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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Going inside to feel the question, I was reminded of the time I first sat at your feet, twelve precious years ago. I said, “I have no question.” You then lovingly diffused me. Osho, I never want to recover from this love. Do I need to know the question?Neither the question matters nor the answer; what matters is a silent being, which has no questions and no answers. This is what I call innocence. The moment a question arises the innocence is lost. And one question brings another, there is no end to it. You will go on finding answers to each question and, strangely enough, every question creates new questions; in the same way, every answer also creates new questions. This way ends in insanity.The sane being has no question and has no answer. Ordinarily there is a misunderstanding that the man of wisdom knows the answer. That is absolutely wrong. The man of knowledge may know the answers, but the man of knowledge is not a man of wisdom. And the difference is great. The man of knowledge is as ignorant as anybody else. All his answers are borrowed. In fact he is in a more difficult situation than a person who has only questions. He has a far deeper slavery to the mind than the ignorant man.The ignorant man can go out of the mind, transcend it without any fear, because he has nothing to lose. But the knowledgeable man hesitates to step out of the mind, because he has much to lose: his whole knowledge, his whole prestige, his whole respectability. And that’s all he has, he has no wisdom.Wisdom is a space without any ripples of questions and answers – neither knowledge nor ignorance but a pure silence, innocence. This is the state of the awakened one, the enlightened one, the buddha.You are asking me, “Do I need to know the question?” No, nobody needs to know the question and nobody needs to know the answer either; everybody needs to know himself. And that revelation of oneself, that realization of oneself comes only when there are no questions, no answers…just a pure sky without any clouds, an utter peace that passes understanding.This is the definition of the authentic seer, the true mystic: one who knows without knowledge, who is as ignorant as a small child – whose ignorance is innocent, whose knowing is innocent.Ramakrishna lived just in the last part of the nineteenth century…such an innocent being. And one of the very learned men, a great scholar – perhaps the greatest scholar of those days – was Keshav Chandra Sen. They both lived very close; Keshav Chandra lived in Calcutta and Ramakrishna lived outside Calcutta by the side of the river Ganges, as a priest in a small temple in Dakshineshwar.Keshav Chandra was respected all over the country for his wisdom, for his knowledge, for his tremendous rationality, intellectuality, authority over scriptures and his logical acumen. People from all over the country used to come to sit at his feet.But slowly, slowly he became very puzzled: the people who had been listening to him for years started going to Dakshineshwar to sit at the feet of Ramakrishna, who was uneducated, who had no knowledge of any scripture, who could not be called in any sense a man of knowledge. He could not argue, could not convince anybody about anything.But what was happening? Keshav Chandra was puzzled that the people who had been with him for years were slowly disappearing from his gatherings and going to the gatherings of Ramakrishna. And whatever information he had collected about Ramakrishna simply showed him that Ramakrishna seems to be half mad – suddenly he starts dancing, singing; just listening to a beautiful song, he goes into samadhi. For hours, he is lost somewhere; you cannot even wake him up, he has gone so deep into himself. It is not ordinary sleep, it is almost like a coma.Once he remained in such a state for six days continuously. Every effort was made to wake him, but all efforts failed. And finally when he awoke, the first thing he said, with tears in his eyes, was, “Why have you people forced me to wake up? I was enjoying myself so deeply, and you go on pulling me to the outside world, where there is nothing. I have known everything; I have experienced everything and found that it cannot give me lasting peace or eternal bliss or the realization of my own self. So, whenever I go inside myself, please, don’t disturb me.” Naturally his followers became very much concerned; six days is too long a period, and he remained in a coma.All the reports that reached to Keshav Chandra proved that this man was hysterical, whimsical, a crackpot. But the people who used to come to him were intellectuals, professors, well-versed in scriptures. Why have they moved toward Ramakrishna?Finally, he had to decide to go and see this man. Not only to see, but to challenge him to a debate. He informed Ramakrishna, “I am coming on such and such a date. Be ready, because I am going to challenge you to discuss with me matters of ultimate significance.”Ramakrishna laughed. He said, “It will be really a great joy to meet Keshav Chandra. He is such an intellectual giant and he does not know whom he is challenging. But let him come, this is a good excuse. I will accept the challenge.”His disciples said, “But this will be very humiliating. He will bring all his followers, and before all these people…we know you cannot argue – you have never argued in your life.”But what Ramakrishna said is something to be remembered forever. He said, “I don’t argue because I am the argument. Just let him come. I don’t know the scriptures, I don’t need to know them. I know the truth – why should I bother about borrowed knowledge? I don’t have any education, I don’t know how to prove something or disprove something, but I don’t need to know – my presence is the proof. Just let him come.”The disciples were afraid because they could not understand that Keshav Chandra would accept his presence as an argument. And Keshav Chandra came. Ramakrishna hugged him – he was not expecting that Ramakrishna would come out of the temple and hug him – and took him inside. He said, “I am so grateful that you came, I have been waiting for so long. Whenever you feel like challenging me, you can come. Whenever you feel the urge to argue, you can come. I am always available, there is no need even to make any appointment; I am twenty-four hours in this temple. You can come day or night, any moment.”Keshav Chandra kept himself aloof, but found it was very difficult: this man is so loving, his very vibe is so touching. And Ramakrishna said, “First, before you start your argument, for your welcome I will dance.” And he had his musicians there who started playing drums, and Ramakrishna started dancing….Keshav Chandra could not believe it, his followers could not believe it. He had challenged many people, he had argued all over the country with great scholars and defeated them, but he had never seen such a man, who is welcoming him with a dance. And the dance was so beautiful – it was not the dance of a technician, it was the dance of an overflowing love. It was not formal, the welcome was not just etiquette; even Keshav Chandra could feel that the man was authentic.After the dance Ramakrishna said, “Now you can start.” And Keshav Chandra said, “First I want you to prove the existence of God.”Ramakrishna laughed. He said, “The existence of God? You are the proof. Otherwise from where does such great intelligence come? It must be coming from existence, and if existence can produce Keshav Chandra that means existence is not unconscious, is not unintelligent. That’s all we mean by God: that existence is not only matter. You are the proof. It is strange that you are asking for the proof and you don’t know that you are the proof. I can bring anybody before you as a proof that existence is intelligent. That’s all we mean by God: that existence is not without consciousness.”Keshav Chandra’s followers could not believe that they had seen Keshav Chandra in shock for the first time. He was silent, he could not find what to say. And Ramakrishna’s disciples were also in a shock. They said, “My God, we used to think: ‘How is this poor fellow going to argue?’ But he has silenced him without much trouble; no scripture has been quoted – nothing. Keshav Chandra himself has made the argument against himself.”And each time Keshav Chandra said something Ramakrishna would clap – just like a child. And he was saying things against him! The disciples thought, “Keshav Chandra will think Ramakrishna is insane. He will not be able to understand: ‘I am arguing against him, and he is clapping with joy?’”And just in the middle Ramakrishna would stand up and hug him again and say, “That was really a beautiful point. I loved it, you go on.” His joy, his love, his unruffled calm became his victory, without any argument.Keshav Chandra fell at his feet and said, “Just forgive me, I have had very wrong notions about you.”Ramakrishna said, “What are you doing? You are a man of knowledge, I am an ignorant man – so ignorant, so uneducated, I cannot even sign my own name. I know myself but I cannot sign my own name, I cannot read anything. What are you doing?”And Keshav Chandra became one of the great lovers of Ramakrishna. And Ramakrishna had no answer for any question, nor did he have any question. But Ramakrishna’s innocence touched many people and transformed many people. Just his love was a great alchemical process.You don’t have to ask any question and you don’t need to receive any answer. Just drop both. They are not opposites to each other – the question and answer – they are not contradictions, they are complementaries, they are part of one whole. You have to drop the whole thing, you have to come out of this childish game. I answer your questions just to help you to come out. Slowly, slowly, your questions will die out, your answers will die out, and just a cleanness remains behind – that is your true being. All the questions are created by the priest, all the answers are created by the priests; it is a silly game. They create the answers, they create the questions, and in their questions and answers they divide the whole humanity into fragments. Otherwise what is the difference between Christians and Hindus, except their answers? – so trivial that you will find it hilarious.But people go on creating questions. Mind is a very efficient mechanism to create questions, and it is also very efficient at creating answers. Each answer brings more questions; there is no end to it. There are thousands of philosophies in the world and none of them has come to any conclusion. None of them is complete or is ever going to be complete, for the simple reason that every answer will create new questions; it is an endless process.The moment you drop all questions and all answers you have dropped all the priests, all the philosophers; you are freed from the whole past. You are freed from the mind, you are freed from language – you have moved to the beyond, into the inner sky, where there is your eternal life, your infinite light, your deathlessness, your bliss, your ultimate blissfulness; where you will find everything that man has ever dreamt of finding, and a contentment, a fulfillment that is never disturbed again.A big revival meeting was being held. It was midwinter and all the motels were filled with preachers. The small son of the owner of one of the motels came in from the cold and found the lounge crowded with preachers. The boy announced to the room full of preachers that he had dreamt of hell. One of them grinned at him and asked, “What was it like?”“Just like here,” said the boy, “I almost froze.”“You froze?” asked another preacher.“Yes,” replied the boy, “ the preachers were so thick around the fire, no one else could get near it!”These preachers who are talking about heaven and hell, who are talking about God and truth, have never entered their own being. I have met with almost all types of monks, priests, preachers, philosophers – none of them is interested in meditation. They are all playing games of the mind, which are childish, absolutely meaningless. You can go on playing those games and wasting your whole life.I teach you a simple thing: just be silent, utterly silent, and you will have found all the treasures and all the mysteries and all the secrets of existence.Osho,The dictionary definition of humble is: “Having or showing a consciousness of one's defects or shortcomings. Not proud, not self-assertive, modest.” Is a rebel humble? Is there more to the definition of humble?The dictionary definition of humble is one thing, but to know humbleness as an experience is totally another. The dictionary is the world of words, and humbleness is something beyond words.So, do you want to discuss the word humble or the experience of humbleness? They are totally different things. The word love will have a dictionary meaning, but the experience of love will be a totally different thing. So always remember, the dictionary meaning is not relevant in this gathering of mad people. Their search is for the living experience, not for dissection of dead words.The dictionary meaning almost always falls short of the actual experience. For example, the dictionary meaning of humble is, “Having or showing a consciousness of one’s defects or shortcomings. Not proud, not self-assertive, modest.” All these three things have to be understood.First, the man of humbleness is not an exhibitionist; he does not show a consciousness of his defects or shortcomings. A man of humbleness simply is no more; he exists without an ego, without a personality. And without a personality you cannot have shortcomings and you cannot have defects. These are possessions of the ego. That’s why ego feels a deep inferiority complex whenever it sees some defect, some shortcoming.The dictionary meaning is that if the ego accepts and shows its shortcomings and defects to people, it is humble. But the existential humbleness simply means egolessness: there is nobody to experience defects, there is nobody to compare oneself with others as being inferior, as having shortcomings.Second, the dictionary meaning says, “not proud.” Anybody who says, “I am not proud” will be proud of this very fact. He will declare loudly, “I am not proud,” and if you say, “I am even more humble than you, even less proud than you,” he will feel offended. He is proud, but from the back door. The true humbleness knows nothing of pride or no pride. Just a small child…does he know if he is proud or not proud?The sage comes back to the same state of innocence; he is neither proud nor not proud – he is not aware. The very ego that could have decorated itself with being non-proud is missing.The dictionary meaning again says, “not self-assertive.” A man who is not self-assertive is bound to be self-repressive: where will the assertion go? The self is there, the ego is there. He may not assert it – then he will have to repress it, but a repressed ego is more dangerous than an ego which is assertive because the repressed ego goes on accumulating, and you are sitting on a volcano which can erupt any moment.The authentic humbleness knows nothing of assertion or repression. Do you think a roseflower is assertive because it is opening in the morning sun and blossoming, and because it is spreading its fragrance to the winds? It is simply natural; there is no question of assertiveness. Whether anybody sees the flower or not will not make any difference, whether anybody passes by the side of the flower or not will not make any difference. The flower will go on dancing in the wind, in the rain, in the sun, will go on spreading its fragrance; it is simply natural.The humble man is just like a flower He is not assertive, he is not repressive, he is simply natural. When he blossoms, fragrance comes out of him. When he becomes enlightened, he radiates light. Love overflows…his compassion is so abundant that it has to be shared with others. It is not assertiveness. Do you think that when a rain cloud showers it is assertiveness? What should a rain cloud do with its rain? It becomes heavier and heavier and heavier; it becomes a burden. It has to share its rain with the thirsty earth. A humble man is simply natural. And whatever grows in this naturalness – whatever blossoms, whatever fragrance, radiation comes out of naturalness, without any effort on his part – is a happening, it is not a doing.It may appear to egoistic people as assertiveness, that the roseflower is asserting its redness, its fragrance; it is doing a kind of PR job, inviting people to see, inviting people to smell, declaring to the world, “Look, is there any other rose better than me?” But this is your own projection. You are not being kind to the poor roseflower. He is not doing any PR job, it is just his nature.And finally, the dictionary says, “…the humble man is modest.” But a man without ego – how can he be modest? Modesty means you have an ego but you have controlled it. You have made boundaries, limits; you have cultured it, you have made it civilized. But it is very thin…skin-deep. All your so-called modest people, just scratch them a little bit and immediately their barbarous ego will be out.A truly humble man has not practiced humbleness. It is not his discipline, it is his understanding and it is his renouncing of the ego. He is not modest, he is simply what he is. You will interpret him according to your own projections…somebody will think that he is too proud, somebody may think he is too self-assertive, somebody may think he is very humble. But it will depend on you. He is only a mirror; he will simply show your face. Dictionaries cannot do justice to real experiences of life, particularly experiences which go beyond mind.You are asking, “Is there more to the definition of humble?” These are not the definitions of humble at all! The dictionary cannot understand what humbleness is. To understand humbleness, you don’t have to go into a library, you have to go into meditation. You don’t have to consult a dictionary, you have to consult your own being. There you will not find any definition, you will find the real thing – humbleness itself. And don’t be satisfied until you have found the real thing.As far as religious experiences are concerned, dictionaries are absolutely useless, because religion is not part of linguistics; it is something beyond language.Osho,Oh, my God, how am I ever going to get out of this one?Vimal, I don’t know who “this one” is but I will tell you two jokes. You can figure it out, who “this” is. One:Mr. Isar was attending his friend’s wife’s funeral. “It must be hard to lose a wife,” remarked Mr. Isar. “Almost impossible,” remarked his friend.Perhaps you are in trouble – I can sense it from your question. But don’t be worried, every night has an end, and every wife too! Just a little patience….Mrs. Kessy has just returned home after her holiday. “How did you get along with your father, whilst I was away?” she asked her son.“Just fine,” says the boy, “every morning he took me out on the lake in a rowboat and let me swim back.”“Goodness!” exclaims Mrs. Kessy, “isn’t that a long distance to swim?”“Ah, I always made it all right,” says the boy. “The only trouble I had was getting out of the bag!”Vimal, you are in the bag. Just try first to get out of the bag, then swimming out of the lake is not going to be a great trouble. But getting out of the bag I can understand…and I have deep compassion for you. That’s why I was always seeing Vimal in tears – what is the matter with the poor fellow?Now he has come out in the open, “Oh my God, how am I ever going to get out of this one?” That means this is not the only one; he has had other troubles before. He has got out of those troubles, he is experienced. So I am not too worried about him, he will get out of this one and he will fall into another ditch.This is the trouble with experienced people: they think that they know so much – now they can manage not to fall into another ditch. And again they find that not only are they getting experienced, ditches are also getting experienced. It has been going in parallel for millennia.But there is hope. Just make it a decision, that if you can get out of this one, you will not fall into another ditch. Then I can bless you. But you have to make a commitment; otherwise, what is the point? It is better to remain with the old one. You are familiar, the ditch is familiar, you know each other perfectly well. And slowly, slowly, one becomes immune. The problem arises with the new ditches: you have to start learning from abc.In the East, things are simpler, because people remain in one ditch. There is no divorce, they become accustomed, habituated. And because there is no question of any possibility of changing, there is no point in crying over spilled milk. It is spilled, it is better to forget and live life as your destiny has given it to you. It is written on your forehead, it is written in your birth chart – everything is decided beforehand. What can you do? It gives a certain consolation. Hence you will find in the East husbands and wives suffering exactly the same as in the West, but with tremendous contentment.In the West the suffering is not that great, but discontentment is very great, because the possibility is there that you can change. And the hope is that perhaps you can get someone better, someone specially made for you.Nobody is specially made for you. Everybody is made for himself; nobody is made for anybody else. But just the idea that you can change…a small trouble, and immediately you feel frustration, freaking out, and all kinds of things.In the East these things happen also every day, but nobody freaks out. It is just fate, it is kismet, it is written in the lines of your hand; it is God who decides. You have simply to learn how to live with the person God has decided you should live with.But in advanced countries, the trouble has reached a climax: all contentment has disappeared from married life. Now the next step is the disappearance of marriage itself. And unless people are allowed to move easily, without any legalities, without any social hindrances, from one partner to another partner at any time of the day or night…if movement is made absolutely easy, perhaps people will not feel so frustrated, so much in slavery and imprisonment.But so much change will bring new problems…you will be utterly tired. Remember that any solution is not going to have only positive effects; it has its own negative shadow. If change is allowed it is going to be tiring, exhausting, making life a kind of despair, because each time you have to prove again your manliness, your womanliness, your beauty, your strength. And all these things go on declining, so each time you have to be more of a hypocrite.Hypocrisy in life is never a blissful state, and hypocrisy with a partner you are living with twenty-four hours a day cannot be continued. It is good for one hour or two hours, meeting the woman or the man on the beach, or in the movie hall where everything is dark and you cannot see whether her hair is false or dyed, whether her teeth are real or artificial, whether she is alive or dead – in the darkness, anything goes. Neither does she know about you.But living twenty-four hours together, hypocrisy is bound to be broken; the reality has to surface, and that will hurt you very much. Again you will say, “My God, I have fallen in a bigger ditch.” And as you go on and on you will find bigger and bigger ditches…because smaller ditches are for beginners; bigger ditches are waiting for the experienced ones.It is better, Vimal, to try to understand the woman you are with. Try to understand what her problem is, because if she is a problem to you, she must be a problem to herself. If you love her, have compassion for her; try to understand her difficulties, her problems. Perhaps that will melt the ice and she will start trying to understand your difficulties, your problems. That’s exactly what love is: two persons are trying to solve life’s problems together without getting fed up and bored too quickly – patiently seeing it as an opportunity for learning and growth.Each relationship is a growth opportunity. Don’t condemn it, enjoy it in all its phases – in the moments when everything is beautiful and in the moments when everything goes dark.That’s how life is, ups and downs.And you have to learn, you cannot expect things to be always going up; for that, first you have to be enlightened and then you have to find an enlightened woman – that is very difficult. First, it is difficult to become enlightened, and then to find an enlightened woman is an almost impossible job.It has not happened up to now in the whole history of man; not a single enlightened person, man or woman, has been able to find another enlightened person, for a simple reason: Why should any enlightened person get into any ditch, man or woman? If after enlightenment you still have to fall in the same ditches, what is the need of enlightenment?The whole secret of enlightenment is in how to avoid the ditches. Without enlightenment you cannot avoid; if you avoid, the ditch will follow you. These are not static ditches that you go around and run away from. They run faster than you!Mulla Nasruddin was saying to one of his friends early in the morning, walking on the lawn, “My wife is almost like a mousetrap.” And women are so attuned, their antenna is always up in the air; if you speak loudly they may not listen, but if you whisper they will listen to every word.The wife came out and she said, “What are you telling him? Yes, I am a mousetrap – and who are you? You are a mouse. And remember, the trap was not running after the mouse, it was the mouse himself who entered the trap. So what are you telling your friend?”But this story is old. Now traps have wheels, dry batteries – they run. Once they see a mouse anywhere…even if they smell a mouse, they run. They don’t wait for the mouse to come. So it is better, Vimal: become enlightened, be a Gautam Buddha, sit under a bodhi tree with closed eyes. Only then can you hope…But keep your eyes closed, because there are stories in the scriptures that ladies from heaven come to distract the people who are becoming a threat to the king of the gods. His throne starts wavering when somebody becomes enlightened – that means a competitor is coming…fresh. The man there on the golden throne may be very old and this new man is coming fresh, young; there is every danger…. To avoid the danger, they send ladies from heaven, who dance around the person who is becoming enlightened – naked; they don’t care about police commissioners!I have nothing to do with the puranas. In the Hindu puranas – which the police commissioner should be respectful of – they dance, they seduce. So perhaps the idea of wheels on mousetraps is not new, it is as ancient as the Hindu puranas. They are the most ancient scriptures in the world. They sent not only ditches from earth, but ditches from heaven also to destroy your enlightenment. And once they have destroyed your enlightenment, they disappear; then they leave you here for the earthly ditches to take care of you. So be aware!Gautam Buddha has strict instructions for his followers: “Never look more than four feet ahead, so at the most you can see the feet of the woman, that’s all – don’t go more than that. And run away – don’t talk to a woman….” Clear-cut instructions: “Don’t touch a woman, don’t sit in a place where a woman has been sitting. At least for ten minutes leave that space empty, because for ten minutes it remains vibrating.”And I am not saying anything of my own, I am simply quoting things within quotation marks. And not one scripture – Hindu, Jaina, Buddhist, all three religions…thousands of scriptures with the same idea. There must be some truth in it, and the truth is that those people were trying to become enlightened with a repressed sexuality.There is no heaven and no ladies are coming from there and no old guy is sitting there on a golden throne who becomes afraid; these ladies are coming from repressed sexuality. The more silent you become, the more vulnerable to your own unconscious – you can become a victim. Your unconscious can create all kinds of hallucinations, and those hallucinations can destroy your peace, your silence, your feeling that you are coming to the peak of your realization. Suddenly you fall with a thud on the ground, flat. You look all around: there are no ladies, they have gone. There were no ladies before either; it was just your repressed psychology projecting.So don’t repress and try to become enlightened, but still keep your eyes closed as far as possible. Don’t take any chances. It is better to be fully cautious; otherwise you may fall again into trouble.That is one way to get out of trouble. The other way is to understand the woman. Be human. She is human; some bridge is possible – it is not impossible. And just making the bridge is a great experience, just coming to a state of harmony where there was conflict before is a great realization. My preference will be for the second, and if you become enlightened with this harmony, then no woman or man can disturb your enlightenment.I don’t consider those seers who were seduced by their fantasies worthy of being called seers. They were perfectly ready to be seduced by their own repressed sexuality, and they have created all these beautiful stories to console themselves: it is not their fault, it is God from heaven who sends beautiful women.Strange, you are searching for God, and God is trying to keep you away; you are a devotee of God, and God is sending troubles for you as a reward. You have renounced your wife, your children, your family, but God is not satisfied – he is sending more beautiful women. He does not want many more people to become enlightened it seems; he seems to be against enlightenment. This cannot be so. God should be – if there is any God – immensely happy when somebody becomes enlightened, because he becomes the argument to the world proving the existence of God.So it is good, Vimal, for you to try to understand the woman; create a bridge between yourself and her. Learn patience and learn humanness, and see that humanity is frail, is defective. Just as it is defective in the other person, it is defective in you. Perhaps you cannot see your defects and your woman cannot see her own defects – she sees your defects, you see her defects. That is the whole problem: not only yours, but of everyone who has a woman to live with; they are both capable of seeing each others’ defects.Just the other day, Anando brought me a piece of news. In the Soviet Union, one woman who was a crane driver struck an electric pole with her crane, and got such a great electric shock the doctors declared her dead. According to their old tradition, she was waiting two days to be buried. But before burying her, one of the doctors who was taking care wanted to do an autopsy. And when he cut some part of her body, blood came out of it. He could not believe it: she was alive!She came back to consciousness, but with a strange phenomenon which has never happened before: her eyes had become x-ray eyes. Now she can take your x-ray photograph. She is being used in a hospital: the patient simply stands before her and she can see the whole skeleton. She can find where the disease is, where the problem is, where the fracture is, where the cancer is, where the operation is needed. But she is suffering from immense migraine, because there is so much electricity in the head that her eyes…and she cannot see anything other than skeletons all around.Of course, Anando has brought the news because of her own ghost – afraid that “I am troubled by only one ghost.” What about this woman who will be seeing the doctors, the nurses, then everybody in the street…? If she is moving, she will see only skeletons moving all around.But I had a thought, that this is a very good idea: somehow, some way should be found that every woman can have x-ray eyes, so she can see into Vimal, where the defects are. In fact, they don’t need x-ray eyes, they see with ordinary eyes every defect. Not only do they see it, they exaggerate it as much as they can. Being with a woman is a discipline, it is a religious austerity.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Lately, I have been feeling very insecure, and I see how much I dislike that space of not knowing. And then I try all kinds of stupid things to control the situation. I feel as if it is such an imprisonment, and at the same time, I have a deep feeling in me that knows that this is how life is, and I should accept it. I find it very difficult to watch myself, and the insecurity comes up even more. Could you please comment?We are trained in wrong ways; otherwise, security is something to be afraid of, and insecurity is something to be rejoiced. What exactly is insecurity? It means tomorrow is not going to repeat today. It means tomorrow you may not even be alive. It means that one has to live each moment as if it is the last moment.A life of security will be simply boring. It will be like seeing the same movie again and again and again – knowing every detail of what is going to happen. You can enjoy a movie only once. If you are an idiot, then it is another matter….Insecurity is the very fabric of life. If you don’t understand insecurity, you can never understand life. Seasons will change; climates will change; the fall will come, the spring will come. Everything will go on changing, nothing can be taken for granted; this is insecurity. You want everything to be certain, permanent. But have you ever thought what will be the outcome of it if everything is permanent? You eat the same food every day, you say the same things every day, you listen to the same things every day. And there is no death even to demolish this tragic living – you are living in a nightmare.Insecurity keeps people fresh, alive, adventurous – knowing that things can be changed. Even without their changing them, they are going to be changed. So there is great scope for change, for transformation.An ancient saying is, “The authentic man is one whom the sunrise never finds where the sunset leaves him”; or, “where the sunrise leaves him, the sunset never finds him there.” He is always on the move, he is a flow…he is not a dirty pond going nowhere.But the whole training of our minds is such that we are made afraid of insecurity, and our whole life we are trying for safety. Financially, politically, religiously – in every dimension we want to be secure. But security means death, a living death. It means tomorrow will be simply a repetition of today, and today is a repetition of yesterday.Are you living? Is there a dance in your life? Are you moving, growing, risking, taking the challenges of dangerous paths? In the acceptance of the danger, in the acceptance that anything can happen any moment, life comes to its best, to its fullest.Your question is, “Lately, I have been feeling very insecure, and I see how much I dislike that space of not knowing.” You are completely upside down; you will have to change your posture. Insecurity is not a space that has to be disliked, it is a space that has to be loved and cherished, celebrated…because tomorrow will bring new news.And because of the fear of insecurity, you are also fearing not knowing; and not knowing is the highest peak of consciousness. But certainly you must be afraid of peaks because you can fall from there; you prefer the plain, asphalt road – no danger of falling from there. You would like to be at the lowest point in consciousness, because from there you cannot fall.Millions of people have decided to live at the minimum out of the simple fear that from the maximum you can fall. It is safer to live at the minimum; it is even safer not to live at all. Nobody has ever heard that dead people are insecure; graveyards are the most secure places. Once you enter your grave, there is no fear: even death cannot do anything to you – one cannot die twice.Man has been trying to create false props for security, knowing perfectly well that they all fall down, but still he goes on piling up props around him. Time does not care about your props, nor does life care about your props. In fact, it is compassionate of nature that whatever you do, you remain insecure. You can have a bank balance, you can have a big insurance – but these are just strategies to befool yourself. What insurance can there be against death? What insurance can there be against the constantly changing flux of life? You cannot prevent it: it is a mountain river flowing fast, dropping from high mountains into waterfalls, moving into valleys toward the ocean where it will disappear completely.The idea of safety has created the idea of accumulating knowledge – nothing should be left unknown because the unknown creates insecurity. If it is known, you feel safe.Even small things, you are continuously trying to know…even if you are traveling in a train with a passenger, you immediately want to know his name, where he is going, what religion he belongs to, what his profession is. You may not have thought that this is a way of feeling safe about the man; otherwise, who knows? You may be traveling with a madman, and in the middle of the night he may sit on your chest.That’s why people are always afraid of strangers. They become uneasy even if you start living your own style of life, not following the crowd. That means you are becoming an outsider, a stranger. So people go on filling their heads with all kinds of knowledge, most of which is simply rubbish and crap; people become walking encyclopedias.In my village, I used to know a brahmin. He was a little cuckoo – I have never come across another man like that. He had crammed the whole Oxford Dictionary; that was his great achievement. You could ask him the Oxford Dictionary meaning of any word, and he was almost like a computer: he would immediately give you the exact words that the Oxford Dictionary says. And he was living under the wrong impression that he knew the English language.By cramming the Oxford Dictionary, one cannot know the English language. Language is a living phenomenon: it comes through dialogue, it comes through contact with living people. The Oxford Dictionary may be marginally helpful, but just the Oxford Dictionary…. He was not able even to make a single sentence, because in the Oxford Dictionary there are only words. He knew the whole language, and still he was not able to make a single sentence.This is the situation of the scholars: they are afraid of their not knowing; they go on piling up scriptures over their not knowing, covering it up with thick layers of knowledge. But underneath they are as ignorant as ever.Ignorance has not to be covered, but transformed into innocence. Ignorance has not to become knowledgeability, ignorance has to become a feeling of the mysterious and the miraculous in existence.This is the way of a religious man. The scholarly man is never religious – cannot be.Your whole approach is categorically wrong – not in part, but absolutely. You have to understand that insecurity is the very nature of life; there is no way to avoid it. And when there is no way to avoid it, the only wise way is to enjoy it. When it is impossible to avoid it, why go on hitting your head against the wall? Then it is better to transform insecurity into a beautiful experience. In fact, it is that.Man can never demystify existence, he can never become all-knowing. The desire to become all-knowing is dangerous. In this ambition of becoming all-knowing so that you can be safe, the possibility is that you may collect much information. And in collecting information, you will forget one basic thing: that you have to go through a transformation. Information is not going to help you at all – you need a transformation of your consciousness. By transformation, you will not become a knower, you will become more and more a mystic.Each and every thing in life, from the smallest grass leaf to the biggest star…it is all mysterious. Neither holy scriptures have any answers for it, nor science has any answers for it, although they both go on proposing hypotheses. Religion tries to propose a hypothesis of God: that he created the world. This is really pitiable; it has nothing to do with authentic religiousness, it is a childish effort to forget your ignorance. Nobody has witnessed any God creating the world. By the very nature of the fact, nobody can be a witness; otherwise the world is already there, somebody is there to witness it.Man’s stupidity knows no limits. Christianity believes God created the world…but this is not enough: they have to know the exact year, date, day – in detail. And they have calculated – nobody knows how they have come to this calculation because they have not given the process of their calculation – that God created the world four thousand and four years before Jesus was born. Of course, it must have been Monday, and the first of January, because he cannot start in the middle of the year. In fact, wherever and whenever he started, that was the first of January. How can the calendar exist without a world?And it raises a thousand and one questions which Christian theologians have not been able to answer – not even a single one. What was God doing for eternity? And why did he create the world exactly four thousand and four years before Jesus was born? What is the secret of it? And where has this fellow been before? And the more basic question is: From where did God come? Who produced him? Is he an orphan, with no mother, no father? Who created him? If the world needs a creator, then God also needs a creator.This hypothesis can satisfy only very childish minds, and can give them security. But millions of people are in that space. In temples, in synagogues, in mosques, they are praying to a God which is just a hypothesis.Some day when man really comes of age and to maturity, he will laugh at us: “What kind of idiots is the whole history full of? They create a hypothesis, and they worship a hypothesis.”Two plus two make four: that is a hypothesis, but you never worship it – or do you? Just writing “two plus two is equal to four”…and then flowers and devotional songs…But your God is not better in any way than “two plus two is four.”But science is not in a better position either. They say that at a certain point, nearabout four billion years ago…Their calculation is as bogus as the religious calculation: four thousand and four years, or four million years, or four billion years. How do you come to that conclusion? It is simply whimsical. They say the world came into existence out of an explosion. Explosion of what? They have removed God; now instead of God, it is an explosion of energy. But that means the energy was there. And if the energy was there, existence was there.Gautam Buddha seems to be more logical, Mahavira seems to be more logical; they don’t believe in the creation at all. They have simply denied that the world has ever been created: it has always been there, and it will always be there, changing its forms.You cannot conceive a point when the world was not, and then suddenly it was there. It is not logic, it is magic: a moment before there was nothing and a moment after, there was everything. God seems to be a street magician! But the street magician knows only tricks. Out of an empty cap, he brings birds – but they are hidden in the empty cap. He creates the illusion that the cap is empty, but it is not empty.Gautam Buddha is right when he says, “The very idea of the creation of the world is foolish. It will lead to more stupid answers and questions.” But why do people want to know such things? There must be a psychological need, and a universal psychological need. This is the need: safety. Knowing that God created the world, you feel at ease.Strange, I have never felt any unease about whether God created the world or not. Who cares? In what way am I related to that creation? It does not affect me this way or that. I am ready to accept the mystery of life, and I am against all those people – whether religious scholars or scientific researchers – who are going to satisfy your fear of insecurity by giving you hypotheses.Even science could not control its temptation and accept the mysteriousness of existence, that we don’t know. Not even a single scientist has been so courageous as to say, “We don’t know.” In fact, the whole project of science is such that slowly, slowly our area of knowledge is growing, and the area of our ignorance is decreasing. Logically it can be inferred that one day, somewhere in the future – it may take millions of years – a point will come when everything will be known; the whole area will be covered by knowledge, and there will be nothing left to be known anymore.I cannot agree with this. Yes, science tries to know things, but that does not demystify them. It simply pushes the mystery back a little. You split the atom – soon you will be able to split the sperm – and then you say that the atom consists of electrons, protons, and neutrons, and you think you have provided the knowledge. But the question is, why does the atom consist of electrons, protons, and neutrons? The mystery is not dissolved, it has become more subtle.The man of understanding will accept that insecurity is the very fabric of life, and that not knowing is the counterpart of the miraculous and the mysterious existence. We know nothing. All that we know is very superficial, and all that we know goes on changing. That which seems to be so certain today becomes uncertain tomorrow.Have you observed that for almost thirty years, no big volumes on science have been written? Only periodicals, monthly publications…. And people don’t write big books for the simple reason that by the time their book is finished, it will be out of date – so great is the explosion. All old theories become wrong; new theories come in. All old hypotheses drop dead; new hypotheses arise like the phoenix, out of the ashes of the old hypotheses. And they know perfectly well that these are also going to fall.If you are trying to write a complete history of something scientific, you are wasting time. So scientists only write papers, not books; they read papers, not books, because a paper can be read in a university or at a conference of scientists. At least it is real, true at that moment; nobody knows about tomorrow. People used to think that Albert Einstein will never be refuted. He has been refuted, he is no longer the giant he used to be. Inch by inch, his whole theory of relativity has been criticized, and better proposals have come into being.But now one thing is certain – because three hundred years’ experience of science shows that no theory is going to become authentic knowledge, it is only a temporary hypothesis. Somebody with a better intelligence, with more logical acumen, with better scientific equipment, is going to demolish it.Charles Darwin is no longer accepted. The idea that man has come from the monkeys or apes is very appealing; looking at man, it needs no proof! But for millions of years, monkeys have remained monkeys, man has remained man. Neither do we see people falling back toward monkeys – going up the trees, and growing tails, and jumping – nor do we see another modern monkey getting down from the tree, standing on two feet, and declaring, “Now I am a human being.”There has not been a single scientific theory which has remained true. Everything has changed, and everything is changing so fast that perhaps in the future it will not be possible to read even papers.One of the great mathematicians – perhaps the greatest mathematician, Goedel – was writing a book on mathematics. His lifelong effort – he wasted forty years – was to give to the world a complete book on mathematics; there would be no need of any improvement in it. He was a great genius. And when he was coming to the conclusion of his book, Bertrand Russell demolished the whole book of forty years just by a small puzzle.Bertrand Russell was also a mathematician; he has also written a very great book on mathematics, Principia Mathematica, which I don’t think anybody ever reads, except a few crazy people like me! He came to know about a problem: the government of Britain had ordered all the libraries to make a catalog of all the books they had, to keep one copy of the catalog in the library, and to send another copy to the central government library so that they could know how many books were in the whole country.The librarians made the catalog…and finally a few intelligent ones became very disturbed: what to do about the catalog they are keeping in the library? – because that has become a big book itself. Should it be included in the catalog? If they don’t include it, then it is against the order. The order says, “All the books in the library should be included in the catalog.” So according to the order, the catalog also has to be included. But it looks very foolish that the catalog includes itself.But they were just small town librarians. The idea came and puzzled them, but they thought, “We should not worry, we will just send them to the central library.” But to the central library, the order was the same, that they should make a catalog of all the catalogs, keep one copy with them, and send the other copy to the government.The man at the central library was far more educated, far more intelligent, but even he could not figure out what to do: whether to have the catalog included in the catalog itself…That looks ridiculous, and hilarious. But not to include it goes against the order. So he asked Bertrand Russell, “You are a great mathematician, you have to solve this puzzle.”Bertrand Russell worked on it but could not find any solution. Everything was wrong: If you put it in the catalog, it does not look right that the catalog is cataloged in itself. If you don’t keep it in the catalog, that is not right because the catalog is in the library and you have left one book uncataloged.Remembering Goedel, the old man who was a world-famous mathematician and who was known to be completing a book on which he had worked for forty years – and perhaps no mathematical book would ever be so complete, so exhaustive – Bertrand Russell sent the puzzle to him. Goedel was just completing the final chapter, the last pages. His whole hypothesis was that mathematics can solve all problems…but he could not solve the problem of this catalog: whether to include it in itself or not.He became so shocked that just a small thing cannot be solved by his whole mathematical experience that he did not publish his book. He became so frustrated, he sent the puzzle back to Bertrand Russell and told him, “I’m not going to complete the book and I’m not going to publish it although I have wasted my whole life on it. What is the use? It cannot solve a simple thing.”Science is an effort to demystify existence in every way. And that’s what theology has been doing before science – trying to demystify everything. God created the world – that makes you safe. God is the father – that makes you secure; he will take care of you. Everything is decided by God; of course, it cannot be against you. God is compassionate…that’s what Mohammedans say: “Rahman rahim” – he is kindness, he is compassion itself. So don’t be worried about anything. Even all your sins will be forgiven, because his compassion is far bigger than your ability to commit sins.How many sins can you commit in a small life of seventy years? If you go on committing sins day and night, without taking time for eating and sleeping and bathing – just sins and sins and sins, a continuum from the cradle to the grave – even then you cannot commit so many sins that they are greater than the compassion of God. You will be forgiven – it gives great safety, a great consolation – just believe in God.Theology was trying to create safety, consolation, security. And now science has taken over from theology, on a more pragmatic basis, and is doing the same thing: just giving you a false idea that you need not worry, science knows all.The very word science means knowing.But I want to insist again and again to you: neither theology, nor science, nor philosophy – no effort of man can demystify existence.You need to be courageous to accept the insecurity – not only accept, but rejoice in it. You have to rejoice in the mystery of existence: the trees, the oceans, the mountains, the stars…everything is mysterious. From the smallest pebble on the beach to the whole universe, everything is so mysterious that there is no possibility of knowing it.Not knowing is the way of the mystic. Insecurity is the way of the mystic. And to be a sannyasin is to be on the path of the mystic.If you change your basic standpoint – which is wrong, utterly wrong – then your whole problem disappears. And then you are capable of dancing amid all insecurity; you are capable of loving and laughing amid all not knowing.Not knowing is nothing but innocence, and insecurity is nothing but a constantly changing panorama, always fresh and new. Nothing is repeated in existence.You must have heard the saying, “History repeats itself.” History repeats itself because history has consisted up to now of stupid human beings. Existence is so intelligent: it never repeats itself; it never creates another Jesus, another Moses, another Buddha, another Chuang Tzu, another Socrates. It simply never repeats. Its creativity is tremendous, inexhaustible.Yes, the history of man repeats itself, because the life of man is a routine. If you look at your life…you go on repeating it. Slowly, slowly the repetition becomes your efficiency: you become almost a robot, you lose your consciousness. Consciousness is needed only if each moment is new, because you have to respond to a new situation. Old answers won’t do.It is a great blessing that life is insecure, love is insecure, and fundamentally we are in a state of not knowing. We can be childlike – running after butterflies, collecting seashells on the beach, or colored stones, as if they are diamonds, and enjoy all of them.In my childhood, I used to have as many pockets as possible. My tailor used to be very angry with me. He said, “You will spoil my credit; nobody will come to me for their clothes to be made. What kind of dress is this? – with four pockets in front, pockets even on the arms, pockets on the pants…not just two, four.” He said, “You are mad, and you are driving me mad.”I said, “I need all these pockets because I love the river, and I find so many beautiful stones that all these pockets fall short.”Whenever I would come home with my pockets full of stones, I would even go to bed with all the stones. Everybody was angry… “What do you think these stones are? Diamonds, or emeralds, or rubies?”I said, “I don’t know, but they are immensely beautiful and I cannot sleep without my treasure; it feels good that they are close to me.”Not knowing is nothing but innocence. These two things are very foundational: insecurity and not knowing. If you can relax in these two, you are a sage, you are awakened. If you go against these two, you are going against your own enlightenment, against your own possibility of being a sage.Osho,It is a shattering, an upheaval from the depths. Tears pour through the cracks, washing the stones into jewels in the moonlight. My eyes are naked and unprepared for this garden: blooming, silent, and unknown in the darkness – blossoms in the night. Osho, is it possible, is it real? And tears, tears, tears…. Osho, I have become just eyes in the night, and your blessings are the morning dew.Devageet, the tears of joy, the tears of peace, the tears of silence are the most precious things you have. Laughter cannot reach to that height. No words are able to express the beauty of the tears. Your eyes are the most transparent part of your body, and your tears come directly from your very heart. It is a silent dance, a very silent music….One should not think of it as a shattering experience. In a way, it is shattering: it shatters that which is false in you. But it cleanses and brings into light that which is real in you. Don’t pay attention to the dying false, it has never been alive – it was only a pretender. Focus your whole consciousness on the uprising of the real. That is your very being. The tears are welcoming your very being and its discovery.You are asking, “Is it possible, is it real?” Yes, Devageet, it is possible. It has to be made possible for everybody. And it is the most real thing in you. Comparatively, nothing is more real than your tears. But the tears have a negative side too: if they come out of sadness and suffering and misery, then they are negative, then they create a dark night around you. But if they come out of joy and bliss and ecstasy, they create a great light within you and without you. And that’s what is happening.You are saying, “It is a shattering, an upheaval from the depths. Tears pour through the cracks, washing the stones into jewels in the moonlight. My eyes are naked and unprepared for this garden: blooming, silent, and unknown in the darkness – blossoms in the night. Is it possible, is it real? And tears, tears, tears…. I have become just eyes in the night, and your blessings are the morning dew.”Devageet, what is happening to you is expected to happen to everybody who has become intimate to me, who has come close to me – not physically, but spiritually. It is a great moment to welcome and to rejoice and to dance to abandon. You are coming out of your grave, you are going through a resurrection.The funeral procession was reaching the top of the hill when the rear door of the hearse burst open. To the horror of all the mourners, the coffin slid out, and then proceeded to bounce and clatter its way down the hill. At the bottom of the hill, its speed carried it right through the open doorway of a chemist shop. Before the appalled surprise of the chemist, it crashed into the counter, causing the lid to fly open.“For goodness sake!” said the corpse. “Give me something to stop this coffin.”You are coming back out of the coffin. It must have been a long journey. It must have been very shattering, but it brought the dead man back to life! You are coming back to life. You have been dead…now you will know life for the first time. And millions are the people in the world who are living in their coffins, and don’t know what life is.To experience life in its totality and intensity is to know the only significance and meaning of existence. That’s the only way. No philosophical thinking can make you aware of the tremendous meaning, and the beautiful blossoms, and the immortality of your being. Then the juice of life, drinking the juice of life is the only way there has ever been of finding godliness in the stones, in the trees, in the rivers, in people, in animals, in the birds. The whole of existence is full of vibrating light. It is just that we should be tuned in – and then suddenly everything becomes such an ecstasy, you could not have conceived of it before.Just to welcome your tears, a joke for you.A layman and a vicar were playing golf, and the layman was not having a good game.“Ah, damn, I missed!” said the layman at the first green. And then missing an easy putt, he said, “Ah, damn, I missed again!”The layman kept on playing a bad shot, and kept saying, “Ah, damn, I missed!”The vicar put up with this for half the round, but then he felt he owed it to the dignity of his calling to say something to the layman. “You really must not keep using such dreadful language, my dear Sir,” said the vicar, “or the Lord may well strike you down.”And just as the words were out of his mouth, there came a jagged flash of lightning; and in a split second the vicar was burned to a crisp. Above the rolling thunder clouds, a deep voice was heard to say, “Ah, damn, I missed!”

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I look at other people's questions to see how they can express these feelings. I just can't find words to express my tears or my love, although the longing is there. Do I need to use words to expose myself?Language is useful, but not always. Words have a utility, but not everywhere. There are spaces where language falls short, words prove impotent, and in fact those are the only spaces which have any significance.That which can be contained in language is mundane; that which always eludes language is sacred. Hence, nothing has ever been written anywhere, in any age, about love, about peace, about silence – although these words have been used as a necessary evil, as a human frailty, because man cannot speak through silence, cannot just speak through tears. He has to resort to something which is too small to contain the vast experiences; it distorts everything.Hence there is no need: if you feel contented, if you feel something beyond words is arising in you…it comes out through your tears, which are far better an expression than words.Words have a limited meaning; tears have only hints about the unknown, just fingers pointing to the moon. If it is coming through songs or through music, it is far better. If it is coming through a dance, it is far more authentic.But even if there is no expression at all – it simply remains within you like a flame in a temple where no wind is blowing, unwavering, utterly calm and quiet but still radiating the space inside you – some of that radiation is bound to come out of your body, out of your eyes, out of your hands. It is not your doing; it is happening on its own, and then it has a beauty. Then it can express without expressing, can say something without saying.But I can understand your problem: you listen to others’ questions…. This is not only your problem, this is our whole upbringing. We always go on looking at what others are doing, and if they are all doing it, there must be something in it. So many people are asking questions, and you cannot manage to reduce your feelings into a question. You may be feeling as if something is wrong with you.Nothing is wrong except the idea of comparison, the idea of imitation. Those who are asking questions may not have such deep experiences. Their experiences may be very superficial – language is perfectly capable of translating their experiences into words. Their questions may be only intellectual, nothing to do with anything beyond the mind.They may be very articulate, well-versed, scholarly. But even a parrot can be a scholar – only parrots are scholars. But the parrot does not understand the meaning of what he is saying; neither do the scholars understand anything. But they know a vast vocabulary, they know many, many words, with different nuances. Their capacity to express is great, but they don’t have anything to express – their words are empty.So some may be asking out of intellectual curiosity; some may be asking just to show their knowledge – not that they want to know the answer but that they already know the answer. They are just checking whether I also know the answer or not. There are different categories of questioners.A few are very childish. One man is continuously asking that he should be allowed to sit in the first row. It seems he has come here only to sit in the first row, because he is threatening that if he is not allowed to sit in the first row, he will go away from here, be against me, propagandize against me. The qualifications that he is showing in his threats certainly prohibit him from the first rows – he will never be allowed to be in the first rows. He seems to be absolutely stupid. Does he think that he can threaten me, or blackmail me?And the very desire to sit in the first row is nothing but egoistic; here you are to be humble. The people who are sitting in the first rows have been here for years, and they have disappeared long before. That’s why they are in the first rows – just posthumous existences. Once they used to be; now they are no more. You are too much – you will have to remain in the very last row. If you want to be in the first row, disappear. Your question is coming out of your ego and you must be blind, utterly blind, because you cannot see what kind of question you are asking.And I don’t determine who should sit in the first row. It is something autonomous: slowly, slowly, as people drop their egos, they start moving closer to me.Your ego is the distance between me and you.If you want the distance not to be there then you have not to ask, you have to destroy your ego and the distance will disappear. One day you will find yourself sitting in the first row.There are questions and questions. A few people are asking because I have said something before and now I am saying something which appears to them to be different or even contradictory. Neither were they hearing at that time, nor are they hearing at this time – because those who have listened to me are not going to find any contradiction anywhere. Their deep listening will make a great harmony out of all statements that I am making. If the statements look opposite, that means you are incapable of creating a harmony. You have not heard, you have not understood.A few people go on asking questions just to show others that they are growing spiritually very high. One day they are touching the very sky; another day their girlfriend has left them, and all their spiritual flight is finished! One day they are beyond jealousy, beyond ego, and the next day their question comes: “What to do with jealousy? Perhaps it has come back….” It has never gone anywhere. They were just enjoying the idea that they don’t have any jealousy. Perhaps there was no opportunity for jealousy to show, and now the opportunity has arisen.You are asking, “I look at other people’s questions…” In the first place, that is wrong. You are here to listen to my answers, not to listen to others’ questions. “I look at other people’s questions to see how they can express these feelings.” How can you see their feelings? You can listen to their questions but whether they have those feelings within them or not, there is no way to see. In fact, the people who don’t have those feelings find it easier to express; those who have those feelings find it almost impossible to express.And you are unnecessarily worrying: “I just can’t find the words to express my tears or my love, although the longing is there.” Your tears are enough. Your love is enough. There is no need to send the question; just drop a few tears on the paper and write underneath: L-U-V, love. Don’t write the exact spelling, because that means it is coming out of the mind.Or just make…Many small children who are sannyasins send me letters – they cannot write much, they simply make a picture of the heart and an arrow. And they have said everything, far better than any poet. What more can any poet do? Just drop two tears also – then it becomes more heartful, more expressive. And it is not a question, it is simply an expression. Love is not a question; neither are your tears a question. They will show your longing; they will show the space you are in.“Do I need to use words to expose myself?” There is no need. But if you feel the need – not because others are asking…If you feel the need without any comparison and without any imitation, then ask, use words. There is no harm in it. But I repeat again: don’t imitate. Don’t do just anything because everybody else is doing it and if you don’t do it, what will people think? – perhaps you don’t have any love, perhaps you don’t have any tears, perhaps you don’t have anything to ask.Here, nobody is going to think about you. Even to think about somebody is an interference in his freedom; it is trespassing his territory. Who are you even to raise a question in your mind about somebody else? My whole effort is to make you respectful of the dignity of everyone else, and his absolute freedom.Even to think about him is a very subtle interference.Mrs. Isaac was dying. “Rosen, dear,” she pleaded weakly, “I want you to promise me that you will ride in the same car with my mother at my funeral.”“Okay,” sighed Rosen, “but it is going to ruin my whole day.”There are a few things which should not be expressed; it is better not to express them.Little Hymie was taking his bath with little Becky before the Sabbath. They were making soap bubbles, when suddenly little Hymie looked at Becky and said, “And now I am going to duck you.”“Ha!” said Becky with contempt. “You don’t even know how to pronounce it!”It is better sometimes to keep silent.Osho,After being here with you for a while, the world looks to me like a big madhouse, and your place looks like the only madhouse where we can become sane. How can we prevent ourselves from becoming mad again when we go back into the world? The madness is very infectious, and until now, whenever I have gone back into the world, I begin to become what everyone else calls “normal.”It is certainly a great problem for all sannyasins when they go back into the world: if they remain the way they are here, they will certainly be thought abnormal, unfit. They may lose their jobs, they may lose their wives, they may lose everything. They may find themselves in an insane asylum. So it is exactly what you are doing that everybody else is doing – when you go into the world, be normally mad; just fit with their style.Only one thing has to be remembered: that it is your acting, that you are acting simply in order not to create unnecessary trouble for yourself and for others. And you can act, because you have been in the world; you know all the roles there. There is no need for anybody to prompt you. You have lived your whole life in that big madhouse; you know its language, its style, its functioning. Act it! Don’t become normal, just act normal. Deep inside remember that it is madness.In other words, with awareness adjust yourself to society – but with awareness, so that your consciousness remains floating above and there is no compromise as far as your consciousness is concerned.Outside, if people like to use lipstick, you can use it – there is no problem. Although it is ugly…but what else to do when the world has painted lips? It is dirty and in countries where people are kissing each other, when you kiss one woman you may be kissing hundreds of people because the same lipstick has been moving all around. It is highly unhygienic, and recently it has become the most dangerous thing in the world because you can catch a disease called AIDS, just by kissing someone.The hygienic way is such that you will be immediately caught, for being abnormal. The hygienic way is what Eskimos do: they rub noses when they are in great love, they never kiss. For centuries they have known the fact that kissing is a dirty habit; mixing each other’s saliva cannot be called a healthy and hygienic thing. When the Eskimos first saw the Christian missionaries who had reached their land, they could not believe it. What kind of people are these? – because their way of showing love was absolutely hygienic.The nose is so clean, and so cold and cool, and just rubbing the nose is a little playful too. But don’t do it in any society where it is not known. If you start rubbing noses with somebody, you will be caught immediately: something has gone wrong with this man!It is better to adjust and be normal. Just remember inside – a clear division – what is acting and what is your reality. You will have to hide yourself behind a personality. Here you can drop the personality outside the gate and you can be a real individual, but the moment you go out of the gate, just pull up your blanket of personality around yourself; it is absolutely right, there is nothing to be worried about.“Betty,” called the teacher, “tell me the meaning of the word trickle.”“To run slowly,” said Betty.“Quite right,” said the teacher. “Now tell me the meaning of the word anecdote.”“A short funny tale,” said Betty.“Good girl,” said the teacher. “Now see if you can give me a sentence with both those words in it.”Betty thought for a moment: “Yes, I know,” she said. “Our dog trickled down the street wagging his anecdote.”Now, children have their own perception of things, and when you are talking to children you have to understand their language and their perception. What Betty is saying is perfectly right according to her perception. She had already given the meaning of both the words separately; but the teacher understood it according to her own understanding – the dictionary meaning, of which Betty is unaware. She has certainly seen the dog trickling down the street wagging his tail; she is talking about her experience.When you go into the world don’t suddenly start talking about experiences that happened here; otherwise people will think you are becoming a little lunatic, something is getting loose in your head. If you start talking about ecstasy, blissfulness, silence, love, they will listen to you but they cannot understand – and it is not their fault. When you go back to them, speak their language. Unless you find someone with whom you can share your experiences – who has some idea, who has entered into some inner space; he may not have reached to the ultimate XYZ, but he has started the ABC – then there is some possibility.Sufis, because of this problem, have been underground for twelve hundred years, because Mohammedans are fanatic people…. Sufism was born in the Mohammedan areas of the world; it is the pure essence of Mohammedanism, but only for those who have that deep insight. Otherwise it appears to be against Mohammedanism. The superficial organized religion is always against its very own foundations; it is always against its own founders.Jainism is against Mahavira, and Buddhism is against Gautam Buddha, and Christianity is against Jesus, for the simple reason that these people were rebels, and what they said was impossible to organize. Their words had to be diluted, their words had to be interpreted; their words had to be changed to fit with the existing collectivity. They had to be made “normal.”Christianity is normal, Jesus is not. Jesus belongs to this company – he belongs to our circus; here he will completely fit. Even if he comes with his cross, nobody will take any note and nobody will object to it. People will help him to put the cross aside and sit down – “We will not need it here, you can leave it outside.” Here, anybody will be absolutely welcome. But in Mohammedanism, or in any organized religion, the problem arises….The Sufis were the true Mohammedans – but Al-Hillaj Mansoor was murdered, and Sarmad was killed. Then Sufis had to go underground; there was no other way. And “going underground” can be understood to mean that they started behaving normally. With the society they will behave exactly the way the society expects from everybody.If you want to see a Sufi mystic, it is very difficult – and it may be that he is just sitting in front of you. He may be a shoemaker, or he may be a carpenter; he may be a potter – he may be anybody ordinary. You may have passed the man many times. You may have inquired in the whole village, “I have heard there is a Sufi mystic in this village” – but even the village people don’t know who the Sufi mystic is. They will say, “We don’t know any Sufi here.”Unless you come across someone who belongs to the inner circle of the mystic…and there may be only a few people, a dozen people at the most, who know the reality of the man. They meet in the middle of the night in secrecy. If you come across somebody by chance – if you go on searching, you will come across somebody – and if he is convinced that you are really a seeker, he will tell you, “I will get the permission of the master and I will take you for the first, initial meeting.” Then he will inform you, “On such and such day, in the night at such and such time, you meet me.”And he will take you to a place where you will be surprised to know that twelve persons are sitting around a man you have been seeing every day, for all this time that you have been searching for the Sufi master. He is no one but the shoemaker, but now he is no longer in the dress of the shoemaker; he is sitting in the dress of a king. And all those twelve people are sitting around with such deep devotion and love, the whole atmosphere is fragrant.For twelve hundred years, thousands of Sufi mystics have been living a normal life in the day, and in the middle of the night – just for one hour or two hours – they meet with those who can understand each other. Then they expose their hearts.So when you go outside, behave normally but remember it is only an act because you don’t want to be an unnecessary nuisance in the society – and it is not going to pay you either.Tom went to the boss’ office: “Can I have tomorrow afternoon off, Sir?” he asked his boss. “It is my grandmother’s funeral.”“Come off it, boy,” said the boss. “Did you not have an afternoon off a couple of months ago because your grandmother died?”“Yes,” said Tom, “but Granddad married again.”In that mad world, where granddads are marrying, behave in the same way. Don’t become a focus of people’s attention; they will decry you, they will condemn you. They have stoned people to death; they have never shown any mercy – they are almost incapable of being merciful. There is no need to provoke their anger and their violence; there is no need to be a martyr.Your purpose is to attain your unfoldment, silently. If the day is not the right time for you, no need to be worried: there are flowers which only open in the night when everybody has gone to sleep.One of the most fragrant flowers in India is the Night Queen. It is a very small flower, but it comes in thousands, simultaneously – the whole tree becomes just flowers. And it is so fragrant…in one place I had a tree in front of my bungalow. My neighbors started complaining against the tree, saying, “You have to cut it down, because we cannot sleep; the fragrance is too much.” The whole neighborhood used to become full of fragrance.I had asked many gardeners, “This is a flower which is called Night Queen; there must be a parallel plant which opens its flowers in the day. If there is such a flower as Night Queen, there must be a flower known as Day King.” But no gardener could help me to find it.I found it in Kashmir. I was certain that there must be a parallel flower because in existence there is always balance; this Night Queen is a woman, so there must be a man, a male flower. And I was surprised to see, the male was very poor. It was exactly the same kind of flower – a bigger size, male chauvinistic size. It blossomed in thousands in the day. But there was no fragrance.So don’t be worried: you need not expose yourself in the open daylight in the ordinary world. There, you will be in unnecessary trouble. Keep growing inside, and remain alert that you don’t get identified with your act. It is only an act that you are playing – you are playing the act out of compassion; you don’t want to disturb anybody. And your real growth is something inner.Sufis say that your prayers should be in the middle of the night, when even your household people are fast asleep. Nobody should know that you pray. Your prayer will be just a whisper between you and the unknown; you should not be an exhibitionist.Osho,There is a beautiful mango tree in your garden which grows delicious fruits, which I know you are especially fond of. I too have enjoyed the taste of these mangoes very much, but now I am absolutely forbidden to eat them any more. Although your cook has been tempting me to eat one once in a while, I have been faithful in my observance of this new austerity.Beloved Master, I am in the dilemma of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. The smell of ripe, delicious mangoes in my room keeps me awake all night. Perhaps the forbidden fruit is not an apple after all, but a mango. Please help.Milarepa, the mango is certainly more appropriate than the poor apple. But the problem is that the story about the apple is a Christian story, and in the Christian countries mangoes don’t grow. Otherwise it is absolutely certain: if mangoes were present in the Garden of Eden, God would have forbidden Adam and Eve to eat the mangoes rather than to eat the apples. Apples have nothing to be compared with mangoes. But mangoes grow only in the East – countries like India – in many varieties. In India the mango is called the king of all fruits; the apple stands nowhere in comparison with it.But to fit the mango in a Christian story is very difficult – the Christian god does not know the taste of mango at all. It would only be possible if the story of forbidding had happened in India. Every story has its geography, its history, its atmosphere. It does not come out of the blue.The Mother Superior of the orphanage called three girls, who were leaving, to her office. “Now,” she commenced, “you are all going out in the big, sinful world, and I must warn you against certain men. There are men who will buy you drinks, take you to a room, undress you, and do unspeakable things to you. Then they give you two or three pounds, and you are sent away ruined.”“Excuse me, Reverend Mother,” said the boldest girl. “Did you say these wicked men will give us three pounds?”“Yes, dear child,” said the Mother Superior. “Why do you ask?”“Well,” the girl said, “the priests only give us apples.”Not even mangoes! But in a Christian framework, mangoes don’t fit. They need a different territory and a different world. In the Garden of Eden there was not a single mango tree, and here…. You have been forbidden – but not absolutely forbidden – because the mango tree was planted by the gardener, the old gardener who used to take care of the garden here twelve years before.He planted it for me. And when you inform him that the tree is ripe enough, and has started giving fruits…And you have been keeping those fruits because mangoes have to be taken from the trees. If they are fully ripe, then before you can reach them, the parrots reach them.And the parrots don’t understand any language – neither Hebrew nor Sanskrit nor English nor Hindi – you cannot forbid them. They have been eating in the Garden of Eden from every tree. They are eating in this garden from every tree, and they come with a big group. If the mangoes are ripe – and they certainly smell so beautiful – they attract the parrots in dozens. So mangoes have to be taken from the tree just before they start ripening. Then you have to keep them in your house, in some hotter place – maybe hidden under the grass, dry grass, or hidden in dry wheat. There they ripen.Milarepa is now my gardener. There are many gardeners, but by chance that mango tree has fallen in his territory. So I can understand – it is very difficult to sleep. He is ripening those mangoes in his room. Then nobody can sleep – as they become more and more ripe, they will disturb your sleep.You are not absolutely forbidden; once in a while, don’t bother about anybody – just get up and enjoy one fruit, and that will give you a good sleep. But not more than one, because after all, you have to be under a certain discipline. Don’t destroy your freedom by licentiousness.That’s what has to be understood – you are free, and one fruit is more tasteful than two. The more fruits you eat, the less tasteful they will become. That’s a well-known economic law: the law of decreasing returns. If you go on eating mango and mango and mango, then you will jump out of the room and run away, shouting, “Mango and mango!”…you have gone crazy.There is a limit, and I am making the limit just so that you can enjoy it in its totality, because it is only one; one every night. And a mango is not a small fruit. One is good, just in the middle of the night.Sitting silently, take the mango in your hand. Meditate over it; don’t be in a hurry, because you are not a thief, you are allowed. Then eat it slowly – not in a hurry. Chew forty-eight times every bite. That is the science of digesting a mango fruit. And if you chew forty-eight times each bite, one mango fruit is almost forty-eight mango fruits.It depends on you, how many you want to make out of one. And you will get tremendous joy out of it. Then go to sleep. And your every night will become an Arabian night.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,When I came to Pune I felt more strongly than ever before that I have come home. Recently I began to see that although I hear your words, I don't listen. The few times that I have allowed myself to listen, I have felt such a transformation, an opening. Beloved Master, please will you guide me on how to listen?The question you have asked is a little bit strange. Strange, because you say that the few times that you have allowed yourself to listen, you have felt such a transformation, an opening. So listening is not something that you are not capable of. You can allow yourself to listen; you concede the fact, and still you are asking how to listen. It is as if you have eyes, you see everything – and still you ask how to see. It would have been better to phrase the question in another way; perhaps that’s what your intent was.You have a misunderstanding that you allow it. If it is within your powers to allow yourself to listen to me, then the whole question is useless. The reality is that sometimes it happens that you listen. It is not your allowance, it is not within your hands; it is just a happening, not a doing. And whenever it happens, you suddenly find a great transformation, a great opening to existence and all its beauties.Your misunderstanding lies in that you can do something, that you can force yourself to allow opening. That is not possible. In fact, that’s how you are preventing your being from opening.You forget all about it, you simply enjoy…sometimes listening, sometimes not listening. Listening will deepen by itself. It is not an art that you can learn; it is a knack that you have to wait to grow in you. More and more listening will be happening and more and more opening. All that you can do is something negative, not positive. What I mean by negative is: you can remove a few hindrances that don’t let listening happen.You cannot make yourself open by force.But you can watch closely and see why sometimes you are ready and open and why sometimes you are closed. So whatever you find keeps you closing, you can remove that.It is what all the great physicians of the world know: their medicine is not capable of bringing health to you. The power of healing is within you. All that they can do is to remove the hindrances so the power of healing starts flowing. You cannot force that healing power to flow, but you can certainly do something negatively to make the way, to clean the path, to remove the rocks.And then wait, and wait with trust, because it has happened even without you doing any negative work.So there is no reason why it will not be happening. The only thing that hinders it – and there are not many things that you have to remove – the only thing is a preoccupied mind. If you are too much preoccupied with something – it does not matter what it is – then you cannot be open. If you are not preoccupied, then there is nothing to prevent the opening. But almost everybody is preoccupied, although the objects of preoccupation are trivia. If you look at them attentively, you will have a good laugh at yourself, at what kind of nonsense goes on within you and creates a tremendous barrier for listening.Hearing of course happens because you have your ears and they are functioning, but the poor ears cannot manage to listen – they are instruments only for hearing. If your unpreoccupied mind is behind the ears, then hearing becomes listening. And without listening there is no understanding. So just watch what your preoccupations are and drop them.Don’t go directly to make some positive efforts, because that is not the way great things come to you. They always come when your doer is absent, and the preoccupied mind is also your doer. Emptying the mind is possible. It is your doing; you can undo it. But listening is something beyond you, something far greater than you – you cannot manage it. You can simply allow yourself to be overwhelmed by it, to be flooded by it. But one thing you can certainly do: you can undo the preoccupation.What are our preoccupations? What do we go on thinking, and why do we go on giving so much nourishment to thinking? What has it produced in the long life you have lived up to now? Is it not a sheer wastage of time? And it is standing there almost like a China wall.All the religions, all the philosophies, all the cultures, all the civilizations have helped you to remain preoccupied. They have all changed you into deaf beings as far as listening is concerned; they don’t want you to be people of understanding. They are afraid of your understanding, because in the light of your understanding all their fictions will disappear and they are living like parasites on those fictions. They want those fictions to remain in your mind as a reality.For example, all religions have insisted on repressing sex. The moment you repress any natural instinct, it becomes your preoccupation. The repressed energy goes around your mind. Sex becomes cerebral; you think about it.An old man had gone to the doctor. He was feeling very weak and it looked almost as if his story was coming to an end. The doctor said, “There is not much that I can do. I can only give you a suggestion: cut your sex life in half.”The old man said, “Okay, which half – thinking or talking?” Real sex had disappeared long before; it was now only thinking and talking.All the religions have made your sex energy become transformed into thinking and talking – that has become your preoccupation. I am just giving you one instance – one of the most important. And there are many. Anything that has been prohibited, inhibited, anything that has been condemned, takes on a tremendous attraction and that attraction creates a preoccupation. You may be doing something but you are preoccupied.I have seen people in temples – because in temples you have to leave your shoes outside – with their hands folded toward the statue of God, but they are looking at the door where they have left their shoes. They think they are praying to God, but anyone can see they are praying to the shoes. Their minds are preoccupied that somebody may take away the shoes. Just to avoid this, Mohammedans had to find a way: they take the shoes with them into the mosque. They have found a strategy – they put the shoes sole to sole and sit on them, so no fear of anybody…otherwise the shoe remains so much in the mind that it is almost insulting to God.You have to watch what your preoccupations are that create the wall – and you forget to listen. Removing that wall is not difficult; just watching the futility of it is enough for its disappearance.Sidney is visiting the psychiatrist. “Okay, Sidney,” says the psychiatrist, “what’s this?” and he shows Sidney a triangle.“That’s a keyhole,” says Sidney, “and what’s going on behind there!”The psychiatrist then shows Sidney a rectangle. “What’s this?” he asks.“A motel window,” says Sidney, “and what’s going on behind there!”The psychiatrist shows Sidney a circle. “What’s this?” he asks.“A porthole,” replies Sidney. “And boy, oh boy,” he continues, “what’s going on there!”“Well,” says the psychiatrist, “you certainly are sexually disturbed.”“I am sexually disturbed?” Sidney exclaims. “What about you? – showing me all those dirty pictures!”A preoccupied mind goes on projecting its own preoccupation on everything. And because it is so full of its own thoughts, it cannot allow any listening.You have known perfectly well that there have been times that listening has happened and you have seen the great transformation that it brings. But you have not watched closely that it has always been a happening, not a doing. Once you understand that something is a happening, all that is left for you is negative doing. You simply remove the obstacles, the hindrances that prevent the happening, that prevent the spontaneous reaching to you, that prevent the opening of your heart. And remember, there is no technique to make the happening happen.The happening simply means it is beyond you – it comes like a breeze. All that you can do is keep your windows and doors open – that is the negative part. Just by opening the windows it is not certain that the breeze will come immediately. The breeze is not just waiting by the side of the window, so that you open it and the breeze comes in…but an open window is an invitation.An open window is saying to the breeze, “I am ready; if you come you will be welcomed, you will not be sent back. I am available.” Hence, just do the negative part and wait. Slowly, slowly the transformation goes so deep that preoccupation of the mind becomes impossible. When you can manage to have diamonds, naturally you will lose interest in stones. When you can have real roses come to you each moment, you will lose interest in plastic roses.Nothing has to be done; it simply is the way things happen. Just get in contact with the higher, and the lower disappears. And to get in contact with the higher, you have only to make a passage for it to reach to you.Existence is trying from everywhere to reach to you, but you are closed. Not a single window is open; no door is open. You have filled even small cracks in the wall out of fear, for the sake of security. This is not security, this is suicide.Open all the doors, all the windows. Let the sun come in, let the wind come in, let the rain come in. Let existence enter into your being and give you a fresh life each moment. You can have such a joy, such immense ecstasy, without torturing yourself and becoming a saint, without making yourself uncomfortable doing all kinds of yoga gymnastics, which are nothing but contortions of your body. You can be at ease, comfortable.There is no need of fasting, there is no need of lying on a bed of thorns, there is no need of renouncing the world – these are all stupid things. If you want to become a saint, they are necessary – stupidity is the foundation of all your saintliness. But if you want to be a man of understanding, then nothing of all this is needed. All that is needed is: remove the obstacles, watch, and see when listening happens and when it does not happen; what is the difference in your mind? That difference has to be destroyed.Everybody is capable of it, but everybody has fallen into the habit of being preoccupied, because the whole crowd is preoccupied. And you are brought up, unfortunately, by these people. Your upbringing by wrong people is the basic problem, and there seems to be no alternative.Many times a few children have been found in the forests, raised by wolves. Just six or seven years ago, near Lucknow a child was found in the forest, raised by wolves. The child had been missing from a village for almost fourteen years. His parents had lost all hope, they could not figure out where the child had gone. A wolf had just taken the child. But the child was so beautiful and so innocent that even the wolf, out of love and compassion, rather than eating the child, started raising him. And a group of wolves, female wolves, were giving their milk to the child.For fourteen years he was among the wolves…and his life with them revealed many secrets. When he was found he could not stand on two feet, because he had never known anybody to stand on two feet; he was running on all fours. That’s the impact of upbringing. Naturally, he could not speak a single word of any language, but he used the language of the wolves perfectly well. He used to run so fast…no human being can run that fast; only wolves can do that. That showed many things that upbringing can do to a person.He was kept in Lucknow hospital. First they tried all kinds of massages to get him up on two legs; it took six months for them to make him stand up. But still his running was so fast that they could not leave him without chains – he was still wanting to go back to the wolves in the forest. And then they started teaching him his name – they had given him the name Ram. It took almost one year for the poor boy to say “Ram”, when asked “What is your name?” That was all the language he ever learned: the word Ram.He remained for two years in the hospital and died. My own understanding is that he died because he was being forced to do things which he had become almost incapable of. His fourteen years’ training…and fourteen years is the age when sex matures. And with the maturing of sex, biology stops any evolution. So those fourteen years are the most important for learning. Whatever you learn, you learn in those fourteen years. Even the man of eighty years may know much more, but that will be only in terms of quantity – the quality will remain of the fourteen-year-old.That’s where biology has left off evolving – unless a person takes evolution in his own hands. And to me that is the religious endeavor: where biology ends, religion begins.After the second world war, millions of soldiers around the world had to go through a psychological test for their mental age, and surprisingly enough they were all below fourteen years, as far as their mental age was concerned. Somebody was thirty, somebody was thirty-five, somebody was forty, somebody was fifty – that made no difference, their mental age was fourteen.Up to fourteen, nature brings you to a stage; beyond that nature’s work is finished. If you take up the work in your own hands, you can start growing your mental age; otherwise only your body will grow old, the mind will remain retarded.Unfortunately there is no way right now for children to be raised so that from the very beginning meditation becomes an intrinsic part of them, silence becomes their natural experience, opening to existence becomes just natural. That’s my conception of a New Man – that he will be brought up from the very beginning to be in communion with nature and existence. He will not be inhibited in anything, he will not be suppressed in anything, because all inhibitions and suppressions create preoccupation – and those are the most dangerous things for meditation.The moment you start sitting and preparing for meditation, suddenly you are amazed: so many thoughts simply attack you from all sides. Your whole mind becomes a whirlwind. Ordinarily it is silent, not that much disturbed. But whenever you want to meditate, your mind immediately takes it as a challenge, because meditation is a death of the mind. Mind creates every disturbance, so that meditation cannot happen. Listening silently is a meditation. But even though our upbringing has been wrong, we are intelligent enough to remove obstructions.Don’t repress any natural instinct.Don’t go against nature.Whatever you want to do, do it even if the whole world is against it. Whatever you want to be, be, without caring about consequences, and you will not be preoccupied – you will have taken the very roots of preoccupation away.I have heard about a very great poet. His golden jubilee was being celebrated. Everybody was drinking and dancing and singing and rejoicing. Then suddenly they became aware that the poet was not there in the hall. So his closest friend, an attorney, went out to look for him in the garden and found him sitting under a tree, in the darkness, very sad. The attorney said, “This is not right; your guests are rejoicing, dancing, singing. They are celebrating your golden jubilee and you are sitting here outside. It will be good if you come in and join your friends. They have come from far away.”The poet said, “It is all because of you! Do you remember twenty-five years ago that I came to you to ask, ‘If I murder my wife what will happen? What will be the consequence?’ And you prevented me by saying, ‘Never do such a thing! Otherwise at the most I can keep you from getting a death sentence, but still you will have to go to jail for at least twenty-five years.’”The attorney said, “Yes, I remember that evening. But what does that have to do with now?”The poet said, “Remember, today the twenty-five years are finished. If I had not listened to you, I would have been a free man. I would have come out of jail. I am so angry that I feel like killing you! You are the person who has kept me in prison my whole life!”People go on following others’ advice. Live according to your own light and then whatever happens, you will find a peace, a contentment, a fulfillment. You may not be a great success in the world, you may not be very famous, but you will be yourself.And the person who is himself is naturally meditative, naturally silent; he has no preoccupations, because he has not left anything that he wanted to do undone; he has never left anything that he wanted to do incomplete; he has never repressed any desire, any instinct, any natural longing. He has nothing to be preoccupied with.So remove all your preoccupations – this is the negative work – and then the meditation, the silence, the opening will be the rewards coming to you on their own.Osho,There is an emptiness that is happening inside of me. In my joyous moments and in my tears this empty feeling is always there, a feeling of unfulfillment. Even in your presence it is there, and it hurts. The tears don't seem to stop as I am writing this to you. Beloved Osho, please help me to understand what is happening to me.Kendra, it is very easy for you to ask a question; it is not that easy for me to answer it – for the simple reason that if I truthfully answer it, it will hurt you very much, and I cannot answer otherwise. It is not only you – many people ask questions in beautiful language but go on leaving out the real facts: facts that they are perfectly aware of, facts which are creating the trouble. And unless you are able to understand those facts, you cannot get out of the darkness and the emptiness that you are feeling.I have been watching you: you fall in love with bank balances, not with men. Your love for money is too much. That is creating your whole problem. You love shopping just like any other ordinary woman. You are extravagant and you don’t have the money for it. So naturally you have to find someone who can provide that money for you.You were with John, and John sincerely loved you. But when you found Emerson, who is one of the richest men in America, you immediately dropped John as if he did not exist at all. You started hanging around Emerson. You had brought Emerson here in the hope that he will remain here, but he proved to be very much a coward. And this was not his number, he has no desire or any longing for search. He is of the same type of mind as you are.Emerson is Hasya’s son. When Hasya and her husband parted, Hasya did not take any money from her husband; it was simply against her dignity. And I respect a woman who is ready to part from the husband, not bothering about his money. Ordinarily the son would have come with the mother, but seeing that the father is going to have all the money and the mother is leaving without any money, he remained with the father. He also looks at the bank balance.Emerson could not remain here. It was not possible; he has to be close to his father because all the money is there. Once his father is gone from the world, Emerson will emerge as one of the most super-rich persons in America. Already he is richer than you can conceive.John is a courageous man. He has risked all his money for my work; he has not even bothered about the future, about his own security. Now that Emerson is gone, you are again trying to catch hold of John, but now it cannot be the same – John has eyes too. He has seen what your preferences are. That’s what is creating all the emptiness and all the darkness. It has nothing to do with spirituality. But anybody listening to your question will think it is a great spiritual question – that you are full of tears and the tears are not stopping. It will be good for everyone to tell his whole story because I cannot go on digging out your stories.Now settle with someone, not with somebody’s bank balance. Change your whole idea – love is not a financial affair. You love money; that is not going to help you. Love somebody, a living human being, not bothering about the money – and all your emptiness and tears will disappear. If they don’t disappear then ask me again, but don’t torture John anymore. Even when you were with John he was not aware. But I was aware because you both were living in the same house with me in Uruguay. I could see that your love was not authentic, was not sincere, was not human. And you were deceiving John…but I simply waited because these kinds of things don’t go on for long. Soon you found a far richer man than John.If you are waiting for somebody rich, then don’t make much fuss, just wait; somebody will be on the way. But then you will always be pretending to love. And shopping is not a thing that is of any importance. What fulfills the heart and takes away the emptiness of the heart is the fullness of love. You can love a beggar and be absolutely fulfilled, and you may love an emperor and still remain empty.Money cannot do any transformation in your being.So whenever you ask questions be very clear and very sincere. Write down the actual facts, because it is not possible for me to know about everybody’s actual facts. I can answer your question without knowing the actual facts and my answer will not be of any use.You are intelligent, you are capable of love, but you are spoiled. Because you are intelligent and you are capable of love, you can easily catch hold of somebody who has money. If that remains your goal for your whole life you will suffer very badly, because youth is momentary. Soon that will be gone. And as your youth is gone, your capacity to catch rich fish will become less and less, and your emptiness will become more and more deep.I am happy that John is not being caught again in your net for two reasons: for John’s sake and for your sake – because this is the only way you will come to your senses.The whole situation of your life is making you a pessimist, only looking at the dark side of things. Right now you cannot get hold of somebody who has enough money to spend uselessly…. This is against your dignity, it is a kind of prostitution: if you fall in love with the money of a man, and the man is secondary and the money is primary, it is prostitution, it is not love. It will drive you deeper and deeper into pessimism and dark nights. And here with me at least, you have to learn to see facts as facts, because then we can deal with them, dissolve them, change them.Don’t live in fictions.Just the other day I was reading the definition of a pessimist. Pessimists are not born. Pessimism is a disciplined habit; you go on doing wrong things again and again and the ultimate result is a pessimist. The definition I was reading was:A pessimist is one who feels bad when he feels good, because he is afraid he will feel worse when he feels better.He is the kind of guy who won’t pick a four-leaf clover for fear he will be bitten by a rattlesnake.He wears a belt along with his suspenders and is never happy unless he is miserable.He even keeps his fingers crossed when he says good morning and complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.You are still so young that you can avoid becoming a pessimist. Become a realist and see eye to eye within yourself: what you have been doing may look clever to you but it is simply cunning. And cunningness is destructive of intelligence, it is not cleverness.There is still time, you are so young and you can change your path. And this time fall in love with a man without bothering about his bank balance. Love itself is the greatest treasure in the world.Osho,The Sufis say that a person has a purpose in life and you need to find out what your purpose is. This question keeps coming up for me now that I am not in a commune any longer. There it did not matter; the important thing was to be with you. Does it matter what work I do? Please could you talk about this?What the Sufis say is not what you have understood. They certainly say that every person has a purpose in life. Their meaning is that every person has a unique individuality, unique function, a unique place in existence, irreplaceable. And they say you need to find out what that purpose is. The emphasis is not exactly to find out what that purpose is; the emphasis is first to find out who you are.The moment you understand yourself, you will understand the purpose also, without any effort. Understanding your unique individuality will give you an insight into your purpose in life, but you cannot find the purpose directly without finding yourself. The purpose is secondary; you are basic. Hence, I never say find out the purpose, I say:Know thyself.Be thyself.These two sentences are enough for your whole life’s philosophy. Everything else will follow on its own accord.You are asking, “This question keeps coming up for me now that I am not in a commune any longer. There it did not matter; the important thing was to be with you. Does it matter what work I do?”You are again getting confused. The purpose of your life is not the work that you do; you can do anything. By purpose I don’t mean your work. You can be a shoemaker, you can be a carpenter, you can be a dancer, you can be a musician – that does not matter. Whatever gives you bliss, whatever gives you peace, whatever brings more awareness to you, whatever makes your life a life of gratitude…any work will do.The work is not important but what happens within you, doing the work, that is the decisive point. If it brings light in your being, if it brings a deep fulfillment, if it makes you more loving and more joyous, then it is absolutely irrelevant what you are doing; do it and do it totally. The more totally you do it, the more intelligence you bring in doing it, the more your individuality will become authentic, the more your potential will become actual, the more you will find you are coming closer to your destiny, to your home.Eleven-year-old Lucy was walking down the village street leading a cow by a rope. She met the vicar who said, “Little girl, what are you doing with that cow?”“Please Sir,” said Lucy, “it is my father’s cow and I am taking her to the bull.”“Disgusting,” said the parson, “can’t your father do that?”“No,” said Lucy, “it has to be the bull.”Everybody has his own purpose, that’s right, but to find your purpose is impossible without finding yourself. And the moment you find yourself, simultaneously you will find your purpose. So there is no need to be concerned with the purpose. The whole concern should be knowing yourself, and the way to know yourself is meditation.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Robert Bly speaks of the three brains of man – the reptilian, the mammalian and the new brain. The reptile brain is utterly cold and ruthless. It deals with, and grows on, survival issues. The mammalian deals with comforts, which include: family, friends, relationship, home, society, religion, etc. What scientists call “the new brain” is a very thin, incredibly dense, cellular layer surrounding the rest of the brain. They have found no purpose for it. Bly says that it deals with transcendence and grows on mystery.All three exist simultaneously but shrink or grow depending on where we focus our energies. Each can seize control of available energy, and the first two try to do so when their own survival is threatened.Could you please talk about this in the context of your work with us, the commune, and the New Man?The scientific analysis of the mind, or more particularly of the brain, has nothing to do with my work with the New Man and the new humanity. The brain is part of the body; it dies with the body, it is born with the body. My work consists of provoking in you that which has been before birth and that which will remain even after your death. My concern is with your immortality. Hence, the difference is tremendous.Scientists have not yet come to accept that which is beyond matter. Their whole work remains confined to material existence. They don’t think you have a soul; they don’t conceive of you as a spiritual being. And that is one of the most dangerous things about science: it destroys your basic dignity. It also destroys your most fundamental mystery.What Robert Bly is talking about is very mundane. It is the analysis of how man’s brain has developed from the reptile to the mammalian. And now there is a third layer growing which he thinks is the transcendental. The transcendental, by its very nature, means that which is beyond the mind. The brain cannot have any layer for the transcendental.It is true that the brain has three divisions. The first is certainly concerned with survival. You can give it any name – the reptile brain. It is very basic, because unless you survive, nothing else is possible. The second is mammalian. That reminds me of Jesus, when he says, “You cannot live by bread alone.” The bread is absolutely needed, but just bread is not enough for human beings. They need art, they need music, they need philosophy, they need religion, they need civilization; their needs grow to much greater heights than just survival. The third brain that is still growing consists not of the transcendental, as Robert Bly speaks of, it consists only of an effort to know the unknown – not the transcendental, but only the unknown.There is a difference to be understood between the unknown and the transcendental. The transcendental is the unknowable: whatever you do, you will never be able to know it. You can experience it, you can have it, you can dance it, you can sing it, you can drink it, but you cannot make it part of your mind and part of your knowledge. But there is much that is still unknown; perhaps it is almost infinite, that which is unknown.The third layer is trying to move into the unknown. And its effort is how to make the unknown known. The whole scientific endeavor is to demystify existence, to make everything known – nothing remains unknown. And science accepts only the division between the two; the whole existence is divided into the known and the unknown.The known is every day growing more and more as science progresses, and the unknown goes on diminishing. But the unknown is the infinite. It will go on diminishing, but I don’t think that there will come a day when science will be able to say, “Now there is no unknown left any more; our work is finished, we can close shop.”Even just for argument’s sake, if it can be accepted that there may be a possibility that all the unknown becomes known, then too, there is a third dimension which science has been consistently denying. And that third dimension is my work. It is the work of all the buddhas of all the ages, of all the mystics, of all those who are really concerned with the essence of existence. The third category is of the unknowable; hence, the word mysticism. Hence the word mystic – it is just the polar opposite of the scientist.Science tries to demystify existence, and the mystic tries to destroy all demystifications – and to uncover the mystery again, in its immense beauty and glory, in its wonder, and in its splendor. The mystic’s work is of a totally different dimension; it is not of the brain, not of the mind – it is beyond the capacity of both.Meditation is the way to go beyond mind and to enter into the dimension of the unknowable. And because science is not willing to accept the unknowable, it is harming the whole of humanity, because unless you accept the possibility of the unknowable, meditation is meaningless. Meditation gains meaning only if there is the third category of the unknowable, because meditation is a means to the unknowable.If you, from the very beginning, deny the unknowable, you are not going to accept the possibility of meditation.And this is the blindness of science. In other words, this is scientific superstition. Man has suffered long from religious superstitions; now he is suffering from scientific superstitions. My work is to rid man of all superstitions: scientific, religious, political. Whatever their name may be, a superstition is a superstition.Science has no reasons, no arguments, no evidence to deny meditation, but it still goes on denying it. Its very denial is so unscientific, so laughable, so ridiculous. The scientist does not understand a very simple phenomenon; that by denying meditation, by denying the unknowable, he is denying himself. He is saying, “I am a robot”; he is saying, “There is nothing like consciousness in me.” He is saying, “I am only matter, and a by-product of matter.” The moment man becomes just a by-product of matter, then what is the harm in being cannibals? Whenever you have a chance, you can eat each other without any difficulty. Just a by-product of matter….It is an old story, that people can’t see their own defects. It is not only applicable to people, it is also applicable to all that man has created. Religions are incapable of seeing their own defects. Strangely enough, Judaism cannot see the defect that is intrinsic to it – Buddhism can see it. Buddhism cannot see the defect on which it is based – Jainism can see it. And so the merry-go-round goes on. Everybody is capable of seeing the straw in the other’s eye, and nobody is able to see the camel in his own eye; we become immune to our own defects.That was the fallacy of all the religions. That’s why they failed humanity; they could not help. They had immense potential, but it was not used because of their superstitions; it was all lost in the desert. They became so much involved in protecting their superstitions that they became uncreative, only protective, defensive. The same is now happening with science, the same story. Now science is very much afraid of anybody showing the defect in its basic structure.The New Man will be free from the old religion, and will be also free from the old science. He will be simply free from any superstitious approach to life. He will have an open approach, without any prejudice. He will be available to any dimension, for any inquiry.Religion used to say to science, “This is not possible because it is not written in the Bible.” The Bible was the prejudice in the West; how can it be possible if it is not written in the Bible? The religions were not ready to go beyond their scriptures. Again it seems that man goes round in a circle….Science has suffered so much from the hands of the religious people. Just within this century it has been able to get out of the prison. But it seems that prison is something natural; although the scientists are out of the prison of religion, they have created their own prison, just out of old habit. Now if anything goes against their scientific researches up to now, or if anything goes against the foundations of science, without any inquiry they immediately deny it; they don’t even give an opportunity to look into the matter. It is the same stubbornness, the same adamant, prejudiced outlook which they have borrowed from religion.Robert Bly is just a writer about science. He has no idea that science is not all – there is much more to life.All that I want is to make man capable of remaining open and vulnerable to everything, whether it is according to his belief system or not. It may destroy his whole belief system, but if it is true, the New Man will go with truth.There are only two possibilities: either you are ready to go with truth, or you drag truth behind yourself. That’s what has been done up to now. Religions have been trying to drag truth according to their opinion; truth has to be according to their ideology, their prejudice. Now science is doing the same stupidity. Now everything has to be according to science.Life is neither confined to religions, nor is it confined to science. Religion was created by the man of old, science is created by modern man. But life is far bigger than the ancient man or the modern man or the future man – life will always remain bigger. And to accept the possibility of oneself always being in the wrong, makes one humble.The New Man will be absolutely humble before truth. His devotion will not be to any prejudice – scientific or religious – his devotion will be wholeheartedly for whatever is true. He will be ready to drop all kinds of prejudices, all belief systems, all hypotheses, if he comes to feel that there is some truth which is beyond all that he has been thinking up to now. The New Man will be ready to go into the unknowable.The unknowable is not part of the mind. The unknowable is available to your being, to your consciousness, to the hidden sources of your life.Except meditation, nothing can help you to drink out of the living sources of life. The spring is within you. It is not in the brain, it is not in the mind, it is not in the body; it is somewhere far deeper, beyond time and beyond space. To me, meditation is the only possibility to destroy all superstitions and to make man free to seek and search without any preconceived ideology.The New Man will use science for survival; more than that is not the purpose of science. It can give you better bread, better technology, better machines, better medicines. The New Man will use it as a survival measure.The mammalian mind will be used for entertainment: for art, painting, music, dance, drama – any dimension that makes your life richer and more decorated. And the New Man will use the third layer of the mind to search hidden layers of reality, unknown spaces of reality.But these are only three divisions of the mind. The New Man will also use the fourth; he will also use meditation to get beyond mind and to see as a pure observer and a witness the miracle of existence, the mystery which cannot be demystified. In fact the more you enter into it, the more mysterious it becomes. In other words the more you know it, the less you know it. The day you know it, you don’t know it at all.Osho,I feel like I am buried alive under my fear. I've always been so desperately trying to be someone special to hide this fear, running further and further away from myself, until I don't know any more what it means to be real. Why do I still feel such a need to hide behind masks which I know only bring me pain and emptiness, never allowing me to love or feel loved by anyone? Why am I so afraid? Even here at your feet, surrounded by those who want to love and help me, I am still hiding. Please strip me naked, tear me apart.The fear you are suffering from is rooted in every being. It is bound to be so, because every day we know someone dies and we know that we are standing in the same queue. And whenever someone dies we are moving in the queue, closer to death. Soon we will be at the window to take a ticket to get out of existence.The poet is right when he says, “Don’t send anybody to ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” When someone dies, there is an old tradition: in the churches the bells start tolling to inform the whole village, “Someone is dead – come back from your farms, your gardens, your orchards.” It is a call to people that somebody has died and he has to be given the last send-off. But the poet is perfectly right, “Don’t send anyone to ask for whom the bell tolls, it always tolls for thee.” Whenever someone dies you are reminded again that you are a mortal being, that death can take possession of you any moment.This is the root fear; all other fears are reflections of it. If you go deep down into any fear, you will find the fear of death.You are asking, “I feel like I am buried alive under my fear.” Everybody is in the same situation. You are fortunate that you have become aware of it, because if you are aware, you can come out. And if you are unaware then there is no possibility of coming out.You say, “I have always been so desperately trying to be someone special to hide this fear, running further and further away from myself until I don’t know any more what it means to be real.”Do you think the people who are special are doing something else? The presidents and the prime ministers and the kings and the queens – do you think they are in a different boat? Just look around and you will find them all in the same boat. They are all trying to be special in the hope that perhaps if they are special, life will treat them differently than it treats ordinary people. Obviously it cannot treat a president of a country the same way it treats a shoemaker.But they are absolutely wrong. Life makes no discriminations… presidents or shoemakers, toilet cleaners or prime ministers, it does not matter at all as far as life is concerned. Death knocks them off with equality. Death is the only communist in the world; it does not care whether you have money or you are a beggar, you are educated or uneducated.You cannot say, “Just wait, I am qualified enough. You cannot behave the way you behave with uneducated people. Just wait a little…I am a police commissioner of Pune, you cannot behave this way. First, give me a notice and I will consider. And you have to follow a certain discipline decided by me.” Whether you are a police commissioner or just a stray dog, it makes no difference – death comes and makes everybody equal.But the desire is that if you are special existence will treat you with some kindness, some compassion. It will think twice, “The man is a Nobel Prize winner, you should just give him a little more life. The poor fellow is a great painter, you should not blow out his candle just the way you do with everybody else.”This is the hidden hope, unconscious hope, why everybody goes on trying to be special. But it is absolutely foolish and absurd. Just look back at what has happened to the millions of kings and millions of queens who were so powerful….Before death everybody is absolutely powerless.In Jaina scriptures there is a very beautiful story. In India there is a myth that if a man becomes a world conqueror he has a special name – for no ordinary king, not even an emperor. He is called a chakravartin. It means that the wheel of his chariot can move around the earth anywhere, nobody can hinder it. He is all-powerful.The story is about one chakravartin, and because he is a chakravartin…the myth says that in heaven the chakravartins are treated in a special way.There is a golden mountain…the Himalayas is nothing but a very small toy in comparison to the gold mountain called Sumeru. Only chakravartins have the special privilege of signing their name on the gold mountain.And when this chakravartin died, he was so excited…to sign on the gold mountain in heaven is the greatest privilege that any human being can ever attain. But what is the use if you are alone there to see it? So he managed that his whole court – his queen, his friends, his generals – should all commit suicide immediately, the moment he dies, so that they all reach heaven simultaneously. He wanted to sign on the gold mountain as nobody else had ever done before. Signing alone, there is not even a witness – what is the joy in it? He must have been a perfect exhibitionist.Because of his orders, all his friends, his queens, the members of his court, his generals, all committed suicide as he died and they all entered the gates of heaven together. The gatekeeper stopped them and he said, “Let the chakravartin go alone first to sign on the mountain.”But they said, “We have committed suicide only for a simple purpose: we want our chakravartin to sign before all of us. His queens are here, his generals are here, his wise counselors are here, his ministers are here…and we have even sacrificed our life just to see him sign. You cannot prevent us.”But the gatekeeper said to the chakravartin, “Forgive me, I have been on this post for centuries and before that, my father, and before that, my grandfather; this post has been occupied by my forefathers since the very beginning of time. And I have heard from my elders, ‘Never allow any chakravartin to go to the mountain in front of others because he will repent it very badly later on.’ And the chakravartins all insist…. You are not the first who has brought a whole army with him; almost every chakravartin has done the same.“So I simply want you to remember that you will repent if I allow these people. I have no problem, you can have some time to think it over. You are new, you don’t know what the experience is going to be. I have seen many chakravartins coming and going and they have all thanked me afterward and said, ‘You are very kind that you prevented everybody else and sent me alone.’”The chakravartin thought, “What to do? because I do not know what is actually going to happen, and this man seems to be authentic and sincere and he has no reason to prevent me unnecessarily…. There is no harm if these people go and see, but I don’t know what actually is going to happen, so it is better to listen to his advice.” So he stopped everybody at the gate, he took the instruments from the gatekeeper to go and sign on the gold, and he went inside the gate toward the mountain. He could not believe…such beauty! As far as he could see there was all gold and gold – mountain peaks reaching so high that the Himalayas certainly looked like a toy.As he came closer to find a place to sign, he was shocked because there was no space! The whole mountain was signed, because we have been here for eternity; millions and millions of chakravartins have died. He was thinking, “I am very special and there is not even a little space left on this big mountain.”He moved around – no space anywhere. And then he came across another person, the mountain keeper. He said, “Don’t waste your time. Even if you go in search for a millennium, you will not find any empty space; all space is filled.”So the chakravartin said, “Where am I going to sign?”The mountain keeper said, “For centuries I have been serving here. My father has served here – from the very beginning my family has been at this job. And I have heard from my forefathers the same story, that whenever any chakravartin had come, there was no space. So the only way that has been found is: erase one of the names and sign your name, and forget all about being special. It is such a vast existence. That’s why the gatekeeper has prevented the army that you had brought; before all those people you would have lost all pride. You can just erase…I will help, I am here.”The whole joy was gone, the whole excitement was gone, and he said to the man, “It means somebody else will come tomorrow and he will erase my name.” The mountain keeper said, “That, of course, is the case, because there is no space; to create space, that is the only way. We cannot create more mountain; all the gold in heaven has been used to create the mountain. You simply sign. Back at the gate you can go with your head high and you can brag…nobody is going to know because I am not going to tell anybody. That’s why the gatekeeper did not tell you why he was preventing your army. Just go and brag that the whole mountain was empty.”But the chakravartin was a man of some integrity and truth. He said, “That I cannot do; neither can I erase any name. And I am not going to sign – it is absolutely stupid.” He went back and he told the gatekeeper, “I am thankful to you and I am going to tell my people why I am thankful. I am going to spread the news in the world, because many of these people have committed suicide. They will have to be born again, they cannot remain in heaven.“I will make every effort to send the message to the world: ‘Don’t unnecessarily waste your life in conquering the world to sign on the gold mountain in heaven. There is no space. First you have to erase somebody’s name, which is ugly, and then you have to sign in that place and tomorrow somebody else will erase it. The whole exercise is one of simple stupidity.’ I am shocked, but a great realization has arisen in me: one should not ask to be special, because existence does not accept anybody as special, superior or inferior.”Your fear is driving you toward being special but that will not change the situation. The only way the fear can be dropped is, rather than putting your energy into being special, put your whole energy into being yourself. Just find yourself, because in trying to be special you are running further and further away from yourself. That you are clearly aware of it is good: the further away you go from yourself, the further away you are from knowing the truth that you are an immortal, that there is no death.Once you recognize your immortality, death disappears. And with death, all fears evaporate into the air. But not by becoming someone special.In the religious instruction lesson, the teacher asked the class, “Who wants to go to heaven?” All the children put their hands up, except for little Hymie. The teacher asked him why he did not want to go to heaven. “Well,” little Hymie said, “my father keeps saying, ‘Business has gone to hell’ and I want to be where the business is! What should I do in heaven?”You will go on running further and further away from yourself in search of something that can take away your fear, your paranoia, your death. But the further away you are, the more will be the fear, the more will be the paranoia, the more overwhelming will be the death. It is better to go inward and find your real being.This is a simple logic, a simple arithmetic: before searching anywhere else, please search within yourself. The world is vast, you will be lost in the search…so first look within yourself; maybe what you are looking for is already there. And all the great enlightened people of the world are absolutely in agreement that it is there, without any exception.This is the only scientific truth that has no exception – which has remained unchanged as far back as you can go. You will find it has always been declared by those who have known themselves, “We are immortal; we are deathless. Life knows no end.”So first, go in.Just a glimpse of your own immortality, and it is as if one has awakened from a nightmare. All the fear disappears, and instead of fear there is nothing but pure bliss, pure joy – just flowers showering eternally with the fragrance of eternity.Osho,Sometimes I have so much energy I really think I might burst. This energy materializes in different forms – one moment it's pure excitement and frenzied joy, the next it's total, paralyzed misery. I am so addicted to action and drama that by lunch break I'm already out cold from exhaustion. How can I direct this loopy energy phenomenon so that I can enjoy it, rather than it enjoying me?Premdipa, once there was a man who took a ride in an airplane. Unfortunately he fell out of the plane. Fortunately he was wearing a parachute; unfortunately the parachute was not properly packed and it did not open. Fortunately there was a haystack in the field below; unfortunately there was a sharp pitchfork sticking straight out of the haystack. Fortunately the man missed the pitchfork; unfortunately he also missed the haystack!That’s how life goes on. There is no need to be too much worried about it. Enjoy your energy. Sometimes it is fortunate, sometimes it is unfortunate – you have to accept both. If you want it to be always fortunate then you are asking too much; it is not possible in this changing world.Everything is always going up and down. So when you are up, enjoy; when you are down, rest and wait, then soon you are going to be up. The down periods should be rest periods and the up periods should be dancing periods. And it is perfectly natural, otherwise life will become very monotonous. This tragi-comic drama – one moment it is tragedy, another moment it is comedy – makes life more juicy, more spicy. So I don’t see, Premdipa, that there is any problem.You say, “Sometimes I have so much energy, I really think I might burst.” You only “think.” I know people who really burst and then come together again!Unfortunately they burst, fortunately they come together again. You only think, and still you are thinking that you are in a great difficulty.“This energy materializes in different forms.” Great!“One moment it is pure excitement and frenzied joy, the next it is total, paralyzed misery.” Great!“I am so addicted to action and drama that by lunch break I am already out cold from exhaustion.” Great!“How can I direct this loopy energy phenomenon, so that I can enjoy it, rather than it enjoying me?” Just say every time it changes: “Great!” and you will be enjoying it rather than it enjoying you. It is a simple secret: whenever it changes, say “Great!”And don’t be worried that others are hearing, because they may not know what is going on inside.But this communion is of the mad people; they know that here are all kinds of crazy people… “This woman must be having some great things happening inside. She cannot contain her joy, she shouts loudly, ‘Great!’”And you will start a movement. You will find others also thinking, “This is something! Why should we be left behind?” And soon you will be seeing people just walking around shouting, “Great!”There is no need to bother about anybody. Here everybody understands everybody else – that all are mad and they enjoy each other. Nobody is going to condemn you. If anybody condemns, report it! What else am I here for?

