very long, but there are many places, many stops on the path where you will find great blissfulness. When the journey ends, you have come home: everything settles, the contrast disappears. Now there is no misery, no anger, no anguish; slowly, slowly you start forgetting even the taste of those things.I have forgotten completely how anguish tastes, how anxiety tastes. I can describe it, but my description is not very authoritative. It is a memory which is fading every day.There is a beautiful story I must have told you. It is one of the poems of Rabindranath Tagore. The poet himself has been seeking God for centuries. Sometimes he finds him just as close as the horizon, and he rejoices that the home is coming closer…just a little more traveling and he will reach the ultimate, beyond which nothing exists.But it goes on happening: he goes on moving, and the truth goes on moving. Sometimes, near a faraway star, he sees God. Although it is far away, because he can see him, he dances in ecstasy: “If I can see you, it is sure I am going to find you. How long can you go on playing this game of hide and seek? You try your best, hiding; I am trying my best, seeking – and I am determined to find you!”And after many, many lives of search and these beautiful moments…and also moments of anguish, anxiety, because for years there are no signs of God, no footprints – he does not know where he has disappeared to. He even starts suspecting whether he had really seen him or imagined him. Was it an illusion, a projection, a dream? Was he awake or asleep? But again those moments come and he is on the path, moving with great courage and great trust, knowing that these moments are indubitably true.And this goes on happening. Finally one day he reaches a house where, written on a name plate is: Here lives God. He is overjoyed – he dances, he sings – that he has reached God’s home. Now where can he hide?Then he goes up the steps and is just going to knock on the door, and something within him prevents him.Something within him says, “Wait a minute! Think twice before you knock. If you find God then what are you going to do next? – because there is nothing left. This search has been your life for many, many lives – that was all your adventure, that was all your misery and your ecstasy. But if you find him – then give a little thought: What are you going to do?”A great fear grips him. He takes his shoes off so that no noise is made on the steps. Who knows? – hearing the noise on the steps, God himself may open the door! And he runs away with his shoes, as fast as he can, as far away as he can.And then he starts searching for God again – with the same joy, with the same agony, with the same ecstasy. And now he knows the house of God; so he avoids the house of God and searches for him everywhere else, where he is not! Because the search is so beautiful, he sacrifices finding for the search.It is a very strange poem – nothing like this has ever been written in the whole history of literature – but greatly significant. He knows perfectly where God is. He can go directly and knock on the door, but he is not going to do that – he avoids him.First it was God who was hiding, and he was seeking. He still pretends to seek, but the reality is that he is hiding and God is seeking. Because in strange places…he comes around his home, and then he has to escape from there. It has great insight.The seeking is not eliminated by my statement. It is enhanced; so much so that the sought becomes secondary, and the seeking becomes primary, more significant.And I made that statement so that if somebody wants to choose to move alone, I should be of some help to him – even though he is going to move alone, even though he does not want to have a master. But the master’s compassion cannot see him moving on a path which is going to be dangerous and long. The master cannot do anything else on the path, but he can at least give him an insight, that finding is not such a great thing as seeking is.And unless this enters into the heart of the seeker who is going to be alone, he cannot remain alone. I am not saying he should remain alone – he can choose a master. I am simply making it clear that both are possible.There have been both types of people. There are old, traditional people, who all insist that without the master you cannot find – categorically, without any exception. And there is J. Krishnamurti, against the whole tradition, saying that you cannot find if you have a master – again, categorically, without any exception – you can find only alone.I am saying something against both, that they are making absolute statements which are not true. There are always exceptions; and particularly in the world of spirituality where freedom is the law, you cannot enforce such categorical statements – both are taking away that freedom.The tradition is preventing you from moving alone; J. Krishnamurti is preventing you from moving with a master.My own experience is that ninety-nine percent of the people will move with a master. Perhaps one percent will be able to move alone. But both are valid ways, and I don’t see any contradiction.Even people like Jesus had a master. He was initiated by John the Baptist. He was a disciple, and he became a master only because John the Baptist was imprisoned and finally beheaded. And Christianity has made so much fuss about Christ’s crucifixion that nobody thinks of his master, who was tortured more. For years in jail he was tortured, and then he was beheaded.Jesus’ crucifixion has been magnified so much that everybody has forgotten John the Baptist. And he was a man of immense insight. Even from jail, when he heard about statements and actions of Jesus, he doubted Jesus’ enlightenment. And he sent a messenger – a guard who had fallen in love with the old master – to Jesus saying, “Are you really the messiah for whom the Jews have been waiting?”Now this question from the master creates great suspicions. It is equivalent to asking him, “Are you enlightened?” This is a Jewish way of asking the same thing. And when a man like John the Baptist asks such a question, it is not of small significance.He was not a traditionalist, he was not orthodox; he was more revolutionary than Jesus. His words were just pure fire. It was his words and his revolutionary statements that had drawn Jesus and thousands of other people to be initiated by him.Jesus had a master – and still missed.Gautam Buddha had not only one master but many masters. One master he exhausted of all that he knew. He practiced, and practiced so perfectly that the master said, “Now I have nothing else to teach to you. You should move to some more developed spiritual being. I can help you only so far.”