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Who are you? Somewhere I feel the answer will be there when I realize who am I, yet, what I get is already so much. To sit at your feet is the greatest blessing of all my lives. Suddenly, I know I am loved by existence. What a deep, deep joy to realize this. I am dancing in your garden. This is more a song of my heart than a question.Who are you, my Beloved Master? My tears flow in awe and wonder.The question is easy and natural, but it is impossible to answer it. “Who am I?” has been asked for thousands of years and it has helped thousands of people to discover themselves, but nobody has been able to find the answer, because one’s being is a mystery. You can ask a question about it, you can experience the mystery, but the answer is not possible, because the answer murders the mystery.An answer is a way of demystifying. You can feel me, you can rejoice with my joy, you can be filled with my song, you can dance to abandon, but these are all making the mystery deeper; they are not answers. One day, you will understand – when you come to know yourself. Knowing is possible, but bringing it to words is impossible.It is just not in the nature of things to formulate an answer about your innermost being. It is a secret and it is going to remain a secret. In fact, the more you enter into it, the more you are overwhelmed with wonder, not with knowledge – enchanted by its magic, by its silence, by its grandeur, almost breathlessly…you see the greatest beauty that you have ever imagined. But you cannot find any words to describe it, it defies all description; it negates all explanations.The question is significant because the question is nothing but a quest. The question takes you closer to yourself, hoping that you will find the answer – that you will find yourself – but you don’t find the answer. In fact, you find that the question was fundamentally unanswerable.One of the most enlightened people of this century, Raman Maharishi, had only a simple meditation…. He was uneducated; he left his home when he was seventeen. Somebody, perhaps his mother or father, had died and the shock was so much that for him, the whole world became meaningless. Rather than going to the funeral with the others, he simply escaped into the mountains. The fact – that death is going to take you over any day – made him aware, “I have to know myself before death comes.” He was just a boy, uneducated – he knew nothing of scriptures, he knew nothing of meditation techniques, but out of his innocence, he simply sat in the hills asking only one question: Who am I? He wanted to know before death came. He was not willing to die without knowing himself. Who am I? became his only concern, the ultimate concern.At first it was only a question in the mind. Slowly, slowly, it penetrated his blood, his bones, his marrow. A moment came when it was no longer a question – his whole being became thirsty; it became a thirst, a quest. Even the question went beyond words and he was no longer asking, Who am I? His whole being was transformed into the question: Who am I? It was no longer a mental exercise; it became an existential experience.And the day it happened, the clouds dispersed and he knew the ultimate glory of his being. He became famous all over the world. People from all over the world started coming, just to sit by his feet. He was not an orator; he had no knowledge as such. All that he could teach was simply one thing that had helped him, and that was, “Sit silently with me and just ask the question – ‘Who am I?’ Go on asking. It automatically comes to a point where words disappear but the question remains – just a feeling, a mood, an overwhelming sense of inquiry. And when it becomes so intense that you can only say that now it is a thirst of every fiber of your being, then, unpredictably, the explosion happens.”The question disappears, but the answer is not found. The question disappears – you become the answer. First you became the question; now you become the answer. But no verbal answer is found. You don’t come to a logical conclusion that “I am A, or I am B, or I am C.” You know who you are, but your knowledge is far, far away from being reduced to language. You will sing out of sheer gratitude; you will dance out of sheer thankfulness; you will rejoice because you are blessed – when others are groping in the dark, your sky has become completely without clouds and you have come into the open.You are tasting your being, you are seeing your being, you are hearing the music of your being, you are full of the fragrance of your being – but nothing of it is possible to express in words.You are saying, “Who are you? Somewhere I feel the answer will be there when I realize who am I.” No, there will not be any answer anywhere. When you realize, you will also laugh at the very question. You will be there, a tremendous ecstasy will be there, but no answer.It is not a question-answer thing. No answer can satisfy you. You can read all the books of religion and philosophy and theology; you can read all the answers that people have been formulating, but nothing is going to satisfy you. Just as the word water is not going to quench your thirst…and if you are very scientific you can change the word water into H2O, but that is not going to help you either. You need real water. And once your thirst is quenched, you cannot express the experience of deep satisfaction. You can just say, “Now there is no longer any thirst!”That’s what the ultimate experience of oneself comes to: you can say, “Now there is no question at all. All the questions have disappeared – only I am, a light unto itself, a luminosity, a mystery, a wonder, but without any possibility of communicating it to anybody else.” Hence, the whole emphasis in the East has been to have a deep, intimate contact with the man who has come to know himself. He cannot communicate it, but his very being is vibrating and if you come close enough in your love, in your openness, you may be infected by him. He cannot answer, but he can help you catch it.It is not only that you get diseases by infection; you can get health also by infection, by being with a healthy person. You can also get your enlightenment as infection from being with an enlightened man. And this being with the enlightened man is the whole art of disciplehood. Remaining open and available, waiting for the right moment…neither do you know the right moment nor does the master, but the right moment comes.When you are utterly silent and your ego is absolutely absent, the two flames of the master and the disciple become one. Then they dance hand in hand, then their eyes see into each other – the same source of life, the same mystery, the same spring, eternal spring; the same flowers, the same mysteries.This is called communion. You can get the feel of who you are, in communion with someone who has already reached there.The authentic master does not pretend to be superior to you; all that he can say is, “I am a little ahead of you.” Just a little time gap…which does not make the disciple inferior. You started late; you will reach a little later, but in the eternity of existence nothing is late. It does not matter when you reach. What matters is that you are on the right track. Then the final illumination is going to happen. And if you have seen a man who is already illuminated, he has given you the evidence of your own future. He has proved everything that you need. This creates a trust.And remember, I make a great difference between belief, faith and trust. Belief is not trust, it is just to repress your doubts. Faith is the whole system of all your beliefs together. In a very systematic way, logical way, all beliefs are connected together and then it becomes your faith, your religion. Trust is just the opposite. It is not to repress your doubt, it is a spontaneous uprising in you, when there is no doubt. The question of repressing doubt does not arise; you have simply come in contact and you have felt your heart beating in the same tune, in a deep synchronicity with the master.It is a heartfelt experience; you know reality cannot be otherwise. Although you have not reached yet, you are on the right path. Your hand is in hands which are pouring their warmth and love, and making you courageous enough to take the quantum leap from the question to a no-answer experience. Your question was asking for the answer, but there is no answer as such.Experience is the answer, you are the answer. Only your transformation of consciousness is going to quench your thirst.One Sunday morning, a young black woman who needed forgiveness for her sins came to a Baptist church. She got up in front of the congregation and stated, “Last week I slept with a young soldier and I now ask the Lord’s forgiveness.”“Hallelujah!” cried the congregation.“Two days ago,” she continued, “I slept with a young sailor, but now I ask the Lord’s forgiveness.”“Hallelujah!” cried the congregation again.“But tonight, because I came here and done my penance, I will sleep with the Lord.”But before the congregation could respond, an old drunk yelled out in a clear voice, “That’s right, mama, make love to them all!”A drunkard will understand in his own way. The poor woman was saying, “I will sleep with the Lord,” meaning “I will be with the Lord and I am not going to sleep with anybody else. God will be with me.” But the drunkard has, in his drunkenness, understood that she is going to sleep with the Lord. And before the congregation could respond, the drunkard yelled out in a clear voice, “That’s right mama, make love to them all!” Why bother about one Lord? He does not understand that by “Lord” she means God. He is thinking of all the landlords, or perhaps the story happened in England where there are so many Lords – make love to them all!In communication through words, what is said is not necessarily understood. You are free to understand according to your prejudice, according to your state of mind, according to your consciousness. Hence, realities that go beyond mind cannot be expressed. First they become distorted when you pull them into words; then they become distorted when somebody hears them who has no experience of them.The man of understanding knows that this is a crime against truth: to distort it first, and then let it be distorted by those who are utterly drunk – some with money, some with power, some with knowledge, some with something else. But these are all ways of becoming unconscious, and in unconsciousness what you hear is not what is being said to you.When you are conscious and silent and able to understand, then there is no need to utter even a single word.Two mystics in India had a meeting for two days. The disciples of both were immensely interested to hear them speak with each other, they wanted to know how two enlightened men communicate. One was a Mohammedan Sufi mystic, Farid; the other was Kabir, one of the greatest mystics India has known. They hugged each other, they laughed with each other; they wept in joy, in ecstasy, with tears in their eyes, but they did not speak a single word for two days.The departure time came and the disciples of both were really freaking out. Two days of concentrated waiting and they did not utter a single word! But they remained controlled as the mystics departed and Kabir came to lead Farid up to the boundary of his village. Again they hugged, again they laughed, again they cried, but those tears were of immense ecstasy. As they left each other the disciples of both erupted, almost enraged.They asked Kabir, “What happened to you? You go on talking to us – it is not that you are silent – why did you remain silent for two days?” And the same question was posed to Farid by his disciples: “What kind of insanity is this? Hugging, laughing, crying, weeping, but not speaking a single word – and we were waiting with such great expectation and hope, that something would transpire between you which may help us.”The answer of both the mystics was almost the same. Kabir said, “You don’t understand. The moment I saw him, within my heart I said, ‘My God, he has reached where I have reached. There is nothing to say – he knows it all – but we can rejoice in each other’s illumination.’ And that we did.”And Farid said to his disciples, “You don’t understand. Whoever would have spoken a single word would have proved that he knows nothing. The moment I saw Kabir, I said within my heart, ‘My God, I used to think I was the only one around here. This man has reached long before – so beautiful, so luminous, so mysterious, such a miracle.’ All that I could do was rejoice with him – with laughter, with tears, with hugging…but words would have been absolutely out of place.”There are three possibilities: the man who knows can speak to those who don’t know; the man who does not know can even speak to the man who knows; two men who do not know, can go on talking till infinity. But the fourth possibility of speaking does not exist: two men who know are bound to fall into silence. Their celebration will be of silence.So you go on inquiring, “Who am I?” – but transform the question more into flesh and blood rather than leaving it just in words in the mind. The mind is the most superficial thing in you. Let the question become your bones, your marrow; let it beat in your heart, let it be an undercurrent whatever you are doing, awake or asleep – just a silent question mark that follows you like a shadow without making any noise.And you can be certain – it is my promise to you – that one day suddenly, out of nowhere, you will be standing in absolute awareness, knowing the mystery which is unfathomable.Your mystery is the mystery of everybody else; your mystery is the mystery of the whole universe.Osho,Occasionally, a strong feeling comes over me that exactly the situation I am in at that moment has happened before. Others tell me of experiencing the same feeling and that it has been termed, ‘deja vu.' I have always wondered what this experience was and its connection with meditation. Can you help me to understand it?The experience termed deja vu has a reality of its own, because this is not your first time alive; you have seen many lives, many deaths. And naturally in thousands of lives it is simply impossible not to come to the same places, to meet the same faces…to see a certain tree and feel that you have seen exactly this tree before. The feeling is absolutely certain, without any doubt, you are not imagining it: you have seen a certain person before, or you have been in a situation before, in every smallest detail.It is a very strange feeling; one gets dizzy. But it proves that all the religions that have been born outside of India are very incomplete; they cannot explain the experience of deja vu. Unless you have the idea of reincarnation, deja vu is not explainable. You come into a town and suddenly you feel you have been here before. You know that if you go to the right you will reach the river and if you go to the left you will reach the railway station – and you try it and you find that you reach the river or you reach the railway station! You recognize the trees on the way, you recognize the river; it is as if you have seen it in a film, or perhaps in a dream.But you have not seen it in a film; neither have you seen it in a dream. You have seen it in another life.You are full of all the memories of all your past lives. It is just the mercy of existence that it goes on closing each chapter: the moment you die, the memories of that life become a closed chapter. One life is enough to drive you crazy. If you could remember many lives you would not find a single man who is not crazy – because the woman who is your wife was your mother in the past life, or your daughter or the woman that you are in love with was a man who murdered you in the past life, and now you are again getting into the same trap, in a different fashion. And if you remembered all your lives, things would become very complicated.It happened:I was reaching a place, Katni, and people brought a small girl – she must have been nine years old. And she had been insisting for a few months that she remembered her past life perfectly; she remembered that in her past life she was in a certain family in Jabalpur, where I was a teacher in the university. It was not far away, it was only a hundred miles at the most from Katni to Jabalpur, and by chance I knew the Pathak family. They had a workshop and a petrol pump just four blocks away from my house, and I had to go there almost every day for petrol for my car or for something – air for the tires. So I knew those people perfectly well.I asked the parents of the girl, “Has she been to Jabalpur?”They said, “No, and we want somehow that she should forget all this. It is disturbing her studies, it is disturbing our life; she insists that she wants to go to see her old family. We don’t know who these people are and how can we just impose ourselves on them, telling them that ‘This is a member of your family!’”I said, “I know these people, and at least one thing is certain: she is describing the house perfectly right; she is describing their profession perfectly right. She is saying that she had three brothers – there are three brothers. And she says she was the eldest sister and she died as a widow, and I know this much: they had a sister, who was a widow and who died nearabout eight or nine years ago. And your daughter’s age is nine years.” I asked her, “Can you tell me the names of your brothers?” And she immediately told me the names.So I told the family, “You come with me; you can stay with me. I will talk to the Pathak brothers and I will bring them, with ten or twelve other people, to the house. And let us see whether she recognizes them or not.”When I told the Pathak brothers, they were immensely interested and excited. A little bit afraid also, but they were perfectly willing to go through the experiment, so they collected all their servants, a few friends, and a group of at least twenty-five people came to my house. The girl immediately ran, clutched the hand of one of the Pathak brothers, and she said, “Have you forgotten me?” And then she looked around and she caught hold of all the three brothers – “It is strange, you don’t recognize me? I am your sister, and because I became a widow when I was just thirteen years old and because our mother had died, I was almost a mother to you all. I brought you up, and you have forgotten!”I inquired of them, “What she is saying – is it true? Has your mother died?”They said, “We don’t remember our mother…and it is true that we were brought up by our sister. She was almost like a mother to us, and she did not marry again just for our sake, so that she could take care of us; otherwise who would take care of these children? She sacrificed her whole life.”They all touched the feet of the small girl and they said, “We would like to take her home.” That became the problem: she became so split. One part of her wanted to remain with the old family – the attachment was deep, of many, many lives – and another part wanted to be with the new family. But there, the attachment was only for nine years; it was not that strong.I suggested that for six months she lives with one family, and for six months she could be in the other family…but I said, “Her whole education will be disturbed, and soon she will have to be married; then she will have three families and this will drive her mad.” I suggested to the parents and the Pathak brothers that the best way would be to give her a few hypnotic sessions and to make her forget her past life.It is just accidental; it rarely happens. By some freak of nature, some small crack has remained open and the memories of the past life go on flooding the present mind. I had to give her nine sessions, just insisting on one thing: to forget everything of the past.She forgot everything of the past and started asking her father and mother, “What are we doing here? We should go back home.” But they asked, “What about the Pathak brothers?” She said, “Who are they?” I took her around to the Pathak brothers’ house and their workshop, but she did not give any indication that she recognized anybody.Deja vu is a small fragment from the past, somehow entering your present. It is a reality. And these are the facts: deja vu, memories of past lives which have been confirmed many, many times, make the theory of reincarnation not just a religious theory but a scientific fact. Any day, when science is of a more open mind….The trouble is that the whole of scientific progress is happening in the West, where one life is the accepted concept, so they are all prejudiced with the idea of one life. But the world is becoming smaller every day. Sooner or later, science will have to take note of the phenomenon, because it is so essential for human growth, for meditation, for transforming consciousness – because if you can remember your past lives, it becomes a proof that there is a future after death, too. The remembrance of past lives also proves that after death you will be here in a different form, with a different name.Also, if it becomes a scientifically proven fact – which I have no doubt it will once science starts moving in that direction and drops the Christian or the Jewish or the Mohammedan idea of only one life…That is simply stupid, because in existence nothing dies; everything continues, only forms change. Why should it be otherwise as far as life is concerned?If people become aware that they have lived the same kind of life thousands of times…and this was the use that the theory of reincarnation was put to – to create a great boredom and a fed-upness, because all these things you have done before. And you have not learned anything, you are again…for thousands of lives you have been running for power, for money, and you are still doing that. It seems every life’s experience is being erased and you start from abc again!If it becomes scientifically supported, you will have great difficulty in repeating the same stupid games. You have played enough – it is time to change, it is time to raise your consciousness; it is time to go beyond this vicious circle of moving from one life into another, again and again like a wheel.The Hindi word for the world is samsara and the word samsara means “the wheel which goes on moving.” This is what I was saying about how difficult it is to communicate. The people who gave the world the name samsara had a certain idea behind it: to remind you so that you don’t go on moving like a mechanical wheel. And when they said, “Renounce samsara,” they were not saying to renounce the world, they were saying to renounce this wheel-like movement.But it has been misunderstood, misinterpreted, and people started renouncing the world and going to the mountains and the caves and the monasteries. And perhaps they had gone to the monasteries in their past lives also! It is part of the samsara – those monasteries, those mountains, the marketplace. Whether you live with your wife or you renounce her – these are all part of the wheel.Renouncing the wheel is a totally different phenomenon. It means, all that you have done up to now has been done out of unconsciousness. Now it is time to be mature and start doing things out of consciousness. Act with awareness; you have acted enough under the influence of unconsciousness.This wheel of reincarnation is due to unconsciousness. Once you become conscious, you see there is no point: you have achieved success many times, but what is the point? Death comes and erases everything. It is almost like making castles in the sand – a wind comes and the castle is gone. And you start making another castle…again and again the same thing will happen.It is of paramount importance for science not to ignore the fact of millions of people’s experience in the East. It is not a superstition. It is one of those mysteries of life of which we remain unaware. Once science starts discovering ways…. you will find a great change in your attitude toward things and your focus will change; your focus will be how to get out of this wheel. This wheel is your slavery. And to get out of this slavery has been the only longing of seekers of truth and freedom.Once you have realized that your being can remain in the universe without any body, any form – it can be formless and still there, spread all over existence – all your efforts will be how to attain that great freedom. In the East we have called the ultimate experience of such people moksha, which means absolute freedom. Freedom from the body, freedom from the mind, freedom from any kind of chains around you, freedom from form – just a pure consciousness. Still it has an individuality, an invisible center which knows, “I am.” In fact, “for the first time I am in my true essence.”Deja vu is an authentic experience, but it is only a fragment of a far greater phenomenon – reincarnation.Little Hymie was taken to a seance by his mother. The medium asked him whom he would like to speak to. “My granddad,” said little Hymie. The medium went straight into a trance and soon a spooky voice could be heard in the darkened room: “Hello, Hymie,” the voice said, “this is your granddad speaking. What is it you wish to ask me?”“What are you doing in heaven?” asked little Hymie. “You are not even dead yet!”The poor boy is asking a truth – “Here everybody is thinking you are dead, and you are not dead yet. What are you doing?” But nobody ever dies. Death is the greatest fallacy that man has created. It does not exist, it only appears so.After Paddy had jumped a red light and smashed into another car, he dashed over to the other vehicle to discover that the driver was a priest. “Good God, man,” said the badly shaken priest, “you almost killed me!”“I am really sorry for that,” said Paddy, taking a bottle from his pocket. “Drink some of this whiskey for your nerves,” offered Paddy.The grateful priest gulped down some of the whiskey, and then started shouting again, “What do you think you were doing?” he asked. “I am lucky to be alive!”“Oh, Father,” said, Paddy, “I am sorry. You will feel a lot better after you have drunk some more of this.”The priest had a few more stiff shots and then asked, “Why don’t you have a drink?”“I don’t drink, thank you Father,” said Paddy. “I will just sit here and wait for the police.”That is the difference between a man of awareness and unconsciousness. Now he is in a good position: the police are going to catch the priest for being drunk and driving!Either you can exist as an unconscious being – you have existed that way from the very beginning – or you can exist as a conscious being. As a conscious being, all your actions are bound to change. Your life will have a different aroma. Your actions will have different goals. And everything put together, you will have only one dimension: how to get free from unconscious actions, unconscious imprisonment; how to be absolutely conscious and move out of all chains.Meditation will be nothing then but a methodology to prepare the ground for you to jump from unconsciousness into consciousness. And that is the greatest quantum leap.Buddha is not dead; neither is Jesus nor Zarathustra nor Lao Tzu nor Nanak. Anybody who has lived with full consciousness goes on living without any form. Because there is no form, there is no disease; because there is no form, there is no death; because there is no form, there is no old age. A consciousness without form is simply always fresh, young, free, and the whole universe is available to it. Its empire is great.Once Gautam Buddha was asked, “You say again and again that if you become absolutely conscious you will not be born again into the body and your empire will be the whole existence. But what about the many people who become enlightened, have already become enlightened? How can I alone be the master of the whole empire?”The question seems to be logical, but it is not existential. And Gautam Buddha laughed – he has laughed very rarely; not more than three or four times in his whole life. He said, “I can understand your logic but I will tell you one thing…I will give you an example, not a counter-argument. In a dark house you can burn one candle, and the whole house will be full of light. You can burn another candle – do you think the light of two candles is going to be in conflict? The second candle will also fill the whole house with its light. You can burn a third candle; you can go on burning candles after candles.“They will remain individual in their flames, but as far as their radiated light is concerned, they will all possess the whole room. There will be no division. It is not that this is my territory and that is your territory. And the light is not a thing, so a thousand candles can have their light filling the whole house without any conflict.”He was right. There is no way to counter-argue, but his example is perfect. That’s exactly the situation:Once you are free of form, you will be spread all over the universe. Millions of other enlightened people are filling the whole universe with their light, with their consciousness; at their center they will have a flame of their own. But their radiation will have no boundaries.The lights don’t conflict, they are not things. The same space can be occupied by many lights, without any struggle, without any quarrel. And consciousness is a light.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I have heard you say that the friend will not change a person, but that the enemy will. Another time, I heard you say that love will change both.Would you please comment on love and enmity? How do they relate to one another? Why do lovers sometimes look like enemies to one another?Anand Nadam, I have been looking at your questions. It seems your mind is consistently searching for some contradiction in my statements. Perhaps you are not even aware of it. And because you are so preoccupied that you cannot even see when there is no contradiction, you start seeing one just because you want to see it.It is one of the problems with the mind: whatever it wants to see, it can manage to see it; whether it exists or not is not the point. The mind has a tremendously creative imagination. And once it takes a certain standpoint it goes on finding things which have no existence anywhere, but to the mind they appear absolutely real.Before I answer your question, you have to be reminded that your being a disciple does not mean that you have to agree with me on anything whatsoever, except meditation. Our relationship is only of meditation and nothing else. I am not proposing a doctrine to which you have to subscribe. Neither am I proposing a religion that you have to become a member of; I am not working to create an organization that you have to be a part of.You don’t have to agree with me on anything – any of my statements. I am not in search of followers; I don’t have that kind of investment at all. You are absolutely free to agree or disagree, or remain indifferent. Only on one point are you here with me, and the day you feel disagreement on that point you need not be here at all. That point is meditation.Meditation is not philosophy, it is not theology. It is simply a method of being silent, a method of searching within. If you even disagree on that point, and you say that there is no within and that there is no need to search, that there is no question of going in, I am not at all interested in convincing you. I am not a missionary.At that point you are absolutely free to go anywhere, to do anything you like with all my blessings, with all my love. Other than meditation, you need not worry about whether I have said something which is not right according to you or according to your knowledge.For example, you had another question today. A few days before, I had answered a question about why Indian women seem to be so graceful compared with Western women. I had said that the Western woman was just as graceful as the Eastern woman before this century. But in the West, deep research into the science of sex has revealed many new things of which women have been unaware, or perhaps have been kept unaware by man.One of the most significant findings was that women have a capacity of multiple orgasm. A man has the capacity of only a single orgasm. The difference is so great that once a woman knows what orgasm is, no man can satisfy her.Perhaps that is the reason why for centuries the woman has not been allowed to have even a single orgasmic experience. It was easy to avoid it, because the woman has no vaginal orgasm; hence she can produce children without orgasm. Man can make love to a woman and yet prevent the orgasmic experience happening to her.She has a totally different organ, the clitoris, which has nothing to do with making love. It is a separate growth. So one can become a mother of a dozen children and not know at all the experience of sexual climax, because the vagina is absolutely insensitive. It has to be insensitive for the simple reason that the child has to be born – if the vagina was sensitive, childbirth would be an absolutely unbearable pain. Even though the vagina is not sensitive, childbirth is still a great pain.It is natural and very logical and scientific that the vagina should be insensitive, so that when the child is born the woman is not in much pain. The pain depends on your sensitive organs. The vagina is a blind spot; on the body you have many blind spots. You will be surprised to know that inside your skull where the brain is placed, it is absolutely insensitive. One would never have thought that the brain is our most significant organ and it is in a place, inside the skull, which is absolutely insensitive.It was found in the first world war that a man got shot in his head, and by some mistake the bullet was never removed from his head. The wound healed and the bullet remained inside his skull. And he was not even aware that he was carrying a bullet in his brain. It was only because he was suffering from migraine – he again and again reported about having migraines and no medicine was working.Finally, some doctor thought about having him x-rayed, because he saw the wound that had healed – perhaps the migraine had something to do with the wound. And when they x-rayed him, they could not believe their eyes: there was a bullet inside the brain. The skull was opened up again and the bullet was taken out, and the migraine disappeared. But the man had no sensitivity to the bullet.After that, many experiments proved that this too is part of nature’s great strategy. Because mind has seven hundred centers which control everything in your body, if the inside of your skull was sensitive, life would become impossible. Just any small thing happens, anywhere in the body, and you would be troubled, because the mind would go into a turmoil – you would become sensitive to it.So much is happening inside of which you are not aware. And it is for your sake that you are not allowed to be aware. When you eat, as the food passes down your throat, you don’t know how it is digested, how it is transformed into its basic elements. You don’t know how it is changed into blood, into bones, into nerves, into brain cells – into a thousand and one things that are needed by the body.If you were aware of all this continuously, life would be impossible. You would be so occupied continuously – so much information inside would be coming to the brain – that you would not be able to live in the outside world at all.For centuries man was not aware that blood circulates. In the old scriptures on medicine – East, West, both – it is depicted that the body is filled with blood, but nowhere is it mentioned that it is in constant circulation. The blood that is in my feet, by the time I have finished the sentence, will have gone around my whole body. It will have passed through my brain and back to my feet; with such great speed the blood is continuously moving. If we were aware of this movement, it would be a great nuisance.Once in a while, sitting in one posture, your legs start feeling pins and needles because the blood is being stopped. It starts making you aware that the circulation is being hampered and obstructed, and if you don’t listen to it, then your legs go dead. The circulation has stopped. Suddenly you find you have no control over your own legs. The control was in the circulation of the blood; that was your control. Just sixty years before, just in the beginning of this century, man became aware that not only is the body filled with blood, the blood circulates.For thousands of years, man has believed that the woman has a vaginal orgasm. It was believed all over the world. There was no way of checking it, and perhaps man never wanted to explore the fact, because if the woman becomes aware that she has a separate organ for having orgasm, she becomes free of man. It is part of her slavery to keep the idea floating in her mind that there is only vaginal orgasm.So when, in the beginning of this century, the function of the clitoris was discovered, it was a tremendous boost to the women’s liberation movement – because the woman became aware, in the West, that for sexual pleasure she does not have to be dependent on men; that basic slavery is not a necessity anymore.I had said that day that the woman has no vaginal orgasm. Anand Nadam has asked today, “There are scientific researchers who say that the woman has a point in her vagina called the G-point, which is sensitive and which has the capacity of orgasm.”It is not something new. For almost this whole century, since the function of the clitoris has been discovered, even a man like Sigmund Freud continued to say that the woman may have clitoral orgasm, but that it is not important – the important orgasm is vaginal. He could not deny the clitoris, but he could not deny the vaginal orgasm either.And since then there have been researchers who have insisted that the woman has two sensitive organs for having sexual orgasm. But the greatest researchers have found that the vagina cannot have this sensitivity by its very nature, because it is going to be used in giving birth to children. It cannot have any sensitive part which can give orgasmic pleasure; then giving birth to the child would not be painful, it would be great pleasure, which even a man cannot give to a woman by making love. The birth of a child would be such a tremendous orgasmic pleasure.The reality is: there is no vaginal orgasm.But why do a few scientists go on insisting on it? Now they have started talking about some imaginary G-point. It is absolutely absurd, according to me, because it goes against the very nature. Childbirth prevents the vagina from having any sensitive point, and particularly an orgasmic point.But why do these few researchers go on insisting, again and again? The reason is that these are male chauvinists. Just being a scientist does not mean that you have gone beyond your male chauvinistic ideas. They still want to emphasize the fact that for sexual pleasure the woman is dependent on the man. This is possible only if there is that imaginary G-point.Now, Nadam had asked in the question, “What do you say about the G-point?” I am not a scientist. I am not a sex researcher. This is not my business.My logic was simple and natural. I have looked at both the researches and I agree with those who say that the woman has only clitoral orgasm. It seems to me that these people are more authentic, more sincere. They are more interested in the truth than in the supremacy of man over woman. And I am absolutely against any supremacy, either of man or woman. They are both unique, and both are independent.Nobody is dependent for his or her pleasure on the other. If they share, it is beautiful. If they don’t want to share, they are both independent. Man can have sexual orgasm without a woman, but he is not ready to allow the woman to have the sexual orgasm without him.I am simply making a logical point; I have no vested interest in the woman having a G-point or an X-point – she can have the whole alphabet! It is not my interest at all. But I can see the cunningness of a few people who are even scientists, but their mind and their approach is not scientific, it is not logical – it does not convince me.But I am not emphasizing the fact that you have to be in agreement with me. You are absolutely free. I have simply expressed my opinion; I am only expressing my opinions. These are not dogmas.And this has to be remembered in every reference, that I am simply an observer – a very objective witness. I have no leanings, no prejudices, no preconceived ideas to support or not to support.I am not party to any ideology.I am an absolutely free thinker.So whatever I feel is logically sound, I will say it. If it goes against your prejudice, against your preconceived opinion, you are not supposed to agree with me. You can keep your opinion, you can keep your prejudice, but remember that you are not being logical, you are not being intelligent.The same is the situation in this question. You are saying, “I have heard you say that the friend will not change a person, but that the enemy will. Another time I heard you say that love will change both.”In your mind you think you have made your point – that both my statements are contradictory, because I have said “The friend cannot change you” and then I say “Love can change both.” And friendship is, of course, an experience of love.But you have forgotten the context in which I had made the statements. I had said the friend will not change you but the enemy will, in the context that you have to fight with the enemy, and when you have to fight with someone, you have to use the same methods as the enemy.If America is going to fight with Russia, they both have to go on creating nuclear weapons. You have to watch the enemy continuously, what he is doing. India continuously watches Pakistan – what, and how many weapons they are purchasing, and from which country. And immediately India goes to purchase the same weapons from some other country. You have to keep your eye continuously on the enemy. And you have to use the same strategy, the same method, the same language as the enemy.The enemy changes you without your knowledge; he brings you down to his own level. With a friend, the situation is totally different. You are not fighting with the friend. You can be a friend of Gautam Buddha; then, too, it is not necessary that you will become a Gautam Buddha. But become an enemy of anybody, and you will see that by and by you have become his imitation – you have to, just to survive.In that context I had said that one should choose one’s enemy very carefully. Choose an enemy who is higher than you, so that even your enmity becomes a growth – you have to be higher than you are to face your enemy. Don’t choose an enemy who is lower than you.For friends, you can choose anybody; it is not that important. But the enemy is very important. This was the context…that one should choose great enemies because that gives you a great opportunity to grow. You should never choose enemies below your status; otherwise they will pull you down to their state, or even lower.And when I made the second statement, it was in a different context. When I said love will change both…When you are in love – it is a very rare case…what you call friendship is not more than acquaintance. Are you ready to die for your friend? What can you do for your friend? Your friendship may be nothing but a familiarity, perhaps a coincidence that you have been born in the same neighborhood, or perhaps the coincidence that you have been in the same class.How deep is your friendship? How much can you sacrifice for the friend? And if the friend is in misery, can you share misery with him? Or is the friendship only of happy days? This is a well-known fact: when you are rich you have many friends, and when you are poor, all friends turn their backs toward you.I used to live in a house for many years with a man who loved me not unconditionally. He had a vested interest in me. My presence in his house was making him prestigious, respectable. Hundreds of people were coming there from all over the country to see me, to meet me. And he enjoyed that. He also enjoyed that his children were becoming acquainted with great politicians, saints, poets. He was also becoming familiar with the well-known people of the country.But he had a strange habit, and that was that he did not have a single friend in the whole city. He never even talked with the neighbors. His servants, his gardeners – he had never talked to them; he would simply go past, looking straight ahead, and with such a long face that no servant had the courage even to say, “Good morning, sir” to him.I asked him, “What is the matter? Why are you so cold and so inhuman? And particularly toward these poor people who work for you in your garden, in your house – your cook…”He said, “My experience is that the moment you become friendly with the servants they start taking advantage of you. Then somebody’s mother is sick and he needs some money, some advance. Somebody’s father has died, somebody is going to be married…. As far as I am concerned,” he told me, “nobody’s mother has ever died, nobody’s father has ever died, nobody has ever been married, because they cannot even talk to me – I don’t even look at them. I don’t accept them as human beings. The moment you start accepting them as human beings they start taking advantage of you. I have learned it from my childhood not to have friends, because they are all going to be friends to you because you are rich.”I said, “This is very strange. That means you are living a very poor life, without friends…and I don’t think you have ever loved anybody.” I had never seen him even talking to his wife, or sitting with her in the garden, or going anywhere with her – to a movie or to the circus or any social gathering. The same reason: the moment you are too friendly with your wife, she starts asking that she needs this, she needs that. Her hands are immediately in your pockets, and you don’t want anybody’s hands in your pockets.What are your friends? Even the people you think you are in love with…. What is your love? Just a biological urge, or something more? Is there anything more than the physical body? Have you ever thought of the spiritual being of the other person?I have heard…. A woman was asking a man before they were going to get married…they were in great love. People are always in great love before marriage; I have never seen anybody who is not in great love! A small love does not exist, only great love. But it exists only for a few days.They were both in great love and the woman asked, “Tomorrow we are going to get married. One question has been continuously in my mind – will you always love me?”Always? The man thought for a moment and he said, “As far as I can think, just one thing has to be clarified – that in your old age you won’t start looking like your mother. That is the only fear. If you start looking like your mother, I cannot love you. Things have to be made clear, plain, right now. I will love you if you will remain just as you are.”Naturally, nobody can remain, everybody has to become old. The woman who is very beautiful today, tomorrow may become blind. The man who is very strong and beautiful today, tomorrow may become a cripple, may have an accident – everything is possible. Is your love ready for the unknown future? Or is it only for this moment, for this person? Youth is fleeting.This is not love according to me. The love I have been talking about is a communion between two souls. It is not biological, it is not physiological. It is something spiritual. And unless it is spiritual, it is meaningless. A spiritual love certainly transforms both the people who are in that communion; it is the greatest alchemy for transformation.So there is no contradiction in my statements.Sandy McTavish was sitting weeping at his fireside. “Eh, Sandy,” said a neighbor, “what’s troubling you, man?”“Oh dear, oh dear!” sobbed Sandy. “Donald McPherson’s wife is dead.”“Oh well,” said the neighbor, “what of that? She’s no relation of yours.”“I know,” wailed Sandy, “I know, but it just seems as if everybody is getting a change but me!”This is your love. Husbands are hoping that if their wives were dead, then another chance…. Wives are waiting: if their husbands are chosen by God, then perhaps they have a chance again. This time everything got messed up; next time they will take a more experienced step.Just today, because I have been hitting continuously on Latifa and her great boyfriend, Dhyan Om, finally – even in her German mind – something clicked. And although Dhyan Om calls himself not an ordinary nut, but a coconut, something clicked in his mind also. Because what I was saying was so clear to everybody except these two persons. In the whole of Lao Tzu House everybody was worried what to do, because they are suffering so terribly just by being together. Whenever they are away from each other, they look happy, they look healthy. The moment they see each other…finished, everything is finished! And they are living in the same room.And I have been hitting continuously, hoping that some day, some understanding may arise in them; if you cannot be happy together, then at least show this much love to each other – to separate. This is kindness, gratitude.You are both suffering. It is not only one person suffering, both are unhappy. But both are clinging with each other. And finally today, they both agreed, “It is true, we cannot deny it, that we are happy when we are away from each other and we become unhappy, very unhappy, when we are together. And it is time that we should separate.”It was a great understanding. I was not expecting that it was going to happen so soon, because one is a German, another is a nut! What hope is there?And you can see what I mean. Now they decide to separate and immediately – he does not lose a single moment – he rushes to the market to purchase a beautiful, costly sari, and presents it to Shunyo. They had not yet separated, and he had started making pathways…. Stupidity seems to have no limits. He could have enjoyed at least a day or two.But one becomes so accustomed to suffering. And Shunyo…he must have calculated that a German and an English woman are born enemies. So from a German it is better to move to an English woman. He has suffered enough with the German; perhaps there is some hope with an English woman. But he does not know that Shunyo already has a great lover. That poor fellow is taking care of my garden, and this coconut goes and presents a sari to his woman! Once he hears it, or comes to see that sari, Dhyan Om will be in more difficulty than he has ever been. Because he is a dangerous man. Dhyan Om has fallen into a greater and more dangerous ditch.But I have heard that Shunyo was telling people, “How beautiful this Om is. Poor fellow, he is going through such torture with this Latifa, and even in this state of torture he remembers me and he goes and brings a very costly present for me.” Now Shunyo cannot see what is happening to Latifa, but Dhyan Om becomes a poor fellow.Our minds work in such a way that they always lead us into difficulties. And people cannot learn from experience. Neither has Dhyan Om learned anything. And Shunyo – they are all neighbors – knows perfectly well that he is a difficult guy. But just because of a present – and that too in such a situation, when he is going to separate – he becomes a poor fellow; she has great compassion for him. She should have told him, “Give this sari to Latifa as a present for all the suffering that she has gone through with you.” That would have been the right thing to do.And wait for a few days before you start another game, another misery, another trouble. Just rest a little. Even before he has got down from one boat, he has put his foot into another boat…not to miss a single moment of misery.Our love is simply an escape from ourselves. We cannot be with ourselves. And you are asking, Nadam, what I mean by love. I certainly don’t mean anything that you will find happening in the world.I mean by love a sharing of the hearts.But first you should find your heart, a sharing of beings. But first you should meditate deeply and go into the secretmost chambers of your being, so that you have joy and bliss to share in abundance.Your love is not to share something but just to escape from yourself so that you can be involved with somebody else. Your love is against meditation.My love is a flower of meditation.It is a blossoming of meditation.Only a meditator can be a lover.And your love is a cowardly escape. You cannot be alone. You are so afraid of yourself when you are left alone, that the moment someone leaves you, you immediately rush to anybody who is close by.Now poor Shunyo was close by…he had not even gone a little further, to Krishna House or Jesus House. Here, just in Lao Tzu House, immediately…and not even bothering that she is already in love with someone.It is not good to interfere. It is not gentlemanly. It is not in any way compassionate to interfere with two persons’ love. You are being very cruel, very selfish. And the ugliness of the whole phenomenon….Love is one of the most precious experiences, but before you can love someone, you have to find yourself; otherwise, who is going to love? You don’t know anything about yourself. You are absolutely unconscious. In this unconsciousness, whatever you do is going to be wrong.The old bull, all drooped over, was standing in the pasture with all the cows. The farmer turned a young bull loose in the field. He got busy immediately with one cow after the other. The old bull started pawing the ground with his right foot.“You needn’t do that,” said the farmer, “because you can’t do anything about it now.”“That’s right,” said the old bull, “but I can let that young one know that I ain’t a cow, can’t I?”People are no better.Their unconsciousness is as deep as the animals’; there is nothing different. In unconsciousness, we are animals. Only in our consciousness do we rise above animals. The more consciousness we have, the more we are beyond animals. And love is an experience beyond our animalhood. But what we know as love is nothing but our animalness.Hymie Goldberg and his friend, Rosen, were coming home late at night after a club party.“I’m always afraid when I return home late like this,” said Hymie. “I shut off the engine of my car half a mile away, and coast quietly into the garage. I take off my shoes and sneak into the house. I am as quiet as possible, but as soon as I settle down into bed my wife sits up and starts screaming at me.”“You just have the wrong technique,” said Rosen. “I never have any trouble. I barge into the garage, slam the door, stomp into the house, and make a hell of a racket. I go into the bedroom, pat my wife and say, ‘How about it, kid?’ She always pretends to be asleep!”

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 12 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,From your answer to the woman who falls in love with bank balances, not the man, I realized that I can't even see the man, let alone love him. I have accepted my mother's angry conditioning toward men. When a man comes to me with his love, I run away, which encourages him to chase me. This game I play is so ugly. Please Osho, help me to drop this garbage, to be able to see men and to know their beauty, their gifts, their love.Before I answer your question I would like everyone to know that if you are not capable of understanding me when it is a question of your personal relationships then don’t bring those questions to me, because I cannot lie and console you. I am not a consoler. Don’t force me to be a baby-sitter.When you bring a question to me, you have to be ready to understand my vision, my clarity, my understanding, even if it goes against your ego. It is bound to, because all your questions are arising out of the ego. That is your basic problem; all other problems are only by-products.As far as I am concerned, I am not interested in your personal relationships; that is absolutely your own nightmare. You have chosen to suffer – suffer. But when you bring a question to me, then remember that I am simply going to say the truth of someone who can observe without being a party to anybody. This is not ordinarily the case in the world. Whenever you go to someone with a question about your personal relationship and the suffering it is bringing, the worldly way is to console you.In some way, all the religions have been doing that for centuries. They have all found explanations so that nothing has to be changed; you are not to grow in consciousness and awareness. They only go on giving you homeopathic sugar pills – consoling you that it is your past life and its evil acts that are affecting your life, shadowing your life, bringing misery to you. All you can do is accept it and be patient, because God is compassionate and you will be finally forgiven. This is an opium; it keeps you half asleep.People have chosen all these consolations because they help them to avoid taking the trouble of changing their consciousness, their understanding, their attitudes. Nothing has to be changed; you cannot do anything. So relax in your position, accept it as your fate, because if nothing can be done about it, the only thing possible is acceptance.Acceptance brings a kind of peace – dead, hiding your despair, your anguish, your suffering. But knowing that nothing is in your hands; everything is in the hands of God…you are only a puppet. When he pulls your strings, you dance; whatever he wants to do with you, he does. It helps you to remain in a condition of being half asleep. And it also takes away the responsibility from you. You cannot do anything; hence you are not responsible for what is happening – you are not contributing to the suffering of yourself and the person you are related to.And you can go on repeating the same vicious circle your whole life. Slowly, slowly you become accustomed, you become immune. You know this is how life is. That’s why there has not been any revolution in human relationships.Although men and women have suffered together, creating all kinds of troubles for each other, there has not been in ten thousand years any revolution, any change in their relationships. What your parents have been repeating, you are repeating. Your children will learn from you, and they will repeat it. You know that this is how life goes on…you remember your parents, or perhaps even your grandparents. And your children are learning everything from you, and they know this is the way life has to be lived.So if you want consolation, go somewhere else – any priest will be helpful: Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Mohammedan, Jewish.I am not here for consolation.Consolation to me is poison.I want to help you to see clearly how you are creating your own world. To me, you are your own world, and you are your world’s creator. Neither your past life nor any God is deciding what is happening in your life; you are the decisive factor. Take responsibility for it. Be strong, have some stamina, and make an effort to change.But first you ask the question, and if I don’t answer then you feel rejected. Just the other day there was one question, “I have asked my question many times, and you are not replying. I feel very much rejected.” You don’t leave me any space. And if I answer it, then you feel hurt. My answer is going to hurt you – hurt you terribly, because my answer is going to open your wounds which you have been hiding, of which you may not be aware.Just last night I was talking about Dhyan Om and his ex-girlfriend Latifa, because they were continuously fighting. It seems their whole psychology was completely fixed: each was trying to dominate the other, and both were strong people. Nobody was submissive and there was no solution.If one was weaker and had submitted, seeing all the trouble, the problem would have remained but there would have been a cold war; undercurrents would have continued. But because both were strong personalities…and nothing is wrong in being strong, but they were misusing their strength. Every good thing can be misused.It is not only weakness that creates problems, it is also strength that creates problems. If one of them were weaker, that person would have accepted the slavery and they would have been a good couple. Such good couples you can find everywhere. Their goodness consists only in the fact that the woman has surrendered. She has accepted for centuries to be secondary, not to try to dominate directly. But indirectly she goes on torturing, nagging, being bitchy; that is a natural outcome of an unwilling state.Nobody can love slavery. Everybody hates it. And the man who has forced the slavery, rather than being your lover, becomes your enemy. So on the surface, just a thin layer of love…and underneath there is so much hate. But you are not aware of that hate because it is in the deep darkness of your unconscious.People have been asking me how to avoid their wife’s or their girlfriend’s nagging, because it has become a continuous headache. In the name of love, what they are getting is not love but just a constant torture, very subtle. She may not say anything, she may simply bang the door, but she has said everything by banging the door, by dropping the plate, by beating the child. She may not say anything to the husband. But the child has not done anything and he has a good beating. And the husband knows that HE is being beaten, not the child. To avoid this whole thing, he tries to escape from the home, to the office.You know about the offices. The boss approaches first. Even before the janitor has reached the office to unlock it, to clean it, the boss is already there, sitting in the car. Then the janitor arrives, then the clerks start coming, then the manager comes…. And they all look happier in the office, where there is so much work, and they hope that by the weekend they will be able to relax for two days.But those two days of the weekend prove to be the most terrible because they have to be at home for twenty-four hours. Clouds of misery surround them. For five days, the working days, they hope for the weekend, and at the weekend they pray to God, “Finish this weekend as quickly as possible; the office is far better!”I have heard, two men used to sit in the pub very late every day till the owner was about to close. He almost had to push them out, saying, “Now go home, it is illegal to keep the pub open any longer. It is the middle of the night. Get out!” Then reluctantly they would go.One day, one man asked the other, “I know why I am sitting here, but what is the reason that you go on sitting here every day?”The other one said, “My reason is my wife. As long as I can remain out of the home I have some dignity, some self-respect. The moment I enter the home, I have to enter with my tail between my legs. And immediately all my dignity, all my self-respect is destroyed. But why do you go on sitting here? I know perfectly well you are unmarried.”The first man said, “I go on sitting here just because I am unmarried – there is nobody waiting for me at home. I am hoping to get married.”He said, “This is strange, I am sitting here because I am married; you are sitting here because you are unmarried, there is nobody at home waiting for you. For me there is somebody waiting…”What kind of relationships have we created?Dhyan Om was very angry. You ask the question, and then your reaction is anger. That means you missed the point. Latifa was a little better. She was crying, and then laughing…and then crying, and then laughing. Whenever she understood the point she laughed, and whenever she became herself she cried. So this went on for a long time.Shunyo is innocent – in a way very gullible. She thought this poor Om was presenting the sari to her because she understands him and his misery. This is something to be understood. I have been working with thousands of people for almost three decades…. Women never sympathize with women because they know from their own experience how bitchy they are! So they project the same bitchiness on every other woman; they never sympathize with the woman. They will always sympathize with the man: “Poor fellow, he is suffering so much in the hands of that monster.”This is one of the reasons why women are not yet liberated, because they cannot become a force together. They sympathize with the man; their sympathy is not for other women. With other women they have a relationship only of jealousy – if she has better clothes, if she has better ornaments, if she has a good car, if she has a better house. Their only relationship with other women is of jealousy.But if every woman is jealous of every other woman, then naturally this is one of the fundamental causes of their slavery. They cannot become a force; otherwise they are half the number of people – they could have managed to become liberated long ago. Any time they wanted to be liberated there was nothing to prevent them. They are their own enemies.Shunyo is innocent. She unnecessarily got into trouble by accepting the sari. She should have told Om, “This day when you are separating, it seems so outlandish; it proves you really are a crackpot. In one room you are deciding to separate and suddenly, in the middle of this separation business, you remember to present a sari to me.”Now he is saying that he had not purchased the sari from here. A few days before, Latifa had sent Om to Bangalore for some work and there he purchased the sari, with Latifa’s money. And he wanted to give it to Shunyo because she understands him better than anybody else; she sympathizes with him, consoles him more than anybody else.But I wonder why he was keeping that sari for so many days? If it was purchased in Bangalore with Latifa’s money, when he had come back from Bangalore he should have given it to Shunyo. Why had he been keeping it only for the day when he would be separating? This shows a cunningness, a calculativeness. It was not purchased for Shunyo. It was purchased because it was certain that sooner or later he and Latifa will have to separate, because they are creating a constant scene in Lao Tzu House. So he brought the sari in case they have to separate and he will have to find another woman immediately.It is just a coincidence that he found Shunyo. If it was purchased for Shunyo, he would have given it to her a few weeks before; that would have been natural, that he had gone and purchased it, and he had given it as a gift. But just yesterday, when he had to change his room and take his things – before doing that, just in the middle of all that turmoil – he remembered to give Shunyo the sari.Shunyo has to understand it. This innocence can be misused by others.Just a few days before, one woman, Patipada, was here. She wanted to be here but she was part of a small group that destroyed the commune in America, because they committed so many crimes that their crimes became a support to the American government.This Patipada had even tried poisoning people, under the instructions of Sheela. And before things had come to a point where I was going to request the government to inquire into all the activities this small gang had done against the whole innocent commune, Sheela escaped. Patipada also escaped, and the day she escaped she came to see me just as I was going for a press interview. She was standing there in front of the door, and she said, “I am very grateful to you, Osho, but now perhaps I will never see you again. I am leaving this place tonight.”“But,” I said, “why are you leaving, and why will you not be able to see me again?”She said, “The situation is such.”It was only discovered later, when all the crimes were discovered, that she was also a partner in those crimes. That was the reason for leaving the commune, and that was the reason…because then in what way will she be able to face me? But she came here, and she knows perfectly well that I will forgive her; there is no problem about it.It is human to err, and it is more human to forgive. I will not say it is divine to forgive. That is making forgiveness a superiority.But she gave two hundred rupees to Shunyo, two hundred rupees to Nirvano, and two hundred rupees to Amrito just as a present.Amrito and Nirvano both thought that this was a bribe so that she can be accepted into the commune, and they wanted to give that money back – it looked dirty. But Shunyo is innocent; she behaved the same with Patipada, thinking, “How sweet she is.” She could not see the point, why in the first place she would give that money to her. It is because these three people look after me; to approach me, these three people are the key. And if they are satisfied with her then perhaps they will help her to get re-established in the commune.But Shunyo was also hurt yesterday, because she was thinking it was because of Om’s great understanding of her sympathy that he had given her the present.One thing every woman has to remember is that man has divided you in such a cunning way that you can never become a force. You are jealous of each other; you don’t have any sympathy for each other. You would rather sympathize with men – not your man of course! It has to be somebody else’s man.Shunyo has to grow in more understanding and more awareness. The only man who laughed at the whole matter and enjoyed it was Shunyo’s boyfriend, Milarepa. He really enjoyed the whole thing. He proved to be a more understanding person. He did not jump into the tournament that was going on; he remained outside playing his guitar, thinking, “Let these fools decide whatever they want to do.”And people freak out so easily if anything is said which goes against their opinions and their habits. They don’t even think about it, that I don’t have any vested interest in their relationships – whether they are together or separate. Just because they ask the question, I feel it as part of my compassion to make things absolutely clear.And once things are clear to you…they cannot be clear in anger, they cannot be clear when you are freaking out. They can be clear only when you meditate upon them. Whatever I say to you has to be meditated upon. You are not to be defensive about it, because there is no question – I am not attacking you. You all belong to me in the same way.I would like you to be more individual, more free, more alert, more conscious, more meditative. And these situations can be great opportunities for meditation. But if you get angry, freak out, start defending yourself, then please don’t ask such questions. I have no interest at all. Your relationship is your business.My simple concern here is meditation. And this is very strange – rarely do you ask questions about meditation. That does not seem to be your main concern. To me, it is my ultimate concern, the only concern, and to you it seems not a priority – it is not the first item on your mind. Perhaps it may be the last thing on your laundry list, but certainly it is not the first; the first things are stupid things, trivia. You waste your time, you waste my time.And I am ready even to help you to solve those problems just so that you can get rid of all this nonsense and have simple, loving relationships. But that will be possible only when meditation becomes your priority. Out of meditation, everything else will become graceful; you will be able to see deeply into your own acts, into your own behavior, and you will be able to have some compassion for the other person – his human frailty, the possibility of his committing mistakes.When somebody commits a mistake you don’t have to be angry, you have to be more compassionate, so that he does not start feeling guilty. Because you don’t understand the psychology of things: if one person commits a mistake and you become angry – and your anger is justified because the mistake has been done by the other person – your anger creates humiliation in the other person. That humiliation becomes a wound which wants revenge. So the other person will wait until you commit a mistake – and you are not beyond committing mistakes – and then he will take revenge with a vengeance.Never make anyone feel guilty, because if you make the person guilty he or she can only hate you; love becomes impossible.That’s why I repeat again and again:Love needs as a basic foundation, meditation.Only in the heart of meditation roses of love can grow. That is the right soil; there is no other way.Dhyan Nidhi, your question is, “From your answer to the woman who falls in love with bank balances, not the man, I realized that I can’t even see the man, let alone love him. I have accepted my mother’s angry conditioning toward men. When a man comes to me with his love, I run away, which encourages him to chase me. This game I play is so ugly. Please Osho, help me to drop this garbage, to be able to see men and to know their beauty, their gifts, their love.”Now, if you really want to drop this garbage…your mother is in that garbage, and that will hurt you. You have been poisoned by your mother. Out of a hundred problems and troubles, almost ninety percent of them are because of your mothers because the child grows in the mother’s womb. Even while he is in the womb, the mother’s moods and emotions affect him. If the mother remains constantly angry, sad, gloomy, frustrated – if she does not want the child and the husband has forced her to have a child, if she is having the child unwillingly…all these things are going to affect the basic fabric of the child’s mind. He is in the making. It is not only the flesh of the mother and the blood of the mother that the child will get; he will also get her psychology – not only her physiology.So while a mother is pregnant she has to be very careful because a new life is being created inside her. Anything she is going to do – fighting with the husband, fighting with the neighbors, or being frustrated for any reason – is destroying and poisoning the child’s mind from the very roots. Before he is born, he is already prejudiced.It is not only your mother who is angry with men. Almost ninety-nine percent of women are angry with their husbands. The same is true about husbands: they are angry with their wives. But their anger does not affect the child so much, because the child is inside the mother’s womb and the child starts growing under the shadow of the mother, not under the shadow of the father. The father remains only a casual visitor. In the morning he may give the child a kiss, pat him and go to the office. In the evening he may come and have a little talk with the child; otherwise, for twenty-four hours the child is learning everything from the mother.That’s why every language is called the mother language, because the father has no chance to speak to the child when the mother is present! Mother speaks, father listens – the child learns the language from the mother. And it is not only the language, all her attitudes….Every woman is angry for the simple reason that she is not free, she is enslaved. And certainly the enslaver is the husband; he has become her prison.You will be surprised to know that in all old scriptures of religions – they are all written by men – they are condemnatory of women, utterly condemnatory. One of the most famous saints of the Hindus is Tulsidas, who is read the most all over the country. Even in the villages, the uneducated listen to Tulsidas. His attitude toward women is so ugly – but he conditions the mind of man, all over the country.He says that once in a while you have to beat the woman if you want to keep her in control. He categorizes woman with strange fellows: dhol, which means drum – unless you beat the drum it is useless; that’s why the woman is categorized with the dhol. Dhol; ganwar, idiots; and sudras, the untouchables, the people who cannot even live inside the city. They are so dirty, according to Hinduism, that they have to live outside the town. For centuries they have been exploited, and they are doing the worst work, the hardest work. And they are the poorest; they don’t have the dignity of human beings. “dhol, ganwar, sudra, pashu” – and the animals. “dhol, ganwar, sudra, pashu, nari” – and the woman. “Ye sab tarn ke adikari” – all these are in absolute necessity of being tortured.And this man Tulsidas is one of the most prominent saints of the Hindus! To me, just this small statement is enough to declare that this man is neither a saint nor even a human being. But he has been conditioning the mind of man for three hundred years in this land. And he is not alone, he is simply repeating the old heritage of other scriptures.The most intriguing and the most surprising thing is that women are his greatest audience. They listen to Tulsidas, they listen to such statements, and they don’t revolt; they don’t burn every book of Tulsidas, which they could do very easily. Tulsidas’ books should be burned in every house – and every woman is capable at least of burning the books. His name should be erased from all over the country. But no, they worship his book as a holy book, and whatever he says as true.I have been issued summons by courts because I have condemned Tulsidas on this point – that I have hurt the feelings of the Hindus. It is such a strange world: this man is saying such ugly things and no women’s feelings are hurt. And when I say something against this statement, immediately the court issues a summons against me, an arrest warrant: I have hurt the feelings of religious people. Strange, what kind of religious people are these? They should be hurt by Tulsidas, not by me!But Tulsidas is a man, and he is nourishing the egos of other men. And woman has been so unconscious that she is following man and his ugly ideas against the woman herself. At least no woman should read or allow the book in her house. And women should drag the publishers of those books to the court and say, “This book should be banned. It cannot be published because it is against half of the population of the country; a book that hurts half of the population of the country is not worthy of being in circulation.”But life as we have lived it up to now is mostly managed by man. It is a man-made society; it has no place for women. And the strangest fact is that women are not in sympathy with other women. Their minds are also conditioned in such a way that they are sympathetic to the man.Once in a while this also happens – it is natural, but mostly it becomes suppressed by the time she gets married – that deep down a woman carries her mother’s feelings; she has been against men. And I don’t see why she should not be, there is every reason. Man has crippled the woman, has prevented her from education, has prevented her from financial independence, has prevented her movement in the society. She is encaged in the home. Her whole dignity, her whole joy as a social being is completely destroyed. Naturally, there is anger.Dhyan Nidhi, you have accepted your mother’s angry conditioning toward men. It is absolutely well-founded, but it is not going to help human society or create a better future. Past is past.You should start looking at men with fresh eyes – and particularly in this place, where our whole effort is unconditioning, dehypnotizing. All the rubbish that you are carrying has to be thrown away; you have to become unburdened and light so that you can gain your own understanding, your own insight.And the women here are not uneducated. They are financially capable of being independent; they are as intelligent as any man. There is no need for them to be angry against men. If your mother was angry…perhaps she was not educated, perhaps she was not financially able to be independent. She wanted to fly in the open sky, but she was encaged – you are not.This is one of the reasons why I cannot communicate to the vast majority of this country – because the man will not be willing to listen to me; it goes against his domination, his power. And the woman cannot understand me; she is not educated. Even if she can understand me, she is not financially able to be independent; she cannot revolt against the man-made society. In India there is nothing like a women’s liberation movement – not even the talk of it. No woman ever thinks that there is any possibility of liberation. She has lost all hope.But your situation is different. You are coming from countries where you have received education, and education makes you financially able to be independent. You need not be a housewife; it is not necessary for you to be married. You can live with someone you love without any marriage.The woman has to fight for it – the woman has to make marriage an absolutely personal affair in which the government, the state, the society, nobody has any business to interfere.You are in a totally different space than your mother. Now, carrying her anger and her conditioning is simply stupid. Just forgive her and forget her, because if you go on having this conditioning of anger against men, you will never feel complete – you cannot love men. And a woman or a man who is incapable of loving remains incomplete, frustrated.And this way it creates a vicious circle. Your anger prevents you from love, because love means dropping anger against men and moving to the diametrically opposite polarity – instead of anger, love; instead of hate, love. A quantum leap needs courage. The vicious circle is that because of your angry conditioning you cannot love men, and because you cannot love men you become more and more frustrated, and your frustration makes you more angry – this is the vicious circle. Anger brings frustration; frustration makes you more angry, more violent, more against men. That brings more anger, and the circle goes on becoming deeper and deeper. And to get out of it becomes almost impossible.You have to begin from the very beginning. The first thing is, try to understand that your mother lived in a different situation. Perhaps her anger was right. Your situation is different. Moreover, now that you are here with me, your whole situation is totally different. Here, carrying your mother within your mind is simply unreasonable. You have to live your life; you are not to live your mother’s life. She suffered; now why do you want to make more suffering in the world? Why do you want to be a martyr?Have every compassion toward your mother – I am not saying to get angry at your mother that she conditioned you. That will be again keeping you in anger, just changing the object from men to the mother. No, I want you to drop the anger completely. Your mother needs your compassion; she must have suffered. That created anger in her. But you are not suffering.You put your anger aside and you have a fresh look at men. And particularly in my place…these men are not the same as you will find outside in the world. They have some understanding that man has done wrong, much wrong, to women. And they feel sorry for it.But they have not done it. If their forefathers did it, it is beyond their power to undo it; what has happened, has happened. They have a deep apology in their hearts for what man has done to women. And you have to understand this, that these are a different category of people.I am creating every possibility for the New Man – a man who is not contaminated by the past, who is discontinuous with the past. It is a difficult job; it is almost like hitting my head against the wall. But I am determined to go on hitting – I trust in my head! And the wall is very old and ancient. It may hurt me, but it has to fall; its days are finished. It has already lived more than its life span.So have a fresh look toward men. Without man, a woman is incomplete, just as the man is incomplete without a woman. There is only one exception: if you become enlightened, then your inner woman and your inner man make a completion. But without enlightenment you remain half – you have to become complete by meeting with the other sex on the outside. Otherwise, everybody has both, because you are born out of the meeting of a man and woman; your father has contributed, your mother has contributed. You are carrying your father and mother both within you.Sometimes it is only a question of a very small difference. For example, there are people known as ‘the third sex’ – what is their problem? Their problem is that their man inside is fifty percent and their woman inside is fifty percent; they equalize each other. Hence they are neither man nor woman. Mostly the difference is big enough – at least seventy-five percent woman, twenty-five percent man, or seventy-five percent man, twenty-five percent woman.But sometimes the difference is very small: fifty-one percent woman, forty-nine percent man. Then it happens once in a while that the sex changes without your doing anything. The difference is so small that a little change in food, in atmosphere, a little change in your hormones – just by accident you were taking some medicine for something else – and it changes your chemical balance. And the difference was so small…There have been many cases in the past in the courts around the world…A man marries a woman and after a few months the woman turns into a man. Now the problem is, what to do? Both are men. And they have to resort to going to the court. Physiologists came to figure out why such accidental sex changes happen, and now it is possible through scientific methods to change the sex. And many people are changing their sex.Perhaps in the future it will become a fashion. I am certain about it – it will become a fashion. You will live up to thirty years as a man, and then you will go through a change and become a woman. If you can manage to live both sides of the coin in one life, why live only on one side? If you can know both banks of the river, know both banks. Your life will be richer, and at least you will not talk in the way old poets and philosophers have been talking for centuries, that “Woman is a mystery.” Become a woman and know the mystery!There is nothing, no mystery. Neither the woman is a mystery nor is the man a mystery; the mystery is when love happens between them. Alone they are dry deserts. When love comes as a spring it brings thousands of flowers to their being, and much juice, much greenness. Life is no longer just a drag, it becomes a dance.Dhyan Nidhi, meditate more and be aware when your mother’s voice starts speaking to your mind. Slowly, slowly put that voice to sleep. Don’t listen to it; it will spoil your whole life. You have to learn how to love the man.By loving, the man becomes more polite, nicer, a gentleman, loses his corners, becomes softer. Through love, the woman starts blossoming; otherwise she remains a closed bud. Only in love, when the sun of love rises, she opens her petals. Only in love her eyes start having a different depth, a different shine; her face starts having a joyous outlook. She has a deep transformation through love; she comes to maturity, of age.So you get rid of the conditioning that your mother unconsciously has given to you. You have accepted it unconsciously. The way to get rid of it is to become conscious of it. It is a good beginning that you have asked. This is the beginning of consciousness – just the very ABC. You have to go far to change your mind completely, to be fresh, unconditioned, open and vulnerable.And because of this conditioning you have been playing this ugly game, that whenever a man comes to you with his love, you run away – which naturally encourages him to chase you. That you enjoy, that he is chasing you. Every woman enjoys that. It is ugly; you are not aware of its deeper implications. It means you are the game; the man is the hunter and he is chasing the game. You are allowing a supremacy to man, unknowingly.It has been traditionally given to you that the initiative in love should be taken by men, not by women; it is against a woman’s grace. Those are all rotten ideas. Why be number two from the very beginning? If you love a man, why wait? I know many women who have waited for years because they wanted the man to take the initiative. But they have fallen in love with such men who were not going to take the initiative.I know one woman in Bombay who was in love with J. Krishnamurti. Her whole life she remained unmarried, waiting for J. Krishnamurti to take the initiative. She is one of the most beautiful women – but J. Krishnamurti is not the type of man…he is utterly fulfilled within himself, he does not need anybody else to complete him. Obviously, he never took any initiative. And the woman, out of the conditioning of thousands of years, of course cannot take the initiative – that is against grace, that is primitive.I know another woman in Ahmedabad who waited her whole life for Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to marry her. Jawaharlal was not an enlightened man, and there was every possibility…And very strangely, in his old age he fell in love with Lady Mountbatten and they were writing such letters to each other that teenagers write. They were so foolish….But this woman belongs to the richest family of Ahmedabad – I used to stay in their home – and she is so ugly. Jawaharlal was a beautiful man; I cannot conceive that he would ever have thought of this woman when any woman would have been ready to marry him. But she was thinking only of her richness.I know both the women. The woman who was in love with J. Krishnamurti used to come to see me also. I have seen in both these women’s eyes such sadness…it would have been better if they had taken the initiative. There is no harm if the other person says, “Excuse me, I am not ready.” He has that right, it is not an insult. It is simply his freedom to say yes or no.I would like my women not to wait for the man to take the initiative. If they feel love for someone, they should take the initiative and they should not feel humiliated if the man is not willing. This will give them equality. These are small things which will make the liberation of woman possible.But the woman has been always trying to be game. She attracts the man, she tries in every way to attract him by her beauty, by her clothes, by her perfume, by her hairdo, all that she can manage to do, her makeup…She attracts the man, and once the man is attracted then she starts running away.But she does not run too fast, either. She goes on looking back, to see whether that fellow is coming or not. If he is left far behind, she waits. When he comes again close, she starts running. This is stupid; love should be a clean affair. You love someone, you express your love and tell the other person, “You are not obliged to say yes; your no will be perfectly respected. It is just my desire. You need not unwillingly say yes to me, because that yes is dangerous unless you also feel love for me. Only then can our life become a completion.”A woman and a man in love can move into meditation very easily. Meditation and love are such close phenomena that if you move into meditation, your love energies start overflowing. If you really fall in love with someone who loves you, your meditative energies start growing; they are very deeply joined experiences. Hence I am in favor of both.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,In your presence, I feel showered with your unconditional love and compassion. My hungry heart is opening, and I have experienced a lot of joy and stillness here in your buddhafield. But my feelings of unworthiness still dominate my life, and I'm clinging to them so tightly that I despair of ever letting go. It has been a long and serious road so far.Dear Osho, will you please help me?Nobody is born unworthy. Everybody is equal in the eyes of existence. But remember, equality does not mean similarity. Everybody is equally unique.The idea of unworthiness that is torturing you is torturing millions of human beings. It is the people around you who make you feel unworthy, undeserving, useless, good-for-nothing; this is a secret conspiracy against the individual by the crowd.Perhaps you are not aware that the crowd is the enemy of the individual. The crowd does not like individuals; it likes only phony people imitating each other. Anybody who stands alone, in his own right, declaring his own freedom, doing his own thing without any fear of consequences, will be condemned by the crowd.The crowd cannot afford such rebels, because their very presence is dangerous – it may become a wildfire. Many others who are suffering in slavery may start revolting, seeing that it is possible to live your life according to your own light, that it is possible to have your own style, your own religiousness, your own morality – you don’t have to belong to any crowd, you don’t have to become a spiritual slave. If this idea spreads, there will be millions of people who have not died completely – in whose beings there is still a spark of life – who may explode into rebellion against the masses.The masses are easy to control; hence, those people who are in power hate individuals. And this has been the story throughout human history. From the very childhood, the society in different ways – the parents, the teachers, the priests, the neighbors – from all directions the society starts encroaching upon the freedom of the individual. All their effort is to distract you from your own being; they want you to be somebody else, they don’t want you to be yourself.That is the cause of your feeling of being unworthy. It is natural – you can never be somebody else; however perfect your pretension and your hypocrisy is, deep down you will feel you have betrayed yourself. Deep down you can never feel contentment, self-respect, a pride which is natural to every being, a dignity which existence showers upon you just by giving you life.If you are allowed to be yourself, you will never feel unworthy, because that will be your natural growth. If you are a rosebush, roses will blossom in you, and if you are a marigold flower, then marigold flowers will come. Neither the marigold flower feels it is unworthy nor the roses feel that they are special, higher, or holier. Even the smallest grass blade feels as dignified as the biggest star in the universe.In existence there is no inferiority complex anywhere, and as a corollary there is no superiority complex either. The marigold is happy being a marigold; even the idea is stupid: “Why am I not a rose?”It will be a very poor existence where there are only roses and roses and roses, and no other flowers. Roses will lose all their beauty. The variety of millions of flowers makes existence rich beyond all our dreams.But the society wants you to be just a sheep. You may have the qualities of being a deer, or being a tiger, or being a lion, or being an eagle – all the varieties are possible in different individuals – but the society likes only one brand: everybody has to be a sheep. Now, if you force a lion to be a sheep, he is going to feel unworthy. You are imposing something upon him which is not natural.This feeling of unworthiness is because of an imposition of unnatural demands upon you, made by everybody around you. Nobody likes you as you are; everybody wants you to be this, to be that. Of course if you fulfill their demands you will be loved, respected, honored, but it is very dangerous and very costly; you will have to lose yourself. You will become just a hypocrite, and what will be the gain? What is their respect, what is their honor, what are their rewards? They cannot balance the loss – you have lost your soul. They can give you Nobel Prizes, but even a thousand Nobel Prizes cannot make up for the loss that you have suffered in the transaction. You have lost your very space in existence, your very territory, your most significant essential being and consciousness.I can understand your problem, Prem Neerja, and I don’t think you are incapable of understanding it intellectually. You do understand, but just intellectual understanding never brings any change; it brings even more trouble. It makes you aware that you have done something very stupid, and now you have become an expert in doing that stupidity. Now that is your expertise – for that expertise you are paid, honored, respected, so you cling to it.This becomes a tremendous dilemma. It creates a state of schizophrenia. You know that what you are doing is wrong, but this knowing is only intellectual; it has not penetrated into the deeper parts of your being from where actions arise.Intellect is an inactive force. It has not become your meditation, it is still your mind, and mind is absolutely impotent. So you understand intellectually that you are doing wrong, and the same intellect says that this is the only thing that you know – unworthy or worthy, but this is the only thing that gives you credit, makes you respected by the crowd. Don’t leave it, because you don’t know where you have lost your soul and whether you will be able to find it again. You don’t even remember the way back home.So you go on clinging to that which intellectually you know is not right. You are destroying yourself, but you go on drinking the poison, because you have forgotten the way to your home.Just the other day, Latifa was crying, and today all the clouds have disappeared. She has taken the bold step. Intellectually she has been thinking and thinking for almost an eternity…because misery lengthens time so long – one hour passes as if it is one life. Hence I say she has been suffering as if for the whole eternity, knowing perfectly well – because I was continuously hammering her – that if you are miserable in a situation and the doors are open, why don’t you get out of that situation?She wants to get out, but clings; she is afraid of the open, is afraid of the fresh air, is afraid of the unknown. Her deeper being feels the pull, the challenge, the excitement of the unknown, but her superficial mind thinks of security, safety. And who knows? – you may fall into a worse condition. At least this misery is well known, and you have somehow become accustomed – in fact, so habituated that a fear somewhere in the corner of your being lurks: are you capable of surviving without it?It is miserable but at least there is something. You are not alone, and you are not empty; you are full of misery, and you can depend on it that tomorrow also the misery will be there. You need not be worried that tomorrow maybe you will be empty and alone. So one becomes a mess inside.But finally, Latifa came to her senses, took the bold step. And today she wrote a letter to me of tremendous gratitude, saying that she feels as if a cancer has been removed from her being; she feels clean, healthy, happy, light – the whole burden has disappeared. And this was the cancer she was clinging to.But you can experience the joy and the freedom and the lightness and the open sky, only when you drop clinging; there is no other way.But people are such that even when they have come here and they have been listening to me, they are managing what to listen to, what not to listen to. Whatever gives nourishment to their prejudices, they are open to, very happy that their convictions are being supported. The moment I say something that goes against their convictions – and those convictions are their misery, the foundation of their suffering and their hell – immediately they close themselves. But how long can you keep yourself closed? I go on hitting you from every dimension, every direction. Sooner or later you have to listen.Then too, such is human stupidity that people start defending themselves. I sometimes wonder why you are wasting your time. If you are here to defend yourself, that you can do very well wherever you are. It will be easier to defend yourself somewhere else; here it will be very difficult. I will not allow you to defend yourself, because by defending yourself you are defending all your miseries; they are synonymous. You and your miseries, you and your suffering, you and your ideology – they are not separate.Your personality is your hell, and I have to hammer it and bring out your individuality, which is a totally different phenomenon – that which you had brought with you when you were born. This personality is a cover that has been put over you by the society; it is a mask. But you have lived with the mask so long that you have started thinking it is your original face. In their sleepiness people go on defending that which is their cancer.One woman today wrote to me that she hates Hymie Goldberg. I could not believe that somebody can hate a poor fellow like Hymie Goldberg! But perhaps she has an anti-Jewish mind…just the name of Hymie Goldberg and her Nazi upbringing feels hurt that I am making Hymie Goldberg almost a great hero. It is true, I am going to write a biography of Hymie Goldberg.In the same question, the same woman says, “I don’t like you to laugh with us.” It seems she is also against laughter. I rarely laugh, but once in a while I want simply to join with you – so as not to give you the feeling that I am separate from you. I want to be one among you, not somewhere high up, very serious – a stone golden Buddha.Certainly, Gautam Buddha did not laugh; neither is there any reference anywhere that Jesus ever laughed. These people are serious people.I am not serious. I have been telling you again and again that I am absolutely nonserious, but you don’t take it seriously! You think I must be joking…it is such a difficult problem, how to solve it?And when I read this woman’s question, I remembered Nadam’s question yesterday…he was telling me that a few scientific researchers have found the G-point in the vagina of women. I could not figure it out, why it should be called “G-point.”I have also found a G-point. It is not in the vagina, it is in everybody’s belly – just behind your navel. And it is meaningful to call it the G-point because it creates giggling. It is absolutely stupid to say there is a giggling vagina, but a giggling belly is a well-known fact. You know about belly laughter – a real laughter always comes from your belly.So I don’t care about your scientists; my own research says that the G-point is in everybody, man or woman, in the belly, behind the navel. And perhaps this woman’s G-point is either paralyzed or is crippled, damaged – something is wrong with her G-point! Here she should expose herself; her G-point can start functioning. Among so many G’s, how can you remain serious?I have heard…Two small kids, twins, started their first day at school and their teacher asked them, “What are your names?” They were looking so beautiful, so absolutely alive. Dressed in the same way, it was almost impossible to figure out who is who. So she asked, “What are your names?”One said, “My name is Ronald Reagan, and my brother’s name is Richard Nixon.” The teacher could not believe it. She thought, “These kids are playing a joke on me, they are making fun of me.” She immediately phoned their home and said to their mother, “Mrs. Johnson, your two kids have come and when I asked their names, one said his name is Ronald Reagan and that his brother’s name is Richard Nixon. I could not believe it; that’s why I am phoning. Are they making fun of me?”She was in for a great surprise, because from the other end of the phone the woman shouted very angrily, “You have some nerve to call me Mrs. Johnson. I am Miss Johnson and they are my kids, and when you have two bastards, what names can you give them? If you were in my place, would you be able to suggest two other names for two bastards?”Just watch life, and your G-point will start functioning!You have fallen prey, a victim to what people have said to you. This commune is to erase all that has been said to you, and accept you the way you are. As you are is absolutely right, worthy, respectable, and there is no need to change it and create a phony personality just because others want it. You have tried to make others happy too much, and the total result is that everybody in the world is unhappy. Everybody has tried to make others happy, but do you see the total result? Everybody is unhappy.I teach you to be happy, I don’t teach you to make others happy. In your happiness, if there is some truth, some vitality, it will spread – it will help others also to be happy. But that should not be the criterion; that should not be the ideal of your life. You are making others happy, they are making you and others happy, and everybody is unhappy because everybody is pretending.People can be happy only in one way – there are not two ways – if they are authentically themselves. Then the springs of happiness start flowing…they become more alive, they become a joy to see, a joy to be with; they are a song, they are a dance. But they are not dancing for anybody’s approval, nor for anybody’s appreciation; they are dancing out of their own abundance of happiness, out of their own joy.This whole world can be a dancing world, full of songs and full of music, full of creativity and full of life and laughter. But the basic strategy that has been followed up to now has to be completely destroyed, without mercy.The new minister stood at the church door, greeting parishioners as they departed after the end of the service. The people were generous in complimenting the clergyman on his sermon, except one fellow who said to him, “Pretty dull sermon, Reverend.” And a minute later, the same man appeared again and said, “Pretty dull sermon, Reverend.”Once again the man appeared, this time muttering, “You really did not say anything at all, Reverend.” When he got the opportunity, the Reverend pointed out the man to one of his deacons, “Ah,” said the deacon, “don’t let that guy bother you. He is a poor soul who goes around repeating whatever he hears other people saying!”This is a very strange and insane world. Everybody is living in some way falsely, just to get appreciation, just to hear people’s clapping. Everybody is so hungry for attention. The people you think of as great leaders are almost beggars as far as attention is concerned; that’s all their whole life is devoted to – how many people are looking up to them. That gives nourishment to their ego. And they are ready to do any nonsense if they are promised, “More and more people will be attracted toward you; you will get more attention.”I have a strange story to tell you. It is not fiction, and it is about one of the most famous men, Abraham Lincoln. He had a very ugly face. He came from a very poor family; his father was a shoemaker. He himself was chopping wood just to get enough money to go to school – a very poor heritage.His face was certainly not attractive; it was repulsive. And when he stood for the presidential election…. His intelligence was great; perhaps there has been no other man in America of such great intelligence. His rationality, his logic, his ways of arguing his case were superb. But his personality was poor, just because of his face.The first day when he started his election campaign, a little girl…And as far as my understanding goes, that little girl should have the whole credit for Abraham Lincoln’s becoming the president of America, although nobody bothers…nobody even thinks about that little girl, or to find out who she was. She came close and she said, “Uncle Lincoln, with this face you cannot win the presidency. I have a small suggestion: if you grow a beard and mustache, most of your face will be covered, and the beard and the mustache can be given a shape that can change your whole profile.”A little girl…but she was looking attentively at his face; she was interested in his arguments. But women are more aware of physical beauty even from their very childhood. She figured out that if he grows a beard and a mustache, much of his face will be covered. Then a new face can be created by giving shape to the beard and to the mustache. And it appealed to Lincoln. He was himself worried what to do with his face. He started growing his beard…and now you don’t see in his photographs or his statues that his face was ugly. All that ugliness is covered by his beard and mustache. In fact, that beard and mustache have given him a new personality.People have forgotten, but Lincoln did not forget. After becoming the president, the first letter that he wrote was to that small girl, thanking her, “Your suggestion worked.” He was a man of great humbleness and great understanding.But this world does not look into the inner being. It does not look at your intelligence, your talents, your creativity, your potentiality. It simply looks at the outer, superficial personality.And because you are continuously asking for attention, you have to concede to the people; you have to compromise on every step with them if you want to be accepted as worthy. And the problem is that whatever you do, you cannot be absolutely false; something of the real will remain, and that will be your unworthiness.It will hurt you that you have not been able to succeed in being a complete success in the world.Anybody who wants to be a success in the world, anybody who is ambitious and egoistic, is going to suffer the same problem as you are suffering. But the problem is very simple and can be dropped immediately, without any effort: just a simple understanding that you don’t need anybody’s attention; on the contrary, what you need is a deep contentment with yourself. And that is possible only if you are real.What others say, don’t be worried about; it does not matter. The only thing that matters is your inner happiness, your peace, your silence, and finally your realization of your eternal life.You are asking, “What should I do with my unworthiness? It still dominates my life and I am clinging to it so tightly that I despair of ever letting go.” Just a little understanding is needed – not much effort, because it is you who are clinging to it; it is not clinging to you.There is a Sufi story that a river was in flood, and a few people were standing on the bank watching the river rising higher and higher. A Sufi mystic was also standing there. Sufis use just a blanket, a woolen blanket to cover their body; they don’t use anything else. In fact, the name Sufi is derived from woolen blankets. In Persian, suf means wool, and sufi means one who uses only wool.So with his blanket, he was also standing there watching other people, and then suddenly they saw a beautiful blanket, a woolen blanket floating down the river. A young man could not resist. Although everybody said it was dangerous – the river was in flood, and it was a huge river – the young man said, “That blanket I cannot lose.” He jumped.But it was not a blanket, it was a wolf, alive. So as he caught the blanket, the blanket caught him! He started shouting, “Save me!” Everybody asked him, “What do you mean by saving? Just drop that blanket!” He said, “It is not a blanket that I can drop. Now it is a question of whether the blanket drops me or not – it is a wolf!” It was just that they had seen the wolf’s body, which looked like pure wool.The Sufi wrote in his diary, “What I saw today was a real problem. Up to now I have seen people wondering how to drop this, how to drop that…. Those were all unreal because the problems were not clinging to them, they were clinging to their problems. It was not a question of any help; if they wanted to drop it, they could drop it.”The Sufi wrote in his diary, “But today it was totally different; it was a real problem. It was beyond that poor man’s ability to drop it, because he was not clinging to it; now the wolf was clinging to him, and the wolf took him down to his grave.”It is good that wolves are not clinging to you. Whatever you are clinging to, all are just false ideas given by others to you. And the reason why you are clinging to them is that you are afraid that without them you will be almost naked, you will be empty, and you will be moving in an unknown space.But I want to say to you that moving every moment into the unknown is the greatest blessing of life. Remaining with the known is sheer boredom, every day the same. Then what is the point of living? You have lived it many times, many days.My encouragement to you is:Love change, love the unknown.Risk everything known for the unknown, and you will always be in an ecstatic state. You will always be a gainer, because the unknown has hidden treasures only for those who can drop the known. But I can only say it to you; the dropping has to be done by you. It has to be your decision, your commitment – only then will it bring joy.Osho,I have heard you say that we are all enlightened, and that we have just all forgotten it. Did we forget it at a precise time, and if so, why?Yes we have forgotten it at a precise time, and I will tell you why.Just try to remember backward – how far back can you go? Four years of age, or at the most when you were three years of age. Beyond that comes an absolute blank – no memory, no remembrance.One thing is certain, that in those three years many things must have happened. You must have cried, you must have been loved, you must have been left alone, you must have been afraid in the dark night – a thousand and one experiences must have happened. You may have fallen, you may have been hurt, you may have been seriously sick…but you cannot remember anything. It seems as if in those three years, nothing was recorded by your memory mechanism.That’s exactly the time when you forgot your self-nature. Let us say it in another way: the precise moment you forgot your enlightenment and the language of it, is the moment when you started remembering the world and thousands of other things of the world. When you started remembering others, you forgot yourself.Now if you are fifty years old, for forty-seven years you have been remembering the whole world of things and people and events, so you have gathered a thick wall of memories. Behind this thick wall of memories – which goes on growing every day, thicker and thicker – is hidden that small time in the beginning of your life when you were utterly innocent. Even memory was not formed – you lived each moment and you died to that moment, and were born again.In those three years, your life was moment to moment. You did not bother about the past, you did not bother about the future; you were so involved, so totally and so intensely in the moment, collecting seashells on the beach, or running after butterflies in the garden, or collecting wildflowers in the forest, as if that were all. There was no past, no future; you lived in the present in those three years. And those were the days of your glory, those were the days of your golden experience.So I can say that it depends on everybody; it may be either four years or three years. For girls it will be three years, for boys it will be four years. Girls are one year ahead, they mature sooner. Sexually they mature one year sooner than the boys; mentally also they mature one year earlier than the boys. So girls can remember backward to the age of three, and boys generally will be able to remember back to the age of four. That’s where you have lost your treasure.And you are asking why. It is because you became interested in the vast world around you. And you went on becoming more and more interested; you became so curious about everything, you wanted to know everything. Just listen to small children – they go on asking all kinds of questions, they are untiring. You get tired, but they are so excited – they have entered into a new world.For nine months they were in the mother’s womb, in utter darkness – no excitement, no problem, no responsibility, no companionship, just utter silence and relaxation. Then those three years, when their memory system was starting to be built up, their intellect was starting its ABC…by the age of three or four, they were able now, with a memory system and an intelligent, inquiring mind to go in search of this vast world – millions of things to know, unending pastures to be discovered. Naturally, in all this excitement, they forgot one thing: their own being. They went out and out and out, and farther and farther away from the home.They reached to the stars, and now the home is so far away that they have even forgotten the way they had followed. And they don’t know exactly what it was in those three years…just deep down in the unconscious some feeling has remained like a shadow – that it was beautiful, that it was very peaceful, that it was majestic, miraculous, mysterious, that everything was a wonder, that every moment brought new experiences and joys. Just faint echoes, far back…you cannot say if they are real or you are imagining them, or if you are remembering from your dreams. It has become almost a dream.The why is very simple: because the world was very intriguing, very interesting to enter, to inquire.It is natural. I am not saying that you should not have done this. You would not have been able to avoid it, and it would not have been good to avoid it. It is good that you have gone so far. Now that you have known the world and experienced everything good and bad, bitter and sweet, beautiful and ugly, have seen pleasures and have seen pain, you are again becoming interested to know what is your self-nature.Your self-nature is enlightenment.I was reading one story, which is significant in a totally different context – which was not supposed to be part of the story. I don’t think that whoever invented the story had thought about it. The story is:One day a black man showed up at the gates of heaven and was met by Saint Peter. “I would like to be admitted to heaven,” he said.“Fine,” said Saint Peter, “but first tell me what you have done lately which would permit you to be admitted.”“Well,” said the black man, “I marched in a civil rights march.”“A lot of people did that,” said Saint Peter. “Maybe there is something else?”“Yes,” said the black man. “I got married at twelve o’clock noon.”“What is so unusual about that?” asked Saint Peter.“I married a white woman,” said the black man.“When was that?” asked Saint Peter.“Ah, about two minutes ago,” said the black man.As I was reading this, I remembered a scientific calculation. They say that if we think of existence just in terms of one day – as if the whole existence is twenty-four hours, reduced into this small measurement, so that at twelve in the night the existence began, the stars formed, the solar systems arose…. And they have the given exact hour when – for example, at four o’clock in the morning, at six o’clock in the morning – our solar system was born. Then our earth separated from the sun, just at eight o’clock in the morning; then the moon separated from the earth, just at eleven o’clock in the morning.The earth for the first time saw life exactly at twelve o’clock noon, and man came into existence just two minutes later; that is, at two minutes after twelve o’clock.If we measure the whole existence in terms of twenty-four hours, we have come into existence just two minutes ago.Reading this story, that the black man said, “Ah, about two minutes ago,” I remembered that calculation of the scientists. This poor Negro married a woman at twelve o’clock, and then he must have been shot two minutes later when he was coming out of the church, because whites cannot allow a black man to marry a white woman. So only two minutes he remained married.If we go into more details – that if two minutes ago, man came into existence – then just fifteen seconds ago, a Gautam Buddha was born. Then enlightenment and the whole idea of enlightenment is not more than fifteen seconds old.And we have still twelve hours more, if Ronald Reagan allows. Ronald Reagan is just a representative of all the mad politicians of the world. If they allow, then we still have twelve hours to evolve. If in fifteen seconds Gautam Buddha, Pythagoras, Lao Tzu, Mahavira, Jesus, Ramakrishna, Raman Maharishi, J. Krishnamurti, Gurdjieff – if all these people have happened just in fifteen seconds, then the coming twelve hours, if man remains on the earth…one cannot imagine how fruitful these coming days can be.What a great potential is ahead of us! And we have been on the earth only for two minutes. These foolish politicians are trying to commit suicide at a moment when we should be evolving as fast, as quickly as possible, because half the time of existence is gone – only half the time remains.In this remaining time, the whole humanity has to become enlightened. If we can avoid this coming war, then this will be the new dawn of a totally new consciousness, of a totally new and fresh life, with a fragrance it has not known before. It is in our hands.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I have written many beautiful words about you and about your books – words that seem to come from some place either beyond or deep inside when they happen. And afterward I feel almost ashamed, as though I have said something which I have no right to say.In these years of being with you, I know I have changed. Layers and layers have disappeared, and a silence has arisen which is never so far away that it feels out of reach. Yet I often wonder if the clarity I feel coming out of this silence is only “so-called” – some kind of arrogance in disguise, or some imagining, unknown to me.I don't know if this is a question, or three questions, or an apology. Could you help me sort it out?Life is such a mystery that the more you know it, the more you become aware of your ignorance. Or in other words, the more you know it, the less you know it. And the day you know it all, you know nothing.It has been said that science starts from not knowing and ends in knowing – that’s exactly the meaning of the word science: knowing. And religion starts from knowing and reaches to its climax in not knowing – because not knowing is another name of innocence. And if religion cannot bring you back your childhood, and the freshness of childhood, and the wondering eyes of childhood, it is not religion at all.Whatever is happening to you is perfectly the way it should happen. You have every right to say what you have experienced, what you have felt, what changes you have gone through. It is most important to say it, because it is unfortunately the situation that people who know nothing about me even write books against me.All over the world, in all the languages, people who have never come in contact with me, have never heard me, feel perfectly right in writing all kinds of lies and rumors and allegations without any foundation, without any factuality behind them. The negative person is always very articulate, because to say no, you don’t need any intelligence; any idiot can do it. But to say yes needs tremendous courage, and a great intelligence. And the people who say yes, the people who feel yes, are always keeping their secret hiding in their heart. This creates a very unbalanced situation. Those who don’t know me go on writing anything, out of the blue.Now there is an article in a German magazine, Spiegel, saying that I am trying to come to Germany and create a commune in Germany on the same lines as was created in America. So the government has to be aware, and the people of Germany have to be aware. Now, from where do these people get these ideas? I have not even dreamt about going to Germany. Even if they want me to be there, I will refuse. A few days ago in Israel, a Hebrew newspaper had an article saying that the people of Israel have to be clearly aware of the danger, because I am planning to come to Israel. And they say my strategy is that I will be converted to the religion of the Jews, and once I am a Jew, then I will declare that I am the incarnation of Moses!What to do with these people? – and people read them, people believe them. And the people who know me, who have come into deep inner communion with me, who have experienced me, remain silent.It is not new. It is part of a strange human psychology. The positive person is humble; even to say something he feels embarrassed, because he knows that whatever he is going to say is not going to be up to the experience that he had. It is going to fall very short; hence the embarrassment.But the negative person has no fear, no embarrassment. He has not experienced anything. And to deny or to lie, or to create a fiction, is sensational. The people who have been writing against me…all the publishers are eager to publish their books – without knowing what they are writing, all kinds of rubbish. And a few of my sannyasins who have been with me from the very beginning have written books just to answer those lies and allegations, with facts and figures, with solid arguments.The publishers are not willing to publish them. They say there is no sensation in it. Lies have sensation; the truth is non-sensational. And the masses are interested in sensationalism, they are not interested in knowing the truth. Truth is simple and plain.But this situation has to be reversed; there is a limit to everything. The positive people have to come out in the light, and tell with emphasis their own experiences and what they understand about me and my relationship to my people. Unless they come out and do it, they are in an indirect way helping the negative people. Because if those negative people are not contradicted, it becomes an argument in their favor – why are they not contradicted?So I can understand, Sarito, that you have experiences to express but it is always bound to be something not absolutely the experience. It is going to be something far below. But still it will help people to understand both sides. The negative is articulate, but is meaningless; it is not going to help anybody. It can only prevent people from coming to me. And the people who are writing all those negative books and articles – they cannot help anybody either. So they are really public enemies.The positive person has to come out so the negative people can be contradicted, and so that those who are in search of truth, in search of silence and peace, can feel a possibility: if they come here, maybe if it is happening to other people, it can happen to them also. You will be opening doors, and you will be giving invitations to new sannyasins, to new seekers.So don’t keep it as a secret. Don’t enjoy it inside yourself; share it with as many people as possible, with all the news media, so that you can reach to the farthest corners of the world.And the positive person has many problems which the negative does not have. First, the positive person starts thinking, “Perhaps my silence, my joy, my bliss, is just imagination.” The negative person has no problem; he knows exactly that it is imagination, there is no problem about it! The problem arises only to the positive person – because it is not imagination.Living here for years…Imagination is a very momentary phenomenon; you cannot go on living in imagination for twelve years, fifteen years. It is possible to live in imagination for a few moments – imagination is not reality; imagination is just like soap bubbles. For a moment they can shine in the sun, create a rainbow, and then they are gone and all those rainbows disappear.And one thing more you have to understand, for yourself: you cannot imagine silence; that is not in the nature of things. You can imagine all kinds of thoughts, but you cannot imagine thoughtlessness. Nobody has ever been able to do it, it is almost impossible. You cannot imagine blissfulness. You don’t have any idea, how can you imagine it? Imagination needs some kind of experience; then you can project it. But blissfulness you don’t know.You can imagine misery perfectly well. You are so deeply rooted in misery that there is no problem. You know it, you can imagine it, you can exaggerate it, you can magnify it a thousandfold; it is in your hands. But blissfulness you don’t know. Anything that you don’t know is not possible for you to imagine.So if you are feeling silence, peace, bliss; if you are feeling changes happening in you, in your consciousness, it is not imagination.Secondly, you are worried that it may be some kind of arrogance in disguise. One who is aware that his experiences may be some kind of arrogance, has really gone beyond arrogance, because arrogance never recognizes itself. The egoist never recognizes that he is egoistic; the arrogant cannot even think that he is arrogant.To be worried that perhaps it may be arrogance is part of humbleness. Only a humble person becomes concerned that he should not say anything, he should not do anything that may bring arrogance from the back door. He knows the misery of arrogance, he knows the pain and the anguish of arrogance. He does not want to get into that trap again. But if you are aware, arrogance cannot come close to you, just as when you have light in your house, darkness cannot come in.Gautam Buddha used to say, “You should be like a house which has light inside. When the house, its doors, its windows, are showing light, thieves don’t come close. But when the house is dark and there is no light, it is an opportunity for thieves.” And by thieves he means all that destroys your beauty, your grandeur, all that takes away your treasures. Arrogance, ego, aggressiveness, superiority, the idea of being special – all are destroying you and your peace; they are destroying your nobodiness.You cannot imagine nobodiness. It is almost like…a beggar can dream of being a king – in fact beggars always dream, and in their dreams they fulfill the desires which they cannot fulfill in their actual waking lives. But nobody has ever heard of a king dreaming about himself being a beggar; that is unknown. Why should one dream of being a beggar? The hungry person can dream that he has been invited to a royal party; he can dream about delicious food – he has to, just to hide his hunger. But the man who is living in the palace and eating delicious food is not going to dream that he is hungry; that is just illogical, unpsychological.We dream only of things which we don’t have; we imagine things only which we don’t have. But once you start having real experiences, those experiences start changing your lifestyle, your responses to situations; you can start feeling constantly within you a coolness, a grace, a gratitude toward existence, and out of this peacefulness, silence, beauty, all your actions arise…they also have something of it. Your words come out from the silences of your heart; they also have some music from their original source.It is a well-known fact: a man like Jesus was uneducated, but no rabbi in the whole history of Judaism, four thousand years – and Jewish rabbis are great scholars, unparalleled in any other religion – but no Jewish rabbi has spoken the way an uneducated carpenter’s son, Jesus, spoke. And he knew nothing of scripture, he knew nothing of the art of oratory. Even those who were not in agreement with him had to say, “One thing we cannot deny: nobody has ever spoken the way he speaks.”And he is using simple words, ordinary words used by common people, but on his lips those ordinary words have a changed quality. They are coming from a depth; they are bringing some fragrance with them, they are bringing some authority of his experience. The same words are available…all the Christian missionaries are repeating the same words every day. But you don’t feel any impact, you don’t see…Why the difference?The difference is that Jesus was speaking out of experience, and these people are speaking only out of their education. For Jesus, it was his life. For these missionaries, it is their salary; it is their livelihood, not their life. For Jesus, what he was saying was so important that he was ready to sacrifice his life, but not to compromise on any ground. But these missionaries, if somebody gives them a better salary, will change their religion immediately. These are professionals. Their words don’t have any depth. Their words are not alive, but corpses. They look similar, they sound similar, but you can see when you hear a missionary….One of the most famous missionaries in both parts of the world, East and West, was Stanley Jones. He used to live for six months in the East – he had a beautiful ashram in the Himalayas – and for six months he used to live in the West. I have come across many missionaries, but the caliber that Stanley Jones had, none of them have had. He was a genius. But even a genius cannot put life into words that are not his experience.I told him…because he used to stay very near to where I was a teacher in the university, and slowly we became very intimate. He was a sincere man. I said, “There is a difference – you may accept it, you may not accept it. These are the same words spoken by Jesus, which you speak every day in your sermons, but something is missing. They sound the same; they are exactly the same words. And perhaps you are pronouncing them better than Jesus. He was uneducated, you are a genius” – and he was one of the best speakers – “and Jesus has nothing as far as the art of oratory is concerned. But his words had a life, his words had wings; they reached you as alive beings, not just corpses. Not just stuffed, dead birds, looking alive.”He was silent for a moment and he said, “Perhaps you are right. Whatever I am saying is my education, is my scholarship, is my lifelong learning. What Jesus was saying was not his learning; he never went to any school. What he was saying was his experience; his words were coming from a living source.”The positive person has to become assertive; he has to come into the light. Otherwise the world is left in the hands of the negative people, and these negative people are the cause of preventing others from seeking and searching.I have always liked a story by Turgenev – a Russian novelist, one of the best the world has ever known. If you are going to choose ten great books, you will have to give one place to Turgenev without fail. Out of all the literature in all the languages in the world, he may claim more, but one is absolutely certain. He has written a small story, The Fool.In a small village there was a very simple man. His simplicity was such that he almost looked like a simpleton, and the whole village condemned him as the idiot. Out of his simplicity he used to do things, and the cunning people all around condemned him. He became so much afraid even to say a single word, because whatever he would say, he would be immediately criticized, condemned. He became afraid of acting, of doing anything; his life became a hell. And at that time, a mystic passed through the village. The idiot reached the mystic and told his tragic story, asking, “You help me do something….”The mystic said, “Who says you are an idiot? You are a very simple, innocent being. Out of your innocence you do things which are going to be against the ideas of the cunning and the clever.“You do one thing – I will be coming back on the same route within a month, so I can check whether it works or not – I will tell you a simple secret. From tomorrow morning, you become assertive, aggressive: Somebody says, ‘What a beautiful sunrise’ and you immediately jump in and tell him, ‘What is there? What beauty are you talking about? What is beauty? Define it! I have seen many sunrises like this; it is just a mediocre sunrise – what is special in it? It happens every day.’ And nobody can define beauty, nobody can prove that the sunrise is beautiful. There is no argument, there is no way.“Somebody is saying, ‘Look at that woman, how beautiful she is!’ Immediately jump in. You just watch, wherever anybody is making a positive statement about higher values which cannot be proved, you ask for proof: ‘What do you mean by calling that ordinary woman, who is not even homely…what beauty is in her? Where is it? – in her eyes, in her nose, in her hair? Where is the beauty? You have to clearly define it, and point to where it is!’” Now, beauty is not something that can be pinpointed.After one month when the mystic returned, the idiot had become by that time the wisest man in the village. Somebody would say, “That is a holy book,” and he would immediately ask, “What do you mean by holy, and what is holy in this book? The paper used is holy, or the ink used is holy, or the words used are holy? What is holy in it? These are the same words, the same ink, the same paper used in every book – what makes this book holy?” And there was no way to prove….And people became absolutely afraid in his presence. They would tremble, they would not say anything; the situation was completely reversed.Before, he used to be afraid; now he was never afraid. And nobody even asked a question of him…because the mystic had said, “If somebody asks a question, never answer, but ask a counter-question – because your answer can be criticized; don’t be caught in that thing. Just ask a counter-question. Ask, ‘What do you mean by this question? Explain each single word and its meaning.’ And harass him so much that even an ordinary sentence becomes a puzzle.”The mystic came; the idiot touched his feet and said, “Your strategy worked. Now I am the wisest man in this village.”He said, “Don’t be worried – continue. You will be the wisest man in the whole surrounding area, as far as your name can reach! People will start coming to you just to have your blessings.”A small story, but with great significance. It says how even an idiot, by using negativity, can become wise.But that is not true wisdom. True wisdom is always positive. True wisdom is always arising out of a yes, out of love, out of gratitude toward existence. True wisdom knows no “no.” It does not have any contact with negative attitudes and approaches.You are perfectly right. Just don’t remain silent. Bring your silence into songs, bring your experience into expressions. Say to the world what you have known, without fear.The last thing to be remembered:The negative person is always restless, because he has nothing; he is empty, he is angry, he is unfulfilled. Out of his unfulfillment, anger, emptiness, he becomes more and more revengeful, violent. The positive person, the person who has experienced something, becomes calm and quiet. Naturally, he has no need to assert. He has no need to say anything; he is so deeply fulfilled that he does not want to waste his breath unnecessarily arguing, fighting. He simply remains settled in his own center.And this settlement becomes more and more and more and more – to a point that he completely forgets. Not only that he forgets misery, he forgets blissfulness – he becomes so accustomed to bliss…he breathes bliss in and out, day in, day out. It becomes simply his very being; he forgets that he is blissful, that he is experiencing ecstasy. These are just as natural to him as breathing or heartbeats.Before it happens, you should make an effort – just out of compassion – to show the way to others. They are all groping in darkness; they want some door to open. They are tired of their chains and their handcuffs, and they want somebody to help them to be freed, somebody to say to them that “Yes, there is freedom.” They have become so suspicious – perhaps there is nothing like freedom, nothing like blissfulness, nothing like ecstasy. And these negative people go on telling them that these are all imaginations, these are all hypnotic trances; these are not realities. But their innermost beings are thirsty, although their minds are filled and distracted and corrupted by the negative people.Those who experience something that can be a valuable assurance and encouragement to anybody, anywhere – so that his hope arises again that some window can be opened, that there are doors which he has missed; that he has listened to wrong people, that he has been under the impact of negative darkness and he has not opened his eyes to the positive light – before you become completely satisfied, you have to help people.You can do it only before you become so settled that you forget at all that you are blissful. Bliss can be experienced only in contrast to misery, and if you have been blissful for years, you have forgotten misery, how it used to be; now bliss has become your only experience. The gap – when you are dropping the misery and moving toward bliss, when you have seen the star for the first time – that is the moment when you should express yourself… “Nobody needs to be a pessimist, nobody needs to drop his hopes. I have seen the star.”But it has to be done quickly, when you see it. When you become the star yourself, then it will be too late. You will not be able to say anything; even the desire to communicate will disappear.I have heard the pope died, and went to heaven. Saint Peter asked him whom among the saints he would like to meet. “Saint Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ,” said the pope.Saint Peter leads him into a palatial hall. There in a far corner sits an old Jewish lady. The pope approaches her reverently, and sinks to his knees: “Oh, holy mother of God,” he says, “all my life on earth I have been looking forward to this blessed moment. There is one question I want to ask you: What was it like to give birth to our Lord Jesus Christ?” The old lady wags her head and smiles. “Well, actually we wanted a girl,” she said.The mother of Jesus Christ is bound to become accustomed to Jesus Christ – he is nothing special to her, her own son. She is disappointed, because they wanted a daughter and they have got a son who is a troublemaker! Because of him, they are condemned, and because of him, in their old age they have to go through great anguish and suffering because he is crucified.When all the disciples had escaped, the mother was sitting there underneath the cross where Jesus was crucified, crying and weeping. And perhaps, she must have been thinking it would have been better if a girl had been born. A son – and him too, a son who gets crucified in her old age. And he was so young, only thirty-three. He has given his parents nothing but anxiety. To the pope it is one thing – Jesus Christ is God – but to the old Jewish lady, the mother of Jesus, he was just a troublemaker, unnecessarily disturbing the peace, unnecessarily leaving them in their old age in immense misery because of the crucifixion.If Jesus Christ is born to you, you will become accustomed. If bliss is born in your being, you will become accustomed. Before you become accustomed, spread the good news as far and wide as possible. There are millions of thirsty people – under the impact of negative, sensational, articulate people, they are suffering in a kind of limbo. They hear only the negative side of things. Naturally they become suspicious of whether any positive side exists at all, or if they are unnecessarily running after shadows and phantoms – because all these clever people are writing against the possibility.For the new humanity, millions of changes are going to happen. One of the most major changes will be that the positive person has to become articulate. He has to say to the world what he is experiencing, without any fear, without any embarrassment, without any suspicions that it may be imagination. Even if it is imagination, it may do good.But it is not imagination. You cannot imagine spiritual experiences; you don’t have any notion what they are. Unless you know them, there is no way of imagining them, and when you have known them, there is no question of imagination.The people in the world are in immense need of a few articulate, positive, assertive individuals. Not only their words will be helpful, but their presence – because their words can only be supported by their presence, by their actions, by their responses. There is no other kind of evidence. If people see that you are really living peace, that your life is a song of silence and each of your actions shows it, we can change the whole negative and sick psychology of man.Otherwise…these negative people have been predominant all through history – because it is very easy to be negative, anybody can do it. Anybody can say, even to Gautam Buddha, that “Whatever you are saying is all nonsense.” And even a man like Gautam Buddha cannot produce any evidence of his enlightenment. If the person is adamant, stubborn, closed, there is no way.Buddha can help the person if he is open, vulnerable, receptive, ready to feel Buddha’s presence, ready to feel his fragrance, ready to become part of his silence. But most of the people in the world are living under the impact of negative people. This impact has created such an unconscious state…people go on falling more and more into unconsciousness, into darkness.Sometimes I think that the Eastern idea has some psychological significance. It may not be true factually and historically, but psychologically…nobody has explored the idea. Just as Charles Darwin proposed the idea of evolution, the East has believed for thousands of years in a contrary idea of involution, not evolution; that man is not growing higher, but falling lower; that the first golden age was in the very beginning.It is worth understanding the whole idea as a psychological interpretation – not as history, not as science, but as psychology.The first age, according to the Eastern mystics is called Satyuga, the age of truth, the golden age. In a way we can see that each man passes through that golden age again when he is a child. When the whole humanity was in its childhood, then the idea becomes very relevant. Children have to learn to speak lies; otherwise, they simply speak the truth, without any learning. Truth is not to be learned, it is just out of your innocence.Lying needs learning, cleverness, cunningness, calculativeness.Truth needs only innocence.So the first age in the Eastern calculation was Satyuga, the age of truth. They have called it “the golden age.” Their description is tremendously significant. Describing Satyuga they say it was like a table with four legs, absolutely balanced. Satyuga had four legs, which kept it absolutely balanced. Then things started falling down.The theory is exactly against Charles Darwin – I call it “involution.” One leg dropped. The table became very unbalanced; life became unbalanced. Things were no longer the same as they had been – peaceful, silent, tranquil. With three legs, all balance was lost – but still, the table can be converted into a tripod. A tripod has three legs; some balance is still possible. This second age is called treta, because of three legs – treta means three. The English word three comes from the Sanskrit root, tre, and treta also comes from the same root. Life was no longer golden. Innocence was lost – that was the leg that was missing – people became more clever, more cunning.Then as days went by, things went down more. The third age is called “Dwapar.” One more leg dropped; only two legs remained. All balance was lost. Dwapar is the same as the English word two. Dwapar comes from the Sanskrit root, dwa. Dwa has moved through many languages, reaching a few languages as twa…and by the time it reached the English language, it became two. But it is the same word. Life became ugly, more barbarous, with more exploitation, more negativity.And we are in the fourth – one leg has fallen again; now we are standing only on one leg. The fourth is called Kaliyuga, the age of darkness. And it seems certainly true that we are living in an age of darkness and unconsciousness. We are preparing for our own suicide – what more unconsciousness can there be? The future seems to be absolutely meaningless. It seems that every day the end of life is coming closer; the night goes on becoming darker and darker.Even small children have been found in thousands taking drugs; it is no longer the new generation, it is no longer young people – school kids are taking drugs. School kids have been found murdering other children, school kids have been found raping girls – and not as an exception. In America they had a survey, and they could not believe…the government tried hard to repress it, not to let it be known to the world, but it leaked out.The most advanced nation, most powerful, most scientifically, technologically advanced, is going through the darkest period in the whole of human history.This unconsciousness can be broken only if the people whose life has become meditation, whose life has become a pure love, whose life has become a compassion, start waking up other sleeping people: “It is time – get ready. As the night becomes darker, the dawn is closer, but if you go on sleeping, dawn or no dawn, your night continues. Your eyes are closed, your darkness continues.”Otherwise, a new dawn for the whole human race, a new innocence, a new childhood, a new Satyuga – the age of truth – a new golden age is possible. But the positive people have to take the bold step of expressing themselves. They have not been doing that for the whole of history. They have enjoyed their experience, and they have thought their work was finished.I want you to remember always:When you have something to share, don’t stop there; share it. Humanity is in need, as it has never been in need, of people who can create new hope for a new dawn.A Jew comes to an inn, very late at night, and is forced to share a room with a Russian officer. Not wanting to meet him, he asks the innkeeper to wake him up very early in the morning because he has to catch the first train.The Jew undresses and goes to bed, and is awakened by the innkeeper when it is still dark outside. He dresses quickly and goes out, and to his surprise, all the soldiers salute him. When he mounts the train he looks at the mirror and realizes he is wearing a uniform. “Damn the innkeeper,” cries the Jew. “He woke up the wrong man!”