“But,” Buddha said, “the goal has not arrived.”The master said, “It has not arrived for me either – I am on the path. So whatsoever I knew, whatsoever path I had traveled, I showed to you. And you have been so quick and so perfect that you have caught up with me. Others are not quick, others are lazy. They still think that I am the perfect master because I am still ahead of them. But to you I cannot be untrue. You move on – there are people who have gone far ahead of me.”And Buddha continued to move for six years, from one master to another master. And whatever they said, he did it – did it with his totality and intensity. But the goal was as far away as ever. And finally each master had to make an apology to him: “I should have told you before that I have not reached yet – I am on the way. I can teach you only up to the point where I have reached.”After moving from one master to another…. The last master was Allarakalam, who was perhaps the best of all that he had been with. He remained for two years with him, but then the same thing happened.Allarakalam said, “This is where you have to depart from me. And I would suggest that now you start the search alone, because I don’t see anybody who can take you further than I have taken you. So drop this whole idea of a master and being a disciple – and you can destroy any master because you are such a perfect disciple.“The masters are living and enjoying great dignity and power because of the idiots. They don’t do anything; they just hang around. But you are so intent to reach that even we start feeling that here is a man who should not be deceived.“And anyway we cannot deceive you. All that we know, we have given to you. We don’t know whether it leads to truth or not, because how can we know? – we are also in the middle of the way. Whether it leads to somewhere or not can be known only when we have reached to the end. And I know almost all the masters around. It is better you start moving alone – on your own.”Perhaps Buddha is the first person who reached to the goal without a master. But one cannot say that those masters did not help him. They did not help him to the end – they may have helped him only in small ways – but they certainly helped him to eliminate many things. They certainly made it clear to him that it is better to go alone, to take the risk.Perhaps that is the greatest revolution – which has not been taken note of – that Buddha reached alone, without a master, that his enlightenment was not recognized by any master. It was his self-revelation – there was nobody to recognize him.Krishnamurti has a similarity to Buddha, but also many dissimilarities. He had many masters but they were not chosen by him, they were forced upon him. He was just a puppet in the hands of the Theosophists, so whatsoever they wanted to do with him, they did. And when they were going to declare him a world teacher – he is certainly an honest man – he refused…just because of his honesty. Otherwise he was going to be the richest religious leader in the world, having the greatest following. And he was going to found a new religion. But the man is absolutely honest; he simply refused – he could not be anybody’s master.Since then he has been teaching against the masters, because those masters were forced upon him. Gautam Buddha has not said a single word against his masters. In fact he has praised Allarakalam, that he was a man of great insight, understanding, and that he helped him to go alone, and he was grateful for that.But Krishnamurti simply condemned all his masters because they were forced on him, and he must have been accumulating resentment. And in this whole affair of Krishnamurti rejecting the world teacher’s role – condemning all the masters, condemning the whole idea that a master is a necessity – he went to the other extreme, saying that a master is a hindrance.In this whole affair one completely forgets whether Krishnamurti is enlightened or not. Masters are wrong – certainly he can say that, but only about the masters he had. None of them was enlightened; none of them ever claimed to be enlightened.His declaration that he is not going to be the world teacher shows only half the truth. It is sincere that he refused, but the question is: why is he refusing? Is he not capable of being a world teacher – is he not yet enlightened? – or is the very existence of teachers and masters wrong? He has taken the second idea.My feeling is different. I can see his honesty in refusing to be the world teacher, but I also see that he is not stating the whole truth. He should also have said, “I am not yet enlightened – how can I be a world teacher?” That half-truth nobody has asked him about – and he has never answered it. He turned the whole thing against the very idea of masters, that it is wrong, and that’s why he is refusing to be a master.So without making a clear-cut statement that “I am enlightened,” it gives you just an indirect idea that the man must be enlightened – he is so honest that he rejects the world teachership, and all the glory, all the money, all the land and the castles that were coming with it. But just to be honest does not mean you are enlightened. Honesty is a good quality; it can be in an enlightened person. It will help him to become enlightened, but it is not equivalent to it.Since then Krishnamurti has been hammering against masters. And he knows only his own masters; he has not known any enlightened master.That gives me the clear-cut idea that he has been traveling alone but is still traveling. And because he is so full of complaints against other people, his traveling has become not a pilgrimage of joy, it has become a migraine. For forty years he has suffered from migraine. That migraine seems to me to be certainly connected with his strange situation.He is not enlightened; thousands of people think he is enlightened. He has never said it, but they have accepted it because he rejected the world teachership. That is not any proof of enlightenment, but it can be the proof of honesty and unenlightenment.He could see that he was not capable of being a world teacher: he himself is in darkness, and he is not going to deceive the world. He has to be praised for it.But then a mystery has been surrounding him. And for these so many years – now he is ninety – he has not said, on even a single occasion, anything about his enlightenment or unenlightenment. And he has been speaking all this time. It is very strange!And all the speeches are about enlightenment! But he never brings himself into it. He talks about enlightenment as an objective – but never as a subjective – experience.So there are only these two instances: Buddha, who had masters of his own choice, never said a single word against them. He was simply all praise that they were all honest – whatever they could do, they did. And then finally he went alone and found the truth.The second instance is J. Krishnamurti, who condemned his own teachers. They were really worth condemning; they deserved it. He refused the world teachership, showed some integrity of personality, some sincerity and honesty – but he has never said anything about his own enlightenment, this way or that.And his whole life he has never looked ecstatic, joyous; even smiling is difficult for him. You can see him being angry against traditions, against teachers; you can see him being angry against the audience, pulling his hair because they do not understand what he is saying.Now, there is no need to be angry: it is their choice to understand or not to understand; it is your choice to speak or not to speak. If people don’t understand you, don’t speak! And if you speak and they don’t understand, it has nothing to do with you. You enjoyed speaking; they enjoyed listening. Whether they understand it or not is their problem. Why should you get into such a rage? – as if something very valuable is at stake and they should understand you!But this is the attitude of the masters, the very stern and hard masters. Krishnamurti had denied being a world teacher, but he has been doing the same job of teaching the whole world – and being harsh and hard with innocent people who want to understand something about life. And what can they do if they cannot understand you? Perhaps the fault is yours. Perhaps the way you present your ideology is not the right way. Perhaps you make it too complicated and too intellectual. And people are not so complicated and so intellectual.Most people have attained through the masters. Buddha attained alone, and that is a milestone. Krishnamurti has tried…but is still traveling, and traveling in anguish, not in joy. That means the search for the truth has become a hardship for him. Perhaps it has become just intellectual gymnastics.I have never been to any master in any of my lives as a disciple. I have met a few masters, but I have always made it clear to them that I am not the disciple type: “If you can allow me to be with you, to have a friendship with you, I will be happy. But if you reject me, that too is perfectly acceptable, because that is your choice. But I have to make it clear from the very beginning that I am not anybody’s disciple.”The journey has been very long but has been tremendously rewarding. I would have loved it to be still longer, because the moment you find the truth, everything stops. Time stops, movement stops; you start living in an eternal moment.It is peaceful, silent, very still; but you cannot call it ecstasy – the way it was possible to call it on the way – because ecstasy can exist only by the side of agony.It is not any of those things that can exist only with their opposite. It is utterly quiet. It has tremendous beauty, it is fulfillment – nothing can be added to it – but knowing this state and remembering the moments of ecstasy while seeking, I would have preferred the journey to have been a little longer.Once you have attained to the truth, then only can you see what was the beauty of the seeking, the search. But now there is no way to go back.It is easy in Rabindranath Tagore’s poem to take your shoes off and run away. But it is not possible – that part is possible only in poems and stories. In reality it is not possible: you cannot get away from the truth. Once you have got it, you have got it; now there is no way to lose it, no way to again create a game of hide and seek.So I have made the statement simply to make it clear that you can choose to be alone on the path – it has its own beauty. You can choose to be with a master – it has its own efficiency. But ninety-nine percent of the people have attained through masters.Perhaps once in a while somebody has stumbled alone into the temple of truth. That too seems to be very accidental, because without a guide and without a map…. And this vast existence…searching for something when you do not know exactly what it is, where it is, whether it is or not, and running in all directions madly. It has its hardships; it has its beautiful oases in the desert.All I want is that everyone should be a seeker; whether he is with a master or alone is a secondary thing. If one chooses to be alone one should not choose it out of any egoistic reasons; otherwise one’s journey will be simply a journey of agony, self-torture. And one will not have any moments of ecstasy, any glimpses – and there is no way that one will ever reach, even by accident.He should be clear, if he is going alone he is not going because of his ego: he is going alone because he wants to be alone, and he loves to be alone; he enjoys to be alone, to him that aloneness is simply a joy.For the ego, aloneness is never a joy.That’s why I am making those conditions. Ego enjoys only when it subordinates somebody, when it can say, “I am higher than you, bigger than you.”Ego can never enjoy aloneness; in aloneness what is the point of having an ego? And it is the ego which can prevent somebody being a disciple, because that means you are putting somebody above you; you are surrendering yourself.So ego can choose to be alone, but then it is choosing a self-torture, a hell. And that is what I have seen in people who have become interested in J. Krishnamurti’s philosophy. They are all egoistic intellectuals. The reason they have chosen J. Krishnamurti’s philosophy is that he allows them not to submit to any master – but they are not happy.I have known many of his disciples, old disciples. One woman used to come to me, she must have been eighty. She has been listening to him from the very beginning, and I asked her, “Listening to Krishnamurti for so many years, what is the need to come to me? I am a master.”And what she said is applicable to many others, because with many others the same thing happened. She said, “Yes, I have been listening to him, and I have been thinking to find the truth alone. But how to find it alone? Where to go? What to do? It becomes just an intellectual game.”So I said, “Then it will be difficult for you, because if I say to you to become a sannyasin, to be a disciple, then you will bring all that gibberish that you have learned: that no master is needed, that one can find the truth alone. So first you be clear; I don’t take any nonsense. If you come to me, then leave Krishnamurti behind; otherwise I have no problem – you follow Krishnamurti, you listen to him. And you have listened long – you are eighty years old – it is only a question of a few years more.”And the same has been the case with many intellectuals in India. They became interested in Krishnamurti for the simple reason that he gives a shelter to their ego. But that is the problem: with the ego you cannot go in search of truth; then you will be sad.So nobody in these sixty, sixty-five years of Krishnamurti’s teaching has been able to become enlightened. And the strangest thing is that if it is true that no master is needed – if it is absolutely true that a master is a hindrance – then Krishnamurti should not have spoken at