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Would you say something to us about wisdom?Wisdom is one of the most misunderstood words in any of the languages of the world. Mostly, the misunderstanding has arisen because of the word knowledge. People think both are identical, synonymous. In reality, they are just the opposite of each other.The knowledgeable man is not the wise man; the knowledgeable man is simply covering up his ignorance by collecting all kinds of information from the outside. His scholarship is great, his information is vast, his memory may be very rich, but he is still not wise – because wisdom has nothing to do with scholarship, nothing to do with scriptures, nothing to do with memory either. Wisdom is the name of pure intelligence. It is the spontaneous flowering of your being.Knowledge comes from outside.Wisdom comes from your innermost core.Knowledge is always borrowed; wisdom is never borrowed. Neither can you take it from anybody, nor can you give it to anybody.The English word education will help you to understand the distinction. It comes from a root which means drawing out, just the way you draw water out of a well. Education is only an opportunity, a supportive background, where whatever is your potential can be drawn out; whatever is in the form of a seed in you starts growing and comes to blossom.Wisdom is the spring of your innermost being; it is transformation, not information. But in the name of education, whatever has been happening in the world for centuries is just the opposite. Your intelligence is not drawn out the way water is drawn out from a well, but information is poured in from the outside, just the way it is poured into a computer. The whole education makes you knowledgeable. And the more knowledge gathers, layer upon layer, the less is the possibility for your own being to find a way to grow. The whole space is taken by borrowed junk; wisdom gets suffocated and dies a very early death.It is strange that even in the twentieth century when we think we have become very cultured, cultivated, educated, evolved, education is still the same as it was in the most primitive times; it is still doing the same act of turning everybody into a robot, into a mechanical memory system. It does not sharpen your intelligence, it makes you only clever enough to remember things.But remembering is not knowing. Knowing is possible only through meditation.Meditation is just emptying out all that is rubbish in you, all that is borrowed, all that has been fed into you, and making you again an innocent child who knows nothing. If one can come to this state of not knowing, in this spaciousness of not knowing, something spontaneously starts growing within. It does not come from outside, it comes from the innermost life sources, from your very roots. It brings beautiful flowers. That’s why it is possible for a Jesus or a Kabir or a Raidas – people who are uneducated, uncultured. Jesus is the son of a carpenter, Kabir is an orphan – nobody knows whether he is a Hindu or a Mohammedan; he remained his whole life a poor weaver. Raidas is a shoemaker. All three came from the world’s most exploited people, the most humiliated, almost reduced into a subhuman species. But they have wisdom. They know nothing of scriptures, but each of their words is pure twenty-four karat gold. Each of their breaths brings the divine into the world. Each of their heartbeats is the heartbeat of the universe itself. They know without knowledge; they understand directly without any mediators.It happened….One great Christian missionary who was trying to convert the Japanese people to Christianity went to a great Zen master. He collected information about the man – he was well known far and wide; even the emperor of Japan used to come to touch his feet.The missionary was puzzled because the Zen master was uneducated, a villager. He thought, “It is a great opportunity to convert this Zen master into a Christian. It won’t be difficult; he cannot argue, he knows nothing of logic, he knows nothing of theology, he has not heard anything about philosophy – he cannot resist, he cannot oppose me. I just have to go to him and read a few words of Jesus.”He had chosen the most beautiful part, the Sermon on the Mount. He started asking the permission of the Zen master, “I also have a master and I would like you to listen to a few of his words; I want to know your opinion about it.”He had read only two or three lines and the Zen master said, “Stop! Whoever has said these lines will become enlightened in the next life. Don’t waste my time and don’t waste your time.” The missionary was simply shocked; he had never thought that this would be the response.The Zen master said, “Don’t look shocked, I am being very compassionate. It is not absolutely certain that in the next life he will become enlightened. I am simply consoling you. Most probably he will become…he is a bodhisattva, but it is a question of time; no one can predict when a bodhisattva will become a buddha.”The difference is that a bodhisattva means in essence, a buddha, in potentiality a buddha, but not in actuality; just the seed is there. So the possibility is there any day – the seed finds the right soil and the spring comes, and the sprouts start growing out of the seed – but nobody can predict when.As the missionary was returning, very angry, barely repressing his violent mood – the Zen master said, “Listen, a bodhisattva is nothing special; everybody is a bodhisattva. Everybody is, in essence, a buddha; it is only a question of time. When you realize your essence, you become a buddha. You are also a bodhisattva. The essence of wisdom is lying dormant in every being; you bring it with yourself, it is your self-nature.”Knowledge is nurture, not nature, but millions of people around the world live their whole life under the misunderstanding that knowledge is wisdom. If knowledge was wisdom, then great scholars, professors, PhDs, DLitts – all would have become enlightened. But it is very strange that the people who have become enlightened come not from the professional scholars but from very innocent groups. Carpenters are not scholars; nor are weavers, nor are shoemakers, nor are potters, but they all have given enlightened people to the world. Their wisdom was, and even is today, as fresh as the morning dewdrops.Wisdom never grows old.Knowledge is always old, it is never fresh. It is being passed from one generation to another generation; it has been going on from one hand into another hand. Wisdom, everybody has to find for himself.Wisdom is an individual search and its fulfillment. Its beginning is to ask the question, “Who am I?” and its end is to find who is residing in you as your life, as your consciousness. And the moment you have known your being, you have become aware of your immortality.The Upanishads say, amritasya putrah: you are all sons and daughters of immortality. To know it firsthand, not by repeating the Upanishads but to know it by your own experience, is wisdom.A Gautam Buddha, a Mahavira, are people of wisdom because they have come face to face with their own reality. What they are saying is not within quotation marks, it is not a repetition of any scripture. What they are saying is on their own authority. Wisdom is its own authority; it is self-evident, it needs no support from the past.Knowledge never transforms anybody, it simply burdens you. It may give you respectability, honor, prestige, but it will not make you aware of yourself; you will not know who you are. You may remain a Christian, you may remain a Hindu, you may remain a Buddhist, you may remain a Mohammedan, just because the older generation – your parents, your teachers, your priests – have burdened you, conditioned you, fed you with all kinds of traditional knowledge.But wisdom, nobody can impart to anybody else. That’s its beauty and that’s its grandeur. You can find it yourself, but it will be always firsthand – young and fresh and alive. Knowledge is always dead; it stinks of death. Wisdom is fragrant of love, of life, of rejoicings.James, the eldest son of a respected Hollywood family, walked into his father’s study and made a shocking announcement that he now intended to live openly with his gay boyfriend.“Damn it, James,” shouted his father, “our family came over with Columbus and the Mayflower; we have never had a scandal like this!”“But I can’t help it, father,” said James, “I am so in love with him.”“But for God’s sake, son”, shouted his father, “he is Catholic!”This is knowledge. He is not worried about homosexuality, he is worried that “he is Catholic and you are not Catholic.”The knowledgeable person can be found always acting foolishly, because all the knowledge is just superficial. Deep down he is just the old idiot. A donkey loaded with holy scriptures does not become a holy donkey; he remains a poor donkey. Whether he is loaded with holy scriptures or loaded with unholy bricks, it doesn’t matter – he is simply loaded, he is carrying a burden. He will always act according to his understanding.The man of knowledge is not the man of understanding. His behavior, his actions, will show his foolishness. Yes, he can give a good lecture, he can write a great treatise, he can be a great theoretician, but in actual life, in existential situations, his responses will be of a dead and ignorant man, because his ignorance has not gone anywhere – it is simply repressed under knowledge. And whenever there is a new situation for which he has not collected information ahead, for which he has not done his homework, he is bound to respond from his ignorance. There is no other way, no alternative possible for him.The wise man is in a totally different situation: he is not knowledgeable, he is utterly innocent and silent, but he has a clarity of vision. His eyes are without the dust of knowledge; he can see clearly and directly and immediately and spontaneously. He is always here and now with his total presence, with his full, flowering consciousness. He will act out of this consciousness, his action will show his wisdom.It happened once: Gautam Buddha is passing on the road by the side of a village. The village consists of brahmins, scholars, pundits; they are absolutely against Buddha. The knowledgeable people will always be against the wise man because he is a danger to their whole investment. They surround Gautam Buddha and start abusing him, “You are corrupting people’s minds, you are corrupting the youth, you are destroying people’s morality.” The same accusations….The knowledgeable people have not been knowledgeable enough even to find some new accusations – just the old accusations against Socrates, against Gautam Buddha, against Mahavira, against Jesus, against Baal Shem, against anybody who seems to be dangerous to their knowledge. Because he has something really valuable and alive, in comparison to him, the knowledgeable look so poor. It hurts the ego of the knowledgeable.Buddha stood there silently, listening very attentively, as if they were saying something very significant. They were abusing him as badly as possible. They were misbehaving, mistreating an innocent man who had not done any harm to them. Even Buddha’s followers who were with him started losing patience, but before Buddha they could not do anything; otherwise they would have put these people right. They were all warriors, because Buddha came from the warrior race; he was the son of a king, and most of his followers in the beginning came from the warrior race, the kshatriyas.Just one disciple of Gautam Buddha would have been enough to finish all those brahmins who were shouting, abusing, using four-letter dirty words against Gautam Buddha.Listening to them for a time, Gautam Buddha said, “I have a question to ask you. Before I ask the question, I have to ask your permission…because I will not be able to give more time to you today. I have to reach to the other village; people must be waiting for me. But if you have something more to say, something more to convey, I will make a point of it that when I return, I will return on the same route and I will inform you ahead so you can be prepared. And then I can stay as long as you want.”One of the men from the crowd said, “It seems strange, we are not conveying any message to you, we are simply abusing you – and it seems you are not affected at all.”Gautam Buddha smiled and said, “If you want me to be affected, then you have come too late; if you had come to me ten years before, all of you would have been dead by now. But now it is too late – now it does not matter to me, and that’s what I was going to tell you.“In the village that I passed before coming to your village, people had come with sweets, flowers, to welcome me. But I said to them, ‘We have taken our one meal – because only one meal is allowed to us by our discipline, and we are not allowed to carry food with us. So we are sorry – we are immensely grateful, thankful; we can see your love and your honor, but we are sorry – you will have to take your sweets, your flowers back.’ I want to ask you,” he said to the crowd, “what should they have done with the sweets and the flowers?”One of the men said, “Is that a great question? They should have distributed the sweets in the village; they would have enjoyed eating them.”Buddha said, “You are right. Now, what will you do? You have brought all kinds of ugly words. I don’t take them, and without my taking them, you cannot give them to me. You will have to take them back; just the way the other village people had to take their sweets back, you will have to take your presents back that you had brought to me. We don’t take presents – you will have to take them. What will you do?”They looked at each other. Buddha said, “Simply do the same thing: distribute them to each other and enjoy.”Wisdom acts in a fresh way.Buddha turned to his disciples and said, “Remember, unless you take somebody’s insult, you are not insulted. You are insulted only when you take it, you are humiliated only when you accept it. If you don’t accept it, the person has to take it back; there is no way for him to give it to you. But I am not at all concerned with the people, I am concerned with you, because although you are standing silently behind me, I can feel the vibe of your anger.“I can forgive those people because they are knowledgeable but ignorant. I cannot forgive you because you are meditators, and anger is not expected from you. Whatever the situation may be, you have to remain centered and silent, and radiate your meditation. Use the opportunity to radiate your fragrance.“You have failed in a beautiful situation. These people had created such a beautiful situation – you should be thankful to them. They gave you a chance to test your meditation, how wise you have become. But you started getting angry and hot. Even I started feeling your heat and your vibration all around, although you were keeping hold of yourselves. But subtle vibrations I have always felt – your peace and your silence and your love and your gratitude – and I could see the whole climate changing. I could feel as if suddenly the coolness had disappeared and there was a certain heat, which does not show your depth in wisdom.“Remember next time, perhaps in the same village when we return…if these people invite us, we will have another chance. Next time remember, wisdom cannot be disturbed. Knowledge has no depth – it can be disturbed very easily.”Your question is, “Would you say something to us about wisdom?” Everything that I am saying to you is about wisdom. The question may be about anything, it doesn’t matter; whatever I am saying, I am saying about wisdom.Your questions go on differing, but my answer, if you listen correctly, is always the same. The reference changes, the context changes, my words change with your question, but whatever I am saying is nothing but expressing different aspects of wisdom.Osho,What is needed for me to make the next jump? Listening to your words for the last nine years does not appear to bridge the gap, and my experience of silence hasn't either. Where and how can I meet you and dissolve into all that is?The question that you are asking is very simple and yet very complex at the same time. Simple, because although you have been hearing me for nine years, you have not heard a single word.There is a hearing and there is a listening.Hearing is simply possible for everybody, because you have ears. Listening is a totally different discipline. When you are hearing your mind is doing a thousand and one things. In that marketplace of the mind, where so much is going on, whatever you hear is lost or mixed with other thoughts, or is interpreted according to your old prejudices. But one thing is certain, you don’t hear that which has been said. To be able to hear that, you need a silent mind.I don’t mean that you have to agree with me; there is no question of agreeing or disagreeing – I am simply trying to make the difference clear. You have first to listen, then it is up to you to agree or not agree. But first listen clearly to what is being said, and that is possible only if your mind is in silence.If your mind is going with thousands of thoughts – relevant, irrelevant – you may hear and yet you will not listen. That’s why I say your question is simple in a way and yet complex in another, because it raises the whole question of meditation, how to be in a state of meditation – because only a meditator can listen. Mind is incapable of listening.Researches in depth psychology have come to very strange conclusions. One of the strangest conclusions is that although it has always been thought that the mind is the medium to connect you with the world – it is a bridge, a mediator, a window – the researchers have found that this is not the case. Mind is a barrier, not a bridge; it is a window, but a closed window not an open window. It is a censor for whatever passes in front of you. And the most surprising fact for the researchers has been that ninety-eight percent of what you hear is not allowed in; only two percent reaches to you – that too, in a distorted form.If there are five hundred people here, that means there are five hundred versions of what I am saying. If you are asked afterward to give a report in short of what I have said, you will find five hundred different reports contradicting each other. They were all eyewitnesses; they were all present here!It happened:One English historian, Edmund Burke, was writing a world history and he was very ambitious. He wanted to make a complete history of the world – from the very beginning, when life started as a fish in the ocean – up to now; the whole world, whatever has happened…And he had devoted almost his whole life to collecting all kinds of facts and figures.One afternoon he heard a shot behind his house. He ran – there was a crowd – a man was lying…he had been shot. He was not yet dead, but he would die at any moment, so much blood had gone out of his body. And there was a crowd – they were all eyewitnesses. In front of them, the man had been shot and the murderer had escaped.Edmund Burke inquired from different people and he found different versions of what had happened. They were all eyewitnesses, and their descriptions of the happening were so different. Many were so contradictory that he could not believe it was possible. And then a great question arose in his mind, “What am I doing? I am writing the history of the world from the times when life arose in the ocean as fish, and then all the transformations of life up to the man of today, and I cannot figure it out – just behind my house I have heard a shot, eyewitnesses are present, and yet I cannot figure out what has happened. Of what value is my history?”He dropped the whole project. He never looked again at all the collected material for which he had wasted almost his whole life. Many of his friends said, “This is not right – just because of a small incident.”He said, “It is not a small incident. It shows that all that I am writing is only my prejudice, my opinion about something for which I don’t have any eyewitnesses. And even if I had eyewitnesses, it would be of no use. Something happens behind my home; I hear the sound of a shot, I run there in time – the man is dying, the crowd is standing…and everybody has a different story to tell! Now, what can I say about Confucius? What can I say about Moses? What can I say about Krishna? – whether these people ever existed or not?”No, history is simply not possible. And it is true, you can see it. For three hundred years this country was under the slavery of Britain. British historians have written about the last three hundred years’ history, and Indian historians have also written…and they don’t agree on any point. The rulers have their own opinion, their own prejudice; the ruled have their own opinion, their own prejudice. How can they agree? Who is going to decide who is right? There is no third party which is neutral.You have been here, Arpana, for nine years, but you have not been able to hear. And you are asking, “What is needed for me to make the next jump?”What next jump? Where is the first jump? You have not taken even the first step. You are exactly where you were nine years before. You may be going round and round in the same place with the same mind, with the same prejudice….Ask for the first step. And the first step will be: learn to listen. You have already accepted the idea: “Listening to your words for the last nine years…” you have taken it for granted that you are capable of listening. Nobody is capable of listening without going through a certain discipline. Yes, you can hear, but don’t make them synonymous.I have heard….A Baptist, a Presbyterian, a Methodist and a Catholic sat down to dinner. As soon as grace was said, a very large fish was served up. The Catholic immediately rose and helped himself to a good third of the fish, head included. Looking at the others, he pompously announced, “The pope is the head of the church.” Naturally, being a Catholic, he is entitled to take the head of the fish; that’s what his understanding of religion is.The Methodist wasted no time and reached across the table, helping himself to another third of the fish, including the tail. Chin high in the air, he said, “The end crowns the work.”The Presbyterian quickly removed the last of the fish, saying, “Truth lies between the two extremes.”The Baptist looked down at the empty plate and, faced with the prospect of a meager dinner, grabbed the glass of water and threw it in the faces of all the three and shouted, “I baptize you in the name of the Lord!”Everybody is doing his own religion. The Baptist is baptizing. The Presbyterian who believes in the golden mean – the middle way, always remaining in the middle, avoiding the extremes – takes the middle part of the fish. The Catholic takes the head, because the pope is the head of the church, and the Methodist takes the tail and announces that the end crowns the work.This is almost the situation of everybody. Your religion is your interpretation, your convenience, your comfort. What you hear, you hear only selectively – whatever suits your purpose. If you are sitting here with a predetermined mind, that you know already what is right and what is wrong, you cannot listen.So the first step for you will be, Arpana, to drop this idea, which you have taken for granted, that you have been listening. If you had been listening for nine years, you would have gone through such a great transformation that you would not have been able to recognize yourself, how much you have changed. But you have not changed at all. That is absolute evidence that you have not listened at all.So the first step is, start meditating and create the space of silence, so that when you sit here you can really be available to me – not holding anything back – so that I can reach to your heart. But if you remain closed, there is no way.I cannot interfere in your being unless you invite me. Without your invitation and your openness and receptivity, interfering with your life is against the very fundamental rights of every human being. Everybody should be left alone in his individuality. Unless you invite me, I will stand at the door and wait for you; I will not even knock at your door, because even if I knock you may open the door unwillingly. It will be pointless – you will still be resistant.If you are waiting for me with open doors and your eyes are looking far away in the distance, waiting for me…and as I come closer to you – as you start hearing my footsteps – you rejoice, then there is a possibility of communion. Then I can say something. Or it may not even need to be said…just being in my presence may be enough – something may start changing within you, without anything being said.This is one of the paradoxes of existence: you sit here for nine years, hearing, and you don’t hear a word. And I am saying to you, “Sit here silently, there is no need even for me to say anything and you will hear it. You will hear the message, because the message is of silence, it does not consist of words.”Forget all those nine years, they have gone down the drain. Begin afresh. This is your first day; count from today. Never mention again those nine years, but make a change. And I am not asking much, I am simply asking, “Be silent.” But you cannot be silent unless you are going through meditations.It is a whole strategy – you are doing meditations of different kinds because one never knows which one is going to suit you. People are different, that’s why there are different kinds of meditations. And I have chosen the most fundamental types, so one is bound to suit you. That which suits you, that which brings joy to your heart, a dance to your feet, go deeper into it. If you feel that there are some psychological problems which are hindering you in entering meditation, there are groups in which, under expert guidance, you can drop your psychological problems.After you have done all this then sitting with me in silence will become possible, and that is an absolute requirement.Hymie Goldberg was in the middle of a lengthy religious discussion with his psychiatrist.“Now, do I understand correctly,” said the shrink, “that it was your wife who introduced you to religion?”“Yes, that’s correct,” said Hymie. “I did not really believe there was a hell until I married her.”That’s how we listen.“Did you hear that Dennis Thatcher died?”“No, what were his last words?”“He did not have any, his wife was with him to the end.”Jesus and Moses are playing golf. Jesus hits the ball, which almost falls into the hole, when a rabbit jumps past and swallows the ball. As the rabbit runs off, an eagle appears, catches the rabbit and flies away with it into the sky. A hunter arrives and shoots the eagle, the rabbit falls out of the eagle’s claws and as the rabbit hits the ground, the ball shoots out of his mouth and into the hole.”“So, Moses,” says Jesus, “now, what do you say?”“Well, Jesus,” says Moses grumpily, “I have actually wanted to ask you all day, do you really want to play golf or do you just want to muck around?”That’s what, Arpana, I want to ask you. Do you really want to listen to me or just to muck around? Nine years is enough. Now, don’t waste time. It is not only you, there are people with you in the same boat.For example, here is a question from Deva Vimal: “Somehow I feel it is not enough now, just to bask in your presence. It is as if you have prepared the soil and it is time for me to do some gardening. But what have I done with this responsibility? I head-trip through my most valuable job, I hurt myself and two beautiful women in a messy triangular something, and I procrastinate about any effort at meditation. Then the other night I heard you say, ‘Anything you do out of unawareness will be wrong.’ My God, catch twenty-two. Osho, please help me find my courage and method to cut the crap and go within.”On the one hand, you say, “I procrastinate, I make every effort not to meditate,” and yet you want to get out of the problems that your mind is creating. And because you are not meditating, the evidence is immediately available.You say, “Then the other night I heard you say…” You say, “Then…” as if I have said it for the first time, just the other night! My whole life I have been saying only one thing, and that is that anything you do out of unawareness will be wrong and everything that you do out of awareness is right, because awareness is right and unawareness is wrong.This has been my essential teaching and you have heard it only the other night. And at the same time you don’t want to meditate. You yourself are declaring that you avoid making any effort to meditate.So what do you want? How can you get out of this crap? Your whole life will become more and more a puzzle in which you will get entangled; you will forget all ways of coming back home. Now, what are you doing by creating a “triangular something” with two beautiful women? One woman is enough to make you enlightened – two women are enough to drag you back from enlightenment!Are you writing a film story or a novel? Because no film story, no novel is possible without a triangular mess. Don’t make your life a film, don’t make your life a novel. Have you ever heard of any film, any novel, any story, profane or sacred, without there being a triangular mess? Either two men and one woman or two women and one man – that is an absolute necessity for creating the story.But don’t make a story of your life, life is too valuable. Making it a story is destructive. Make it a beautiful growth, a flowering, a celebration, a light unto yourself and for anybody else who is ready to share the light. The night is very dark and the night is very long. Even a single man with a light may be of immense help to millions of people, to bring the dawn closer.Up to a point every stupidity is allowed, but only up to a point. If you go on doing the same thing again and again, then stupidity becomes your second nature; then to get out of it is almost impossible. It is good that you commit mistakes once – once you become a buffoon, you fool around – then you learn the lesson. And nobody can prevent you from coming out of any triangle in the world. The triangle is not holding you in, you are holding the triangle. And it is so deeply humiliating that people in their old age also continue to play games which they should have left when they were teenagers.I have heard about three old men, all retired. One was seventy, the other was eighty and the third was ninety, and they used to meet daily, as a routine, in the park every morning. They would sit there in the beautiful garden, in the cool breeze, in the early morning sun, and they would talk about their past golden times, beautiful days, and their present miseries.One day all three were sitting very silently and very sad. Finally, one man said, “Now it is becoming intolerable, this silence is too heavy. I know we are all in trouble, but sharing with each other the problems, the difficulties, the troubles, the mind will feel a little lighter. I should begin, I should take the initiative and say what my problem is.”So they both said, “Okay.”The man of seventy said, “I feel very embarrassed to say it, but I have to say it; otherwise it will remain on my head and I may not be able even to sleep. A beautiful lady was taking a shower in the bathroom and I was looking through the keyhole and my mother caught me red-handed. I am dying with shame.”The two laughed and consoled him saying, “Don’t be foolish, everybody does such things in childhood; there is not much of a problem. We have all done the same things, we have all been caught red-handed. But in childhood…you are a strange fellow, why are you making a fuss about it now?”The old man of seventy said, “You don’t understand at all. It is not an incident from my childhood, it happened just today, this morning!”They both said, “That is certainly serious. But whatever has happened, has happened, you cannot undo it.”“But your trouble is nothing,” said the man of eighty. “You don’t know others’ troubles, so you start bragging about your trouble. What is great in that? It is natural. A beautiful lady is taking a shower and you are becoming a peeping Tom…that’s perfectly okay. What’s wrong in it? You are not harming anybody. And your own mother has caught you red-handed; before your mother you are always a child, forget all about it. For the mother you are never a grown-up, so don’t make much fuss about it. You don’t know what great trouble I am passing through. For almost a week I have not been able to make love to my wife.”The first man said, “That is really a bigger trouble. For a whole week you have not been able to make love to your wife? What is the problem?”The ninety-year-old man started giggling. He said, “You are an idiot, and you have been your whole life an idiot. Although you are seventy years old, that makes no difference; you are just a seventy-year-old idiot. First ask what he means by making love to his wife.”He said, “What can he mean? It is a well-known fact.”But the old guy insisted, “First ask.”So he asked, “Please tell me, what do you mean by making love?”He said, “What can I mean? At this age I have found a way of making love to my wife. I take her hand in my hand, I press it three times; then she turns to the other side, I turn to the other side and we fall asleep peacefully. But for seven days continuously, the moment I start trying to find her hand she has said, ‘Not today, I have a headache.’ These seven days have appeared almost like hundreds of years, and I have not made love to her. And she is so stubborn, she goes on talking about her headache every night. And you think you are having trouble?”The ninety-year-old man was still giggling and he said, “Listen, now you know what he means by making love. You are both idiots. I knew it from the very beginning what kind of love he makes. But you don’t know my trouble, and I am ninety years old – you are just children in comparison to me. I am passing through such bad times, you cannot believe.”They said, “Please tell us.”He said, “What to tell you? Just this morning when I started preparing to make love to my wife, she started shouting and screaming, ‘What are you doing, you idiot?’ And I said, ‘I am not doing anything, I am just trying to make love.’“She said, ‘The whole night! This is the fourth time. Neither you sleep nor do you allow me to sleep – love, love, love….’“So I said, ‘My God, it seems I am losing my memory,’ because I was thinking it was the first time. And you think you are having troubles! Now I am worried that whenever I start making love to her, I will be trembling inside…who knows how many times I have already made love? And even if she is lying, I cannot do anything. This is real trouble,” he said, “and at the age of ninety – life is ending like a tragedy.”But this is the situation of many people in the world. In different ways you go on making the same mistakes all your life. If you are given another chance to live again, you will make the same mistakes – I can give a guarantee for it – because you don’t learn.This place is a place of learning.The very meaning of the word disciple is, one who is ready to learn. It is derived from the root which means learning.This is not a place for everybody, it is not a public place. It is a gathering of disciples, of people who are ready to learn and who are ready to transcend their mistakes; who are ready to transcend their egos; who are ready to transcend their minds and who are ready to explode into a light which is eternal, which is divine, which is another name of God.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 16 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is the relationship between enlightenment and the spring of life? Is enlightenment the spring of life?One basic thing has always to be remembered: not to get involved in questions of intellect. They are pseudo questions, they don’t belong to your experience. Mind is tremendously capable of creating questions out of words.But any question that is created by the mind, out of words, not out of experience, is an exercise in utter futility. You don’t know what enlightenment is as an experience, you don’t know what the spring of life is as an experience. The question is purely intellectual. It can lead to a great philosophical discussion, but it will not lead to any understanding or any transformation.Intellect is one of the barriers to reach to the sources of existence. It does not allow you to ask the authentic question. It goes on giving you questions which only appear as questions, but they are not your quest. Of course in a dictionary, enlightenment will mean one thing and spring of life will mean something else.But here we are not discussing linguistics. And the people who have been writing dictionaries, analyzing language and grammar, are not the people of the path. So the first thing: always remember whether the question is arising from some experiential source or not. If it is not arising from experience, then it is not worth discussing.Carol, a newlywed, brags that her Romeo is a model husband. We looked up the word model in the dictionary, and found it means “a small imitation of the real thing.”It has been heard that the pope died but was allowed to return to earth to speak to the cardinals. They gathered around him eagerly.“What is he like?” they clamored. “Is he very old, with a long, white beard, like in all the paintings? Tell us, describe him.”“Well,” said the pope, “to start with, she is black.”Knowing is one thing; knowing directly and knowing through books are so different. Sometimes they may appear to be similar, but they are not similar.I cannot answer your question in terms of intellect, but I can answer it in terms of existential experience.The spring of life and enlightenment are not the same, although they are deeply related. The spring of life, when it becomes aware of itself, brings you to the experience of enlightenment. In other words, spring of life plus awareness is equal to enlightenment.The spring of life is available to everybody; otherwise how can you live? Your life is continuously being nourished by the spring of life. The trees are nourished by the spring of life, the flowers blossom…but the juice comes from the spring of life. The whole existence is nothing but a manifestation of the springs of life.But trees cannot become enlightened – neither can mountains or oceans; neither can animals or birds. They all have the same source of life that you have. But man has a prerogative, a privilege, that he can become aware of his spring of life. This awareness is not possible in any other form in existence. It is man’s grandeur, it is his dignity. Existence has given him the most precious opportunity. If he can create awareness, consciousness, more alertness, then his spring of life explodes into a new dimension. The dimension of life becomes the dimension of light, of knowing – knowing the deepest roots of our being in eternity. And the moment we know our roots are eternal, we know our flowers are also going to be eternal.Enlightenment is a flowering.The springs of life are seeds; enlightenment is a flower. The seed has come to its ultimate expression – there is no further to go. Springs of life are the lowest rung of the ladder, and enlightenment is the highest rung of the ladder, although the ladder is the same.The change comes slowly, as you become more aware of who you are, of what life is – not intellectually, not by reading through scriptures, but by reading the only holy scripture: your own being, and bringing your potential to its realization. So that which was hidden in the seed becomes an explosion in the flower, in the fragrance. That fragrance is enlightenment. It comes from the sources of life, but it is not synonymous with it.The seed is not synonymous with the flower, although the flower comes from the seed. The seed is the womb, but the flower – although connected with the seed, with the womb – is a totally new experience.Awareness ordinarily is objective. You know others, you know the world, you know the faraway stars. The moment awareness turns inward and starts knowing itself – in other words, the moment awareness is the object of its own knowing – enlightenment blossoms with all its beauty, with all its immortal glory.Life is accepted by the scientist, but he is not yet capable of accepting the possibility of enlightenment. Life is accepted by the atheist, but he is also not capable of comprehending the ultimate explosion. Just as for millennia we had no idea that matter is made of small atoms, which are not visible to the eyes…they are so small that if you put one atom upon another atom, and then go on putting one on top of another, you will need one hundred thousand atoms, and then they will be as thick as a human hair. Such a small atom, one hundred thousand times thinner than a human hair, when it explodes, releases so much energy that a city like Hiroshima or Nagasaki disappears within seconds – evaporates.I have seen a picture sent by a friend from Japan…just looking at the picture, one feels so sad about humanity, so hopeless. The picture is of a small girl, maybe nine years old. She is going from the ground floor to the first story with her bag and books – perhaps to do her homework before she goes to sleep. She is just in the middle of the staircase when the atom bomb falls on Hiroshima.Then and there she is burned; and her whole body, with the books and the bag all burned, becomes attached to the wall of the staircase. She’s now just a shadow; everything is burned, but you can see the figure of the girl, you can see the figure of her bag. It did not take even a single minute for people to see what was happening, and there were at least one hundred thousand people in Hiroshima – and the number in Nagasaki was the same or a little more.Just a small atom exploding creates so much energy…you can use it for destruction or you can use it for some creative purpose. Right now the scientists say we have come so far from Hiroshima and Nagasaki – our new nuclear weapons are so great in their energy – that the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima look like children’s toys.If matter, in its smallest particle, contains so much energy, can you conceive how much energy may be available in the living cell of human beings?Enlightenment is the explosion of a living cell. Certainly it is not destructive at all, but it transforms the whole man. In that way, it is destructive. It destroys the old man, it destroys the night, it destroys all that was constituting your personality: your jealousy, your anger, your hate, your lust, your greed – all that is simply finished in a single moment. And the same energy that was involved in jealousy, hate, greed, ambition, and a thousand and one desires, is changed into totally new forms of energy: love, silence, peace, compassion, wisdom – all that is the basic search of life itself.Life in itself is dormant, it is fast asleep. Enlightenment is absolutely awake. But it is the same energy that was asleep that becomes awake. So they are not synonymous, but they are two extremes of the same energy.But this, if taken as an intellectual understanding, is not going to help you in any way. It has to become your own experience.You have to see that light.You have to see that explosion within your own being.You have to see the darkness disappearing. You have to see the new dawn of a new life – a life of grace and gratitude, a life of beauty and blessings.You have to remember, it is very easy to ask questions as mind gymnastics. I am not interested in mind gymnastics because it leads you nowhere; you remain stuck where you are. You only become more burdened with knowledge – knowledge which is meaningless because it is not part of your own experience.Rabbi Bierstein was asking his congregation to donate money to help build a new synagogue. Suddenly, the town prostitute stood and shouted, “Praise the Lord. I repent. I will give two thousand dollars right now.”“Well, as much as we need funds, I am afraid I cannot accept tainted money,” said Bierstein.“Take it, Rabbi,” shouted a man from the back, “after all, it is our money anyway!”Now, what are these guys doing in a synagogue? Just a formality. They are visiting prostitutes. The prostitute is more authentic. Perhaps the money also belongs to the Rabbi; that’s why the man is saying, “It is our money anyway.”Mind has been befooling man for centuries.After holding mass in Warsaw Cathedral, the pope was giving words of encouragement to a group of devout Poles. One of them asked, “Your Holiness, Poles are such devout Catholics, why was Christ not born in Poland?”“Don’t you understand,” said the pope, “that for such a birth, there had to be three wise men and a virgin?”And where can you find three wise men and a virgin in Poland? You must know the story of Jesus, that he is born out of a virgin, and three wise men come from the East to pay him respect. They are the first to recognize in the small child the possibility of a future enlightened being. They recognized in the seed, the flower.I recognize in you the seed and the potential of the flower. But if you go on thinking intellectually, you will become a philosopher, a theologian; you will never become a mystic. And unless you become a mystic, you have wasted your life. Such a great opportunity, where you can grow to your greatest height of consciousness, is being wasted in unconscious trivia.Even if you think about something great, it is only a thought, it never becomes an actual reality in your being.I would like you to be more existential. I am not an existentialist because that is again falling into the same trap. Existentialist philosophers are not enlightened people. Neither Jean-Paul Sartre is enlightened nor Jaspers, nor Martin Heidegger, nor Marcel, nor Soren Kierkegaard; they are philosophers of existence, they think about existence.I want you not to be existentialist thinkers; I want you to be existential experiencers. That difference is so great, and makes all the difference – because Jean-Paul Sartre, or Jaspers or other existentialist philosophers live in anguish, in anxiety, in boredom, in despair. They even think that perhaps suicide is the only way out of this mess. These people are not to be categorized with Gautam Buddha or Chuang Tzu or Baal Shem. These people are thinking about existence, just as old philosophers were thinking about God; only the object of thinking has changed, but thinking continues, and thinking can only lead you into a desert.It is only the experience which leads your life river toward the ultimate merger with the ocean, with the universe, with the life of full awareness. You come back home. You had left the home unconscious, you come back home with consciousness. The circle is complete. Your life has come to fulfillment and contentment. This is the only benediction and this is the only authentic religious path.Osho,If I look at my death, or your death, one thing I could never forgive myself for is to miss you. I used to think: if life has a purpose, you are the purpose – and if there is a destiny, you are my destiny. Now I see things a little differently. The most beautiful gift my life can give to you is not to worship you or help your work on this earth. It is not even to love you. Out of your compassion, as I understand it, the most beautiful gift my life can give to you is my own enlightenment. Please, Osho, give me a technique to prepare my meditation.The way your understanding has been growing is perfectly the right way and the right direction. The only thing you should think of is enlightenment. Yes, that is the only gift you can give to me: your enlightenment. Everything else is trivia. So your conclusion has my absolute, categorical approval.Once you are committed, once you have decided wholeheartedly that enlightenment is the only purpose of being here in the world, of being alive, then a single pointed awareness – just like an arrow moving toward its target – begins in you.You are asking for the right meditation. Meditation is a beautiful word; hiding behind it is a very dangerous reality. The dangerous reality is: if you want to be deeply in meditation, you will have to pass through almost a death – the death of the old, the death of all that you used to be, a discontinuity with the past – and a rebirth.The place where your meditation is going to descend is the place occupied by your mind and your past. So the first and primary work is to clean your interior being of all thoughts. There is no question of choosing to keep the good thoughts in and to throw the bad thoughts out. For a meditator, all thoughts are simply junk; there is no question of good and bad. They all occupy the space inside you, and because of their occupation, your inner being cannot become absolutely silent. So good thoughts are as bad as bad thoughts; don’t make any discrimination between them. Throw the baby out with the bath water!Meditation needs absolute quiet, a silence so deep that nothing stirs within you. Once you understand exactly what meditation means, it is not difficult to attain it. It is our birthright; we are absolutely capable of having it. But you cannot have both: the mind and meditation.Mind is a disturbance.Mind is nothing but a normal madness.You have to go beyond the mind into a space where no thought has ever entered, where no imagination functions, where no dream arises, where you simply are – just a nobody.It is more an understanding than a discipline. It is not that you have to do much; on the contrary, you don’t have to do anything except clearly understand what meditation is. That very understanding will stop the functioning of the mind. That understanding is almost like a master before whom the servants stop quarreling with each other, or even talking with each other; suddenly the master enters the house and there is silence. All the servants start being busy – at least looking like they are busy. Just a moment before, they were all quarreling and fighting and discussing, and nobody was doing anything.Understanding what meditation is, is inviting the master in. Mind is a servant. The moment the master comes in with all its silence, with all its joy, suddenly the mind falls into absolute silence.Once you have achieved a meditative space, enlightenment is only a question of time. You cannot force it. You have to be just a waiting, an intense waiting, with a great longing – almost like thirst, hunger, not a word…. It is like the experience of people who have sometimes got lost in a desert. At first, thirst is a word in their mind: “I am feeling thirsty and I am looking for water.” But as time goes on, and there is no sign of any oasis – and as far as the eyes can see, there is no possibility of finding water – the thirst goes on spreading all over the body.From the mind, from just a word, thirst, it starts spreading to every cell and fiber of the body. Now it is no longer a word, it is an actual experience. Your every cell – and there are seven million cells in the body – is thirsty. Those cells don’t know words, they don’t know language, but they know that they need water; otherwise life is going to be finished.In meditation, the longing becomes just a thirst for enlightenment and a patient awaiting, because it is such a great phenomenon and you are so tiny. Your hands cannot reach it; it is not within your reach. It will come and overwhelm you but you cannot do anything to bring it down to you. You are too small, your energies are too small. But whenever you are really waiting with patience and longing and passion, it comes. In the right moment, it comes. It has always come.You are asking what meditation will be helpful to you. Raso, all meditations…hundreds of techniques are available, but the essence of all those techniques is the same, just their forms differ. And the essence is contained in the meditation Vipassana.That is the meditation that has made more people in the world enlightened than any other, because it is the very essence. All other meditations have the same essence, but in different forms; something nonessential is also joined with them. But Vipassana is pure essence. You cannot drop anything out of it and you cannot add anything to improve it.Vipassana is such a simple thing that even a small child can do it. In fact, the smallest child can do it better than you, because he is not yet filled with the garbage of the mind; he is still clean and innocent.I would suggest Vipassana as the technique for you. Vipassana can be done in three ways – you can choose which one suits you the best.The first is: Awareness of your actions, your body, your mind, your heart. Walking, you should walk with awareness. Moving your hand, you should move with awareness, knowing perfectly that you are moving the hand. You can move it without any consciousness, like a mechanical thing. You are on a morning walk; you can go on walking without being aware of your feet. Be alert of the movements of your body.While eating, be alert of the movements that are needed for eating. Taking a shower, be alert of the coolness that is coming to you, the water falling on you and the tremendous joy of it…. Just be alert. It should not go on happening in an unconscious state.And the same about your mind: whatever thought passes on the screen of your mind, just be a watcher. Whatever emotion passes on the screen of your heart, just remain a witness – don’t get involved, don’t get identified, don’t evaluate what is good, what is bad; that is not part of your meditation. Your meditation has to be choiceless awareness.You will be able one day even to see very subtle moods: how sadness settles in you just like the night is slowly, slowly settling around the world, how suddenly a small thing makes you joyous.Just be a witness. Don’t think, “I am sad.” Just know, “There is sadness around me, there is joy around me. I am confronting a certain emotion or a certain mood.” But you are always far away: a watcher on the hills, and everything else is going on in the valley. This is one of the ways Vipassana can be done.And for a woman, my feeling is that it is the easiest, because a woman is more alert of her body than a man. It is just her nature. She is more conscious of how she looks, she is more conscious of how she moves, she is more conscious of how she sits; she is always conscious of being graceful. And it is not only a conditioning; it is something natural and biological.Mothers who have experienced having at least two or three children, start feeling after a certain time whether they are carrying a boy or girl in their womb. The boy starts playing football; he starts kicking here and there, he starts making himself felt – he announces that he is here. The girl remains silent and relaxed; she does not play football, she does not kick, she does not announce. She remains as quiet as possible, as relaxed as possible.So it is not a question of conditioning, because even in the womb you can see the difference between the boy and the girl. The boy is hectic; he cannot sit in one place. He is all over the place. He wants to do everything, he wants to know everything. The girl behaves in a totally different way.That’s why I say, Raso, it will be easier for you to take Vipassana in this first form.The second form is breathing, becoming aware of breathing. As the breath goes in, your belly starts rising up, and as the breath goes out, your belly starts settling down again. So the second method is to be aware of the belly, its rising and falling. Just the very awareness of the belly rising and falling…And the belly is very close to the life sources because the child is joined with the mother’s life through the navel. Behind the navel is his life’s source. So when the belly rises up, it is really the life energy, the spring of life that is rising up and falling down with each breath. That too is not difficult, and perhaps may be even easier, because it is a single technique.In the first, you have to be aware of the body, you have to be aware of the mind, you have to be aware of your emotions, moods. So it has three steps. The second sort has a single step: just the belly, moving up and down. And the result is the same. As you become more aware of the belly, the mind becomes silent, the heart becomes silent, the moods disappear.And the third is to be aware of the breath at the entrance, when the breath goes in through your nostrils. Feel it at that extreme – the other polarity from the belly – feel it from the nose. The breath going in gives a certain coolness to your nostrils. Then the breath going out…breath going in, breath going out….That too is possible. It is easier for men than for women. The woman is more aware of the belly. Most men don’t even breathe as deep as the belly. Their chest rises up and falls down, because a wrong kind of athletics prevails over the world. Certainly it gives a more beautiful form to the body if your chest is high and your belly is almost non-existent.Man has chosen to breathe only up to the chest, so the chest becomes bigger and bigger and the belly shrinks down. That appears to him to be more athletic. Around the world, except in Japan, all athletes and teachers of athletes emphasize breathing by filling your lungs, expanding your chest, and pulling the belly in. The ideal is the lion whose chest is big and whose belly is very small. So be like a lion; that has become the rule of athletic gymnasts and the people who have been working with the body.Japan is the only exception, where they don’t care that the chest should be broad and the belly should be pulled in. It needs a certain discipline to pull the belly in; it is not natural. Japan has chosen the natural way; hence you will be surprised to see a Japanese statue of Buddha. That is the way you can immediately discriminate whether the statue is Indian or Japanese. The Indian statues of Gautam Buddha have a very athletic body: the belly is very small and the chest is very broad. But the Japanese Buddha is totally different; his chest is almost silent, because he breathes from the belly, but his belly is bigger. It doesn’t look very good because the idea prevalent in the world is the other way round, and it is so old. But breathing from the belly is more natural, more relaxed.In the night it happens when you sleep: you don’t breathe from the chest, you breathe from the belly. That’s why the night is such a relaxed experience. After your sleep, in the morning you feel so fresh, so young, because the whole night you were breathing naturally…you were in Japan!These are the two points: if you are afraid that breathing from the belly and being attentive to its rising and falling will destroy your athletic form…men may be more interested in that athletic form. Then for them it is easier to watch near the nostrils where the breath enters. Watch, and when the breath goes out, watch.These are the three forms. Any one will do. And if you want to do two forms together, you can do two forms together; then the effort will become more intense. If you want to do all three forms together, you can do all three forms together. Then the process will be quicker. But it all depends on you, whatever feels easy.Remember: easy is right.As meditation becomes settled, mind silent, the ego will disappear. You will be there, but there will be no feeling of “I.” Then the doors are open. Just wait with a loving longing, with a welcome in the heart for that great moment, the greatest moment in anybody’s life – enlightenment.It comes…it certainly comes. It has never delayed for a single moment. Once you are in the right tuning, it suddenly explodes in you, transforms you. The old man is dead and the new man has arrived.Big Chief Sitting Bull had been constipated for many moons. So he sent his favorite squaw to the medicine man for help. The medicine man gave the squaw three pills and told her to give them to the chief, and then report back to him the next morning.The next morning the squaw came back with the message, “Big chief no shit.” So the medicine man told her to double the dose.The next day, she came back with the message, “Big Chief no shit.” So again he told her to double the dose.Again she came back with the same message. This went on for a week, and finally the medicine man told the squaw to give Sitting Bull the whole box.The next morning, she came back with a very sad expression. “What is wrong, my child?” asked the medicine man. The little squaw looked at him with tears in her eyes and said, “Big Shit, no chief!”One day it will happen to you, and that will be a great moment. That’s what I am calling the right moment.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 17 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is the language of enlightenment?There is no language of enlightenment. There cannot be by the very nature of the phenomenon. Enlightenment happens beyond mind and language is part of the mind. Enlightenment is experienced in utter silence.If you want to call silence a language, then of course enlightenment has a language which consists of silence, which consists of blissfulness, which consists of ecstasy, which consists of innocence. But this is not the ordinary meaning of language. The ordinary meaning is that words have to be used as a vehicle to convey. Silence cannot be conveyed by words; neither can ecstasy or love or blissfulness. In fact, enlightenment can be seen, can be understood, can be felt, but cannot be heard and cannot be spoken.I have told you the story:When Gautam Buddha became enlightened, he remained silent for seven days and the whole existence waited breathlessly to hear him, to hear his music, to hear his soundless song, his words coming from the land of the beyond – words of truth…the whole existence was waiting. And those seven days looked like seven centuries.The story is tremendously beautiful. Up to a certain point it is factual and beyond that it becomes mythological, but by mythological I do not mean it becomes a lie. There are a few truths which can only be expressed through myths. He attained enlightenment, that is a truth; he remained silent for seven days, that is a truth. That the whole existence waited to hear him is a truth, but only for those who had experienced something of enlightenment and who had experienced the waiting existence, not for everybody.But still it can be understood that existence rejoices whenever somebody becomes enlightened – because it is a part of existence itself that is coming to its highest expression, a part of existence that is becoming an Everest, the highest peak. Naturally, it is existence’s crowning glory. It is the very longing of the whole: one day to become enlightened, one day to dispel all unconsciousness and flood the whole existence with consciousness and light…destroy all misery and bring as many flowers of joy as possible.Beyond this point it becomes pure mythology, but still it has its own significance and its own truth.The gods in heaven became worried. One thing has to be understood: Buddhism does not believe in a God; neither does Jainism believe in a God, but they believe in gods. They are far more democratic in their concepts than Mohammedanism, Judaism or Christianity – these religions are more fascist. One God, one religion, one holy scripture, one prophet – they are very monopolistic. But Buddhism has a totally different approach, far more democratic, far more human. It conceives millions of gods.In fact, every being in existence has to become a god one day. When he becomes enlightened, he will be a god. There is no creator as such; the very idea is ugly. If God has created you, you are only puppets; you don’t have an individuality of your own, your strings are in the hands of the puppeteer. And if God can create you, he can uncreate you any moment. Neither did he ask you when he created you, nor will he ask you when he destroys you. You are just a victim of a whimsical, dictatorial, fascist God.According to Buddhism there is no God as a creator, and that brings dignity to every being. You are not puppets, you have an individuality and a freedom and a pride. Nobody can create you, nobody can destroy you; hence another concept has come out of it: nobody can save you except yourself. In Christianity there is the idea of the savior; in Judaism there is the idea of the savior – if there is a God, he can send his messengers, prophets, messiahs to save you. Even liberating yourself is not within your hands. Even your liberation is going to be a sort of slavery – somebody else liberates you. And a liberation that comes from somebody else’s hands is not much of a liberation.Freedom has to be achieved, not to be begged for. Freedom has to be snatched away, not to be prayed for. A freedom that is given to you as a gift out of compassion is not of much value. Hence, in Buddhism there is no savior either. But there are gods – those who have become enlightened before.Because there is no creation, existence is eternal; it never began and it will never end. This has to be understood. Christianity says that God created the world exactly four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ was born. Now, this is a very simple logic, that anything that begins in time is bound to end in time someday. You cannot have only a beginning without an end. However far away the end may be, there is bound to be an end because there has been a beginning. Hence, in religions where God is a creator, existence cannot have the rejoicing of eternity, timelessness, deathlessness, immortality.Since eternity, millions of people must have become enlightened; they are all gods. These gods became disturbed when seven days of silence passed after Gautam Buddha’s enlightenment, because it rarely happens that a human being becomes enlightened…It is such a rare and unique phenomenon that the very soul of existence waits for it, longs for it, and thousands of years pass and then somebody becomes enlightened. And if Gautam Buddha is not going to speak, if he chooses to remain silent…which is a natural possibility because silence is the only right language for enlightenment. The moment you try to bring it into language it becomes distorted. And the distortion happens on many levels.First, it becomes distorted when you drag it down from its height, from the peaks, to the dark valleys of the mind. The first distortion happens there. Almost ninety percent of its reality is lost.Then you speak. The second distortion happens because what you can conceive in the deepest core of your heart is one thing; the moment you bring it into expression as words, that is another thing. You feel great love, but when you say to someone, “I love you,” suddenly you realize the word love is too small to express what you are feeling. It seems really embarrassing to use it.And the third distortion happens when it is heard by somebody else, because he has his own ideas, his own conditionings, his own thoughts, opinions, philosophies, ideologies, prejudices. He will immediately interpret it according to himself. By the time it reaches the person, it is no longer the same thing that had started from the highest peak of your consciousness. It has gone through so many changes that it is altogether something else. So it has happened many times that enlightened people have never spoken. Out of a hundred enlightened people, perhaps one may have chosen to speak.Gautam Buddha was such a rare human being, so well-cultured, so articulate, that if he chose to remain silent, the world would miss a great opportunity. The gods came down, touched the feet of Gautam Buddha and asked him to speak. “The whole existence is waiting. The trees are waiting, the mountains are waiting, the valleys are waiting, the clouds are waiting, the stars are waiting. Don’t frustrate everyone. Don’t be so unkind, have some mercy and speak.”But Gautam Buddha had his own argument. He said, “I can understand your compassion, and I would like to speak. For seven days I have been wavering between the two, whether to speak or to not speak, and every argument goes for not speaking. I have not been able to find a single argument in favor of speaking. I am going to be misunderstood, so what is the point when you are going to be misunderstood? – which is absolutely certain. I am going to be condemned; nobody is going to listen to me the way the words of an enlightened man have to be listened to. Listening needs a certain training, a discipline, it is not just hearing.“And even if somebody understands me, he is not going to take a single step, because every step is dangerous; it is walking on a razor’s edge. I am not against speaking, just I cannot see that there is any use, and I have found every argument against it.”The gods looked at each other. What Gautam Buddha was saying was right. They went aside to discuss what to do now. “We cannot say that what he is saying is wrong, but still we would like him to speak. Some way has to be found to convince him.” They discussed for a long time and finally they came to a conclusion.They came back to Gautam Buddha and they said, “We have found just one single, small argument. It is very small in comparison to all the arguments that go against, but still we would like you to consider. Our argument is that you may be misunderstood by ninety-nine percent of the people, but you cannot say that you will be misunderstood by a hundred percent of the people. You have to give at least a little margin – just one percent. And that one percent is not small in this vast universe; that one percent is a big enough portion. Perhaps out of that one percent, very few will be able to follow the path.“But even if one person in the whole universe becomes enlightened because of your speaking, it is worth it. Enlightenment is such a great experience that even if your whole life’s effort can make one person enlightened, you have done great. To ask for more is not right; this is more than enough. And there are a few people – you must be aware, as we are aware – who are just on the borderline. Just a little push, a little encouragement, a little hope and perhaps they will cross the boundary of ignorance, they will cross the boundary of bondage, they will come out of their prisons. You have to speak.”Gautam Buddha closed his eyes and thought for a few moments, and he said, “I cannot deny that much possibility. It is not much but I do understand that all my arguments, howsoever great, are small before the compassion. I will live for at least forty-two years, and if I can make a single individual enlightened I will feel immensely rewarded. I will speak. You can go back unburdened of your worry and concern.” And he spoke continuously for forty-two years.And certainly not one, but nearabout two dozen people became enlightened. But these two dozen people were the people who learned the art of listening, who learned the art of being silent. They did not become enlightened because of what Buddha was saying, they became enlightened because they could feel what Buddha was – his presence, his vibe, his silence, his depth, his height.These two dozen people were not becoming enlightened just by listening to the words of Gautam Buddha. Those words helped: they helped them to be in the presence of Gautam Buddha, they helped them to understand the beauty ordinary words take when they are used by an enlightened person. Ordinary gestures become so graceful, ordinary eyes become so beautiful, with such depth and meaning. Just the way Buddha walks has a different quality to it, just the way he sleeps has a different significance to it. These were the people who tried to understand not what Gautam Buddha was saying, but what he was being. His being is the only authentic language.But millions heard him, became knowledgeable. And the day he died, the same day, thirty-two schools sprang up, thirty-two divisions among the disciples – because they differed in their interpretations of what Gautam Buddha had said. Every effort was made that they should gather together and compile whatever they had heard from Gautam Buddha, but all their efforts were failures. There are thirty-two versions, so different that one cannot believe how people can hear one person in so many ways.Their interpretations are different: even today those thirty-two schools go on quarreling. For twenty-five centuries they have not been able to be reconciled with each other. In fact, they have gone farther and farther away from each other. Now they have become independent philosophies, proposing that “That is what Gautam Buddha has said and everybody else is wrong. This is the holy scripture. Others are just collections by people who don’t understand.”It is one of the great problems that you have raised: “What is the language of enlightenment?” The being of the enlightened person is his language. To be in contact with him, to drop all defenses, to open all the doors of your heart, to allow his love to reach to you, to allow his vibe to become your vibe….Slowly, slowly, if one is ready, unafraid, then the heart of the disciple starts dancing in the same tune as the master. Something is being transpired which nobody can see. Something has happened; something which has not been said has been heard. Something which is not possible to be brought into words, has been conveyed through silence – just through looking into your eyes, or just holding your hand, or just sitting by your side in silence.But language as such…there is none.Grandpa Hymie Goldberg went to see his doctor. “What is the problem?” asked the physician.“Well, doc,” said Hymie, “it is like this: after the first I am very tired; after the second I feel all ill; after the third my heart begins to pound; after the fourth I break out in a cold sweat; after the fifth I am so exhausted I feel I could die.”“Incredible,” said the doctor. “How old are you?”“Seventy-six,” replied Grandpa Hymie.“Well, at seventy-six don’t you think you should stop after the first?” said the physician.“But doctor,” said old Hymie, “how can I stop after the first floor, when I live on the fifth?”Language is not much, even in ordinary life. Rather than giving understanding to each other, it gives many misunderstandings.Two robbers broke into a bank in a small town. “All right,” said the bigger man, “line up! We are gonna rob all the men and rape all the women.”“Wait a second,” snapped his partner. “Let’s just grab the money and beat it.”“Shut up, and mind your own business,” said a little old lady from the back. “The big fellow knows what he is doing.”Language is a very fragile instrument, but it works as far as ordinary life is concerned. It is utilitarian, but the moment you start moving toward the non-utilitarian existence, language starts failing you. For example, in poetry language is not so clear as in prose. Prose is simple to understand. Poetry needs interpretation, and interpretations can be many.The Hindu holy book Shrimad Bhagavadgita has one thousand interpretations. It is great poetry; and the poet takes every license with language. He is allowed; otherwise there would be no difference between prose and poetry. You cannot write a scientific treatise in the form of poetry, and you cannot write a love letter the way you solve a mathematical problem. The love letter has to be poetic; even though it is written in prose its essence is poetry.Poetry has beauty, but becomes vague. It is difficult to catch hold of it – it becomes more and more elusive. The greater the poetry, the more elusive. You feel something, but you cannot exactly pinpoint what it is, where it is.It happened….A professor of literature at London University suddenly stopped when he was teaching about the poetry of a great English poet, Coleridge. Just in the middle of the poem he said, “Forgive me, I cannot be unjust to the poet. I can manage and you will not be able to detect it, but I cannot deceive myself: beyond these lines everything is vague, illusory. I don’t understand, myself, exactly what he means. And fortunately, Coleridge lives in my neighborhood so it will not take much time; tomorrow I will come having asked him what he means by these words. So just forgive me for one day.”He must have been a very sincere and honest man; otherwise it is very easy to make up some meaning. And people must have been making up that meaning – other professors before him and after him.He went that evening to Coleridge and he said, “Forgive me disturbing your peaceful evening, but I had to come because I cannot be insincere; neither can I be unjust to you. I have loved you, respected you. Each of your words is pure gold. But the mystery becomes too much here, in these lines, and I cannot figure out exactly what their meaning is. They seem to contain much, but perhaps too much for my mind to grasp. It will be a great kindness on your part if you can tell me what you mean by these statements.”Coleridge said, “You will have to forgive me because when I wrote them, two men knew the meaning of these lines. Now only one man knows.”The professor said, “Then there is no problem,” because he thought that that one man could not be anybody else but Coleridge. Who bothers about the other man, whether he still has the understanding or not?Coleridge said, “You don’t understand. When I wrote these lines, God knew and I knew. Now I don’t know, only God knows. If you meet him somewhere, ask him. And if you can find the meaning, please inform me, because whenever I come to this place I become puzzled myself. There is something, there is something great; but because it is great, mind falls short. It has come from beyond the mind.”And a poet is not capable of going beyond the mind. That is the difference between a poet and a mystic: the mystic can go beyond the mind; the poet once in a while suddenly finds himself, accidentally, beyond the mind, but it is not his will. It happens once in a while, but not according to his desire. When it happens, he catches as much as he can. He fills himself with the beauty, with the significance, with the joy, as much as he can – pours it into poetry. But it is beyond his willpower. He cannot manage to open the door to the beyond whenever he wants; the breeze comes whenever it wants to come.When Coleridge died, he left forty thousand poems unfinished. Because the door opened for a moment, he saw something, but by the time he managed to write it, the door had closed. It is almost like lightning – you see the whole place, just a glimpse, and then it is all darkness. You remember a few things, as if seen in a faraway dream. You can write, but it will remain incomplete.His friends insisted continuously, “Coleridge, what you are doing is not right. Some poem needs only two lines more and it will be complete. And it is a great poem.”But he said always the same thing: “I have tried, but when I look, I can see my words are very ordinary. Although nobody will be able to detect it, I will always know. I cannot deceive myself. These poems will remain incomplete until the beyond opens again, and fills my heart with the song that has left an incomplete impression, so that I can complete it.”He completed only seven poems. Only seven poems have made him one of the greatest poets of the world, for the simple reason that the quantity is not much but the quality is. You may have written seven thousand poems, it makes no difference – they will not come to the height of Coleridge. He is the only man in the whole history of literature who is thought to be a great poet only on the grounds of seven poems.Rabindranath is thought to be a great poet. He has six thousand poems complete, of great grandeur. Of course you can call him a great poet. But Coleridge’s greatness consists of a totally different dimension – his quality.If this is the situation of the poet, you can understand the situation of the mystic. The poet simply goes just a few steps beyond the mind, and the mystic has gone forever beyond the mind. He lives beyond the mind; he never comes back to the mind. He cannot express his enlightenment in any language. Even if he speaks, he speaks as a device; he speaks to attract the seekers to feel his being, to feel his presence, to be overwhelmed by his fragrance. He is using language only as a trap, because you can understand only language.But once you start falling in love with somebody, although in the beginning it is only his language, his poetry, his graceful assertions, his mysterious words…slowly, slowly you come closer and closer. Words are forgotten and the person becomes more and more important, his presence becomes more and more tangible. You can almost touch it. His silence slowly starts reaching within you, creating a communion – not a communication.There is a story about a Sufi mystic, Jalaluddin Rumi, who has been loved by Sufis the most. He is the only Sufi mystic who has been called Mevlana: master of masters. And he was certainly a master of masters.A caravan was passing through the desert, and in a castle in the desert Jalaluddin Rumi had his campus, where seekers from all over the Middle East used to come to see him. The people in the caravan thought, “It is a good place for the night’s rest. We and our camels are all tired. And moreover, it is a good chance, just out of curiosity, to see what is happening with this madman, Jalaluddin Rumi, who attracts strange people from faraway countries. And we don’t see any point in it. He looks to us a little mad, but they call him a master of masters.” So just out of curiosity they stopped under the trees and went into the castle to see what was happening.Jalaluddin was teaching. His teaching consisted of pure poetry; he would sing a song. They heard his songs – they looked like utterances of a madman: irrelevant, unconnected. Beautiful words, but saying nothing…strange sentences. When you are hearing them you feel great; when later on you think about them you find nothing, your hands are empty. They left in the morning.When they were returning they again stopped, just out of curiosity: “What is happening now?” Jalaluddin was sitting with closed eyes, and all the disciples were sitting with closed eyes with him. Nobody was saying anything and nobody was hearing anything.They said, “Now things have gone from bad to worse. Last time at least that madman was saying something which at least looked beautiful – without meaning. But now he is sitting with closed eyes, and all these idiots are sitting with closed eyes. Now there is nothing for us.” So they went away.On their second trip they again passed by the side of the castle, and they again stopped to see how much the madness had progressed. There was only Jalaluddin Rumi sitting, and nobody else.They said, “So all those idiots are gone. This is strange – very strange progress of the disciples. Where have they disappeared to? They have all left.”Seeing nobody there, they took courage, approached Jalaluddin, and asked him, “It is not good to disturb you, but we cannot resist our temptation to ask – what happened to your disciples?”Jalaluddin looked at him – the man who was asking – and the crowd behind him, the whole caravan. He said, “I have been watching you. The first time you stopped I was speaking to my disciples, just preparing them so that they can sit in silence with me. The next time you passed, they had become mature enough, they were sitting in silence with me.“This time you have come, they have all gone to spread the message. They have ripened, they have arrived at the space they had been searching for. Now they have gone to catch hold of other mad people. I will have to begin again when new people come. I will talk, and when they are ready just to enjoy my presence in silence, then I will sit in silence with them. And when they have come so close that their heart and my heart have become one, I will send them to fetch other mad people who are in need of me.”Enlightenment has no language. But enlightenment finds ways, even without language, to convey the essential message. Even language can be used as a device, but it is not a communication of the experienced truth. That communication will happen only in communion.Everything can be used, and different masters use different things. Jalaluddin Rumi used to dance, and his dance was so infectious that people would start dancing with him. And just by dancing with him, something would start transpiring.Nanak traveled all over India and outside India – the only great Indian mystic who ever went outside India. And he had only one disciple with him in all these travels. He went to Sri Lanka, he went to Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, far and wide – and he was walking. All that he used to do was just to sit under a tree and his disciple, Mardana, used to play on a certain musical instrument. He would play music and Nanak would sing a song. And there was such beauty in his song, and in the music of Mardana, that even people who did not understand their language would come there and sit close to them.After the music was finished, Nanak would sit silently. And the people who had become enchanted with the music, without understanding – because it was not their language…a few would leave, but a few would sit because now his silence had also become a tremendous magnetic force.He was an uneducated man and he used only a villager’s language – Punjabi. But he managed to create an impact on almost half of Asia. Without any language, he managed to make disciples. I am reminded of a small but tremendously valuable incident.Near Lahore there was a campus of Sufi mystics, very famous in those days – five hundred years ago. People used to come from far and wide to Lahore for that mystic gathering.Nanak also reached there, and he was just taking a bath outside the campus when the chief Sufi heard that he was there. Neither he understood Nanak’s language, nor Nanak understood his language; but some way had to be found. He sent one of his disciples with a beautiful cup full of milk, so full that even one more drop of milk could not be contained in it. And he sent that cup of milk to Nanak.Mardana could not understand: “What is the matter? What are we supposed to do? Is it a gift, is it a welcome?” Nanak laughed and he looked around, found a wildflower, and floated it in the milk. The wildflower was so light that it did not disturb the milk, and nothing came out of the cup. And he gave the signal to the man to take it back.The man said, “This is strange. I could not understand why this milk has been sent, and now it has become even more mysterious: that strange fellow has put a wildflower in it.” He asked the chief Sufi, his master, “Don’t keep me in ignorance. Please tell me what the secret of all this is. What is going on?”The chief mystic said, “I had sent that cup full of milk to tell Nanak, ‘Go on to somewhere else; this place is so full of mystics, there is no need of any more mysticism. It is too full, just like this cup. We cannot welcome you; it will be unnecessarily crowding the place. You go somewhere else.’ But that man has managed to float a flower in it. He is saying, ‘I will be just like this flower in your gathering. I will not occupy any space, I will not be a disturbance in your gathering. I will be just a beautiful flower, floating over your gathering.’”The Sufi mystic came, touched the feet of Nanak and welcomed him – without language; nothing was said. Nanak remained their guest, every day singing his songs, and the Sufis were dancing, enjoying. And the day he left they were crying. Even the chief mystic was crying. They all came to give him a send-off. Not a single word of language was exchanged – they had no possibility of any communication. But a great communion happened.Enlightenment has no language, but enlightenment is capable of finding ways of conveying its rejoicings, its blissfulness, its truth, its love, its compassion…all that is great in human experience – the highest peaks of consciousness.Osho,I am experiencing that the more I find my inner child, the more you come into me. When I feel that strongly I panic, slam the door, and rush into my strong, adult mind. I tell myself not to let you take me over. Sometimes I think that letting you in and finding myself are synonymous, which makes me wonder. Am I a hopeless case?You are not a hopeless case, but you can turn out to be – you can manage it. You are creating the situation. Just listen to your question: “I am experiencing that the more I find my inner child, the more you come into me.” This is the very purpose of your being here, to allow me in. But instead of rejoicing, you say, “When I feel that strongly I panic, slam the door, and rush into my strong, adult mind.”Something great comes to your door – something for which you are longing, something which has brought you here – but when it knocks on your door, you forget all about the fact that you have longed for this moment, perhaps for lives. You “panic, slam the door, and rush into your strong, adult mind.” You tell yourself not to let me take you over.This is just old habit.This fear comes to everybody.On the one hand, you want me to transform you. On the other hand, you are afraid of any change. On the one hand, you want to pass through a revolution to become totally new and fresh. On the other hand, the grip of the old is too strong. So as long as your prayers are not heard, everything is okay.Millions of people are going to the temples, to the churches, to the synagogues, to the mosques, to the gurudwaras, just for a single reason – because there is no God to hear their prayers. If their prayers were heard, nobody would go even close to the temples. Everybody would panic! – for the simple reason that to allow God or to allow the beyond to enter in you is to be possessed of something which is far bigger than you.You are no longer in possession; you are possessed – possessed of such a tremendous force that unless you are ready to drop your ego, your personality, your separation, you are bound to feel in a terrible shock, scared, and do everything to prevent this overwhelming experience from happening.“And sometimes,” you say, “I think that letting you in and finding myself are synonymous.” These must be the times when I am far away from you and there is no fear of being overtaken; when there is no fear that I will hear you; when there is no fear that I am so close that you have to close the doors and run away into your adult mind. But this is far truer…this is what you have asked, you have been asking every moment to happen.It is exactly the case. Letting me in is finding yourself. In the deepest core, you and I are not separate – nobody is. In the deepest center, we are all one. So whether you allow your own child, your own innocence, or you allow me in, it is the same, it is synonymous. The moments when you feel this are saner moments, but you feel this only when nothing is happening and you are well defended: the doors are closed, you have slammed everything shut, and you are perfectly protected by your adult mind. Then you start thinking again because your mind is not your contentment, your mind is not your peace, your mind is not your god. Your mind is your prison, and you are thinking you are very secure.When I was in prison in America, in the first jail…because they kept on moving me from one jail to another. In twelve days I had the great experience of being in five jails. Perhaps it is unprecedented – in twelve days, covering five jails! In the first jail, the man in charge was a beautiful old man, and he immediately fell in a kind of deep intimacy with me. He told me, “Here you are absolutely secure.”I said, “That’s absolutely true, in a jail certainly one is absolutely secure. Security and jails are synonymous. Outside there are all kinds of dangers – in jail nobody can rob you, nobody can murder you…you are perfectly secure.” I said, “You are right, but you don’t follow your own advice.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “In America, twenty percent of the presidents have been assassinated. This is the greatest record of assassination in the whole world. Out of five, one president is going to be assassinated.”He said, “I don’t follow. What do you mean by bringing in these assassinations of the presidents?”I said, “You should keep your presidents in jail instead of keeping me in jail. Ronald Reagan needs to be in jail; here he will be absolutely secure. As far as I am concerned, I have lived my whole life outside. And how long will you keep me in jail? You are keeping me in jail illegally, without any arrest warrant. You don’t have any evidence of any crime against me. So just a few days’ security will not help – again I will be outside.“And I am of no importance to anybody. I am not a president of a country or a prime minister of a country; I am not a pope of any religion. I don’t need any security. Your idea is great. You should suggest to the senate that every president, once he is chosen, should be immediately imprisoned. This way you will save the twenty percent assassinations.”He said, “My God! You are really dangerous. I have heard that you are dangerous…you are! What kind of ideas are you putting into my head? I’m just on the verge of retirement; don’t disturb my life.”I said, “It was your idea. And why do you live outside the jail? It is dangerous outside. Just come in and be safe.”He said, “It is very difficult to argue with you. The whole idea is wrong, but you are convincing.”I said, “It is your idea. You told me, ‘You are very secure here – rest, don’t be disturbed; nobody can disturb you.’ I have just been extending your idea to its logical end. If you follow your own advice, don’t go home.”He really fell in love with me. For three days I was in his jail – I was in the hospital part of the jail. The nurses told me, “You have changed the whole climate here, because this man, who is in charge of the jail, used to come once in six months or once a year to visit this section. Now that you are here, he comes at least six times a day to meet you. He cannot sit in his office.” He used to take me to his office also…”Just come, have a cup of tea in my office and we will discuss something.”I said, “Listen, if the government comes to know, you will be in trouble.”He said, “I don’t care because I’m going to be retired soon.”And the world news media wanted to interview me in the jail. He said, “This is unprecedented, but I will allow the world press conference.” And he allowed it…in the jail were one hundred journalists: television people, radio people, newspaper people, magazine people, cable television people.And he said, “I’m going to be retired. They can retire me a little earlier at the most. What else can they do? And there is no prohibition in the jail code saying that no press conference can be held inside the jail. So there is no problem.”I said, “That’s perfectly good.”He enjoyed the press conference so much, and whatever I said to the press people. His whole staff was there to listen: the doctor, the nurses, everybody was there. And from the next day on they started bringing their families to see me. I said, “What?” And their children started bringing their autograph books!The nurses could not find anything for me to sign, but in the newspapers there were many pictures of me, so they started bringing cuttings of photographs from the newspapers: “We will remember that once you have been here for three days. This will be our memory…the most cherished memory. In these three days this place has not been a jail at all.”The nurses were coming even on the day which was their day off. They said, “We will lose that day, but you may go any moment and we don’t want to miss any time.”You are worried about security, safety; that if I take you over, or I become your very center, then what is the guarantee of your security and your safety? You are already living in a prison. If I can come within you, I can pull you out of your prison – even from the outside. That’s what I am trying to do: to pull you out of your old mind.You are not a hopeless case, but if you go on doing this, then it becomes impossible for me to help you in any way. If you panic, if you slam the door and rush into the strong, adult mind behind a protective wall, then you are doing a schizophrenic act: on the one hand you are asking me to come and transform you, and on the other hand when I come to you, you close the door.Decide any way – whichever suits you. If your old mind is a great joy to you, there is no need for me to disturb you; be satisfied with your old mind. But it cannot be the case. If the old mind was right, you would not have been here. You are here in search of something new, in search of something unknown, in search of an alchemical change. Now gather courage. And it is a question only of a single moment.Stop slamming doors, and stop running into a defense. I cannot destroy you, I can only destroy that which is not you. I can discover and help you to discover your authentic being. But you are in an absolute misunderstanding.On his wedding night, the preacher returned to the bedroom from brushing his teeth and found his newlywed lying in bed stark naked, on her back, with her legs spread invitingly.“Praise the Lord!” cried the preacher. “I expected to find a good Christian girl like you on her knees beside the bed.”