all. Because that is playing with people’s lives. You go on saying to them that no master is needed; and in their unconscious you become their master.So it is a strange game.You go on saying, “No master is needed,” and they repeat like a parrot, “No master is needed,” but their repetition that “no master is needed” is not their own understanding, is not their own finding. It has been given by somebody else: they have followed a master.All Krishnamurti people are repeating simply verbatim what Krishnamurti says. They have not been able to add even a single word to it. It is very surprising.I have seen disciples of masters, but I have not seen in those disciples such puppet-like repetition – just gramophone records. Even though they are with a master they have a certain independence. If the master is true, they have full independence.But with Krishnamurti there is no master, and all the people who have been listening to him are simply repeating, word for word, giving every argument that Krishnamurti has given.I have asked these people, “Have you found any argument on your own? Have you looked into what you are saying, that it is not yours? Then you have a master and a very dangerous one, because he gives you the idea that you are independent – so you enjoy your ego – and still you go on repeating his words.”And all borrowed knowledge fits with the ego very easily. One’s own experience does not fit with the ego; they cannot coexist.My position is very realistic: Most of the people have attained with masters, and there is nothing wrong in it. A few people have attained without a master – there is nothing wrong in it. The whole question is to attain; which route you choose – shorter or longer – depends on you. But I am not eliminating the search, I am making it available to all kinds of people. I am not making it a monopoly – either this or that.I don’t believe in either/or.I say both are valid.Osho,Is jealousy yet another form of cowardice?Jealousy is very complicated. It has many ingredients in it. Cowardice also is one of them; egoistic attitudes is another; monopolistic desire – not an experience of love but only of possessiveness; a tendency to be competitive; a deep-rooted fear of being inferior….So many things are involved in jealousy.You love a person – at least you think you love a person…. If you really love, then jealousy is impossible. If you find the person loving somebody else, you will be happy: you love the person, and he is happy with somebody else; and all that you want is to make him happy. You will not feel jealous; on the contrary you will feel grateful to the person who has made your lover happy. You will feel a great friendliness.But this is about true love, which is a rare variety. What exists in the name of love is just an idea.You “love” a person means you possess a person. You “love” a person means he cannot love anybody else. If he loves anybody else he is insulting you; he is proving that you are inferior, that there are better people, more lovable people than you are. It hurts the ego, it hurts your possessiveness, it hurts your monopolistic idea.And basically it is cowardice, because you are not trying to face the facts about your love in a straightforward manner. It is not a question of your lover loving somebody else; the question is, do you love the person? And you are not brave enough to face that question. And that is the real question to be asked.If I love the person then nothing matters.Love allows freedom.Love allows that whatever he feels like doing, he can do. Whatever he feels to be blissful, it is his choice.If you love the person, then you don’t interfere in his privacy. You leave that person’s privacy uninterfered with. You don’t try to trespass his inner being. You don’t want that he should say where he has been, why he is late in the night. That is not right at all.It is his life: where he goes, and whether he comes late or not…. You have loved the person as he is – and this is the way he is. And you never try to interfere in his privacy. You don’t open his letters; you don’t look into his pockets, into his diary and note the phone numbers. You don’t try to find out some clue. That is all ugly.You have to face it yourself.If you don’t face it, that is cowardice.And to hide it, you make so much of a tantrum of jealousy that you completely forget that it is only your cowardice. What was needed was to be very clear whether it is an idea that you love the man, or it is a reality. Reality has no problems; only ideas bring trouble because they are just superficial. Underneath there is so much rubbish that those ideas cannot help you. Any small thing and immediately trouble starts.I cannot conceive that if two persons really love each other they will ever have any fight for any reason, that they will try to impose any idea on the other for any reason, that they will try to inhibit the other person from any action.Love’s basic requirement is: “I accept the other person as he is.” And love never tries to change the person according to one’s own idea of them. You do not try to cut the person here and there and bring him to size – which is being done everywhere all over the world.People who think they are lovers – they are continually harassing each other, trying to create the image that they want. They want the other person just as a puppet – and the strings should be in their hands. And the same is being done by the other person: he wants you to be a puppet, and the strings have to be in his hands. Now there is going to be continual conflict, misery, pain.And one starts feeling a great wonder: why have poets been writing so many beautiful things about love? – because nothing seems to happen! It is only in the poetries.The reality is that most of the poets have never loved. They are in love with the idea of love, so they make beautiful poems, beautiful novels. Or perhaps they have loved, but failed so utterly that just to console themselves they create the polar opposite in their poetry.For example, Leo Tolstoy was tortured by his wife for his whole life, even to the very end. The last day, she harassed him so much that he left the house at night and went to the station and died there on a bench. He was a count, and he had immense property and immense land and everything – but he lived like a poor man. The wife had control of everything.She would not allow him even to have a friend, a male friend. She was so jealous that she would not allow him to read or write in front of her. He had to go out in the garden or in the fields to write; all his writing was done outside. Her jealousy was such that…, “When I am present you are more interested in your novel. This is an insult to me!”And this man has written such beautiful books and such beautiful things about love, that if you didn’t know his life, you could not believe how it is possible. It is a compensation. In life he is missing it; he is putting it in the novels: in the novels he is creating the fantasy he would have liked his life to be, just to forget his life, its ugliness.So either the poets have never loved and known, have never known the agony of it; or, if they have loved, they have known the agony of it and they wanted to know the ecstasy. So in their poetry you will find the ecstasy of love. But the truth is that the whole world is tortured unnecessarily.Yes, it is cowardice that keeps you in torture. Just face the facts, whether you love a man or not. If you love, then there are no conditions to be put. If you don’t love, then who are you to put conditions?Either way it is clear. If you love then there is no question of conditions: you love him as he is. If you don’t love, then too there is no problem: he is nobody to you; there is no question of putting conditions. He can do whatsoever he wants to do.But one has to face one’s feelings in a very sincere and honest way. And that straightforward encounter of one’s feelings immediately shows you the path.Life is not difficult – we are making it so because we are cowards: we don’t see a thing which we know is there.I had a friend; we were traveling together and the ticket checker came. I gave him my ticket, and my friend was looking in this pocket and that pocket, and was getting in great trouble.I asked him, “Why don’t you look in this pocket – on the right side?”He said, “That is my only hope! If it is not there, then the ticket is lost! So I am afraid to look in that pocket – first I look everywhere else. That will be the last.”And that is the situation in life: we are not looking because we know that perhaps to face it will be a difficult task. But I know that it’s not difficult.It is always simple to face reality.And it makes you innocent; and unnecessary complexities don’t arise. Otherwise one goes on living in imagination, that one loves, that one can die for the other person.You cannot even see the other person being happy with someone for a minute – and you think you can die for the other person!Just try to see what actually is in you for the other person – and jealousy will disappear. In most of the cases with jealousy, your love will also disappear. But it is good, because what is the point of having a love which is full of jealousy, which is not love?If jealousy disappears and love still remains, then you have something solid in your life which is worth having.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 27 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I remember you saying once that the growth of man is dialectical; and you have also explained about thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Would you please give more clarity in this reference on the growth towards enlightenment?Every growth, growth as such, is dialectical. It needs thesis, antithesis, and synthesis; synthesis again in its turn becomes thesis, and creates antithesis and synthesis – which again, in its turn, becomes thesis.That’s the way the whole existence works. That’s why you find duality everywhere. The duality is thesis and antithesis. One can remain caught between the two, divided, split; there will be no growth. One can make a bridge between the two, and create a new phenomenon: that is synthesis. One can remain at the synthesis; then growth stops there, unless this synthesis again functions as a thesis to produce antithesis, and so on.For example, you have love and hate. Love is the thesis, hate is the antithesis; and most people die caught in the struggle, conflict, between the two. They are never able to see that there is a subtle connection between love and hate; that they are not two energies but one energy having two polarities. They are just like the negative and positive in electricity – but it is electricity all the same.Hate is also a kind of love standing upside down. It happens that you can forget your friend, but you cannot forget your enemy. The enemy haunts you more than the friend. You think more of destroying the enemy than helping the friend. The reason is that love is a thesis – simple. Hate is an antithesis – it has become more complicated. It has become negation, and negativity has an attraction – for many reasons.One is afraid of negativity because you cannot hate someone without creating a wound within yourself. Nobody pretends hate. It is always authentic, because why should one pretend hate? – it hurts.People pretend love; they may not be really in love, but the very idea that they are in love is soothing. So love can remain superficial; but hate always goes deep – it cannot remain superficial. That’s why one becomes more concerned about the enemy than about friends.The man who is working for enlightenment has to find a bridge between the dualities, because without finding the bridge he cannot transcend them, he cannot go above them. And the bridge is there – it has only to be discovered. One has to see how love becomes hate, how hate becomes love – that they are capable of transforming into each other. Naturally, they cannot be different energies; just different situations, states, of the same energy.As you become aware that love and hate are the same energy, then you are not to be concerned with love and hate, because those are only two poles; you have to be more concerned with the energy of which they are the poles: what is that energy?Watching it, you start a new force within yourself which is synthesis. You come to a point when you know love and hate are one. This is a great synthesis – the dualism is finished. But with the finishing of dualism your life comes to a static point. You have grown above love and hate, and there will be a kind of compassion – that will be the synthesis. You don’t hate, you don’t love, but you have a certain compassion for both friends and enemies. But compassion again becomes a simple thing.That’s why the synthesis always turns into a thesis – another beginning. And compassion must have some duality which you can become aware of only when you have achieved compassion.What is the antithesis of compassion? It is indifference, upeksha. That’s the word Buddha has used. It carries more meaning than “indifference.” It is a kind of no interest, neither this way nor that way…as if the person does not exist at all for you. Compassion will bring you to indifference.And all these stages you can find in the growth of different people at the point where they got stuck. For example, the Jaina monks are stuck with indifference. That becomes renunciation, not being bothered with the world.The Hindu has also become stuck with that, thinking that the world is only a dream; it doesn’t matter, you need not be concerned about it. They have grown a little; but at the point of indifference they will start shrinking, they are stuck again. They have to find something between