“Well, all right,” blushed the bride, “but that way it always gives me hiccups.”Just people are such…Their minds are conditioned in such a way. The poor preacher is thinking of prayer, but the girl is thinking of something else.Henry Ford died, and before going to heaven was interviewed by God. Asked about his achievements on the earth, Henry Ford boasted, “My model-T Ford is one of the greatest achievements of all time. Incidentally, what do you think about it?”God smiled and said, “It was not a bad invention.” And he asked Henry what he thought about his greatest creation – woman.“Not bad,” said Henry. “But if you ask me, the inlet valve is a bit too near the exhaust.”A Henry Ford is a Henry Ford; he understands only one language. Your old mind understands only one thing: how to protect yourself. But life belongs to those who drop all defense measures, because every defense measure is a mistrust in existence.Life belongs to those who trust existence. Then there is no need for any defense. Then this is your home…all these stars and all these oceans and all these mountains are part of your home. This whole existence is your very life’s source. There is no need to fear, and there is no need to close yourself in dark cells in a deep mistrust.Mistrust is almost death.Trust is the only life that I know of.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 18 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Do I have to know and understand the roots of my old patterns in order to be able to drop them, or is awareness enough? Please comment.This is the dividing line between Western psychology and Eastern mysticism. Western psychology is an effort to understand the roots of your old patterns, but it does not help anybody to get rid of them.You become more understanding, you become more sober, you become more normal; your mind is no longer a great mess. Things are settled a little better than they ever have been before, but every problem remains the same – it simply goes dormant. You can understand your jealousy – its roots – you can understand your anger, your hate, your greed, your ambitions, but all this understanding will remain intellectual. So even the greatest psychologists of the West are far away from the Eastern mystics.The man who founded Western psychology, Sigmund Freud, was so much afraid of death that even the mention of the word death was enough to throw him into a coma; he would become unconscious, the paranoia of death was so great. It happened three times. He was so much afraid of ghosts that he would not pass by the side of a cemetery. Now, a man like Sigmund Freud who has tremendous intellectual acumen, who knows every root of the mind, who knows every subtle functioning of the mind, still remains confined in the mind.Awareness leads you beyond the mind. It does not bother to understand the problems of the mind, their roots, it simply leaves the mind aside, it simply gets out of it. That is the reason why in the East there has been no development of psychology.It is strange that for ten thousand years at least, the East has been consistently and one-pointedly working in the field of human consciousness, but it has not developed any psychology, any psychoanalysis or psychosynthesis. It is a great surprise that for ten thousand years nobody even touched the matter. Rather than understanding the mind, the East developed a totally different approach, and their approach was disidentifying with the mind: “I am not the mind.” Once this awareness becomes crystallized in you, the mind becomes impotent.The whole power of the mind is in your identification with it. So it was found to be useless to go unnecessarily digging for roots, finding causes behind causes, working out through dreams, analyzing dreams, interpreting dreams. And every psychologist finds a different root, finds a different interpretation, finds a different cause. Psychology is not yet a science; it is still fictitious.If you go to Sigmund Freud, your dream will be interpreted in sexual terms. His mind is obsessed with sex. Bring anything and immediately he will find an interpretation that it is sexual.Go to Alfred Adler, the man who founded another school of psychology – analytical psychology…He is obsessed with another idea: will to power. So whatever you dream will be interpreted according to that idea – it is will to power. Go to Carl Gustav Jung, he interprets every dream as a faraway echo from your past lives. His interpretation is mythological. And there are many other schools.There has been a great effort made by Assagioli – psychosynthesis – to bring all these schools together, but his psychosynthesis is absolutely useless. At least psychoanalysis has some truth in it, and analytical psychology also has some truth in it; but psychosynthesis is simply a hodgepodge. It has taken one part from one school, another part from another school, and it has joined them together.Assagioli is a great intellectual; he could manage to put the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle in the right places. But what was significant in Sigmund Freud was significant in a certain context; that context is no longer there. He has only taken what appears to be significant, but without the context it loses all meaning. Hence, Assagioli has worked his whole life for some synthesis, but he has not been able to create anything significant. And all these schools have been working hard.But the East simply bypassed the mind. Rather than finding out the causes and roots and reasons, they found out one thing: from where does the mind get its power? from where does the energy come to feed it? The energy to feed the mind comes from your identification that “I am it.” They broke that bridge. That’s what awareness is: being aware that “I am not the body, I am not the mind. I am not even the heart, I am simply pure awareness, a sakshin.”As this awareness deepens, becomes crystallized, the mind has more and more a shadow existence. Its impact on you loses all force. And when the awareness is a hundred percent settled, mind simply evaporates.Western psychology has still to figure out why it is not succeeding. Thousands of people are going through psychoanalysis and through other therapeutic methods, but not a single one of them – not even the founder of those schools – can be called enlightened, can be said to be without problems, can be said to be without anxieties, anguishes, fears, paranoia. Everything exists in them as it exists in you.Sigmund Freud was asked many times by his disciples, “You psychoanalyze all of us; we bring our dreams to you to be interpreted. It will be a great experiment if you allow us to psychoanalyze you. You give us your dreams and we will try to analyze and find out what they mean, from where they come, what they indicate.” But Sigmund Freud never agreed to that. That shows an immense weakness in the whole framework of psychoanalysis. He was afraid that they would find the same things in his dreams that he was finding in their dreams. Then his superiority as a founder, as a master would be lost.He was not aware at all of people like Gautam Buddha or Mahavira or Nagarjuna. Because these people don’t dream, there is nothing to analyze. These people have come so far away from the mind that all connections are cut. They live out of awareness, not out of intellect. They respond out of awareness, not out of mind and its memories. And they don’t repress anything; hence there is no need for any dreaming.Dreaming is a by-product of repression. There are aboriginal tribes where people don’t dream. Or if they dream, they dream only once in a while. They are surprised to know that civilized people dream almost the whole night. In eight hours’ sleep, six hours you are dreaming. And the aboriginal is simply sleeping eight hours in deep silence, with no disturbance. Sigmund Freud was aware only of the sick Western people. He was not aware of a man of awareness; otherwise the whole history of Western psychology would have been different.I will not tell you to make an effort to understand the roots of your mind and its patterns; it is simply a useless wastage of time. Just awareness is enough, more than enough. As you become aware, you come out of the grip of the mind, and the mind remains almost a dead fossil. There is no need to bother from where the greed came, the real question is how to get out of it. The question is not from where the ego arose – these are intellectual questions which are not significant for a seeker.And then there will be many philosophical standpoints: from where greed arose, from where ego came in; from where your jealousy, from where your hate, from where your cruelty came in – looking for the beginnings of all this. And mind is a vast complex; in fact, life is too small to figure out all the problems of the mind and their origins. Their origins may be of thousands of lives. Slowly Western psychology is coming closer to it – for example, primal therapy.Janov understood that unless we find the beginnings of the problems…That means to him, being a Christian, believing only in one life – the roots must be found somewhere in childhood. So he started working to remind you of your childhood, and then he stumbled upon a new fact – that in deep hypnosis people not only remember their childhood, they remember their birth. They also remember the nine months in the mother’s womb, and a few very sensitive people even remember their previous life.And then he became afraid himself, that he was going into a tunnel which seemed to be unending. You go into the past life and that will take you again, through the whole long passage, to another life. Your mind is many lives old, so you are not going to be able to find its root in the present. Perhaps you will have to travel backward through thousands of lives, and it is not an easy thing. And then too, even if you come to understand from where the greed has come, it does not make any change. You will then have to learn how to drop it.And there are so many problems that if you start dropping each problem separately, you will need millions of lives to be completely finished with the mind. And while you are figuring out about one problem, other problems are growing, gathering more energy, more vitality, more influence. It is a very stupid game.In the East, not a single person in the whole past – in China, in India, in Japan, in Arabia – has ever bothered about it. It is fighting with shadows. They worked from a very different angle and they succeeded immensely. They simply pulled their awareness out of the mind. They stood outside the mind as a witness and they found a miracle happening: as they became a witness, the mind became impotent, it lost all power over them. And there was no need to understand anything.Awareness goes on growing higher and the mind goes on growing smaller – in the same proportion. If awareness is fifty percent then mind is cut to fifty percent. If awareness is seventy percent, only thirty percent of the mind remains. The day awareness is a hundred percent, there is no mind to be found at all.Hence, the whole Eastern approach is to find a state of no-mind – that silence, that purity, that serenity. And mind is no longer there with all its problems, with all its roots; it has simply evaporated the way dewdrops evaporate in the sun in the morning, leaving no trace behind. Hence I will say to you, awareness is not only enough, it is more than enough. You don’t need anything else.Western psychology has no place for meditation in it yet, and that’s why it goes on going round and round, finding no solution. There are people who have been in psychoanalysis for fifteen years. They have wasted fortunes on it – because psychoanalysis is the most highly paid profession. Fifteen years in psychoanalysis and all that has happened is that they have become addicted to psychoanalysis. Now they cannot remain without it. Rather than solving any problem, a new problem has arisen. Now it has become almost like a drug addiction. So when they get fed up with one psychoanalyst, they start with another. If they are not being psychoanalyzed, then they feel something is missing.But it has not helped anybody. Even they accept that there is not a single man in the whole West who has been completely analyzed. But such is the blindness of people that they cannot see the simple point, why a single person is not there – when there are thousands of psychoanalysts analyzing people – who has been perfectly analyzed and who has gone beyond mind.Analysis cannot take you beyond. The way beyond is awareness, the way beyond mind is meditation. It is a simple way and it has created thousands of enlightened people in the East. And they were not doing anything with the mind, they were doing something else: they were simply becoming aware, alert, conscious. They were using mind also as an object.The way you see a tree, the way you see pillars, the way you see other people – they were trying to see the mind also as separate, and they succeeded. And the moment they succeeded in seeing the mind as separate, that was the death of the mind. In its place grows a clarity; intellect disappears, intelligence arises. One does not react anymore, one responds. Reaction is always based on your past experiences, and response is just like a mirror: you come in front of it and it responds, it shows your face. It does not carry any memory. The moment you have moved away, it is again pure, no reflection.The meditator becomes finally a mirror. Any situation is reflected in him and he responds in the present moment, out of presence. Hence, his every response has a newness, a freshness, a clarity, a beauty, a grace. It is not some old idea that he is repeating. This is something to be understood, that no situation is ever exactly the same as any other situation that you have encountered before. So if you are reacting out of the past, you are not able to tackle the situation; you are lagging far behind.That is the cause of your failure. You don’t see the situation, you are more concerned with your response; you are blind to the situation. The man of meditation is simply open with his eyes, available to see the situation and let the situation provoke the response in him. He is not carrying a ready-made answer to it.A beautiful story about Gautam Buddha….One morning a man asked him, “Is there a God?” Buddha looked at the man, looked into his eyes and said, “No, there is no God.”That very day in the afternoon another man asked, “What do you think about God? Is there a God?” Again he looked at the man and into his eyes and said, “Yes, there is a God.”Ananda, who was with him, became very much puzzled, but he was always very careful not to interfere in anything. He had his time when everybody had left in the night and Buddha was going to sleep; if he had to ask anything, he would ask at that time.But by the evening, as the sun was setting, a third man came with almost the same question, formulated differently. He said, “There are people who believe in God, there are people who don’t believe in God. I myself don’t know with whom I should stand. You help me.”Ananda was very intensely listening now to what Buddha says. He had given two absolutely contradictory answers in the same day, and now the third opportunity has arisen – and there is no third answer. But Buddha gave him the third answer. He did not speak, he closed his eyes. It was a beautiful evening. The birds had settled in their trees – Buddha was staying in a mango grove – the sun had set, a cool breeze had started blowing. The man, seeing Buddha sitting with closed eyes, thought that perhaps this is his answer, so he also sat with closed eyes with him.An hour passed, the man opened his eyes, touched the feet of Buddha and said, “Your compassion is great. You have given me the answer. I will always remain obliged to you.”Ananda could not believe it, because Buddha had not spoken a single word. And as the man went away, perfectly satisfied and contented, Ananda asked Buddha, “This is too much! You should think of me – you will drive me mad. I am just on the verge of a nervous breakdown. To one man you say there is no God, to another man you say there is a God, and to the third you don’t answer. And that strange fellow says that he has received the answer and he is perfectly satisfied and obliged, and touches your feet. What is going on?”Buddha said, “Ananda, the first thing you have to remember is, those were not your questions, those answers were not given to you. Why did you get unnecessarily concerned with other people’s problems? First solve your own problems.”Ananda said, “That’s true, they were not my questions and the answers were not given to me. But what can I do? I have ears and I hear, and I have heard and I have seen, and now my whole being is puzzled – what is right?”Buddha said, “Right? Right is awareness. The first man was a theist. He wanted my support – he already believed in God. He had come with an answer, ready-made, just to solicit my support so that he can go around and say, ‘I am right, even Buddha thinks so.’ I had to say no to him, just to disturb his belief, because belief is not knowing. The second man was an atheist. He had also come with a ready-made answer, that there is no God, and he wanted my support to strengthen his disbelief and so he can go on proclaiming around that I agree with him. I had to say to him, ‘Yes, God exists.’ But my purpose was the same.“If you see my purpose, there is no contradiction. I was disturbing the first man’s preconceived belief, I was disturbing the second person’s preconceived disbelief. Belief is positive, disbelief is negative, but both are the same. Neither of them was a knower and neither of them was a humble seeker; they were already carrying a prejudice.“The third man was a seeker. He had no prejudice, he had opened his heart. He told me, ‘There are people who believe, there are people who don’t believe. I myself don’t know whether God exists or not. Help me.’ And the only help I could give was to teach him a lesson of silent awareness; words were useless. And as I closed my eyes he understood the hint. He was a man of certain intelligence – open, vulnerable. He closed his eyes.“As I moved deeper into silence, as he became part of the field of my silence and my presence, he started moving into silence, moving into awareness. When one hour had passed, it seemed as if only a few minutes had passed. He had not received any answer in words, but he had received the authentic answer in silence: don’t be bothered about God; it does not matter whether God exists or does not exist. What matters is whether silence exists, awareness exists or not. If you are silent and aware, you yourself are a god. God is not something far away from you; either you are a mind or you are a god. In silence and awareness mind melts and disappears and reveals your divineness to you. Although I have not said anything to him, he has received the answer, and received it in a perfectly right way.”Awareness brings you to a point where you are able to see with your own eyes the ultimate reality of yourself and the universe…and a miraculous experience that you and the universe are not separate, that you are part of the whole. To me this is the only meaning of holy.You have been trained for analysis, for understanding, for intellectual gymnastics. Those things are not going to help anybody; they have never helped anybody. That’s why the West lacks one most precious dimension – that of enlightenment, awakening. All its richness is nothing in comparison to the richness that comes from enlightenment, from achieving the state of no-mind.So don’t get entangled with the mind; rather become a watcher by the side of the road and let the mind pass on the road. Soon the road will be empty. The mind lives as a parasite. You are identified with it; that is its life. Your awareness cuts the connection, it becomes its death.The ancient scriptures of the East say that the master is a death – a very strange statement, but of immense meaning. The master is a death because meditation is the death of the mind, meditation is the death of the ego. Meditation is the death of your personality and the birth and the resurrection of your essential being. And to know that essential being is to know all.Becky Goldberg phoned down to the hotel manager. “I am up here in room five hundred and ten,” she shouted angrily, “and I want you to know there is a man walking around the room across the way stark naked, and his blinds are up.”“I will be up right away,” said the manager. He entered Becky’s room, peered through the window and said, “You are right Madam, the man does appear to be naked. But his window still covers him from the waist down, no matter where he is in the room.”“Ah, yes,” yelled Becky. “Just stand on the bed, just stand on the bed!”Mind is a strange fellow. Where there is no problem, it creates a problem. Why should you stand on the bed? Just to find that somebody is naked in his room? One has to be aware of all these stupidities of the mind. I don’t agree with the theory of evolution of Charles Darwin, but I have a certain respect for the theory, because it may not be historically true that the monkeys became men, but it is certainly psychologically true – because man’s mind is just like a monkey…stupid in every way.There is no point in digging deep into the rubbish of the mind. It is not your being, it is not you; it is just the dust that you have gathered through many, many lives around you.A young woman went to the doctor, afraid that she had gangrene because of two small spots, one on each of her thighs. The doctor examined her carefully and then told her it was not gangrene and she had nothing to worry about. “But by the way,” he asked the girl as she was leaving, “is your boyfriend a gypsy?” “Yes,” replied the girl, “as a matter of fact he is.”“Well,” said the doctor, “tell him that his earrings are not gold.”These are mind’s functionings.It is a great discoverer.The old definition of a philosopher is that he is blind in a dark night, in a dark house where there is no light, and he is searching for a black cat which is not there. But this is not all: he finds her! And he writes great treatises, theses, systems, proves logically the existence of the black cat.Beware of the mind: it is blind. It has never known anything but it is a great pretender. It pretends to know everything.Socrates has categorized humanity into two classes. One class he calls the knowledgeably ignorant: the people who think they know and they are basically ignorant; that is the work of the mind. And the second category he calls the ignorant knowers: the people who think, “We don’t know.” In their humbleness, in their innocence, descends knowing.So there are pretenders of knowledge – that is the function of the mind – and there are humble people who say, “We don’t know.” In their innocence there is knowledge, and that is the work of meditation and awareness.Osho,At the end of the meditations I sometimes reach a quiet, expanding space inside me. It is like a feeling of vastness and it relaxes me very much. Then, after some time I get tense and afraid and the vastness reaches a barrier and disappears. Each time, the silence during this experience has something unbearable in it. What is the barrier that I encounter?The question that you have asked is significant for all meditators. The first experience of silence is heavy for the simple reason that it is the entry into the unknown. You are well accustomed to the known, familiar. With the unknown, entering into a space without boundaries, you are absolutely unfamiliar, and the same fear arises in you as the fear that arises in a dewdrop which is slipping from the lotus leaf into the ocean. It is a kind of death; it will never be again a dewdrop. It is losing itself into the vastness of the ocean. But it is only in the beginning. Soon the realization turns into a totally different experience.When it happened to one of the mystics, one of the greatest mystics, Kabir, he wrote a small, beautiful poem, which means: I had gone in search for truth; truth is found but I am no more. There was the seeker – then the sought was not there. Now the sought is there but the seeker is no more. My dewdrop existence has fallen into the ocean, and now there is no way to take it out.Before dying, he told his son, Kamal, “Just write another statement. The first line remains the same: I had gone to seek the truth; the truth is found but the seeker is lost. But change the second line: I was a dewdrop. Now the whole ocean has fallen into me and there is no way to be separated from the ocean.”In the beginning you will feel you are getting lost. In the end you will find that that which was false is lost and you have gained immense territory…the infinite silence, unbounded bliss. You are no longer there as you used to be. You are no longer a mind, you are just a pure awareness. Hence, the first experience becomes unbearable. One trembles – the fear of getting lost…One clings to the lotus leaf. The vast ocean creates a great danger – danger to your personality, danger to you as you have known yourself up to now. But it is just in the beginning.One of the very significant statements of Gautam the Buddha is, “That which is sweet in the beginning, beware of it, because in the end it will turn into bitterness. And that which is bitter in the beginning…have courage, it will turn into sweetness in the end.” That bitterness in the beginning is your test, whether you are worthy to have that sweetness that is waiting for you in the end.I will read your question: “At the end of the meditations I sometimes reach a quiet, expanding space inside me. It is like a feeling of vastness and relaxes me very much. Then, after some time I get tense and afraid and the vastness reaches a barrier and disappears. Each time, the silence during this experience has something unbearable in it. What is the barrier that I encounter?”It is good news. Everyone who goes from the mundane to the sacred comes to a barrier. Finally he understands it is not a barrier but a bridge, but that is when he has passed it. From this side it looks like a barrier. Once you have passed to the other side you are surprised that it was a bridge, but it was so unknown that you could not have understood it as a bridge.You have known barriers in your life; you have never known bridges. Hence, you interpreted it according to your experience. Next time, when you encounter that barrier, pass through it as if it is a bridge. Of course it will be only “as if” for you, but once you have passed it, that “as if” will drop. You will have a good laughter at yourself. And silence seems to be unbearable because you are so accustomed to noise.Aldous Huxley, one of the most intelligent people of this age, wanted to experience silence – Western style. So he went into a scientific lab where they had an absolutely soundproof room for their own experiments. Those experiments were going on at that time for the astronauts, because of all the problems that a man who is going to the moon is going to face after he leaves the two hundred miles of air around the earth, the greatest problem is the silence, deafening silence. So they were training the travelers in space for all those experiences that they may encounter and may find very difficult – but if they know something of it, it will be easier for them. That absolutely soundproof room was created for that purpose.Aldous Huxley remembers that when he entered the room he could not believe that silence can be so heavy. He became so afraid, knowing perfectly well that he is in a room which is soundproof, no noise can enter it. But his ears, his body, everything was accustomed to vibrations all around. You are sitting here, you are listening to a few noises: the birds in the trees, I am speaking to you…and there are many sounds which you are not listening to but your body feels the vibes.All the radio waves are passing through you. You can catch any radio station with just a small transistor set. Do you think that transistor set creates those waves? Those waves are passing; the transistor set is simply capable of catching them. They are touching your body. You are surrounded by millions of radio waves which you are not hearing, but you are accustomed to them. That has been your whole life’s experience.Aldous Huxley felt a few things: one, as if he was naked – and he was wearing his clothes! What happened? Why was he feeling naked? All those subtle clothes of vibrations that are surrounding you were no longer there. And his ears started hurting…strange! One can feel one’s ears hurting when somebody is shouting or some great noise is there. But because there was no noise, the ears came into an absolutely unknown territory. It was unbelievable.He had asked to remain there for one hour, but he remained only for five minutes, and he started knocking: “Open the door. It is too much! It feels…I may burst, I may fall apart” – because the support of all the waves around you is keeping you together.When you go into deep silence within you, it is also a very strange experience in the beginning. It creates fear – inside your silence you know that the identity you had of yourself is absolutely false. Your name is false, your form is false, your body is just a separate thing from you, and you don’t find anything solid inside to cling to. In fact, you find you are the silence…a kind of nothingness, nobodiness.Gautam Buddha has the right words for this experience. One is anatta; you feel a state of no-selfness. The second is shunyata; you find yourself just a zero. And the third is that there is no hint of any “I.” The silence is so deafening – and you are it – that one feels like running out into the well-known world, howsoever miserable, howsoever full of suffering. But anyway we are accustomed to it.The astronauts have gone through strange experiences, which mystics have always gone through – Eastern style – just by going inside. As the rocket leaves the gravitation sphere of the earth, for the first time you don’t have any weight and it is such a shock. You start floating in the spacecraft. Unless you keep your belt on, you cannot remain in your seat. You are just floating, touching the top, and everything else that is loose is also floating. Because there is no longer any gravitation, you don’t have any weight.Albert Einstein had an idea which most probably will be found to be accurate, because he was the man who worked the hardest as far as space travel is concerned. His idea is mind boggling. He himself kept it for many months and did not announce it to the scientific world because he was afraid that nobody was going to believe him. The idea was such that people would think he had gone cuckoo. But the idea was so significant that he finally decided that he could risk his sanity but he had to declare it.The idea was that beyond gravitation you stop aging. If a man leaves the earth for a faraway star, and if it takes thirty years for him to reach that star and then coming back again another thirty years, and when he had left the earth he was thirty years old, then if you think that by the time he comes back he will be ninety years old, you are wrong. He will still be thirty years old. All his friends and colleagues may be already in their graves. Perhaps one or two may still be with one foot in the grave, one foot out. But he will be as young as when he had left.The moment you are out of gravitation, the aging process stops. Aging is continuously a certain burden on your body. The earth goes on pulling you and you are fighting the pull. Your energy is disturbed and destroyed in this continuous fight. But when you are out of the gravitational field of the earth you simply remain as you were. You will not find your contemporaries; you will not find all those fashions that were current when you left. You will find that sixty years have passed.But the feeling of going beyond gravitation can happen even in meditation – it happens. And that has misled many people. With your closed eyes, when you are absolutely silent you are out of gravitation. But just your silence is out of gravitation, not your body. But in that moment you are identified with your silence, so you feel as if you are moving upward; that is called by yoga “levitation.”And without opening your eyes you will feel not only that it is a feeling, but that your body is actually moving upward. But that is only a fallacy. Your silence is beyond gravitation – that is a true experience. But because you are identified still with the body, you feel as if your body is moving. If you open your eyes you will find yourself sitting in the same posture on the ground.Just now there is a case in the Supreme Court of America against Maharishi Mahesh Yogi by seven disciples, asking him for ninety million dollars for deceiving them – because he promised that they would be able to levitate with their body and that did not happen. Whenever they opened their eyes they were sitting on the ground, although when their eyes were closed they felt that it was happening.Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has been charging people for teaching them levitation, but he has not been able even to give one public demonstration. It is exploitation in the name of spirituality. Certainly those people feel it, but they should keep their eyes closed. If they open their eyes everything is disturbed, they are sitting on the ground. If you continue for hours the feeling of going up, going up, you can move beyond the house, you can move beyond the trees, you can move beyond the mountains – but don’t open your eyes because you are sitting where you are sitting.It is just the experience of your silence; your silence is moving beyond gravitation. And I don’t think Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is going to prove anything in the Supreme Court. He has been asked again and again to give a public demonstration, but no public demonstration is possible. It is an old, known fact that meditators have always felt themselves going up, but that is purely a spiritual experience, nothing physical. What he has done is try to make it appear as if it is physical, and thousands of people have paid him two hundred and fifty dollars for the training.It is very easy to exploit people in the name of spirituality and to give them a sense that they have not been exploited. The only condition is, keep your eyes closed and you will feel it, and you will go home with the feeling that you have attained levitation.It is possible for you also to have that experience – don’t be afraid, you are not going anywhere; you are sitting perfectly in your place. But all these experiences can create fear. Knowing it well that they create fear – but the fear is unfounded – one needs just a little courage to get accustomed to the unknown and the fear disappears.A new group of husbands had just arrived in heaven. The welcoming angel looked them over and said, “Okay, all you men who were henpecked on the earth please step to the left. All those who were the boss of the house please step to the right.”The line quickly formed on the left. Only one man, Hymie Goldberg, stepped to the right. Seeing Hymie looking more like a mouse than a lion, the angel inquired, “And what makes you think that you belong on the right side?”“Well,” squeaked Hymie, “this is where my wife told me to stand.”A lifelong habit of listening to the wife…even though he is dead, now there is no wife around. The gap is unbridgeable – the wife is in the world and he is in heaven – but the old habit…The wife has even instructed him: “Don’t stand in a crowd.” And on the left certainly everybody was standing, so naturally he had to stand on the right.Habits die hard, and we have so many mundane habits that when you enter into the world of the sacred you will feel you are being robbed of everything. But remember, whatever you are robbed of was false. Don’t cling to it; that will become the barrier – let it go. Whatever is yours will always be yours, there is no way to rob you of it.A man was in a Turkish bath when he looked up and saw someone stealing his clothes. He took off after the man, covering his private parts with his hat. As he turned the corner, he bumped straight into two girls who looked at him and burst out laughing. “If you were ladies,” he shouted, “you would not laugh at a man in my circumstances!”“And if you were a gentleman,” replied one of the girls, “you would raise your hat.”This is our known world – ladies and gentlemen. When you enter into the unknown you are neither a man nor a woman, you are neither a mind nor a heart; you are something that can only be called X. It is better not to give any name to it, because any name will come from your vocabulary of the known. Let it remain unknown, mysterious; just don’t be worried, don’t be afraid.And I say this not because it is written in some scriptures, I say this because I have passed through the same problems, the same fear, the same desire to turn back, the same barrier which proved finally to be a bridge. So whatever I am saying to you, I am saying with the absolute authority of my own experience. I am not saying to believe me, I am saying just to experiment. Let my words be just hypothetical – perhaps your experiment will prove whether they are true or untrue – don’t believe in them beforehand, remain open.I can allow you to remain open; no religion leaves you open. They say, “Believe.” And the reason is that the people who had experienced may have died twenty centuries before, and now the people who are representing them have no experience of their own. They are afraid that if you don’t believe…they themselves are not certain what they are saying, whether it is true or not. They believe; hence they insist that you believe.I don’t believe, I know. Hence, I insist: experiment without any belief and you will know.Once somebody asked Raman Maharishi, “Do you believe in God?” and he said, “No.” The man was shocked; he had come from far away, hearing that Raman Maharishi was an enlightened being. He thought perhaps he had been misunderstood, or he had misunderstood. He repeated his question. Raman Maharishi said, “I have heard it rightly, you have heard it rightly; there is no need to repeat it. I don’t believe in God because I know.”Belief is for those who do not know. My effort with you is not to give you belief systems, but to give you hypothetical ideas to experiment on. And I have a certainty that you will come to the same conclusions. There is no other possibility.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 19 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,You are the greatest marketing person of a product that gratifies the soul. We are in the business of selling a product that gratifies the mind; there are others who sell products that gratify the body. What lessons can we learn from you to effectively market mind and body products?Sameer, I am reminded by your question of an anecdote. H.G. Wells had completed his great work on the history of the world…. And he has made tremendously important statements in his rare book. For example, he has said about Gautam Buddha that “He was the most godless, yet the most godly man that has ever walked on the earth.”His book was the talk of all the intellectuals around the world, and one intellectual journalist interviewed him about the book. His first question was, “What do you think about civilization?” And the answer that H.G. Wells gave is of such depth that it has not to be forgotten; it is still fresh and new. He said, “The idea of civilization is good, but somebody must do something about it, because it is still an idea. Civilization has not happened. Researching for my book on world history, I have come to know that man is still uncivilized.”And one of the reasons man is still uncivilized is the division between mind, body, and soul. This division has been preached by all the religions of the world. They have condemned the body; a few of them have condemned the mind, too. And they have all praised the soul. The result has not been as they expected. The result has been a very strange poisoning of humanity. People have not dropped their bodies, they have not dropped their minds, but they have become guilty about them. They have lost self-respect, they have lost touch with the wisdom of their own bodies, and they have lost the mastery of their own minds. And the reality is that unless all three function in a total organic unity, a man is not whole.One who is not whole is not holy either.My basic approach is: I am not against the body, I am not against the mind; I am all for a unity, a symphony, a synchronicity among these three spheres. And a man will be fulfilled only, complete only, when all three are functioning in total harmony.In the East, the body has been so much condemned that the ultimate result is poverty – no science, no technology, a poor, hungry body; starved, condemned, neglected. And in the West, the result has been a healthy body, an evolved technology, richer literature, art, all for the nourishment of the mind, but a poor soul, almost nonexistential. This is a strange tragedy. The West is suffering from a poor soul, and the East is suffering from a poor body and a poor mind.My suggestion to you, Sameer, is that the work for the future humanity, for a new man, is to drop the old conditioning – of the East, and of the West. Drop all antagonism, either of the spiritualist or of the materialist. Accept the realistic approach that existence is both – matter on the outside and spirit on the inside. And in between the two is the bridge of the mind.In a miniature form, the same is true about every human being. The new man will come out of this unity.It feels…if somebody says that Gautam Buddha is only half, it hurts. But truth is truth. Mahavira is half – just a soul, anti-life. So is Zorba – against spirituality. So are all the scientists – even the greatest, like Albert Einstein – who cannot conceive the possibility that there is an interior existence of consciousness.Albert Einstein is half; that is the tragedy of the West. Buddha is half; that is our tragedy. And the work for the future is to bring them together.I have been using one expression, and that is “Zorba the Buddha.” The body has to be enjoyed as much as your soul. Matter has its own beauty, its own power, just as consciousness has its own world, its own silence, its own peace, its own ecstasy. And between the two is the area of the mind – something of matter and something of the spirit. The poet is just in the middle, between the materialist and the spiritualist; his poetry touches both extremes. I would like all three points – the two extremes and the middle – to become one unity.A man who rejoices in his body and the wisdom of the body, a man who uses his mind as a tremendously significant mechanism that evolution has brought, and a man who does not stop at mind but goes on searching beyond, into the realms of divineness, into the realms of godliness – to produce this man should be the effort of all those who are in some way concerned with educating the new generation. The educationists, the journalists, the spiritual teachers – all people who are involved in some way in creating a better human being than has been possible in the past – have to accept the totality of man without rejecting anything.Journalists can do a tremendous service to humanity if their minds are clear, if they are not themselves prejudiced, either in favor of spiritualism or in favor of materialism. A journalist has to be of an open mind, receptive to all kinds of possibilities. He has to be a seeker and a searcher and an agnostic; he has not to be a believer. The moment you believe in something, you start enforcing your belief, whether it is right or wrong. The journalist has to be open to all dimensions, ready to accept anything that is going to beautify existence and make man more blissful, more healthy, more intelligent, more aware of the tremendous mystery that surrounds us.To me, that is the only prayer: to become aware of the miraculous, the mysterious that surrounds us. And only a man who has come to a unity within himself is capable of understanding the mystery of existence.Osho,When a person enters a temple, one feels a sense of sensory appeasement – music, chanting, incense, prasad, the visual beauty of the architecture, etc. Can corporate houses, the temples of the modern age, have anything to learn from this?Sameer, not only the corporate houses but every place where man dwells has much to learn from the temples. First, you are always moving on holy ground. Not only in the temple are you in a holy place, but even in the marketplace you are moving on the same holy ground. You are not to be just prayerful in the temple, in the mosque, in the church. Your prayerfulness has to become just your breathing. You have not to create only in your temple a beautiful world of incense, of flowers, of music, of chanting, of beautiful architecture, of sculptures – the temple should simply be the model for every house. Not only corporate houses, every house should be a temple, because every body is a temple.God dwells in you, and wherever you are, you should create the aroma, the fragrance of godliness.The authentically religious person is neither Hindu, nor Mohammedan, nor Christian, nor Jaina, nor Buddhist. An authentic religious person is simply a prayerful person, a loving person, a creative person – a man who has the golden touch; whatever he touches becomes beautiful and valuable.It is not possible that our houses remain in hell and once in a while, for an hour, we can enter a temple and find heaven – that is not possible. Unless you are twenty-four hours in heaven, you cannot enter into a temple and suddenly change – suddenly drop your jealousies, your anger, your hatred, your competitiveness, your ambitions, your politics. You cannot simply drop all your ugliness.You can pretend, you can be a hypocrite …and in fact all the people who are visiting temples of any religion are hypocrites, because their other twenty-three hours show their reality. For only one hour, they cannot become a different being.A religious person has to understand that it is not a question of believing in a certain theology; it is not a question of believing in a certain tradition. It is a question of transforming yourself in such a way that compassion becomes your very heartbeat, that gratitude becomes your very breathing, that wherever you are, your eyes can see the divine – in the trees, in the mountains, in people, in animals, in birds. Unless you can make the whole existence your temple, you are not religious.Wherever you move, you are always in a temple, because you are always surrounded by that mysterious energy that people have called “God.” A few others have given it other names – they differ only in names. But one thing is certain: we are not living in a mundane universe. On each step there is a mystery, and there are mysteries beyond mysteries. If you are simply aware of all the mysteries, your worship will be to make everything as worthy of God as possible.Sitting in your shop, you should be waiting for a customer who is going to be a god….Kabir became enlightened, and even kings were his disciples. They all said to him, “Now it is time: you stop weaving clothes. It hurts our pride. People laugh at us, they say, ‘Your master has to function like a poor weaver. The whole week he weaves clothes and then he takes the clothes on his own shoulders to the marketplace. It does not look right for a man who has so many disciples. Can’t you take care of him?’”But Kabir insisted, “It is not a question of my livelihood, it is a question that some god will be coming to the market to purchase what I have woven with such love, with such gratitude, with such meditativeness. And if he does not find me there…I cannot do that. As long as I am alive, I will go on serving God by the only art that I know – that is weaving.”And he made clothes with such love, with such prayerfulness, with such grace, that you could feel that this man is not only weaving clothes – he is weaving something more; something spiritual is being woven into the clothes. And in the market every customer was addressed by Kabir as Ram, the Indian word for God. “Ram, I have been waiting so long for you; where have you gone? It is time for the closing of the market, the sun is setting, and I am waiting for you.”And at first customers used to be very puzzled: this great saint calls them “Ram”? By and by they became accustomed to the fact, and they started behaving in a different way – it was not a question of being a shopkeeper and a customer, it was a question of being two lovers. It was a love affair.I would like all corporate houses to be temples – but not only corporate houses; I would like every house, every kitchen, every bedroom, to be a temple. And I would like you to behave with everybody…. He may be your enemy, but still he has deep in his being the same source of life you have. You have to be respectful to his being, as much as you are respectful to your friend. Your wife should be as much respected as any goddess in any temple.I cannot believe that people who have been pretending up to now to be religious, have behaved with women in such a barbarous way, and they have not seen any shadow of God in the woman. The same religious people have behaved with the poorest of the poor – the sudras, the untouchables – as inhuman beings. They could not see. They could see gods in stone statues, but they could not see in living beings that a god is throbbing in their hearts just as he is throbbing within you.I want to say it with absolute certainty: these people were not religious. Just as civilization has not happened yet, religion also has not happened yet. We have to create the space where religion, civilization, culture, can happen. They are different aspects of the same consciousness, of the same awareness.Osho,For a commercial organization, marketing is the ultimate life source; however, some marketing professionals suffer from an element of contradiction in their personal lives. Vis-à-vis professional objectives, are we selling things to people that they don't need?Sameer, the question is a little complex – complex because in a way you are selling people what they need…but whether their need is sick or healthy is a totally different matter.You are fulfilling people’s sick needs. And that should be felt as a responsibility. Needs have to be fulfilled, but you have to learn a great discrimination: what are the sick needs, and what are the healthy needs?For example, pornography is a need. And millions of people are providing pornographic literature, photography, all kinds of pornographic films, blue films. They certainly are fulfilling a need – people have been so repressed sexually for centuries that they are hungry to see the naked woman. Certainly your business prospers, but you are depending on a very ugly exploitation of people.The responsibility of the journalist is great: he has to make people aware – why do they need pornography? In an aboriginal tribe, nobody is interested in pornographic literature because people are almost naked; they don’t have any clothes. From the very childhood, the boys and the girls become aware of each other’s bodies, it is a natural acquaintance. They never become peeping Toms. And they will not be interested in magazines like Playboy. But in our so-called civilized society, people are hiding Playboys in the Shrimad Bhagavadgita, in the Holy Bible, because that is the safest place to hide anything; nobody opens it. Who bothers to look into the Holy Bible, or the Shrimad Bhagavadgita?I have heard about a man who was a salesman of encyclopedias, a door-to-door salesman. He knocked at the door, a woman opened it and as he started his sales talk the woman said, “We already have a good encyclopedia; we don’t need any. You can see: there in the corner on the table is the encyclopedia. So please forgive me, I am not interested.”The man said, “I can say definitely, that is not an encyclopedia; it is a Bible.”The woman said, “You seem to be a strange man – how can you say that so categorically?”He said, “Because so much dust has gathered on it, nobody opens it.” Encyclopedias are opened, people look into them, but who looks into Bibles? And he said, “I am ready to bet.”The woman said, “No there is no question, it is a Bible; just forgive me for telling you a lie.”Just the layer of dust was so thick, it was enough proof that it was not an encyclopedia but something holy. People are hiding all kinds of ugly things in Holy Bibles, holy Gitas, holy Korans.The need is to make society aware that any kind of repression is against nature, to create a climate where what is natural is accepted, not denied. On the one hand, you will deny what is natural; then from some other door, your natural instinct will demand its satisfaction. That becomes a perverted need. In a very strange way, your so-called saints and your pornographers are in a conspiracy; they are both partners in the same business.The saints go on telling people to repress sex, to be celibate. And these repressed people are hungry – you know if you have ever fasted, then the whole day you are thinking only about food and nothing else. You never think about food – every day you eat whatever you feel like eating and whatever your need is. You don’t think about it, you don’t dream about it, you don’t need some pornography, some delicious dishes to look at. But I know people who have been on a fast…then their whole thinking becomes concentrated on food. They dream about delicious food; if you take them out in the market, they only see food stores, restaurants, hotels. They don’t see anything else; nothing else is attractive.It has been found in psychological experiments that if a man is kept for three weeks on a fast, he loses interest in seeing a pornographic picture. He would rather see a picture of a beautiful dish. It is not strange that people call women “beautiful dishes.” It is humiliating, ugly, but somehow sex is also a hunger, as any other hunger is.The problem becomes complex because people need pornography – if you provide pornography, you sell, you earn. If you don’t provide it, the circulation of your newspaper or your magazine drops. You are in a very difficult dilemma: either you lose business or you have to do something which is absolutely ugly.Unless the whole situation changes, unless the whole news media becomes aware of the fact, of why people are interested in pornography…. They should start creating an atmosphere – with articles, with stories, with poetry, with films, with television, with radio – that repression is anti-life. The day there is no repression in the world, there will be no need of pornography. The day there is no repression in the world, there will be no perversion, there will be no homosexuality, there will be no lesbianism.And journalism has to become aware of the complexity of the situation. For example, now there is a great disease spreading all over the world – AIDS. It has come out of homosexuality. And the Catholic pope and other heads of religions are condemning homosexuality, but homosexuality is only a symptom. The real disease is the teaching of celibacy – because homosexuality was born in the monasteries, in soldier’s camps, in boy scouts living together, in the hostels of boys and girls, which we have separated. Wherever we have separated man and woman, some kind of perversion arises.In Texas, the government passed a law that homosexuality will now be a crime, punishable by five years in jail. And one million homosexuals – one would have never thought that Texas has so many homosexuals – one million homosexuals protested before the assembly hall. And these are not all the homosexuals of Texas, certainly – not everybody has joined in the protest. And they declared that “If you don’t withdraw this law, we will go underground. There are gay restaurants, gay clubs, and all kinds of homosexual groups, openly – if you make it a crime we will go underground.” And once homosexuality goes underground, then it will become more difficult to fight the disease that is being created by it.The disease is spreading like wildfire, and every government of the world is trying to hide the fact of how many homosexuals there are in their countries, and how many homosexuals have tested positive for the AIDS virus. Because AIDS has no cure; the person is absolutely certain to die.And scientists have shown with absolute certainty that we will not be able to find a cure. The disease is such that it is almost a slow death. It is not an ordinary disease; it has come out of behaving against nature, and nature is taking its revenge – with vengeance.Just the other day, I was informed about South Africa: in one hospital they did a survey, just one month before – in the whole city, seventy percent of the prostitutes had AIDS. And after one month, when they did the survey the next time, a hundred percent of the prostitutes had AIDS. But this is not something to be surprised about; the more surprising fact which came to light was that out of all the mothers who came to give birth in the hospitals, seventy percent also had AIDS – the same percentage as the prostitutes. They had AIDS: and these were not prostitutes, these were housewives…and their children will be born with AIDS. But the whole world is silent.This is more dangerous than nuclear weapons, because nuclear weapons at least are something that can be controlled, something within our hands. But AIDS seems to be out of our hands.The responsibility of the journalist is to bring before the people authentic facts, to make them aware how to avoid perversions. Homosexuality is not a disease; it is just a symptom of a disease. The real disease is celibacy, which is being preached by all religions. Now it is a strange game. The same people who are the cause of creating AIDS are condemning homosexuals. And they are the real criminals – if anybody needs to be behind bars, it is all your saints and all your preachers and all your priests. But not the homosexuals, they are victims – victims of an absolutely wrong psychology being preached for centuries.Don’t fulfill sick needs. Expose the fact that those sick needs are arising from a certain source. And create a protest in the minds of people so that the sources can be stopped. You cannot fight with the sick needs if the sources are not dropped. On the one hand you go on supporting the sources, and on the other hand you want people to drop their sick needs, which is impossible.The fire and brimstone fundamentalist was ranting and raving before his congregation. “Praise the Lord, I know there are those among you who have committed the unspeakable sin of he-ing and she-ing. Stand up and repent!” Three-quarters of the congregation stood up.“And there are those among you,” continued the preacher, “who have committed that double sin of sins, he-ing and he-ing. Stand up and repent!” The rest of the men stood up.“And I know there are those among you who have committed the triple sin, she-ing and she-ing. Stand up and repent!” The remaining women all stood up. No one was left sitting except one little boy with a puzzled look on his face.“Preacher,” he cried, “I would like to know where you stand on me-ing and me-ing?”But this is the situation your religions have created. There is a great need for all these bogus, unscientific, unpsychological doctrines to be exposed to the public, and the public should be made aware to live a natural and healthy life, accepting whatever the need of the body is as a natural gift. Then only is there a possibility that we will be able not to exploit people’s sick needs…because there will be no sick needs at all.Journalism should not be only a business; it should also be a great responsibility toward humanity. It is no ordinary business, it cannot look only for profits. You have many other businesses for profit – at least don’t corrupt journalism for the sake of profit. Journalism should be ready to sacrifice its profits; only then can it avoid fulfilling people’s sick needs, and expose their original and basic causes – which can be removed.Journalism should be a revolution, not just a profession. A journalist is basically a rebellious person – who wants the world to be a little better, who is basically a fighter – and he has to fight for right causes. I never look at journalism as just another profession. For profit, you have so many professions available; at least something should be left uncorrupted by the profit motive. Only then is there a possibility that you can educate people: educate them for a rebellious attitude against all that is wrong, educate them against anything that causes perversions.One thing more I would like to remind you of. Life is not just a bed of roses, there are thorns too. But there is no need to make too much fuss about thorns. By making too much fuss about thorns, you slowly start forgetting about roses.Journalism and other news media are a new phenomenon in the world. There was nothing like that in the times of Gautam Buddha or Jesus. That is one of the reasons that people go on bragging that the days of old were very beautiful. Hindu chauvinists go on saying that in the times of Gautam Buddha, people had no need to lock their doors. Their argument is that there was no stealing – but that is sheer stupidity, because Gautam Buddha preached every day for forty-two years against stealing. Do you think he was mad? If there was no stealing, to whom was he preaching, “Don’t steal, don’t lie”? All the teachings of all the old saints are against lying, against stealing, against adultery. You will not find anything new in the world that was not there before – you just have to look into their preaching.If there were no locks, it is not because there were no thieves; in fact, there were no locks! And there was nothing to be locked, people were so poor. The lock is a certain stage of technology that was not there…and you have to have something to lock. You don’t even have food for two meals a day – what are you going to lock?It happened in Gujrat in this century: Mahatma Gandhi was going on his tour toward Noakhali, and a woman came and touched his feet and said, “Just wait a minute. My husband wants to touch your feet.” So Mahatma Gandhi said, “But why has he not come with you?”She said, “Don’t make us embarrassed. We have only one good set of clothes, so I have come; now I will go and give the clothes to him and he will come. He’s standing naked in the house.”This is in the twentieth century! We don’t know about things that were happening which were evil in those times because there was no news media. The existence of news media has brought a very new thing – because everything evil, everything bad, everything negative, whether true or untrue, is sensational; it sells. People are interested in rapes, in murders, in briberies, in all kinds of criminal acts, riots. And because people are asking for all this news, you go on collecting all the wrong that is happening in the world. The roses are completely forgotten; only thorns are remembered – and exaggerated. And if you cannot find, you invent, because your whole problem is how to sell.The same or even worse was the situation in the past, but people never came to know about it. They always knew about what can be called the “good news” because scriptures were written not about thieves, not about murderers, but about saints and their statements. That was the only literature. Journalism has brought the possibility of making saints out of criminals.There was one case in Sweden…a man murdered a stranger whom he had never met; he had no idea who he was. He had not even seen his face. The man was sitting on the beach, looking at the ocean, and this other man came from behind and shot him dead. And in the court, the man said, “I wanted my picture to be printed on the front pages of all the newspapers. My desire is fulfilled. Now I don’t care; you can sentence me to death, that’s perfectly okay. My only desire was to see my picture in the newspapers.” Now, you are creating a strange kind of person by the attention that you are paying to wrongdoings.Last year a California university did a survey: after each boxing match, after each football match, the crime rate suddenly goes fourteen percent higher, and it remains fourteen percent higher for seven to ten days – then slowly it tapers down. But the government is not interested in preventing a barbarous thing like boxing – which is absolutely inhuman, and definitely inhuman to those two persons who are fighting. It creates in the whole state of California fourteen percent more crimes: more murders, more rapes. Strange…still boxing continues, football matches continue. And the news media goes on reporting all these things. If the news media is alert, it should stop all commentaries on football matches, boxing – let them happen, but don’t make so much fuss about them that the whole country becomes involved. They will die out by themselves.The news media has to learn to boycott a few things which are creative of crimes, of inhumanity to human beings. But rather than boycotting them, you are flourishing, profiting from them, making your sales bigger and bigger, your circulation more and more, without ever giving a single thought to what the ultimate consequence is.The old economics had the idea that wherever there is a need, there will be a supply. But the latest research shows that wherever there is a supply, slowly, slowly the need is also created. For example, nobody needed a car five hundred years ago, nobody needed airplanes, nobody needed the railway.When for the first time a railway train started from the London station, all the priests and bishops and cardinals and the archbishop of England gathered great congregations and declared: “This railway train was not made by God. When God created the world, it is obvious he never made the railway train, so who is making this railway train? It must be the devil.”And the old railway train, its engine, looked like the devil! The train was just experimental, only going for ten miles. The train was offering a free journey – breakfast, lunch, every comfort and luxury – to whoever wanted to come. And the preachers in every church were preventing people. What they were saying was, “In the first place, God never created it; in the second place, why are they persuading people by giving free tickets, breakfast, lunch, and all the comforts?”“We can tell you,” the archbishop told the congregation, “that this train will start, but it will never stop. So if you want to go, you can go. But remember, you will repent.”Nobody was ready to go into the train. A crowd was waiting all around the railway station, all along the ten-mile path, but nobody was ready. Only a few daredevils, thinking… “Let us see what happens. If it does not stop, so what? If they go on giving lunch and breakfast, let it not stop! What is the harm?”A few people…the train was meant to carry one hundred and twenty people, but only eight people managed enough courage to enter the train. But once the train was there, it became an absolute need – now you cannot think of a world where trains don’t exist, or cars don’t exist, or airplanes don’t exist.Journalism not only has to look to fulfill the needs of the people, it has to create healthy supplies – which will create needs in people. That old law of economics is out of date…and that is the whole secret of advertisement. Why do people advertise? Particularly in America – the product will come two years afterward, and advertisement starts two years before. They are simply making people aware of something which is coming into the market. The supply is first, and the supply is creating the need; hence, great advertisements are needed.You can create better needs, healthy needs. You are not compelled to fulfill the sick needs of people. Fulfilling their sick needs is really committing a great crime.But I have been around the world, and I have been puzzled that the so-called news media, if it cannot find something negative, invents it. All kinds of lies are invented. It never talks about anything beautiful, anything great. It does not create the idea in people that we are progressing, that we are evolving, that a better humanity is ahead. It only gives the idea that the night is going to be darker and darker.And looking at your newspapers, your radio broadcasts, your television, your films, it seems that there is no way of going in any other direction than toward hell. Just in California alone…school kids are taking drugs – six year olds, eight year olds. Those days when there were hippies are gone – hippies have disappeared. Hippies were at least adult: twenty-one years, twenty-two, up to thirty. They are gone, they are there no more. Now it is small school kids. There have been cases of murder by thirteen and fourteen-year-old boys, and there have been cases of rape by fourteen, fifteen-year-old boys. How does all this get into their minds? They see the films, and particularly the films that are prohibited to them – that prohibition becomes an invitation. They see in the news every day what is happening in the world.In America alone, surveys show that every person is watching television for an average of seven hours every day – just glued to the chair for seven hours. And what is he watching? Murder, rape, robbery…slowly, slowly it gets into his head. He starts thinking, “This is all that is happening in the world; I’m just a fool who still goes to the church!” He never sees anybody praying, he never sees anybody meditating; he only sees people who are raping, people who are murdering: “Something must be wrong with me, I’m something abnormal. Normal people are doing normal things; all that I am doing is just being glued to the chair and watching television. Something has to be done.” And slowly, slowly his mind is conditioned by all the input of the news media.A healthy news media is a great need. And if you feel that perhaps this is not the need of the people, then create the need; create a beautiful supply. I don’t think that there are not people who are going to be interested in the good side of life.Don’t take the attitude of a pessimist. There are people who are interested in the good side, there are people who are interested in the roses, there are people who are interested in all that is great in man. Bring it out; make everybody feel that if he is not doing something good, he is sick, abnormal. Right now just the opposite is the case.Osho,In our journalism training course, the growth of being, the spiritual dimension, is totally ignored, while other psychosomatic subjects are all very much highlighted. Osho, could you please explain: why is it significant to include the spiritual dimension in the teaching of journalism?Nandita, this country has been under slavery for two thousand years. That has created a psychological slavery in people. Although politically we are free, psychologically we are still slaves. Journalism is a product of the West, and we are imitating whatever is being done there; it is not our creation. The West does not believe in any spirituality, and it is suffering great anguish and great anxiety because of it.The suicide rate is four times more than it is in the East. And in the East, people commit suicide because of hunger, starvation; you have to be compassionate toward them. In the West people commit suicide because they have everything, and they feel life is meaningless. They have all the money, they have all that money can purchase…but there are a few things which money cannot purchase. They cannot purchase silence, they cannot purchase joy, they cannot purchase love, they cannot purchase meditation….In the life of Mahavira, there is a beautiful story.One great king of Mahavira’s time, Prasenjita, had everything that was possible in those days. But one day he came across a Jaina monk who said to him, “You may be a great emperor, but do you know the blissfulness and the ecstasy of meditation?” And for the first time, Prasenjita was very shocked – he used to brag, thinking that he had everything. For the first time somebody had pointed out that he didn’t have everything. He asked the monk, “From where can I get meditation?” He thought perhaps that too could be purchased. “I am ready to pay any price.”The monk said, “For that you will have to go to my master, who is living just outside the capital. You have to go to Mahavira.”Prasenjita went to Mahavira, and asked him the same question: “I have come here to purchase meditation, whatever the price. You don’t be worried about the price – I am ready to pay right now – but I want meditation.”Mahavira looked at him, and said, “You certainly want meditation, but I don’t want to sell it – at any price. But I know a very poor man in your own capital, my disciple. Perhaps he may be ready to sell it.” Just a joke…so he gave him the name of the poor man, and he said, “Perhaps he may be in need of money, and he may sell his meditation.”And Prasenjita went in his golden chariot to the quarters of the poorest people, and they could not believe it – a great crowd gathered, and they found the poor man. Prasenjita asked, “Whatever the price, it will be given to you right now; I am carrying enough money in the chariot. But give me your meditation.”The man said, “My master must have been joking. It is not something that you can purchase. Although I am poor…. But it is not possible to sell meditation, you have to evolve into it.”In the West, four times as many people are committing suicide – and these people are not poor people, these people are from the highest class, super-rich. What is the problem, what is missing? And those who are not committing suicide are feeling at a loss. They have reached the highest rung of the ladder, and now…nowhere to go, and inside there is simply darkness and death.Journalism is coming from the West. You are still copying something that has not grown within your culture, within your atmosphere; which is not part of this earth, it is not a flower here. So you are carrying a plastic flower; it has no roots.In the West, the news media is not interested in spiritualism because in the West, nobody is interested in spiritualism. That has been their choice for centuries, and they are suffering because of it – badly suffering. So many people are in psychoanalysis, so many people are inside psychiatric hospitals, so many people are going insane, committing suicide, murdering, doing things just because they find life so meaningless, so useless.One of the very famous novels of Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, has a statement by one of the brothers: If I meet God, I want to return my ticket. I don’t want to be in the world; it is simply useless, there is no meaning.You are asking me: “In our journalism training course, the growth of being, the spiritual dimension, is totally ignored.” It is because you are not growing a journalism that belongs to this earth, that has the fragrance of this earth. You are simply imitating.And you are doing a tremendous harm to this society, because here spiritualism is the most fundamental thing. But the same is happening in your educational systems. In your universities, in your colleges, in your schools, everywhere there is a mental slavery to the West. Whatever is happening in the West, you have to imitate it; it has become your unconscious habit. Journalism has to learn its own way, has to evolve its own individuality, just as education has to evolve its own individuality.Nandita, you are asking if it is significant, and why it is significant to include the spiritual dimension in the teaching of journalism.Spiritualism is the very meaning of life.Without a spirit, a man is only a corpse. And without spiritualism, anything – education, journalism…they are only corpses, they stink.Your politics is an imitation from the West. That’s why even after forty years of freedom, nothing seems to have changed. The same bureaucracy…it has even got worse, because imitators cannot be better than the originals.Your education is just an imitation. I have been a teacher in the university, and I had to fight with the university continuously. They were not ready to include yoga or meditation in the university courses, but they go on bragging that this is the land of Gautam Buddha and Mahavira and Bodhidharma and Patanjali and Kabir and Nanak – they go on bragging, but they don’t see what they are doing. Their journalism, their education, their politics, has no impact from Kabir, or Nanak, or Patanjali, or Buddha.They are under the impact of Western masters. Although politically you are free, psychologically you are not free.Journalism has to attain freedom from the West and it has to give an authentic, original shape to itself. And you will be surprised that if you can manage to introduce a spiritual dimension to journalism, the West is going to imitate you sooner or later – because there is a great hunger, a great thirst. Rather than being imitators, why can you not be the originals, and let others be the imitators? That will be for the first time that something out of freedom happens in this country.And spiritualism does not mean any kind of fanaticism. Spiritualism does not mean that you have to preach Hinduism, that you have to preach Jainism, or you have to preach Mohammedanism. Spiritualism simply means you have to spread the basic fundamentals of all religions, which are the same.Can love be Hindu or Mohammedan? Can a peaceful mind be Hindu or Buddhist? Does a man of compassion have to be a Christian or a Jew?An authentic spirituality will be without any adjective. It will teach only the essentials of all religions. And journalism should give it the first preference: on your laundry list, it should be your first item and politics should be the last. Unfortunately, politics is the first and spiritualism is not even the last.I cannot understand how you can go on and on being slaves. Is not the time ripe that we should be spiritually free from the West? That we should have our own education, that we should have our own journalism? That we should have our own fragrance, and our own nuance?The time is ripe, and journalism can become the beginning of a new era. Push politics as far back as possible, to the last pages of your newspapers. Politics is not our soul, it is the dirtiest game that you are propagating in people’s minds. It is absolutely necessary that the politician be made clearly aware that he is not the man of wisdom, that he is not to guide the destiny of the nation; that he is only the servant of the people, his role is that of a functionary.You don’t make much fuss about who is the postmaster general; his role is that of a functionary. You don’t make much fuss about who is the head of all the railways; what is the need? He is doing his work, he is getting his salary, that’s enough. Why do you go on bothering about politicians? More than fifty percent of your energy is wasted on those whose life span is only four years. Tomorrow they will be forgotten.They are exactly like your newspapers. Yesterday’s newspaper is just as useless as your politician of yesterday.But why give so much importance to momentary things? Spirituality means giving importance to something which is a permanent value, which gives life, light and guidance forever, which is Sanatan, which is eternal. Eternal values constitute spirituality; momentary values constitute politics. Politics and religion are just polar opposites.And politics is trying to make every effort to suppress religion in every part of the country. The only danger for politicians is from the religions, because only from the religions can people come out with more wisdom.For example, I cannot see any problem so big that the country should remain struggling and not be able to solve it. Within ten years, every problem of this country can be solved. But the politicians don’t want to solve the problems, they want to create them. In fact their very life depends on problems.Adolf Hitler, in his autobiography, has a very significant statement: a politician, if he wants to be a great politician, a great leader of people, should never allow peace in his land. He should always create turmoil, keep people afraid, insecure, worried, concerned. He should keep people in such a situation that they need him. Always create enemies in the neighbors – real or phony, but always keep enemies on the side – and the moment you feel that your leadership is going, create a war, because only in war are great leaders born. And he is right. But what is the conclusion from it?The conclusion is that the politician is not interested in solving problems, he is interested in making them as complex as possible. So he becomes absolutely essential; you need him always. He wants to keep you always afraid of the enemies – from China, from Pakistan – they are gathering atomic weapons, nuclear weapons, so you need your leaders, whether they are of any worth or not. In times of war, whoever is in power should be given total support, because it is a question of crisis. The cunning politician keeps every country always in crisis.There is a saying that the first statement which can be called political was asserted by Adam to Eve. When they were driven out by God from the Garden of Eden, passing through the gate, Adam said to Eve, “We are passing through a great crisis.” Since then, every politician has been saying the same thing: “We are passing through a great crisis.” And the crisis is so great that only he can tackle it, you cannot manage it.One of the greatest revolutions in journalism will be, Nandita, if we can create in this country a different kind of journalism – which is not dominated by politicians, but is inspired by its wise people. And you can remain absolutely certain that the wise people of any country are not going to fight in the elections; they are not going to beg for votes from the masses. So the wise people by their very nature remain out of power. It should be one of the basic functions of journalism to bring the wise people and their wisdom before the masses, into the light.Politicians should not be paid too much attention; it is dangerous. They should be ignored as much as possible. They should be paid attention only when they do something which is authentically good.Osho,What is healthy journalism? Can journalism survive on positive news? Please explain your vision on the responsibility of the media.Nandita, by healthy journalism, I mean journalism which nourishes the whole personality of man – his body, his mind, his soul – journalism whose whole concern is to create a better humanity, not just to report what is happening. Journalism should not be just a news medium, it should also be great literature – then it is healthy. Even yesterday’s newspaper should remain of some worth, so that even today it can be read. It should not be so momentary. But if you are only a news medium then naturally, once the day has passed, the news is old. You should make something that never becomes old, and always remains new.That’s what great literature is. Dostoevsky’s novels, or those of Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, or Turgenev, Rabindranath Tagore…they will remain significant as long as humanity remains, and as fresh as ever.Something in your journalism should have that quality, and that quality can be introduced. You can have space for news, but that should be secondary. Because what are those news reports? What are they going to do? Somebody steals – what is the point of reporting it? And somebody commits suicide – what is the point of reporting it? Why make it news unnecessarily? You are filling your space with absolutely nonessential things.Bring the essential in. You have poets, you have painters, you have writers, you have spiritual giants – you can introduce all of them. They should be your major part, and politics should be just your third page, or fourth page – or maybe no page! You have made these politicians so huge, so exaggerated, and then the whole country suffers. The whole world is suffering because of these people, and you will have to take responsibility for it. These people should be cut down to size and put in their place. Somebody may be the president of the country; that doesn’t mean much. The question is whether he is a great president; the quality is the question.It happened when Abraham Lincoln became the president: The first day in the Senate, the aristocrats were very much arrogant and angry because he was not an aristocrat; he was the son of a shoemaker. And one aristocrat could not resist his temptation, and stood up. He said, “Mr. Lincoln, before you start your speech” – that was the inaugural speech – “I want you to remember that you are the son of a shoemaker.”The whole Senate clapped and laughed; they wanted to humiliate Abraham Lincoln. But you cannot humiliate a man like him. He stood silently and as the clamor died, he said, “I am very grateful to you, that you reminded me of my great father. I know my frailties, my weaknesses; I can never be as great a president as he was a great shoemaker. I stand as no comparison. My father was a great artist. I will try my best, but I know I cannot surpass him.”The Senate was shocked, but they recognized that this is not the kind of man whom you can humiliate. And he said to the man who had raised the question, “How have you remembered him? Because I remember perfectly well: my father used to go to your house also. Are you wearing the shoes made by my father? Are they pinching? Because I know something, I can mend them. I am not a great artist, but just by working with my father I have learned a little bit. So if any of you have any trouble with your shoes, you can always depend on me.”A president, just by being a president, is not much, but his quality…Talk of the qualities, don’t talk of personalities. A prime minister, just by being the prime minister, does not mean anything. Talk about the qualities – what has he done to the country, what is he capable of doing? Provoke him to do it.Days go on passing…I have seen these forty years passing. My whole family was involved in the freedom struggle, all of them had been in jails; we suffered as children. In my childhood I used to ask my father, “Are you certain that the freedom you are fighting for will ever come? It is possible that the British may go, but are you certain that the people who replace them will be better? I can understand that you are fighting against slavery, but I don’t think you have any idea that you are fighting for freedom; you don’t have any positive program.”The whole liberation movement in India was running without any positive program. And the result is that forty years have passed, and the country has been falling down and down. When I started speaking thirty years ago, the population of the country was four hundred million. I spoke in favor of birth control methods, and I was stoned, my meeting was disturbed. And next time when I reached that city, I was not allowed to get off the train. Two hundred Hindu chauvinists were standing on the platform; they would not let me get out.And now the country’s population has reached nine hundred million. By the end of this century it will pass one billion. For the first time in history, India will be ahead of China. Up to now, China was the most idiotic land; now India will be ahead of it. China has managed to cut its population, but your politicians don’t have guts; they are afraid to tell the truth to people, because they have to get their votes.Journalists should not be afraid of anybody; you are not dependent on anybody’s votes. You should bring truth to the people: You are creating children – but in fact you are creating death. By the end of this century, half of the country – that means five hundred million people – will be dying of starvation: one man out of two. You will be surrounded by corpses. What are your politicians doing about it? And if I speak for birth control methods, then shankaracharyas condemn me, then the politicians try to destroy my efforts, because it goes against the religious superstitions of the people.No politician has even the courage to come and meet me. Indira asked…six times she had appointments to come to me, and just one day before, she would cancel. Finally, I sent my secretary to ask her, “What nonsense is this? If you want to come, you come; if you don’t want to come, nobody is inviting you. You have been asking….” And then she told my secretary, “My colleagues prevent me. They say if I go there, it is dangerous for my political future.” Because I don’t have any votes! The shankaracharyas and the imams and the bishops will all withdraw their votes, if they see a politician coming to me.And it is one of the wonders that none of them is able to argue. I have been challenging them, saying that I am ready for a public debate with anybody on any point, and those cowards…none of them comes.The journalists should bring to the public news of the people who are fighting for unpopular causes, because the unpopular causes are the future of man. The popular causes are the past, rotten heritage. The politician cannot have that courage, but the journalist can have it, and should have. Nandita, I call that journalism healthy.And you are asking, “Can journalism survive on positive news?” I am not saying that; I am saying don’t try just to survive on negative news. Bring out the positive, in all its beauty, and put the negative in the background; it should not be the focus. I don’t want you just to be positive, I want you to be realists.The negative side is a part of life, yes; death is a part of life. But that does not mean that you have to make your funeral ground in the middle of the market. You make your funeral ground outside the city, where you go only once and you don’t come back. Why don’t you make it in the middle of the bazaar so that everybody can see, passing by every day, that people are being burned?It is part of life, so once in a while you can talk about the funeral, but don’t focus on it. Death is certain, but life is more important. Talk about life, make life a celebration. Don’t make people too much afraid of death.Don’t create a phobia with the negative; that’s what I am saying. I am not saying that the media can survive only on the positive news – that will be wrong, that will be half. The negative should be brought to light, but should not be emphasized. It should be criticized.The positive should be supported, and the negative should be condemned. In that way you are not being simply positive, you are bringing both…but the negative side is ugly. You know that in life we go on putting the negative out of the way, and we go on putting the positive in front. The same should be the attitude of a healthy journalism: the positive should be the goal. The negative should be used as a stepping stone to it, but never emphasized, because that creates in people’s minds the idea that the negative is what life is all about. That is a very dangerous cancer of the soul.Osho,What is your trade secret? Please make your trade secret an open secret.Nandita, I don’t have any secret – but if you want to call it an open secret, then it can be described simply: I have been bringing the truth as I see it, without any fear of any vested interest. Whatever the consequences for me were, I have always accepted those consequences as rewards. And I have no regrets about life; I have lived it according to myself. Even if the whole world was against me I have never bothered to compromise.You can call this my secret: I am a non-compromising man. Either I am true or I am wrong, and I fight for my truth, tooth and nail.I have been around the world fighting for my truth, and it is hilarious to see that a single man can put the whole world against him, and great nations like America and Germany and England and Greece can freak out – and they don’t have any answer.I have been prohibited from entering twenty-one countries, because they are afraid that if I enter their country for three weeks I will destroy their morality, their religion, their tradition. I have been asking, “If your religion, that you have been establishing for two thousand years, is so poor that it can be destroyed in three weeks’ time, if your morality is so rotten that a single person on a three-week tourist visa can demolish your morality, then it is worth demolishing whether I come or not! You should do it yourself.”And you will be surprised to know: countries like Germany have even passed laws in their parliaments saying that I cannot enter the country. I have never entered their country, and I have never said that I wanted to enter their country. It is just from the air, from nowhere. But the fear, the paranoia is spread all over the world.Other countries were doing the same – England did it, America, then Germany. It was almost like wildfire, and they forgot completely that at least you have to be intelligent in what you are doing. Germany has passed a law that I cannot enter the country, and not only that, my airplane cannot land at any airport of Germany, for refueling or anything. They are afraid that perhaps sitting in my airplane I can destroy and corrupt the people of their land.What a weak humanity we have…. Is this the country of great intellectuals like Kant and Hegel and Feuerbach and Karl Marx? Is this the country that has created really great thinkers…that is afraid?In Greece, I had a four-week tourist visa, and I had not gone out of my house – I never go; whoever wants to come, comes. I am just a well: if you are thirsty, you are welcome; if you are not thirsty, the well is not going to run after you, because that would be a very weird scene.I had not gone out of the house. People were with me in the house, twenty-five people, and those who wanted to come, were coming to see me. The archbishop of the oldest church in the world, the Greek Orthodox Church, started a campaign against me. He said that if I were not thrown out from the country within twelve hours, the morality would be in danger, the religion would be in danger, the youth would be corrupted.And these are the people who talk about peace, about love; they say “God is love,” they talk about Jesus as “the prince of peace.” The archbishop threatened the government, and he threatened me, that if within twelve hours I was not out of Greece, then he was going to dynamite my house with all the living people inside, and burn them all. Now, these are your religious leaders. The prime minister became afraid. The police came immediately…I was asleep, and my secretary stopped them and said, “Just wait, I will go in and wake him.” But even the police were carrying dynamite, saying that “If you don’t allow us, we will start dynamiting the whole place.”They threw my secretary, a young girl, from the first floor to the gravel on the ground, and dragged her into a jeep. I was asleep; I was awakened by the noise, because they started throwing stones and rocks against the beautiful palace that was my host’s house. I could not understand what was happening, because I was sleeping on the second floor. And then one sannyasin came running, and he said, “The police seem to be absolutely mad! We were telling them that we were going to wake you up, but they have started throwing stones and breaking windows.”So I had to go down without even changing my clothes, and they said, “You cannot stay even for a single moment.” No arrest warrant, no search warrant – and they forced me, at gun point. Forty loaded guns, against a man who has nothing in his hands, and who has not gone out of the house.And I told the chief of the Greek police – because he was among the forty – “Now I can understand what kind of people poisoned Socrates. You must have been one of those people, born again.”I said, “Is there any reason for this? I have not done any crime, I have not done anything wrong against your society, I have not gone out of the house. And your morality is disturbed, your religion is disturbed.” I have been around the world and I have seen the ugly faces…and the dead humanity.I have enjoyed it immensely, hilariously, seeing that one man can put the whole world on fire – without having any dynamite in his hand, just with his words.I don’t have any secret – simply that I have been saying whatsoever I have felt as truth from the depths of my being. And I have been ready to fight for it in every possible way. If you think of that as a secret, Nandita, you can call it a secret; otherwise I am just a lover of stories, a storyteller. And through stories I have been demolishing people’s superstitions as politely as possible.Just the last thing…A little girl was complaining to her mother about the long prayers she had to recite before going to bed at night.“Why can’t I say the short prayers that you and daddy use?” she asked.“What prayers do you mean, sweetheart?” replied her mother.“Well,” said the little girl, “last night I heard Daddy say, ‘Oh, dear God, I am coming!’ and then you said, ‘Lord, Jesus Christ, wait for me!’”

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 20 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is the concept of soul mates more useful than marriage?One of the most significant things in man’s life has been the love affair. Birth is not in your hands, death is not in your hands; and these are the only three great things in life: birth, love, and death. Only love is in your hands, only love gives you the freedom and dignity of being a human being; otherwise, birth and death happen just like any other animal, or any tree. Love should be kept as pure and unpolluted as possible.You are asking, “Is the concept of soul mates more useful than marriage?” Concepts don’t matter. What matters is your understanding. You can change the word marriage to the word soul mates, but you are the same. You will make the same hell out of soul mates as you have been making out of marriage – nothing has changed, only the word, the label. Don’t believe in labels too much.Why has marriage failed? In the first place, we raised it to unnatural standards. We tried to make it something permanent, something sacred, without knowing even the abc of sacredness, without knowing anything about the eternal. Our intentions were good but our understanding was very small, almost negligible. So instead of marriage becoming something of a heaven, it has become a hell. Instead of becoming sacred, it has fallen even below profanity.And this has been man’s stupidity – a very ancient one: whenever he gets into difficulty, he changes the word. Change the word marriage into soul mates, but don’t change yourself. And you are the problem, not the word; any word will do. A rose is a rose is a rose…you can call it by any name. You are asking to change the concept, you are not asking to change yourself.Marriage has failed because you could not rise to the standard that you were expecting of marriage, of the concept of marriage. You were brutal, you were barbarous, you were full of jealousies, you were full of lust; you had never known really what love is. In the name of love, you tried everything which is just the opposite of love: possessiveness, domination, power.Marriage has become a battlefield where two persons are fighting for supremacy. Of course, the man has his own way: rough and more primitive. The woman has her own way: feminine, softer, a little more civilized, more subdued. But the situation is the same. Now psychologists are talking about marriage as an intimate enmity. And that’s what it has proved to be. Two enemies are living together pretending to be in love, expecting the other to give love; and the same is being expected by the other. Nobody is ready to give – nobody has it. How can you give love if you don’t have it?And when you feel that love is not coming toward you…and both feel the same: a great frustration and an idea, a suspicion that perhaps the other has deceived you. Before the marriage both were using beautiful words, sweet nothings; both were bringing their best to attract the other, to catch hold of the other. And once they are married, and the law has entered in, and society has granted you freedom to live together, soon the honeymoon is over. Even before coming back from the honeymoon it is over…all is finished because you have come to know the other in their total wholeness, which is ugly.The facade, the mask that they were wearing before the marriage has slipped. You cannot hold it for twenty-four hours. When you live with someone, you have to come down from your hypocrisies and be whatever you are – and you know that you are not the person you pretend to be. The same is true about the other. And then it becomes a struggle to possess the woman, to possess the man.The only significant symptom of love is, it never possesses; on the contrary, it gives freedom. It is happy in the happiness of the other. It does not beg; it is not a beggar. It is an emperor. It gives, and it gives unconditionally.But in actual life, what we have been doing for centuries is asking the other to give; and the other is also asking you to give. And both are beggars, their bowls are empty; they don’t have anything to give. It becomes a struggle, a warfare.You can change the concept from marriage to soul mates, but what about you? What about the people who will become soul mates? If they are the same people who were becoming a couple in a marriage, nothing will change.My suggestion is, neither marriage is needed nor soul mates are needed – just friendliness is enough. You don’t know anything about soul, how can you become a soul mate?If you can become just friendly with each other, that is more than can be expected from the present man. If you can be understanding of each other’s frailties, weaknesses, that is more than can be expected.If you can drop the old superstitions, that once a woman or a man loves you, they have to love you forever… Love is very fragile. It is just like a flower: beautiful, but very delicate. In the morning it blossoms; by the evening it is gone, its petals are scattered. That was a beauty in the morning; by the evening it has become a grave. Life is a changing, continuously changing phenomenon.When I say a great understanding is needed, the old idea of permanent relationship under any concept has to be dropped. You have to live moment to moment, you have to live each moment as if it is the last moment. So don’t waste it in quarreling, in nagging or in fighting. Perhaps you will not find the next moment even for an apology.One of the mystics, Sarmad, used to tell his disciples every night, “We are going to sleep for the last time. Please forgive me. As a master I may have been hard to you. I had to be because I loved you and I wanted a transformation to happen. And I don’t know whether in the morning I will wake up again, so I’m asking for your forgiveness.” Each night he would go to bed as if it was the last night – and one day it is going to be true, one night will be the last night and you will never wake up again.And each morning he would wake up as if it was a new beginning; he had accepted death in the night before, now this was a rebirth. He looks tremendously grateful toward existence: one day more to live, one day more the sun, the wind, the trees, the birds, one day more of friends, one day more of love. But not more than that.The very idea of having a permanent, lifelong relationship helps you to postpone that which is essential and go on doing things which are absolutely nonessential; not only nonessential but idiotic.People are fighting about such small things that they themselves, in their saner moments, laugh about it. I have heard about a couple who were getting married in the government registrar’s office. The man signed – the woman had signed before him. As she saw the man’s signature, she immediately told the registrar, “I want a divorce.” The registrar said, “What has happened? You are getting married, you have just signed the marriage papers.”She said, “Yes, I have signed but things have gone sour already. Just look at the paper. I have signed in small letters and he has signed in such big letters, to show me who he is. This is the beginning of trouble – I don’t want to get into it.” The bigger letters already declare the supremacy, superiority of the man.You can change words – I would like to change your consciousness.The idea of permanent relationship was wrong, but it has been imposed on you by poets, by priests, by everybody. And I am not saying that two persons cannot live in deep friendship for their whole life. They can, but it should not be a conditioning, but just a flowering of friendship, open. Any day one partner can say, “I am grateful for all the beautiful moments you have given to me, but now our paths separate. In sadness…but I will remember you always. I don’t want life with you to create a hell. Then all that was beautiful will be destroyed, even the memory of it will be destroyed. Just a friendliness is enough.”My vision of a new society is that of small communes, not of big cities. A commune consisting of not more than five thousand people, so that people can know each other very easily. And the commune should take the whole responsibility for the children, and nobody should be allowed to have children unless the commune needs them. That decision will be of the commune. And now all scientific techniques are available. The society can decide what it needs – engineers, doctors, scientists, poets, mystics. Now it is scientifically possible to choose what kind of a child you are going to give birth to, you just have to drop your old superstition that the child has to be yours.Just as you have blood banks, you should have sperm banks in every hospital. And scientists are able now to figure out about every living sperm; they can read it, what it is going to be. Up to now we have lived a very accidental life, and perhaps the world is so full of stupid and retarded people because of that.When two persons make love, the man releases in one lovemaking almost a million living sperm, and a great politics starts because they all run fast to reach the mother’s egg. Only one will be able to enter. The mother’s egg is made in such a way that it remains open until a living male sperm has entered it. The moment the sperm enters, it closes. It rarely happens that two cells reach simultaneously – that’s why twins are born – or sometimes three, or sometimes four; but these are exceptions.That small passage is a long journey for the small sperm. According to its size it is almost two miles long, and a great struggle…a million people trying to reach to become the president! My understanding is that the wiser ones will stand to the side and let the idiots go ahead.Rabindranath was the thirteenth child of his parents. If there had been birth control, Rabindranath would not have ever been born. And even without birth control there are very few people who produce thirteen children. If the parents had stopped at one dozen, which would have been more logical and a more rounded figure, Rabindranath would have been out of the game, you would never have heard of that man and his greatness.But science has become able, within these last ten years, to read the whole future of a single sperm: whether it is going to become a scientist, whether it is going to become a poet or a doctor or a philosopher or a mystic or a dancer or a musician. Its potential can be read. Its life pattern, in minute detail, can be read: whether it will be a healthy child or a sick child, whether it will die after six months or after a hundred years. To go on doing the old accidental thing and producing children, not knowing whom you are bringing into the world – whether you are giving birth to an Adolf Hitler or a Benito Mussolini or a Joseph Stalin or a Ronald Reagan…you don’t have any idea. It is a very blind game.Love should be only of friendship. And if society has a need and the medical profession proves your wife to be the right vehicle for bringing a child into the world, then from their sperm bank they can find the right sperm and inject it. You can go on making love; that is a separate affair.There has been the pill, but it was not a hundred percent foolproof. Sometimes you are not thinking that you are going to make love and you don’t take the pill, and suddenly your lover turns up and you take the risk. They chance it – it is not always that one becomes pregnant. Now they have come up with two other pills. One is to be taken after you have made love – that is a hundred percent effective – and for the second one the woman is not needed, just the man can take a pill. They have come up with a pill for men, too. Then the woman need not take any pill. Your love becomes pure fun, pure joy, without any responsibility and burden.And the woman should be educated, should be given all the opportunities to become an independent individual, financially and in every other respect, so that she is no longer dependent on you. An independent woman and an independent man, just out of friendship feel good to be with each other. As long as they feel good they remain together. The moment they feel things are going wrong, there is no need to prolong the affair. They can say good bye with gratitude toward each other. No law is needed, no government permission, no social sanction is needed – because who are these people to interfere in your life?Yes, society can only have a concern about the children because that is going to be the future society. Society cannot allow you to produce Adolf Hitlers. But society has not done anything to prevent it. And this can be prevented.There is no need of calling it marriage or soul mates or any great words…just hot air! Use simple words. You feel friendly toward someone and you feel joyous to be with the person. As long as you feel joyous it is valid. The moment trouble arises, you can separate. Marriage has created so much ugliness in the world, that you cannot conceive.First, it has given accidental generations which are not produced out of understanding, out of a scientific approach, but just like animals, under the force, the blind force of biology; otherwise we can have so many beautiful people around. And the world does not consist only of a beautiful moon and beautiful stars, its greatest beauty is a beautiful person: physically, mentally, spiritually.The by-products of marriage have been very strange. All religions are against prostitutes, but they are a by-product of marriage. In fact, prostitutes are a safety measure for marriage to remain, because by nature neither man is monogamous nor woman is monogamous. Monogamy is a kind of bondage, imprisonment. Why should you be so one-dimensional when life has given you all the opportunities of multidimensionality? No one can say whether tomorrow you may come across a woman and you may fall in love.The society in a subtle way approves of prostitutes. It is an arrangement for men, when they get bored with their wives. And wives also have been accepting, down the ages, the existence of the prostitute because they know the prostitute is only a commodity, she is not a competitor. The husband may go there for one day, that’s all. She becomes more worried when the husband falls in love with some woman; then there is competition. With the prostitute there is no competition.Prostitutes used to come to rich houses to dance and to give pleasure to the rich people, and it was accepted. The wife was not at all disturbed by it – because she is only a purchased woman, she will be gone tomorrow. It is not going to be a constant problem for her. But the woman was completely confined in monogamy. It is only just now, because of the women’s liberation movement in Europe and in America, that male prostitutes have become available. Now woman can also have the same opportunity that man has enjoyed for thousands of years. It is strange and ugly, but because we are going against nature we have to find some way to satisfy nature.Polygamy is the nature of man and woman both, because polygamy is multidimensional, it is a freedom. If today I love someone and tomorrow I find someone who suits me more, then why should I be prevented? If tomorrow I find someone who is more harmonious with me, then why should I be prevented and kept in bondage? And of course, in this bondage I will be suffering and it will be a torture, and I will take revenge on the poor woman who has done nothing to me.So one thing: the old superstition that love is monogamous has to be dropped – it is not. There is every evidence against it.Secondly, the old superstition that love has to be permanent, only then is it true, is absolutely wrong. If a roseflower is not permanent, do you think it is not real? And if you are so much interested in permanency, then you can have only plastic flowers, not real roses. Those plastic flowers don’t die because they don’t have any life, they are already dead. Love is a very living phenomenon. In fact, life comes to its highest peak in love.Hence, there is every possibility that what has been today a great blessing, tomorrow may not be there. It is a breeze that comes and goes. We have to accept nature as it is. To create something unnatural is going to create perversions.“I locked my husband out of the house last week for playing around with other women,” confessed the attractive young housewife. “And now he wants me to take him back. What should I do, Father?”“You must take him back, it is your Christian duty,” replied the priest, patting her hand. “But,” he added as his grip tightened, “how would you like to get even with the bastard?”After all, your priest is also a human being. You have forced him into celibacy, so he has to find ways…Fifty percent of the monks in a Christian monastery in Ethos have declared that they are homosexuals and they are going to remain homosexuals. You will be surprised to know that the archbishop of England has been considering a petition from many cardinals that homosexuality should be allowed, it is not against celibacy. A great idea!The idea is that celibacy is only against heterosexual relationships. Homosexual relationship is not the question; it does not break the vow of celibacy. These poor priests, they are hung up in an unnatural situation. Naturally, they have to find some way through the back door. And they are enforcing unnaturalness on other people.I have heard about a party of very super-rich people…because the more rich you become, the more open you become with your perversions. You can afford it. The poor man will be condemned and crushed, will lose his job, but who can raise a finger against the super-rich? They have their private theaters in their own homes, where they can see blue movies. For them, special movies are created, absolutely ugly, of sex orgies.There was a party of very super-rich people and they were playing a game, and the archbishop of the country was also invited. The game was so strange that the archbishop said, “I feel that I should retire. I cannot join in the game.” He had come a little late so he had no idea that the game had already been going on. The game was that the lights would be turned off and all the men would stand naked and the women would find out, by touching their genitals, who the person was. If they can guess the right name, then they have the right to have the night with the person.The archbishop said, “This goes against my religious ideology and I cannot participate.” But the people laughed. They said, “Don’t be a hypocrite, the game has been going on and your name has been proposed three times. All the women seem to know you perfectly well, so don’t feel shy.”All these uglinesses are by-products.Two little old ladies were chatting over the back yard fence. The first one boasted, “I went out with old man Cane last night and I had to slap him twice.”“To stop him?” asked the friend.“No,” she giggled, “to start him up.”He must be too old, maybe falling asleep. She had to slap him so he came to his senses…what is he doing?If you look at the back doors, it is a very hilarious situation. Marriage has proved ugly because it has perverted people into homosexuality, into sodomy, into all kinds of perversions, into pornography. It has given them the opportunity to make women slaves. Half of the population of the world has been deprived of all kinds of spiritual growth.Women have asked again and again why there are not women as great as Gautam Buddha or Jesus or Zarathustra or Lao Tzu. Man has not allowed women even to be educated. He has not allowed women to have any financial independence. He has not allowed the woman free movement in society. At the most she can go to church. The only man available to her is the priest.How can the woman become a Gautam Buddha? Gautam Buddhas don’t grow on trees; neither they drop from the sky suddenly! They need roots in the earth and they need nourishment to grow. The woman, in the past particularly, has been continually kept pregnant. She has been used like a factory for reproduction. And it was a biological necessity, because out of ten children, nine were dying and only one was surviving. So if you needed a few children, the wife had to be continually pregnant. There was no time for her to be a Gautam Buddha. She was not even accepted as equal to man.Marriage has created the family: the unit of the society, the unit of the nation. Unless the family disappears, nations cannot disappear. And without the disappearance of nations, wars will continue, man will continue to butcher man. To me, marriage is one of the things that needs to be immediately abolished. With marriage abolished, prostitution will disappear. And everybody is miserable – husbands are miserable, wives are miserable.I have been staying with thousands of families – everybody is miserable. And because I have been loved by so many people, the husband could open his heart to me, the wife could open her heart to me. Both are beautiful people, but together they are continuously at war. Every house has become a battlefield. And children are growing in this poisonous atmosphere. They will learn the same techniques and strategies and they will repeat them.That’s how every generation goes on giving its diseases to the new generation. Generations change, diseases have become permanent. Now we have to drop the diseases, so that the future humanity can be free from all this ugliness.Don’t just give it a new name, change it from the very foundations.Three young men arrived at the pearly gates together and St. Peter asked, “How did three healthy men like you die so soon?”“Well,” said the first, “it happened like this: I came home from work early one day and found my wife stark naked in bed, the bedcovers all a mess. I saw her glance at the open window, and so I looked out and saw a man running across the front yard. I raced into the kitchen, picked up the fridge, carried it back to the bedroom and hurled it out of the window at the running man. But unfortunately the effort was too much for me and I died.”“What about you?” St. Peter said to the second man.“Well,” he replied, “I don’t know what the hell happened. I was late for an appointment so I ran out of my ground floor apartment and some idiot dropped a fridge on my head and I died.”“And what about you?” said St. Peter to the third man.“Well, Pete,” said the man shyly, “it all started when I was in the fridge.”This is going on…. It is a hilarious situation.Before she left her friend’s house one evening, aunt Emma was warned that a sex maniac was loose in the neighborhood. When she returned to her apartment, she cautiously looked under the bed, in her closet, and behind her curtains. Then Emma switched on the light.“Well,” she sighed, “he is not here, damn it!”Osho,What is sleep for you? Do you leave your body while it is resting or does sleep help you to stay in your body?Asleep or awake, my consciousness is in the same state. To me, sleep is samadhi. That’s how Patanjali explains samadhi: a sleep without dreams; a sleep which is not unconscious, which is not like a coma, but simply a light rest for the body. But deep inside, the inner being is fully alert…just like a candle burning all night in a dark room, where no wind comes in. It remains unwavering but goes on radiating light.I don’t feel any difference in my sleep or in my awakening. The same light and the same blissfulness and the same silence continues day in, day out. My sleep is not much of a sleep, just a thin layer of rest for the body. Inside I am all awake.You are asking, “Do you leave your body while it is resting or does sleep help you to stay in your body?” I don’t leave my body while I am asleep and neither does sleep help me to remain in the body. In fact sleep helps my body to continue functioning. My inner being, my subjectivity is awake all the time. I don’t have any dreams because I don’t have any repressions of anything. I am not an ascetic, I am against all repressions. I am the most natural man possible – almost wildly natural.Sleep is also a beautiful experience of tremendous rest. You feel the aftereffects of rest in the morning, when you wake up. It is only inference for you that sleep must have refreshed you, must have taken away all tiredness, must have rejuvenated you; but these are your inferences. To me, these are my eyewitness experiences. While the body is resting, relaxing, regaining its strength, I am watching it. It is not in the morning that I find my body is relaxed, I find it relaxed simultaneously as it is resting. And there is no need to leave the body.My work is of a totally different kind. I don’t want to interfere in anybody’s life; otherwise it has been done, it can be done: one can leave the body and while somebody else is asleep, can work upon the person. But it is an infringement of somebody’s freedom, and I am absolutely against any infringement, even if it is for your good, because to me freedom is the ultimate value.I respect you as you are, and because of my respect I go on telling you that much more is possible. But that does not mean that if you don’t change, I will not respect you. That does not mean that if you change, I will respect you more. My respect will remain constant, whether you change or not, whether you are with me or against me. I respect your humanity and I respect your intelligence.Rather than working in a way in which you will not be conscious, my work is absolutely to confront you consciously. And my experience is that this way is the best way and the right way. Coming from the back door in your sleep and changing things, in the first place is a criminal offense – although nobody can see the crime or catch the criminal, because it is absolutely invisible. You will never know, but the change that will happen to you will always remain something foreign, as if it has been imposed on you, and you will feel a certain tension.I can make you more loving by coming to you in your sleep. And you will become more loving but your love will have a certain tension, it will not be relaxed, because you have not really changed; it has not come from your own understanding. It has to come consciously from your own understanding. So my work has a very different approach. I go on talking to you, making every effort that you listen and you understand, and if something comes out of that, it is your own. And what is your own is the only real treasure.Hymie Goldberg was down on his luck, so he went to the local synagogue and approached the rabbi. “All I need is fifty dollars to get me out of debt,” sobbed Hymie. “I keep praying to God but he does not answer my prayers.”“Don’t lose faith,” said the rabbi. “You must keep praying.” After Hymie left, the rabbi began to feel sorry for him. “I don’t make much money,” he thought, “but that poor man needs help. Perhaps I will give him twenty-five dollars out of my own pocket.”The next day the rabbi went to Hymie’s house and handed him an envelope with twenty-five dollars inside and said, “Here, Hymie, God has sent this for you.”After saying good bye to the rabbi, Hymie closed the door, looked inside the envelope and bowed his head. “But next time you send money,” he said to God, “please send it directly to me. That bastard rabbi kept half of it!”Things should be done directly, with your understanding; otherwise there is going to be a mess, a conflict. I can give you some change, but it will not have roots in you. So it will be something polished, just on the surface. Deep inside you will be still carrying your old garbage.A drunk walked into an open elevator shaft and fell twenty-four stories straight down. Shakily he stood up, brushed himself off, carefully adjusted his hat and shouted, “Damn, I said ‘Up!’”In your unconsciousness, in your sleep, I don’t want to disturb you. My approach is purely of individual respect and respect for your consciousness, and I have immense trust in my love and in my respect toward your consciousness, that it will change you. And that change will be authentic, total, irreversible.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 21 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I heard you speak of scientists choosing future people from their genetic analysis of sperms. I have no trust in scientists, or doctors or anybody whose knowledge extends no further than their head. I intuitively feel that genetics plays only a small role in determining what a person becomes. A gardener may well have become a musician; a soldier may have the potential to be a scientist. Surely what a man is, is no measure of what he might have been in different circumstances.Beloved Master, who could have foreseen an Osho in the sperm and egg of your father and mother? Please speak more on the underlying sanity behind your suggestion – which I cannot see because of my fear of totalitarian regimes.Devageet, I can understand your concern; it is my concern too. But there are many things to be understood. The first is, never act out of fear. If man had acted out of fear there would have been no progress possible.For example, the people who invented bicycles…can you ever think of any danger? It is simply inconceivable that bicycles can be dangerous. But then the Wright brothers made the first flying machine out of the parts of bicycles. The whole world rejoiced – because nobody could have foreseen that airplanes would be used to destroy cities, millions of people, in the first world war.But the same airplanes are carrying millions of people around the world. They have made the world small, they have made it possible to call the world just a global village. They have made bridges between peoples, they have brought together people of different races, religions, languages in such a way that no other invention has been able to do. So the first thing to remember is that acting out of fear is not the right way.Act cautiously, with consciousness, remembering the possibilities and the dangers, and creating the atmosphere to prevent those dangers. Now, what can be more dangerous than nuclear weapons in the hands of the politicians? You have put the most dangerous thing into their hands.Now, in fact there is no need to be afraid; even nuclear weapons can be used creatively. And I have a deep trust in life, that they will be used creatively. Life cannot allow itself to be destroyed so easily, it is going to give tremendous resistance. In that resistance is hidden the birth of a new man, of a new dawn, of a new order, of the whole of life and existence.According to me, nuclear weapons have made a great war impossible. Gautam Buddha could not do it, Jesus Christ could not do it. All the saints of the world together have been talking about nonviolence, no war; they could not succeed. But nuclear weapons have done their job.Seeing that the danger is so big, all the politicians are trembling deep down, that if a third world war begins the whole of life will be destroyed – and they will be included in it. They cannot save themselves. Nothing can be saved. This is a great chance for all those who love creation. This is the moment when we can turn the whole trend of science toward creativity.Remember one thing: that science is neutral. It simply gives you power. Now, how to use it depends on you, depends on the whole of humanity and its intelligence. Science gives us more power to create a better life, to create more comfortable living, to create more healthy human beings – rather than preventing…just out of fear that some totalitarian power may misuse it.Everything can be misused. And Devageet himself is a doctor; he himself belongs to the category of scientists. He should understand one thing, that everything that can harm can also be of tremendous benefit. Don’t condemn anything, just raise the consciousness of human beings. Otherwise you are falling into the same fallacy into which Mahatma Gandhi has fallen.Once you start acting out of fear, where are you going to stop? Mahatma Gandhi was using the same logic, and he stopped at the spinning wheel. That must have been invented at least twenty thousand years ago and he did not want to go beyond that. He wanted everything that has been invented after the spinning wheel to be destroyed. He was against railway trains, because in India railway trains have been used to make the whole country a slave.These railway trains in India were not created for people’s comfort and their service. They were created to move armies, so that within hours armies can move from one part of the country to another part. This is a vast country. There are places which, even by railway train, you can only reach in six days’ time. It is almost a subcontinent; and to control this country they had to spread a big network of railway trains. Its basic purpose was the army and the army’s movement.But that cannot make us decide that railway trains should be destroyed. That would mean the movement of man is curtailed, he falls back into the Dark Ages. Mahatma Gandhi was not in favor even of innocent things like telegrams, telegraphs, the post office, because they were all used in India, in the beginning, to control the country. Slowly, slowly they were changed into public services. Every invention has been used first by the military, by the war-mongers, and finally they have come to be used by the people.What is needed is not to go backward; otherwise you will destroy the whole humanity. What is needed is to go forward and learn some lesson from the past: so that, as scientific technology develops, simultaneously human consciousness should develop. And that will be the protection against technology being used as something harmful to mankind.My basic disagreement with Mahatma Gandhi has been this: that he was dragging humanity backward.First, horses were used by the soldiers. Do you mean to say that horses should not be used any more? In fact, every vehicle has been used in the beginning in the service of death. Now there are all kinds of medicines; and allopathic medicines – which is the official science in the world as far as medicines are concerned – are mostly poisons. They are in the hands of the powerful.Now there has been great concern that the Soviet Union is developing a certain ray called a death ray. It can be extracted from the sun rays; it does not reach us because there is a certain layer of ozone around the earth which prevents it from entering. Ozone turns the death rays back.But we only became aware of it when our first rockets went to the moon. They made holes in the ozone layer and death rays entered. And immediately the cancer rate went so high that it was unbelievable – what has happened? And then it was found that there are some rays reaching the earth which have never been reaching before. The Soviet Union has been trying to generate those death rays rather than sending nuclear weapons and missiles and airplanes loaded with bombs without pilots, controlled just by remote control.They are trying to find a far more refined way. Just sending rays…you cannot do anything against those rays, they are not even visible. And they will not destroy anything, houses will remain intact. They will simply destroy only living things – man, birds, animals, trees, anything that has any kind of life. The moment the death ray touches it, life disappears. It will create really a tremendous nightmare. Houses will be there, streets will be there, shops will be there, everything will be there, just life will not be there.But even then I would not say, not to investigate death rays. As the Russians began to work on death rays, America immediately started to work on how to prevent them, how to detect them, how to turn them back, how to create anti-death rays. And there is a possibility…Perhaps in the future, even if man does not use these things, if the ozone layer starts breaking in different parts and death rays enter into the atmosphere, we will be able to create anti-death rays to turn them back. We may be able to create, closer to us, another ozone layer.So one should not act out of fear; one should see the whole perspective. If there is fear, that means the fear comes not from the power generated by science, the fear comes from the unconscious man. In his hands everything becomes poisonous, dangerous.Change the man, don’t stop progressive science. For example, what I have told you was the latest findings of genetic scientists. Up to now we have lived accidentally, in the hands of blind biology. You don’t know what kind of child you are going to give birth to – blind, retarded, crippled, ugly; and he will suffer his whole life. And in an unconscious way you are responsible, because you never bothered to figure out some way that only healthy children – not blind, not deaf, not dumb, not retarded, not insane – are born.And particularly now, when children are born with AIDS, you have to take some steps to choose which children should be born and which children should not be born. The children born with AIDS are bringing death to themselves, to their family, to their friends. They will go to the schools, they will go to the colleges, and they will spread it. And finally they will get married, and they will produce children who will have AIDS.Now, unless we listen to the genetic scientists, there is no way to prevent it. Devageet is perhaps not aware that genetic science is able to exactly figure out a few things: for example, whether the child born out of a certain combination of male and female energy is going to be healthy or not.In Tibet, in the past they used a very strange method, very primitive; but you cannot be angry against them, they had to use it. It was a very barbarous method. Whenever a child was born, immediately it was dipped in ice-cold water seven times. Out of ten children, nine children used to die – the ice cold water…Immediately after the child is born, the first thing is to dip him into ice-cold water. He will become blue by the seventh time; you are just dipping a corpse.But it was absolutely necessary, because Tibet is the highest land in the world, at the top of Himalayas. Life is very hard, it needs very strong people, and the cold is killing. Unless a child is able to cope, it is better he dies. It was out of compassion, not out of cruelty. It is better that he dies rather than suffer his whole life. He will not be able to function, will not be able to work. And the land needs people who can tolerate that much cold and still work, produce. This was an ancient type of genetics. They were choosing – although they had no idea how to do it. But somehow they managed to choose the healthiest people.Hence the outcome has been that Tibetans have lived the longest, because all the people who would have died in the middle somewhere have been finished on their first entry into the world. They were returned unopened! And the people who remained were really strong, really stubborn. They have lived a long life and a very healthy life, because they eliminated all the weaklings from the very beginning. And it was part of compassion. Why allow a person to live who is going to suffer his whole life from all kinds of diseases, sicknesses, weakness? He will not be able to enjoy life at all.Genetic scientists cannot say in detail that this man will become a doctor, or an engineer, or a gardener, but they can say a few things very definitively and a few things as possibilities. About health they can say very definitively; what kind of diseases the child will suffer from they can say very definitively. So precautions can be taken, and the child can be saved from suffering from those diseases. They can certainly and very definitively say how long the child will live. Measures can be taken to prolong his life.On the side of possibilities, they can say that this child has a possibility, a potential for being a musician. That does not mean that he cannot become a doctor; that simply means that if the right opportunities are given to him he will become a musician rather than becoming a doctor. And if he does not become a musician and becomes a doctor, he will never find fulfillment. His innermost being will remain missing something.So if the genetic scientist can say that these are the possibilities, the society, the parents, the commune, can make certain opportunities available to the child. Right now, we don’t know what his potential is. We have to decide; parents are in a dilemma where to send the child: to an engineering college, to a medical college, to a carpentry workshop, or to a car mechanic. Where to send him, and how to decide? Their decision comes out of financial considerations. That is the only way for them to decide – which way the child will be a success, comfortable financially, prestigious. That may not be the potential of the child, but parents have no idea.The genetic scientists can simply give you the possibilities. They are not saying these are certainties, that whatever you do this child will become a musician. They are not saying that, because nature can be diverted by nurture. If you stop all possibilities for him to become a musician and you force him to become a doctor, he will become a doctor; but he will be a doctor his whole life unwillingly, without any joy.Nurture is important, but if we know exactly what the possibilities are, we can help the child through the right kind of nurture. Then nature and nurture can function harmoniously together and create a better human being, more contented with himself, more joyous, and creating a more beautiful world around him.Only on one point are you right: genetics is capable of giving the potential about everything except enlightenment, because enlightenment is not part of a biological program. It is something beyond biology.Hence, in genetic science there is no way to say that this person is going to become enlightened. At the most they can say this person will have a leaning more toward spirituality, mysticism, more toward the unknown; but if these leanings are known, we can provide the nurture for him. And the world will have more enlightened people than has ever been possible before.The fear that Devageet feels is that if genetics falls into the hands of totalitarian governments, they will start choosing children who will be obedient to the status quo, who will not be revolutionaries, who will never become rebellious, who will be always ready to become slaves without any resistance.That fear is there, but that fear can be avoided. Why give the power to totalitarian governments? I am giving you a whole program for society.My first idea is, nations should disappear. There should be a world government which is only functional. And there is no problem of its being afraid about revolution because it will be a servant of the people. And the functionaries of the world government will be only a Rotary Club. They will go on changing each year. Nobody will be in power for more than one year, no one will be allowed to be in power in the government again.Only one time, for one year – what can he do? And his power is not totalitarian. The people who have chosen him have the right to recall him at any moment. Just fifty-one percent of the voters who have chosen him give a signature to the government that they want him to be recalled – he is going against the interest of the people – and the person loses all his power. His power is not given to him for five years without any restraint. Anyway he is going to be out of power at the end of the year, and he will never see power again, so he will make the most of it, to do something that will make him be remembered. And if he tries to do any harm, we have the possibility of recalling him. Just fifty-one percent of the voters are needed to sign a petition and the person can be out.My plan is complete for the whole society; it is not fragmentary. Big cities, by and by, should disappear; small communes should take their place. Families should disappear, so there is no loyalty toward a family, no loyalty toward a nation. Children are brought up by the commune, not by the parents. And it is to be decided by the commune how many children are needed, because as people’s lives become longer we will need less and less children. If the old people are going to stay longer, then for new guests we don’t have any room.In the past it was possible – go on producing children, as many as you can. A woman was almost always pregnant, until the day she became unable to be pregnant. She went on producing like a factory – because people’s life span was very small.The findings are that five thousand years ago, nobody lived more than forty years. Not a single skeleton has been found, of this age, in the whole world, which has been proved to be more than forty years old. When a man died, he was not more than forty years old – and this may be the highest age limit, not the average. When people were dying at thirty-five years or forty years of age, naturally there was much space for the new people to come up and take over.But genetic scientists also say that everybody is by nature capable of living at least three hundred years – and remain young. Old age can be abolished. And it will be a great revolution, because if an Albert Einstein can go on working for three hundred years, if a Gautam Buddha can go on preaching for three hundred years, if all the great poets and mystics and scientists and painters can go on working, refining their methods, refining their language, their poetry, refining their techniques, technology, the world will be immensely rich.This is a very great wastage as it is now. When a man really comes of age, death starts knocking on his door. It is very strange – it brings new people who know nothing. Now bring them up, educate them, train them, discipline them, and by the time they are really mature, retire them. When they are really capable of doing something, the time of retirement comes. And after retirement nobody lives more than ten or fifteen years, because after retirement one becomes absolutely useless, and he himself starts feeling a burden on the children, on the society. He loses all his respectability, prestige, power. He becomes an outsider, an unwelcome guest who is just reluctant to die.You may not be aware that the generation gap has never been in existence in the past. The generation gap is a new phenomenon that has come into existence just now because people are living longer. Now a ninety-year-old father…three other generations have come into existence. His son is seventy years old, his grandson is fifty years old, his great grandson is thirty years old. Now the distance is so great that the great grandson has no connection at all: Who is this old man, and why does he go on hanging around? – an unnecessary trouble and always irritated, always angry, always ready to freak out. What purpose is there?In the past, people never saw four or five generations together; hence there were no generation gaps. I don’t even know the name of my great grandfather. I asked my father. He said, “I don’t know myself. The names that you know are the names I know. More than that, I know nothing.”Now in the Caucasus, where there are a few people who are living at the age of one hundred and eighty, what do you think? Seventh, eighth generation children will be in their houses and they will not recognize them. These people should have been in their graves long before – that was the usual way. So foreigners are living in the house, one house. They don’t speak each other’s language because the times have changed. They don’t understand each other’s fashions, they don’t understand each other’s music, each other’s religion. There is nothing in common at all.If we continue to live accidentally, then the situation is going to become worse. It is better that society takes a new formulation, a totally new program. Old programs have failed. The commune is the new unit of the world. No more family, no more nation – communes and an international humanity.The commune is decisive in creating what is needed, because right now you need doctors but doctors are not there. Engineers are unemployed because there are too many engineers; or you need engineers and engineers are not there. There is no planning of life, it is just going zigzag, accidentally. That’s why there are so many unemployed people; otherwise there is no need, there should not be a single person unemployed. You should not produce more people than you can give employment to.As machines are becoming more and more capable of doing the work of man, more efficient than man, without asking for higher wages, without going on strike, without changing shifts – twenty-four hours they go on producing; a single machine can work in place of a thousand people – more and more people will be becoming unemployed.It is better to plan, so that you have only as many people as you need. And why not have the best? Why not drop this mob that surrounds the earth? This mob is the most dangerous thing, because it plays into the hands of any cunning politician.The mob has no mind of its own, no intelligence of its own. We can create individuals with great intelligence, individuality, and each generation will be a better generation than the outgoing one. Then evolution will be in leaps and bounds; otherwise we are stuck. We have been stuck for thousands of years, only things go on growing – better cars, better airplanes, better bombs, but not better human beings.If man is stuck and everything goes on growing, it is a dangerous situation. Man will be burdened with his own progress, with his own technology, with his own science. Man should also grow; man should always remain ahead.I understand Devageet’s concern, but I don’t agree with it. I always see a ray of light in the darkest night. And howsoever dark the night may be, there is always a possibility for the dawn to be very close.I am in favor of every scientific progress, but the progress should be in the hands of creative people, the progress should not be in the hands of war-mongers. War can now be stopped and war-mongers can disappear. This is possible for the first time in the history of man. Hence, don’t be afraid of totalitarian people.It is true that genetic scientists cannot say anything definitely; perhaps in the future they will be more definite. It is a very new discovery, to read the future possibilities in human sperm. It is just the beginning. Perhaps within five years, ten years’ time, what we are now just able to say as a possibility we will be able to say as a certainty. Then the nurture is in our hands, so that we can give a harmonious nurture, knowing the possibility, and create more harmonious beings.Devageet, look positively at things, don’t look negatively.I have heard….Hymie Goldberg goes to visit his gay friend lying on his deathbed. Hymie’s friend is whining and sniveling about the negative side of his life. Hymie, in an attempt to cheer up his friend, says in a consoling voice, “Don’t just look at the dark side of things. At least your AIDS test was positive!”Just look at the positive side, whatever the circumstance may be.The genetic scientists have also been trying to change the program which is already determined by biology. Up to now they have not been able to split the living cell of the sperm, just the way they have been able to split the atom. But it took three hundred years of physical research to split matter into atomic energy. It may take a few years, but I am absolutely certain that they will be able to split the living human sperm also. And once they are able to split it, they can reprogram it. The whole program is there.You will be surprised to know that once in a while there are twins born. Twins are of two types: two-egg twins and one-egg twins. Once in a while this accident happens, that the mother releases two eggs – which is very rare. Then naturally two male sperm enter the two eggs. These are also twins, but they have differences because their mother cells are different. Once in a while just one egg is released but two male sperm reach the mother cell exactly at the same time, so as the door opens they get in. Then a rare variety of twins is born, which is one-egg twins.They look exactly similar, and experiments on these twins have given great insights to genetic scientists, because these twins…One may be living in Europe and one may be living in China. In China there may be some disease that the child falls sick of. In Europe the disease is not there, but the twin child in Europe will fall sick of the same disease of which his brother has fallen sick – without being informed about it.They will have at the same time colds, headaches, and they will die almost simultaneously, wherever they are. That gave genetic scientists the first idea that there must be a fixed and determined program; otherwise how is it happening? It cannot be infection because one boy is in Europe and one boy is in China. Why should they have headaches at the same time? They feel angry at the same time, they feel sad at the same time.It seems it is beyond their capacity to be sad or angry – it is something in their program. They die almost simultaneously; at the most the difference has been found to be three months, but not more than that. Mostly it is the same day, but at the most the difference has been only of three months.If we can change the genetic program, life can have a very different flavor. We can change the many stupidities that man is prone to. We can change man’s lust for power, we can change man’s desire to be somebody special, we can change jealousy – we can simply remove it and we can put in new qualities, as a program.It is not that you are not ashamed of your jealousy, your anger, your lust for power, but what can you do? Somehow you feel that you are caught in some blind force that drives you nuts.A husband and wife were having a fight. “Look, honey,” the husband said, “can’t we discuss this sensibly?”“No, no, no!” she shouted, and stamped her foot. “Every time we discuss things sensibly I lose.”We have to change the woman’s genetic program, so that every time she discusses sensibly she does not have to lose. She knows perfectly well, that “sensibly” is not the way to win. Behave as crazily as possible, do absolutely absurd things. Make the whole neighborhood know and the husband will be afraid, and he will say, “You are right.”They know the whole question is not being sensible or not sensible. The question is, who wins. Victory decides whether your means were right or wrong. But this has to be changed. This destroys something in the individuality of women. Reason will give them a beauty. Intelligence will give them something that will make them not only physically beautiful, but will make them also mentally more developed.Otherwise, even the most beautiful women in the world are not capable of having a good conversation. They are mostly vegetables. They look beautiful, so it is always good to look at somebody else’s woman because you are only looking; the other man knows how she behaves, what she says, what she does. But she is not responsible, it is the biological programming.Genetics relieves you of your burden. Man has a very chauvinistic, egoistic idea about himself. That is his program. It makes him look very stupid.Jerry was visiting his married friends Ethel and Richard. “Rich, I can’t help it,” said Jerry, “but Ethel really turns me on. If I could pinch her on the backside just once, I would give her five thousand dollars.”“For that kind of money,” said Richard, “I don’t think Ethel would mind. Go ahead, pinch her.”Ethel leaned over a chair, lifted her skirt and exposed her bare behind. Jerry took a long, thoughtful look at it. Finally, after about five minutes he said, “I just can’t do it.”“Why not?” asked Richard. “Have you not got the nerve?”“It is not that,” said Jerry. “I have not got the money.”But the desire is there…what to do?I am in every way in favor of genetic reprogramming of men and women. What kind of nonsense is this? Pinching! And in every crowd men are doing that. Every woman knows when she has been pinched, and she cannot conceive what this man is getting out of it. But the man is ready to give five thousand dollars, which he has not got! Some blind force which is not within his control…Unless we change the whole program of men and women, we will not have a new world. We have to drop all fears. And I repeat again, never act out of fear. Any action out of fear is going to lead us backward.Act with consciousness, cautiously. Use every preventive measure so that what you are doing cannot be misused, but don’t look backward. Life is ahead and in the future. Because of this point I have angered all of India’s Gandhians; if it weren’t for this they would be my followers. Even the president of the ruling party and the ministers and the chief ministers, all used to attend the meditation camps.But the day I started saying things against Mahatma Gandhi, they became afraid. Nobody answered me, but they became afraid: “You should not say anything against Mahatma Gandhi.”I said, “I am not saying anything against him, but what he is proposing is a backward step, taking man back to primitive ages, making him more barbarous. He is already barbarous.”But the people who are acting out of fear think perhaps it is good that all scientific progress is stopped and all scientific technology is drowned in the ocean, and man goes back to when there was not even kerosene oil, when there were no clothes – you had to spin your own clothes.If you spin your own clothes eight hours per day, in a year you will be able to clothe yourself, your bed, but what you are going to eat? And if some day you fall sick, from where will you get the medicine? And what are you going to feed to your children, and how are you going to feed your old father and mother and your wife? And how are the children going to be educated? – who is going to pay their fees and their expenses? One man has to be involved for eight hours just making his own clothes.Such a society will be so poor…no education. But Gandhi is against education because education is being misused. His whole philosophy is based on fear: anything that can be misused…But you are talking such nonsense – anything can be misused. There is not a single thing in the world which cannot be misused. If you are just living in paranoia then everything has to be renounced.In my home town, my father’s shop was in front of a row of barber’s saloons. And I used to go to those saloons because they used to have newspapers, magazines for their customers. I was not a customer of anybody, but I used to go for their magazines and their newspapers.The principal of my school used to come to a certain shop for his beard to be shaved, his hair to be cut. But he never talked with the barber. And that barber was so talkative that a thing that could be done in five minutes would take fifty minutes, because he would go so slow and he would talk so much. And I saw that my principal was simply saying, “Yes, yes, mmm, yes…” He would never talk to him.One day I caught hold of him outside the shop. I said, “This is strange, he goes on saying anything and you don’t even talk.”He said, “You don’t understand, that man is almost mad. Have you heard what he is saying? He is saying anything – I have not asked, I am not interested. And moreover, he has that big razor blade just near my throat. If I say something…And he looks like a very angry man, because he is always saying that ‘We will destroy this whole government,’ and this and that, so I have to simply be silent.“Politics cannot be discussed, religion cannot be discussed, because he is such a fanatic. Instead of cutting my hair he will cut my throat! He will not take a single moment to think. My life is at risk and you are asking me, ‘Why don’t you talk to that man?’”I said, “Then I can help you to find a better barber.” He said, “No, I don’t want to change either because this one I am accustomed to. I don’t know about others.” He was an outsider in the city.So he said, “I don’t want to get into trouble. This one at least simply talks and bores me, takes a long time – but no harm…And I have become accustomed.”I said, “It is up to you; otherwise I have an acquaintance with a barber. If you want he can do you without taking any money.”He said, “I don’t want to take any risk. A man who can do it without money – he is dangerous from the very beginning. Why should he do it without taking money?”I said, “Because he does things. He is an opium addict.”What punks are sometimes doing in the West now, that man in that village was doing fifty years ago. He would simply cut off half of your hair – just on any whim. And when you asked, “What are you doing?” when you looked in the mirror, “What have you done?” he would say, “Don’t be angry. If you don’t like it, don’t give me any money, I have done it for free. You get lost. I have wasted my time and you don’t have any appreciation.”But, the man could not move in that situation because punks were not known at that time. They are not known even now in India. Sometimes he would cut half the mustache and would say, “Wait, I am coming.” And the man would say, “Where are you going?”He said, “I am just going to take a cup of tea. Just sit down. And I have cut half the mustache considerably, so that you cannot escape from here.”I have seen people sitting for hours. Once he was gone, he was gone. If he came back on the same day it was great fortune, because he was such a good conversationalist that anybody could catch hold of him and he would sit there and he would start talking. And he would forget all about his shop. I have seen people sitting there for hours, and they would say, “My God, is this man going to come back or not?”I said, “Don’t be worried, he will come because he has to close the shop.”They said, “To close the shop? That is the whole day. Shops are closed at eight o’clock in the evening and now it is just ten o’clock in the morning.”I said, “You can go and have your lunch and come back. You don’t be worried, he will come.”And mostly it happened that he would come only when the shop had to be closed; otherwise that was an illegal act, keeping the shop open after eight o’clock. That’s why he had to come. And he would see the man sitting there and say, “What are you doing, when there is nobody here? Who are you? What are you doing here?”The man said, “Have you forgotten me? In the morning you cut half of my mustache.” He would say, “Yes, I remember. I remember that sometime I cut half of somebody’s mustache. So you are that fellow! Come tomorrow, because now it is time to close the shop. Otherwise I will be in trouble – the police may come and you will be in trouble. Why are you sitting here?”The man said, “This is strange.” So he said, “You can go, I will not charge you.” And the man had wasted the whole day!He said, “At least cut my half mustache. And I had not told you to cut my mustache at all. I had come to have my beard shaved. I have been always proud of my mustache and you have destroyed my mustache.”The barber was a very philosophical man. He said, “Don’t be worried, hairs grow. They will grow again. Don’t be worried, I have not cut off your nose. Just feel fortunate, because once the nose is cut off, it never grows.” He would cut half of the mustache and the man would rush out angry – but what to do? And the principal knew about it, he had heard many stories.When I told him that “This is the place,” he said, “You are getting me into trouble. Can’t you stop making trouble for people? You create trouble for your teachers, you create trouble for your fellow students. I don’t get in your way. Every day I receive reports against you. I just go on keeping them in the file, because I don’t want to encounter you unnecessarily. I have not done any harm to you and you are introducing me to that opium addict.”There are all kinds of people in the world. These people could have been totally different, just they need a different program from the very beginning.There are so many criminals in your jails. In America, they have so many jails and so many criminals that American judges have been telling the government, “If you don’t create more jails, close the courts, we cannot send anybody to jail – there is no space. Once we send somebody to jail, we have to release somebody else, although he should still remain in jail for two or three years. We have to release him just to make space for the new criminal.”The whole world is full of jails, and these people only have the wrong genetic program. They are victims of a blind biological force. And, Devageet, do you want to continue this accidental humanity? Don’t you want it to be well-planned – intelligently, consciously? I understand your fear, but that can be avoided. That should be avoided. But progress cannot be dropped.In every way we can create a man who is really a superman, who has never existed except in the dreams of great poets and great mystics. That superman has to be made a reality. Genetic science and engineering can help immensely.Little Eddy was doing his arithmetic homework. “Three plus one, the son of a bitch, is four,” he was saying. “Three plus two, the son of a bitch, is five. Three plus three, the son of a bitch, is six.” And so on.Eddy’s mom was horrified when she overheard him. The next day she went to see what kind of arithmetic his teacher was teaching.“I don’t quite understand where Eddy has picked this language up,” said the teacher. “I simply teach the children to say: three plus one, the sum of which is four; three plus two, the sum of which is five.”But not only little Eddy, even your oldest citizens of the world are living in such a misunderstanding about everything.In spite of the dangers we have to take steps to change this situation. Man’s intelligence is absolutely dependent on his genetic heritage. We can have as many Albert Einsteins as we need, we can have as many Rabindranath Tagores as we need, we can have as many Nijinskys as we need. The world can be such a beautiful place. But certainly there are risks and there are dangers, and I am aware of them more than you are aware of them, Devageet. But still, I want to take all the risks because man has nothing to lose – he has got nothing. So why be so much afraid? He has everything to gain and he has nothing to lose.The risk can be taken – yes, with consciousness, with awareness. Hence I am teaching all the time how to be more aware, how to be more conscious, because much has to be done once we have a certain portion of humanity alert and conscious. Those will be our guardians, our guards against technology being used in any way for evil purposes.We can take every protective measure, but we cannot go backward.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 22 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Buddha was saying again and again to his disciples that meditation and compassion should grow side by side. These days I have been feeling your compassion as never before, and I have also been feeling the urge to start learning from it, at least the abc. For now, the only thing that makes me feel close to it are those warm tears that flow down my cheeks as I look at you.Beloved, can you please talk about compassion, and how to go into it from the stage I'm at.Gautam Buddha’s emphasis on compassion was a very new phenomenon as far as the mystics of old were concerned. Gautam Buddha makes a historical dividing line from the past; before him meditation was enough, nobody had emphasized compassion together with meditation. And the reason was that meditation brings enlightenment, your blossoming, your ultimate expression of being. What more do you need? As far as the individual is concerned, meditation is enough. Gautam Buddha’s greatness consists in introducing compassion even before you start meditating. You should be more loving, more kind, more compassionate.There is a hidden science behind it. Before a man becomes enlightened, if he has a heart full of compassion there is a possibility that after meditation he will help others to achieve the same beatitude, to the same height, to the same celebration as he has achieved. Gautam Buddha makes it possible for enlightenment to be infectious. But if the person feels that he has come back home, why bother about anybody else?Buddha makes enlightenment for the first time unselfish; he makes it a social responsibility. It is a great change. But compassion should be learned before enlightenment happens. If it is not learned before, then after enlightenment there is nothing to learn. When one becomes so ecstatic in himself then even compassion seems to be preventing his own joy – a kind of disturbance in his ecstasy…That’s why there have been hundreds of enlightened people, but very few masters.To be enlightened does not mean necessarily that you will become a master. Becoming a master means you have tremendous compassion, and you feel ashamed to go alone into those beautiful spaces that enlightenment makes available. You want to help the people who are blind, in darkness, groping their way. It becomes a joy to help them, it is not a disturbance.In fact, it becomes a richer ecstasy when you see so many people flowering around you; you are not a solitary tree who has blossomed in a forest where no other tree is blossoming. When the whole forest blossoms with you, the joy becomes a thousandfold; you have used your enlightenment to bring a revolution in the world. Gautam Buddha is not only enlightened, but an enlightened revolutionary.His concern with the world, with people, is immense. He was teaching his disciples that when you meditate and you feel silence, serenity, a deep joy bubbling inside your being, don’t hold onto it; give it to the whole world. And don’t be worried, because the more you give it, the more you will become capable of getting it. The gesture of giving is of tremendous importance once you know that giving does not take anything from you; on the contrary, it multiplies your experiences. But the man who has never been compassionate does not know the secret of giving, does not know the secret of sharing.It happened that one of his disciples, a layman – he was not a sannyasin, but he was very much devoted to Gautam Buddha – said, “I will do it…but I want just to make one exception. I will give all my joy and all my meditation and all my inner treasures to the whole world – except my neighbor, because that fellow is really nasty.”Neighbors are always enemies. Gautam Buddha said to him, “You forget the world, you simply give to your neighbor.”He said, “What are you saying?”Buddha said, “If you can give to your neighbor, only then will you be freed from this antagonistic attitude toward a human being.”Compassion basically means accepting people’s frailties, their weaknesses, not expecting them to behave like gods. That is cruelty, because they will not be able to behave like gods and then they will fall in your estimation, and they will also fall in their own self-respect. You have dangerously crippled them, you have damaged their dignity. One of the fundamentals of compassion is to make everybody dignified, everybody aware that what has happened to you can happen to him; that he is not a hopeless case, that he is not unworthy, that enlightenment is not to be deserved, it is your very self-nature.But these words should come from the enlightened man, only then can they create trust. If they come from unenlightened scholars, they cannot create trust. The word, through the enlightened man, starts breathing, starts having a heartbeat of its own. It becomes living, it goes directly into your heart – it is not an intellectual gymnastics. But with the scholar it is a different thing. He himself is not certain of what he is talking about, what he is writing about. He is in the same uncertainty as you are.Gautam Buddha is one of the landmarks in the evolution of consciousness; his contribution is great, immeasurable. And in his contribution, the idea of compassion is the most essential. But you have to remember that by being compassionate you don’t become higher; otherwise you spoil the whole thing. It becomes an ego trip. Remember not to humiliate the other person by being compassionate; otherwise you are not being compassionate, behind the words you are enjoying their humiliation.Compassion has to be understood, because it is love come of age. Ordinary love is very childish, it is a good game for teenagers. The faster you grow out of it the better, because your love is a blind biological force. It has nothing to do with your spiritual growth; that’s why all love affairs turn in a strange way, become very bitter.That which was so alluring, so exciting, so challenging, for which you could have died…now you could still die – but not for it, you could die to get rid of it.A great psychologist, Alfred Adler, went to a madhouse to see in what condition the mad people were, what their problems were, and if he and his understanding about man’s psychology could be of any help.The superintendent knew he was a world famous figure…but there happened to be a very strange case. He saw a man behind bars, in a cell, who was keeping a photograph on his chest – and tears were coming from his eyes. Alfred Adler knew the man, because the man was a professor in the university where Alfred Adler had addressed the professors many times. He was a very learned man. What had happened to this poor guy?The superintendent said, “It is a very complicated and strange story. When you know the whole of it, you will not be able to believe it. He loved a woman – the picture is of that woman. He still loves her, he cannot forget her for a moment. He never loses hold of the picture; even in the night he sleeps with the picture. And these tears…one cannot believe how many tears he has. They seem to be inexhaustible, they go on flowing. Because the woman refused to marry him, that triggered something in him and he went mad.“Now he does not talk to anyone. We have tried in every possible way to break the ice and somehow bring him back to normality, but he does not talk, he does not want to see anybody. If you go in front of him, he closes his eyes. He wants to see only his beloved. That picture is more real to him than anything else in the world. And that ‘no’ is hurting him so deeply…he eats well but he goes on losing weight. He has become almost a skeleton.”Alfred Adler said, “I knew the man before; he was a perfectly healthy, a robust person. He has aged as if he had skipped at least twenty years. He was young when I knew him, just a year ago.”The superintendent said, “He is simply committing slow suicide. That ‘no’ has been too heavy; he really loved the woman.”They moved on, and in the second cell there was a man rolling around like a maniac, hitting the walls, beating the bars, shouting as loudly as he could, “Just leave me! I want to do one thing only – to kill that woman!”And the superintendent said to Alfred Adler, “You will be surprised now, really surprised. The woman who refused the first man – and he has gone mad because he could not conceive of his life without her – is the same woman this man married. And just within six months of marriage things have gone so poisonous that he wants to murder her. He has made efforts to murder her; he was caught by the police and forced into the madhouse.”Alfred Adler, in his autobiography, remembers the incident, and he said, “What kind of love is this? They both loved, but the first one, to whom she said no, still loves her; and the second one, to whom she said yes, wants to kill the woman. That is his only goal in life. He said, ‘Any day, someday you will let me out. My only project is to kill that woman and surrender myself to the police. You can shoot me, you can hang me, whatever you want to do – I am no longer interested. But let me do at least one thing first – kill that woman. She destroyed my peace, my life, my joy, everything.’”Love is a blind force. The only successful lovers have been those who never succeeded in getting their beloveds. All the great stories of lovers: Laila and Majnu, Shiri and Farhad, Soni and Mahival…these are the three Eastern stories of great love. But all the three never could get together; society, parents, everything became a barrier. And I think perhaps it was good. Once lovers get married, then there is no love story left.Majnu was fortunate that he never got hold of Laila. What happens when two blind forces come together? Because both are blind and unconscious, the outcome cannot be a great harmony. The outcome can only be a battlefield of domination, of humiliation, of all kinds of conflicts.The very word compassion will remind you about passion. When passion becomes alert and aware, the whole energy of love comes to a refinement; it becomes compassion.Love is always addressed to one person, and its deepest desire is to possess that person. But the same is the case from the other side – and that becomes the cause of creating a hell.Compassion is not addressed to anybody. It is not a relationship, it is simply your very being. You enjoy being compassionate to the trees, to the birds, to the animals, to human beings, to everybody – unconditionally, not asking for anything in return. Compassion is a freedom from blind biology. Before you become enlightened, you should keep alert that your love energy is not repressed. That’s what old religions have been doing: they teach you condemnation of your love. So you repress your love energy, and that is the energy which can be transformed into compassion. But by condemnation there is no possibility of transformation.So your saints are absolutely without any compassion; in their eyes you will not see any compassion. They are absolutely dry bones, with no juice at all. To live with a saint for twenty-four hours is enough to experience what hell is like. Perhaps people are aware of this fact, so they immediately touch the feet of the saint and run away.One of the great philosophers of our age, Bertrand Russell, has emphatically declared, “If there is hell and heaven, I want to go to hell.” Why? Just to avoid the saints, because heaven will be full of all these dead, dull, dusty, saints. And Bertrand Russell thinks, “I could not tolerate this company even for a minute. And to think of eternity, forever, to be surrounded by these corpses, who don’t know any love, who don’t know any friendship, who never go on holidays…”A saint always remains seven days a week a saint. It is not allowed for him that at least on one day, Sunday, he should enjoy being a human being. No, he remains stiff, and this stiffness goes on growing as time passes.Bertrand Russell’s choice to be in hell I appreciate very much, because I can understand what he means by it. He is saying that in hell you will find all the juicy people of the world – the poets, the painters, the rebellious spirits, the scientists, the creative people, the dancers, the actors, the singers, the musicians. Hell must be really a heaven, because heaven is nothing but a hell!Things have gone so wrong, and the basic reason for their going wrong is that love energy has been repressed. Gautam Buddha’s contribution is, “Don’t repress your love energy. Refine it, and use meditation to refine it.”So side by side, as meditation grows it goes on refining your love energy and makes it compassion. Before your meditation reaches to its highest climax and explodes into a beautiful experience of enlightenment, compassion will be very close. It will become possible for the enlightened person to let his energies flow – and now he has all the energies of the world – through the roots of compassion, to anyone who is ready to receive. Only this type of man becomes a master.To become enlightened is simple, but to become a master is a very complex phenomenon, because it needs meditation plus compassion. Just meditation is easy, just compassion is easy; but both together, simultaneously growing, becomes a complex affair.But the people who become enlightened and never share their experience because they don’t feel any compassion, don’t help the evolution of consciousness on the earth; they don’t raise the level of humanity. Only the masters have been able to raise consciousness. Whatsoever small consciousness you have, the whole credit goes to the few masters who managed to remain compassionate, even after their enlightenment. It will be difficult for you to understand, because enlightenment is so absorbing that one tends to forget the whole world.One is so utterly satisfied that he does not have any space to think of all those millions who are also groping for the same experience – knowingly, unknowingly, rightly, wrongly – but a compassion remains present; then it is impossible to forget those people. In fact, this is the moment when you have something to give, something to share. And sharing is such a joy. You have known through compassion, slowly, slowly that the more you share, the more you have. If you can share your enlightenment too, your enlightenment will have much more richness, much more aliveness, much more celebration, many more dimensions.Enlightenment can be one-dimensional – that’s what has happened to many people. It satisfies them, and they disappear into the universal source. But enlightenment can be multidimensional, it can bring so many flowers to the world. And you owe something to the world because you are sons of this earth.I am reminded of Zarathustra’s saying, “Never betray the earth. Even in your highest glory, don’t forget the earth; it is your mother. And don’t forget the people. They may have been hindrances, they may have been enemies to you; they may have tried in every way to destroy you; they may have already crucified you, stoned you to death, or poisoned you – but don’t forget them. Whatever they have done, they have done in an unconscious state. And if you cannot forgive them, who is going to forgive them? And your forgiving them is going to enrich you immeasurably.”You are asking, “Gautam Buddha was saying again and again to his disciples that meditation and compassion should grow side by side.” That’s his uniqueness among all other mystics.“These days I have been feeling your compassion as never before, and I have also been feeling the urge to start learning from it, at least the abc. For now, the only thing that makes me feel close to it are those warm tears that flow down my cheeks as I look at you. Beloved, can you please talk about compassion, and how to grow into it from the stage I am at?”You simply allow it to grow on its own. You are in a right space; those tears are indications. If you start doing something to make the process of growth faster, you may damage the whole thing. It is almost like a gardener – he cannot pull up his plants to make them grow faster. The pulling may destroy the whole plant. It may come out of the earth with the roots, and you may not be able to give it life again. The gardener has to take care; he has to water, he has to give nourishment, he has to give all kinds of manure, but he has not to touch the plant. The plant will grow on its own, it is a spontaneous growth.You are feeling that the seed has broken, and perhaps just two green leaves have sprouted out of the earth. Rejoice, and in every way support it, but don’t try to hurry up the process. There are processes which cannot be hurried – you can kill them. They are so delicate that they grow only on their own. You can support them, you can put around them everything that they need, but leave them absolutely to themselves.You are exactly in a right space. Enjoy your tears, enjoy your laughter – and not only when you are with me. Slowly, slowly bring the same space with other people. Perhaps they will not be able to understand you. They may start consoling you, “Don’t cry. What has happened? Has your girlfriend left you? Or are you in some financial trouble?” Just tell them that your girlfriend has not left, that you are not in financial trouble, but thank them for their sympathy. Tell them your tears are not of sadness or failure; your tears are out of your joy.Joy is the nourishment for your compassion…a very subtle food. Sing, dance, play on musical instruments, and all this will support the delicate phenomenon that has already been born in you. But don’t do anything to hurry up the process, because that hurrying up comes from the mind. The mind is always in a hurry, the mind is always speeding; but all great things grow very slowly, very silently, without making any noise.Just watch that anything that goes against compassion you don’t give any support to. Jealousy, competition, an effort to dominate – all that goes against compassion. And you will know immediately because your compassion will start wavering. The moment you feel your compassion is shaky, you must be doing something that is going against it. You can poison your compassion by stupid things, which don’t give you anything except anxiety, anguish, struggle, and a sheer wastage of a tremendously precious life.A beautiful story for you:Paddy came home an hour earlier than usual and found his wife stark naked on the bed. When he asked why, she explained, “I am protesting because I don’t have any nice clothes to wear.”Paddy pulled open the closet door. “That’s ridiculous,” he said, “look in here. There is a yellow dress, a red dress, a print dress, a pantsuit…Hi, Bill!” And he goes on, “A green dress…”This is compassion!It is compassion to his wife, it is compassion to Bill. No jealousy, no fight, just simply, “Hi, Bill! How are you?” and he goes on. He never even inquires, “What are you doing in my closet?”Compassion is very understanding. It is the finest understanding that is possible to man.As he was approaching an intersection, the man’s car lost its brakes and bumped into the rear of a car with “Just Married” written all over it. The damage was slight but the man sincerely offered his apologies to the newlywed couple.“Aw, it doesn’t matter,” replied the husband. “It has been one of those days.”An understanding, a deep understanding that now everything is possible…Once one is married, then he can expect all kinds of accidents. The greatest accident has already happened – now nothing matters.A man of compassion should not be disturbed by small things in life, which are happening every moment. Only then, in an indirect way, are you helping your compassionate energies to accumulate, to crystallize, to become stronger, and to go on rising with your meditation.So the day the blissful moment comes, when you are full of light, there will be at least one companion: compassion. And immediately a new style of life…because now you have so much that you can bless the whole world.Although Gautam Buddha insisted consistently, finally he had to make a division, a categorization among his disciples. One category he calls arhatas; they are enlightened people, but without compassion. They have put their whole energy into meditation, but they have not listened about compassion. And the other he calls bodhisattvas; they have listened to his message of compassion. They are enlightened with compassion, so they are not in a hurry to go to the other shore; they want to linger on this shore, with all kinds of difficulties, to help people. Their boat has arrived, and perhaps the captain is saying, “Don’t waste time, the call has come from the other shore, which you have been seeking all your life.”But they persuade the captain to wait a little, so that they can share their joy, their wisdom, their light, their love with all those people who are also searching the same. This will become a trust in them: “Yes, there is another shore, and when you are ripe a boat comes to take you to the other shore. There is a shore of immortals, there is a shore where no misery exists, there is a shore where life is simply a moment-to-moment song and a dance. Let me at least give them a little taste before I leave the world.”And masters have tried in every possible way to cling to something so that they are not swept away to the other shore. According to Buddha, compassion is the best, because compassion is also a desire, in the final analysis. The idea to help somebody is also a desire, and while you can keep the desire you cannot be taken to the other shore. It is a very thin thread that keeps you attached to the world. Everything is broken, all chains are broken – a thin thread of love…But Buddha’s emphasis is, keep that thin thread as long as possible; as many people that can be helped, help them.Your enlightenment should not have a selfish motive, it should not be just yours; you should make it shared as widely, to as many people as possible. That’s the only way to raise the consciousness on the earth – which has given you life, which has given you the chance to become enlightened.This is the moment to pay back something, although you cannot pay back everything that life has given to you. But something – just two flowers, in gratitude.Osho,Being here with you, I find myself more and more often in moments of let-go. It seems that in these moments my mind loses all its power, and I can watch overwhelming waves of energy vibrating within my body. I suddenly become aware of the earth beneath my feet, and it feels as if I am connected with existence itself, as if I am one with existence.Beloved Master, would you please talk to us again about the state of let-go and melting into existence.Lokita, the question that you have asked is, “Being here with you, I find myself more and more often in moments of let-go.” That’s the very purpose of this place, that’s the very purpose of me lingering on this shore. My boat has long been waiting. So if you are feeling moments of let-go, that is a good beginning, in the right direction.“It seems that in these moments my mind loses all its power, and I can watch overwhelming waves of energy vibrating within my body.” It happens, when you are in a let-go, that the mind has no power over you. The mind becomes impotent, it loses all its power. And the same power is felt vibrating all over your body. So these are exactly the right symptoms.“I suddenly become aware of the earth beneath my feet, and it feels as if I am connected with existence itself, as if I am one with existence.” Just, please drop those words, “as if.” When you feel that you are one with existence, what is the need of “as if”? That destroys the very beauty of the experience.Perhaps you are afraid to say with certainty that “I feel one with existence,” but here you have to be exactly authentic and sincere in whatever you say. It is also possible in the beginning that when such experiences happen, you yourself are uncertain whether you are imagining, hallucinating, because you have never felt one with existence before. So just to avoid showing your confusion, uncertainty, you can use “as if.” But “as if” is a very poor expression.There is a great book of philosophy called As If. And the whole book is filled with great statements, but all their greatness is destroyed because the man goes on saying “as if”: as if there is a God…It is better to say “There is no God,” or “There is a God.” But “as if there is a God” keeps God in a limbo, hanging in the middle. Neither do you give him reality, nor do you take him as unreal. You make him a hypothesis.So I would like you, when these experiences happen to you again – and they will be happening – to drop the idea of “as if.” Feel the experience in its totality, and attain to some certainty. That certainty will make the experience happen more often. And as it happens more often, more certainty…and a point comes such that even if the whole world denies it, it does not matter. Your certainty is far bigger, far more crystallized than the whole world. It is not a question of voting, you know it. I want you to be aware of the dangers of “as if.” That will never allow you a certain ground to stand on; you will be always wavering, wishy-washy.You are asking me to talk about “the state of let-go and melting into existence.” There is no need to talk about it, it is almost happening to you. It is better to let it happen. No talk can be a substitute for actual experience. But mind plays all kinds of games before it leaves you, it tries in every possible way to keep you entangled. That “as if” is coming from the mind.The experience of becoming one with existence is coming from a different source – beyond mind. You drop that “as if” and listen to the source beyond, and allow these moments more and more to take possession of you, without any fear.That is one of the greatest advantages of being with a master. Alone, you will become so afraid – perhaps you are going insane, how can you be one with existence? And if you talk to people, say that you are being one with existence, they will say, “Shut up. Don’t say it to anybody, otherwise you will be sent to a psychiatric hospital. One with existence?”It is too big even if you say, “I am feeling one with this tree.” They will say, “My God! Lokita has gone out of her mind. Something has to be done to put her back into her normal senses. How can you be one with a tree, or a mountain, or the ocean?”But in this place…this is a communion, a gathering of fellow seekers, where everybody’s experience is going to help everybody else to experience the same things without any fear. I am here to tell you whether you are moving in the right space or not, and I say with an absolute guarantee, you are moving in a right space.Those moments are beautiful when you feel the let-go. These are the things you cannot do. Let-go is not something that you can manage to do – that will not be let-go; you are still the manager. It is something like sleep: either it comes or it does not come. You cannot force it to come, you cannot threaten it to come, you cannot blackmail it to come; you have just to wait silently, trustingly. Whenever it comes, it comes. It is beyond your powers of doing.And let-go is a far greater relaxation than sleep. These moments are happening to you without any effort, that is their beauty. If you don’t listen to your mind and its doubts, those moments will become bigger and bigger. Finally, one starts feeling oneself in a let-go twenty-four hours a day.Don’t ask me to talk about the state of let-go, because that may give you clues, and you may start forcing them to happen more often – because the beauty of those moments is not of this world. The nourishment that comes in those moments is divine.So there is no need, because they are happening on their own. Just beware, when you become in those moments, a nobody. A let-go means the ego has disappeared. You will feel oneness with existence, because the ego is the only barrier. Once the ego disappears, you are one with the earth, you are one with stars, you are one with everything all around.One Zen master, Bokuju, was very puzzling to his students, his disciples. He had a big monastery and a great name as an enlightened master – and he was. Every morning, when he would open his eyes, the first thing he would say was, “Bokuju, are you still here?”“Yes, sir.” He would answer it too.The disciples said, “This is madness.”Finally they gathered courage and asked, “Everything is okay that you say, but what you do every day in the morning is absolutely inconceivable to us, it looks insane. You are Bokuju and you ask, ‘Bokuju, are you still here?’ And you yourself say, ‘Yes, sir.’”Bokuju laughed. He said, “I become so relaxed and so one with existence that a question arises in me: is Bokuju still in the same old personality? So just to hear my own voice, I ask, ‘Bokuju, are you still here?’ And when I hear the question I say, ‘He is here.’ That’s why I say, ‘Yes, sir.’”“You need not think that I am insane. In the day I am so much engaged with your problems, from the morning until late in the night. But in the night I am left alone, in a let-go. In the morning I have to remind myself, ‘Who am I? And what am I doing here? Who is this fellow who is waking up?’ So I have made it a strategy. I forget everything, but I keep on remembering only one thing: the name of Bokuju. The day I forget that name also, you can prepare for a funeral.”They were very much shocked. They said, “No, we don’t want you to forget. You continue as many times as you want to ask; it is your business, in your room.”He said, “Not many times, just one time.”And the last day, on the day he died, he did not ask. He woke up, and the disciples waited: “What happened to his lifelong habit? ‘Bokuju, are you still here?’ And he himself answers, because there is nobody else, ‘Yes, sir.’ What has happened? He has not asked it.” They gathered courage again, and one disciple asked, “You have forgotten something.”He said, “I have not forgotten, but Bokuju is no more here. And no one is here to answer ‘Yes, sir.’“I have only been waiting for the morning so that I can see you for the last time and bless you for the last time; otherwise in the middle of the night I was evaporating. Now it is not a meaningful question to ask. So come close to me, receive my blessings; Bokuju is going, and from tomorrow this room will be empty to the ordinary eyes – but to those who had loved me, it will be still full of my presence. And those who have loved me totally, they may even hear every morning a sound coming from nowhere, ‘Bokuju are you still here?’ – ‘Yes, sir.’”And the story is that only two disciples were able to hear it after he was dead, disposed of, but many felt his presence. Those two disciples became enlightened very soon.Even when you are becoming one with existence, it does not mean you lose your individual being. You lose only your periphery, your center remains always there. But in such a harmonious state with existence, you can say that you have become one with it.So this is a very vulnerable state for you. Perhaps this anecdote may help you:“I have to take every precaution to avoid pregnancy,” confided a woman to her friend.“But hasn’t your husband just had a vasectomy?” asked her friend.“Yes,” replied the woman, “and that’s why I have to take every precaution.”You have to take every precaution not to get entangled with doubts, questions, and the mind. And just enjoy the feeling of let-go. The more you enjoy it, the more it will be coming to you.The mind is the only problem in the growth of your spiritual being. The mind is continuously lying. Even when there is something real happening, it becomes very much afraid, it creates all kinds of doubts, because its life is at risk.Two women in a restaurant were having an intense conversation. One said to the other, “Why don’t you go to him in a perfectly straightforward way and lie about the whole thing.”Great advice! But that’s what the mind goes on doing to everybody.Hymie Goldberg thought he had the perfect marriage, until he moved from New York to California and discovered he still had the same milkman.Don’t trust the mind – a perfect marriage! And everything else is just a lie. Mind is a lying energy. Respect with certainty the experiences that are happening to you – the let-go, and because of the let-go the feeling as if the separation has disappeared.That “as if” is not your feeling; that “as if” is an insertion by your mind. You are feeling with absolute certainty that the separation has disappeared and you are one with existence. So all that you have to do is to drop your “as if,” and to not allow your mind to interfere and disturb a beautiful phenomenon that is going to grow in you.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 23 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,During discourse the other night, I experienced myself filling with air like a balloon and becoming mind-bogglingly enormous. It was as though my body was just a skin of the finest elastic and had the capacity to stretch to eternity. It seemed as if my belly was taking in the air and filling out every little crevice and crease of me. Although I had no sensation of floating, the feeling was light and transparent.I'm a fairly ordinary sort of person who has rarely been known to go wildly ecstatic, freak out or have exotic spiritual experiences. Is my tide turning?Nobody is born ecstatic. Everybody comes into the world exactly alike – innocent, with all the possibilities and all the dimensions. But society closes a few doors completely; they are dangerous. Such experiences as the one you had last night will be thought crazy.They are not of any utilitarian use. And society is based fundamentally on utility, so it closes all those dimensions which can be called spiritual, religious. It keeps the mind one-pointedly focused on ambitions – for money, power, prestige. It allows a few people to move into traditional ways in the world of religion, but then too that world of religion remains very mundane.For example, no Catholic pope has ever experienced anything like ecstasy, enlightenment. They are people of the market; their function is marketing God. They are part of the mundane, utilitarian society – which also wants to feel that it is not irreligious, that it is not unspiritual. So it creates pseudo religions, pseudo spiritualities, which are nothing but people like parrots repeating scriptures, the meaning of which is not their experience.And unless there is experience to support them, those words are meaningless and dead. Have you ever heard of any pope who was enlightened? Have you heard of any shankaracharya who was enlightened? It is a strange phenomenon, but we go on taking it for granted that these people are religious heads – and they have not experienced any out-of-the-body phenomenon, they have not experienced the innermost being of themselves. They have not known any silence or peace. They are not men of wisdom.So naturally, you must have become a little disturbed when you started feeling that you are “filling with air like a balloon and becoming mind-bogglingly enormous.” It was as though your body was “just a skin of the finest elastic and had the capacity to stretch to eternity.” It seemed as if your belly was “taking in the air and filling out every little crevice and crease” of your being. Although you had “no sensation of floating, the feeling was light and transparent.”It certainly must have been a very outlandish experience because you say, “I am a fairly ordinary sort of a person who has rarely been known to go wildly ecstatic, freak out, or have exotic spiritual experiences. Is my tide turning?” Dhyan Sagar, fortunately, yes. The tide is turning.And now more and more experiences will be coming to you. But always remember: Life is not what we ordinarily experience it as. Life is much more, beyond our dreams, beyond our imaginations, beyond all our fantasies…Life is a tremendous mystery.In a sense it is ordinary, but in a very special sense: I call it extraordinarily ordinary. Only the superficial can think of it as ordinary; otherwise, behind this apparently ordinary existence there are so many mysteries, incalculable – you just have to be open to it.The tide is turning but it will depend on you, whether you allow it to turn or you prevent it from turning. The ordinary, normal life is not going to give you anything; it is just a burden, a drag from the cradle to the grave. Only if something of the spiritual starts happening do you start for the first time having some meaning, some significance, some blissfulness.And as you become attuned to all these experiences, existence goes on opening new doors – doors upon doors, peaks upon peaks. And there is no end, the mystery is infinite.On your part, all that is needed is a deep trust that wherever existence takes you, it is good. Go easily with it, without any reluctance, without any resistance, because a slight reluctance, a slight resistance immediately closes the doors.Existence is very shy.It never interferes in anybody’s life.If last night something happened to you, you must have been so absorbed in listening that you forgot to close the doors of your being. You forgot your ordinary, normal psychology. You became so attuned with me, you fell in such a harmony, that things which were not possible for you before, suddenly started happening.What has happened, happens to many meditators – an experience of expansion. It is not imagination; you really expand your consciousness. Your consciousness is not limited within your body; it has the capacity to expand to the very limits of existence – if there are any limits. The center will remain in you, but the periphery will go on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger.In the beginning it is certainly scary. But once you have taken the step with courage, with trust, the very experience that was looking risky becomes the most beautiful experience of life. You will ask for it, you will pray for it. Each moment you will wait for it. And this is nothing, this is only a small fragment. There are so many experiences which you may not have even heard about.But they are all possible. You have the potential capacity for them, it is just that the society does not allow all those experiences. And society has a reason for it. If people start becoming exotic, outlandish, freaking out, suddenly dancing in the middle of the street blocking the traffic…the normal life will feel these people are disturbances.It used to happen with Ramakrishna – and I take Ramakrishna as an example because he is not very ancient, so that nobody can say it is just a mythology. I have come in contact with people whose fathers or grandfathers have been eyewitnesses of these experiences.The followers of Ramakrishna were very afraid to take him anywhere. And he was invited by the disciples if there was a marriage, just to bless…and he would never say no to anybody. But to take him to that place was a great problem. The problem was that if anybody on the way, just casually, pronounced the name of God, that would trigger in him strange experiences.He may stand in the middle of the road almost frozen, as if he has become a marble statue. The traffic will stop, the police will come, and the disciples will say, “We will take him but don’t disturb him, don’t touch him.” In the marriage ceremony, if there is being sung a devotional song, he will start dancing. And the whole marriage ceremony will be disturbed, because everybody will forget about the bride and the bridegroom; he will become the center of the whole celebration.And he was such a lovely and such a beautiful person, radiating so much joy…he was not an ascetic – dry, desert-like. He was a garden full of flowers. And when he was dancing, by and by people would become infected, and others would start dancing. Sometimes it was found that the bride and the bridegroom were dancing also. In the center was Ramakrishna and he had disturbed the whole ceremony. And the priest who had come to perform the ritual of marriage was standing in the corner looking at the whole scene: “What to do? Who is going to be married with whom?”The disciples used to say to people, “Never invite him. He is a continuous nuisance anywhere, and we cannot stop him because it is beyond his capacity to stop.” He has fallen many times on the road in a trance. He will go absolutely inside…in the middle of the road he is lying with his eyes closed, his disciples surrounding him, feeling very embarrassed: “What kind of master have you got? Wherever you go some trouble is bound to happen.”Once he remained for six days in such a coma. The doctors declared, “It is a coma,” but his disciples said, “You are not able to understand a man like Ramakrishna. It is not a coma, he is in deep samadhi – and we will wait. If we have to wait our whole lives, we will wait and take care of his body.”And after six days he came back, opened his eyes, and with tears said, “Why have you awakened me? You don’t know – what you thought was my unconsciousness was my purest consciousness, and what you think is my awakening is falling back again into the unconscious world.”What he was saying was exactly the definition made by Patanjali – who is the authority on samadhi, the ancientmost authority. Nobody has been able to go further than that. He has defined samadhi from all possible aspects. There has very rarely been such a case, when one single man has developed a whole science – the whole science of yoga is the contribution of a single man, Patanjali. With all its far-reaching effects…he has not left a single thing unmentioned.About samadhi, he says in his yoga sutras, “It is just like a deep sleep without dreams. The being in the deepest core is fully awake; only the body is in a sleep-like state. Don’t disturb. It is possible even breathing may slowly, slowly stop; heartbeats may slowly, slowly disappear; the pulse may not be found at all – but don’t be worried, just wait. The man will come back. If he is a man of meditation, the possibility of falling into a coma is absolutely canceled.”Even the disciples became restless after the second day, third day. And more and more people became disturbed and restless and thought, “Perhaps he is in a coma.” When the breathing disappeared, when the heartbeat stopped, when the doctors could not find any pulse…and the doctors – the best doctors of Calcutta – unanimously said that he was dead. But his wife, Sharda, simply refused. She said, “You don’t know anything about yoga or samadhi; you have never been a physician to an enlightened being. All that you know is not of any use. The functioning of the enlightened being differs totally from the ordinary human being.” All the doctors proved wrong and the uneducated woman, Sharda, proved right. By the sixth day, Ramakrishna was back.The doctors could not believe their eyes, and they all said to Ramakrishna, “It is due to your wife that you are saved; otherwise we were going to say that a funeral should be prepared. But your wife has certainly a deep insight.”Ramakrishna had so much respect for his wife that he used to call her “Mother.” He never had any relationship with her the way a husband is related to the wife. Even from the very beginning, even before the marriage…He was only thirteen years of age, and his family had taken him to see the girl. And as is the custom in India, when somebody comes to see the girl, when they are sitting for their breakfast or lunch, the girl comes to serve some sweets or something and that is the only time the boy can see her for a moment.When the girl came near Ramakrishna to put a plate of sweets…He had three rupees in his pocket that his mother had given him: “In case you need to purchase something; you are going to a big city from a very small village.” He took out those three rupees, put those three rupees at her feet, touched her feet and said, “Mother, you certainly look beautiful.”Everybody was shocked – his family, his father, uncle and other friends. They were shocked, “This idiot is calling his own wife ‘Mother,’ touching her feet, offering three rupees…” And the family of the girl was shocked also, “Is this boy crazy or what? Should we say yes to the marriage? He looks very silent, looks very graceful, but seems to be a little bit eccentric. What has he done?”But the strangest thing happened. Even Sharda, who was only ten years old, said that if she will ever get married, this is the man. Otherwise she will not be ready to marry anybody else – only a man who can respect her just like a mother she cannot refuse.Unwillingly the family agreed, and from the very first day Ramakrishna started every morning…instead of worshipping the mother goddess Kali in the temple, he started worshipping Sharda. He said, “It is useless to go to the temple to worship a stone statue while you are here, so beautiful, so living, so divine. You just sit and I will worship you here.” After that he stopped going to the temple.The whole village was angry, that this idiot…because they thought, “This is idiotic, what he is doing. Worshipping his own wife and calling her ‘mother goddess’…and has stopped going to the temple, and he is the son of a priest!”But this relationship remained his whole life. So he told the doctors, “She is not only my wife, she is my mother too. And if she cannot understand me, nobody else can understand me. So whenever something like this happens, never do anything against her will – because I will not be listening to you, but whatever she says is going to be right.” And since that day, many times he fell into that trance state. His wife was the authority. No doctor was listened to, no disciple was listened to; whatever Sharda said was agreed upon.The day he died, the doctors were at a loss what to do. According to them, every symptom of death…but the disciples said, “The mother Sharda has gone to the Ganges to take a bath. Unless she comes, nothing can be decided. Keep your decision suspended.”As Sharda came, entered the room, she burst out crying. She said, “This is not a trance, he is dead.”And the people asked, “How can you make the distinction, because he has been exactly like this many times. Even for six days continuously he has been in this state, and this is only twenty or twenty-five minutes and you declare him dead?”She said, “The very fragrance has changed around him; the aura has disappeared. I used to see an aura around him – it is not there. I cannot smell the fragrance that was always surrounding him.” Without even touching him, she said, “He is gone. You can prepare for the funeral.”Life has many, many mysteries.As man has developed more and more his insight into objective reality, he has forgotten completely the inner world – which is far bigger, far more valuable – which is our real home.Dhyan Sagar, certainly your tide is turning. Don’t stop it, go with it singing and dancing and rejoicing. Not for a single moment think about your past, that you were only “an ordinary sort of a person.” Everybody is an ordinary sort of a person and everybody is carrying the divine potential – it is only a question of discovering it. And sometimes it happens without your discovering it. That’s how it has happened to you.God has knocked on your doors, although you were not waiting for him.In India, we call God “the guest.” But the word that we use for guest has a totally different significance, which the word guest does not have. The Hindustani word for guest is atithi. It means someone who comes suddenly, without informing his date, his time, without even informing that he is coming. Tithi means date, day, time. Atithi means one who comes absolutely suddenly, without sending a telegram ahead of himself, “I am coming.”God is an atithi – that is one of the statements in the ancient scriptures. The other statement is also very significant: that every guest, every atithi is a god. You should treat him as a god, because one never knows – God comes in many forms. He may have come in the form of a guest, he may have come in the form of a stranger.Just nearby, just a few hundred miles away, there was an authentic saint, Sai Baba. He is no relation of Satya Sai Baba – Satya Sai Baba is a fraud, and he has chosen the name Satya Sai Baba to deceive people that he is the reincarnation of Sai Baba.But Sai Baba was really a man belonging to the category of buddhas. Nobody knew whether he was Hindu or Mohammedan; one day suddenly he appeared in a village. Nobody knew what his name was; Sai Baba is not a name. Sai means saint, and baba means grandfather – grandfatherly old man, and saintly. This was not his name, because whenever people asked him his name he laughed. He said, “Nobody is born with a name; I was also not born with a name.”“From where do you come?” – people wanted to know from where, which village, which state. And he always laughed and he said, “Nobody knows from where he comes – why do you unnecessarily insist on asking questions to me which nobody else can answer? From where do you come?” The truth is, nobody knows from where one comes.He lived for almost sixty years in that village. I remembered him because of this word atithi. One of his disciples used to live three miles away from the village on his own farm and he used to bring Sai Baba’s food every day. He would prepare the food himself and bring it. Until Sai Baba had eaten the food he would remain fasting.Sometimes the whole day there was such a crowd of visitors that there was no time for Sai Baba to take food – but the man would wait. For years he had not eaten until Sai Baba had taken the food. Finally, because he was becoming very old, and coming from three miles away, going back again, and sometimes waiting the whole day, hungry…Sai Baba said, “Why do you insist on coming here? I can manage to come.”The man could not believe it. He said, “You never go anywhere…”He said, “Of course I will not come in the form I am, but I will come. Now it is up to you whether you recognize me or not. I will try in every possible way.”The next day the man took a bath, prepared delicious food – all that he knew Sai Baba liked. A beggar came and the man said, “It is not possible. Before Sai Baba has taken, I cannot give his food to anybody. If you want, you can come after Sai Baba has taken his food.” The beggar left.A dog came, and the man took his staff and ran after the dog. It was getting late, and finally he thought, “He must have joked.” So in the evening he brought the food to the mosque where Sai Baba used to live. He was very angry. He said, “You deceived me.”Sai Baba said, “You should not use such words. I had come twice – once as a beggar, but you did not recognize me, and then as a dog, and you ran with a staff to beat me.”The ancient scriptures of this country say that God is a guest, and any guest has to be treated as a god. In fact, everybody has to be respected as divine, because that is his essential being. You are not ordinary, you are not normal – you are divine.Once you become available to all such experiences, more and more will be coming to you. Just don’t remain confined to the world of things and objects and money and power and sensuality. Try to become more and more a man of consciousness, awareness, sincerity and truthfulness.Cathy came home with a brand new mink coat.“Where did you get that?” asked her husband Edward.“I won it in a lottery,” she replied.The next night Cathy walked in with a beautiful diamond bracelet.“Where did you get that from?” asked Edward.“I won it in a lottery,” said Cathy. Then she added, “And dear, do me a favor. I’m going to enter another lottery tonight and I’m in a hurry. Would you run the bath for me?”Edward did as instructed, but when Cathy came to take her bath, she found only half an inch of water in the tub.“Edward,” she said, “why did you not fill the tub?”“Well, darling,” he replied, “I did not want you to get your lottery ticket wet.”This is your normal world, where people are winning lotteries every night. Your normal world is not so normal as you think; it is utterly abnormal, insane. But because all the people are insane and everybody is running after lottery tickets, it appears that this insanity is normal.The world will be really normal when everybody has a divine experience, and a divine presence, and a divine aura, and a divine fragrance. When the world is full of all kinds of unique individuals blossoming, releasing different fragrances – then the world will be normal.When you will meet Gautam Buddha on every street, when you will meet Jesus in every house, wherever you will come across someone who will remind you that you are late, that you should do something: people have become lighted flames of fire with ecstasy, and you are still looking for lottery tickets! While people have become temples of God, you are running for election, or going to give an interview to the police commissioner! – and that too of a dead city, Pune.We have chosen this city just to create a little oasis. In America we had chosen Oregon to create an oasis. We are oasis creators! We choose deserts and dead places, cemeteries, and try to bring people who are dead – who have been dead for a long time – back to life.You should not think of yourself as ordinary, because once that settles in your mind it is dangerous. It is almost a cancer of the soul.Paddy, an Irish farmer, was on holiday in Dublin. He complained to the bellboy, “I’m not going to have this room. It is so small I can hardly turn around. It is no better than a pigsty. And I’m not going to sleep on that tiny folding bed. Don’t think that because I’m from the country you can fool me!”“Get in, Sir,” said the boy. “This is the lift, not the room.”But a boy coming from the village knows nothing about the lift. The experience that you had yesterday was a lift. Just get in!Osho,Is there a sense of humor beyond the mind? To me meditation has a sense of seriousness in it, and in my experience a sense of humor arises from misunderstandings – real or imagined – which have their root in the mind. Is it possible for laughter to arise with no-mind?It is true that the sense of humor is part of the mind – but that does not mean that that is the end of it. There is a sense of humor which even your body feels, there is a sense of humor that your mind feels, and there is a sense of humor that is only felt when you are beyond the mind. They all differ in qualities.For example, a small child whose mind has not grown at all – you can just make him giggle by touching his belly. And he will enjoy it so immensely that in your whole life you will never enjoy like that. Now, there is nothing of the mind involved in it. You have simply touched his sensitive, humorous parts of the body.Ordinarily, most of the humor is because of “misunderstandings – real or imagined – which have their roots in the mind.” Most jokes create humor because of a sudden turning, unexpected. The whole science of the joke is that it takes you toward a certain height of expectation, step by step, and then suddenly there is such a turn that you had never expected. Your whole tension that was gathering explodes into laughter. It will be better to tell you a joke…Danny discovered that his wife was cheating with another guy, so he went to the guy’s wife and told her about it.“I know what we will do!” she said. “Let us take revenge on them.” So they went to a motel and had revenge on them.She said, “Let us have more revenge.”So they kept having revenge and more revenge. Finally Danny said, “That’s enough revenge. I don’t have any more hard feelings.”If the end comes in such a way that you were not expecting – you could not have figured out that it will end in such a way – it brings a sudden laughter. It is a release of tension.A recent survey of men’s sexual practices revealed that after intercourse, twenty percent rolled over and went to sleep; two percent had a shower; three percent went to the refrigerator for a snack; and seventy percent got up, got dressed and went home.So it is true that most of the humor in life is out of the mind – finding itself in a situation which is unexpected.Your question is, “Is it possible for laughter to arise out of no-mind?” Yes. But that will be a totally different quality of laughter. It will be laughter about oneself.For example, when Bodhidharma became enlightened, entered for the first time into the world of no-mind, he started laughing – and he never stopped till he died. Many people asked him, “Why do you go on laughing?” He said, “I go on laughing because what I have been searching for was always within me. I was such an idiot; I cannot believe that for so many lives I have been searching for something which was already within me. In fact, the searcher was the sought, the seeker was the goal. There was no other goal except myself to be found.“And when I see others are doing the same, I cannot stop laughing at the ridiculousness of the whole search, of the whole spirituality. It is yours and you are searching for it. It has never been lost and you are searching for it. There is no way to lose it and you are searching for it. Even if you want to lose it you cannot lose it, because you are it.”So there is a certain laughter, but that is not about others; it is about your own ridiculous search. The moment you go beyond the mind, you suddenly become aware: “My God, this place has been always within me and I have looked into the far corners of the earth. I have gone to the Himalayas, I have gone to the saints; I have disciplined myself in arduous techniques; I have fasted, tortured myself. I have done everything and it is within me.”I have heard about an American seeker. He was a super-rich man, and having everything, he got fed up. The more you have, the more you become aware that it is not going to satisfy you. The poor man is in a better mental condition, because he can hope that tomorrow he will have a better house, a better job, more salary, a better car. There are millions of hopes around him which will never be fulfilled, and it is good that they will not be fulfilled. The super-rich finds himself in a very strange position: all hopes are fulfilled and his hands are empty, his being is empty; nothing has been found. Life has befooled him. Those hopes have proved to be all mirages.So the man started looking for some wise man who can show him the path to find the real, the ultimate, the absolute truth. And he went around the world looking. Tired, he came to this land and somebody told him, “In the plains you will not find such a wise man, you will have to go to the Himalayas. We have heard there is an old man – nobody knows how ancient, how old. If you can find him, perhaps your search will be fulfilled.”The man was adamant, stubborn. The journey was hard, difficult, but he managed. Tattered, tired, somehow he reached and he saw the old man sitting under a tree surrounded by eternal snow all around. He was so tired he could not even walk. He had to move on all fours toward the old man, and he fell at his feet and said, “I have found you after all. They said that it was very difficult to reach – it was more difficult than I thought. But God is graceful. So tell me how I can find peace, joy, wisdom.”The old man looked at him and said, “First things first. Have you got some American cigarettes on you?”He could not believe it – is this the right type of question? But to argue with the old man was not good because he might get angry or anything. He said, “Yes,” so he brought out his remaining few cigarettes and the lighter. The old man took them, started smoking, and the tired man was looking – what is happening? And he said, “What about me?”The old man said, “Wait, let me finish the cigarette because I have been waiting for somebody to bring a cigarette. It has been years.” The man said, “I am dying, tired, and you are smoking my cigarettes in front of me. And I was thinking you are an enlightened man!”He said, “Everything is okay. I am enlightened, but enlightened does not mean that you cannot smoke a cigarette. Who told you that?”He said, “Nobody told me, but I just figured out that cigarettes belong to the ordinary people.”He said, “You are wrong. You can see now in front of you; you are an eyewitness. You have seen an enlightened man smoking a cigarette.”He said, “I don’t want to talk about it. You just tell me, because life is short and I’m so tired. You tell me what I have to do now.”He said, “Now you go back home, have a good rest and come back again. And next time, don’t forget to bring a Havana cigar, because without a Havana cigar I never say the truth to anybody.”The man was shocked very much: “I have never heard…I have read all the scriptures, listened to great sermons – I have never heard that a Havana cigar is needed before you can say anything about finding the truth.”He said, “Every enlightened man is unique; this is my condition. It is up to you – if you don’t feel like coming, don’t come, because I have sent many others who will be coming. How do you think I go on living here? You are not the only fool who has come in search of himself. Many others have come and many others will come, and I have a simple condition, bring a Havana cigar.”The man said, “Okay, I will go home and if I am still alive I will bring the Havana cigar. But promise me that you will not give another condition.”He said, “You should remember, enlightened people never promise anything, because who knows about tomorrow? I may change my mind. I may refuse your Havana cigar. You try your best, I will try my best, and then we will see what happens. But right now you get lost. I have enough cigarettes that you have brought, let me enjoy them.”The man was very much frustrated, but as he went back, by and by he started thinking, “Perhaps there is something in the message. He said, ‘Go home and have a good rest.’ Perhaps he was speaking allegorically – where is the home?” He had read in books that the real home is inside. And how can you find the home? Have a very relaxed, restful state of mind and you will find the home.He said, “My God, he told it and I have not even thanked him. I will bring the Havana cigar just as a thankfulness.”I have loved that story. Whether that man came back or not I don’t know; whether that old man meant what he figured out about the home and the rest, that too is not clear. But whatever the situation, the man got the message. He went back, relaxed, rested, and tried first to enter into his inner being – to find the home, because the walls of your house are not the home.Your body is the wall; your mind is the wall. Behind your body and mind there is your real home…your very source of life.When somebody finds it, he has a good laugh: “I was unnecessarily standing on my head, distorting my body doing yoga exercises, fasting, going on holy pilgrimages, torturing myself in the mountains, in the deserts – and all the time I was carrying my truth within myself.” Whenever somebody finds it, can you think he will not laugh – laugh at himself? Mind laughs at others.Beyond the mind there is only one laughter, but it resounds for centuries. The place where Bodhidharma became enlightened…I have been to that place. He became enlightened fourteen hundred years ago and people have made a temple in his memory, in the place where he laughed for the first time. And the story is that if you sit silently in the temple, you will still hear the laughter.There is a statue of Bodhidharma. He was a very strange man. If he meets you in the night, you will never go out of your house in the night again. He had such big eyes that, if he looked into you once, that was enough for enlightenment! And his laughter must have been a great laughter because he has a very good, big belly. Even in the statue the belly has ripples.I had not time to sit there in the temple, but I know that if you sit there in the temple in the silence of the forest, perhaps you may hear the laughter. Perhaps the mountains, the trees, the rocks around the temple are still vibrating with that great man. I have looked into the lives of many great people, but Bodhidharma stands apart…very strange and very unique.It is possible that his laughter was so infectious that the trees started laughing and the mountains started laughing. Although Bodhidharma is dead, they are still laughing; they cannot stop it. If you go with the whole idea, perhaps you may really hear it – or you may imagine it. But I have come across people who have heard it, because they have told me.I had gone there, but I had not time enough to stay in the temple, because the right time is in the middle of the night – when he had become enlightened. And particularly on a full-moon night in a certain month, if you stay in the temple, in the middle of the night there is every possibility that either you will hear the laughter or you will start laughing. That’s what I am doing…Just the very idea that you are such an idiot: a man who has died fourteen hundred years ago, you are sitting, waiting to hear his laughter now!The body has its own giggling points – “G-points.” Mind always laughs at others. No-mind only laughs at one’s own ridiculousness. But the sense of humor is spread over your whole being, from body, mind, and soul.In fact, everything that you have has counterparts in the body, in the mind, in the soul. The purest will be in the soul and the crudest will be in the body. The mind is just in the middle of the two; it will be half primitive, half cultured.That’s how all these three layers of your body function in harmony. And once in a while you may find something which is happening in all the three layers simultaneously. For example, when Bodhidharma laughed, it cannot have been only a no-mind laughter. It must have got down into the mind, created ripples in the mind; it must have got down into the body, created ripples in the body.We are an organic unity. Anything that happens anywhere has its echoes all over our being; hence my emphasis on the sense of humor. I am the first man in the whole of history who is trying to make the sense of humor a sacred quality, a spiritual quality.All your so-called religions are too serious. To me seriousness is sickness. Laughter has a health, a beauty, a quality of grace and dance. I am in absolute favor of laughter and against sadness.Sadness is sickness and is very close to death. Laughter is life and is very close to the universal life, to the very God that is spread all over.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 24 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I have known frustration attempting to describe my mystical experiences to people. It is like trying to explain what an orgasm is to someone that has never known one. One can say it is like a wave of pleasure or like a sneeze, but the reality of the experience is much more satisfying than the words convey.Verbalizing something seen or felt can leave one exhausted. Even if one can lead another up to the experience, it is the prerogative of the other person to be receptive. You can't really give another person an orgasm; they have to permit themselves to experience it. Dearest Osho, I am so grateful for the immense bliss I have known through meditation. One problem: how does one talk about it?There is no problem at all. One simply does not talk about it. It is almost an impossibility. You can talk around and around, but you cannot talk directly about it. There is every possibility that you will be misunderstood.You can say what is happening to you; you can express in your actions, in your behavior, in your postures, in your gestures, what is happening to you. Because a man or a woman of meditation has a grace which does not come in any other way, has a beauty which is not physical, has a spontaneity which people have almost forgotten. They only go on repeating their past experiences, rarely are they spontaneous – just right in the moment, like a mirror reflecting the situation and allowing the response to arise in oneself on its own.You can live meditation – that is the only way to convey some fragrance of it and some fragmentary indications about it. But talking about it…the words are too small.And words are meant for the marketplace, not for the temple. The temple knows only the language of silence, and when you try to convert silence into sound, everything that was living in it disappears and what is left in your hands is a dead word. And the difficulty is multiple. First, you cannot bring your experience into words; secondly, the person who hears them hears according to his own conditioning.A Japanese scholar had come to see me a few years ago, and I told him that all his problems needed only one solution, and that is meditation. If you try to solve each single problem separately it will be like pruning the leaves of a tree – you go on pruning, and new leaves will go on coming up. Meditation is like uprooting a tree; the very foundation is demolished. This much he understood, but the word meditation created a problem. Immediately he asked, “I am ready to meditate, but tell me, on what?”That is our whole mind’s approach – objective. Even meditation has to be on something – a name, a form, a god, a chanting, a mantra, but something has to be there. Otherwise how are you going to meditate? On what?The reality is, English has no word to translate exactly the Sanskrit word dhyan. English has three words: concentration, contemplation, meditation. But they are all objective. In concentration you put your whole mind energy on one subject. It is a useful technique for all scientific research. No science can grow without concentration.Contemplation is thinking about a subject but not going astray. If you are thinking about beauty then you go on thinking about beauty, of its different aspects, heights and depths, but you confine yourself to one’s object. In concentration you are static; in contemplation you move but you move almost the way a train moves, on the same track; it does not go on running into fields and streets. Out of contemplation was born all philosophy. Without contemplation there would be no philosophy at all.And meditation, in the Western world, is a special kind of concentration, or a special kind of contemplation. When you concentrate or contemplate about ordinary, worldly things it is not meditation. When you contemplate about the other world – God, heaven and hell, the existence of the soul – then it becomes meditation. It is a particular specialization of contemplation and concentration. But there is no word which can convey the meaning of dhyan.And it is not a new phenomenon. When Buddha spoke, he was not speaking in Sanskrit he was speaking in the living language of his people. The language was Pali, but he had to take the word dhyan, from Sanskrit; Pali had no word for it of its own. But it changed its form. Instead of dhyan, in Pali it became zana. And when Bodhidharma took the message to China, in Chinese there was no word with a parallel meaning to zana, so they took the word itself, and in Chinese it became ch’an – but it is dhyan.When from China it went to Japan, again there was the same problem. They figured it out, what was more suitable for them as far as pronunciation was concerned. But the word dhyan continued – in zana, in ch’an, and in Japanese it became zen. It is a very interesting history of a word which has never been found in any other language – for the simple reason that nowhere else has it been developed. And unless you develop something, you cannot have a word for it. It was always exported: from India to China, from China to Japan.In English they thought the word meditation will do; it was a wrong decision. The translators have been using meditation and now it has become established, but the meaning has to be changed. If you are not going to change the word, you will have to change the meaning.Meditation means no object, no concentration, no contemplation, but an absolute silence…nothing on the screen of the mind, just a tabula rasa.In this situation – only when you are neither thinking, nor concentrating, nor contemplating – the energy of your awareness has no involvement with any object. And energy has an intrinsic quality. It cannot remain static, it is basically dynamic; it moves, it is movement. When it cannot find any object…and you have to understand the meaning of the word object: that which hinders, that which prevents. It is an objection, it is a wall. Awareness goes and is objected by the wall; it shows the wall, it shows the details of the wall. But meditation is when there is no object, the energy goes on moving.The second fundamental about energy is that it moves in circles. All energies in existence move in circles. The earth moves in a circle around the sun, and the scientists say the sun is moving around the center of the universe, though we have not been able yet to decide where this center is. All the stars are also moving around the same center.But everything is moving, so when there is no object your awareness starts moving in a circle and comes back upon itself. Rather than being involved in an object, it falls back to the source, as if an old man has moved again back to his childhood.Meditation simply means awareness being aware of itself, the mirror reflecting nothing but just being itself. It is one of the most difficult subjects to talk about. It is better not to talk about it. Even if you can manage to say something it will be misunderstood. In life there are things which cannot be talked about, and meditation is one of those great experiences which can be expressed, but through different means, not words – through your eyes….The eyes of a meditator have a different quality, a different depth, a certain compassion. The face of the meditator has something of the quality of a marble statue. The gestures of the meditator are so peaceful and so cool that if you can watch them, even watching them will bring coolness and silence and calmness to you.The meditator walks differently; he has a grace in every one of his actions. He also speaks differently. He does not bother about linguistics or grammar, his whole concern is to expose his heart, as far as is possible, through his speaking or through his non-speaking. His presence has a tremendous vitality, a freshness, a youthfulness. Even at the last moment of his life…his body may have become old, but he is young.So rather than thinking about how to talk about it, be it, and let people feel it. The experience that you are going through is immensely beautiful, but by talking about it you may create a disturbance in your own experience. If you are not understood, or misunderstood, you will start suspecting that perhaps you are hallucinating or perhaps you are daydreaming, because nobody seems to understand what you say.It is better not to say until you are in a situation where even if the whole world misunderstands you, it cannot create a doubt in your being. Your experience has become so crystallized that there is no possibility of raising a question. Then you can talk – whether people understand or not, that is their problem. But right now, in the beginning of your experience, things are very fragile, very delicate, just like the petals of a roseflower. You have to be aware of the fragility of your experience.It is not always right to talk about things. Sometimes the right thing is to be silent, and perhaps your silence will say much more than you can say. And one thing is good about silence: it cannot be misunderstood.The husband had arrived home unexpectedly, and was staring suspiciously at a cigar smoldering in the ashtray. “Where did that cigar come from?” he thundered at his wife, so loud that she hid under the bed covers. There was a heavy silence, then from the closet a shaky voice answered, “Cuba.”There are moments when one should remain silent.A well-endowed woman was waiting to go in for a job interview. She was warned by the receptionist, “Listen, honey, I don’t want to upset you right before your interview but the boss has a bad reputation with women. I have heard from other girls that when he gets you alone in his office, he practically rips the dress right off your back.”“Thanks for the warning,” replied the girl, “I will change into an old one.”It is not necessarily true that what you say will reach the other person. The moment you have said something it is beyond your control. Now it is in the control of the person who has heard it. The person has absolute freedom about the kind of interpretation he is going to give it. And things like meditation should not be allowed to be misinterpreted because it is dangerous. If the person gets things wrong once, he will carry the wrong impression his whole life.Just out of compassion for others, don’t say things which can be misinterpreted, which are bound to be misinterpreted because the other person has no experience parallel to it. Then he will carry that misinterpretation his whole life. You have prevented him from finding the right source and the right feel for a meditative state.I can understand why you are asking, “How to talk about it?” It is intrinsic to meditation that the moment you feel the joy and the bliss, it wants to be shared. And you know only one way of sharing, and that is talking. You will have to learn new ways of sharing.Meditation is a new way of being, it needs a new way of sharing. Words belong to the mind; meditation is a state of no-mind. Don’t make the effort to bring it into words.One Zen master was sitting on the beach and a very curious person came and said, “I am in a hurry so I don’t want a long explanation. Just say to me in short, what is this meditation that you all go on bragging about?”The Zen master remained silent, as if he had not heard it. The man said, “What is the matter? Are you deaf?”He said, “No, I am not deaf, but you are not in a position to understand what meditation is. Neither do you have time, nor do you have any longing. The way you have proposed your question is so humiliating, insulting; I am not obliged to satisfy your curiosity. Meditation never happens to people who are only curious. Are you thirsty for it?”The man said, “I have never thought about it.”So the master said, “Just seeing me, a curiosity has arisen in you. By coincidence you will be passing by my side, why not ask about meditation?”The man felt that he had done something wrong. He said, “Forgive me, it was out of curiosity, but now I am sincerely asking. Seeing you, seeing your beauty, a small longing is arising in me too.”Still the master remained silent. He said, “Now what is the matter? I am ready to wait, I will drop the project I was on.”The master said, “I have answered it. Silence is the answer.”The man said, “My God, if silence is the answer I can get it from the trees, from the mountains, from the rivers. What is the need to come to a master?”The master said, “Their silence is meaningless. The silence of a master has immense meaning because it is conscious silence.”The man said, “These are difficult words, and I don’t know anything about consciousness. Why can’t you write in the sand with your hand a sentence that explains it to me.”The master said, “Very reluctantly, I am writing, because the moment it is written it is no more the same thing that I wanted to write.” And he wrote simply ‘Dhyan’. The man said, “But that does not explain anything to me. I don’t understand, please explain it in a little more detail.”The master wrote the same word in bigger letters, dhyan. The man said, “I am asking for some more detail.”The master tried a third time. He stood up and wrote a very big word, D-H-Y-A-N in the sand.The man said, “Small ‘dhyan’, big dhyan, or even bigger, but I am in the same situation.”The master said, “You will remain in the same situation because you want to be satisfied by simple words, and meditation is not a word. It is not even a part of the mind. If your longing is great, if your thirst is so much that you cannot live without knowing meditation, then perhaps there is some possibility.“I can show you my whole being in different ways so that you can have a little feeling of what meditation is, how it transforms the man, but forget words, forget explanations, forget language.”It is perfectly right to feel compassion, to talk about it, but it is not the right time for you. Only after enlightenment, when meditation has reached to its ultimate flowering, is one allowed to talk about it – because then he knows the subtle nuances of words, and the gaps between the words, and the gaps between the lines, and he can be articulate. Something can transpire, even through his words.But before enlightenment nobody is qualified to talk about meditation. Your whole energy should be to go deeper into meditation, so that you can know its whole territory, all the joys and all the songs and all the dances. Once you have known it from every nook and corner, once you have known its very heartbeat, perhaps. Awakened, liberated, enlightened you may be able to talk about it – then too it is not certain that you will be understood. But one thing is certain: misunderstanding will not disturb you.Otherwise, if everybody misunderstands you there is every possibility that you will start suspecting your own sanity. In this insane world, to be a meditator is almost to become an outsider, a stranger, coming from another planet. So it is better to keep your mouth closed. Let meditation grow and fill your whole being. Then perhaps you may be able to sing, or play music, or dance, or talk – in whatever way you feel yourself to be articulate.One of the great mystics of India, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, never spoke. And it was not that he was not articulate…just the opposite. Before his enlightenment he was the most proficient logician of his day, even the greatest scholars used to tremble before him. His arguments were like swords; they would penetrate you and demolish you completely. But when he became enlightened, he became utterly silent. His only expression after that was simply dancing with his small drum.You were asking about meditation, you were asking about God, and this was his answer. And he was such a beautiful dancer that slowly, slowly many gathered around him. It became a big group of dancers. Meditation was not talked about, but those dancers started feeling all the joys, slowly – which he had not told them. But his dance was so infectious that whoever had seen him dancing and whoever had the guts to join him soon became part of his being.His disciples knew nothing about meditation, as far as mind is concerned, but they knew everything about meditation as an experience.Mike was exhausted when he arrived home from work very late one night. In order not to disturb his wife, he decided to undress in the dark. He took off his shorts and was just about to climb into bed when his wife sat up and said in a sleepy voice, “Mike, dearest, would you go down to the all-night drugstore and get me a box of aspirin? I have a splitting headache.”“Certainly, sweetheart,” said the husband, and feeling his way across the room he crawled back into his clothes and stumbled out of the house and down the street to the store.“Hey, Bill, a box of aspirin for the misses,” he said wearily to the pharmacist.“Sure, sure,” said the pharmacist, “but tell me, where did you get that great fire chief’s uniform? It’s a scream.”People are living in darkness. And in darkness you cannot rely on your understanding. A light is needed within you. If you can see inside of yourself, your whole being lighted, perhaps you will become able in some way to communicate your ecstasy, your experience of godliness, but not before that.My concern is not that others will misunderstand you, my concern is that you are right now very fragile, you need all kinds of protection. You should not bother to enlighten others – first become enlightened.This is one of the functions of the master: to see whether the disciple is ripe enough to be sent to the masses; or his experience is so new, just like a small plant which can be destroyed very easily, even by a child. I would like you first to become as strong as a cedar of Lebanon. Then you can raise your head, even to the stars, and communicate your experiences.You can learn much from my own life. I have been talking about things which people cannot understand, and because they cannot understand they feel, in their unconscious, humiliated. And the only way they find to respond is to condemn me, without any evidence, without any proof, without any argument. But the masses are with them, because the masses also feel the same as they are feeling.But to me it is a hilarious phenomenon, seeing the whole world in such a mess, in such a deep insanity that no intelligent communication is possible.I was talking to the pilot of the US Marshal’s plane, because that plane was taking me from one jail to another jail, and the pilots and the air hostess became deeply interested in me. They started feeling that injustice was being done to me.They said to me, “We are in the service of the government, but still we cannot see any justice. It is absolutely pointless – a six hour journey from North Carolina to Oregon was enough and they are taking you from one city to another city, for no reason at all.” They took twelve days while the journey was only of six hours. And even the pilot, who was a well-educated man, started seeing the ugly strategy, that they wanted simply to harass me. They would bring me to the airport…At five o’clock in the morning they would wake me up in the jail, saying, “Your plane is ready,” and the plane would leave at five o’clock in the evening. And the plane was ready.The pilot said, “This seems to be absolutely absurd. The plane is ready. I am ready, I am waiting; you are ready, you are waiting, and they are simply delaying for twelve hours, for the simple reason that you can reach the next jail in the middle of the night. And orders are given to us: ‘Go as slow as possible, there is no hurry.’”But they saw me on all these twelve days handcuffed, my feet chained, on my waist another chain. And because all over there was media, to prevent me from waving my hand to the media they put another chain on my handcuffs, a small chain, and joined it with my waist chain so I could not move even my hands.The pilot said to me, “This has never happened…and particularly in the plane you cannot escape. Even criminals, even murderers are allowed to take their chains off, their handcuffs off, but they are not allowing you to take your handcuffs, your chains off. This is sheer revenge. But you look so calm and so quiet, almost enjoying the whole trip.”And finally they started asking me, “What is the secret of your calmness? You are not angry, you are not criticizing, although everything that is being done is illegal.”I said, “This is an opportunity. I have never before in my life had a twelve-day holiday! They are very understanding people.”Finally the air hostess said, “We have been asking, ‘What crime can this silent man commit?’ And they all said – the marshals, the jailers – ‘He has not committed any crime. His only crime is that he was teaching people to be silent and to be rejoicing.’”The day they left me in Oregon they had tears in their eyes – the pilot, the air hostess, the copilot. They said, “Whenever we can get a holiday from our jobs, we are going to come to your commune, because you have made us, without saying anything, aware that we are missing something. We don’t know what it is, but we are missing and we want to learn. We have gathered information from others that you call it meditation; we want to learn meditation.”Every jailer had promised me that he will be coming with his whole family to the commune, just to learn meditation… “Because we can see that we have everything, but inside we are hollow.”You can start talking only when you are absolutely clear. You will be criticized and you will not be able to support yourself with arguments. You will not be able to produce any evidence, unless you have become so capable that your whole life becomes the argument, your whole being becomes the evidence; that even without saying anything, even strangers who are not connected with you start feeling something within their being, as if a snake is uncoiling. A suppressed longing, perhaps for lives, is raising its head again.Meditation is something that you can keep repressed for as long as you want, but you cannot kill it. The seed will remain there, and one day you will have to stop repressing it. One day that same seed that you have been repressing for lives will become your savior.Osho,Sometimes I have a feeling that now I am ripe for the world, that now I can go and do those things, “what a woman has to do, a woman has to do.”To go out into the big, wide world, make lots of money, impress everybody and go down in history. I have spent a lot of the last three years in the commune and loved it. But recently, now that I am the closest to you that I have ever been, all these fantasies of fame and fortune emerge.Why can I not just sit down, be at peace with the here and now, and soak up the love you shower upon me every day? Am I really so blind?Premdipa, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but the truth is, you are still blind. There are many kinds of people who have come to me. Most of them are accidental; they had not come with a definite vision of what they were coming here for, and when they came here they got involved in meditations, they got involved with my presence, with my love. They stayed, but deep in their unconscious their old desires were still alive. So on the surface they were feeling very good, but the surface is very thin.Any small incident can open up the Pandora’s box, and all their desires they were thinking had gone are there, more forceful than ever before. That’s what is happening to you.You say, “Sometimes I have a feeling that now I am ripe for the world.” Please don’t deceive yourself. The day you are ripe for the world, I will tell you. You cannot have a certificate for yourself. You are not ripe for the world.But this is how mind is cunning. The mind wants to go into the world not because you are ripe, but because all those repressed feelings want their fulfillment: “Now I can go and do…things.” And what are the things? “What a woman has to do, a woman has to do.”And very strange things a woman has to do. “To go out into the big, wide world, make lots of money, impress everybody, and go down in history.”The end is not very interesting – go down in history? Or go down the drain! Going down in history means going to your graveyard. History is only a chronicle of those who are dead. Strange idea you have… “What a woman has to do, a woman has to do.” I have never thought about it. Whatever a woman has to do she can do here. Why go into the wide world?“Make lots of money.” What will you do with the money? Create a charitable trust? You cannot eat the money, and you cannot live by money alone – and not just money to survive but lots of money. Have you ever thought about what you mean by “lots of money”? Is there a limit to it? Because “lots of money” can mean anything. And how are you going to earn lots of money? Just by doing “what a woman has to do?”Don’t be stupid. There are many stupid women outside and they are doing their job, earning lots of money, and getting ready to go down in history. A strange desire in you…You will go to the grave, only your name may be in history. But that too is a very difficult thing. How many women have gone into history? And how many women have lived on this planet? And the women who have gone into history are not worth imitating.For example, Cleopatra. She went down in history because she was one of the most beautiful women, and she sold her body to any conqueror that came to conquer Egypt – Caesar or Anthony or anybody else. Her only defense force was, she would sell her body. She must have been the greatest prostitute of the world. Do you think she blossomed, came to her individuality? She was simply a football between the generals. One general would come and she was offering her body, and another general would come and she was ready to offer her body. Certainly she remained the empress of Egypt, with lots of money, and did everything that a woman has to do.But these kind of ugly creatures are not to be imitated. Only her physical body was beautiful, but her spirit must have been mean, utterly mean. In love, you can give everything – your body, your mind, your soul – and it is a great experience. But for money or for power, selling your body is the meanest kind of thing in the world.And what will you gain by impressing everybody? Here I can tell everybody, “Be impressed by this Premdipa,” and they all will be impressed by you. Everybody will come to you and will say, “Premdipa, you are really great! Cleopatra was nothing.”Outside in society, how are you going to impress? What genius have you to impress the world? Poetry, sculpture, painting, and all those fields are very competitive. Here things are very simple. You just stand up and tell people, “A great desire to impress you all has arisen in me. Please be kind enough and be impressed” – that’s all! And everybody will be impressed. And you don’t have to do anything that a woman has to do.“All these fantasies of fame and fortune are emerging. Why can I not just sit down, be at peace with the here and now, and soak up the love you shower upon me every day? Am I really so blind?”Your blindness consists of your repressed desires. You have not cleaned your heart. You have come here and you have put a layer around yourself, but underneath the layer are all the scorpions and all the snakes and all the spiders and all the cockroaches.The first thing for every sannyasin is to clean all these things. And with a clean ground start growing roses; otherwise one day or other these scorpions and these snakes and these cockroaches are going to assert themselves, and they will destroy your whole beautiful garden of roses. Still, nothing is lost – start cleaning.A meditator is neither a man nor a woman, because meditation has nothing to do with your body; neither does it have anything to do with your mind. In meditation you are simply and purely consciousness. And consciousness is neither male nor female.The moment you understand your consciousness, all desires for money, fame, power, impressing people and going down the drain into history, simply disappear. You have not cleaned the weeds from the ground and started growing roses. Now those weeds are hiding your roses, those weeds have grown up. You were watering the roses but the weeds were exploiting all that watering, all that manure, all that care.And remember the weeds, wild weeds, are far stronger than beautiful roses. They will slowly cripple your roses, destroy your roses, and the whole garden will be full of dead roses and dancing wild weeds. Every gardener understands it, that first the ground has to be cleaned, all roots have to be removed. All grass, weeds have to be removed from the very roots so they can’t come back again. Only then can delicate flowers be grown.Meditation is the most delicate flower in existence. You started growing it without bothering about all the rats and cockroaches and scorpions. They remained there and now they are raising their heads in protest. They are all political beings – and very strong fellows.Scientists say that there has never been any time in the history… wherever man has been there have been cockroaches. Or vice versa – wherever there are cockroaches you can infer that nearby there must be human beings. Cockroaches are in such a deep love with human beings; there seems to be no way to get rid of them. I have heard that even on the rocket that went to the moon, the passengers who were going to the moon suddenly found cockroaches. And every care was taken, but somehow cockroaches made their way and went with the people to the moon.Still, it is not too late. Start cleaning your ground. And you have every capacity, capability, and you have had experiences of beautiful silences of the heart. You have been joyous, in spite of this underlying conspiracy. And this underlying conspiracy of your mind is now convincing you that you are ripe: “Now there is no need to be worried about the world, you can go into the world.” For what? A person who is ripe in meditation cannot even think of having lots of money, going down in history, and “what a woman has to do, a woman has to do.” This is a strange idea. From where did you get it? Seems to be your own contribution.Premdipa…everybody has heard her name, now be impressed with her! You will enjoy, she will endure. There is no harm, just find her, bow down, and tell her, wherever you see her, “I am so much impressed. My God, why do people talk about Cleopatra when Premdipa is still here?” Why go down in history? Just go around the ashram!It was the late night news broadcast on CBS, at the height of the hostage problem in Iran. The newscaster announced, “And here is the latest flash. There is some good news and some bad news. First the good news: Raquel Welch has offered to give herself in exchange for the hostages and the Ayatollah Khomeini has accepted. Now the bad news: Teddy Kennedy is driving her to the airport.”Avoid these Ayatollah Khomeinis and Teddy Kennedys. All your desires can be fulfilled by my people. Just ask her, “What a woman has to do, a woman has to do – what is that?” Why not do it here? If you want to impress people, impress – my people are compassionate enough. Even if you are not beautiful they will say you are, just a unique quality of beauty.And as far as history is concerned, you can start writing a history of the world in which you make yourself the greatest heroine who has ever lived. Why wait for other historians, whether they will write about you or not? And here we have many very articulate people who can write. They will start writing a history for you. It will be a great joy to have Premdipa, who is still alive, go down in history. We can make our own history books; there is no need for anybody else to do our job.Beautiful history books, raw-silk bound, with your great pictures in it. There is no need for many copies, just a few copies, circulated to sannyasins all over the world, sent to every center, every commune: “It is a must for every meditator to read this history.” We can manage these things very easily.Outside in the world I am worried that you will be alone. And perhaps you may succeed, you may not succeed. Here success is absolutely certain and guaranteed.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 25 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,The other day, Sarito asked about writing beautiful words about you that she felt she had no right to say, and you encouraged us to express ourselves in the world. Beloved Master, I am not a speaker or writer of beautiful words, still, many times I have experienced sharing myself with people in the world, sharing you, sharing your vision. For that moment of sharing, I become what I am expressing. For that moment I radiate your light flowing through me, as if each time I myself am experiencing you newly and fresh. Can you please talk about the magic of sharing?There is only one magic in the world, and that is the magic of sharing. All else in the name of magic is simply trickery; but sharing belongs to the ultimate truth. Sharing is possible only if you have experienced – in absolute depth – love, blissfulness, ecstasy, and these are not just words to you but your very heartbeat, your very breathing. Then the magic happens. There is no magician, just the magic. You don’t do it, it simply overwhelms you. If there is somebody to receive, open and vulnerable, thirsty and longing, then something invisible starts flowing between the two.You cannot see it, but you can feel that a connection has happened which is beyond the reach of the mind. Neither can anybody else see it, but if people of understanding are around you, they can see the effects of it. The person who becomes overwhelmed is immediately no longer a person but only a presence, no longer a flower but only a fragrance, no longer a dancer but only a dance. You cannot catch hold of him, but you can enjoy to the fullest. And the person who has become connected starts melting and merging. There are no longer two persons; there are two bodies and one soul.In fact, without our knowing there is only one soul of the whole universe. The trees and the birds and the animals, and all that is living, has a universal soul. We are simply parts of it, and our ignorance consists of our thinking of ourselves as separate. That’s what is called the ego.The idea of separation is ego. The moment that false idea disappears, your whole life becomes a continuous experience of mysteries, miracles, and magic. And without your knowing, those who are thirsty start coming toward you, those who are searching suddenly start feeling a magnetic pull, a charisma, irresistibly. They may not even like to come, but they have to come; it is beyond their capacity to prevent themselves. Once they have felt something of the beyond, then they have no power to go against the flow; then they have to be just part of the flow and allow it to take them wherever it is going.In a gathering like this, that magic happens every day. You may not give it the name “magic”…because that word has become very contaminated by wrong usage; otherwise it is one of the most beautiful words. There are thousands of eyes here, but suddenly one seeing; thousands of hearts, but suddenly one beating…one harmony, and a silence as if there is nobody. This is the only magic there is.You don’t have to learn it; it is not an art. It is not within your capacity to learn it. What is within your capacity is to allow existence to flow through you. You should not stand in the way, that is the only art; you should not block the radiation. You should simply stand aside and let the universal consciousness flow through you, and reach as far as there are people who can receive it.When we are meeting here – and not just meeting in the ordinary sense but actually meeting, heart to heart, being to being – this overwhelming experience goes around the earth, to all the sannyasins wherever they may be. They may not understand what is happening, why suddenly they have become silent, why suddenly they have started singing or playing on the flute, why suddenly a deep urge has arisen in them to dance. They may not be aware of what is happening. So this gathering is not only the gathering of those few who are actually present here, it is a gathering of all those who have loved me and who have received my love. Wherever they may be, dead or alive, they are part of this gathering, and they will rejoice and sing and dance, and feel grateful to existence.A great Zen master was getting on in years. Finally, one day a few of his disciples gathered around him, and with long faces asked, “Master, your death is approaching – you have told us that. Now we must ask, where would you like us to bury you?”The old man looked up, and with a twinkle in his eye said, “Surprise me!”These are the real people, the real magicians. Even death cannot make them sad. They can make fun even of death. What a beautiful man this old Zen master must have been, who could say, “Surprise me. Let me see what you do when I die. I am not leaving any instructions, I will wait and see. Do something that has never been done. Surprise me – just don’t be repetitive.”I don’t know what happened later on, because I cannot think myself how to surprise. Whatever you do must have been done thousands of times. The old man has left his disciples in a state of koan – that was his whole life’s teaching.These people are so strange that even when they are dying they cannot forget their teaching. That was his teaching: giving koans to the disciples. Koans are puzzles which cannot be solved, whatever you do; it doesn’t matter. It is not a question of intelligence, it simply is not possible to solve them. The moment you realize it, that all your efforts have failed and now you cannot see anything else that is possible, a great silence descends on you. In that silence you are no more. The puzzle remains, but you are solved.And that’s the whole purpose of a koan. The puzzle will always remain – that’s why the same koan goes on being used for thousands of years, because no koan can ever be solved. But it solves the person. All his problems and doubts and questions and everything disappear. In that utter failure of his mind to solve a small puzzle, the mind stops. It has tried every way; there is no way out. And the moment the mind fails, you encounter yourself…beyond mind, beyond words.That old man has again given them a koan. He will be gone and they will be sitting there trying to solve the puzzle. How to surprise the old man? Whatever you can think of must have been done before. Millions of people have died and thousands of masters have died. Everything must have been tried; surprise is almost impossible. That was the meaning of the twinkle in his eye – he knows that he is putting you in trouble.Perhaps you will not be able to surprise him, but in the very effort to find a way out, you may find a way in, you may come to know yourself. His death may become a resurrection for you. In his death you may come to know the eternal, the immortal.This is the only magic I know of: to have a taste of the eternal and to allow people to share the taste. Those who are ready and ripe, those who are mature and of age, they will immediately start growing. And those who are not yet ripe will have to wait a little.There is no harm in waiting a little, because time is without any beginning and without any end. It does not matter whether you become enlightened on Monday…because there are only seven days – you can choose any day. These seven days have been chosen because of the seven colors of the rainbow. These are the seven colors of the rays of the sun. These seven days are named after light and color.Enlightenment is the most psychedelic experience. More colorful than enlightenment there is nothing else. More full of light and more full of delight there is nothing else.Osho,For the last four days I have been taking part in the Zazen group. When anger arises, it is so difficult for me to watch this feeling instead of throwing this anger on others. Beloved Master, would you please speak about the art of watching?Everything that I have been saying to you consists of the art of watching – from different dimensions, from different aspects, from different angles. My whole teaching can be reduced to a single word – watching.That is the only thing in you which is not part of the mind. That is the only thing in you which does not belong to you, but belongs to existence itself. For example, I can watch my hand; that means I am not the hand. Whatever you can watch you are not. This is a simple arithmetic. The watcher is bound to be separate from the object that he is watching.You can watch your body from outside, and from inside too. You can close your eyes and you can watch your body from the inside. It will be dark, and it will not be so visible and so clear, but still you can feel many things. You can hear the heart beating. If you are really very silent you can even hear the sound of your blood running. You are not the body.You can watch your mind. All its thoughts, howsoever fine, are available to your watching. You can see the subtlest expression of the mind. That makes one thing clear – that you are not the mind either. It is a little more difficult, but not impossible, to watch your feelings – what the poets call the heart; your emotions, your moods – which are the subtlest things in your personality. A little sadness, a little joy, or perhaps nothing but an indifference…But even indifference is a certain attitude. Watching goes on becoming more and more deep.Beyond your moods there is nothing to watch, but only silence. In that silence a great miracle happens. The energy that has been watching turns upon itself. Hence many old religions have used as a symbol the snake holding its own tail in its mouth. It is a circle…the mouth and the tail. It has been used in a very ancient school in Tibet, and Madame Blavatsky brought it from there and it became a symbol for the Theosophical movement.I have met many Theosophists. In the city where I used to live there was a Theosophical lodge; it was one of their big centers. And just before the lodge was the snake taking his tail in his mouth.The president, who had invited me to speak in their lodge, was taking me inside the lodge. I asked him, “Do you know the meaning of this snake?”He said, “I have once or twice been puzzled myself – what is the meaning of this snake? And I have been asking all our Theosophist leaders – president of the world society, secretary of the world society – but nobody seems to know the meaning of it. And it is there on all the lodges. It seems everybody has forgotten the meaning.”I said, “If you have forgotten the meaning of this simple symbol, then you have forgotten everything about theology, theosophy, or whatever name you give to it. You have forgotten everything about religion, because this snake represents the ultimate experience of watching. When the energy of watching, just like a snake, turns back to the source, creating a circle, one knows oneself, there is nothing else to know. That’s what Socrates was saying to his disciples: ‘Know thyself, because without knowing thyself you cannot be thyself.’”Unconscious, you simply think you are. But you don’t know who you are, what you are, why you are. Your whole life is lived in unconsciousness.Mrs. Pomeroy’s maid became so sick one afternoon that Mrs. Pomeroy said to her, “Please, let me put you in my bed until I can get our family doctor here to examine you.”When the physician arrived, Mrs. Pomeroy showed him into the bedroom, then left him alone to examine the maid. “Doctor, I am not sick at all,” confessed the maid, “I am faking it. That old tightwad owes me three months back salary, and I am not getting out of her bed until she pays me.”The doctor’s face suddenly brightened. “Hell,” he said, “she owes me for my past ten visits here.” He then popped a thermometer into his mouth and said to the maid, “Move over.”But this is our whole life…almost living in a state of sleep.When a sudden storm blew up at sea, a young woman leaning against the ship’s rail lost her balance and was thrown overboard. Immediately another figure plunged into the waves beside her, and held her up until a lifeboat rescued them.To everyone’s astonishment, the hero was the oldest man on the voyage, ninety-two years old. That night a party was given in honor of his bravery. “Speech, speech!” cried the other passengers.The old gentleman rose slowly and looked around at the enthusiastic gathering. “There is just one thing I would like to know,” he said. “Who the hell pushed me?”This game goes on. Our life is really ridiculous, and the only way to make it sane and intelligent is the way of creating a watcher in you. Then whether you are awake or asleep the watcher remains inside you, just like a small flame, continuously burning. It watches your sleep, it watches your dreams; it watches everything. Finally it watches your death too.And because it watches your death, it means you are not dying. Only that which was not you is dying. The flame has become your life source, and the center simply moves on into another form, into another life. And this flame cannot be extinguished. It is immortality itself. The experience of this flame is the experience of enlightenment. With this experience, all the fears of life disappear.What remains is pure joy, and a tremendous gratitude toward existence. I call this gratitude the only prayer…no words, but without words a deep feeling of gratefulness: “So much has been given to me which I don’t deserve, which I have not earned, of which I am not worthy. Life goes on giving to me out of its abundance, not because I need it, I deserve it, but because life has so much to give. It is overflowing.”The energy of existence is so much, uncontainable. So those who are not closed, who are open, they become filled with all kinds of flowers, and all kinds of fragrances, and all kinds of riches, and all kinds of mysteries, and all kinds of secrets.The golden key is watching. And there is nothing much to learn in it. It is a very simple thing. You cannot imagine anything more simple which can open the doors of the whole existence for you.Osho,Lately I have slipped right back into my English skin, and I'm so tired of it: sad, serious, depressed, repressed, apologetic, hesitant, without humor or playfulness, conscientious, and boring. It is really pathetic.When my energy takes off I am a totally different person, so I know this isn't the real me. But something will trigger, and I am back in the old skin again. Please help me to cast it off.You are in one of the most difficult skins. But I will take you out. And you also have become aware of slipping out of it; but just out of the old habit you again get into it. So now it is not as difficult as it usually is.You are describing very rightly that English conditioning. It is one of the most serious and sad conditionings in the world.You say, “Lately I have slipped right back into my English skin.” Because you have been out, that’s why you can recognize what this skin is. Those who are already in have no way of knowing. They cannot compare, they have never been out of the bag.“…and I am so tired of it.” Everybody who has that conditioning is tired of it. But one of the fundamentals of conditioning is that whether you are tired or bored, you have lived with it so long that leaving it aside makes you feel that you are standing naked, nude. Your conditioning has become your companion; without it you are suddenly lonely.You want to get out of it because you can feel that the sadness is unnecessary, the seriousness is unnecessary. Life is not serious, life is very playful. And those who understand life a little bit immediately jump out of their conditionings and join with the celebration of the eternal, ongoing dance of existence.You say, “…sad, serious, depressed, repressed, apologetic, hesitant, without humor or playfulness, conscientious, and boring.” All great qualities! These are the qualities which used to make people saints. Think twice before dropping this skin. You can become a great English saint!But if you want to drop it, you will be just a healthy human being. And to me a healthy human being who is sane, loving, full of a sense of humor, joyous, full of laughter, is far more valuable than any saint with all the qualities you have described. But you are in a kind of limbo.You say, “It is really pathetic. When my energy takes off I am a totally different person, so I know this is not the real me. But something will trigger, and I am back in the old skin again.” Just learn a simple thing: what triggers, that makes you go back into all these great qualities. It must be happening often, so you can watch – where is the switch that suddenly makes you English? Put it off and you are out of the skin.And once you know the switch…Perhaps it is jealousy, perhaps it is egoism – because these qualities make one very egoistic. One feels superior to others. The people who are laughing, enjoying, these qualities condemn them – they are childish, foolish. These qualities proclaim themselves to be spiritual. So if you have somewhere a desire to be called spiritual, saintly, special, then there will be the trigger.To be out of this English sickness is very simple. Just go against all these qualities. When you feel sad, jog, jump, laugh. When you feel repressed, express. And don’t be bothered that people may think you are mad; that it is not the time, it is not the right place where you are expressing. It is not their problem. You remember that you have not to allow depression to set in. The moment you feel that something is becoming depressed, repressed, immediately express yourself in a song, in a dance, in a laughter. You will have to do something so that these qualities are counter-balanced.And here it is possible. Back in England it will be very difficult, because that is the only country where everybody is a saint. The climate of the country is very saintly – so sad, so grumpy. And just visualizing…because they have not allowed me even to enter the country, perhaps out of fear that I will condemn everything that I see. It is better not to let me know their real situation, that everybody is walking with an umbrella. What kind of people are these? And with an umbrella can you laugh? With an umbrella a serious and sad face fits perfectly well. Here it is possible. I have heard….An English tourist was visiting a Wild West town in America for the first time. He had heard about an old Indian who was famous for his incredible memory. He spied the old Indian in front of the general store and decided to put him to the test.“Okay Mr. Indian, what did you have for breakfast on October 4, 1920?”The poker-faced old Indian answered, “Eggs.”The English man scoffed, “Hell, everyone eats eggs for breakfast. You are a fraud.”Eight years later, the English man once again was visiting the same Wild West town and saw the old Indian lounging in front of the same wild west store. The tourist walked up to him and said, good-naturedly, “How.”The Indian answered, “Scrambled.”Here it is possible. Laughter is in the air here. In fact, I cannot conceive how one can be sad and serious in this temple, which is a temple of a dancing god, of a laughing god; which is a temple rebelling against all temples of the past which were all serious, sad. This is a temple of love.You have just to be alert and careful that the old habit does not catch hold of you. Just for a few days it will come again and again, but don’t let it take possession of you. Run, stand on your head, do anything crazy, but don’t be English, because that country is simply a big madhouse.You will have to make just a little effort. Be playful. And here everything is allowed. If you are standing by the side and just laughing, nobody is going to ask you why you are laughing. If somebody is interested, he may stand by your side and start laughing himself. What is the point of asking you? Laughter is such a healthy exercise. Somebody is laughing – that’s perfectly good exercise, join him. Somebody is being playful – if you have time, join him. Make every effort which goes against these habits. Never hesitate for anything.There is no question of being apologetic; you are not committing any sin, you are not interfering with anybody’s life or freedom. You don’t have to be continually saying, “I am sorry.”I have heard about a man who had come from a faraway village to a big city, just to see the city – he had never seen it before. There are millions of people in India who have never visited a big city, who have never seen a railway train, who are still at least ten centuries behind the rest of the world.But he found it very strange. There was such a crowd on the streets that people were pushing him, people were walking on his toes, and everybody was saying, “I am sorry.” He could not understand: “What kind of game is this? First push somebody and then say, ‘I am sorry.’ Walk over his feet and then say, ‘I am sorry.’” He thought, “Perhaps in this big city…I don’t know the game.” But watching a little more, he thought, “I have to participate in it.”So he really started hitting people and saying, “I am sorry.” People looked at him: “What is the matter? What kind of lunatic has come here?” Because he was simply hitting on their head and saying, “I am sorry.”Then somebody took hold of him and said, “What is the matter?”He said, “I am just joining in the game. Now that I have come to the city, I have to learn everything. Everybody was making a fool of me. Soon I realized that this won’t do. And I am a villager; when I do something, I really do it.”“These weak fellows, they just hit a little bit and say, ‘I am sorry.’ I give them such a hit, they will never forget it for their whole life. And I am enjoying the game. Now I don’t want to go back to the village, this game is so great. And you need not worry, just you have to say, ‘I am sorry,’ and you can do anything.”In this place you don’t have to be continuously on the defense, because nobody is complaining against you, nobody is in any way trespassing on your territory. You are here as if you are alone. It is the easiest place where you can drop your English skin and conditioning. And you can learn ways of being joyous, cheerful, playful.We are not creating here a commune of dead people. We are creating a commune of people who are living moment to moment, with totality, with intensity, squeezing the juice of life to the very last drop. And once you have learnt, all these conditionings which go against life cannot come back. You have to be so totally in tune with life that anything that goes against life will not be able to get hold of you.Life is the greatest power. Once life gets hold of you, then no habit is big enough. And these are just sick habits; they are not even healthy. They are created by a society which has been thinking itself to be the greatest land of the world, the most powerful land of the world, the biggest empire in the world. And there was a time when it was a great empire. It was said that the sun never sets in the British empire; somewhere or the other the sun is always rising – because the empire was the biggest all around the world.These qualities are the qualities of the imperialist – because the people who rule, they cannot be playful, they have to be serious. The people who rule, they have to be hard – not only hard on others, but hard on themselves. They had to be some kind of ascetics, serious people. They are carrying the whole burden of the earth. They used to call it “white man’s burden.” And naturally, if you are carrying the whole world’s burden on your shoulders, you cannot laugh, you cannot rejoice, you have to be serious.And the ridiculous thing is that they have taken on the whole responsibility themselves. The people that they have taken responsibility on their shoulders for, want freedom, want their responsibility in their own hands. Because the moment responsibility goes into others’ hands, your freedom is also gone. The responsibility and the freedom remain together. The white man’s burden was because he was making slaves around the world – almost half of the world. And because they had taken their freedom, they had to take their responsibility too. That created all these great qualities – ugly, psychologically sick.But there was a purpose once. Now that purpose also is gone. Now Britain is no longer even a big power. But they cannot forget those old days, those great days when they were the most powerful people around the world. And they cannot drop those qualities because those qualities make them remember the days of glory and power.But for you, for the new generation in England or anywhere else, there is no need to be bothered about the past and its glory and its golden days. In fact, those days were the most ugly and barbarous for England. The very idea that you are ruling over other human beings is inhuman. And perhaps they were doing so much inhumanity to other human beings that it reflected back on their own joy. They started feeling guilty deep down that they are doing something wrong; hence the continuous apologetic mood. They could not mix with people because everybody was lower than them.India has known them for three hundred years. They lived separately; they were not living in Indian cities, they had their own separate camps in every big city where Indians were not allowed even to enter. They had their own societies – small societies, small clubs, where Indians were not allowed. Indians were not accepted as human beings. The English had to keep a very serious face continuously because they could not be friendly with the people they were surrounded with. They had to keep all the people continuously afraid of them because their number was small.If Indians were not a race of very patient people, whose tradition has been of accepting everything silently, who have never revolted against anybody and who have never attacked anybody…Even when they had a great empire of their own, they never went beyond their boundary even to conquer small countries, which would have been so simple.It was totally a different kind of culture. But because of this different culture, a small group of Britishers could manage to control a country of millions. But they absolutely never mixed, just to make it clear that they are superior beings, higher beings. How can they mix with ordinary human beings?But this kind of attitude naturally has a consequence on the person. He has to suffer. Carrying any kind of inhuman idea ultimately is going to backfire. And that’s what is happening. Now everything has backfired. England has fallen into a very dark state, and there seems to be no possibility that it will be able to come out of it.But here nobody is a foreigner. Nobody is English, nobody is Indian, nobody is German, nobody is Chinese. My whole approach is that I am against all discriminations of race, nation, color. I believe in one world, one humanity, and I would like my people to be also aware that this whole world is ours. Nobody is superior and nobody is inferior. And then life becomes a very playful, a very blissful affair.An English woman, traveling on safari in darkest Africa, was very excited until she discovered that part of the journey was to be made through cannibal country.Knowing that the safari cook was a member of one of the cannibal tribes, she decided to consult him. He proved to be a pleasant, civilized man.“You need not have any fear of my people,” he assured her. “It would never enter their minds to harm anyone on safari. However,” he continued, as he eyed the woman’s short, plump figure, “if you happen to meet with an accident and be killed, you won’t go to waste.”Do you get it? – No!I have to tell you something else.Jealously eyeing her next door neighbor’s new mink coat, the young wife asked how she had been able to afford such an expensive item.“You probably won’t believe this,” replied the neighbor, “but I saved up all the money myself by charging my husband five dollars every time we made love.” The young wife was determined to get a mink coat of her own, so that night when her husband advanced on her she pushed him away and demanded five dollars before going any further.The aroused husband fumbled through his trouser pockets but could only come up with four dollars and fifty cents. “Well, for that amount you can only sample my affection,” she bargained.After several minutes of extensive sampling, the wife was very excited and knew she would be unable to resist her husband much longer. In a final last-ditched attempt to maintain her bargaining position, she whispered in his ear, “Say, if it is all the same to you, dear, why don’t I lend you the fifty cents until tomorrow?”