compassion and indifference – the bridge.There is a bridge, there is always a bridge in every duality, unless you come to a point which has no duality.That point is the point of enlightenment.It has no antithesis, so you cannot even call it thesis; and it is not a synthesis. It has dropped all three – the whole triangle. It is something beyond the triangle of evolution. And the beauty is, because it is not part of a triangle, you are not stuck. And from that point growth changes its nature completely: it is no longer dialectical.Before enlightenment, growth is dialectical: always divided, always finding something which joins it and then again another division and another division. But a point comes – for example between compassion and indifference, the synthesis is equilibrium. The Buddhist word for it is samata.You are equally balanced, you are neither indifferent nor compassionate, neither leaning to this side nor to that side. Samata can become a point from where the change, the radical change happens in the process of evolution.Below samata everything is dialectical. You cannot love without hating; they will both go together. One will be conscious, the other will be unconscious; but they are one thing. That’s why you can turn them easily: a small incident, and love becomes hate.The person you were going to die for, you can kill him! Lovers have killed the same person for whom they would have sacrificed themselves. It is the same energy, but it has turned completely upside down.Samata, equilibrium, has been immensely praised by Gautam Buddha. It simply means absence of any preference – neither this nor that. You are simply so much in the middle, so absolutely in the middle, that you are almost out of the duality – samata – because you have withdrawn your energy from both sides, you are not throwing your energy on any duality.The whole energy becomes concentrated. In that concentration of your total energy is the possibility of explosion. The small point exactly in the middle cannot contain that much energy, which was spread all over a line divided into many sections, over the whole spectrum. It is almost like an atomic explosion. But it is the atomic explosion in consciousness.The atom is not material, but a living entity. A living explosion of your energies becomes almost like a lotus flower. The shape of the explosion seen by the enlightened person is very similar to the shape of the lotus flower. It is because of this that the lotus flower has become symbolic of enlightenment.From this point things are totally different. There is growth – growth never stops – but we cannot call it growth because that may create confusion. Before, it was dualistic; now it is non-dualistic. Before, there was constant conflict; now there is no conflict – it simply goes on growing.Hence there is absolute silence and great blissfulness, because for the first time you are free of the torture of being caught in two opposing polarities. There is no tension, everything is relaxed, everything is at ease. Rather than calling it growth, it is a let-go.Now the flow of your life becomes a relaxed phenomenon. There is no end to evolution. Enlightenment is the end of dualistic growth, but the beginning of a non-dual evolution…a peaceful, silent movement of energy which goes on becoming bigger and bigger and goes on losing its separateness from universal energy. It always remains individual, even though it is spread all over the universe.That feeling cannot be expressed by “I” because “I” is just another way of saying “ego.” Before enlightenment there was ego; ego can exist only in conflict. This state can be spoken of only as “am”-ness, without any “I.” It is a very strange feeling: you are not, and yet you are. You are not your old self; you are no longer a self, but you have not lost the feeling of am-ness.So the question of what happens to individuals when they dissolve into the universal…. They still remain individuals, but with no assertion of “I” in them…just a silent song of am-ness or isness.It is as if we put hundreds of candles in this room; all their light will become one. You cannot differentiate in the light – which part belongs to which candle – it has become a universal phenomenon. But still, each candle has its own flame, it has a certain individuality. The individuality has not disappeared, but it is very quiet and very silent and very nonassertive. It is almost as if it is nothing, but it is still there.And that is one of the greatest mysteries: to feel yourself at one with the whole existence and yet know your inner flame…part of the whole, and yet not just a part – you are also a whole.The Upanishads have a statement: “From the perfect comes the perfect. Yet the perfect left behind still remains as perfect as before” – nothing is taken away from it. The perfect dissolves into the perfect, but it is not that two perfections become a bigger perfection; it is the same perfection. The emphasis is that it is not a question of quantity, it is a question only of quality.For example, one hundred candles burning in this room will not make the light heavier; it will be lighter. The change will be qualitative but it will not be quantitative. Each candle will be spread all over the room, and there is going to be no conflict in one hundred candles spreading all over the same space because these are not material bodies.Just as light…consciousness is even more a quality. Light perhaps has some quantity in it. I think the scientists say that when there is sunlight over five square miles, the light has a little weight, but very small. I don’t know what will be the equivalent of five tolas….Sixty grams.Sixty grams. But on five square miles, if we can collect that light, concentrate that light, it moves the weighing scale to sixty grams. So although it seems just non-quantitative, it has a little quantity in it.But consciousness has no quantity – five miles or five thousand miles or five million miles, it makes no difference. Awareness has no weight. So infinite awarenesses can exist in the same space without coming into any conflict. And the universe is infinite, so the growth never stops.But we should remember that it is not the old growth; it is absolutely a new phenomenon. It is as if the first growth was something similar to sexual reproduction: two energies, male and female, negative and positive, thesis and antitheses, creating the birth of a child – the synthesis.But the second part, after enlightenment, is nonsexual. Your consciousness just goes on expanding; it does not give birth to any child.That’s why I have always condemned Jesus’ idea of the only begotten son of God. If God is the ultimate consciousness or equivalent to it, there is no possibility of any birth of a child. And if you accept the birth of a child then the Christian trinity is not right; there has to be a woman as an antithesis to