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 26 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is it enough to go to your discourses without understanding the words? My Japanese girlfriend does not speak any English but enjoyed your lectures very much.She wrote to me that she will not learn English because it is too dangerous for her to understand what you say. Can the non-verbal communication between master and disciple really be the ultimate, or should I develop all the abilities that existence gave me and learn English?Anand Alok, the real communion between the master and the disciple is certainly not through words. On the contrary, words are hindrances. Your Japanese girlfriend is absolutely right. If she can enjoy just being in my presence, there is no need to learn the language.She is also right that it is dangerous to understand me through words – dangerous for two reasons. The more basic reason is that she will start connecting with me through the mind, and that is no connection. That is just a false and pseudo supplement, substitute for the authentic connection that is heart to heart. And secondly, it is true that what I am saying is dangerous, because it may disturb her conditionings, it may disturb her prejudices, it may disturb her completely. But tell her to remember that a heart-to-heart communion is far more dangerous than any communion between minds, because your mind can have safety measures, defenses.The heart is open; there are no safety measures, no defenses. Your mind may interpret me according to your prejudices – then it need not be disturbed – but your heart will simply take me in without any interpretation on its own part. She has chosen the more dangerous path, but the more sincere, more authentic and the most shortcut.So don’t disturb her and force her to learn the language. Language has to be forgotten. You have to forget, you have to unlearn all that you know. In the space of unlearning your innocence starts growing. I speak just to help you to understand my silent gaps. But what I am really doing is in the silences – not through the words, but between the words. Words are just toys that I am giving to your mind to play with. Silence is really the sword that penetrates directly into your heart; it brings transformation.Mind is very reluctant to change, very stubborn in changing. It has so much investment in its past that it is almost blind to the future possibilities. The heart has no past, it has only the present and an opening into the future. It longs for the unknown, for the mysterious. It is not satisfied with the mundane, it is not satisfied with money or power, or prestige. Its longing is for something beyond the ordinary, beyond ambitions, because only beyond ambitions is the land of the lotus paradise.Your Japanese girlfriend has a deeper understanding than you have. In fact, it is a strange coincidence that you are Chinese.The whole philosophy of meditation first reached China from India, but China already had its own ideas. Confucius was a very mundane philosopher, and he was the dominant figure in China, the most respected person – because he was the most moralistic, puritan. He created all kinds of disciplines for the development of the personality. And meditation is a demolishing of the personality.There was a great clash between meditation and Confucian philosophy, which was predominant in China. It was a long struggle. There was a small stream of Tao – Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu – but it was a very small stream. It had no national impact because the people who were impressed by Confucius remained in their heads, and Tao was the philosophy of the heart.So when Buddhist monks reached China from India, there was immediately a deep communion between them and the small Taoist stream. Just looking into each other’s eyes they understood, language was not a barrier.But with Confucius there was a continuous argument for centuries. And it is a strange fact that Confucius has won, finally, because the communism that now prevails over China is an extension of Confucius. Mao is a Confucian, and they have destroyed all the Taoist monasteries; their scriptures; they have forced the Taoist meditators to go to the fields and work there.China has gone against Lao Tzu, who was its greatest son. It has gone with Confucius, who is just as ordinary as Manu in India – just a social thinker, creating ways for having a better culture, better civilization, without thinking at all about consciousness. The West has many philosophers of the same quality.Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu are rare flowers, exotic…but they were the people who understood Bodhidharma without a single word being said to them. They were the people who simply accepted Gautam Buddha and his immense contribution of meditation. But China has slipped out of the Taoist world of non-verbal, non-linguistic silence.But in Japan things were different. When the philosophy of meditation reached Japan, it already had a religion, Shinto – very primitive, without any great philosophy or any great arguments. People were only formally related to it; their hearts were not dancing with it. It was out of date, there was a vacuum. They needed something to fill the vacuum, and then came the philosophy of meditation. And by now it was even richer than it was when it had reached China, because Gautam Buddha’s approach to life was tremendously enhanced and enriched by the Taoist approach.They melted into each other, they made each other brighter, lovelier, deeper, higher. In fact it was a miracle. Meditation has never reached to such heights as when Gautam Buddha and Lao Tzu’s philosophies met in an eternal communion.What reached Japan was Gautam Buddha and Lao Tzu both together. China had made Gautam Buddha’s approach more refined, had given it new dimensions, made it more pure. Japan was fortunate that it was in a state of vacuum. It simply absorbed this new philosophy without any resistance. Hence dhyan, or meditation, came to the highest flowering in Japan.The flowering of Zen has left even the original master, Gautam Buddha, far behind. It has also left Lao Tzu far behind. It went on improving because there was no resistance, no argument against it, nobody to fight with it. Everybody was immediately in an agreeable receptivity. Zen became such a flowering that nothing like it has happened anywhere in the world.Anand Alok you have been with me for many years, but your foundation is Confucian. And on top of it, you are interested in communism too. Both these together are preventing you from growing. Springs come and go but your meditation has not reached to the peak, although you love me, and slowly, slowly you have started loving meditation too. But you have barriers within you: Confucius and Karl Marx and Mao Zedong. And these are big boulders, preventing the whole passage, not allowing your consciousness to reach to its ultimate heights.Your girlfriend is in a far more blessed state – please don’t disturb her. Let her enjoy a silent communion. It is the ultimate as far as communion is concerned.She is fortunate that she does not understand the English language; hence her mind cannot interfere. She can understand, but not what I am saying. She can feel me, but not the meaning of my words. I am to her just a presence which makes her silent, which helps her to be more conscious, and she is absolutely right not to learn the language, because she is growing. Why bother about what I am saying? If you can understand me, what I am, there is no point in understanding what I am saying.If you can also forget Confucius and Karl Marx and Mao Zedong-Tung, it will be a great step toward Gautam Buddha, toward Lao Tzu, toward me – and in the final analysis, toward yourself.“You must help me, doctor,” said Hymie to his psychiatrist. “I can’t remember anything for more than a few minutes. It is driving me crazy.”The psychiatrist asked gently, “How long have you had the problem?”Hymie paused, then said thoughtfully, “What problem?”Mind is nothing but memory, and memory is not understanding. This has to become as clear as possible to you. Memory is a totally separate mechanism; even a very stupid person can have a very good memory. Intelligence is a totally different phenomenon. More often, the intelligent people don’t have good memories. Their whole energy is involved in intelligence. The mechanism of memory does not get enough nourishment. But a person who has no intelligence, all his energies go into his memory systems, and there have been such strange cases of memory, almost unbelievable, but the people were simply idiots.It happened in the time of the emperor Akbar, in India, and it happened again in the times of a British governor-general, Curzon. The Curzon case is very famous, and perhaps there has never been such a complicated examination of a villager’s memory, who had no intelligence. And Curzon is close to us, and every detail has been written about it.He heard that in Rajasthan there was a villager whose memory was phenomenal, almost inconceivable. Curzon became so intrigued that finally he invited the villager to his court. The villager only understood his local language, Rajasthani; it is a dialect of Hindi. He had no other education, he had no knowledge of any other language, and Curzon, with his political cunningness, made such an arrangement that it was almost certain that the man would fail.The arrangement was this: He called the man into his court, where he had to encounter thirty people, and these thirty people all spoke different languages. Each person – this was the process, the procedure – each person was going to say one sentence in his language.The man will go to the first person and he will say the first word of a sentence, and then there will be a big gong struck just to get the mind of the villager disturbed. Then he will move to the second person, who will say the first word of his sentence. In this way he will go on moving – one round. On the second round, the first person will give the second word of his sentence. And each time a word is given a very loud gong is struck.And he went on and on; he had almost to take twelve rounds and then he was asked to repeat each sentence. He knew none of the languages, and the way the sentences were given to him was a very strange and cunning device: One word each time, then twenty-nine words of other languages; then he will get the second word of the first language. Again twenty-nine words of other languages, then he will get the third word. The man, to the amazement of all, repeated all thirty sentences with absolute accuracy, without knowing the meaning.Curzon himself has written in his autobiography, “I saw it with my own eyes, I had made this whole arrangement, still, sometimes I start suspecting whether it really happened. Is it possible to have such a memory? And the man was just a village idiot.”The whole village thought that he was good for nothing, he could never do anything intelligently. But his memory was perhaps the most evolved computer that nature has ever produced in anybody’s mind. And you will find hundreds of the same kind of stories about great intelligent people whose memory is either almost negligible or nil.The first man who found the law of averages was a great mathematician, Diodorus. He had gone for a picnic with his wife and his half dozen children. The wife said, “Take care of the children,” because they were crossing a small mountain stream and the current was very strong. The wife said, “Hold each child and take him to the other side.”He said, “Don’t be worried.” Instead of doing the simple thing, the great mathematician did his mathematics. He measured every child, his height, and in the sand of the bank of that stream, he calculated their average height. Then he went and in a few places measured the depth of the stream; he again calculated the average depth of the stream. The average height of the children was greater than the average depth, so he said, “There is no problem.”The wife was suspicious – as every wife is always suspicious – about the intelligence of her husband. She said, “I don’t believe in your mathematics and all this nonsense. I am interested in the life of my children.”He said, “Don’t be worried, my calculations are absolutely right.” He went ahead, and the wife shouted because two children started going down. She was holding them somehow, and the current was strong. But you will not believe it, Diodorus said, “What is happening? There must be some mistake in my calculation. So you wait, hold the children, I am going to the bank to see my calculations in the sand.”She said, “Drop all that nonsense – these children will be gone! You can do your calculations later on.” Because she was screaming, he had to take the children to the other side. Leaving them on the other side, he came back to look at the calculation. Still he could not see a simple fact, that average is the most fictitious thing.Some child was taller, some child was very small; the stream somewhere was very deep and somewhere it was very shallow – and you bring out the average. There is nobody who is average. But he was so much involved in his mathematics that even his common sense was missing. This has been the story of many great thinkers, philosophers, scientists. Their intelligence was great, they have contributed great ideas to the world, but their memory system and their common sense were very small.Anand Alok has the mind of an intellectual. He wants to understand every word, analyze it, argue for and against, and come to a conclusion. But this is not the way of the meditator.Anand Alok, your girlfriend is perfectly right, don’t disturb her. If she is enjoying my presence, my silence, and just the sound of my words, not the meaning, and if she is feeling a certain growth of consciousness in her, then everything is going as it should be. No interference is needed. On the contrary, you should start forgetting and unlearning Confucius, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong-Tung, who are all intellectuals. None of them is a meditator.Osho,For twelve years, as a sannyasin, I have repeatedly risked living above the income I could make, and so far have not only survived, but at times been immeasurably blessed. But since my re-entry into Chinese society and becoming forty-eight years old, I've become more sensible and worry about health insurance and creating a financial base for myself.What does it mean for a sannyasin to live in society without falling into the mental traps of stability, and missing the growth in trust, possible in a state of insecurity?Anand Alok, the first thing to be understood by a sannyasin is that life is insecurity. There is no insurance against death. And the more you make life safer and secure, the more it becomes dry and a desert.Insecurity means you have to remain awake, alert to all the dangers. And life is always passing on a razor’s edge. The idea of being secure and safe is very dangerous, because then you don’t need to be alert and conscious. In fact, to avoid alertness and consciousness you want security and safety.Live moment to moment with all the insecurity there is. The trees are living, the birds are living, the animals are living; they don’t know anything about insurance, they don’t know anything about safety. They are not concerned – that’s why every morning they can sing.You cannot sing every morning. Perhaps you have never sung in any morning. Your nights will be filled with nightmares of insecurity, unsafety, dangers lurking all around. In the morning you wake up, not joyously; you wake up to again face the insecurities of the day – the problems, the anxieties.But listen to the birds. And I don’t think they have lost anything. Just see the deer and their beauty and their agility, see the trees – who can be cut down any moment. But they are not concerned with that, their concern is the moment, not the next moment; this moment is all joy, all peace. Everything is green and everything is juicy.I can understand that you have grown in age. And as one grows in age…in other words, he is saying that death is coming closer. But there is no way to prevent it. And if you cannot prevent death – and nobody has ever been able to prevent death – then it is better not to be bothered by it. What has to happen will happen, but why destroy your present moment for something which has not happened yet? Let it first happen, then you can worry about it. First let death happen, then in your grave you have eternity to worry about security, safety – you will not have anything else.For twenty-four hours a day you can toss and turn in your grave, it is absolutely private and secure – you cannot even get out of it. Nobody can get into it. Only the people who are in graves are absolutely safe; nothing can happen to them.The more alive you are, the more you will love insecurity, and your insecurity will make your intelligence sharper, your alertness keener, your consciousness a continuous growth.Have you not watched that great scientists never come from rich people’s families? Neither do great poets or great mystics. The rich families have not contributed much to the development of consciousness or human growth. What is the reason? Because a boy who is born with a golden spoon in his mouth need not be bothered about security and safety, everything is secure and safe. Naturally, it dulls his mind. He has no challenge, he is surrounded continuously with servants, with facilities, with luxuries. He has no time even to think of consciousness, alertness, meditation.I have heard…In front of a hotel in California a Rolls Royce limousine stopped, and the woman sitting inside told the guard, “Ask for four bearers to come, my child has to be carried to the room.”The guard could not believe it, but he felt great pity for the poor child – perhaps he cannot walk. But he was looking perfectly healthy. Too fat certainly, but something must be wrong; otherwise, this was the first time that somebody had to be carried, and he was not more than ten years old. So four bearers were called. They carried the boy, and they were also puzzled. They asked the boy, “Can’t you walk? Is there some difficulty?”He said, “There is no difficulty, there is no question, I can walk. But I need not – I can afford to be carried. Only poor people walk. When I can afford to be carried to my room, why should I behave like a poor man?”They told the mother, “This is not good.” She said, “It is not your business to be worried. Each time the boy has to go anywhere, carry him to the car. When he comes back, carry him to the room. He is my boy, my only boy, and I have to give him all the luxury, all the comfort possible. And don’t be worried, we can afford it; whatever your charges are, they will be paid.”Now, can this boy ever think of becoming meditative, conscious, alert? Can even the idea of searching for truth arise in him? No, he will remain just a vegetable.You have seen, just a few years ago there were hippies all around the world. They were all below the age of thirty. And a strange phenomenon was happening, nobody has been observing it…after thirty, where do those hippies disappear? After thirty they start becoming worried about safety and security. Half the life is gone, they enjoyed it to the fullest, but now old age will come and death will come. They forget all about the philosophy of the hippies – they suddenly become square!And I have information from my friends that those hippies who were not taking a bath, who were not shaving, who were not brushing their teeth, are now behaving perfectly normally – taking a bath, shaving their beard, brushing their teeth. They are working, and working efficiently, in offices, in factories, but they all have disappeared.As one becomes older the shadow of the death starts falling on you; that’s what is creating the fear. But as far as a sannyasin is concerned, there is no death.If you are feeling afraid of death and the dangers ahead, that only means you are not going deeper into your meditation, that meditation has been to you just a fashion. Now it is time, that you should sincerely and authentically enter into meditation, because that is the only space which can free you from all fears of death, old age, sickness.It makes you aware that you are not the body and you are not the mind, and you are not only this life, you are eternal life. Death has happened many times and you are still alive, and death will happen many times and you will be still alive.Meditation’s ultimate conclusion is, live the moment to its totality, intensively, joyously, because there is nothing to be feared – because even death is a fiction. There is no need for any security, for any safety. Live moment to moment, trusting the whole existence as the birds are trusting it, as the trees are trusting it. Don’t separate yourself from existence, become part of it and existence will take care of you. It is already taking care of you.A traveling salesman, completing a trip earlier than anticipated, sent his wife a telegram: “Returning home Friday.”Arriving home, he found his wife in bed with another man. Being a person of nonviolence, he complained to his father-in-law, who said, “I’m sure there must be an explanation.”The next day the father-in-law was all smiles. “There was an explanation: she did not get your telegram.”These are the ways of the mind: If you look deeply, mind is simply stupid – every mind. And the mind goes on creating all kinds of worries, concerns. My message to you is that you are not the mind. You don’t need any explanation, you need an experience, and that experience is missing; hence the problem has arisen.An airplane passenger being served drinks by the stewardess exclaimed, “Hey, here is something new – an ice cube with a hole in it!”“What is new about that?” answered the man sitting alongside him, “I married one.”Don’t take much notice of what mind says and thinks, laugh at it.The pope was making water in the men’s room when he noticed that somebody had written on the wall, “My mother made me a homosexual.”So he took out a pencil and wrote underneath it, “If I buy her the material, will she make me one too?”Avoid your mind games. Get beyond the mind, where only silence prevails…no insecurity, no question of safety. In that silence everything is secure. You are part of this existence.Your worry is something like a leaf on a tree being worried about security. The tree is taking all the care, providing all the juice to the leaf, bringing water against gravitation – high up, perhaps a hundred feet or two hundred feet – but the leaf is not worried. The leaf is unaware that she is only a part of a vast tree.You are part of a vast existence. Don’t think of yourself as separate and immediately all your problems disappear. In other words, your ego is the only problem.“I am” – that is the only problem.“I am not, the existence is,” is the only solution.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 27 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,In the last two years, while in deep meditation I have been hearing a sound. It's a sort of ocean sound, like distant ocean waves. I call this noise my tone and enjoy it as a sign of the beginning of silence. But the other night I heard you say that we can hear our blood circulating. Is this what I am hearing? Can you give me any insights other than just watching, which is what I have been doing when I hear this sound?It is not the sound of your blood circulating. The sound of your blood circulating can be heard only in an absolutely soundproof room; there is no other way to hear it.The sound that you are hearing is far more significant. It is the sound which the ancients in the East have called the sound of the universe, the sound of existence itself. They have named it omkar. It is the sound of Om, and if you listen carefully you will find exactly the word Om repeated again and again in the sound. Om is not part of any alphabet – it is the only word in the world which does not belong to any alphabet – neither does it mean anything. It simply resembles the sound of existence. When you are utterly silent you can hear it.The ancient seers and modern physics are very close on this point. Modern physics thinks that existence consists of electricity and sound is also only a certain wave of electricity. The mystics in ancient times thought just the other way around. They thought that sound is the basic constituent of existence and electricity is a certain wave of sound.Hence, in the East there has been a certain music which can create fire. You can keep unlit lamps around the musician and once he plays a particular raga, some particular music, a moment comes when all the unlit lamps suddenly flare up. Fire can be created by sound; hence the mystics thought that electricity, fire or anything is nothing but different variations of sound waves.Now, both agree in a way. One emphasizes electricity, another emphasizes sound, but deep down there is no difference – except that the mystic’s idea of sound being the foundation of existence is a more poetic conception, because then music becomes of tremendous importance, singing becomes of tremendous importance, dancing becomes sacred.To accept electricity as the foundation is a very prosaic idea, not very poetic. You cannot conceive of music, song, dance, or rejoicing being made of electricity. So whatever the case may be, I still prefer the mystic’s, the poet’s approach to reality. He may not be so arithmetical, he may not be so scientific, but he is more poetic, more musical, more artistic, more creative. And to me, poetry is a higher value than science, music is a higher value than mathematics, because to me ecstasy is the source and the ultimate goal of life.So, what you are hearing is what has been heard down the ages by all those who have come to a certain state of silence. It is the sound of existence, it is the song of existence itself. And you are asking, should you do something else except watching? No, to do anything will be a disturbance to watching. You simply watch – watch more joyously, watch more lovingly. Don’t watch in a dry way, watch full of juice, watch the way a poet looks at the sunrise or the painter looks at the flower or the lover looks at the beloved. Don’t watch the way the wife looks at the husband.The woman made herself comfortable on the couch and her psychiatrist proceeded, “All right, Mrs. Finkelstein, what has been the most exciting thing in your life these past weeks?”“Well,” she exclaimed, “I have been serving my husband rabbit food for dinner every night.”“And what does your husband say about that?” asked the psychiatrist.“Ah, nothing much,” she said, “but you should see the way he looks at me from across the table with those little pink eyes.”Don’t watch that way. Every woman turns the husband into a rabbit “with those little pink eyes.” Eyes have to be more joyful, more radiant, more beautiful.So what you are doing is perfectly right, just put more juice into it, more beauty, a quality of song, and the sound will start becoming more and more clear – so clear that you will be throbbing with the whole sound. Each fiber of your body, each cell of your mind will be in a dance.This is the true way of knowing the ultimate mantra. Repeating, “Om, Om…” is simply foolish. It is not a question of your repetition; you should be absolutely silent and possessed by existence and then existence repeats in you, in every fiber of your being, the sound of Om. And it is so refreshing, it is so blissful that there is no comparison, in any human experience, which goes beyond the ecstasy of this dance of existence within you. You can call it the ultimate in ecstasy.It is a good beginning, just go on and on. Slowly, slowly you will not be hearing the sound, you will become the sound. That is the end of the journey, you have come home.Osho,Taking care of a business – continuity, commitment, responsibility…Unnecessary values, which are quite contrary to being in the moment, freedom and spontaneity, which the heart longs for. Please say something about the way in which these two spaces can live peacefully together, if there is any.If you want to ride on two horses together, it is going to be a difficult job. You will have to understand one thing: if you have a longing for freedom, spontaneity and being in the moment, you will have to be not businesslike. You can continue the business but you will have to transform your business attitude, approach. You cannot compromise both, you cannot synthesize both. You have to sacrifice one in the favor of the another.I remember my grandfather. My father and my uncles did not want the old man in the shop. They would tell him, “You just rest, or you can go for a walk.” But there were customers who would ask for him, and they would say, “We will come back when he comes.” The problem was that he was not a businessman.He would simply say, “This commodity costs ten rupees to us and I am not asking for more than ten percent profit. That means it will cost eleven rupees to you. Are you hesitant even to give me ten percent profit? Then how are we going to survive and live?” And people would immediately make the deal with him.But this was a loss in the eyes of my father, my uncles, because they would have started the price at twenty rupees – and then the haggling…And if the customer manages somehow to bring them down to fifteen rupees he feels happy that he has got it for five rupees less. But in fact they have taken four rupees more. So naturally they were pushing my grandfather, “Go away, go to the river, have a good bath. Go to the park, rest. You are old, you need not be here.”But he would say, “There are customers who know me and who know you. They know one thing about me, that I am not a businessman. And you are business people. And I have told my customers that if I am not around, wait, soon I will be back from wherever they have sent me. I have been telling those customers, ‘Remember one thing: whether the watermelon falls on the knife or the knife falls on the watermelon, it is always the watermelon that is cut into pieces, not the knife. So beware of the business people.’” He had his own customers, who would not agree even to talk, even to say what they had come for; they would sit. They would say, “Let the old man come.”Business also can be done with a sincerity, with an authenticity, with a truthfulness; it does not necessarily require you to be cunning, to be exploiting, to be cheating. So don’t ask for any synthesis between “taking care of a business – continuity, commitment and responsibility,” and “being in the moment, freedom and spontaneity, which the hearts longs for.”Listen to the heart, because it is finally the heart that is going to decide the caliber of your being, the very growth of your consciousness, and finally the transcendence that leads you and your awareness beyond death. Anything else is simply mundane. What is your commitment? A man of understanding avoids stupid commitments. What is your continuity? – because your father and your forefathers had been doing the business, so you have also to do it, the same way as they have been doing it. Are you here just to repeat the past?Don’t you have the courage to introduce the new and to drop the past and the old and the rotten, to bring a fresh breeze into your life and into the lives of those who are concerned with you in some way? What is your continuity? There is no question…In fact you have to be discontinuous every moment, not only with the past of others – your fathers and forefathers – you have to discontinue even with your own past every moment. The moment that is gone, is gone. You don’t have any obligation to continue and carry a corpse of a dead moment.And commitment is always out of unconsciousness. For example, you love a woman and you want her to get married to you, but she wants a commitment. And you are so unconscious; you commit yourself so easily about the future, which is not in your hands. How can you say anything about tomorrow? Tomorrow is not your property. You may be here, you may not be here. And who knows about tomorrow? The love that has suddenly taken possession of you may disappear.But almost every man commits himself to his woman, that “I will love you my whole life.” And the woman commits herself also, that “I will love you not only in this life, but I will pray to God that in each life I will always find you as my husband.”But nobody is aware that not even a single moment of the future is in your hands. All commitments are going to create troubles. Tomorrow your love may disappear, just the way it has suddenly appeared. It was a happening, it was not your act, it was not your doing. Tomorrow, when the love disappears and you find your heart completely dry, what are you going to do?The only way that is left by the society for you is to become a pretender, to be a hypocrite. What is no longer there, go on pretending, go on at least saying, “I love you.” You know that your words are meaningless and the woman knows that your words are meaningless, because your words don’t sound sincere. And you cannot deceive a woman as far as love is concerned; she has a tremendous sensibility. In fact, when there is love there is no need to repeat it. You know and she knows. The question of repeating it arises only when the heart is no longer radiating it, so you are substituting it with words.But words are very poor. Your actions will show something, your face will show something, your eyes will show something, and your words will be trying to prove just the opposite. But the problem has arisen because you were not conscious enough to say to the woman, “How can I commit myself? I am a fragile human being, I am not absolutely conscious. Most of my being is deep in darkness, about which I don’t know. What desires will arise tomorrow, I am not aware of, nor are you aware of. So please don’t commit anything to me and I will not commit anything to you. We will love each other as long as love remains authentic and true, and the moment we feel that the time has come to pretend, we will not pretend – that is ugly, inhuman. We will simply accept that the love that used to be there is no longer there, and it is time for us to part.“We will remember all those beautiful days and moments that we passed together. It will remain always a fresh memory. And I don’t want to destroy it by pretending; neither do I want you to become a hypocrite.”As far as my people are concerned, never make any commitment. Make it clear that commitments are bound to lead to a difficult situation. Soon you will find that you cannot fulfill it.And responsibility…You have been burdened with the idea of responsibility, that you are responsible to your parents, you are responsible to your wife or your husband, you are responsible to your children, you are responsible to the neighbors, you are responsible to the society, you are responsible to the nation. It seems you are here only to be responsible for everybody – except yourself. It is a strange situation.A woman was teaching her child, “The most fundamental thing of our religion is to serve others.” The little boy said, “I understand it, just one thing I cannot understand: what will others do?”The mother said, “Of course, they will serve others.” The little boy said, “This is strange. If everybody is serving everybody else, why should I not serve myself, you serve yourself? Why create this complexity and make it a burden – that I should serve others and wait for them to serve me?”In his innocence the child is saying a truth which all the religions have forgotten. In fact, the very meaning of responsibility has changed in the hands of religions, of politicians, of so-called do-gooders, teachers, parents. They have changed the very meaning of responsibility. They have made it equivalent to duty: it is your duty. And I want you to know that duty is a four-letter dirty word.You should never do anything because of duty. Either you do something because of love or you do not do it. Make it a point that your life has to be a life of love, and if out of love you respond, that I call responsibility. Break the word into two: response-ability, don’t make it one. Joining these two words has created so much confusion in the world. It is not responsibility, it is response-ability. And love is able to respond. There is no other force in the world which is so able to respond. If you love, you are bound to respond; there is no burden. Duty is a burden.Again I remember my grandfather. He was a simple villager, uneducated, but had the same quality of innocence that a child has. He used to love somebody to massage his feet before he went to sleep, and everybody tried to escape. At that moment when he was preparing his bed, everybody was as far away as possible, not to be caught; but I used to reach to him at that time.He said, “It is strange that whenever I am making my bed, everybody simply disappears. Just a moment before everybody was here, and once I have gone to sleep – I may even be awake, just with closed eyes – they all come back.”I said, “Nobody wants to massage your feet. As far as I am concerned, it is not my duty. They think it is their duty, that once they are caught it is their duty to massage. It is not my duty. If I don’t want to massage, I will say so.” And I had made it clear to him that “I will massage to the point I feel; it is not going to be your decision.”And I made a symbolic language, a code language with him. When I started feeling that now it was time, I would say, “Comma.”He would say, “Wait, this is too early.”I said, “I have given you the warning – soon the semicolon and then the full-stop. And once I have said full-stop it is finished.” It was out of my love that I massaged, it was not my duty.The people who thought it was their duty all disappeared. And he understood it, and he said, “You have made it clear to me. It was never clear to me before that there is such a great difference between duty and love.”There was one Hindu saint in Africa. He had come to India for a pilgrimage to the Himalayas, particularly the Hindu holy temples of Badrinathdham and Kedarnath. They are the most difficult places to reach – and at that time they were very difficult. Many people simply never came back – small pathways and just by the side ten-thousand-feet-deep valleys, eternal snow. Just a little slip of the feet and you are gone. Now things are better, but at the time I am talking about, it was very difficult. The Hindu sannyasin was tired, carrying very little luggage – because to carry much luggage at those heights becomes more and more difficult; as the air becomes thinner, breathing becomes difficult.Just ahead of him he saw a girl not more than ten years old carrying a little boy, very fat, on her shoulders. She was perspiring, breathing heavily, and when the sannyasin passed by her he said, “My daughter, you must be tired. You are carrying so much weight.”The girl became angry and she said, “You are carrying weight. This is not weight, this is my younger brother.”I was reading the autobiography of the man and he remembers that instance, that he was shocked. It was true, there was a difference. On the weighing scale of course there will be no difference; whether you put your younger brother or you put a suitcase it does not matter, the weighing scale will show the weight. But as far as the heart is concerned, the heart is not a weighing scale. The girl was right: “You are carrying weight, I am not. This is my younger brother and I love him.”Love can cancel gravity, love can cancel burden. Out of love any response is beautiful. Without love, responsibility is ugly and simply shows that you have a mind of a slave.So as far as I am concerned, if you are really longing for freedom, spontaneity, and being in the moment, there is no question of creating a synthesis. You will have to change your whole approach toward business: your business becomes your meditation, your sincerity, your truth; it stops being an exploitation. Your continuity simply disappears; you bring a newness into existence. Commitment is absolutely absurd. You cannot commit yourself because time is not in your hands; neither life is in your hands, nor is love in your hands. On what grounds are you committing yourself?Your state is almost like those two men I have often talked about. Both were opium addicts. On a full-moon night both were lying under a tree and enjoying the full moon, and one of them said, “The moon is looking so beautiful, I would like to purchase it.” The second one said, “Forget all about purchasing it, because I am not going to sell it. Just forget it, never mention it again!”Neither possesses the moon, but in their unconsciousness one thinks he possesses the moon and the other thinks he is ready to purchase. The other says, “Don’t get angry. If you don’t want to sell, it is okay. But I am ready to pay any price, you just offer. And it is not right, we are old friends.” But the second one said, “Forget all about it. Friendship or no friendship, I am not going to sell it at any price!” And they are very serious about it.That is the situation of your commitments.A man is telling a woman, “I will love you forever,” and just the next day he falls in love with another woman. He is a victim of biological, blind forces. It is not that when he was saying, “I will love you forever,” he was lying; it is not so, he was absolutely true. The man who was ready to purchase the moon was not lying, he was sincerely interested in purchasing the moon. And the man who was not willing to sell it was not lying either. He was absolutely sincere that he did not want to sell it at any price.When the man said, “I will love you forever,” he was absolutely truthful; but he was unconscious that tomorrow is not within his control. He can only speak about this moment: “I love you now. As for tomorrow, we will see what happens. Neither am I in a bondage, nor are you in a bondage. If tomorrow again we feel that we are in love with each other, it will be a great surprise.”Why close your life with commitments? Why not keep it open for surprises. Why not keep it open for adventures. Why become closed in a grave? Then you suffer, because you start thinking, “I have promised, I have committed. Now whether I want to fulfill the promise or the commitment does not matter. My whole integrity is at stake. I will pretend but I cannot accept that I was a fool when I committed.”There is no question of making a synthesis of the untruthful and the truthful, the authentic and the false. You will have to drop the false and you will have to listen to your heart and go with it, whatever the cost – it is always cheap. Whatever you have to lose, lose; but if you have been listening to the heart, you will be the winner in the end, victory is yours. But if you want to deceive others and deceive yourself, then it is a different matter.Paddy was reading in a science magazine that cigarette smoking had been known to cause cancer in rats and mice. This moved him greatly, so that night when he went to bed he locked his cigarettes in a cupboard where the rats and mice could not get at them.What a great understanding and synthesis!You are only capable of making such a synthesis as this.Osho,I am loving my aloneness. I am feeling fulfilled, nourished, fresh with new energy and ecstatic. However, there are days when I feel lonely. Then I get sad, unmeditative and even grumpy. Can you talk about how to go through the transition period from loneliness to aloneness?Nirvano, aloneness is the Everest of meditation, the highest sunlit peak. Once you start enjoying aloneness, there is no end to where your joy stops growing. It goes on growing, it goes on spreading; it seems as if the whole universe is full of joy and full of fragrance. Aloneness is the greatest achievement in life but certainly there is a painful period of transition.Man ordinarily lives in loneliness. To avoid loneliness, he creates all kinds of relationships, friendships, organizations, political parties, religions and what not. But the basic thing is that he is very much afraid of being lonely. Loneliness is a black hole, a darkness, a frightening negative state almost like death…as if you are being swallowed by death itself. To avoid it, you run out and fall into anybody, just to hold somebody’s hand, to feel that you are not lonely.I have seen people when they are walking in the night on a lonely street, they start singing songs. Nobody has ever heard that they are singers! And what suddenly transpires that they become singers? – and loudly. They are simply trying to forget that they are lonely. They are trying to drown themselves in their own voice.Nothing hurts more than loneliness.But the trouble is, any relationship that arises out of the fear of being lonely is not going to be a blissful experience, because the other is also joining you out of fear. You both call it love. You are both deceiving yourself and the other. It is simply fear and fear can never be the source of love. Only those love who are absolutely fearless; only those love who are able to be alone, joyously, whose need for the other has disappeared, who are sufficient unto themselves.The common psychology of man is of loneliness. He does everything to avoid it. But whatever you do, it is always there, just like your shadow. You may not look at it, but you know it is there. And once in a while you cannot resist the temptation either: you will look and you will find it always there. You cannot escape from your shadow. In the same way you cannot escape from your loneliness just by creating friendships, relationships, marriages, organizations – religious, political, social. They give you a little relief, but they don’t transform anything.The day you decide that all these efforts are failures, that your loneliness has remained untouched by all your efforts, that is a great moment of understanding. Then only one thing remains: to see whether loneliness is such a thing that you should be afraid of, or if it is just your nature. Then rather than running out and away, you close your eyes and go in. Suddenly the night is over, and a new dawn…The loneliness transforms into aloneness.Aloneness is your nature. You were born alone, you will die alone. And you are living alone without understanding it, without being fully aware of it. You misunderstand aloneness as loneliness; it is simply a misunderstanding.You are sufficient unto yourself.The transition period is a little painful and difficult because of old habits but it won’t be long. And the way to make it short, bearable, is to enjoy your aloneness more and more. Make it a point that when you are enjoying your aloneness, you are not miserly. Then sing and dance, then paint. Do whatsoever you always wanted to do, but you were so much involved in relationships that there was no time left.Be creative, and the more creative you are, the more rejoicing, the more dancing, the more songful your aloneness becomes. Those periods of sadness, of grumpiness – old habits – will start falling like dead leaves falling from the trees. They also cling for a little while, but they have to fall.You just have to make your aloneness more and more strong. So you don’t have to do anything with your sadness or your grumpiness, or your fear that the old habit may come back again. You have not to think about that at all. You have to pour your whole energy into the joy of being alone. You have only a certain amount of energy – either you can dance or you can be sad. If you dance half-heartedly, then you are saving energy for sadness. That’s why I insist: live every moment totally and so intensely that no energy is left to be invested in sadness, in misery, in anger; there is simply no energy left.So the whole effort has to be very positive. Feed and nourish your aloneness with all that you have, pour your love, and you will be surprised that those gaps of sadness and grumpiness are not coming any more because you don’t have any energy for them and you are no longer in a welcoming mood for them.And if by chance you find some clouds of sadness coming, just watch. Don’t get identified with them. Remember only one thing: everything passes. So these clouds will also pass. Many times before they have been there and they have passed, so there is no question that this time they are not going to pass away. So why unnecessarily get disturbed? You just let them pass. You remain absolutely unidentified and watchful.If these two things are remembered, your aloneness gets your total energy so that no energy is left for anything else. But if in the beginning you don’t understand what is total and you are holding something back, then some moments will come. For that, use a watchfulness, unidentified with the moment, as if it has nothing to do with you, as if it is somebody else’s sadness, somebody else’s grumpiness – none of my business. Keep a distance; don’t let them come closer and become one with you.That’s what I mean when I say, don’t identify. Don’t say, “I am sad,” simply say, “A cloud of sadness is passing in front of me.” Don’t say, “I am angry,” simply say, “A cloud of anger is just at the corner going by.” And it will not leave even a trace on you, it will not even touch you. And once you have become aware that by not identifying you become free of everything, you have a secret key in your hands for freedom from any kind of emotion, any mood, any thought.This will remind you that you have not been putting your total energy into your aloneness, something is left. So next time, when you are again feeling alone and the clouds have gone and the sky is clear, put in more energy. You never know how much you have. You will know only when you put it into action, when you make the potential actual – only then will you know. When the seed comes to blossom, only then will you know what was hiding in that seed. So many flowers – such a small seed – so much green foliage, such a beauty. But you know only when things become actual.Much of your life remains unlived; it never becomes actual. That’s why very few people are able to blossom. They live at the minimum – and I teach you to live at the optimum.A woman was pregnant and went to see her genetic specialist in order to find out what kind of baby she was going to have. “For one thing,” said the doctor, “you are going to have twins.”“Ah, great,” said the woman, “my husband always wanted twins.” The doctor continued, “And they are both going to be boys.”“Ah, that’s really great,” said the woman. “My husband will put them both on the baseball team.”“And what is more,” continued the doctor, “one of them will be a musician of the stature of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.”“Oh, no!” exclaimed the woman. “My husband hates music, especially Mozart.” Feeling very depressed she went home and decided to break the news to her husband very slowly. She cooked him a beautiful candle-lit dinner, and after the first course she said softly, “Darling, I went to the genetic specialist today and he told me that we are expecting twins.”“That’s great,” said the husband. “What else did he tell you?”“He said that they would both be boys,” she said. “Oh, marvelous,” he said. “One day they can play on the baseball team.”They carried on with the meal but after a while the husband said, “Dear, there is something else that you have not told me. What else did the doctor say?”“Well, darling,” she answered, “I can’t hide it from you. The doctor said that one of them would be a musician with the talent of Mozart.”“Oh, no!” screamed the husband, “How could you do this to me? You know I hate Mozart.” He then picked up a knife and in a mad fury he chased his wife around the room. Unable to get hold of her, he picked up a candle stick from the table and hurled it at her; it struck her on the belly. They both froze as a small voice from inside her stomach sang, “One for the money, two for the show, you got my brother, now go man go.”Just enjoy everything. When you are alone, laugh. Tell a beautiful joke to yourself, sing. But remember that you have to nourish your aloneness so much that it becomes the most beautiful experience of your life; that no sadness can overtake you; that no past can ever possess you again; that no old habit can get you again into patterns that you know perfectly well are simply misery and suffering.Two things: one, a totality in aloneness. And if in the beginning sometimes you have not been total and a cloud comes, remain unidentified, far away. Slowly, slowly no sadness comes, no suffering comes, no feeling of loneliness comes.And that does not mean that you cannot relate with people. In fact, only a person who lives in a beautiful aloneness is capable of relating, because it is not his need. He is not a beggar, he is not asking you for anything – not even your company. He is a giver. Out of his abundance of joy and peace and silence and bliss he shares. Then love has a totally different aroma to it, then it is a sharing. And if both persons know the beauty of aloneness, then love reaches to its highest point, which has very rarely been possible. Then it touches the very stars of the sky.You cannot even dream of the beauty of it and the benediction of it – because both are overflowing with joy, both are overflowing with laughter, both are ready to give and nobody is asking for anything. Both are ready to give freedom, both are ready to give unconditionally. This love becomes one of the most beautiful meditations, in which two persons melt and merge and become one.Aloneness does not mean you cannot relate. It simply means you will have to relate in a totally new way, which will not create suffering and misery, which will not create conflict, which will not be an effort – directly or indirectly – to dominate the other, to enslave the other. Because it is not out of fear, it is pure life. Out of fear is only death; out of fearlessness grows everything that is beautiful.Just a joke for Nirvano. In her aloneness she can think about it.A priest, a backpacker and Ronald Reagan were flying in a plane. Suddenly the pilot ran in and said, “The plane is about to crash. There are only three parachutes and I am taking one.” And he jumped out.Ronald Reagan grabbed the next parachute and said, “I am the smartest man in America and America needs me.” Then he jumped too.The priest turned to the backpacker and said, “I am an old man. You take this last parachute and jump.” The backpacker laughed and said, “Don’t worry Father, the smartest man in America just grabbed my backpack and jumped.”