the man.They have avoided the woman just to discredit her, just not to put her on such a high pedestal as to be part of God; otherwise she becomes divine. But they have forgotten that the child is possible only through duality.If God is alone, or the ultimate consciousness is alone – which is a far better and more evolved terminology…. Jainism uses, for the ultimate state of consciousness, kaivalya. It means aloneness. The word “God” is very primitive and childish – but pure aloneness…and it goes on growing. Its bliss, its joy, its ecstasy goes on growing, knows no limit.But before it can happen you have to pass through a process of dialectics, because where we are, we are under the law of dialectics. To get free from dialectics is one of the major projects of spiritual evolution.But it is very easily possible if one works through meditation, because that is the only way to find out the golden mean, the middle point which is transcendence. Buddha even called his whole way “the middle way,” because it is always to find exactly the middle point.The moment you have found the middle point between love and hate, you are beyond both: you have entered into a new area, unexplored. But don’t stop until you find something which has no duality to it. Go on and on, searching after each duality for the one point which has no polarity to it; because that is the point between the two growths – prior to enlightenment and after enlightenment.So in one way enlightenment is an end, a goal.In another way it is a beginning, a tremendous beginning.Osho,What is orgasm in reference to meditation and higher levels of consciousness? Isn't feeling orgasmic in a deep state of meditation totally nonsexual?The experience of orgasm itself is always nonsexual. Even though you have achieved it through sex, it itself has no sexuality in it.You can reach to orgasm through sex. It is a merger of the negative and the positive polarities – such a deep merger that the man is no longer man, the woman is no longer woman. They are not two; there is only one energy surrounding them both. They have melted into that energy.It may be for a moment – that does not matter – but the experience itself has nothing to do with sex.The first orgasm is bound to be attained through sex. And my own understanding is that meditation has grown out of the experience of orgasm, because the original founders – particularly Shiva who, in his Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, has written, just like a scientific formula, about one hundred and twelve meditations; each meditation just in one line or two lines…. The man is tremendously aphoristic. Those one hundred and twelve sutras are just like seeds. He has condensed everything about the method in them.He is also known as a great lover. Perhaps he was the first man to discover meditation. And it can be very scientifically assumed that whoever experienced orgasm, if he had a little intelligence, would have seen that although it has come through sex, it itself is a nonsexual experience.That gives the insight that there may be possibilities of reaching it through nonsexual means, because it is not sexual itself, so sexuality is not necessarily the only way.It does not need much intelligence if you experience it and see clearly that it does not have any impact of sexuality. Perhaps sexuality created the background, the groundwork in which it happened. But the experience of orgasm itself does not remind you of sex; it is purely spiritual.Whoever experienced this must have concluded then that there can be other ways to reach it – because sex is not necessarily a part of it. There is no color, nor any impression of sex left in it. Then he must have watched how it happens. And then things are very clear: the moment the orgasm happens, time stops, you forget about time. Your mind stops, you do not think anymore. There is tremendous calmness, and a great awareness.You are not asleep. You have not fallen into any hypnotic sleep. Everything is crystal-clear. The mind is no more functioning the way it functions continuously: the thought process has stopped. The sense of time is not there; it seems timeless. Afterwards you will think it lasted only a few seconds, but that is afterwards; in the experience itself, it seems it is eternity. And you are fully aware, as aware as you have ever been: wide-awake.Any observer going through the experience will naturally think, “If these things can be managed without sex – awareness, thoughtlessness, timelessness – you will reach to the orgasmic state, bypassing sexuality.”And this is my understanding: this is how man must have first discovered meditation; otherwise meditation is not something biological or natural, so that in the course of time you have to discover it. But biology has given you an experience; if you try to understand it, you are bound to search for other methods to make it possible. You know it has happened – that there was no thought, no time, and only pure awareness – so it is possible.You are not groping in the dark, you are not just guessing: you know it is possible. You have known it through the biological route. Then if these three things can be maintained without sex, the orgasm happens.And the difference is that the sexual orgasm is very momentary. Although while it is there, it looks almost eternal, that feeling is just because of its depth. But through meditation you can have it as long as you want, because meditation is not dependent on anybody else – the woman or the man or a certain state of two minds, a certain rhythm of two energies. The sexual orgasm depends on many things, and particularly on the other person being there.Meditation is independent of any other person; only you are to create the situation. And naturally the conclusion will be to start with awareness, because you don’t know how else to stop thoughts. It is not in your hands to stop thoughts or to stop time. Only one thing remains, and that is awareness – that you can be more aware or less aware.You know it. If this house is suddenly on fire, you will be more aware. You know that your awareness goes up and down. At certain moments you are more aware; at certain moments, less aware. So it is possible to create the situation of being more aware.That’s why awareness became the basis of meditation. And with awareness came the surprise that as you become aware, thoughts disappear. When you are fully aware, there are no thoughts, and suddenly time has stopped. Time can be there inside only with the movement of thoughts.In fact time can be measured only with some movement. For example, with a watch, how are you measuring time? By the movement of the hands; otherwise, there is no way.If everything is unmoving, you will not be able to think that anything like time exists. But you know that a car has passed, then a train is passing – there has been a gap. In the gap…it