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 28 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,As meditation is deepening, I feel tension and frustration at not being okay with myself, melting more and more. Now as you push us on, another kind of tension will not allow me to be satisfied, except momentarily. I have heard you call this divine discontent. I remember once a friend said, “If you think this is it, you can be sure it isn't.” This pushes me on to inquire more deeply.Beloved, laughter helps to move beyond tension, and with divine discontent I just need to remember to laugh at myself. Do you have a little something to remind me?It is one of the traps every meditator is prone to fall into. The name of the trap is seriousness. You are taking things too seriously. The moment you become serious about anything, it creates tension. And tension is a great disturbance as far as meditation is concerned, peace is concerned, silence is concerned.Anything that is known as spiritual becomes more impossible, the more tense you become. And remember the vicious circle: the more tense you are, the less you will be experiencing the joys and the depths and the heights of meditation. The less joyous, the more tense you will be; the more tense, joys will disappear completely.Millions of people have tried meditation and dropped out of it because they took it very seriously. Religion has been thought to be a very serious affair – it is not. One has to understand – at least those who are with me – that religion is a playfulness, a laughter. Take it easy; then things blossom without any tension. You are not taking it easy, you are making it difficult.You say, “As meditation is deepening, I feel tension and frustration at not being okay with myself, melting more and more.”It is not you who is feeling frustrated and who is feeling tense. Your innermost being knows nothing of tension and nothing of frustration. It is your mind who is coming in.The absolute criterion to know whether it is mind or not is the desire for more and more. That is the way mind functions in every field of life. If you are earning money, the mind goes on saying more and more. If you are after power, mind goes on saying more and more. If you are doing meditation, mind goes on saying more and more.That “more and more” is the very basic quality of the mind. And mind is always serious. It disturbs everything that comes from the beyond.If meditation is deepening, you should feel more joyous. But we think we deserve more, we are worthy of more; we are doing a great obligation to nature because for a few minutes we are sitting in meditation.Don’t make it serious. Existence does not allow seriousness.One emperor of Japan went to see Rinzai, a Zen master who lived in the mountains with the wild animals, with the trees. The emperor had taken a great risk in going there. And he had taken with him a very beautiful robe studded with diamonds and precious stones. He had made it specially as a present for the master.The master accepted it, because it would be an insult to the emperor not to accept his present. But when the emperor was returning he told him, “Please, if you don’t mind, take this precious robe with you. Here in the wild if I use this robe all the animals will laugh at me, the trees will laugh at me. The birds will make a laughingstock of me. This will be the talk in the mountains, in the forest, the only talk: Look at that old Zen master. Now he is doing such a foolish thing!“It is not going to impress anybody here in nature, because nobody is so stupid to be impressed by anything false. Here only the real and authentic is accepted. You take it back to the capital. You can use it, and there are enough idiots who will be impressed by it.”Life is hilarious. The moment you become serious you become closed to life. And one should always remember to be grateful, and one should not ask for more. Asking for more is a complaint. In other words, you are saying, “I am doing so much, and the blissfulness equivalent to my effort and my worthiness is not descending on me.”Don’t have a complaint against existence. You don’t have any right. Whatever is being given to you, be thankful for it; your thankfulness, your gratitude will bring more. And the more comes to you, be more grateful, be more humble, knowing that you don’t deserve it at all. It is just because of the compassion of nature that it goes on pouring all kinds of riches into your being.So the first thing is, drop this tension and frustration. It will destroy your meditation that is going deeper. You will be thrown back into your mind where tensions dwell, frustrations dwell, complaints, and everything that is ugly.Secondly, you have misunderstood me. When I have used the words “divine discontentment,” you have understood it in the same way as you are discontented with your wife or your husband, with your house, with your earning, with your boss or with your servants, with your children, with your parents. In short, with everybody.When I have added to “discontent” the word divine, it changes its very quality. Divine discontentment is not your ordinary discontentment with things. Divine discontentment is simply a thirst, a prayer, without any words. It is not a complaint such as “give me more.” It is simply a prayerfulness saying, “I am in your hands. Make me more worthy so that I can receive more blessings from you.”See the difference. You are not asking directly for more blessings, you are asking, “Just make me more worthy. I am so unworthy, so undeserving that I feel embarrassed when flowers shower over me. I don’t think I have earned them. Before you shower flowers on me, please make me worthy of them.”Divine discontentment has a totally different flavor. It is not ordinary discontentment; it is asking, it is praying to existence, “You are giving me so much. I am grateful on the one hand, and on the other hand I feel that I am not worthy of it. You should make me worthy also. My discontentment is about my worth, not about your gift.” When it is about the gift, it is an ordinary discontentment. When it is about your worth, then it takes a totally new dimension. It becomes divine.You say, I remember once a friend said, “If you think this is it, you can be sure it is not.” Do you know if your friend has got it? You should have asked him, “What about you? Do you have it? If you say you have it, you don’t have it. If you say you don’t have it, you don’t have any right to say such a statement.”You simply accepted a statement which can be made only by an enlightened man – not by any ordinary friend. He must have read it in some book. If you meet him again, ask, “Have you got it?” and listen to his answer. In every way he is going to be wrong. If he says yes, he has not got it. If he says no, then you can say, “If you have not got it, how do you know? On what authority can you make this statement, that if you think this is it, you can be sure it is not.”Look at it from the other side: if you are sure it is not, do you think you have got it? The people who have got it don’t say that they have got it. They don’t say they have not got it either; they simply smile at the mystery of the experience, that it cannot be expressed as yes or as no. It is beyond the duality of yes and no, beyond the positive and the negative.So if you use the positive you are wrong, and if you use the negative you are wrong still. Only silence is something which is beyond both – or a smile, or a laughter, which does not say yes, which does not say no, but expresses absolutely that you have got it. Your radiant face, your eyes, your grace – let them say that you have got it. Don’t use words.There are limits beyond which any word is meaningless. And don’t listen to the advice of friends who are simply knowledgeable, because I cannot think you have found a friend who is enlightened. He is simply repeating verbatim from a Zen master whose statement this is, and you accepted it.Never accept anybody’s knowledge. It is going to disturb your own progress. “This pushes me on,” you say, “to inquire more deeply. Laughter helps to move beyond tension, and with divine discontent I just need to remember to laugh at myself.” You know what you need: “just to remember to laugh at myself.” Then why don’t you do it? You know the answer.But the friend has disturbed you. Always remember, advice is the only thing in the world that is given freely by everybody and is not accepted by anybody. The whole day people are giving advice, knowing perfectly well that nobody is going to accept it and also knowing that they don’t follow their own advice either. But a few people get caught into it, and then they make an unnecessary mess.Avoid advice. You are right on the path; you are meditating. Just remember one thing, that whatever is coming to you is more than you deserve. And remember to laugh.Existence loves laughter. You may have observed, or not, that man is the only animal in the whole of existence who is capable of laughing. Laughter is the only distinguishing mark that you are not a buffalo, you are not a donkey; you are a human being. Laughter defines your humanity and your evolution. And the greatest laugh is at your own ridiculous things.For example, it is ridiculous to be frustrated and tense because more meditation is not happening. It is laughable to accept the advice of a man who knows nothing. And then that advice becomes a problem to you, creates new problems in you.Unable to manage his rebellious girlfriend, Walter asked his dad how he has dealt with similar problems.“Well son,” replied the father, “every time your mother began to act up, I would take down her pants and spank her.”“I tried that,” said Walter, “but by the time I get my girl’s pants down, I’m not angry any more.”Nobody’s advice is going to help you. You have to work out your way yourself. And learn to laugh at yourself. Learning to laugh at others is very easy; it is easy because it is ego fulfilling. But laughing at yourself is a great achievement. It means you are becoming humble; you don’t take your ego seriously.Half way across the Atlantic ocean, the captain of the aircraft addressed the passengers, “I regret to say, ladies and gentleman, that one of our engines has failed. This puts us in no danger, since the aircraft can function perfectly well on the remaining three engines. But it does mean that our arrival in New York will be delayed by an hour.”A few minutes later, a further announcement was made. “I regret to say, ladies and gentleman,” he explained calmly, “that another of our engines has failed. There is still no danger as this aircraft can function perfectly well on the remaining two engines, but it does mean that our arrival in New York will be delayed by two hours.”Half an hour later, the passengers heard their captain yet again, “I regret to say, ladies and gentlemen, that yet another of our engines has failed. There is still no danger whatsoever, as this aircraft can function perfectly well on one engine alone. But it does mean that our arrival in New York will be delayed by three hours.”“I hope,” said the Polack pope, who was aboard the aircraft, to another passenger, “that the fourth engine does not pack up as well or we will be up here forever.”Just laugh! There is so much to laugh at in the world that the people who become serious are really doing something very great. With great effort and with great tension they are creating seriousness; otherwise nothing is serious. If meditation is deepening slowly, what is the hurry? Enjoy it, relish it as long as you have got it. And the more you relish it, the more you rejoice in it, the more you will become capable of receiving.This has to be remembered: don’t misunderstand me, because I have to use the words which are being used by everybody. But I try to give them a different color. That’s why I call it “divine discontentment.” You should have emphasized what is the meaning of divine. But you forgot the word divine, you simply emphasized your old habit of discontentment.So when you are interpreting anything said by me, be careful – where is the emphasis? Why should I add divine, why not just say discontentment? I want to change the quality of discontentment, I want to give it a new dimension. You forgot that; that’s why you are feeling tension that things are not going as well as they should. Things are always going as well as they should.The whole existence is at ease except your little minds, which go on creating problems for you. Just put these little minds aside: “It is not your work, it is not your territory. Meditation has nothing to do with you. You just go out and play, and whenever I need you, I will call you in.”But you have to be aware that you are not the mind. And if the mind is feeling tense and frustrated, it is simply destroying the possibility of meditation – because mind is afraid of meditation. Meditation is going to be the death of the mind. The day your meditation starts functioning fully, mind will not be needed at all. So before it happens, mind tries in every possible way to create disturbances. It is just a question of its survival.But if you want to be yourself and not a slave of a mind which was created by others…just like the friend who advised you, and you never asked him; you simply swallowed the advice without any question. Mind is created by everybody around you from the very beginning of your childhood. By the time you come out of the university, almost one third of your life has gone into conditioning you. And society uses such subtle means of conditioning that it is becoming more and more difficult to get people out of the conditioning.Solzhenitsyn, one of the dissident Nobel Prize winners from the Soviet Union, who is now in America, has just said that what is being done in America is not different from what is being done in the Soviet Union. The only difference is that America is using more sophisticated means and Russia is using more primitive means: torturing people, harassing people, keeping them always in fear. These are their ways of conditioning minds, so the people cannot think anything other than what the government wants them to think.He says that in America this kind of thing is not needed. America is using education. For example, in America, the books of Charles Darwin are prohibited. No university in America can teach the theory of evolution, because it goes against the Bible and the theory of creation. Now, this is a very sophisticated way of bringing religion into education. And nobody will detect it because religion is not mentioned at all. But why are you prohibiting Charles Darwin? All his books have been removed from every library in America, from every course in the colleges, in the universities – because if the world was created then there is no question of evolution.Man was created as man – that’s what the Bible says – not that we evolved slowly from fish up to man. God created the fish, God created the monkey, God created the man, God created everything. The whole world was created completely. There is no question of evolution. To sustain the Bible’s idea of creation, Charles Darwin is prohibited even from being read.Just a few days ago, the American Supreme Court decided that when somebody goes bankrupt, the bare essentials should not be auctioned. For example, his bed, his chair, his kitchen things, his clothes; the bare essentials should not be auctioned. Now they have added a television also to the essentials. And it seems to be essential because the average time each American spends looking at the television has gone from five hours to seven and a half hours per day.Certainly it is essential. Almost one third of the day is devoted to television. And what is the television doing? It is propagating the same ideas, the same advertisements, the same philosophies, the same attitudes that the government allows. Watching television eight hours a day continuously for years is a conditioning. Those ideas become imprints on your mind – every day…Solzhenitsyn is right that what is being done by television in America is being done by very primitive means in the Soviet Union. It is possible that there may be a revolution in the Soviet Union some day – there is a limit of tolerance – but in America there will not be any revolution. You can’t revolt against such a sophisticated way of conditioning your mind.Adolf Hitler has said that there is no truth and there is no lie. The truth is the often repeated lie. Go on repeating it and it becomes true. And he proved it by his own experiments. Absolute lies that anybody can see…and he convinced one of the most intellectual races in the world that they are truths: for example, that the fall of Germany in the first world war was because of the Jews. There is no question of giving any reasoning, you just repeat the sentence continuously on every radio, in every newspaper, in every magazine.In his great rallies he was continuously repeating it: “If we can get rid of the Jews then Germany will rule over the whole world. These Jews are the problem; they are sabotaging everything in such a subtle way that Germany can never come to the top. And they are sabotaging because they think they are the chosen people of God; they should rule the world. And of course they cannot allow anybody else to rule the world.”And he convinced the whole of Germany that Jews have to be completely eradicated. He killed six million Jews. No single man has ever killed so many people – and with consent of the whole nation. He proved it absolutely that a lie repeated continuously becomes an imprint on the mind. Then people start thinking according to that imprint.A meditator has to remember not to be imprinted upon by friends, by teachers, by parents, by priests. He has to be very alert because everybody is so keen to make an imprint upon your mind – because everybody is so keen to make a slave of you.An unconditioned mind is a rebel. It functions out of its own understanding, not according to conditioning. It functions according to its own light, not by what has been said to it.So don’t be gullible. Somebody says something and you immediately catch hold of it, it becomes part of your mind. And mind is a great antique collector. Anything rotten and the mind immediately collects it. It is a kind of cemetery where every dead idea, dead philosophy, dead religion, anything dead is immediately collected. That is the whole of your mind: a collection of things for which there is no use now. Life goes on changing and you are depending on things which may have been significant, useful at some time, at some point in history, but today they are simply out of date.All minds are out of date. Let me repeat it again: every mind is out of date. Only meditation is fresh, young, alive, in the moment.To move on the path of meditation is to move on the path of life…life’s joys, life’s songs, life’s laughter. And take everything easy.Easy is right.Osho,What is the source of consciousness?Consciousness is the source of all. Consciousness is the stuff existence is made of. But there is no source of consciousness itself. Consciousness is another name of God – a better name, more scientific, less mythological.You never ask, what is the source of God? You know that that question is going to lead into an infinite regress. God is the source of existence, but you never ask what is the source of God. Those who have asked are thought to be atheists, and they are condemned: “You are asking an absurd question.” They are not asking an absurd question. They are simply making your God himself an absurdity.The religions have been saying that existence cannot be without a creator; nothing can be without a creator – that has been the argument of all the religions for centuries. But then the question naturally arises to any intelligent mind that if everything needs a creator, then God must also need a creator. But then there is no end. God number one is created by God number two. God number two is created by God number three…Where are you going to stop? There is no terminus. The train goes on and on. And finally you will become so tired.People like Gautam Buddha, who had a greater clarity than anybody else ever had, say that bringing God in is in itself absurd. Existence has always been here. Nobody has created it, and nobody can destroy it. But that does not mean that Gautam Buddha is an atheist. It simply means he has a more scientific and less mythological approach.He says existence consists of consciousness. Existence itself is made of consciousness. And consciousness has always been here, is here, will be here. It can be asleep, it can be awake, but it is consciousness all the same.When it is asleep you work blindly, unconsciously. When it becomes awake you are enlightened. But there is no source of consciousness, Prem Komal.Consciousness itself is the very foundation of the whole existence. Nothing is deeper than that. You cannot go beyond consciousness.An English couple wanted to have twins but also wanted them to be very polite and gentlemanly. So they went to see the genetic specialist who reprogrammed two of the husband’s sperms and implanted them into the egg in the mother’s womb.Very satisfied the English couple went home. After nine months, the woman was ready to give birth but nothing happened. After ten months there was still nothing. Then after a year she was still pregnant. This went on year after year.After fifty years her husband died, and still she had not given birth. After seventy years the old lady felt that she might die soon, and so she went to the hospital and asked them to remove the babies surgically.The woman was put on the operating table and the surgeon opened up her stomach. To the great surprise of all present, inside her stomach were two old English gentlemen, saying one to the other, “After you, I insist.”“No, no. After you, I insist.”Just remember one thing: don’t wait for such intellectual questions to be decided. They are never decided. But if you want to experience what is the source of all, go deeper into meditation, and you will find that there is nothing deeper than meditation. You will find that everything comes out of consciousness. Even matter is condensed consciousness, in deep sleep – perhaps in a coma.There are degrees of consciousness. Man is the only being whose unconsciousness has allowed a little bit of consciousness to arise and to be awake. Now this little piece, this little layer of consciousness is enough, if you use it rightly, to bring unconsciousness more and more into a state of consciousness.Right now it is one tenth of your whole consciousness. The day it becomes all consciousness and no unconsciousness in you, a pure awareness from abc to xyz, from the beginning to the end – you will find all questions have disappeared, because you are in a state of knowing without questioning. You are consciousness itself and you know that it is the source of everything; it does not need any source for itself.While questioning a suspect, the police detective flipped through the man’s folder.“I see here,” he said, “that you have a string of previous arrests. Here is one for armed robbery, one for breaking and entering, and another for sexual assault.”“Yes sir,” replied the suspect modestly. “It took me a little while to find out what I do best.”Even the criminal, even the worst criminal has a little consciousness. But he does not allow his consciousness to grow. On the contrary, he allows his unconsciousness to use his consciousness. The unconscious remains the master and consciousness is being used as a servant.The day you became an initiate, the day you entered into sannyas, you took a quantum leap: “From now on consciousness will be the master and unconsciousness will be the servant. I will not allow unconsciousness to infiltrate into my consciousness. Howsoever small my consciousness is, I have to work only consciously so that slowly, slowly it becomes stronger, more crystallized, and capable of making unconscious parts of me also join hands with it.”Your unconscious will join hands with your consciousness only when consciousness is the master. Who joins hands with servants? With a master the unconsciousness will certainly join hands, knowing that now it is reduced to a servant. And nobody wants to be a servant.A firebrand women’s lib activist was invited to speak at a teamsters’ convention. Addressing the all male audience, she declared that women were the foundation of the American republic.“That may be so,” rumbled a voice from the back of the room, “but remember who laid the foundation!”People use their consciousness once in a while, but it is not the active part of their being twenty-four hours a day.A sannyasin has to be conscious twenty-four hours a day. At least he has to make the effort. Slowly, slowly consciousness goes on seeping into the unconscious layers of your being. And it is not just a philosophy or an imaginary idea, because thousands of people have become totally conscious. Those who have become totally conscious have been our highest flowering. In them is the argument for our evolution.These people who have become fully conscious have all agreed on the point that consciousness is the stuff the universe is made of – different forms, different stages, but it is consciousness.Asking a question, “What is the source of consciousness?” is simply an intellectual question. It is not existential. If you want to ask the question existentially, become fully conscious – and you will never ask it. The question will disappear. The question will look absurd.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 29 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I find myself in conflict between a part of myself that tries to be clear and intelligent with others and a part that is emotional, unpredictable, very unclear and somehow unconscious, but perhaps more real. I tell myself just to be authentic and then I get really confused. Meditation takes away the immediate tension but I have found no way to get to the root of the problem. Am I just not wanting to see something very obvious?The problem you are encountering is almost everybody’s problem, because man is not born fully developed just as other animals are born. A dog is fully developed; nothing else will be added in his whole life to his basic individuality. A lion is born as a lion, will live as a lion, and will die as a lion.Only man is born as a possibility. He can be many things, all his doors are open; he is not a finished being. He has a potential, but the potential is always vague. From one point of view, it looks very confusing that the highest animal in the world is born unfinished. But looked at from a better and higher standpoint, it is a prerogative of human beings to be born only as a seed and then to evolve with total freedom into whatever their innermost longing is.That certainly creates many problems. He is not fully aware what is going to be his destiny. He is not able to predict his own future. It is always moving into the unknown, always hoping for the best, but without any certainty. Hence a continuous trembling inside, a fear – are you going to make it or not? Are you going to attain your destiny, or will death take over before? Are you moving in the right direction?You cannot be certain about anything. This causes one of the greatest difficulties: people start imitating others, because that seems to be easier. Everybody is going in a certain direction, the crowd is moving on a superhighway. It is better to be with the crowd – at least you are not alone. And somewhere in the mind there is the feeling that so many people, millions of people cannot be wrong. But this is the strangest thing about life, that the crowd is always wrong, because each individual has an individual destiny. There is no destiny for the crowd as such. So whenever you are moving with a crowd you are committing suicide.The moment you become a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan, you have destroyed yourself utterly. Now there is no hope for you; you have lost track of your individual, original destiny. At the most you can now be a beautiful carbon copy, but never the original. And without being the original there is no satisfaction, no contentment, no joy, no fulfillment, no feeling that life has been meaningful, that life has been a celebration. On the contrary, there is a feeling of despair, anguish, boredom, meaninglessness and a feeling of continuous suffocation.But it happens to millions of people because their mind has a simple arithmetic: it is better to follow where everybody is going than to be alone and find your own pathway. But only those few people ever achieve who drop out of the crowd and who trust their own intelligence and who trust in life, in nature, in existence, and who with deep trust start moving alone in the search of their destiny.The more you trust in your intelligence, the more your intelligence blossoms. In the crowd there is no need for any intelligence; in fact, in the crowd intelligence is dangerous. The crowd does not want intelligent people at all. It wants believers, it wants faithful people, it wants loyal people – loyal to the crowd, to the nation, to the race, to the church, but never loyal to themselves. All these loyalties are nothing but beautiful names of slaveries. And a slave cannot attain to his destiny, that much is absolutely certain.If you want to be free, you will have to start your first step in freedom. The last step can be of freedom only if the first step has been taken in freedom. If the first step was taken as a slave, your last step cannot be anything other than slavery – absolutely confirmed.You say, “I find myself in conflict.” What is the conflict? The conflict is between ideas, between moralities, between ideologies: to be or not to be, this way or that way. The conflict means you are trying to choose, and until you drop choosing you will remain in conflict.I teach you choiceless awareness.Stop choosing and conflict disappears.Be spontaneous, don’t decide about the future. Then there is no frustration, no failure, no feeling that you have missed. All these feelings are born because you are deciding about something which is not in your hands. The future is not in your hands.The old saying is, man proposes and God disposes. There is no God to dispose. In the very act of proposing you have disposed yourself; the very act of proposing means you are trying to make the unknown certain, you are trying to make the living flow of life a frozen pond.If you live choicelessly and if you live spontaneously, moment to moment, responding to every situation that arises in front of you, your growth will be in leaps and bounds, and you will never for a single moment feel frustration. Each moment will bring greater joy and greater fulfillment. Instead of feeling despair you will feel a great gratitude: “Existence is so compassionate that it goes on giving to me each moment new opportunities to grow, new opportunities to flower, new spaces to discover, new mysteries to experience.”But if, out of your fear, you start disciplining yourself for a particular ideal in the future, you are going to be a failure. And on each step you will see that things are not happening according to your visualized concept, visualized future. Naturally frustration sets in, conflict becomes even bigger and bigger. On every step you think whether to take it or to take some other step. And as every step goes on failing, you become settled in sadness, in gloom, in a state which is not healthy, which is spiritually sick.You say, “I find myself in conflict between a part of myself that tries to be clear and intelligent with others and a part that is emotional, unpredictable, very unclear and somehow unconscious, but perhaps more real.” Listen to the real. However unpredictable, however dangerous, but listen to the real. It may not be rational, it may be emotional, but still, listen to the real, because only the real can lead you to a more authentic life, to more real spaces, and ultimately to truth.But if you listen to the clear…and what is clear? The path that is clear is borrowed: because everybody is saying it, so it is clear; because everybody is supporting it, so it is clear. And you are using the word intelligent wrongly; it is not intelligent. The feeling that something is clear is rational but not intelligent. And these are two different things. It is logical but not intelligent.Intelligence is always a search of the unknown, and the search of the unknown is always vague, it is never clear. The seeker is always moving in a chaos. But those who have known have agreed on the point that it is only out of chaos that stars are born. The unclear, the vague, something that seems to be there and yet not clear enough, hidden in a kind of morning mist, is an indication of a dawn approaching. Don’t go against it. It is an indication of a sun that is going to rise soon. It is also an indication of the mysterious; the mysterious can never be clear. And life is nothing if it is not mysterious.The intelligent person is one who listens to the real, who listens to the unclear, who listens to the vague, who listens to the mysterious and who is courageous enough to go deep into the mystery of existence. Those who follow the clear, the rational, the mathematical, remain mundane. They remain with the crowd, they remain ordinary, and they always remain retarded because they have never allowed their intelligence a chance for adventure. They have never risked, and without risk intelligence goes to sleep. It is only in risk that intelligence awakens.When your house is on fire, suddenly you find a great release of energy and intelligence in you. You may have been tired just a moment before, so utterly tired that you wanted to go to sleep and not to do a single thing. But if the house is on fire, immediately all tiredness disappears; immediately you find yourself more full of energy than you have ever found yourself before. Suddenly you are no longer old, you have become young.Sometimes instances have happened…of one I have been an eyewitness. A woman had been for almost ten years paralyzed. She could not move from her bed, she was a burden to everybody. But one day the house caught on fire. Everybody ran out of the house, and everybody forgot about the woman – obviously, when it is a question of survival you first think of yourself. But when everybody was out, then they suddenly started thinking, what will happen to the poor woman? She was somebody’s wife, she was somebody’s mother, and she was somebody’s someone…they were all related. But nobody was ready to go in.The whole crowd, the whole neighborhood was there and they were all in for a great surprise, because they saw the woman coming running out of the house. Nobody could believe it: she had not moved from the bed for ten years, and doctors had declared that she will remain paralyzed her whole life, she is not going to be cured. But everybody saw that she was running, and as she came out and people said, “What are you doing? You have been paralyzed for ten years,” she said, “My God, I simply forgot!” And she fell down, again paralyzed.I said, “At least now drop this whole idea of paralysis. You have proved that you are not paralyzed. It was just an idea in your mind that gripped you, and gripped you so greatly. And for ten years continuously it has become more and more emphasized every day. The imprint has gone deep into your unconscious, but the fire…and you suddenly forgot the whole idea. Now there is no need to fall down again, get up.” And listening to me and seeing that what I was saying was true, hesitantly…but she got up.I said, “Now never mention paralysis again. It is good that the house is burnt – at least you are saved, you are cured. Now I will see your doctors. They don’t understand a thing about what they are talking about. You have proved all those doctors completely wrong.”Intelligence needs opportunities, risks, adventures, dangers – then it becomes sharpened. Intelligence goes with the unpredictable because that is risky; intelligence goes with the unclear because there is some work to do to make it clear. Intelligence is almost attracted, as if toward a magnet, to every mysterious situation because there is something to be discovered.So your conflict is simply between fear and courage. Reduced to the basic realities, choose courage. Never act out of fear and your growth is certain. Act out of fear and you have committed suicide.You are saying, “I tell myself just to be authentic.” It is not a question of telling yourself to be authentic – be authentic! When you are telling yourself to be authentic it is certain that you are not being authentic; otherwise, what is the need of saying it?There is a small community who are part of the Christians – a mystic school – called Quakers. They have been harassed, persecuted for a very small thing: they are not willing to take an oath in the court. And their reason is perfectly clear; I am absolutely in agreement with them. Their argument is, “If we take the oath that ‘I will speak only the truth and nothing else,’ it means that without the oath there is a possibility that I may be speaking an untruth. By implication I am accepting that without the oath I am not trustworthy, I may be lying. But it is our religion,” they say, “to be true; hence we cannot take the oath. We always speak the truth. The oath is for those who don’t always speak the truth, not for us.”They have been jailed, they have been fined, but not a single Quaker has ever taken an oath in any court. And I have great sympathy for them. On many grounds they are very beautiful people. They are the only people in the whole world whose prayer does not consist of words, whose prayer is only silence. They are the only people in whose communions no scripture is read.They sit silently in darkness and if somebody – there is nobody as a preacher, they are all just sitting – suddenly feels a spontaneous urge to say something, he stands up and he says it. It is not a question of whether he is a preacher or not. It is not a question of whether he is a man of wisdom or knowledge. No, the only valuable thing is his spontaneity.If he feels that he has some message coming from the beyond, not from his mind…and it is very clear when something comes from beyond your mind; you can see the difference. It is absolutely new and fresh, you had never known it before. Mind is a gramophone record; it goes on repeating the same thing – what it knows. And most often it gets stuck. Then there is great difficulty.When I was a student it happened once…. I used to go all over the country to university competitions for eloquence, or debates. In Varanasi, in the Sanskrit university there was an all-India competition. Because the scholars of the Sanskrit university did not know any English, and all the other competitors were perfectly educated in English, the debaters from the Sanskrit university must have carried a certain inferiority complex – although the debate was in Hindi so that everybody could participate, whether they knew English or not, whether they knew Sanskrit or not. At least everybody knew Hindi.After I had spoken it was the turn of a student from the Sanskrit university, and because of that inferiority complex he must have crammed a quotation from Bertrand Russell. So four or five lines in Hindi he spoke perfectly well, and then he quoted Bertrand Russell in English and got stuck in the middle of the sentence. I was just by his side, so just to help him I said, “Start again.” I thought that perhaps…sometimes if you start again, maybe you won’t get stuck again. I had not told him to start the whole speech again, but he had crammed the whole thing as one piece.He could not start from the quotation of Bertrand Russell, so he started again from “Brothers and sisters….” The whole convocation hall of the university was full and people started laughing and clapping. And he again went through all those sentences, came to the quotation – and people were clapping, “Go on, go on!” – and he got there and the needle got stuck again. He looked at me. I said, “Start again.”The situation was very embarrassing – what to do? because he could not go ahead. That was the only way, to go into reverse and start again. Rather than standing there and looking like a fool, he started again, “Brothers and sisters….” It was such a hilarious scene that even the judges started laughing, and he came exactly to the same point and got stuck.It was a great blessing that by that time his time was finished; otherwise he would have had to start again, because there was no other way. When he came back and sat by my side, I said, “You did great.”He said, “What great? You are the person who put me in the trouble. If you had not said to start again, I would never have imagined the very idea of starting again. But I was in such a bad situation that I had to accept your idea, knowing perfectly well that this was foolish. But standing without saying anything in the middle of a sentence, it is better to start again. Who knows? – you may pass through, the needle may move on.”Mind is a gramophone record. So when you feel something coming from the beyond you can immediately recognize it, because you have never heard it before, you have never learned about it, you have never read about it; it is just absolutely from the unknown. Only then does a Quaker stand up and allow the unknown to be shared. And many times it happens that their meeting will end up without anybody speaking, because nobody can speak from outside the mind – that is the ugliest sin according to the Quakers, because your mind speaks only what is borrowed.Put the mind aside…but that is risky, because one does not know where one is going and what one is going to say. But this spontaneity makes your intelligence such a joy, such a sharp sword that it cuts all that is rubbish and brings you fresh experiences, introduces you to new mysteries. There is no need of any conflict.You are creating your trouble yourself. You are saying, “I tell myself just to be authentic and then I get really confused.” You are bound to get really confused. “Meditation takes away the immediate tension but I have found no way to get to the root of the problem.” You will never get to the root of the problem, because the problem is very superficial, it has no roots.In India we have a creeper which goes from one tree to another tree; it has no roots anywhere. It is a parasite. It simply digs into the tree and sucks the juice of the tree and goes on moving and spreading. Sometimes you will find it spreading on hundreds of trees, just a single creeper. But if you try to find its roots, you will never find them anywhere – there are none. It exists as a parasite, without any roots. Your many problems are just like that.Its name is very beautiful; its name is amarbel: a creeper of immortality. It has no roots, so you cannot kill it. You can take it away from the trees and throw it anywhere, and it will again somehow get attached to something and will start growing again. It is a very dangerous creeper because it kills the trees. It does not allow them to blossom, it takes all their juice. It does not allow them to come to fruition. But it itself has no roots.You are creating more confusion and more trouble for yourself if you want to find out the root of the problem.You say, “Meditation takes away the immediate tension.” Then your meditation is not real meditation. At the most it may be a little relaxation; that’s why it takes away your immediate tension. If it is meditation it takes away your tension forever. That is the very definition of meditation: not only the tension is taken away, it takes away your very mind which is the root cause of all the tensions. Not only one tension, but all possibilities of ever being tense – meditation simply takes all that away and gives you an open and clear sky for your intelligence to grow…as much space as you want.So learn rightly how to meditate. Relaxation is good, but it is only a beginning; it just prepares the ground for meditation. But meditation is a totally different affair. You have to become aware of your mind stuff. Whatever goes on in your mind you have to become a watcher, and the watcher has to be so deep-rooted that slowly, slowly your mind disappears and only the watcher remains. Then all possibilities of tension, anxiety, anguish, disappear and you will not find even the conflict.Meditation will give you a clear-cut insight to be authentic, to be spontaneous, and to live dangerously, because there is no other way of living. Those who want to live without any danger should dig their graves and get into them. Those are the safest places in the world.“Now, now, just relax, Mr. Goldberg,” said Hymie Goldberg’s psychiatrist. “I have helped a great many others with problems far more serious than yours. Now, let us see. You said that in moments of great emotional stress you believe that you are a dog, a fox terrier. Is that so?”“Yes, sir,” mumbled Hymie, “a small fox terrier with black and brown spots to be precise. Ah, please help me doc, I just can’t continue living in this madness.”The doctor pointed to the couch and said calmly, “Don’t worry, Hymie, the first thing to do is to lie down on the couch and we will see if we can get to the root of your problem.”“Oh no doctor, I can’t do that,” said Hymie seriously, “I am not allowed up on the furniture.”That is his problem, that he thinks that he is a dog and nobody allows him on the furniture. How can you get to the root of this man’s problem? This is not a problem which can be solved. This is sheer madness, which cannot be solved, which can only be dissolved – and these are two different things. This man has not to be just advised that this is stupid, this is mad. All this advice has been already given to him by many people. Those things don’t help; on the contrary, they continuously emphasize the fact.What he needs…. He is living in an illusion; he has created a hallucination around himself. He has hypnotized himself in some way that he is a dog. You have to cut through his autohypnosis. You have not to take him to a psychoanalyst, you have to take him to a hypnotist who will take him into a deep hypnotic sleep and who will give another suggestion, canceling the old suggestion that he is a dog: “You are not a dog. It was only an illusion and it is no longer there, it is finished.”This has to be repeated for a few sessions continuously, so that it goes deep into his unconscious to the same point where the autohypnotic suggestion of being a dog has reached. Once the anti-suggestion reaches to the same point, the problem will dissolve. It will not be solved, it will simply disappear, it will evaporate. Hymie Goldberg will simply laugh and say, “What kind of nightmare had I fallen into?”Every one of you has many, many auto-suggestions. You have hypnotized yourself, and society has supported it if those suggestions are useful for the society. For example, just today I was informed that in America a certain group of scientists are emphasizing a certain hypothesis against the evolution hypothesis of Charles Darwin. They are all fanatic Christians and they are saying that the theory of evolution is against the Holy Bible, because the Holy Bible says that God created the world in seven days in its completion. There is no question of evolution.And the most surprising thing is that many of the states in America have made it mandatory, compulsory that in colleges, in universities, in schools the theory of creation should be taught, not the theory of evolution. And when these so-called scientists were asked, “What is the evidence? Because everything goes against the hypothesis preached in the Bible” their argument was so hilarious….But all the American politicians are ready to accept it. Already governments of different states are passing laws. Books of the evolution theory of Charles Darwin are banned; they have been removed from libraries, they have been removed from university courses, and now in their place an absolutely absurd theory has to be taught, as mandatory. You cannot make it optional, you cannot even say that it is not scientific. And the reasons that they have given are just laughable.Their first reason is that this theory is right because God himself has written in the Bible. Now, somebody should ask these idiots, “Do you have any proof that God has written the Bible except that the Bible says it itself?” So God writes himself that “I am writing the book.” I can write in the book, anybody else can write in the book – that “I am the God who is writing the book” – and then I can write any nonsense, and that has to be accepted; it is not just hypothetical.The Hindus believe that the Vedas are written by God. And on many points they are absolutely against the Bible. The Mohammedans believe that the Koran is a direct message from God, and on many points it is absolutely against the Bible. Moses has encountered God directly – he is the only man in the whole of history who had a direct conversation, face to face – and his statements are different from the Christians’.There are thousands of pieces of evidence that this earth is about four billion years old, and our sun is even older, and this universe is at least thirteen billion years old. And science has come to these conclusions on very solid grounds. According to the Bible the whole universe is only six thousand years old.And these scientists are trying to enforce on educational systems that it should be taught that God created the world four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ, completed it in seven days. And all the evidence that goes against it is not even to be discussed; it is banned. In one of the most advanced countries of the world, such a stupidity…and naturally the students will repeat whatever is being taught to them. That will become their hypnosis. And from childhood until university – almost one third of life – continuous repetition. You can create any kind of hallucination.Most of the things that you believe and you see and you experience are because of your hallucinations. For example, in China for thousands of years it was thought that a woman is beautiful if her feet are very small. So small that she cannot even walk – because her body needs a certain length of foot, as a support, to stand. Rich families, royal families who could afford it, made it a torture to the women. Girls, when they were born, were given steel shoes and they could not take them off, even in sleep. So their whole body grew up and their feet remained so small that they could walk only with two servants supporting them. That was thought to be real richness, real beauty. Such a nonsensical idea…but it prevailed for thousands of years.Everywhere you will find such nonsensical ideas in people’s minds. They are not problems, they are social hypnosis, and unless your social hypnosis is taken away…. And the only way is to negate that hypnosis by another hypnosis. You have to be deprogrammed. Every human being has to be deprogrammed so that his state of mind is absolutely clean, and from there you should start developing. Then you may come to the state of a Gautam Buddha or a Jesus Christ; then you may come to your ultimate destiny: utterly fulfilled and absolutely satisfied, and grateful to existence that it gave you such a great opportunity.A Sunday school teacher had just finished explaining about heaven. “Now,” she said, “hands up, all those children who want to go to heaven.”All the children raised their hands except for little Hymie in the front row. “Don’t you want to go to heaven, Hymie?” asked the teacher.“I can’t,” said Hymie tearfully, “my mother told me to come straight home.”Osho,Most of my questions are never completed in my mind. They surface like the bubbles of a lava pool, then sink back into the mud. The only questions that are undeniably authentic, like thirsts that need quenching, are those to do with the mystery of your presence. Should I be putting more energy into crystallizing my incomplete questions, or should I just be allowing myself to go more and more deeply into the silence of this mystery?If it is possible for you to go more and more deeply into the silence of this mystery, of this life, of this existence, then there is no need to be worried about questions. All questions are superficial, and all answers too, because the reality can neither be questioned nor can it have any explanation or any answer. It simply is. Questions and answers are games you can play with.I allow you to question because if I don’t allow you to question, they will go on and on inside you, whirling and driving you mad. I allow you to question so that they can come out. My answers are not answers to your questions, my answers are simply a death to your questions. I destroy your questions, I don’t answer them, because if I answer them you will only become more knowledgeable. You will now have instead of questions, answers, but you will remain in the same mind which had questions – now it has answers.At least questions were good because you were humble, knowing that you are ignorant. Answers are more dangerous; they will destroy your humbleness and they will give you a feeling that “I know.” That will be a great nourishment to your ego.I cannot give any nourishment to your ego, so my answers are totally different to those you will find anywhere else in the world. Everywhere those answers are imparting knowledge to you so that your question can be dissolved. I am not imparting knowledge, I am not interested in giving you information. I am interested in bringing to you a transformation, and that is a totally different dimension.I have to destroy mercilessly your questions, so if it is happening on its own that you cannot complete your questions, you are blessed. Don’t complete them. Let them die incomplete; they have to die anyway, so why complete them? Why waste energy? And if you feel that you are capable of going into silence and you can enter into the mystery without any questions, nothing can be better than that.The old white-haired spinster was rocking on her front porch with her tomcat at her feet. Suddenly a fairy appeared and offered her three wishes. “Ah, go on,” the old lady said disbelievingly. “If you grant wishes, let us see you turn this rocking chair into a pot of gold.”The fairy waved her wand and the spinster found herself in the center of a pot of gold. Her face lit up. “And I get two more wishes?” she asked. “Anything your heart desires,” said the fairy.“Then make me into a beautiful young girl,” she ordered. Another wave of the wand and her wish was granted. “Now,” said the old lady, “make my tomcat into a handsome young man.”The good fairy waved her wand and disappeared as the third wish came true, and the man of her dreams stood where the tomcat had been sleeping. The young man approached the once old lady and took her in his arms, and murmured gently, “Now, aren’t you sorry you sent me to the vet?”Bringing your questions to me is dangerous. You will be sorry for it, because my whole work is to destroy your questions, to demolish your mind and to clean you completely from all past and all inheritance from the past. I want you to be as fresh as Adam and Eve, as if there has been nobody before you, so that you can start completely fresh. Then each moment is such an adventure and such a deep penetration into mystery. And you don’t know fear because you have never experienced fear. You are not conditioned because you have never been with anybody.Meditation is my method to demolish your past, and your mind is nothing but your past. Meditation is my method to give you a new birth, a new beginning, a revolution in your being, so that you can find reality as an experience for your thirsting soul, not answers for your questions.Questions and answers are just intellectual. You need a real encounter with existence. Only that can help you to blossom, to be liberated, to be enlightened. Silence is perfectly the right path. If your heart has heard and felt something of silence and is entering into the mystery of existence, then forget all about your questions and forget all about answers. Just be silent. And as you become more and more silent, the mystery will go on opening its doors to you. Door upon door, peak upon peak…there is no end.Life is such an eternal miracle, and it opens its doors only to the magic of silence. Whoever has understood silence has known the science, the magic, the art, the knack of entering into reality as if it is your own home. In fact it is.Questions and answers will keep you outside the temple and will never allow you to enter the temple. Leave questions and answers where people leave their shoes, and enter into the silence of the temple. Silence is the way. That will bring you a new dawn, a new explosion of light, an overwhelming dance – a dance in which the stars and the trees and the ocean will be your partners. The whole existence will be your music.I don’t teach anything about God, I teach simply about experiencing the dance of this mysterious life…and you will know about God. God is not a person, but only the fragrance when you have come to your ultimate actualization. When you have attained to your destiny, you will know a quality that can only be called godliness. You will not meet a God confronting you, you will see God radiating from your heart, from your very being, as rays of light and love and compassion and beauty.A dentist and his assistant were busy pulling a man’s tooth when a sharp cry from outside caused them to look up. They rushed to the window just in time to see a good friend of theirs go hurtling past.A couple of moments later someone burst into the office shouting, “Hey, did you hear about Johnny Jones? He just jumped off the roof and fell sixty stories. He is lying down there on Madison Avenue right now and he looks pretty bad.”“That’s funny,” said the dentist. “We saw him go by just a minute ago and he looked fine.”Life is so mysterious. If you are open you will find everywhere so much to laugh at. It is simply hilarious. So enjoy this life, its hilariousness, its mystery, and be just like an innocent child without any questions, without any answers. Don’t be bothered about knowledge and I promise you, wisdom will be yours.Those who are knowledgeable are preventing wisdom from entering into their beings. Knowledge is not a door, it is a wall; it is a China Wall – very thick. It does not allow anything so fragile as wisdom. It does not allow anything like light, fragrance, joy, music, anything that can make your life meaningful, significant…and you can declare to existence that it has been a great blessing to be here on the planet. “There is no way to pay it back. All that we can do is to show our gratitude, our thankfulness.” That thankfulness is the only right prayer. It has no words in it, just a feeling of gratitude.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 30 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Lately, sitting in your presence I am aware that I don't feel the love I used to feel in the past. Rather, I am aware more of your silence and my falling into this silence, this stillness, beauty, quiet and grace. Osho, can you please explain the difference between love and silence, and why I feel saddened by this happening?The path of a seeker is not straight. It takes many turns, unexpected…suddenly, out of nowhere. But you will come back to the same experience again and again, on a higher level of course. It is just like going up a mountain: the path goes round and round.You come to the same spots but on a higher level. You will come to feel love at least seven times, and you will lose it the same number of times, but each time it will be a different quality of love. And the same is true about other experiences – silence, blissfulness, innocence, ecstasy. Unless you become enlightened you will not be able to gather them all; they will be scattered along the whole path. But it is happening for the first time, hence the question.The love that you used to feel was the lowest rung of the ladder. It was beautiful, but still, it was not the purest that comes at the last rung. Now you have moved on and you are feeling silence, stillness, beauty, quiet and grace. But because you have lost love you are feeling sad. There is no reason to feel sad; on the contrary, there is every reason to feel joyous. You have moved on the path.Soon the turn will come again, that you will find love enveloping you. But it will be a different experience. Although the name remains the same, it has a depth which was not there before. Before it was a superficial layer, now it has depth and height. Before it was horizontal, now it will be vertical. It will be lost also, and again you will feel a great silence and stillness and serenity, and you will see the difference from the first experience of silence.The first experience of silence is only an absence of noise. The second experience will start turning from the negative to the positive. It will not be just absence of noise, it will be a positive existence in itself, not related to noise at all. And then silence is a tremendous transformation.Just to not feel the noise is one thing. We call it silence – it is not silence – but when silence descends on you as a positive force, it fills you. It is not emptiness, it is overflowing.And so will be the other qualities: stillness, beauty, quiet and grace. And this is going to happen seven times, so there is no need to be sad; you will lose on one level and you will go on moving. You will find the same experiences on a higher level, more crystal clear, more penetrating to the heart, more transforming, more positive. And each time it happens you will be rising higher.After the seventh, nothing will be lost. Then you can gather all the experiences of seven layers into one organic unity. That unity happens on its own. That’s what I call enlightenment. Now there is nowhere to go, you have reached the highest point and from that point you can see all those lower stages.Remember a basic law: the higher can see the lower and can understand it; the lower cannot see the higher and cannot understand it. So what is happening is perfectly right. Just don’t disturb yourself by sadness that can drag you back.Rather than moving onward, you can go backward and you can find the love again. But then you will not be evolving in consciousness, you will be stuck, and stuck at the lowest rung of the ladder. It is natural to feel sad because you don’t know what is going to happen ahead. You only know that something is lost. You don’t know that it is lost only to appear again when you come to the same point, having gone right round the hill – but at a higher place.You will see the same beauty and the same scenic experience, but you will be at a higher evolved consciousness. And with you everything goes on deepening, becoming more clear, becoming more than just an experience. It goes on becoming your very being.The day silence, love, blissfulness, ecstasy, all become not experiences but your very being – you breathe them in and out; your heart beats with them, dances with them; your being is filled with them, it is no more something that is coming from outside…on the contrary, it is something that is overflowing from your innermost source – then only will you understand that there was no need for any sadness at any moment.Just to help you to drop the sadness:Mona was applying for a job at the whorehouse.“So,” said the madam, “just how expert are you?”“I don’t like to brag,” said Mona, “but I can make love standing on my head.”“Great,” said the madam, “you are the one I want. There is a yogi waiting downstairs.”Osho,I am very afraid to write to you, but I need to tell you: thank you for telling me the truth about myself.Dhyan Om, there is no need to be afraid. I am happy that you have understood the truth. You have been living unnecessarily in misery.In all relationships nobody is responsible for misery. Just the very nature of a relationship is that it turns sour at a certain point. It is neither you nor the other who is responsible for creating the misery, but both are suffering immensely. And the nature of the mind is such that it goes on clinging and hoping, even hoping against hope that perhaps tomorrow things will be better, that it is only a passing phase. You go on somehow consoling yourself.You go on thinking that the other will understand, but it is not the fault of the other. The other is also waiting for you to understand. And it is not your fault either. So there is nothing to understand, you have simply to see and recognize that a relationship as such is bound to end up in a boring, miserable suffering.The moment it starts happening, if you are alert you will separate…not condemning or complaining against the other, because nobody is really doing anything. It is the relationship’s very nature that it cannot remain the same as it was before the honeymoon ended. It cannot be the same after the honeymoon; the whole world has changed. And as days pass, things that you were dreaming start becoming clear to you – that they were only dreams, they don’t have any reality. Both feel frustrated, and both try to throw the responsibility on the other, so that instead of love, fighting becomes their only relationship.But the problem is that the man or the woman goes on clinging even though everything is going toward hell. The reason for clinging is the fear of loneliness. It is better to be miserable but with somebody, than to be lonely – because when you are lonely you have to face yourself. And unless you are prepared for a deep meditation, and to see your inner being and transform your loneliness into aloneness, you are going to cling even though it is miserable. And that’s what you were doing, that’s what many are doing.In fact you proved a pioneer. You created the understanding in many others. After you, many suffering couples have separated. They all owe gratitude toward you. You were the first to take the risk and move out of the relationship. And it is good that you are not angry at me. That’s what ordinarily happens if a man has no intelligence.I am not going to console you. If I see that things are becoming bitter, I want you to separate. Separate peacefully, separate with respect toward each other; separate in such a way that you don’t become enemies, that at least you remain friends. Separate without hate. Remember the person you have loved at least deserves not to be hated.But if you go on clinging too long, all love is forgotten, all beautiful moments are forgotten. All that you can remember is misery and misery and misery – every day misery. Then love turns into hate, then everything is poisoned. Then you cannot separate even with grace, and after separation you cannot even think of friendship.And because I made it clear to you, naturally a man who is not intelligent will start thinking in angry terms against me – that I brought the idea of separation. But you will find that you are happier than you were in the relationship.Latifa has again been heard, after many, many months, laughing. Yes, this is Latifa! She had forgotten to laugh completely. And now remember never to get into the same trap again. You can have friendships, you can have casual relationships, but never go beyond casualness. Don’t make them permanent. Don’t try to cement your relationship – that will kill you both. Remain free.One of the wisest steps is to never live with the woman you love. Live separately, so you are free to be alone, she is free to be alone. Never make promises and commitments, never demand that only you should be loved. On the contrary, if your woman or your man on the weekends takes a little joy in somebody else, it is perfectly good for a change. And after the change, back to the working days, it feels better. One is rested, and one’s mind is no more wandering, and one knows that this woman or that, this man or that, they are all the same. When the light is turned off, then all differences disappear!So just enjoy your aloneness. That does not mean that you have to remain without creating any friends, but make it clear always…At least my people should remember it. The old world has suffered so much because these simple things were not understood, and they made it almost compulsory that you have to be together once you have decided to be with someone. This goes against man’s frailty, man’s weakness.Man is not made of steel. What is love today, tomorrow may not be. If tomorrow somebody else catches your eye, what can you do about it? The old man used to repress it, but when you repress something it turns into anger against the woman whom you are now tied to like a prisoner. The woman hates the husband because she is tied.Just a few days ago one sannyasin was saying, “I have given him enough rope.” What do you think your husband is – a dog? You are giving enough rope, but the rope is in your hands. The moment you see the dog has seen some other girlfriend, you pull the rope back: “You son of a bitch, come back!” This is not love, this is pure politics. It is a lust for power, domination.Two bishops were discussing the decline in morals in the modern world. “I did not sleep with my wife before I was married,” said one clergyman self-righteously. “Did you?”“I don’t know,” said the other. “What was her maiden name?”And these are the people who are enforcing morality, who are teaching you to be committed, to be loyal, who are teaching you to remain attached with one person. Nobody is concerned whether it creates a hell for you and the other.There is an ancient parable:A man’s father died, so the whole neighborhood came to console him. Many old people said to him, “Don’t be worried, if your father is dead we are here. Your father was our friend and we are just like your father; you will not miss him. You can always come for any advice or for any help. We are available to you, you are just like our son.”Then his mother died, and all the women of the neighborhood said the same thing: “Don’t be worried, we are just like mothers to you. You can come to us the way you used to go to your mother for any help or any problem. We will always remain available. She was such a good soul and we all loved her.” Then his wife died, and he waited and waited and waited and no woman turned up. He was very angry. He came out of his house and shouted, “What has happened? When my father died all the old idiots came to be my father. When my mother died, all the stupid old women came saying that they want to be my mother. Now what has happened? My wife has died, and nobody is coming to tell me, ‘Don’t be worried, she was a great soul, and we are just like your wife. You can come to us.’ Nobody is coming!” And the neighborhood remained silent.The relationship between man and woman as husband and wife has been put in a special category, different from every other relationship.This is not the right approach, not an enlightened approach. If the people had been really understanding, women would have gone to him and said the same thing, that “Don’t be worried, if one woman has died, we are all here. Whenever you need or whenever you feel alone, just ask for help and we will be available.” In a really human society, all jealousy will disappear, all domination will disappear. People will be helping each other in their loneliness, and helping them to become capable of being alone. It is human.So if your woman once in a while goes with somebody else, there is nothing to be worried about. If your man goes with somebody else…everybody needs holidays. But your saints, your priests, because they don’t have any holidays…a saint has to be a saint for seven days continuously; there is no Sunday. He cannot take leave of his sainthood even for a single moment. Because he cannot enjoy any holiday, he takes revenge on society. He will not allow you either to have holidays.They decide your morality, they decide how you should live, and they are the worst people to decide it, the most inexperienced people to decide it. They don’t know relationship, they don’t know the intricacies of relationship; they don’t know the fragility of love. They don’t know that the human mind gets bored with the same thing every day, and just a little holiday will be a tremendous help to keep people together.It is said that Mulla Nasruddin was made an advisor to a king, and because of his beautiful stories the king became very much addicted to him. He wouldn’t let him go anywhere. They used to eat at the same table – that was the first time that the king had allowed anybody else to sit at the same table while eating. The first day Mulla was sitting there and the king said, “The cook has made stuffed bhindis.” Once in a while it is really delicious, but only once in a while. And the king appreciated them. Seeing that the king was appreciating, Mulla said, “Perhaps you don’t know that bhindis are not only vegetables, they are medicine. They prolong your life, they make you more powerful, they give you longer youth. It is written in the ancient books of medicine.”The cook heard all this praise so he started making stuffed bhindis every day. The second day the king tolerated it; the third day he was feeling angry that this idiot, Mulla, had corrupted the mind of the cook: “It seems now my whole life I have to eat bhindis!”On the fourth day it was too much, and he threw the plate on the ground shouting at the cook, “I will shoot you if ever I see a bindhi in this house again.”Mulla said, “I was going to say the same thing before you did. This cook needs to be shot immediately. Bhindis are very dangerous.”The king said, “Mulla, have you forgotten what you said before?” He said, “I am your servant, I am not a servant of bhindis. You were appreciating so I appreciated; I am just here to serve you. Now if you want me to, I can shoot the cook.”The cook said, “This is strange. You corrupted my mind.”But human mind has to be understood. It gets bored with the same thing every day. Whether it is a wife or a husband, or a certain food, or a certain film…how long can you see a film? Once is great. Twice it is dull, because you already know what is going to happen. Thrice and you will start thinking of committing suicide: if this is the film that you have to see for your whole life, it is better to be finished with it.My own approach is that boredom is coming into relationships because we have made relationships very tight and very controlled. This should be more free, and newer pastures should be available to both the persons. And they will come together again and again, with great love, because whoever gives you freedom creates love in you. Whoever destroys your freedom destroys your love too.“Baby, I am going to kiss you to death tonight,” said the big, macho man.“Yeah, sure,” teased the young secretary.“Baby, you will be lucky if you can walk tomorrow,” he bragged.“Sure, sure, we will see,” scoffed the girl.When the chips were down though, and the big man could not quite come up with the goods, the girl pulled out a feather from a pillow and began to stroke him lightly on the forehead.The big, macho guy eyed her curiously and asked her, “Hey, what’s the big idea?”“Well, comparatively speaking,” she scolded, “I am beating your brains out.”Osho,The other day I heard you say that when we take sannyas we make you out a blank check of our lives. I can imagine that this statement would rock the very floorboards of the conservative element the world over. But as far as one of my best friends is concerned, after hearing that, he jumped and took sannyas the next day. Is this the wealth of courage leading toward the new man?It is true that when you take initiation into sannyas you give me a blank check for your life. And it is also true that this will rock the very foundations, floorboards of the conservative element the world over. I want it to happen. I want to destroy all those foundations and floorboards of the conservative mind that have kept humanity under slavery for centuries. They are the worst criminals and the greatest enemies of man. And this is also true, that your friend is a courageous fellow, a man who loves adventure, a man who accepts a challenge when it comes and is not too cowardly to escape and hide himself. But there is one thing that I have not told, and I would like you never to tell anybody – at least the orthodox and conservative elements in the world – that I have never used anybody’s blank check.Certainly initiation means you have taken a step into a dangerous life. You have accepted me as your friend in the darkness and you have given your hand with great trust. But I have never used any blank check and I have never used or even interfered in anybody’s life. It is just on your part – I am absolutely out of it. It is your initiation and it is your initiative to offer your life to be transformed. But the whole action and its responsibility is yours. You can take your blank check back any moment, because it will remain blank. But unless you take a step with such courage, you are not going to grow.Growth certainly needs one thing, and that is courage. That is the most fundamental religious quality, the only qualification that I require from my people. Everything else is ordinary and can follow, but courage is the most fundamental thing, the first thing. Yes, Satyadharma, this is the courage which will bring the New Man into existence. The past, the old man, the outgoing man was very much of a coward. He remained a sheep, while he had the potentiality of being a lion. He remained a sheep because it is very cozy to be surrounded by a big crowd; one feels secure and safe. And one feels that “Everybody cannot go wrong, and I am going with everybody.” This is one of the greatest mysteries of life, that crowds always go wrong. They cannot go right. Have you ever heard of any crowd becoming enlightened? It is always the individual who attains to the highest peak of consciousness. The crowd remains at the lowest possible state of consciousness – just a very small, thin layer of consciousness. And the bigger the crowd, the thinner becomes the layer of consciousness.Courage means to stand alone and to take a path without anybody to be your companion, without any guide, without any map…just finding out your way in the thick forests of life. This very effort makes you alert. This very fact creates consciousness in you, because you are surrounded with all kinds of dangers – the wild animals, the darkness of the night, and the untrodden path. Nobody knows where you are going. In such circumstances an explosion happens in you which becomes the rebirth, or the beginning of a new dawn, or the beginning of a new man.But Satyadharma, you have to learn something from your friend. You have taken sannyas almost for granted. It is not a danger to you; perhaps it has become a shelter to you. Mind’s cunningness has no limits. It can make a dangerous situation also a shelter, a security – at least it can hallucinate. Otherwise the very act of becoming a sannyasin will be a great transformation in your being.“My beautiful sexy lady,” whispered the suave playboy, “you are the only girl for me. I dig you, I’m crazy about you, I’m nuts about you. I can’t make it through the night.”“Hey, wait a minute,” protested the shy girl. “I don’t want to get serious.”“Hell, baby,” said the guy, “who’s serious?”If you become a sannyasin because others are becoming, because some of your friends have become sannyasins – to you it is just a curiosity, not an authentic longing for search – then it will not help you in any way. It will be simply an exercise in utter futility.Sannyas cannot be accidental; it should be intentional. You should be ready to go into any transformation, any change. And the curious man is not ready for that – only a seeker, only one who is ready to risk his life. That risking of life is the beginning of a new consciousness within you. It is the awakening of your soul.Osho,Since “I” and “doing” seem to be rather a problem, is there anything “I” can do toward “no I” and “no doing”?An old Zen master, who was known and feared for his ferocious behavior and his unpredictable answers, was once visited by one of his disciples. He knocked cautiously at the master’s door and asked, “Master, are you there?”After a moment the disciple heard a wild voice roaring back, “No!”The disciple answered, “Oh, what luck that I did not come.”You are unnecessarily getting into puzzles. You are asking, “Since ‘I,’ and ‘doing’ seem to be rather a problem, is there anything ‘I’ can do to move toward ‘no I’ and ‘no doing’?Nothing is needed but a good laughter.The teenage couple were having an argument on the phone. Finally the boy exploded and said, “I am tired of this fooling around. I am coming over to your house tonight and I am going to throw you down on the sofa and pull off your pants.”“Oh no you’re not,” shouted the girl.“And I am going to screw you so hard,” the boy continued, “that you won’t be able to walk straight.”“Oh no you’re not,” shouted the girl.“And what is more,” the boy cried, “I am not even going to wear a condom.”“Oh yes you are,” shouted the girl.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 31 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is it because of women being repressed so long that there are not many women comediennes or jokes that don't have a male chauvinistic ring to them? Do women not have such a great sense of humor as men? I am asking this question very seriously, but would settle for a joke as an answer.Maneesha, the sense of humor comes into existence at the last stage of evolution. No animal other than man has a sense of humor. The sense of humor can be called the criterion whether evolution has become conscious or not. Up to man, evolution is an unconscious process. With man something absolutely new opens its wings: evolution is no longer dependent on the blind forces of nature, man has to take it into his own hands.Your question is immensely significant, because man has not allowed woman the same status, the same position, the same freedom as he has allowed himself. The woman has lived down the ages as a prisoner. In the name of religion, in the name of morality, in the name of chastity – all great names but hiding a simple and ugly fact: slavery, spiritual slavery.Education was not allowed, social movement was not allowed. In different countries, in different ways, the woman has been reduced to a subhuman status. Because she is not educated, she has to be dependent on man financially. She cannot compete with man in the marketplace or anywhere else. She is debarred from any possible evolution of consciousness in any dimension.For example, there have not been any great painters or poets or musicians or sculptors from the world of women. Not that woman is incapable or intrinsically has no potential, but potential alone is not enough. It needs opportunity to become actual and man has removed all opportunities for woman’s growth. That’s why there is no sense of humor in women. They cannot in fact enjoy laughter. Their very situation is sad. They are living in chains, invisible, they are living in prisons. But they have lived in those prisons for so long that everybody has forgotten that they are prisons. They are in every way handicapped, prevented from everything creative – even prevented from being spiritual beings.It is a very sad story that half of humanity has been prevented from every creative dimension. And this half of humanity has far bigger a heart than man, has more capacity for sensitivity than man, can create in many dimensions in a far superior way than any man, but she has just not been given any opportunity. On the contrary, all kinds of preventive measures have been taken so that she remains enslaved. It is so ugly, so condemnable that because of this very few women could become enlightened.And they have more potential for it than man, for the simple reason that nature endows them in a few dimensions with greater energy and greater power – because they have to be mothers. Nature depends on them for reproduction, for life to continue. Man’s hand in life’s perpetuation is negligible. On the contrary, man has been the cause of bringing destruction and death to millions of people around the globe. As far back as you can go, you will always find man fighting. His whole effort, his whole intelligence and genius has been devoted singularly in creating more powerful weapons to destroy.Woman is the source of life; man seems to be in the service of death. And of course the source of life has more creative possibilities than man can ever have. It is not a coincidence that even those few men who have been great musicians or dancers or poets or painters, in some way became as graceful as women.Friedrich Nietzsche had a great insight when he said, “I cannot accept Gautam Buddha because he has a feminine quality.” Friedrich Nietzsche is deep down a male chauvinist. In Gautam Buddha’s whole life and whole philosophy, he finds only one thing that is significant to him, and that is the feminine grace of the man. And because of that he condemns Gautam Buddha.His condemnation is not based on any argument against the philosophy of Gautam Buddha. His condemnation is that his philosophy must be wrong because it creates a feminine grace, it makes people incapable of violence. Gautam Buddha’s meditation techniques will destroy war, and without war there will be no great men. It is war that creates great leaders. A strange argument in favor of war. A very strange idea against peace, against silence, against grace, against enlightenment itself.But as far as I am concerned, to me it shows that the woman has more potential to become enlightened. She is far closer to enlightenment because she already has the grace, she already has a loving heart. She has been corrupted badly, poisoned badly, but still, in spite of all that has been done to her, she is capable of coming out of the dark night.The woman has had nothing to laugh about, she has had only things to weep and cry for. She knows perfectly well how to cry; she is expert in tears. Laughter has been a faraway goal. What has the woman to laugh about? Her whole life is so badly damaged: her potential has been so much crushed, her individuality has been kept in such a bondage, her wings have been cut, her roots destroyed. No other class has suffered so much through the hands of man as woman. And she has given birth to man, and she has raised man, and she has loved man, and she has been a companion to him in the darkest nights. She has been a solace in the most depressive moments, she has been an ointment for all his wounds. Still, man has paid her only with slavery and more slavery.It seems there is some psychological fear. Man seems to have sensed it at the very beginning that woman has some more superior powers, some more vitality, and if she is allowed total freedom to grow she will go far ahead of man. It is better to keep her wings cut so that she cannot fly in the open sky; to keep her weak; to teach her, condition her that she has to depend on man.The Hindu scriptures say, when you are a small girl you should depend on your father; when you are a young woman you should depend on your husband; and when you are an old woman you should depend on your children. But you should always depend, you should never be independent. The ugliest words of abuse have been used in all the so-called holy scriptures.The ultimate result is that the woman has become very bitter. Her whole being has become a cry for revolt. She is not at peace to laugh at things; she is in utter misery and despair, and unless she becomes liberated she will not have a sense of humor. Once she becomes liberated, she will leave man far behind in all creative dimensions and she will be really joyous and playful. Naturally, she is not serious, she is not concerned with serious things. Man by nature seems to be serious. If you talk about nonserious things, he thinks you are being childish.The woman never talks about God or about heaven or about hell. She is not interested in the holy gospels, she is interested in all the unholy gossips! She is interested in a very nearby life. She is pragmatic, practical, realistic; she is not a stargazer.I am reminded about a great astrologer. The story is from ancient Greece, from the times of Socrates. The astrologer was looking at the stars in the night, and he was going to look at the stars at a place out of the city, in the open…to see better – he had only primitive instruments. And because he was looking toward the sky and not looking at the earth, he fell into a well, and he shouted. An old woman living by the side, on her farm, came to rescue him, and when he was out of the well he said to the old woman, “You may not know me, but I am the greatest astrologer in the whole land. I am the astrologer not only of the king of Greece but of the kings of many other countries. Even very rich people stand in line to see me, but for you I will do a favor – you have saved my life. You can come any day you want and I will read your birth chart, look into your future, into your past, and I will not charge you anything.”The old woman laughed and she said, “Forget all about it, I am not going to come, because if you cannot see that a well is ahead of you, what more future…? First learn to see what is ahead of you, then start telling others what is in their unknown future. Don’t befool me. You can befool the kings. Even if you pay me, I am not going to come. I have seen your reality.”Man has always been interested in faraway things. The woman is never interested in faraway things, her interest is very real. And if she is allowed freedom – and she will have to be allowed because it is time…. This kind of slavery cannot be tolerated any more; neither by women, nor by any man who has any compassion, any intelligence, any love. This situation has to be totally changed.Then she will sing songs that her past is absolutely missing. She will dance, and she will dance better than any Nijinsky; she will paint better than any Picasso. And her songs and her paintings and her music and her dances will be closer to life, more sane, more healthy. Once she is completely liberated she will be able to produce more Buddhas, more Bodhidharmas, more Jesuses than man has been able to. And one thing can be said with absolute certainty, that she will not crucify a Jesus, she will not poison a Socrates, she will not murder a Mansoor; that is simply inconceivable about woman.Man is destructive, woman is creative. Her laughter will also be of a different quality, of a far superior quality…more innocent and more childlike.But Maneesha, it has not been up to now possible simply because the woman has not been accepted as a human being. And she has been forced to remain in the shadows, never coming out into the light. But I would like my people, whether they are men or women, to feel sad about the past and to do everything to break away from the past and its ugly inheritance. I teach complete discontinuity.The woman should be given her rights to grow in her own uniqueness, and that will enhance the whole society. It will enhance man too because man begins his life in the woman’s womb. For nine months he is one, totally one with the woman. And scientists say that in nine months the child grows more than he will grow in the coming seventy years of his life. Those nine months are condensed growth, almost unimaginable – because the child has to pass through all the stages that man has passed through in the whole evolution. Almost millions of years have to be passed in nine months’ time: from the fish to the man.The first stage of the child in the mother’s womb is that of a fish. And then he passes through all the stages of other animals. He has lived inside the woman, and you will be surprised…Sigmund Freud and his school of psychologists have contributed many great insights. One of them is that man’s whole search for paradise, or a heaven, or the kingdom of God, or nirvana is nothing but the search for the mother’s womb.Those beautiful nine months without any responsibility…not even the responsibility to breathe – the mother was breathing for you – not even the responsibility to bother about your food. No question of past, no question of future, just the present moment and everything is available. Before the child asks, everything is available to the child. Sigmund Freud feels that those nine months have remained in the unconscious and they are creating the urge to find those golden moments again. Certainly you cannot enter the mother’s womb again. But he has a great idea and great insight.You can enter into the womb of the whole existence. Nirvana and the kingdom of God are nothing other than entering into the womb of existence itself where no responsibility, no burden, no fear, no death…but only a pure, eternal dance of blissfulness.The moment the woman is totally free, not only will she make life more peaceful, more full of laughter, she will also make man calm down, be less tense. And you all know it – in ordinary experience it happens. If two persons are fighting and a woman comes in, they calm down, they become just gentlemen immediately because a lady has come in. They cannot use the dirty language that they were using before, they cannot behave barbarously the way they were behaving before.Just now in America, in a few federal jails, they are experimenting by mixing women prisoners and men prisoners together; up to now the jails were separate. After just a few months’ experience, strange conclusions have come to light. The most important is that the male prisoners have become less dangerous. A certain calmness and quietness…just because of the presence of the women among them. And the jail psychologists are simply surprised. The very ferocious criminals, murderers, rapists, even they have started behaving in a better way. They have started shaving twice a day!In their jails they are running out of Eau de Cologne because the men are asking continuously for Eau de Cologne; they don’t want that the women should notice that they are smelling badly. They are asking for combs and mirrors – new demands that they had never bothered about before. They are taking regular baths and asking for fresh clothes every day. Their habits have changed; otherwise they were constantly fighting and quarreling among themselves. But the presence of women has changed the whole atmosphere.Although they are not allowed to make love…the prisoners are complaining only of one thing. They have not raped any woman, which was expected: whether you allow it or not. They have been raping outside the jail – that’s why they have been put in jail! And you provide women; it is taking a risk. But no woman has been raped in the jail. On the contrary, their complaint is that, since women have come into the jail, they are being constantly watched, and that has become a tension in their minds.The jail authorities are constantly watching from every window, from every door, from every keyhole. They are watching that no harm is being done to the women, and the prisoners have complained, “This is insulting, this is humiliating us. Nobody is behaving badly with the women, but being constantly watched is against human dignity. We may be criminals but still we are human beings, and we don’t want that the whole night somebody is watching. We cannot even sleep without being watched.” Otherwise they are very happy and they have welcomed the women. And the women have also been in for a great surprise – nobody has harmed them and the atmosphere has suddenly lost its heat, anger, and a certain calmness has settled.If all over the world the woman is allowed freedom to grow to her potential, there will be many, many women enlightened; many, many women mystics, poets, painters. And they will enhance not only the woman’s part of the world – because the world is one – they will enhance the whole world. They will give man also new dimensions because their ways of seeing things are different. Man looks at things in one way; the woman looks from a different perspective. Life will become richer.It is for the betterment of both man and woman that the woman should be given every freedom and equal opportunity for her individuality. Then there will be a sense of humor. And the woman can laugh more gracefully than man, she has every potential for it – but it is repressed, condemned, criticized. She has lived a life of such misery that you cannot hope that she will show some sense of humor. But the day is not far away…then the whole earth will be full of laughter. Instead of talks about war, instead of politicians giving speeches all around the world, instead of the sermons of stupid priests who know nothing, it will be far better that every man and every woman is able to see the hilarious side of life and to enjoy it.Two jokes for you, Maneesha:On his way home from work one day, the husband was suddenly filled with inspiration and bought his wife a bunch of flowers. Wanting to surprise her he knocked on the front door and waited around the corner. When his wife opened the door, he jumped out in front of her and with a big smile handed her the flowers. The smile froze on his face as she burst into angry tears. “My God, what is the matter, honey?” he asked.“I have had a terrible day,” she cried. “This morning I broke the teapot, the baby has been crying all day long and now, to top it all off, you come home drunk!”Because this must have been the first time that he has brought flowers, out of great inspiration. The poor woman cannot laugh. On the contrary, the man’s smile becomes frozen. He cannot believe that this is the reception his great inspiration gets.A man went to visit an old married couple he had not seen for some time. The old housewife greeted him at the door and the man asked, “Hello Mabel, and how is Jack?”“Ah, did not you hear?” said Mabel. “He died a little while ago.”“I am very sorry to hear that, Mabel,” said the man. “Tell me, how did it happen?”“Well,” said Mabel, “he had gone into the garden to pick some vegetables for our dinner when he just collapsed and died.”“Good Lord,” said the man, “that’s simply terrible. What on earth did you do?”“What could I do? I opened a tin of beef.”Osho,In the last few days I heard you speak about watching the clouds of moods passing by. The other day I heard you saying: be total, go totally into it. I like to watch the clouds of anger, sadness, jealousy, etc. passing by, but not moods like happiness and joy. I like to become identified with these moods and go totally into them and express them. Should I watch every mood or should I go totally into every mood? I cannot bring these things together. Would you please comment?No one can bring these two things together. You will have to choose one. My suggestion is, watch everything with equal distance, with equal aloofness. Sadness, anger, jealousy, happiness, joy, love – remain aloof from all and just be total in your watching.Your watchfulness should be total. You be identified with your watching because that is your nature, that’s what you are. There is no question of disidentifying with it; even if you try you cannot succeed. Your intrinsic nature is simply that of a witness. A single quality of awareness makes your whole being. So watch everything as if it is a cloud passing by.I can see your difficulty: you would like to be identified with love, you would like to be identified with happiness and you would like not to be identified with sadness, you would not like to be identified with misery. But this kind of choice is not allowed by existence.If you really want to get beyond the mind and all its experiences – sadness and joy, anger and peace, hate and love; if you want to get beyond all these dualities, you have to watch them equally, you cannot choose. If you choose, you will not be able to watch those which you don’t want to choose. So the first thing is, just be a watcher.It will be a little difficult in the beginning to watch those things which are so sweet, so beautiful because watching makes you distant from every experience that is passing by like a cloud. You cannot cling. Up to now that’s what you have been doing: clinging to that which you think is good and trying to get away from that which you think is ugly and miserable. But you have created only a mess of yourself. You have not been successful.The best way is to be totally a watcher, but if you find it difficult there is an alternative. But that is harder than this, it is more difficult than this one – to get identified with every cloud that moves. If there is misery, then become absolutely miserable, then don’t hold anything back, just go with it to the very end. If you are angry, then be angry and do whatever stupidity it suggests to you to do. If some crazy cloud passes by, be crazy. But then don’t miss anything. Whatever comes to you, be totally with it in that moment, and when it is gone it is gone.This also will liberate you, but it is a more difficult path. If you want something really dangerous to play with, you can get identified with everything. Then don’t make any differentiation, that this is good to get identified with and this is bad to get identified with. Then there is no question; without any discrimination, get identified, and within a week you will be finished with it. Just one week will be enough, because so many things are passing by; you will be so tired, so exhausted. If you survive, we will meet again. If you don’t survive, good bye.But this is a dangerous path. I have never heard of anybody surviving. And you know perfectly well what kind of things come to your mind. Sometimes you feel like barking, then get into it, bark like a dog. And whatever the world thinks, let them think. You have chosen your path, you will get free…perhaps totally free. Enlightenment and freedom from the body will come together! But it is a bit dangerous.People may try to prevent you, because nobody knows what kind of things come to your mind. Your own people – your friends, your family, your wife, your husband – may try to prevent you. There are many people all over the world whose families have forced them into insane asylums, because that was the only way to protect them. And this happens everywhere.Just now the world has come to know that England’s royal family has been keeping two persons, belonging to the royal family, locked in a basement for forty years in Buckingham Palace. And this was not released, this was not allowed to be known, because even to accept that royal people can go mad is humiliating. Royal blood?For forty years they have been hiding the facts about where these people had disappeared to, and just now it has leaked out. Then they had to accept that they have been keeping them in a basement because they were behaving in an insane way, and they did not want the world to know that members of the royal family of England are behaving insanely.But this goes on happening. In my village, the richest family had one person locked inside in their house his whole life. Everybody knew that something had happened to the person because he suddenly disappeared. But it was sixty years before, so by and by, people had forgotten. I came to know just by chance, because one of the sons of the man who was kept in chains was my student. Because he was from my own village, he used to come to see me often, and one day I just asked him, “I have never seen your father.”He became very sad and he said, “I cannot lie to you, but what is happening to my father is such a heavy weight on my heart. Because my family is the richest family of the village, they don’t want anybody to know what they are doing with my father. They beat him; he has been encaged almost like a wild animal. He cries, shouts, screams, but nobody listens, nobody goes near. Just from the top, food is dropped to him. Everything that he needs is dropped from the top. Nobody wants even to face him.”But I said, “What has he done?”He said, “Nothing special, he was just crazy. He used to do things which are not normal.” For example, he might go naked into the market. Now, there was no harm…he had not done any harm to anybody, he had just been walking naked in the marketplace, but that was enough for the family to force him. And they made him more and more insane. This was not going to help, this was not a cure, not a treatment.So if you get identified with all your ideas, then you should think before you start the practice: what people will think about it and how they will behave with you – although it is possible to get free of all those emotions if you get identified with all of them, without any choice.Either be choicelessly identified or be choicelessly unidentified. The real thing is choicelessness. But the first way, you will be on safer ground. Be a choiceless watcher. Don’t choose something good and don’t throw away something bad. Nothing is good, nothing is bad; only witnessing is good and non-witnessing is bad.“Doctor,” said the housewife, “I have come to see you about my husband. We have been married for over twenty-five years. He has been a good husband, happy, contented and very devoted to me, but since he came to see you about his headaches he has been a different man. Now he never comes home at night, he never takes me out anymore, he never buys me anything nor gives me any money. Hell, he never even looks at me. Your treatment seems to have changed his entire personality.”“Treatment?” said the doctor. “All I did was give him a prescription for a pair of glasses.”Because he was not able to see exactly…now for the first time he has seen the woman. So just a pair of glasses can make a dramatic change – the whole personality, his whole behavior. Otherwise he used to be a very loyal husband.And this will not be such a small thing, just a pair of glasses. If you start getting identified with everything, you will be in difficulty from every corner. It is better to choose the safer way; all awakened people have chosen that way. It is without exception the sanest path toward enlightenment.Osho,The other morning when you talked about our relationship I heard myself laughing and suddenly I got so sad. I realized that even though we are separated and I'm much happier, part of me is still holding on and clinging. I am still dreaming of Om, thinking of him and still, very deep down hoping. I have heard you say that women are more clinging than men. As far as Om and I are concerned, it is true. It feels as if he has left it far behind and I still have it in my mind, in my heart and even in my body. Beloved Osho, where can I go from here?Latifa, it is part of our unconscious state. You were unhappy together with Om, now you are unhappy without him. You have to watch your mind. It will never leave you at peace; whatever you do it will create misery, because mind is a duality. You are able to see that you are happy, yet another part of your mind still longs to be with Om. And when you were with Om, the part that is happy now was very unhappy.Mind will always be divided about everything in life. Half of the mind is for it and half of the mind is against it, so you are always in a tense state. You have to understand one thing: a few days being alone is not going to harm anybody. It will give you space to see things clearly; it will give space to Om to see things clearly.And if you choose to be miserable, either Om may be available or there are even greater Oms. What do you think, only Om is a coconut? I have seen bigger coconuts around here. A coconut is not a rare thing, it is a very normal and a common variety. So whenever you are in difficulty…but I would like you, for a few days, just to let the world be at peace. You be alone, let Om be alone. The world will remain always grateful, and perhaps you will start enjoying your aloneness. But give it a little chance. You have been with Om long enough and you have suffered every moment of it. Now again the desire for suffering…one gets addicted. These are just drugs.Now sitting alone in your room, with nobody to fight… Otherwise I have heard that people are fighting the whole night, up to three o’clock in the morning. That makes life a thrill. At three o’clock they go to sleep, hoping that “Tomorrow we will see again. Just a little rest and then we will start again.” Now you must be feeling alone. No need to be worried, you can talk alone. Just close your doors and talk with your pillow. Write on the pillow “Dhyan Om,” make a little picture…or you must have a photograph of Om, so put the photograph on that pillow and go on hammering whatever you want to say, or beat him, and he cannot do anything. Such a good situation!And you are asking, “From here, where can I go?” There is nobody and nowhere, and there is no need to go. Some nut will come into your trap by itself. You just wait, keep your doors open…some nut will enter. Most probably it will be Om himself, because he is feeling the same – missing Latifa. And both were torturing each other; it was such a perfect couple that even I am feeling sorry that a perfect couple has been separated. You should think of me, too. It is so rare to find such a perfect couple. Nobody was tired of suffering, nobody was tired of misery, both were ready every day, and it was an ongoing story. Just a little interval is not bad.For a few days enjoy aloneness, and if you really find it beautiful, joyous, then there is no need to get into any relationship, any trap. You can have friends – even Om is not a bad guy. Once in a while you can meet with Om also. And because it will be only once in a while, there will not be conflict, there will not be fight; it will be a sweet experience. But don’t hang around with each other longer. The moment you see that the climate is changing, find any excuse and get rid of Om.And there are other people also. Why torture only Om? Give the same experience to a few other people, because everybody needs such experiences for their spiritual growth. You are just after Om; you want to make him enlightened anyway, whether he wants it or not. You can make, in the interval, a few other people enlightened. Om will be always there; he is also in the same situation. Let him torture a few other people, and then you can meet again with all your new experiences. Then you can torture with new methods, new techniques.Right now, you have tortured each other with the same techniques, the same methods. First, learn a few more. Each person will give you some new technique, because everybody knows his own way, his own style of torturing others. It is a great opportunity – don’t miss it – for you both.You have created such a great trigger that many great couples are breaking away. Seeing that even Latifa and Om can separate – who were living in constant hell, but they were so much glued…You have become an example. Your name will be remembered in history! There are many couples separating, here and there, just seeing that “Even Latifa and Om can separate, so what is the problem? We can also separate. Why go on suffering?” You have made the door open and created a great example, just don’t destroy your prestige.Beloved Latifa, you are not to go anywhere, just remain in your room alone. And let poor Om also have a little rest. When I see that it is too much for you to be happy, to be relaxed, to be restful, I can always send a message to Om, who is always ready to fall into the same ditch again. He will come with great joy to join you and create the same hell again. Then don’t tell me, “From here, where can we go?” There is no need to go anywhere, just remain where you are.But give a little time for you, for Om and for others who have followed your example. If you start being together again, all those who have followed your example will think, “My God, should we start joining together again?” They are for the first time feeling free and joyous. It is not only your question, now it is a question of many, many people. On your shoulders is a great responsibility. So be a little strong and allow a little rest to yourself; you have tortured yourself and Om enough.I know, it is an ancient religious way of torturing to attain to the kingdom of God, but nobody has attained. By torture, you can only descend into hell. And you have tasted hell so long that just a small holiday won’t do any harm. Just now, for two days, I have started hearing your laughter again – for years I had forgotten how Latifa laughs. And many more are laughing and enjoying, so don’t betray your followers.“Why don’t you settle the case out of court?” said the judge to the husband and wife.“That’s what we were doing, your honor,” said the wife, “until the police came.”You have done enough to each other.

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 32 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I seem to have become very muddleheaded and scatter-brained lately. But unfortunately there has been no corresponding upsurge of intelligence. Is this just a temporary lapse or do I have a leak somewhere?Anando, you are a rare intelligence but it often happens that the people who are intelligent don’t have a good memory. And people who are intelligent, if they are not a little eccentric, are very flat and boring. You are not flat and boring. You are a born cuckoo. And you can hear from the very morning…the cuckoo is going sane. I have been listening for almost half an hour.A man who has intelligence is bound to be thought by many to be a little bit off the track. And in fact he is. Certainly he is not one of the crowd. To the crowd he is an outsider, a stranger. He dreams dreams which are not common, he hopes against hope, which looks absurd to commonsense people. He perceives faraway things, imagines utopias. He is the very salt of the earth.And particularly being a woman you are even more rare, because man has not allowed women to be intelligent. Man has always kept them in an inferior position. Even the greatest men who are known to be compassionate have completely forgotten their compassion as far as woman is concerned. Perhaps there was a certain fear going against their whole manhood or perhaps they are not even aware what man has been doing to woman.Even a man like Jesus treats women as if they are not human beings. For twenty years continuously Gautam Buddha did not allow any woman to be initiated into sannyas, because he was worried about the future of his religion. To be frank, the worry was not about religion, the worry was about the monks who had repressed sexual energy. To bring the woman in was dangerous. Perhaps Buddha could have managed while he was alive, but how long he could be alive? After him things would take their natural course.Mahavira was afraid…He is thought to be one of the most courageous men that have walked on the earth; hence the name Mahavira. It is not the name given by his parents, it is an appreciation by the people; his name was Vardhamana. Mahavira means the courageous one. But even this courageous one was not courageous enough to declare that a woman is as capable of becoming enlightened as a man.To me, these things hurt deeply. I appreciate these people – Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira – but I cannot totally appreciate them. Something is missing, and that something is about women. Mahavira was absolutely adamant that no woman can enter into enlightenment through the body of a woman. And these are the statements of a man who is saying every day that “You are not the body, you are not the mind, you are pure consciousness.” And he is unable to see the contradiction: If consciousness is not the body, then it does not matter whether consciousness is in the body of a woman or in the body of a man. Consciousness itself is neither male nor female.And this is true of all religions. They have committed a crime for which they are going to pay, and pay highly. They have destroyed half of humanity and its intelligence and its possibility of growth.Anando is an intelligent woman. Somehow she has escaped from the trap, and all intelligent people are so individualistic that the crowd thinks that something is wrong with them, particularly about a woman.In the first place, she is not expected to be intelligent; in the second place, she is not allowed to be a cuckoo, and Anando is both! And I love cuckoos, because cuckoos will reach enlightenment before anybody else. And a man or woman who does not have something eccentric in them is not interesting. They are too flat, too boring. A small eccentricity makes people more juicy.So Anando, there is no need to be worried. There is no leak, and it is not just a temporary lapse either – you are a permanent cuckoo. But this is not going to hinder anything. It is going to help your growth immensely.This communion is of outsiders. This is not a gathering of commonsense people. All commonsense people are against me. To be with me you need some uncommon sense, only then you can understand me.Memory one day has to go completely. If it is disappearing, it is a good sign. To be clean of memory means to be clean of past, and to be clean of past is to be absolutely open and available to the future. Memory is not of the future, memory is of the past; it is always a graveyard. And the future belongs to life, to intelligence, to silence, to meditativeness. It does not belong to memory.Once a man becomes enlightened he does not function out of memory, he functions spontaneously. And even on the path toward enlightenment, slowly, slowly spontaneity goes on replacing memory. Memory is the way of the unintelligent man. One who cannot respond to reality immediately, needs a memory system so that he can remember old answers, old situations – what he has done before. But then his response is no longer a response, it becomes a reaction. And all reactions fall short of the situation that is ahead of you, because the situation is continuously changing and the answers in your memory don’t change. They are just dead commodities, they remain the same.That’s why, as a person grows old, he finds himself getting out of touch with the new generation that is growing. The fault is not of the new generation, the fault is of the old man who has nothing but memory, and memory belongs to the past and the past is no longer there. The new generation is more responsive to the present – that creates the gap. The old generation always wants old answers, old scriptures, old saints; the older they are the more true.Every religion tries to prove that their scriptures are the oldest. It is strange that they want to prove that. And they glorify in their ancientness. In fact, the more ancient they are, the more useless they are, because they have lost touch with reality completely. The man of consciousness and wisdom, alive, actually responds to the situation. Otherwise all answers fall short and life becomes more and more a mess.So there is no need to be worried about it, if you are losing your memory and you see that you don’t feel any parallel upsurge of intelligence. You will not feel it. Intelligence is so subtle that you will not hear the sound of its footsteps. But slowly, slowly it will transform your whole being and then suddenly, when the work is complete, you will awake from a deep sleep and you will see yourself as a new being, reborn.So as far as I see, everything is going perfectly well. And I am watching you every day – because Anando is one of my secretaries, so I see her every day. She is growing, becoming more and more silent, joyous, humorous, sharp. But man has energy…. If you start becoming more sharp, more intelligent, from where will you get the energy? The energy that is involved and invested in memories has to be taken out, and there is no harm in it. In the ordinary marketplace, perhaps, not to have a good memory can be dangerous. But if you look at the geniuses of the world, you will be surprised that one of the most common points among all those geniuses is their lapse of memory.Edison is going for a lecture tour to a few universities. He is saying good-bye to his wife and the maidservant is also standing there. He kisses the maidservant, thinking that she is his wife and waves to his wife, thinking that she is the maidservant. The driver of the car who was taking him cannot believe what is happening.He said, “Sir, you have forgotten, you have got mixed up. The woman whom you are waving to is your wife and the other woman is your servant.”He said, “My God. There is no harm, I can get out of the car and put things right.” He kissed his wife, waved to the maidservant and he said, “It often happens that I forget very essential things.” He had discovered more inventions than anybody else before or after him – one thousand inventions. Such a genius…but while he was working on a certain invention, his wife had to remember and take notes, because in the middle of working on the invention he would forget what he was doing. At first he used to keep notes on paper, loose papers. Then it became a problem because thousands of loose papers in his study…and he was rushing like mad, looking for the loose papers, “Where are those notes?” The wife said, “It is better you write down your notes in a diary. I don’t understand science, how can I help you?”So he started writing in a diary. Then he started forgetting those diaries; where has he put the diary? Where has he left it? Finally, his wife started learning something about science and started taking notes, so that whenever he was in trouble, she could give him the notes. She had a good memory, but no intelligence. But it was fortunate that she was with Edison. Once he forgot his own name, which is a rare, very rare phenomenon. I don’t think it has happened ever, or it will happen again. To forget one’s own name, that seems to be getting to the rock bottom of forgetfulness. You cannot forget anything more – nothing is left.In the first world war, when ration cards were introduced for the first time, everybody had to go to register his name and get his ration card. Edison also went and he was standing in a long queue. Slowly, slowly, the queue was becoming smaller and he finally got to the front and the clerk shouted loudly, “Thomas Alva Edison!” He looked all around, “Who is Thomas Alva Edison?” He asked the man behind him, “Do you know this fellow?”The clerk said, “It is strange, where is this man, Thomas Alva Edison?” Somebody far back in the queue recognized that he was a world famous scientist. He had seen his pictures in the newspapers. He shouted from the back of the queue, “You are Thomas Alva Edison, I can guarantee it.”He said, “If you can guarantee it, I will accept it. But as far as I am concerned, I have completely forgotten what my name is, because almost for fifty years nobody has used my name. My students, out of respect, just call me professor. My colleagues, out of respect, just call me professor. And my parents died very early on, when I was very young, so there is nobody who uses my name. Slowly, slowly, I have become accustomed to hear my name as ‘the professor’. But I think you are right. Far, far back I remember, as if in a dream, I have heard Thomas Alva Edison, perhaps that is my name. And anyway nobody else is claiming it.”The clerk said, “You seem to be insane.” He said, “That’s true.”The world is full of sane people and those sane people do nothing at all; it is only the insane who have helped man’s evolution. And this is true not only about Edison, but about many scientists, about many painters, about many poets.Once, George Bernard Shaw was traveling in a train. The ticket checker came and Bernard Shaw looked all over, he almost felt like he was having a nervous breakdown because the ticket could not be found. The ticket checker said, “Don’t be worried, Sir. I know you, the whole world knows you. The ticket must be somewhere in your luggage and I will be coming in the next round, you can show me – and even if you don’t show me there is no need to worry.” He was not ready to listen to what Bernard Shaw said to him: “You shut up. You don’t understand my problem. Who cares about you? The problem is if I don’t find my ticket, then I don’t know where I am going. It is written on the ticket. So are you going to decide for me? I am in such trouble, the ticket has to be found.”The ticket checker must have been taken aback, that this was a strange situation. Shaw was not worried about being caught without a ticket, his worry was far, far deeper. Now the question was, where was he going? And because he could not find the ticket he had to go back home on the next train. He could not bring to his memory the place he was going to.But all educational systems of the world have emphasized memory too much. And their emphasis on memory is a great conspiracy against humanity, because the whole energy has been focused on memory: Memorize more and more so that you can be successful in your examinations. And you can see what kind of success happens in the universities. The people who get first class, the people who get the top first class, the people who top the whole university – gold medalists, they are all lost in the world. You will never hear of them again, because the world needs intelligence, not memory.Each moment intelligence is needed, not memory. My own understanding is that if we want to make humanity more conscious, more alert, more enlightened, then the emphasis has to be taken away from memory; the emphasis has to be put on intelligence.But for universities, for professors, for pedagogues, emphasis on memory is simple. You just ask five questions and if the person can memorize the books, he can answer them.My own professor was very much worried – because he loved me so much – because I never bothered about the prescribed books. And he was so concerned that, “Unless you answer exactly what is written in the books, it will be a great shock to all of us. You have the capacity to top the whole university, but the way you are behaving you cannot even pass.”I said, “Don’t be worried,” but he was so concerned that he used to come early in the morning to pick me up from the hostel and take me to the examination hall. He was not certain whether I would go or not, whether I would remember to go or not. And he would stand there until I had gone in and he would tell every examiner, “Keep an eye on this student, don’t let him get out of the hall before the three hours are over, because he may answer within one hour and be gone. Force him, whether he has answered or not, to be here for three hours.”I said, “This is strange,” but the examiners listened to him because he was also the dean of the Faculty of Arts. They were all under him; it was just a coincidence. And that’s why I say life is so full of mysteries. All my professors, my vice-chancellors, everybody was so surprised when I topped the university and got the gold medal. Nobody was expecting that.But a coincidence – one of the most famous professors of Allahabad University, Professor Ranade…It was well known that in his life he had given only two persons first class. Those two were the bare minimum. Otherwise it was very difficult even to get pass marks from him. And he was thought to be not only a professor, but a sage. He had written great books with great insight; there was no doubt about his intellectual acumen.Just by coincidence my papers reached his hands. And he wrote a note which the vice-chancellor showed to me, because he had written in the notes, “This note should be shown to the student: you are the only person in my life who has fulfilled my desire. I always hated memorized answers; your answers are so fresh and so short, to the point. You are not a man of memory. I wanted to give you a hundred percent marks, but that may look a little suspicious – perhaps I am favoring you – that’s why I am giving you ninety-nine percent.“But if you happen to come to Allahabad any time, I would love to meet you. In my whole life-long career as a professor, I have been waiting perhaps for you. I wanted these kind of answers. I wanted this courage – that rather than answering the question, you questioned the question and you demolished the question completely. You have not answered it because there is nothing to answer; the question is absurd. And when you answer a question, you answer to the point. I don’t want to read long answers, which are all repetitive. Everybody else is writing them, nobody is using his intelligence.”He was aware of the fact that memory is only mechanical; intelligence is your real treasure. And now it has become an absolute fact. In the future, memory will not be used at all, because you can carry a small computer in a pocket with all the answers for all the questions that can be asked. Even absurd questions…for example, on what day Socrates was married. Or, who was the first man to use the bow and arrow. Everything can be ready-made. You can get any answer from the computer.And computers can be so small that you can keep them in your pocket. They can be so small that you can make just a wristwatch out of them. On the surface it will look like a wristwatch, but deep down it is carrying all the answers that you need. Just ask the question and the answer is there. It has happened in different areas before. Before the fountain-pen came into existence, people’s handwriting was very beautiful, because there was great emphasis on handwriting. As the fountain-pen came into existence, those days of great handwriting disappeared.Before calculators came into existence, everybody was able to calculate. Now, even the greatest mathematician never does any calculation without a calculator. Without a calculator he is at a loss. He may have even forgotten that two plus two is four. The calculator has demolished the great memory system about figures.And now computers have come into existence. You may have a small computer but it can be connected with a big computer in your town, in your state or in your country, from where every kind of knowledge is available immediately. You just ask the question and the answer will appear on the screen of the computer.Just the other day, Anando brought the news – man is such a strange animal – that in America there is now so much use of computers that a few criminals have started a new crime. That is, erasing people’s computers’ memory. And they have found such a beautiful system that you will never know what you are doing.They simply advertise a certain puzzle or a certain game that can be played with the computer – between you and the computer. And those games are so interesting that people start playing them on their computer. For a few moments, everything goes right. Those games are made in such a way that when the game is over and you are absolutely satisfied with it, the game that you have fed into the computer will start demolishing all memory that is in the computer. It will erase it all, blank. Next time when you ask anything, no answer will come.Now there is a great fear; these people are very dangerous. And they are not getting anything out of it. Perhaps they are agents of the computer agencies which sell computers, because if one program is completely erased, you are bound to go and get another. So the computer market will go on always having more demand than they can supply. Otherwise I don’t see the point of why somebody should start such a thing. He is not gaining anything unless he is being paid by the computer agencies.It seems that as man becomes more and more intelligent, his crimes also become more and more intelligent; his criminal mind is far ahead of his effort to become enlightened.But, Anando, you don’t have to be worried about your memory. What is essential is intelligence. And the whole energy should move toward intelligence. It will make you feel very light. And as far as memory is concerned, just use a notebook. Anything essential, fundamental, just note it down. Soon we will have computers, but before that you can use a diary. And there is no leakage. Leakage as such never happens.Paddy, Sean and Mick were out hunting one day when they came upon some tracks. After looking at them closely, Paddy said, “Those are bear tracks.”“No, no,” said Sean, “those are deer tracks.”“Hey Mick,” they both asked, “what do you think they are?”But before he could answer, all three were hit by a train.Intelligence is going to be the savior, not memory.A factory had a football game between the Polacks and the Italians. They played all afternoon, but neither team was able to score. Suddenly it was five o’clock, the factory whistle blew and the Italian team walked off the field. Twenty minutes later the Polacks scored a goal.Little Eddy said to his mother, “Mom, I want to be early at school this afternoon so that I can sit in the front row. We are going to have a lesson on sex.” When he returned home later that day, his mother noticed that he looked very sad and disappointed. “What is the matter, Eddy, didn’t you enjoy the lesson?” she asked.“Phooey,” replied Eddy, “it was all theory.”Osho,I find more and more that the most essential thing for me in relationship, as well as my strongest wish, is to be loved and accepted completely, exactly the way I am. Is this just another way of being needy and demanding? Will you throw some light on this confusion I am in?Tamar, you have put everything upside down. I have been telling you, accept everybody as he is. Don’t make demands that he should fulfill some ideal of your conditioning, that he should be according to your fancy. This is not the way of love, and this is not even the way to behave humanly.Love accepts the person as he is. Certainly, the acceptance of the person as he is brings tremendous changes in the person. But they are not demanded. They happen on their own accord. But you have put the whole story in an absolutely wrong way. Rather than accepting others as they are, you want them to accept you as you are.Your question is really funny. And it shows how you go on listening to me and making up things which I have never said. I have never said such a thing in my whole life. What I said was just the contrary.You are saying, “I find more and more that the most essential thing for me in relationship, as well as my strongest wish, is to be loved and accepted completely, exactly the way I am. Is this just another way of being needy and demanding?”It is simply the way of being stupid.I have heard about a man who remained celibate to his very last breath. When he was dying – and he was very old, ninety-years old…and he was not a religious man either; why he remained celibate was a mystery. Many times people asked him, but he simply smiled and never answered. His friends had gathered and they said, “At least now, before you leave the body, solve the puzzle; otherwise it will torture our minds and the curiosity will remain lingering, and nobody will be able to find the answer. Only you can tell us why you remained celibate.”The man said, “I can say it now. I remained celibate because I was in search of a perfect woman.” The people around him said, “Couldn’t you get a perfect woman in a lifetime’s search of ninety years?”He said, “That is the most sad thing. Once I came across a perfect woman, but she was looking for a perfect man.”Now, it is not in your hands or in your power that the other should accept you as you are, and you should be loved and accepted completely. You cannot enforce this kind of idea on anybody. Yes, you can love somebody as he is or she is, without making any demands. But you have put everything upside down. Rather than becoming accepting of people, you have got a new idea – a very original idea – that you should be accepted as you are and loved totally and perfectly. Then you will never be loved and you will never be accepted. You will remain always empty, hollow, and you will live a life of despair.You have put the bullock behind the cart. Now there can be no movement. Just bring a little intelligence and see what you are doing. This is not possible. And never ask for the impossible, unless you are ready for a great frustration.Paddy telephoned the police in a terrible state. “Officer,” he cried, “come over at once. The steering wheel, the gear-stick, the clutch, the brake and the accelerator have all been stolen from my car.” A few minutes later Paddy called back and said, “I am sorry, officer, no need to bother. I just realized I got in the back seat by mistake.”Tamar, you are in the back seat.The woman was watching the next door neighbors embracing on their front door step one morning. She commented to her husband, “That’s the most devoted couple I have ever met. Every time he goes out he kisses her. Why don’t you do that?”“Why should I?” nodded her husband, reading his newspaper, “I hardly know the woman.”When I am speaking, please try to understand what I am saying. Don’t continue to read your newspaper.Sally came home from her first date looking very pleased with herself. “How did it go with John?” asked her mother. “Ah, it was all right until after dinner,” Sally replied, “But on the way home he stopped the car in a lonely lane and started kissing me to distract my attention. He then started feeling around inside my clothes but I fooled him – I had hidden my money in my shoes.”