means time. Then you hear the sound of an airplane…. This is movement – you are finding movement around you.Inside there is only one movement, and that is of thoughts.When thoughts stop, suddenly time disappears, because time can be measured only through some kind of movement. That’s why, if in the night you had many dreams, in the morning you will find that it was a long, long night, because so much movement happened. But if you had no dream at all, you will feel as if you have just fallen asleep, and now you are awake. The night has passed so quickly.When you are in anxiety, in misery, in pain, time passes slowly because of your pain. You would like the pain to pass quickly, but with your expectation that the pain is not going, time is passing very slowly.But when you are meeting a friend after years, you find hours have passed, and it seems just minutes since you met. When you are joyful, when you are miserable, it makes a difference in the speed of time immediately. But when you are neither – just silent – time has no way to move.So as one becomes aware, first one finds thoughts becoming less, and finally stopping. Then he finds time is not there – and he has found the key to the basic meditation. Then all other meditations are differentiations of the same method, different combinations of the same method. Different combinations, but essentially they are awareness or witnessing.And it seems there is no other way to find it except through sexual orgasm, because that is the only experience in life given by nature that comes close to meditation. And the misery is that millions of people have no experience of orgasm, and all the religions have been preventing them from having that experience.This is so ridiculous, because if they don’t have any orgasmic experience, meditation remains just a fiction; or maybe some giants can do it. “But we are human beings – it is not possible for us to be more aware. How can one be more aware? We are aware as much as we can be. How to stop thoughts?”And the responsibility for keeping humanity away from meditation goes to all the religions because they are against sex. They have prevented people – not from sex but from orgasm, because they have poisoned people’s sex with guilt. They could not prevent sex, but they did not allow people to be playful about it, they did not allow people to be respectful about it, they did not allow people to go deeper into it.On the contrary, because sex is sin, it makes people feel guilty. The man is in a hurry to finish as quickly as possible, because you should not continue any sin too long. Knowing that you are doing something wrong, you want to do it quickly and be finished with it.And if the man is in a hurry he cannot attain to orgasm, only to ejaculation; which proves all the religious teachers right – that you are wasting your energy. Because the man feels he gains nothing, it is a waste, he feels tired. The next day he may have a headache, feels dull, is not so sharp. Perhaps the religious people are right – he is already punished.So it is a very strange thing. They have created the idea of guilt, and the idea of guilt on its own has given proofs that you really are doing something wrong.The woman has remained unmoving while making love, because she has been told that to enjoy herself while making love – or to move, or to be playful – is only for prostitutes, not for ladies. Ladies simply lie down almost dead, thinking, “Let him do what he wants to do and let him be finished soon” – because they don’t gain anything out of it.The man at least finds a certain release of the energy with which he was becoming burdened, but the woman does not get even that release. So naturally women are more against sex than men. And every woman thinks in her mind that all men are nothing but animals: their only desire is sex.This is the by-product of all the religious teachings. In this way…they have not been able to prevent sex; otherwise humanity would have disappeared. And orgasm is not necessary for reproduction, so biology has no problem: it can continue its work without orgasm.Orgasm was not something necessary for reproduction, it was something to open a window for the higher evolution of consciousness.But the idiots who have been religious leaders and priests prevented that window. They have been teaching continuously: “Meditate!” And when people fail, when they cannot attain to meditation, then the priests say, “You are sinners – how can you attain? First be celibate, fast, do penance.”And all these things will prevent people from having orgasm – which is the only natural way to have a first glimpse of meditation.So you can understand my difficulty. If I say to people, “You have been prevented by your religious people from becoming religious,” they cannot understand what I am saying. But what I am saying is absolutely scientific.There must be something in man’s nature that opens a window towards higher evolution; otherwise how can you convince the man that there are things like higher experiences? And how did the first man come to know? Why did he meditate in the first place, and how did he find the way to meditate?Somebody, somewhere in the past, must have found some similarity with his nature, and must have seen that, although he passes through sex, he reaches to a point where sex has nothing to do with it: sex simply opens a door into a new reality. And that door can be opened without sex far more easily, without dependence.It is one of the great misfortunes that has befallen humanity, that sex became taboo, prohibited, rejected, condemned. They did not succeed in preventing it, but they certainly succeeded in poisoning man’s spiritual growth.So it is not only the orgasm that you experience in meditation which is nonsexual, even the orgasm that you experience through sex is nonsexual.Orgasm itself is a nonsexual experience.The natural way, the easier way, the primary way is through sex – and it is perfectly good; it is in accordance with nature’s intentions. And then you know that such an experience is possible for you. Then you can play with the experience, and you can find many ways to reach it.All those ways have become meditations. And that does not prohibit you from using the sexual way, because it is sex that has given you the first experience of orgasm, has given you the first insight into meditation, has taken you far away from biology and nature.So one should be grateful to one’s sexuality.There should be no question of guilt.If religions had taught people to be grateful to sex, we would have produced a totally different kind of man – not this miserable and suffering creature that you see all around the world.We could have produced really joyful, blissful people; people who would have forgotten how to be miserable, how to suffer, who would have forgotten completely the anguish in which they are living now.