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The New Dawn 01-33Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The New Dawn 33 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Twelve years ago I left Japan to find my own way, without looking back. At that time I hated to face any reminder that pulled me back to the Japanese conditioning. Now, what I feel is totally different. It seems as if the old Japan has died in me, and a new Japan appeared. I can feel a quality of beauty, sensitivity and a tremendous capacity to expand toward a new world. I used to feel a thick cloud of repression suffocating me. Now I feel a dance in the air. Beloved Master, what has changed?Geeta, everything has changed. Fundamentally you have changed. You are no longer the same person who left Japan twelve years ago. Your consciousness has grown new wings. You have dropped all repressive conditioning.Unfortunately, Japan is one of the most repressed countries. It is the ancient influence of Confucius. Confucius has remained dominant for twenty-five centuries over the whole Far East, and Confucius is unparalleled as far as a man of etiquette, manners, culture, and civilized ways is concerned. But he is not a man of realization. He knows nothing of the soul. He in fact does not believe that there is even a possibility of an inner world. His whole conception is of the outside world, and how to live in this outside world in the most cultured, refined and graceful way is the foundation of his philosophy.China, Korea, Japan, Thailand – except India, almost the whole of Asia has been dominated by Confucius. They all have lived in a tremendously beautiful way, but that beauty is only of the outside, of manners. Their smiles are false, but they have been trained to such a degree that it is absolutely impossible to make any distinction between an authentic smile and a false smile. Perhaps the false looks better because it is practiced, it is the discipline.The Japanese mind is one of the most disciplined minds, but in that discipline all spontaneity dies. Man lives according to fixed rules, regulations, but has not the freedom of consciousness to respond to situations. And situations are changing every day, every moment. Unless you are also capable of changing with the changing existence, you will never feel joy, you will never feel contented, you will never feel at ease. There will be always a great tension and anguish inside you.The suicide rate is the highest in Japan; for small reasons people commit suicide. The tension is so much that suicide seems to be easier than living under the pressure and tension. And the pressure and tension is so respectable that anybody who goes against it is badly condemned, so rebels don’t exist in Japan. Rebellion as such is not known to Japan. It has created a very strange society, where everybody is fake – beautiful but inauthentic, looking joyous but without joy. Only the appearance is well painted; the interior is empty.Geeta, your coming to me was coming to a totally and diametrically opposite world. Here I emphasize spontaneity, not discipline. Here my teaching is to be responsible in the moment.Don’t act out of your knowledge, but act out of your consciousness. Don’t be dictated to by any discipline, howsoever old, howsoever ancient. Withdraw yourself from all conditionings and live an unconditional, spontaneous, moment-to-moment, changing, flowing and relaxed life.To me there is no other way of being religious. All that is known as religion has been only destroying people’s lives. It has been poisoning their naturalness, it has been creating immense tension and allowing no relaxation. And except man, the whole of existence is utterly relaxed. The moment you are tense you are no longer part of existence, you are left alone. That creates great anxiety.If you are relaxed, the stars are with you, and the trees and the rivers and the mountains and the birds, everything is with you. The whole of existence suddenly turns into a home. You are not a foreigner in existence, you are not an outsider. You are not a stranger, you belong to it, you are rooted in it. Your life and its life are not two separate things; they are one phenomenon. The whole idea of separation is false.I know in these twelve years that you have been with me you have not looked back toward Japan. Japan has a main current…it is a very fossilized society; it consists of dead people. But a small part is very alive. It is not the main current, it flows side by side with the main current – but that is the true Japan, its very soul. That small part consists of those people who are committed totally to only one single thing, and that is meditation.They have focused all their energies only on one point: how to get beyond mind. Those few people are the very soul…they are the living people, the most living people. In their monasteries they are living a life as natural as possible, as full of reverence toward existence as human nature allows. Those are the most beautiful flowers you can find anywhere in the world.Coming here, you have really found the living Japan. That’s why there has not been a need to look back.When I was arrested in America, the first protest came from a Zen monastery, from Japan. Then thousands of protests came from all over the world. But the first to reach was from Japan, from a Zen master, addressed to the president of America and to the jail where I was being kept.The jailer could not believe it. He rushed to me and showed me the telegram: “Do you know this man?”I said, “I don’t know him.” But a Zen master from Japan had written to the president of America, saying, “We are teaching Zen in our monastery and in our university from the books of Osho. Arresting a man who is absolutely innocent – and you don’t have any proof, any evidence against him – and keeping him in jail without giving him bail, is so ugly that it condemns your whole propaganda of being a democratic country. We vehemently protest, and want you to understand that anybody in the world who is interested in the inner growth of man will feel the same; it is not only our feeling.”Just a few days ago I received a message that one of my books, The Supreme Understanding, is the biggest selling book of one publisher in Japan. Sixty thousand copies…and it is still in demand; more editions are needed. It has gone through twelve editions already.Somebody has sent a list of the books: my books are the top sellers, next to me is Friedrich Nietzsche, and then third comes somebody Japanese. Although I have not been in Japan, almost two dozen of my books have been translated into Japanese and have been received with great love and understanding. Almost every university in Japan is teaching Zen through my books. It is their tradition, they have developed it, but my interpretations have appealed to them more than their own commentaries and their own interpretations.Coming to me, Geeta, you have come to yourself, to Japan’s very soul. It was because of this fact that you never missed Japan. You are saying, “Twelve years ago I left Japan to find my own way, without looking back.” You have found your own way. Now there is no need of looking back at all.“At that time I hated to face any reminder that pulled me back to the Japanese conditioning. Now, what I feel is totally different.” It is bound to be so, because now you understand not the superficial Japan and its social structure. Now you have looked into the greatest contribution Japan has made to the world – Zen. It is the purest form of meditation.There are thousands of ways of meditation, but nothing is so pure and so refined as Zen. Now you will certainly look at Japan in a totally different way, with great respect. Now what is apparent to the ordinary eyes is not, to you, the real Japan. The real Japan is hidden in the monasteries, in the mountains. It has to be found within yourself, and nowhere else.“It seems as if the old Japan has died in me and a new Japan appeared.” It is absolutely true. “I can feel a quality of beauty, sensitivity and a tremendous capacity to expand toward a new world. I used to feel a thick cloud of repression suffocating me. Now I feel a dance in the air. Beloved Master, what has changed?”You have changed. You have come to know something of the inner. You have become relaxed. You are no longer clouded by tensions; you are no longer surrounded by the conditionings of a certain society, a certain land, a certain country. You have become, in this gathering, a citizen of a world – of a world that is going to come. These are the new arrivals here, the first arrivals of a world, of a whole new world with a whole new conception of man.You are heralding a new dawn, a new beginning. You may not understand exactly right now, but through you human consciousness is moving toward a new height, dropping all that is rotten and old and creating a new garden with fresh flowers – with more color, with more variety, with more individuality…unique beings with a totally new vision of life. Spontaneous, alert, living moment to moment; neither being bothered by the past nor being tortured by the future…a humanity that knows only one state of time and space: for time only now, and for space only here.And twelve years are enough to destroy your personality, and to give you a rebirth and bring a new individuality to you. It has arrived. Hence you feel a dance in the air, because a dance is now in your heart.After their first date, Mary refused to see George anymore. Not to be put off so easily, George began writing to her. He was so infatuated that he sent a special delivery letter twice a day for sixty-three consecutive days. On the sixty-fourth day, the campaign produced results: Mary ran off with the mail man.Twelve years are going to produce some results, Geeta – right?Osho,My biggest fear and limitation, as far as I can discover, is the fear of being left alone. I feel that this always had, and still has, a strong influence on my life and my relationships. Besides feeling this fear and letting it be there – which I obviously haven't done enough – is there any other way out of it? Beloved Master, would you like to talk about this fear of being left, and alone?The fear of being left alone is something natural, because everybody is born in a family, so from the very beginning one is always within a certain group, a certain crowd, a certain religion. Always there are people surrounding you. So being among people becomes almost natural to us, although it is only a habit.It is not natural; as far as nature is concerned, everybody is born alone. It does not matter that one is born in a family. For nine months in the mother’s womb you are alone. After you are born, whenever you close your eyes you will find your aloneness. Even in the marketplace, just close your eyes and you will find yourself alone.Aloneness is your very nature, and the crowd is just a habit. But the habit has become so strong and you have become so unaware of your nature that there is always a fear that if everybody leaves you, what are you going to do? In fact, you don’t know who you are if everybody leaves you. It is their opinions which create an identity for you.Somebody says to you, “You are so beautiful.” He is giving you a certain identity. Somebody says, “You are so intelligent,” somebody says, “You are so joyful,” somebody says, “You are so loving.” These are all opinions. They may have been expressed only as a form of etiquette, they may not mean anything, but you collect these opinions. And this is what your personality is.Your personality depends on what people say about you. That’s why everybody is so much concerned about his reputation, his name, his prestige. And society exploits this situation very cleverly. It keeps everybody trembling, afraid, because society has the power to take away your respectability, your honor. You are a slave, unknowingly, because you depend on society for your identity. Without that identity you don’t know who you are. That is the ultimate fear of being left alone, that you will not know who you are.I have told you a Sufi story….A Sufi mystic comes to Mecca. It is a festival time, when Mohammedans from all over the world come to Mecca. It is part of their religion that every Mohammedan at least once in his life must go to Mecca. I have seen poor Mohammedans…And Mohammedans are poor because of certain of their religious ideas. They are so fanatic that they cannot change those ideas, and unless they change those ideas they are not going to be rich. Their ideas simply go against the whole economics.Mohammedans are against lending money with interest or borrowing money with interest. Now, the whole world of economics depends on interest. The whole of banking, the whole of business, even the nations, even the greatest industrialists, the super-rich – all are dependent on loans. Nobody is going to give you money without interest, and Mohammedanism is against interest, saying that it is the greatest sin, to take interest or to give interest. Naturally, Mohammedans have remained the poorest people of the world.I have seen poor Mohammedans selling their houses, their land or whatsoever they had, just to go at least once to Mecca; otherwise they are not perfect Mohammedans. How are they going to face their God? The first question he will ask is, “Have you been to Mecca or not?”This Sufi mystic, a poor Mohammedan, went to Mecca. All the hotels were full, all the caravansaries were full. And he was not a rich man. He knocked on many doors, but everywhere he was refused – millions of people had gathered there. And in the desert in the cold night, hungry and thirsty, how was he going to survive? Finally he told the manager of a hotel, “I will lie down anywhere – on the steps, in the basement. But at least for the night…I am tired, I have been walking miles and miles to reach here.”The manager said, “I can see you are tired and you look a very simple and humble man. I cannot refuse you. But the trouble is, we don’t have any room, any place. Just one thing is possible. One room I have given to a man – he is rich. It is a double bedroom; he is alone, but he has paid for the room. I can ask him, perhaps he may feel some compassion for you. So come with me.”The manager thought, “There is no problem, because one bed is empty. Why send this poor man…? He can go to sleep.” So the manager left, and the mystic, with his turban, with his shoes, with his coat, went to bed – even with his shoes on. He wore everything, and of course sleep was difficult. He was tossing and turning, and because of his tossing and turning the man to whom the room belonged could not sleep.Finally the man said, “Listen, I have allowed you to sleep here but you don’t sleep, you are simply tossing and turning. And I can see that in such a situation nobody can sleep: you have not even taken your shoes off, your turban is on, you are sleeping in a tight coat; it is impossible. And you are not allowing me either to sleep.”The mystic said, “It is a great problem.”The man said, “What is the great problem?”He said, “You are sleeping naked; I also have the habit of sleeping naked.”So the man said, “Then what is the problem? Just get naked and go to sleep!”The mystic said, “It is not so easy. The problem is, if I go to sleep naked, in the morning how am I going to find out who is me – you or me? Because my only identity is my clothes: my turban, my shoes. Naked, I don’t have any identity. So in the morning who will say who I am ?”The man laughed at the stupidity. He said, “I will suggest to you something. Just look in the corner – some toy…perhaps the previous people who stayed in the room, their children must have left it.” So he said, “Do one thing: take that toy, tie it to your foot and go to sleep. In the morning you can see that the toy is there, so it is certainly you.”The mystic said, “That sounds absolutely right.” He dropped his clothes, got naked; the other man helped in tying the toy to his foot and he fell asleep and immediately started snoring. He was really tired.The other man had an idea. He untied the toy, tied it to his foot, and went to sleep. In the morning the mystic woke up, looked at his foot, looked at the other man’s foot and said, “My God, I know you are me, but who am I? It is absolutely certain you are me, because the toy is there on your foot. But now the problem arises, who am I?”Mystics have used this story for centuries to tell you that your whole identity consists of very nonessential things: and those are the opinions given by others to you. They can withdraw their opinions; hence people are always afraid to do anything that goes against tradition, religion, political ideology, nationalistic attitudes. Even if it seems absolutely wrong, people go on supporting it for the simple reason that they are afraid that if they raise their voice against anything traditional, society can withdraw the identity that it has given to them. And then you will not know who you are.This is the fear, that if you are left alone, how will you know who you are? Those people who had made you something, somebody, are all gone. And the fear remains until you come to know yourself directly, not via the other.These are the two things to be remembered. When you know yourself via others, it is your personality, just a thin layer of opinions. When you know yourself directly, you know your individuality. And once you have known your individuality, the fear of being left alone disappears. There is no other way.You are asking, “My biggest fear and limitation, as far as I can discover, is the fear of being left alone.” This is not only your fear, this is the fear every human being suffers from. It is good that you have become aware of it, because that is the first step toward getting rid of it.“I feel that this always had, and still has, a strong influence on my life and my relationships.” If the fear is there it is bound to have an influence on your life, because you will always move in such a way that you are not left alone, whatever the price you have to pay, even if you have to remain a slave your whole life. If you have to sell your soul you will sell it, but you will remain surrounded by the crowd. It feels cozy, secure, safe. You know who you are.It will destroy your whole spiritual beauty, your spiritual glory. It will destroy all your possibilities of inner growth. And it is going to influence your relationships. Millions of people go on living in relationships which are simply hell; but just out of the fear that they will be left alone they go on clinging. It is miserable, it is a great suffering, it is a torture, but at least somebody is with you.In comparison to being left alone, it is better to be miserable but to be with someone. That is one of the reasons why millions of people go on suffering, and still go on clinging to the same relationships which are not giving them any nourishment, but are simply destructive, suicidal.Only a man or a woman who is capable of being alone is also capable of being in a relationship without being destroyed by it – because being alone is no longer a fear. If some relationship is creating misery, you can simply get out of it. Nobody can prevent you. It is a very pathetic situation, that millions of people are clinging to each other just out of the fear that they might be left alone. And to be alone is our nature. There is nothing to fear, only you have to experience it. Once you have experienced, in the deep silences of your heart, the beauty of your aloneness and the ecstasy of your aloneness, all fear will be gone. And you will laugh at your past: how stupid you have been! What have you been doing with yourself?“Besides feeling this fear and letting it be there – which I obviously have not done enough – is there any other way out of it?” There is only one way out of it, and that is: learn to enter into your aloneness as often as possible. Whenever you have a chance, don’t unnecessarily get busy to avoid your aloneness. Whenever you have a chance, close your eyes, sit silently, relaxed, and look inside. Slowly, slowly the turmoil settles, the mind becomes quiet, and a deep silence prevails. And suddenly you start feeling your innermost being, your very center of life, which is alone. There is nobody and there can never be anybody.Nobody can approach there except you. It is your territory. It is the only place which belongs to you. Nobody can take it away, not even death. That will happen to the outside, to the body, to the mind, but not to this inner space, which for centuries we have called the soul, the spirit or the god within you – whatever name you want. But this aloneness, once known, simply removes all fear. In fact it brings a new dimension of blissfulness. Rather than being afraid of aloneness, you become more and more intrigued with its mystery. You want to be more and more alone.In the middle of the night you will awake and sit in your bed and just move into your aloneness. And it is only a question of going again and again. By your moving in and out the way becomes easier, the path becomes easier. It becomes so easy that just any moment you close your eyes you immediately reach, without losing a split second, to the center. Then in the very marketplace you can be alone, in the crowd. And you will feel such a joy arising in you, such a song out of your silence, such fragrance that you have never known before.It is not a big problem. It is a very simple thing. Just, because people have forgotten the very idea of going within themselves, it looks like something difficult. But I say unto you, it is the simplest thing in the world.This fear of being alone, or left alone, is not a simple phenomenon; it is very complex. Because of it, many other things happen to you: jealousy is part of it, anger is part of it, sadness is part of it, attachment is part of it, possessiveness is part of it. You can see why – why you want to dominate as a husband, as a wife, as a parent. Why do you want to dominate? Just to make sure that the other is absolutely under your control. Hence everybody is trying to keep everybody else under control. But deep down it is only the fear of being alone. And it is not only today; perhaps from the very beginning – if there has ever been a beginning – the fear has been there.And, because you are a woman it is even more complex, because man has taken away all possibilities of your independence. Mostly he has not allowed you to be educated, he has not allowed you to learn any craftsmanship, any skill; he has not allowed you to be financially free and independent. That was his strategy to keep you in bondage. He is also afraid of being left alone. Out of his fear he has destroyed women’s liberty. And a woman is more afraid of being left alone because now she is absolutely dependent. She will not be able to earn, she will not be able to stand on her own. So even if her husband is just a torturer, a sadist, she has to remain with him. At least he takes care of her food, of her clothes, of a shelter.Coming home very late one night, Adam found Eve waiting angrily. “Late again,” she shouted, “you must be seeing some other woman.”“I consider that accusation wildly absurd,” said the outraged Adam. “You know perfectly well that you and I are quite alone in this world.” Adam stamped off to bed.He was awakened by a tickling sensation on his chest. Opening his eyes, he saw Eve hovering over him, carefully counting his ribs.Because God had created Eve by taking one rib out, she is counting the ribs. Perhaps he has taken out another rib and somewhere in the surroundings there is another woman in the bushes.This fear, although natural, can be dropped, because you have the possibility of rising above nature. Your awareness can go higher, and from those heights what was very important in the dark valleys of life becomes absolutely unimportant and ridiculous. The day you can laugh about all your fears will be a great day in your life – and I am preparing you for that day.A naive priest is moved to a parish in a bad neighborhood of New York and is bewildered by the many women who are constantly approaching him to whisper, “Five bucks for a blow job, buddy.”Not wanting to remain ignorant any longer, he approaches a local nun. “Excuse my ignorance, sister,” says the young priest, “but could you please tell me what a blow job is?”The nun snaps back, “Five bucks, just like anywhere else.”I am preparing you so that one day you can laugh about everything that has been a fear, a misery, a jealousy, a possessiveness, a domination, and you can joke about everything that people are taking too seriously.Two Irish girls were commiserating with each other about their unmarried state. “At least I was two-thirds married once,” said Maureen.“What do you mean, two-thirds married?” asked Eileen.“Well,” replied Maureen, “I was there, the priest was there, but that bloody Paddy never showed up.”Life is so hilarious. Why should you unnecessarily get worried about fear, about misery, and about Latifa and Om? I think most of your problems become important because they are the problems of millions of people. So you think that certainly your problems are serious, and great, and difficult. But that is not the right conclusion.Hymie and Betty Goldberg were having a day in the country. Betty saw a lovely place under a tree next to a small pond and pointed it out to Hymie.“That’s a beautiful spot for a picnic,” she said.“It must be, dear,” shrugged Hymie. “Fifty million mosquitoes can’t be wrong.”That is the trouble. But I say to you, fifty million mosquitoes may not be wrong, but fifty million human beings may be wrong, because they are simply imitating each other. It is the same story. They are all playing the same game, the same role, and just because the whole crowd is suffering from the same problem, a small problem becomes an epidemic. If you look at the problem and forget the fifty million mosquitoes, it is a very small problem, and a very small method can bring you out of it.Osho,Although at the time I looked, felt, and behaved more like a mafia heavy than a meditator, you gave me the name, Dhyan Vipal. Over two years have passed since I took sannyas, and although some people still say I look like a gangster, I don't often feel, and very seldom behave like one. Moments of silence and peacefulness have penetrated my tough outward exterior and have become more prolonged and frequent.The longer I spend here with you, the more I see the possibility of really becoming the name you have given me. Do you think it will help if I drop my sunglasses and toothpicks?Dhyan Vipal, the first thing: you need not be worried about what the fifty million mosquitoes say. You simply be yourself. If you like your sunglasses, there is no question of dropping them. But if you yourself are feeling that they are unnecessary, or they no longer suit your new individuality that is arising, then certainly you should drop them – but not because of what others say.Always remember, I am absolutely against any change because of the opinion of the crowd. If you look like a Mafia heavy, it is perfectly good. If you look like a gangster, that’s great. I need all kinds of people. I trust in variety. A few Mafia guys are certainly needed! So I don’t think you have to drop your sunglasses and toothpicks, because once you drop them somebody else is going to pick them up – here there are many Mafia guys. It is better you keep them.But if you feel that the changes that are happening in you…you may never have thought about it, that when changes in your inner being start happening you want to wear different kinds of clothes, you want to have a different haircut. Because whatever you use – your clothes, your sunglasses, your hats, your shoes – are extensions of your mind. They are not just there by accident, you have chosen them; they show some quality in you.So if the inner quality changes and suddenly you find that something has become outdated, it no longer fits with you, you have to drop it; but not because others are saying to drop it. Never listen to anybody. All these wise guys who go on advising everybody to do this, do that, these are very dangerous people. Their whole effort is to impose their ideas on others. I am not at all in favor of interfering in anybody’s private affairs.Now, your sunglasses are absolutely a private affair. You are not doing any harm to anybody. Why should somebody get upset? There are people who will get upset because you are wearing sunglasses; it is their problem if they get upset. Let the whole world be upset, but don’t drop your sunglasses. You don’t know about all these wise guys, what their situation is.You stick to your own individuality. Yes, if inner changes need outer changes, you have to listen to your inner voice. Always go according to it; that is your guide, and nobody else has the right to interfere in your life.The pope is working on a crossword puzzle on Sunday afternoon. He stops for a moment, scratches his head, then asks the cardinal, “Can you think of a four-letter word, meaning woman, that ends in u-n-t?”“Aunt,” replies the cardinal.“That’s it,” says the pope, blushing. “Have you got an eraser?”These are the wise guys, who are advising everybody. They are the representatives of God. Particularly the pope is infallible – and still he needs an eraser!Don’t be bothered by anybody. Simply be authentic and true to yourself. It will be something grand to see a Mafia guy becoming a Gautam Buddha, with his sunglasses over his eyes, with his toothpicks, looking like a gangster. The world needs…just one variety of Gautam Buddha, one size, one shape is boring.I am in support of every kind of person – of all sizes and all shapes, of unique personalities, of individualities which have no parallel anywhere – becoming enlightened. But this is possible only if you don’t become a follower, if you don’t become a believer, if you don’t imitate; if you simply listen to your own still, small voice, and without any fear, trusting it courageously, go on moving wherever it leads. Only then will we have in the world different flowerings, with different fragrances, and a world immensely rich.The crowd hates uniqueness; it likes similarity. It wants you all to be the same. It does not want you to stand alone, separate, a sunlit peak. The crowd hates individuals – I love individuals. And the mind of the crowd has been the most destructive mind. My suggestion to my people is, never be influenced by the crowd. Try to remain aloof, try to remain yourself. Only then is there a possibility that someday your night will come to an end and a new dawn, a new beginning, a new birth, a new ecstasy, a new dance, a new song will overwhelm you.That new dawn is very close, you just have to remember to be yourself, authentically, sincerely. Up to now mankind has lived as a crowd. From now onward, if mankind wants to live at all it has to live as individuals, not as crowds.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Could you please explain exactly what the work of the mystery school is?My beloved ones…You are blessed to be here today, because we are starting a new series of talks between the master and the disciple.It is not only a birth of a new book, it is also a declaration of a new phase. Today, this moment: 7:00 p.m., Saturday, the sixteenth of August of the year 1986 – one day this moment will be remembered as a historical moment, and you are blessed because you are participating in it. You are creating it; without you it cannot happen.Books can be written, can be dictated to a machine, but what I am going to start is totally different. It is an upanishad.Long forgotten, one of the most beautiful words in any language, a very living word, upanishad means sitting at the feet of the master. It says nothing more: just to be in the presence of the master, just to allow him to take you in, in his own light, in his own blissfulness, in his own world.And that’s exactly the work of a mystery school.The master has got it. The disciple also has got it, but the master knows and the disciple is fast asleep. The whole work of a mystery school is in how to bring consciousness to the disciple, how to wake him up, how to allow him to be himself, because the whole world is trying to make him somebody else.There, nobody is interested in you, in your potential, in your reality, in your being. Everybody has his own vested interest, even those who love you. Don’t be angry at them; they are as much victims as you are. They are as unconscious as you are. They think what they are doing is love; what they are really doing is destructive. And love can never be destructive.Either love is or is not. But love brings with it all possibilities of creativity, all dimensions of creativity. It brings with it freedom, and the greatest freedom in the world is that a person should be allowed to be himself.But neither the parents nor the neighbors nor the educational system nor the church nor the political leadership – nobody wants you to be yourself because that is the most dangerous thing for them. People who are themselves cannot be enslaved. They have tasted freedom, you cannot drag them back into slavery.So it is better not to allow them to taste freedom, their own being, their potential, their possibility, their future, their genius. Their whole life they will grope in darkness, asking for guidance from other blind people, asking for answers from those who know nothing about existence, who know nothing about themselves. But they are pretenders – they are called leaders, preachers, saints, mahatmas. They themselves don’t know who they are. But these cunning people are all around, exploiting the simple, the innocent, poisoning their minds with beliefs of which they themselves are not certain.The function of a mystery school is that the master – speaking or in silence, looking at you or making a gesture, or just sitting with closed eyes – manages to create a certain field of energy. And if you are receptive, if you are available, if you are ready to go on the journey of the unknown, something clicks and you are no longer the old person.You have seen something which before you had only heard about – and hearing about it does not create conviction but creates doubt, because it is so mysterious. It is not logical, it is not rational, it is not intellectual. But once you have seen it, once you have been showered by the energy of the master, a new being is born. Your old life is finished.There is a beautiful story:A great king, Prasenjita, had come to see Gautam Buddha. And while they were conversing, just in the middle, an old Buddhist sannyasin – he must have been seventy-five years old – came to touch the feet of Gautam Buddha. He said, “Please forgive me. I should not interrupt the dialogue that is going on between you two, but my time… I have to reach the other village before sunset. If I don’t start now I will not be able to reach there.” The Buddhist monks don’t travel at night.“And I could not go without touching your feet because one knows nothing about tomorrow; whether I will be able to again touch your feet or not is uncertain. This may be the last time. So please, both forgive me. I will not delay your conversation.”Gautam Buddha said, “Just one question: how old are you?” Strange, out of context.And the man said, “I am not very old – just four years.”King Prasenjita could not believe it – a seventy-five year old man cannot be four years old! He might be seventy, he might be eighty, there is no problem. It is difficult to judge; different people grow old at a different pace. But four years old is too much! In four years, nobody can grow to be seventy-five years old.Buddha said, “Go with my blessings.”Prasenjita said, “You have created a problem for me by asking an unnecessary question. Do you think this man is four years old?”Buddha said, “Now I will explain it to you. It was not unnecessary, it was not without a proper context. It was for you that I was asking him – really I was creating a question in you – because you were talking nonsense. You were asking stupid questions. I wanted some relevant question to come out of you.“Now, this is relevant. Yes, he is four years old because our way of counting age is from the day a person allows the master, allows his total being to be transformed, not holding back anything. His seventy-one years were simply a wastage; he has lived only four years. And I think you will understand that your sixty years have been sheer wastage unless you are reborn. And there is only one way to be reborn, and that is to come in contact, in deep communion with someone who has arrived. Then the real life begins.”A mystery school teaches how to live. Its whole science is the art of living. Naturally it includes many things – life is multi-dimensional. But you must understand the first step: being totally receptive, open.People are like closed houses – you cannot find even a single window open, no fresh breeze passes through those houses. Roses are standing outside but cannot release their fragrance into the house. The sun comes every day, knocks on the doors, and goes back; the doors are absolutely deaf. They are not available for fresh air, they are not available for fresh rays, they are not available for fresh perfumes, they are not available for anything. They are not houses, they are graves.An upanishad contains in itself the whole philosophy of a school of mystery.The upanishads don’t belong to Hindus; they don’t belong to any other religion either. The upanishads are the outpourings of absolutely individual realized beings to the disciples. There are four steps to be understood.First, the student: he comes to a master but never reaches a master; he reaches only a teacher. It may be the same man – but the student is not there to be transformed, to be reborn, he is there to learn a little more knowledge. He wants to become a little more knowledgeable. He has questions but those questions are just intellectual, they are not existential. They are not his life concern, it is not a question of life and death. This type of person may go from one master to another master, collecting words, theories, systems, philosophies. He may become very proficient, he may become a great pundit, but he knows nothing.This is something to be understood. There is a knowledge: you can have as much as you want, yet you will remain ignorant. And there is an ignorance which is really innocence: you do not know anything, but still you have come to the place where everything is known. So there is a knowledge which is ignorant, and an ignorance which is wisdom.The student is interested in knowledge. But sometimes it happens: you may come to a master as a student, just out of curiosity, and you may be caught in his charisma, you may be caught by his eyes, you may be caught by his heartbeat. You had come as a student but you are turning to the second stage – you are becoming a disciple.The student unnecessarily goes from one place to another place, from one scripture to another scripture. He collects much, but it is all garbage. Once he comes out of the cocoon of studentship and becomes a disciple, then the wandering stops; he is getting in tune with the master. He is being transformed without his knowing. He will know only later on that things are changing. The same situations that he had faced in the past he faces now with a totally different response.Doubts are disappearing, rationality seems to be a child’s game. Life is much more, so much more that it cannot be contained in words. As he becomes a disciple he starts hearing something which is not said – between the words, between the sentences, in the pauses when the master suddenly stops but the communication continues.A disciple is a great improvement upon the student.In the past, in the days of the Upanishads, those mystery schools that existed in India were called gurukuls. A significant word – it means “the family of the master.” It is not an ordinary school, a college or a university. It is not a question of just learning; it is a question of being in love. You are not supposed to be in love with your university teacher. But in a gurukul, where the Upanishads flowered, it was a family of love. The question of learning was secondary, the question of being was important. How much you know is not the point; how much you are is the point. And the master is not interested in feeding your bio-computer, the mind. He is not going to increase your memory because that is of no use; that can be done by a machine, and the machine can do it better than you.I have heard about a computer. The computer was fed with all kinds of astrological knowledge. And the scientist who worked on the computer for years, filling it with all the possible knowledge of astrology, naturally wanted to ask the first question himself, and he wanted to ask a question which was really difficult.Apparently it was a simple question: he asked the computer, “Now you are ready. Can you tell me where my father is?”The computer said, “It is better if you don’t know.”He said, “What? Why should it be better if I don’t know?”The computer said, “Don’t insist. But if you want to know, it is not my problem. Your father has gone fishing.”The man said, “Nonsense. My father has been dead for three years. So my whole work is wasted!”And the computer laughed. It said, “Don’t be sad, your work is not lost. The man who died three years ago was not your father. Go and ask your mother! Your father has gone fishing, he must be coming back. He is your neighbor.”But even a computer can do things which the human memory can’t do. A single computer can contain a whole library. There is no need for you to read; you can just ask the computer and it will give the answer. And it is only very rarely that things will go wrong – if the electricity goes off or the battery runs down.The master is not interested in making you into a computer. His interest is in making you a light unto yourself, an authentic being, an immortal being – not just knowledge, not what others have said, but your experience.As the disciple comes closer and closer to the master, there comes another point of transformation – the disciple becomes, at one point, a devotee. There is a beauty in all these steps.To become a disciple was a great revolution, but nothing compared with becoming a devotee. At what point does the disciple turn and become a devotee? He is nourished so much by the energy of the master, by his light, by his love, by his laughter, just by his sheer presence – and he cannot give anything in return. There is nothing that he can give in return. A moment comes when he starts feeling so immensely grateful that he simply bows down his head to the feet of the master. He has nothing else to give except himself. From that moment he is almost a part of the master, he is in a deep synchronicity with the heart of the master. This is gratitude, gratefulness.And the fourth stage is that he becomes one with the master.There is a story about Rinzai. He was living with his master for almost twenty years, and one day he came and sat in the seat of the master. The master came; he looked at Rinzai sitting in his seat. He simply went and sat where Rinzai used to sit. Nothing was said, but everything was understood. Everybody was puzzled – “What is happening?”Finally Rinzai said to the master, “Are you not offended? Have I insulted you? Have I shown ungratefulness in any way?”The master laughed. He said, “Now you have become a master. You have come home; from the student to disciplehood, from disciplehood to devotion, and from devotion to mastery. I am immensely pleased that now you can share my work. Now I need not come every day; I know somebody else is there with the same aura, with the same perfume.“In fact you have been very lazy. This should have happened three months ago; you cannot deceive me. For three months I have been feeling that this man is unnecessarily holding my feet – he can sit on the seat, and for a change I can hold his feet. It took three months for you to gather courage.”Rinzai said, “My God, I was thinking nobody knew about it, that it was just inside me. And you are giving me the exact date of when it started. Yes, it has been three months. I have been lazy and I have not been courageous enough. I was always thinking ‘This is not right, it doesn’t look right.’”The master said, “If you had waited one more day I was going to hit you on your head. Three months is enough time to decide, and you were not deciding. And existence has decided.”An upanishad is a mystery school. And we are entering into an upanishad today.I was a teacher in the university. I left the university for the simple reason that it stops at the first step. No university requires you to become a disciple; the question of being a devotee or a master simply does not arise. And there are temples which, without making you a student or a disciple, simply enforce devotion on you – which is going to be false, without roots. And there are devotees in churches all over the world, in synagogues, in temples: not knowing anything about disciplehood, they have become disciples, they have become devotees.A mystery school is a very systematic encounter with the miraculous. And the miraculous is all around you, both within and without. Just a system is needed. The master simply provides a system to enter slowly into deeper waters, and ultimately to enter a stage where you disappear into the ocean; you become the ocean itself.Osho,If the search is to know who I am, I must be taking a wrong turn. Through witnessing, I am losing all the ways I had of defining myself: I'm not what I do, I'm not the personality who does them. I feel as if I know less and less who I am; I don't seem to have a permanent face anymore. I feel more like a cloud – spacious and light – than anything else. Would you please say something?It is not a wrong turn. You are on the right path. Your personality, your actions, your thoughts, your mind, your emotions – none of them is your reality. So naturally one who goes in search of himself finds himself in this strange position, that every day he becomes less and less instead of becoming more and more.The logical mind says, “What are you doing? You have been searching for yourself and all that is happening is that you are losing all those things that you used to think were yourself. You must be taking a wrong turn. Come back! The old way was better. You could collect more thoughts and become more. You could cultivate a better personality, more polished. You could rise in the world of ambitions and you would have been something – a president, a prime minister, a celebrity.” That seems to be the right path to the logical mind.But remember, the logical mind is continually going to deprive you of the right direction. The right direction is bound to be that you will become less and less, because all that is false will be understood as false. A moment will come when you will know that everything is false. You are just a witness, at the most, a point of witnessing. But this is only half the journey.Before knowing the truth, one has to know the false – because we live in the false. So we have to know it, we have to drop it, and we have to be empty of the false, utterly empty, so that the truth of our being can fill the space. There will be a gap, a very small gap, but it will look like eternity.When the false leaves you and the real comes in there is a little gap, a fragment of a second. But because of the emptiness it looks as if eternity has passed. And those are the moments when the master, when the family of the master, can be of immense help. Just the presence of the master is enough proof: “Don’t get frustrated. Learn to wait and learn to be patient. If it can happen to one man, it can happen to all.”And the family will provide every support, because each one of them will be at a different stage. Somebody will be in just the same position as you are; somebody may have passed beyond it, and just holding his hand you will feel the warmth, the love, the compassion. Just being in the school – which is full of the presence of the master – will give you courage.It was not without purpose that mystery schools were opened. The reason was that alone the journey becomes very arduous at many points.I am reminded of a story of Gautam Buddha:He is traveling with his disciple, Ananda. They are tired. They want to reach the next town before sunset; they are rushing as fast as possible. But Buddha has become old, and Ananda himself is older than Buddha. They are worried that perhaps they will have to stay in the forest for the night, they will not be able to reach to the nearby town.They ask an old man, a farmer who is working in his field, “How far is the town?”And the old man says, “Not very far. Don’t be worried. It is just two miles, at the most. You will reach.” Buddha smiles. The old man smiles.Ananda could not understand: “What is going on?”Two miles have passed. There is no town yet, and they are more tired. An old woman is collecting wood and Ananda asks her, “How far is the village?”And she says, “Not more than two miles. You have nearly reached, don’t be worried.” Buddha laughs. The old woman laughs.And Ananda looks at both: “What is this laughter?”And after two miles still there is no town. They ask a third man, and again the same question and the same situation. And Ananda drops his bag and he says, “I am not going to move anymore. I am so tired. And it seems we are never going to cross these two miles. Three times we believed, but one question arises in my mind continually…”Living with Buddha for forty years – he has learned how to live with such a man, not to ask him unnecessary questions. But he said, “Now if it is unnecessary or necessary, I don’t care. One thing you have to tell me – why were you laughing when that old man said, ‘Two miles, just two miles – you have not to go more than that’? And again you laughed with that old woman, and she also smiled, and again with the third person the same thing happened. What was this laughter? What was transpiring between you people? You don’t know them, they don’t know you.”Buddha said, “Our profession is the same. When I laughed, they laughed, they understood that this man belongs to the same kind of profession, where you have to keep people encouraged: ‘Just two miles, just a little more.’”He said, “For my whole life I have been doing that. People finally reach, but if you tell them from the very beginning, ‘fifteen miles,’ they will drop then and there. But by two miles and two miles they will pass two hundred miles. And I laughed at those people because I know this village, I have visited this village. I know it is not two miles. But I kept quiet because you were so eager to know how far it was. I knew that we were not going to make it. But what was the harm? You could ask them.“You can understand a deep phenomenon of human psychology. These people are compassionate people: they were not lying, they were simply encouraging you. The first old man pushed you two miles, the second old woman pushed you two miles. The third man also pushed you two miles; you just needed a few more people and you would reach the town! But now you have dropped your bag. It is okay, we can stay here under this big tree. The town is still not two miles!”The mystery school helps you not to be alone in a search which is basically lonely, helps you to keep courage in a search which is unpredictable.But the master, his authority, his love – you cannot believe that your master would be lying. But there are even higher values. If I can help you to reach to the ultimate goal by just lying a little I will not hesitate, I will lie – because I know you will forgive me; not only forgive me, you will be grateful that I lied for you. If I had told you the truth, perhaps you would have stopped.The journey is long, it is tedious. Everything has to be dropped, taken away. This is possible only when somebody you love, somebody you are devoted to, somebody you trust, says, “Don’t be bothered. The things that you are dropping are not real, and unless you drop them you will not find the real.” All that is unreal has to be dropped. You have to come to a point of utter nakedness where you don’t have anything – no personality, no name, no fame, no face – because all faces are different masks that you have been using on different occasions.You can see it. Just sit by the side of the road, see the people on Juhu Beach. You can tell from far away whether a couple is married or not. How can you say? The married man looks as if he has been beaten the whole day, and is now somehow trying to reach home and fall on his bed and forget the whole nightmare. But he cannot show that face to his wife. When he looks at his wife he smiles, runs to bring the ice cream – although he is cursing in his mind, “This woman is a hell!” But he is presenting ice cream to the hell, or bhelpuri.But if he is with somebody else’s wife then you can see – his eyes have a shine, he looks younger. He looks beautiful, he looks so energetic. You can just sit down and note the people who are passing – who is married and who is unmarried, who is going with somebody else’s wife. Different masks…When you are with your beloved you have one face; when you are with your wife you have a different face. Strange. When you are with your master, the boss, you have one face; when you are with your servant you have another face.With the boss you go on moving your tail – which does not exist at all, but it moves. With your servant you don’t behave as if he is a human being. Have you ever said to your servant, “Good morning” or “Good night”? No, the servant is not human. He can go on passing through your room and you don’t even take note of it that anybody has passed.These masks will fall down, and behind these masks is just your skeleton. It creates fear. But behind the skeleton is your real face, your original face. But you will have to pass through all this agony before you can feel ecstasy. Everybody wants to feel ecstasy, but nobody wants to go through the agony. Agony is the price – you will have to pay for it. Alone it will be very difficult, but when there is a school and many people are passing through different phases they can help each other.And every mystery school can exist only in one way, and that is that they have a living master. Once the living master is gone the mystery school disperses. That’s why you don’t see mystery schools becoming religions.There were mystery schools around Gautam Buddha, but that mystery school dispersed. What is now known as Buddhism has nothing to do with his mystic teachings. It is the knowledgeable people, the students, the scholars, the researchers, who have combined all his teachings, compiled, edited them. They have done a great job, but the soul is missing.It happened on Charles Darwin’s last birthday. He was very old, everybody was thinking that perhaps this was the last birthday, so all the friends and colleagues gathered to celebrate it. The children of the neighborhood also wanted to contribute to the celebration – and they did a great job.Charles Darwin’s whole life was spent in studying insects, animals, birds, because he was in search of how evolution has happened and what the stages are.The children played a trick on him. They caught many kinds of insects, cut those insects into different parts and made a new insect – somebody’s head, somebody’s legs, somebody’s body – no such insect exists anywhere. They glued it perfectly well, made it ready, and when the party was on they entered, placed the insect before Charles Darwin and said, “People are afraid that you are not going to live long. We are also afraid, because you have not studied this insect up to now. There is no reference to this insect in your books.”He looked at the insect; he could not believe it. He had never come across such a thing! And these neighborhood boys, where did they get it from? Then he looked from this side and that side, and those children were hilarious…And they asked, “Can you tell us the name of this insect?”He said, “Yes. It is a humbug.”All religious scriptures are humbugs – perfectly glued. And those who don’t have any experience of truth of their own cannot find what is missing in them – because to find what is missing you must know it.A mystery school comes into existence with a master, and disappears. And that’s how it should be.In nature, in existence, everything that is real… A roseflower opens itself in the morning and by the evening it is gone. Only plastic flowers remain; they remain forever.Becoming part of a mystery school is a great benediction. It is very difficult to find a mystery school, to find people who are searching and not imposing themselves on each other, but only helping each other if there is the need. If there is no need, even help can become a hindrance.You are absolutely on the right path. You have not taken any wrong turn. Just go on dissolving all that is false. It is beautiful to feel like a cloud, beautiful to feel like just a witness.These are the moments, the interval. Night has gone, the sun will be rising soon. Make these gaps as beautiful as possible – full of silence, full of gratitude, gratitude to the existence that has given you the chance, gratitude toward all those who have helped. And wait.Wait is a key word. You cannot force existence to do things. You have just to wait. In the right moment things happen. You have sown the seeds, you are watering the garden; now wait. Any hurry is dangerous. Everything, to grow, takes its time. Only falsities can be manufactured quickly, in an assembly line. But realities grow, and growth needs time.And the inner growth is the greatest growth in the whole of existence.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,You seem to be fulfilling two roles: an outer one in which you provoke and expose the structure of our society, and a more intimate one in which you encourage your disciples toward the ultimate. Could you please comment?Existence consists of both: the inner and the outer. Unfortunately, for centuries the inner and the outer have been thought to be opposed to each other. They are not.The teaching which proposes that the inner and the outer are opposed has caused a tremendous tension in man – because man is a miniature existence, a miniature cosmos. Whatever exists in man also exists on a wider scale in existence, and vice versa. If man can be understood in his totality, you have understood the whole. The function of the master is to bring the inner and outer into a harmony: to create opposition between them is poisoning you.They are not opposed, they are one – two sides of the same coin, you cannot even separate them. Can you separate the inner from the outer? If they can be separated then what will you call the inner? What will you call the outer? Of what? Both are part of a coherent whole. But mankind has suffered tremendously because of the division. My function is to destroy the division completely, and to create a synchronicity in man’s outer life and his inner life.The work is tremendously complicated and great because the outside, up to now, has been considered to be materialism. It has been condemned by the so-called holy people; you have been told to renounce it. If you are not capable of renouncing it you are a sinner. Life has been made a sin. And for centuries, the whole emphasis of all the religions and all the traditions has been on the inner. This is one side of the story.The other side of the story is that matter is objective, visible; the inner reality seems to be just beautiful talk. So there have been philosophers and thinkers saying that only the outer is real; the inner is only an invention of the priests, it has no existence. These people have condemned spiritualism as nonsense. And both sides agree on one point: that the inner and the outer are contradictory – you can choose one, you cannot choose both.My approach is a choiceless acceptance of both. Naturally I am against the materialist because I know the inner exists – in fact the outer exists only for the inner, for its protection, for its nourishment. And I am also against the so-called spiritualists because I cannot deny the reality of matter. It is so evidently there all around us that only people who can close their eyes, their reasoning, their understanding, their intelligence, can believe that this is all illusion, that it does not really exist.Just try. When you go out, go through the wall, not through the gate – and you will know whether it is illusion or reality. Even a Shankaracharya will go through the gate, not through the wall – and his whole life he will try to prove that the wall is an illusion, that it only appears to be, but it is not there.There is a beautiful incident:One fine morning, Shankaracharya – the Shankaracharya, the first shankaracharya – after taking his bath in the Ganges in Varanasi, is coming up the steps and a man is coming down the steps. It is still dark. The sun has not risen yet, and the man touches Shankaracharya. And the moment he touches him he says, “My God, please forgive me. I am a sudra.”Shankaracharya is very angry – a man who says that everything outer is illusory, even for him the body of a sudra is not illusory. He says, “You wasted my time. Now I have to take another bath.”The sudra said, “Before you take the bath, please answer my few questions. If you don’t answer you can take a bath, but I will touch you again – and that will be a real waste of time.”He has put Shankaracharya into such a corner. And there is nobody around, so Shankaracharya agrees to answer his questions: “You seem to be such a stubborn man. First you touch me, then you declare that you are a sudra, and now you are forcing me to answer your questions. What are your questions?”The sudra said, “My questions are very simple. I want to know whether my body is sudra, untouchable. Is there any difference between my body and your body? Is there any difference between my blood and your blood, my bones and your bones? Would it be possible, if we both died, for anybody to decide which body was a brahmin’s body and which body was a sudra’s body? Our skeletons will be the same, so please tell me: is my body untouchable?“If not, then is my soul untouchable? And you are the man who has been teaching that God is in everybody’s soul – is it more in you and less in me? Is there some difference of quantity or quality? Or does it exist only in you, and in me there is no God, no satchitanand, no truth, no consciousness, no bliss? And remember, you are standing near the Ganges and the sun is rising. Don’t lie! And this is not a philosophical discussion; it is a question of my life and death.”Shankaracharya moved all around the country, winning great debates with great scholars, but he remained silent before this sudra. His question was very simple: bodies are bodies, made of the same stuff, and consciousness is consciousness, made of the same stuff. Where is the distinction?Seeing Shankaracharya silent he said, “If you have understood me, then just go back, no need to take another bath. If you take another bath – then answer my question!”And you will be surprised – in his whole life, this was perhaps Shankaracharya’s only defeat. He had to leave the place and go back to the temple without taking another bath. Of course he was not courageous enough to say the truth. The question was simple, but he could see that whatever he said was going to be against his own philosophical teachings, against his own religion. It was better to keep silent, not to say anything.But the untouchable man – nobody knows his name – must have been of tremendous intelligence. He managed to get the answer because he made it clear, “If you take the bath I am going to touch you again. If you accept my standpoint that there is no difference, then simply go back to your temple – it is time for your morning prayer.”Seeing the situation, Shankaracharya went back to the temple. But that destroys his whole philosophy; within five minutes his whole life’s effort is destroyed. And the reason is that his philosophy is against existence. This unknown man was simply stating a fact – that the outer is material, the inner is spiritual, and there is no conflict.Have you seen any conflict between your soul and body – fighting, wrestling, beating each other? There is tremendous harmony. In fact whenever the harmony is not there, you are sick. The healthier you are, the more harmonious. Disease can be defined as a conflict between the outer and the inner; they have fallen apart, they are not moving together, the harmony is broken. The function of the physician is to bring the harmony back, to bring the music back, to make your life an orchestra.The master is a physician – not of your ordinary diseases but of your existential conflicts. That’s why I have been fighting on two fronts. I have to fight the old traditions, old religions, old orthodoxies, because they will not allow you ever to be healthy and whole. They will cripple you. The more crippled you are the greater saint you become. So on one hand, I have to fight with any kind of thinking or theology which divides you. Secondly, I have to work on the growth of your inner being.Both are part of the same process: how to make you a whole man, how to destroy all the rubbish that is preventing you from becoming whole – that is the negative part; and the positive part is how to make you aflame with meditation, with silence, with love, with joy, with peace. That is the positive part of my teaching. With my positive part there is no problem; I could have gone around the world teaching people meditation, peace, love, silence – and nobody would have opposed me. But I would not have been of any help to anybody, because who is going to destroy all that rubbish? And the rubbish has to be destroyed first, it is blocking the way. It is your whole conditioning.You have been programmed from your very childhood with absolute lies, but they have been repeated so often that you have forgotten that they are lies. That’s the whole secret of advertising: just go on repeating. On the radio, on the television, in the films, in the newspapers, on the walls, everywhere, go on repeating.In the old days it was thought that wherever there is a demand the supply happens on its own accord. Now, that is not the rule. The rule is, if you have something to supply, create the demand. Go on hammering certain words into people’s minds so that they completely forget that they have been listening to it on the radio, on the television, in the films, in the newspaper, and they start believing it. Continually listening to something, they start purchasing it – any soap, any toothpaste, any cigarette – you can sell anything.I have heard about a man who was thought to be a great salesman. His company was very proud of him. The company was dealing in real estate, and there was a big plot of land that had been with them for years and they had not been able to find anybody even interested in it. Finally the owner called the great salesman and asked him. He said, “Don’t be worried,” and he sold the plot.After just fifteen days the rains started, and the plot was at least fifteen feet under water, fifteen feet deep. That was the reason nobody was interested in purchasing it. Anybody could see from the road what would happen in the rains. All around, the land was so deep. The man who had purchased it came, really angry – he rushed into the owner’s office and said, “Is this business or robbery? Where is your salesman?”The owner asked, “What is the matter? What happened?”He said, “What happened? He sold me a plot that is now under fifteen feet of water! It has become a big lake. What am I going to do with it? I will kill that man. Otherwise, return my money.”The owner said, “Don’t be worried; just sit down.”He called his salesman, and the salesman said, “This is not a problem, you just come with me, I will solve it. You need your money? Take your money with fifteen days interest because I have better buyers ready.”The man said, “What?”The salesman said, “Don’t change your mind – take your money with interest, and forget all about that land. It is such a beauty. You can make a beautiful house on it after the rains, and when the rains come again you can make arrangements so that the water does not flow out. You will have the only place of its kind in the whole city, a lake palace. And as far as the situation right now is concerned I will give you two boats, we have been saving them for this situation.”And he sold two boats to the man!The owner was just standing there, watching the whole scene. Those boats were absolutely useless – they had been lying down there for years, rotten. They would drown the moment they were put into the water. He said to his dealer, “You are creating more trouble.”The salesman said, “Don’t be worried. If I can manage that big a trouble, I can manage just two boats.”You just have to create a desire in people – “lake palace.” He was only thinking of making a house. You have changed the desire and the ambition into a lake palace. The salesman said, “Just think, if you want to make a lake palace, first you will have to make a lake. And we are giving you a ready-made lake and not charging anything!”For centuries man has been sold beliefs, dogmas, creeds which are absolutely untrue, which have no evidence, except in your ambition, except in your laziness. You don’t want to do anything, and you want to reach to heaven! And there are people who are ready to give you maps, shortcuts – as much of a shortcut as you want. Just get up in the morning with the name of God – remembering it for two, three minutes while you are getting ready to get out of the bed – and that’s enough. Once in a while go to the Ganges, take a bath so all your sins are finished – you are purified. And all religions have created the same kinds of things – go to Kaaba and everything is forgiven.Mohammedans are poor people, and they are poor because of their belief: they are against taking money on interest or giving money with interest. Now, the whole of business depends on interest; they are bound to remain poor. And it is told to them that you should go to Kaaba at least once in life, and that’s enough – going seven times around that stone of Kaaba all sins are finished, all virtues shower on you. Such shortcuts.One man came to Ramakrishna. He was going to Varanasi to take a holy dip, but he was interested in Ramakrishna, so before going he went to touch his feet. And Ramakrishna said, “But what is the need to go to Varanasi, because the Ganges is coming here” – the Ganges was flowing just behind his temple where they were sitting: “The Ganges is coming to Kolkata itself. Where are you going?”But the man said, “In the scriptures, the Ganges in Varanasi has a specialty. It is the same Ganges, but if you take a bath in Varanasi then all your sins are washed away.”Ramakrishna was a very simple man. He said, “You can go with my blessings, but remember one thing. Have you seen? – on the bank of the Ganges there are big trees.”The man said, “Yes. I have been there once with my father when I was very young. But why are you mentioning those trees?”He said, “I am mentioning those trees because people don’t know their purpose. The Ganges is great – you take a dip and all your sins leave you immediately, but they sit on the trees and they wait for you! They say, ‘Son, sometime you will come back on the same road. Where are you going to go? How long can you remain in the Ganges? You can manage as long as you want – one hour, two hours, one day, two days – but finally you will have to come out.’”That man said, “Not even two days; I will just take the bath and come out. It will take five minutes at the most, in such cold weather… But this is strange. Nobody told me that all those sins are sitting on the trees.”Ramakrishna said, “And the moment you put on your clothes… You are putting on clothes and the sins are coming back down on you, settling. And sometimes it happens that somebody else’s sins, if they like you… ‘This man looks beautiful. That man is already dead, finished; this man is good, young, has some possibilities of committing more sins’ – they may drop on you; that is the greatest difficulty. Yours will certainly come back upon you, and others! All those trees are full of sins, so try to save yourself somehow.”He said, “How can I save myself? You can’t see sins. I can’t see them when I take the bath, nor will I be able to see them when they descend upon me again!”Ramakrishna said, “That is up to you. That is why I don’t go there, because it is absolutely useless. Those trees are not just uselessly standing there, they have been doing their job for centuries.”The man said, “You have created such a doubt in me. I will go home and think again whether to go or not. It is an unnecessary wastage if this is going to happen. And you have made me afraid also – others’ sins, which I have not committed at all…”The priests are giving you shortcuts because you are lazy. You really don’t want to do anything for your inner search.Heaven is not somewhere far above in the clouds. It is within you, and for that you don’t need to go to the Ganges or to go to Kaaba. You need to go to yourself. But that is something that no priest of any religion wants you to do, because the moment you do it you get out of all the bondage of religions – Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity – all that seems to be stupid and nonsense. You have found your truth.So my work begins with negativity: I have to destroy every program that has been given to you. By whom, it does not matter – whether it is Catholic or Protestant does not matter. I have to deprogram you so you are clean and unburdened: your doors and your windows are opened. And then the second part, the essential part, is to teach you how to enter within. You know very well how to go out; for many lives you have been going out and out and out. You are accustomed to it. You don’t think when you go to your office, “Now turn left, now turn right, now turn…” When you come home, you don’t think in this way. Simply, mechanically, like a robot you go on coming home every day, going to the office every day. The outer journey is your habit.But the inner world is a new world where you have not even looked, where you have never taken a single step. So I have to teach you how, slowly, you can step inward. Even when I say to people to go inward, immediately they ask questions which show how focused on the outside things they are. I say to them, “Sit silently.”And they will ask me, “Can I do Gayatri Mantra?”Whether you do Gayatri Mantra or you read the newspaper does not matter, both are outside. I am telling you, “Sit silently.”They say, “That is right, but at least I can repeat omkar…” It is pitiable. I feel sad for them, that I am telling them to be silent but they are asking me to fill their silence with something. They don’t want to be silent. If nothing else, then omkar will do – anything will do.I was a teacher in the university. A professor of mathematics became interested, just seeing me day after day. I would pass just by the side of his office. We were not introduced – still, I would put one of my fingers on my lips and look at him. He would just look here and there – “Is anybody seeing or not? Otherwise they will think this is mad, I don’t know this man.”In the beginning he used to look away, to the other side. I would have to clap. Then he thought it was better to stand at the window so I would not have to clap, because others would hear. And when I insisted on putting one finger on my lips he thought, “It looks odd that I don’t do anything,” so he started putting one finger on his lips. This is how we became great friends.One day he came to my house. He said, “This is too much. Are you mad or something? Why do you torture me? And every day! I am so afraid of you, that if you come and my class is there, and if they see all this, they will start doing the same thing. And in front of other people I cannot put my finger on my lips because they will ask, ‘What are you doing?’”I said, “There was no other way.” And he was an Englishman. I said, “Without an introduction it is very difficult to start talking with an Englishman, so I thought this would be perfectly right. I am not talking, I am not saying anything to you. I am just putting… It is my finger, these are my lips. I have every authority to put them wherever I want.”He said, “That is right, but – just in front of me, always in front of me!”I said, “You have come. Now things can begin.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “I mean, are you going to destroy your life in mathematics?”He was an old man, just ready to retire. And he was waiting to retire and go back to England and settle back in his own country.He said, “This is an important question I have asked myself many times – am I going to destroy my whole life in mathematics? What have I gained? Just figures and figures, and I am torturing myself unnecessarily and gaining nothing.”I said, “I know a way. You can sit silently. That is the symbol; this one finger on my lips simply means be silent, just for half an hour. You are alone” – his wife was dead and his sons had gone into their own businesses – “you have nothing else to do. You have a beautiful house and a beautiful garden. You can sit anywhere, just in silence.”He said, “The idea is good, but in silence can I go on repeating from one to a hundred? And from a hundred backward: ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven, down to one, and then back? That way it will be easy for me, just like a ladder – from one to two to three to four, and then coming back down the ladder. But without engagement, just sitting silently…?”I said, “This won’t do, because you will still be doing the same stupid thing – the mathematics you have been doing your whole life. But what is the trouble with sitting in silence?”He said, “It just looks… Somebody may see me. Somebody may ask, ‘What are you doing?’ Just my whole upbringing is such that if somebody asks, ‘What are you doing?’ you cannot say ‘nothing,’ otherwise people will think something is loose. Nothing? The whole world is there to do everything and you are sitting here doing nothing?”In every language there are proverbs which say, “Anything is better than nothing.” Anything – without any conditions! Strange – anything is better than nothing? Every language has such proverbs. “Don’t sit there doing nothing; do something!”I have heard…One woman was telling another woman, her neighbor, “Today there is good news. My son, who used to do nothing, has joined a meditation group. Now he is doing meditation.”I was just passing; I said, “You don’t know what you are talking about, because meditation simply means doing nothing. Your boy has really found the right people, his own kind. Now he is not doing nothing alone, he is doing nothing with many people.”Meditation is not something. Once the negative part is complete – and it depends on your intelligence; it can be complete within a second. If you can see that all that you have is borrowed, and if you have courage to decide that “I will not carry anything borrowed; I take the decision to find out something for myself, my own truth…”What is the point of knowing all that has been written about love and never being in love? You may collect a whole library on love – beautiful poetries, dramas, novels – but it is all pointless; you don’t know what love is. You have never loved. A single moment of love is more valuable than your whole library.The same is true about everything that is valuable. A single insight into yourself is more valuable than all your scriptures. A single glimpse of your consciousness and you have entered the real temple – which is not made of bricks and marble, but which already exists in you; it is made of consciousness itself. It is a flame, an eternal flame which has been burning since eternity. It needs no fuel. It is waiting for you to see it, because by seeing it your eyes for the first time will have something – the joy, the light, the song, the beauty, the ecstasy.And it is not that when you enter in, your outer will be forgotten. As you enter in, your outer starts radiating the inner – in your gestures, the way you see, the way you talk, the authority behind your words. Even your touch, even your presence, even your silence will be a message. The inner and the outer are parts of one reality.First you have to cleanse the outer, which has been distorted by centuries. It is fortunate that nobody can distort your inner reality; nobody can enter there except you. You cannot even invite your lover, your friend. You cannot take anyone there except you. It is fortunate; otherwise everything would have been spoiled in you and recovery would have been impossible.Only the outer side is covered with dust of all kinds; a small understanding can make you free of it. That is an essential part – the negative part – to know the false as false, because the moment you know it is false it drops, it disappears. And after that the inner journey is very light, very simple.Osho,When we drop the attitude of judging people negatively, it follows that acknowledging the positive in people has to be dropped too – the whole package has to go, does it not?Yes, the whole package of judging has to go. Nobody has the right to judge anybody, negatively or positively. These are the ways of dominating people. When you judge someone you are trying to interfere in his life, which is not your business. A real, authentic man simply allows people to be themselves.It is not my business to judge anybody as good, as bad. Everybody has to be conscious of his own qualities. If I want to help people, I cannot help by judging; I can help them only by making them more conscious. If I want to help people – and there is great beauty in helping, great joy – then the first thing is a total acceptance of the person, whoever he is, whatever he is. This is the way existence has brought him. There must be some need that he is fulfilling; without him existence will be a little less, he will be missed. And nobody can replace him; he is so unique that he is irreplaceable.But the whole history of man is that we have not been told about the uniqueness of people. We have been told that people have to be in a certain way, have to behave in a certain way, have to live in a certain way – then they are good, then they should be rewarded by respect, by honor here on earth. And they should be rewarded in the other world also, with all kinds of pleasures. We have been told things which are bad – and those people should be condemned here, dishonored, rejected by the society, made to suffer in every possible way. And finally, after death they will have to suffer in hell.And the things that decide goodness and badness are shifting, changing – what was good yesterday is no longer good today. What was bad one day becomes good another day. Just look at the long span of history and you will be surprised.For example, Rama, Krishna, Parasurama, who are incarnations of God, are all nonvegetarians, meat eaters; they are very ancient. You can think of the present time – Ramakrishna used to eat fish. Being a Bengali, and not eating fish, seems to be impossible. In fact every Bengali house has a small pond. They grow fish; just as you grow other things, they grow fish. Naturally their houses smell fishy.When the British Empire took over India, Calcutta was their first capital. All the Bengalis had to be the first clerks, the first bureaucracy, and they were all smelling of fish. That’s why the Britishers started calling them babu; babu means one who smells. You can say “Bengali babu” and there is no problem, but you cannot say “Punjabi babu” – that does not suit. With “Punjabi,” babu does not suit at all – “Punjabi babu?” It is impossible – “Punjabi” and “babu”? The Bengali is a babu, and in his shadow even the Bihari has become a babu, but there it stopped.And it is strange; because the powerful British empire was calling Bengalis babus – it was a condemnatory word; ba means with, bu means smell. Even a condemnatory word became a very respectable word because the powerful people were using it. So now when you want to show respect to somebody you call him babuji – Babu Rajendra Prasad. You have not even left out the president of India; you call him babu.As time changes… Today we cannot accept, no sensitive person can accept that a man who was thought to be a reincarnation of God can be a meat eater. It simply looks awkward, embarrassing. After Mahavira and Gautam Buddha, values changed so dramatically. They had to change, because these two persons lived a vegetarian life and proved that any man who has love in his heart, compassion, cannot be a meat eater. And at the heights of consciousness you cannot imagine that a man continues to eat meat – something is wrong.In every age, man has to define what is good, what is bad. You never think that Rama, obeying his father – a dying man, under the influence of a young wife… In the first place, to have four wives was wrong. Then, even at the point of death the man had not the courage to say no to his young wife. Such a henpecked husband! For no reason at all he ordered Rama to go to the forest for fourteen years. And this was a value in those days – obedience. Rama has been respected for centuries because he obeyed his father without even asking, “Why? What have I done? For what is this punishment being given to me?” Fourteen years he passed, on foot, in the forest.Today, nobody who has any intelligence can say that obedience can be of such a high value. He should have disobeyed. And this is my feeling, that if Rama had disobeyed Dasharatha, his father, this country would have been a totally different country. His obedience made this whole country a country of slaves. It is not a simple phenomenon, it is very complicated. When you respect Rama, you are respecting obedience.Then invaders came and the country obeyed, and invaders went on coming and the country went on obeying. In five thousand years you have not seen a single revolution because revolution has never been a value for us. We have never thought that revolution is anything good. We have always condemned the rebellious spirit, while the rebellious spirit is the only spirit in the world which helps evolution. If we are lagging behind everybody in the world, it is because of our respect for obedience.I am not saying be disrespectful, I am not saying be disobedient. I am simply saying be discriminating. And discrimination comes out of awareness – be alert, be aware, see the whole situation. And let the decision come from yourself, not from outside – not from your father, not from your teachers, not from your priests. Listen to what they have to say, listen carefully, respectfully. But the decision has to come from your own innermost being. Then you will have individuality and you will have independence. And with you, the whole society will move higher into consciousness, into freedom.Don’t judge people. Rather, love people. You are not told to love people; knowingly or unknowingly, you are being taught to judge people. Love knows no judgment; it simply loves, as you are. It is your question, it is your life. How to live it? And if my love is truly great, it may change you without any effort on my part. Without judging you, there is a possibility of changing you.You can look at me: I have lived with thousands of people; I have never judged anybody. I have simply loved everybody who has been with me, and I have seen tremendous changes happening in them without any effort on my part. Just my love has made them different.The other day I received a letter from an American jail. One jailer loves me. And without bothering about the government, he gives time to the criminals to meditate. His jail is a special jail where only very severe criminals – either those who are going to live their whole lives in jail or who are going to be crucified, only those kinds of people are there.After a few years in American jails, if their behavior is good, people are given a vacation – for one week they can go and visit their family, their friends. But not in this jail, because in this jail you cannot expect… It has already been judged that a man who has murdered seven persons – leaving him for seven days outside, he has nothing to lose. He can cut up as many people as he wants; you cannot punish him more than you have already punished him. He can escape, there is no risk; even if you catch him again you cannot do anything, you have given him the ultimate punishment that is possible. So in this jail, holidays don’t happen.But my friend the jailer, without asking permission, started giving a few criminals holidays after years of meditation. He was a little hesitant about one criminal who had committed seven murders, but then he remembered, “Don’t judge, just love.” And lovingly, he gave him seven days and told him that if he needed anything he was willing to support him: “Go out and live fully, seven days.”He was not expecting that the man would be back, and he was expecting that he was going to be in trouble. If the man did not come back then there was bound to be trouble for the jailer. But the man came back after five days. The jailer asked, “Why are you back after five days?”He said, “I was worried about you, that you must not be sleeping; you must be afraid that I may not come back. It became such a concern to me, your worry, that I thought it was worth dropping two days; better to go back. You have loved me so much; can’t I do only this much for you – coming back to jail two days earlier? It does not matter to me. I am to live here my whole life – two days more… But I was not able to sleep; I was concerned about you. I knew that you would be continuously worried about what would happen, whether I would come back or not. And I could not enjoy, because I was missing the meditation.”You are not to judge anybody. But you can do something more: you can love. You can help the person to meditate, to become more aware. And perhaps your love and his meditation may bring the change, may bring the transformation. And it will not be imposed from outside – it will be coming from inside, like a flower, and blossoming in the person. And when anything comes from inside and blossoms, it has tremendous beauty.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,My feeling is that since I have known you, your sannyasins have passed through an evolution, but you have too. So are we making this journey hand in hand?It is true, and it is not true. The sannyasins have been certainly evolving, going through radical changes in their lifestyle, in their thinking, in their behavior, in their very vision of existence. I am also moving moment to moment, changing. In this sense it is true that I have gone through a revolution hand in hand with my sannyasins. But in another sense – and a far deeper sense – your change is the change inward. I am moving beyond the inner and the outer. The reality is neither inner nor outer; it transcends both.I love the expression “hand in hand,” but it is just like when the sun rises in the morning and the birds start singing, the flowers open and release their fragrance. As the sun rises, they are also blossoming – hand in hand – but the distance is immense. That’s why I said the question is a little complicated.I am with you and yet far away; the distance is just like that between a rose opening and the sun rising. Without the sunrise the rose will not open. And I say it on my own authority: that if all the roses decide not to open the sun will not rise. It will look so stupid – for whom to rise, for what?Existence is interconnected so deeply, so intimately, but the distances are vast. On the full-moon night you see the ocean: it is affected by the full moon – hand in hand – but the moon is far away. And it is not only the ocean that is affected; even you are affected, because eighty percent of you is ocean water.It is not strange that the people who have become enlightened – only with one exception, Mahavira – have all become enlightened on the full-moon day. Mahavira became enlightened on the night of amawas – no moon in the night, total darkness. It is because of this fact he is called Mahavira. That is not his name. Mahavira means the great warrior, going against the current – and not only going against the current but achieving it.Gautam Buddha became enlightened on the day of the full moon. Gautam Buddha’s whole life is connected with the full moon: he was born on a full-moon night, he became enlightened on the full-moon night, he died on the full-moon night. This cannot be just coincidence.And now psychologists have been studying the effects of the full moon on the human psyche, and the results are staggering. On the full-moon night more people go mad than any other night, the number is almost double. More people commit suicide – again, the number is almost double. More people commit murder, again the number is almost double.The full-moon night does something to the human psyche. The full moon is so far away – but not so far away; it affects you. Since the very beginning it has been affecting the poets, the painters, the sculptors, the musicians, the dancers. They all feel that something is different under the full moon; that perhaps the rays of the full moon are hand in hand…Yes, you have been going through many radical changes to reach yourself. I have been going through many revolutions to reach beyond, beyond myself. You have been moving toward enlightenment, and I have been going beyond it – and this whole process is going hand in hand.But the distance is vast – remember the distance, and also remember the closeness, the intimacy.Osho,I seem to recall you once saying that we only have glimpses into existence in proportion to our capacity to absorb and integrate them. Nietzsche's insight that, “That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil” was part of an understanding that literally drove him insane. Could you please talk about this?A genius of the caliber of Friedrich Nietzsche is always in danger of going mad. Nobody has ever heard of any idiot going mad. To go mad, first you have to have a mind. A genius is walking on a sword – just a little mistake and he can fall, fall into an eternal darkness of madness.Nietzsche is perhaps one of the most prolific geniuses the world has produced. He had so many insights that finally he had to change his way of writing. His writing became aphoristic because the insights were crowding in his mind and if he were to write an essay, the other insights might be forgotten, might be lost. He started writing aphoristically, in maxims.But to have too many insights is dangerous. One can afford only a limited number. And Nietzsche was confronted with an infinite number of insights. Each insight could have become a philosophy. For example, this insight that when there is love there is no question of good and evil, love is beyond both. That’s all. He could have written a whole system on it, explained it in detail in different contexts.There are traditional ways of writing, and they have a certain validity about them because you cannot misinterpret them, you cannot misunderstand them. For example, Bertrand Russell, in his famous book Principia Mathematica, devotes two hundred and sixty-five pages to a simple thing. You cannot conceive how a man can manage such a big-sized book, two hundred and sixty pages, just to prove that two plus two are really four. But he has taken every possible consideration, every possible question, every possible implication. He has exhausted the subject, he has not left anything for anybody. That is the traditional way of writing – systematic, rational.But Friedrich Nietzsche had no time – life is too short and his insights were so many. So he would simply write a maxim: “Love takes you beyond good and evil. If you love, then don’t bother about good and evil.” He is right, dangerously right – we will have to look into a few of the implications of his statement.Ordinarily, for centuries, love has been synonymous with good – it takes you beyond bad, beyond evil. Love cannot harm, love cannot be violent, love cannot be destructive, love cannot be evil; those are the qualities of hate. For thousands of years man has thought love and goodness are synonymous.But Friedrich Nietzsche is far more right than the tradition. Nobody has thought about it before him. That is the function of a genius: he brings new light, new glimpses into the world; he opens new windows into existence. But he has not explained it.I agree with him totally. Good and evil are opposite to each other and they exist together. Just like darkness and light, life and death – all these opposites exist together, you cannot separate them. If you make love synonymous with good, then the evil will follow you like a shadow; and that has been happening everywhere around the world, for centuries.There is a treatise by a psychoanalyst entitled The Intimate Enemy. It is about love: whomsoever you love you are bound to hate. This will be like a wheel – day comes, night comes; love comes, hate comes.It is not something unnatural that lovers are continuously fighting, nagging each other. It is part of the game – you have chosen love, you have chosen hate as the other side of the coin. Once in a while things become too much and the hate part asserts itself. If you watch the life of lovers you will be immensely surprised: before they feel loving toward each other, first they fight. When their fighting part is fulfilled, then their love part comes up – they are simply moving on a mechanical wheel. Then they are hugging each other and kissing each other and, just a few minutes before, they were throwing things at each other.Before every act of lovemaking there is a pillow fight. I don’t know what pillows have done – they are such innocent people, they never do any harm to anybody – but they unnecessarily get caught in between the lovers because it happens that they are on the bed, and handy. After a good fight – saying things against each other, against each other’s family – when this catharsis is over suddenly they are full of love, hugging each other. You cannot believe these are the same people. Then why were they doing that drama before? And this happens every day, it is a routine process.Certainly your love is not what Nietzsche means by love. He means by love what I mean by love – love not addressed to anybody in particular but just your aroma, your field of energy. Just as the perfume of the rose surrounds the rose, a loving man is surrounded by love. That love is beyond good and evil; it transcends that intrinsic contradiction of the ordinary love.But it is true that a man like Friedrich Nietzsche, reaching to the very heights of understanding, became mad. The reason is not his insight. The reason is that his insight remained only intellectual. He had no foundation in meditation, he never heard of the word.If Friedrich Nietzsche had been born in the East he would have been another Gautam Buddha, nothing less – perhaps more. But in the West, intellect seems to be all. So he came to conclusions logically – beautiful conclusions, and then he tried to live according to those intellectual conclusions for which there was no meditative foundation. He fell apart. He had a nervous breakdown. He tried to reach where only meditators are allowed; and naturally he had to fall from those heights, and he suffered multiple fractures. His genius was absolutely certain, but his genius led him into madness; that too is certain.In the East it has never happened. One should look into it. In the West it has always happened: whenever there was a man of great genius, sooner or later there was a nervous breakdown, as if he had seen so much that he could not absorb it. He had not enough wings, but still he had taken a long flight into the sky – tired, tattered, he fell down.In the East it has never happened, because we never begin with insights. First we make certain that you have a foundation. We make your wings stronger. We don’t care about flights; we care about your wings.You cannot conceive a Gautam Buddha, a Bodhidharma, a Mahakashyapa – even to conceive that these people can be mad is impossible. Their sanity is so perfect, and their sanity is rooted in their meditativeness, in their silence, in their peace, in their grounding in their own being. Because they have roots deep down into the earth, they are capable of sending their branches high to have a dialogue with the stars. Their flowers can go high in the sky to release the perfume.You must remember one fact: a tree grows only proportionately. It can go only to a certain height if it has a certain strength, a depth to its roots.In Japan there is an old art. I don’t call it “art,” but they call it art. I call it murder. But people go to see it from all over the world because there are only a few trees – five hundred years old and six inches in height! You can see that, although it is just six inches high, the tree is old. Its bark is old, its leaves are old; just its height has somehow been prevented.And the strategy is that in the pots in which those trees are put there is no dirt in the bottom. So the gardeners, from generation to generation – because the tree is five hundred years old; many generations of the family that owns the tree have passed – they go on cutting the roots, they don’t allow the roots to grow. The pot has no dirt in the bottom, otherwise the roots will find their way into the earth. The roots go on becoming older, the tree goes on becoming older, but because the roots cannot spread, cannot go deep into the earth, the tree cannot go high into the sky.People think it is an art. It is sheer murder; it is a crime against the trees. And the same crime has been committed against man all over the world. Your roots have been cut.Intellect can have flights, but it has no roots. Once in a while a genius may suffer from his own intelligence, and finally either he will commit suicide – because the tension of his intelligence will become too much, his thoughts will become too many – or he will go mad.In the West many professors, many philosophers, mathematicians, painters, poets, novelists – all kinds of creative people who have genius – have gone mad or have committed suicide. A few have done both. First they went mad, and then when they were thought to be cured and were released from the madhouse, they committed suicide.Vincent van Gogh, one of the great painters of Holland, was in the madhouse for one year. He was released, and the next day he committed suicide. And he wrote a letter to his brother in which he mentions, “It is better not to be, than to be mad. I don’t want to be mad again and I know I cannot avoid it; my mind is again moving in the same directions. All their medicines and tranquilizers can keep me normal in a madhouse, but to live in a madhouse is not life. At least I will have the satisfaction that, although I could not live my life, I could manage my own death. I was not the master of my life, but I was the master of my death.”And he was so young, only thirty-three years old, but one of the greatest painters the world has produced. His insights were such that people who have been studying his paintings are simply puzzled, they cannot figure out how this man managed – because one hundred years ago he painted stars as spirals. You don’t see stars as spirals, nobody has ever seen spirals, and in his paintings all his stars are spirals. Even other painters were saying, “Watch out. You are going toward insanity. This is nonsense, nobody has ever seen it. Stars are not spirals.”Van Gogh said, “What can I do? I see them as spirals.” And after one hundred years, just four weeks before one hundred years had passed, modern physicists came to the conclusion that stars are spirals. Our vision… Because they are so far away, that’s why we cannot see that they are spirals.Now people are puzzled. Van Gogh had the insight, had the genius – without any instruments. It took one hundred years for the scientists to find out, with all kinds of sophisticated instruments, that stars are spirals. Van Gogh, with his bare eyes…But he himself started thinking he must be mad. No, nobody supported his vision; even painters, great painters laughed. And this was not only one case, this was the case about all his paintings. He was seeing things which nobody else sees.A genius is always ahead of his time. The bigger the genius, the farther in the future is his reach in time. Nobody is going to agree with him. He will be thought mad.Remaining mad was not worthwhile; van Gogh committed suicide. We forced him to commit suicide. What harm was he doing? That’s why I say don’t judge people. He was not doing any harm to anybody. The canvas he was painting on was not in any way insulted. The canvas was not reporting to the police station, “This man is making stars into spirals on me.” The colors that he was using had no objection…But people go on continually judging. Can’t you keep quiet? Perhaps he sees better than you, farther than you. And anyway, he is not doing harm to anybody.You will be surprised: in his whole life he could not sell a single painting. Who would purchase it? Only a genius, only a man of insight, only a man of the same category as van Gogh would purchase one; otherwise, who would purchase his paintings? You will not purchase his painting, because anybody coming to your house will look at the painting and will think you are mad: “Is this painting? How much have you paid?”And now only two hundred paintings have somehow survived, in friends’ houses. Each painting is worth a million dollars, and van Gogh lived hungry because he could not sell them. His brother used to give him enough money for seven days. Four days he was eating, and three days he was fasting, to purchase materials for paintings. This fast I call religion – not the fasts of Jaina monks; those are stupid fasts. This man was pouring his blood on the canvas. He had something more valuable than his own life and he was ready to sacrifice it.The same was the case with Friedrich Nietzsche. He was condemned by everybody, because if you say love takes you beyond good and evil, that means there is something higher than good. And if it leads you beyond good and evil then you are totally free; then your acts cannot be judged as good or bad.He was right, but he had no meditative support. He could argue about it, but he could not prove it by his own life. He himself could not love the love he was talking about. That love comes only as a fragrance of meditation – and then certainly there is nothing good, nothing bad. Love is the highest value. There cannot be anything higher than that.I feel deeply sad for Friedrich Nietzsche. I don’t feel for the normal human beings, because whether they are in the East or in the West makes no difference – they will be the same people. Superficial differences will be there of course. But I feel deeply sad for Friedrich Nietzsche, because if he had been in the East he would have raised the consciousness of humanity with his own enlightenment and, perhaps, going beyond it.Osho,What is awareness? Why is it lost, and how can it be regained? Are there any steps for the same?Awareness is never lost. It simply becomes entangled with the other, with objects. So the first thing to be remembered: it is never lost, it is your nature, but you can focus it on anything you want. When you get tired of focusing it on money, on power, on prestige, and that great moment comes in your life when you want to close your eyes and focus your awareness on its own source, on where it is coming from, on the roots – in a split second your life is transformed.And don’t ask what the steps are; there is only one step. The process is very simple. The step is only one: that is turning in.In Judaism there is a rebellious school of mystery called Hasidism. Its founder, Baal Shem, was a rare being. In the middle of the night he was coming from the river – that was his routine, because at the river in the night it was absolutely calm and quiet. And he used to simply sit there, doing nothing – just watching his own self, watching the watcher.This night, when he was coming back, he passed a rich man’s house and the watchman was standing by the door. And the watchman was puzzled because every night, at exactly this time, this man would come back. He came out and he said, “Forgive me for interrupting but I cannot contain my curiosity anymore. You are haunting me day and night, every day. What is your business? Why do you go to the river? I have followed you many times, and there is nothing – you simply sit there for hours, and in the middle of the night you come back.”Baal Shem said, “I know that you have followed me many times, because the night is so silent I can hear your footsteps. And every day I know you are hiding behind the gate. But it is not only that you are curious about me, I am also curious about you. What is your business?”He said, “My business? I am a simple watchman.”Baal Shem said, “My God, you have given me the key word. This is my business too!”The watchman said, “But I don’t understand. If you are a watchman you should be watching some house, some palace. What are you watching there, sitting in the sand?”Baal Shem said, “There is a little difference: you are watching for somebody outside who may enter the palace; I simply watch this watcher. Who is this watcher? This is my whole life’s effort; I watch myself.”The watchman said, “But this is a strange business. Who is going to pay you?”He said, “It is such bliss, such a joy, such immense benediction, it pays itself profoundly. Just a single moment, and all the treasures are nothing in comparison to it.”The watchman said, “This is strange; I have been watching my whole life. I never came across such a beautiful experience. Tomorrow night I am coming with you. Just teach me. I know how to watch – it seems only a different direction is needed; you are watching in some different direction.”There is only one step, and that step is of direction, of dimension. Either we can be focused outside or we can close our eyes to the outside and let our whole consciousness be centered within. And you will know, because you are a knower, you are awareness. You have never lost it, you simply got your awareness entangled in a thousand and one things. Withdraw your awareness from everywhere and just let it rest within yourself, and you have arrived home.Osho,Yes!There was no need to say yes because I have seen it in your eyes. I have heard it when you were sitting near me, although you have not uttered it.Since you have come to me there has never been a no in you. And it is strange, because your type is no-type! You have said no to everything, and perhaps that is the reason that your no is finished. You don’t have any no anymore, and you have come to the person with whom you can connect only through yes.To be with a master is to be in a yes attitude. That’s what I mean by receptivity, openness, vulnerability. But I know that you want to say it, thinking perhaps I may not be aware. I am absolutely aware of those people whose heartbeat is saying yes.There are people who are still in two minds – sometimes yes, sometimes no. There are also people who are attached to their no too much – but I don’t count them, they are not my people. Only those whose yes is unconditional, absolute, categorical, are my people.And you are fortunate. You belong to my people.Yes.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Why don't we drop our miseries, our ignorance and unhappiness? How can a man be happy and blissful?It is one of the most fundamental questions that a man can ask. It is also strange, because it should be easy to drop suffering, anguish, misery. It should not be difficult: you don’t want to be miserable, so there must be some deep complication behind it. The complication is that from your very childhood you have not been allowed to be happy, to be blissful, to be joyous.You have been forced to be serious, and seriousness implies sadness. You were forced to do things that you never wanted to do. You were helpless, weak, dependent on people; naturally you had to do what they were saying. You did those things unwillingly, miserably, in deep resistance. Against yourself, you have been forced to do so much that by and by one thing became clear to you: that anything that is against you is right, and anything that is not against you is bound to be wrong. And this whole upbringing constantly filled you with sadness, which is not natural.To be joyous is natural, just as to be healthy is natural. When you are healthy you don’t go to the doctor to inquire, “Why am I healthy?” There is no need for any question about your health. But when you are sick, you immediately ask, “Why am I sick? What is the reason, the cause of my disease?”It is perfectly right to ask why you are miserable. It is not right to ask why you are blissful. You have been brought up in an insane society where to be blissful without reason is thought to be madness. If you are simply smiling for no reason at all, people will think something is loose in your head – why are you smiling? Why are you looking so happy? And if you say “I don’t know, I am just being happy,” your answer will only strengthen their idea that something has gone wrong with you. But if you are miserable nobody will ask why you are miserable. To be miserable is natural; everybody is. It is nothing special to you. You are not doing something unique.Unconsciously this idea goes on settling in you, that misery is natural and blissfulness is unnatural. Blissfulness has to be proved. Misery needs no proof. Slowly it sinks deeper into you – into your blood, into your bones, into your marrow – although naturally it is against you. So you have been forced to be a schizophrenic; something has been forced on you that is against your nature. You have been distracted from yourself into something which you are not.This creates the whole misery of humanity: that everybody is where he should not be, what he should not be. And because he cannot be where he needs to be – where it is his birthright to be – he is miserable. And you have been in this state of going farther and farther away from yourself; you have forgotten the way back home. So wherever you are, you think this is your home – misery has become your home, anguish has become your nature.Suffering has been accepted as health, not as sickness. And when somebody says, “Drop this miserable life, drop this suffering that you are carrying unnecessarily,” a very significant question arises: “This is all that we have got! If we drop it we will be no one, we will lose our identity. At least I am somebody right now – somebody miserable, somebody sad, somebody in suffering. If I drop all this then the question will be: What is my identity? Who am I? I don’t know the way back home, and you have taken away the hypocrisy, the false home that was created by the society.”Nobody wants to stand naked in the street. It is better to be miserable – at least you have something to wear, although it is misery. But there is no harm, everybody else is wearing the same kind of clothes. For those who can afford it, their miseries are costly. Those who cannot afford it are doubly miserable – they have to live in a poor kind of misery, nothing much to brag about.So there are rich miserable people and poor miserable people. And the poor miserable people are trying their hardest to reach somehow to the status of rich miserable people. These are the only two types available. The third type has been completely forgotten. The third is your reality, and it has no misery in it.You are asking me why man cannot drop his misery; it is for the simple reason that that’s all he has got. You want to make him even poorer? He is already poor. There are rich miserable people: he has a small, tiny misery, he cannot brag about it. And you are telling him to drop even this. Then he will be nobody; then he will be empty, a nothingness. And all the cultures, all the societies, all the religions have committed a crime against humanity: they have created a fear of nothingness, of emptiness.The truth is that nothingness is the door to richness. Nothingness is the door to blissfulness – and the door has to be nothing. The wall is there; you cannot enter a wall, you will simply hit your head, may have some broken ribs. Why can you not enter the wall? – because the wall has no emptiness, it is solid, it objects. That’s why we call things “objects”: they are objective, they don’t allow you to pass through them, they prevent you.A door has to be non-objective, it has to be emptiness. A door means there is nothing to prevent you. You can go in.And because we have been conditioned that emptiness is something bad, nothingness is something bad, we are being prevented by the conditioning from dropping the misery, dropping the anguish, dropping all the suffering and just being nothing.The moment you are nothing, you become a door – a door to the divine, a door to yourself, a door that leads to your home, a door that connects you back to your intrinsic nature. And man’s intrinsic nature is blissful.Blissfulness is not something to be achieved. It is already there; we are born with it. We have not lost it; we have simply gone farther away, keeping our backs to ourselves. It is just behind us: a small turn and a great revolution.But there are fake religions all over the world which are telling you that you are miserable because in the past life you committed evil acts. All nonsense – because why should existence wait for one life to punish you? There seems to be no need – in nature things happen immediately. You put your hand in the fire in this life and in the next life you will be burned? Strange! You will be burned immediately, herenow. Cause and effect are connected, there cannot be any distance.But these fake religions go on consoling people: “Don’t be worried. Just do good acts, worship more. Go to the temple or the church, and in the next life you will not be miserable.” Nothing seems to be cash; everything is in the next life. And nobody comes back from the next life and says, “These people are telling absolute lies.” Religion is cash; it is not even a check.Different religions have found different strategies, but the reason is the same. Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, religions born outside India say to people, “You are suffering because Adam and Eve committed a sin.” The first couple, thousands of years back… And not a great sin – you are committing it every day. They simply ate apples, and God has forbidden them to eat apples.The question is not the apples, the question is that they disobeyed. Thousands of years ago somebody disobeyed God and he was punished, he was thrown out of the Garden of Eden, thrown out of God’s paradise. Why are we suffering? – because they were our forefathers. But strange, nobody asked these idiots – these Christians, Mohammedans, Jews, their great rabbis, popes and imams – “If that is the reason for our miseries, then why are our miseries different? Because the sin was one and single and the same, our miseries should be the same. But every man is suffering differently. His anxiety is different, his anguish is different, his problems are different – how come this variety of miseries?”Nobody has raised the question, and they don’t have any answer if somebody asks it. If the whole of humanity were suffering the same misery there would be some logical grounds to believe that there must be a singular cause, but it is not so.The religions that were born in India have all taken another excuse: that you are suffering because of your past lives. I used to meet Jaina monks, Buddhist monks, and ask them, “I can understand that I am suffering because of my past life, but what about the first life? There must have been a first life, in the very beginning. Why did people suffer then? They had no past life. And if they did not suffer, then the first generation of humanity lived in blissfulness; it is impossible that their children should suffer. Their children should have learned the blissfulness of their parents – children imitate. Then how did misery enter in?”And they always said, “You, whenever you come you bring some embarrassing question. We don’t know. First life? – nobody knows what happened, when it happened.”But I said, “Hypothetically there must have been a first life, or you have to accept another hypothesis – that this vicious circle has been going on eternally. Always there was a past life, always there was a past life. Then you cannot get out of this vicious circle, because in the next life you will suffer from this life’s acts. And then for seventy years you cannot remain a saint; even for twenty-four hours one cannot remain a saint. One needs holidays. Even your saints have holidays. And in the next life you will again commit a few evil acts…”And what are evil acts? They are so simple it is impossible not to commit them. You see a beautiful woman; the scriptures say, “Close your eyes. Don’t see her.” But they forget completely that you close your eyes only because you have seen her! The evil act has been committed; otherwise why are you closing your eyes? You don’t close your eyes seeing an ugly woman. No scripture says, “When you see an ugly woman close your eyes.” Strange. You yourself close them without any scriptures, without any teachers, without any religions. But when you see a beautiful woman you don’t want to close your eyes, you really forget to blink – and it is natural.Not only that – the latest scientific experiments about this phenomenon have revealed strange things. I can give you a deck of cards in which there are beautiful women, ugly women, naked women, beautiful flowers – different things on different cards. And I need not see the cards. You can go on looking at the cards, and when you come to a beautiful naked woman I can just watch your eyes and I can say, “Now you have come to a beautiful woman” – because your eyes are windows. You want to absorb that beauty more, so your eyes become wider. That is a natural mechanism.When you go outside in the sun your eyes become smaller, the window shrinks, because the sun is too much and there is no need to take in that much light. When you come home, slowly the eyes again open to their normal size. But when you see something beautiful they become wider, wide open. It is not in your hands, it is not that you are doing it. Even a saint will have to do it because it is not a voluntary thing. It is non-voluntary, it happens on its own accord. It is biologically set up.You have this word in English, respect. People have destroyed its meaning. It does not mean “honor” – or it means honor in a very different way than you understand. Respect means the desire to see again, re-spect – spect means seeing. If it is honor, it is honor for beauty – because you want to see it again. The woman has passed, you find some excuse to see her again, as if somebody has called you or you have forgotten something, and you turn back. These are sins.But if to appreciate beauty is sin, then all art is sin. Then all paintings are sin, all great music is sin, all great literature is sin, and all great poetry is sin. Why confine it to women? When you look at a sunset and you are filled with the beauty of it, you are committing a sin. Or when you see a roseflower and it overpowers you with its beauty, its delicateness, you are committing a sin.These religious people have managed such simple things so that it is impossible to get out of the wheel of life. You will be committing sins, and you will be coming back to suffer the punishment.To eat tastefully is a sin. In Jainism – and Mahatma Gandhi has borrowed from the Jainas because Gujarat, although it is Hindu, its mind is ninety percent Jaina; Mahatma Gandhi has borrowed all five principles of the Jainas.The first is aswad, to eat without taste. You are asking human beings to do inhuman things – it is better not to eat, and commit suicide. Even taste is not allowed! And who will tell the child, “Don’t drink the mother’s milk with taste; otherwise, finished – you have already arranged for your next life.” He enjoys the mother’s breast; in fact he enjoys so much that he remembers it again and again his whole life.The interest of men in women’s breasts is not without any psychology. Why are all the painters, all the poets, all the sculptors making beautiful breasts? – so beautiful that really that kind of breast doesn’t exist.I was very close to Khajuraho. I used to go there because it has the most beautiful sculpture in the whole world. And as far as breasts are concerned, Khajuraho is just at the very top; nobody anywhere in the world has been able to create such beautiful breasts. But seeing those breasts I said, “These breasts are not possible. If these breasts were there humanity would die.”The minister of education who was showing me around said, “Why?”I said, “Just see the roundness of the breast – the little child on this round breast… His nose will be closed, he will not be able to drink milk. Either he can drink milk or he can breathe, two alternatives are before him.”And nature has not created those breasts for the sculptors, but for that small child. It creates breasts in such a way that the child can breathe and drink milk too. Just a completely round breast, a full moon, will kill anybody – not just the child but the child’s father also! If you cannot breathe… It is good in a sculpture.But why is man so obsessed? In every magazine, in every poem… Somehow the breasts seem to be the central theme of all art. The reason is that the child has enjoyed the taste, the warmth, the feeling that flows from the mother’s breast – which is invisible to us, which is now being explored by scientists.They have tried on monkeys: one monkey is given every necessary ingredient that he needs for his physical growth; no ordinary monkey gets such balanced food. The other monkey gets just ordinary food, as monkeys can get. But the other monkey has the mother’s breast, and the first monkey has just a mechanical breast. Whenever he wants to drink milk the breast is available but it is cold, the breast is just mechanical. There is no warmth, there is no human aura around it. And the scientists have found repeatedly that the child who gets perfect nourishment dies – just because he is not getting the mother’s warmth, her body. And the child that is not getting perfect nourishment lives healthily, because he is getting the mother’s warmth.Somehow, in the psychology of man, that childhood continues. All this art is just a remembrance of a past golden time when there were no worries, no responsibilities, and life was just love.These Jaina principles make it impossible to live. No taste, no possessions… I can understand, and I teach no-possessiveness, but I cannot understand “no possessions.” And there is a great difference between the two. You can live in a palace remembering that you are simply living in a caravanserai – it is not yours; tomorrow you will be gone, somebody else will become the possessor. One day you were not here, somebody else was the possessor.My sannyasins have been looking for a beautiful house for me. Sixteen years ago they were also looking for a beautiful house, and I had chosen a house. Everything was settled, but there were some legal difficulties. The man didn’t have all the necessary papers in his possession, so we had to wait. But the man died. His son was not interested in selling the house. I moved to Pune.Then I went to America. And now when my friends started looking for a house, I remembered that house. The man with whom I had talked about the house, who was the owner, has died. His son, who was against selling it, has died – now his son is in possession. But he has made many other houses around it, and destroyed the whole beauty of the place. He wants to sell all the other houses that he has made – it had a big campus, a beautiful lawn and garden. And my whole interest was in the big campus, so thousands of people could sit there under the trees on the lawn. The main house is still there – it was a beautiful house, but now it is surrounded by so many other houses it has lost its whole beauty. Its whole beauty was in those trees, the rocks, the lawn, the vast campus.I inquired, “Who is the possessor of the house?” And when I came to know that it is now the third generation, I said, “Still people go on thinking that they possess things! They go on dying, new people go on becoming the owners.”You should live in the world, but not let the world live in you – that’s perfectly right. But to make it a point that you should not have any possessions creates insanity. Mahavira lived naked because he could not have clothes, it would be a possession. You are asking inhuman things! There is cold, there is old age, there is sickness…He would not sleep on a mattress – just on the bare floor. He would not cut his hair with scissors or shave his beard with razors because those are mechanical things, and he cannot possess anything. So he used to pull out his hairs: every year there was a festival time for the insane followers who would come to see the naked Mahavira pulling his hairs out. And it was thought to be a great religious ascetic discipline. But do you want the whole of humanity to do it?The Jaina scriptures don’t mention what he was doing with his nails. I have been looking very minutely into the Jaina scriptures to find out about the nails – I am also a crazy man! Because what did he do with his nails? You cannot pull out your nails the way you pull out your hair. And if you don’t cut your nails for eighty years, you will become almost like an animal. People cannot even come close to you; your nails will reach at least six feet. They will keep everybody away, particularly women: good devices – nuclear weapons!No, you cannot expect to get out of this vicious circle of life and death. If cause and effect are put at a distance – in one life is the cause, in another life is the effect – then it is absolutely impossible. But it is a good consolation for people, for their misery; that they had committed evil acts. What evil acts? I don’t see people committing evil acts in such a proportion that the whole humanity should be miserable.The reality is something totally different. It is not a question of evil acts, it is a question of your having been taken away from yourself, from your natural blissfulness. And no religion wants you to be so easily blissful; otherwise what will happen to their disciplines? What will happen to their great practices, ascetic practices – people torturing themselves in a thousand and one ways. People beat themselves until they fall unconscious, and that is thought to be a religious discipline.If dropping the misery is as easy as I say it is, then all these fake religions lose their business. It is a question of their business. Blissfulness has to be made so difficult – almost impossible – that people can only hope for it in some future life, after long arduous journeys. But I say to you, on my authority: it has happened to me so easily. I have also lived many past lives and certainly I must have committed more evil acts than any of you – because I don’t consider them to be evil acts. Appreciation of beauty, appreciation of taste, appreciation of everything that makes life more liveable, more loveable are not evil things to me.I want you to become sensitive, aesthetically sensitive to all these things. They will make you more human, they will create more softness in you, more gratitude toward existence.And it is not a theoretical question with me. I have just accepted nothingness as a door – which I call meditation, which is nothing but another name for nothingness. And the moment nothingness happens, suddenly you are standing face to face with yourself – all misery disappears.The first thing you do is simply to laugh at yourself, at what an idiot you have been. That misery was never there; you were creating it with one hand and you were trying to destroy it with another hand – and naturally you were in a split, in a schizophrenic condition.It is absolutely easy, simple. The most simple thing in existence is to be oneself. It needs no effort; you are already it – just a remembrance, just getting out of all the stupid ideas that the society has imposed on you. And that is as simple as a snake slipping out of its old skin and never even looking back. It is just an old skin.If you understand it, it can happen this very moment, because this very moment you can see there is no misery, no anguish.You are silent, standing on the door of nothing; just a step more inward and you have found the greatest treasure that has been waiting for you for thousands of lives.Osho,In the mind, in the process of thinking, there is so much energy. How can we use that energy in a creative and constructive way?The question is very complex. It sounds simple, but it is not simple. You are asking: The mind is full of energy, how to use this energy in a creative and constructive way?Who is going to use this energy? If mind itself is going to use this energy, it can never be creative and can never be constructive. That is what is happening all over the world. That is what is happening in science. The whole misery of science is that mind is using its energy. But mind is a negative force; it cannot use anything creatively, it needs a master. Mind is a servant. Do you have a master?So to me the question is… Meditation brings the master in. It makes you fully aware and conscious that the mind is your instrument. Now, whatever you want to do with it you can do. And if you don’t want to do anything with it, you can put it aside; you can remain in absolute silence.Right now you are not the master – even for five minutes. You cannot say to the mind, “Please, for five minutes, just be silent for five minutes.” Those will be the five minutes when mind will be faster, rushing more than ever – because it will have to show you who is the master.There is a famous story in Tibet. A man wanted to learn the art of miracles, so he served a saint who was thought to be a knower of all the secrets. He served the saint day in, day out; he closed his business. The old saint told him again and again, “I don’t know anything. You are unnecessarily wasting your business, and you are becoming a burden to me because whenever I look at you… Twenty-four hours a day you are sitting here, on my head – and I don’t know any miracles. What to do?”The man said, “You cannot avoid me so easily. I have heard that you have been hiding those secrets. But if you are stubborn, I am also stubborn. I will die sitting here, but I will learn the secret.”Finally the saint said, “Listen. This is the mantra” – it was not much, it was a simple mantra – “Just repeat ‘Om, om, omkar’ and all the secrets of all the miracles will be available to you as you become more and more attuned with the mantra.”The man rushed toward his home. While he was going down the steps of the temple the saint said, “Wait! I have forgotten one thing. After taking the bath, when you are sitting to chant the mantra, remember not to let any monkey enter into your mind.”That man said, “You must be getting senile! In my whole life no monkey has ever entered into my mind. Don’t be worried.”He said, “I am not worried. It is just to make you aware, so you don’t come later on and tell me that a monkey disturbed everything.”The man said, “There is no fear about the monkeys. Everything has entered into this mind, but a monkey? I don’t remember this at all, not even in a dream.”But as he started moving toward his house he was amazed; monkeys started appearing on the screen of his mind – big monkeys, giggling. He said, “My God!” He tried to push them away, “Get out! Get lost! I don’t have anything to do with monkeys, and particularly today!” But he was surprised that it was not one monkey, it was a vast line; they were coming from all sides.He said, “My God, I had never thought that so many monkeys are hidden in my mind. But first let me take a bath.” But it was so difficult to take a bath because he was continually shouting “Get out! Get lost!”Finally his wife knocked on the door – “What is the matter? Who is inside the bathroom? Are you alone?”He said, “I am alone.”“But then why are you shouting so loudly: ‘Get out, get lost’?”He said, “About these monkeys…”The woman said, “You have gone mad. What monkeys? There are no monkeys here, keep quiet.”He said, “Strange. This woman has never been so hard on me, but in a way she is right because there is nobody in the bathroom. But to say that they are in my head looks even worse.”He sat down in his worshipping place, but the monkeys were inside. He closed his eyes – they were sitting all around him. He said, “I have never thought that monkeys are so interested in me. Why are you bothering me? A few are inside the mind, and if I close my mind, a few are sitting all around me. They push me from this side and from that side, and giggling! I am a silent man, and this is not gentlemanly behavior.”And again the wife looked into his worshipping place and she said, “With whom are you talking?”He said, “My God, now I have to explain something which I do not understand myself. Just don’t you disturb me tonight. Tomorrow morning I will go and I will see that old man.”The whole night he took showers many times, rubbed the soap as much as he could to clean himself, but there was no way. In fact the bathroom was so full of monkeys that to make his way into the bathroom was difficult, to come out of the bathroom was difficult. And when he came back to his worshipping place they were sitting all over – even in his place a big monkey was sitting chanting “Om, om, om.”That man said, “I cannot wait for morning.” It was midnight. He rushed to the temple, woke up the old man and told him, “What kind of mantra have you given to me?”He said, “I have told you; that was the condition. That’s why I have not told it to anybody for so many years – because that condition is unfulfillable. Simply drop this idea of miracles and the monkeys will disappear.”The man said, “Just… I have come for that. I don’t want any miracles, I don’t want any secrets. Please just help me to get rid of these monkeys because they are sitting all over the place, and if I open my shop tomorrow they will be sitting all over the shop. I am a poor businessman. I got into the wrong business; this is not my business. You do your business but please, if you can help me…”The saint said, “There is no problem. If you drop the idea of miracles, those monkeys will disappear. They are the guardians of the miracles.”If you try for even five minutes to stop thinking, more thoughts than ever will rush in – simply to show you that you are not the master. So first one has to get the mastery, and the way to become the master is not to say to the thoughts, “Stop.” The way to become the master is to watch the whole thought process. If the man had simply watched the monkeys, had allowed them to giggle, had allowed them to do whatsoever they were doing; if he had been simply a witness, those monkeys would have gone – seeing that this man seemed to be absolutely indifferent, not interested at all.Your thoughts have to understand one thing: that you are not interested in them. The moment you have made this point you have attained a tremendous victory. Just watch. Don’t say anything to the thoughts. Don’t judge. Don’t condemn. Don’t tell them to move. Let them do whatsoever they are doing, let them do any gymnastics; simply watch, enjoy. It is just a beautiful film. And you will be surprised: just watching, a moment comes when thoughts are not there, there is nothing to watch.This is the door I have been calling nothingness, emptiness. From this door enters your real being, the master. And that master is absolutely positive; in its hands everything turns into gold.If Albert Einstein had been a meditator, the same mind would have produced atomic energy not to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki but to help the whole of humanity to raise its standard of living. Without meditation the mind is negative, it is bound to be in the service of death. With meditation the master is there, and the master is absolute positiveness. In its hands the same mind, the same energy, becomes creative, constructive, life affirmative.So you cannot do anything directly with the mind. You will have to take a little roundabout way; first you have to bring the master in.The master is missing, and for centuries the servant has been thinking he is the master. Just let the master come in, and the servant immediately understands. Just the presence of the master and the servant falls at the feet of the master and waits for any order, for anything the master wants to be done – he is ready.The mind is a tremendously powerful instrument. No computer is as powerful as man’s mind – cannot be, because it is made by man’s mind. Nothing can be, because they are all made by man’s mind. A single man’s mind has such immense capacity: in a small skull, such a small brain can contain all the information contained in all the libraries of the earth, and that information is not a small amount.Just one library, the British Library, has so many books that if we put those books in a line side by side they will go three times around the earth. And a bigger library exists in Moscow, a similar library exists in Harvard, and there are similar libraries in all the big universities of the world. But a single human mind can contain all the information contained in all these libraries. Scientists are agreed that we may not be able to make a computer comparable to the human mind which can be put into such a small space.But the result of this immense gift to man has not been beneficial – because the master is absent and the servant is running the show. The result is wars, violence, murders, rape. Man is living in a nightmare, and the only way out is to bring the master in. It is there – you just have to get hold of it. And watchfulness is the key: just watch the mind. The moment there are no thoughts, immediately you will be able to see yourself – not as mind, but as something beyond, something transcendental to mind.And once you are attuned with the transcendental then the mind is in your hands. It can be immensely creative. It can make this very earth a paradise. There is no need for any paradise to be searched for above in the clouds, just as there is no need to search for any hell – because we have already created hell. We are living in it.I have heard that a great politician died. Naturally, he was afraid that he would be taken to hell. He knew his whole life: it was absolutely criminal and nothing else.Without crimes it is impossible to succeed in getting political power. In going higher on the ladder of power you have to crush, kill, destroy – you have to do everything. But if you succeed then you are forgiven. Nobody remembers that you have done anything wrong. And he was a successful politician. But as he was dying he was afraid; he remembered his whole past, and he was certain “I am going to hell. Now nothing can help. Those political tricks will not be helpful here.”But when he opened his eyes he was in front of heaven. He could not believe it. He asked the angels who had brought him there, “There seems to be some mistake, some bureaucratic mistake. This is heaven and you have brought me here?”“This is, certainly. And there is no mistake, you have earned it.”The man said, “What are you talking about? I have done everything wrong that can be done.”They said, “We know, but your whole life you lived in hell, and now to send you to hell again will not be justified. Moreover, our hell will look very old-fashioned. You have been living in a very ultra-modern hell, and we don’t want to feel ashamed. Our hell is very ancient, our methods of torture are very ancient, and you have refined everything so well that in fact you will laugh – ‘Is this hell?’ So the only way… Even God was puzzled. You are three days late. You must have died three days ago, but it took three days for God to make the decision about where to take you. Finally we decided, ‘It is better to take him to heaven, because hell he has lived enough.’”People still go on thinking that hell is somewhere down underneath the earth – and you are living in it, this is the beauty – and heaven is somewhere above.You can change this hell into heaven if your mind can be under the guidance of the master, of your self-nature. And it is a simple process. But don’t try directly with the mind; otherwise you will be getting into trouble. One can even get into insanity. If you try to put your mind energy into creative directions, if you are not capable even of stopping it for one moment and you are trying to put it into a creative dimension, you will go crazy. You will have a nervous breakdown.Don’t touch the mind. First just find out where the master is. It is a complicated mechanism. Let the master be there, and the mind functions as a servant so perfectly.In the East we have done this. Gautam Buddha could have become Albert Einstein without any difficulty – he has a far greater genius. But his whole life was concerned with transforming people, with awareness, with compassion, with love, with blissfulness.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I have no idea about what “right awareness” is. How to judge that I am going in the right direction?There is no right awareness, because there is no possibility of wrong awareness. Awareness is right. So first drop the wrong question. Once you are asking a wrong question to yourself you cannot get the right answer.Don’t ask what is right awareness. Simply ask what is awareness. Your question gives the fallacious impression that you know what awareness is, that the only thing that you don’t know is what is right awareness and what is not right awareness. Erase that fallacy completely from your mind.Awareness is simple, very innocent. Everyone has it, so it is not a question of achievement. One wrong question leads to another wrong question: first you ask what right awareness is, then you ask how to achieve it. You already have it. When you see the sunset, are you not aware? When you see a roseflower, are you not aware? You are aware of the beautiful sunset, you are aware of the beautiful rose; all that is needed is that you become aware of your awareness, too. That is the only thing that has to be added, the only refinement.You are aware of objects. You have to be aware of your subjectivity. When you are looking at a sunset, you are so absorbed in the beauty of the sunset that you completely forget that there is a greater beauty which is making it possible for you to know the beauty of the sunset – it is your awareness. But your awareness is focused on an object – the sunset, the sunrise, the moon. Drop the object and just remain engulfed in pure awareness, in silence, in peace. Just be alert.I am reminded of one of the most beautiful stories that I have come across in my life:A king in Japan sent his son to a mystic, to a master, to learn awareness. The king was old. And he said to the son, “Put your total energy into it because unless you are aware, you are not going to succeed me. I will not give this kingdom to a man who is asleep and unconscious. It is not a question of father and son – my father has given it to me only when I attained awareness. I was not the right person because I was not his eldest son, I was his youngest son. But my other two brothers, who were older than me, could not attain.“The same is going to happen to you. And the problem is even more complicated because I have only one son: if you do not attain to awareness, the kingdom is going into somebody else’s hands. You will be a beggar on the streets. So it is a question of life and death for you. Go to this man; he has been my master. Now he is very old, but I know that if anybody can teach you, he is the man. Tell him, ‘My father is sick, old, can die any day. Time is short, and I have to become fully aware before he dies; otherwise I lose the kingdom.’” A very symbolic story too: if you are not aware, you lose the kingdom.The king’s son went to the old master in the mountains. He said to the master, “I have been sent by your disciple, the king.”The master was very old, older than his father. He said, “I remember that man. He was really an authentic seeker. I hope you will prove to be of the same quality, of the same genius, of the same totality, of the same intensity.”The young prince said, “I will do everything.”The master said, “Then start cleaning in the commune. And remember one thing – that I will be hitting you at any time. You may be cleaning the floor and I may come from the back and hit you with my stick, so be alert.”He said, “But I have come to learn about awareness.”The master said, “This is how you will learn.”One year passed. In the beginning he was getting so many hits every day, but slowly, slowly he started becoming aware. Even the footsteps of the old man… He might be doing anything – howsoever absorbed in the work, he would become immediately aware that the master was around. The prince would be ready. After one year the master hit him from the back while he was deeply involved in talking with another inmate of the ashram. But the prince continued to talk and still he caught hold of the stick before the stick could reach his body.The master said, “That’s right. Now this is the end of the first lesson. The second lesson begins from tonight.”The prince said, “I used to think that this was all. This is only the first lesson? How many lessons are there?”The old man said, “It depends on you. The second lesson is that now I will be hitting you while you are asleep, and you have to be alert in your sleep.”He said, “My God. How can one be alert in sleep?”The old man said, “Don’t be worried. Thousands of my disciples have passed through the test. Your father has passed through the test. It is not impossible. It is difficult, but it is a challenge.”And from that night he was getting hit six times, eight times, twelve times in the night. Sleep was difficult. But within six months he started feeling inside himself a certain awareness. And one day when the master was just going to hit him, with closed eyes he said – “Don’t bother. You are too old. It hurts me; you are taking so much trouble. I am young, I can survive these hits.”The master said, “You are blessed. You have passed the second lesson. But up to now I have been hitting with my wooden staff. The third lesson is that now, from tomorrow morning, I will start hitting with a real sword. Be alert! Just a moment of unconsciousness and you are finished.”Early in the morning the master used to sit in the garden, just listening to the birds singing, the flowers opening, the sun rising. The prince thought, “Now it is becoming dangerous! A wooden stick was hard, difficult, but it was not going to kill me. A real sword…” He was a swordsman but he was not given any chance to protect himself; only awareness was going to be his protection.An idea came to his mind: “This old man is really dangerous. Before he starts his third lesson, I would like to check whether he himself can pass the third test or not. If he is putting my life at risk, I cannot allow him to do it without checking whether he is worthy of it or not.” And these were only thoughts that he was thinking lying down in his bed; it was a cold morning.And the master said, “Come out of your blanket, you idiot! Do you want to hit your own master with a sword? Feel ashamed! I can hear the footsteps of your thoughts. Drop the idea.” He had heard. Nothing was said to him, nothing was done to him.Thoughts are also things. Thoughts also, while moving, make sounds, and those who are fully alert can read your thoughts. Even before you have become aware of them, they can become aware of them.The prince was really ashamed. He fell at the feet of the master and he said, “Just forgive me. I am really stupid.”But because it was a question of a sword, a real sword, he became aware of everything around him, even his own breathing, his heartbeat. Just a small breeze passing through the leaves, a dead leaf moving in the wind, and he was aware.The master tried a few times but found him always ready. He could not hit him with the sword because he could not find him unconscious, unalert. He was just alertness. It was a question of death – you cannot afford to be anything but alert.In three days’ time the master could not find a single moment, a single loophole. And after the third day he called him and told him, “Now you can go and tell your father – and this is the letter from me – that the kingdom is yours.”Awareness is a process of being more and more awake.Whatever you are doing, you can do it like a robot, mechanically. Just watch: the way you are walking, is it alert or just a mechanical habit?A man was brought to me and he was really in a great mess because he was a professor and he walked like a woman – which is a miracle. It is not easy to walk like a woman, because to walk like a woman you need a womb. Only the womb helps you to move in a certain way, otherwise you cannot. But by some freak of nature he was walking this way from his very childhood. And because everybody was laughing and telling him that this was bad, he was trying hard not to move like that. But the more he made the effort, the more it became impossible. It became a deep-rooted habit.He was a talented person, a good teacher. And in the university he was a laughingstock wherever he would go. Whoever would see him walking was bound to laugh – “Look at this man!” He was given psychoanalytic treatment, he was taken to other therapists; nothing worked. Somebody suggested me. His parents brought him to me and I said, “Do one thing. In front of me, consciously, try to walk like a woman.”He said, “What are you saying? That is my problem!”I said, “Forget the problem. Simply walk in front of me, with full consciousness, with as much grace as possible, like a woman.”He looked at his parents. He said, “Where have you brought me? I want to get rid of it, and this man seems to be a trainer!”But the parents said, “There is no harm, just try. Who knows? He has some secret idea behind it – try.”Forced, he tried – and he could not walk like a woman because now he was trying to walk consciously. He was surprised, he could not believe it. He said, “My whole life I was trying not to walk like a woman but it was an unconscious effort, because people were laughing.”I told him, “If you want to get rid of it, wherever you go remember: you have to walk consciously like a woman. In the university, in the city, in any club – wherever you go, walk consciously like a woman.”After three years he met me and he said, “In these three years it has not happened. I have been trying my best.”I said, “Go on trying, because in that very effort is your alertness.”People come to me – they want to drop smoking and they have tried thousands of times. And again, after a few hours the urge is so much their whole body, their whole nervous system is asking for the nicotine. Then they forget all the religious teachings that “You will fall into hell.” They are ready, because who knows whether hell exists or not? But right now they can’t live in this hell; they can’t think of anything else but cigarettes.I have told these people, “Don’t stop smoking. Smoke consciously, lovingly, gracefully; enjoy it as much as you can. While you are destroying your lungs, why not destroy them as beautifully and gracefully as possible? And these are your lungs; it is nobody else’s business. And I promise you there is no hell – because you have not harmed anybody, you have just harmed yourself; and you have paid for it. You are not stealing cigarettes, you are paying for them. Why should you go to hell? You are suffering already.”Somebody is suffering from tuberculosis. The doctors are telling somebody, “Stop; otherwise cancer is absolutely certain to happen to you, you are preparing the ground.” What more hell? But when you have decided to do it and when you cannot restrain yourself from doing it, then do it aesthetically, consciously, religiously. They will listen to me and will think, “This man must be mad. What is he saying – religiously?”And I will teach them how to take the packet from the pocket consciously, slowly. Open the packet, take the cigarette consciously – watch, look around. It is such a beautiful thing! You love it so much, you should give it a little time, little attention. Then light it; watch the smoke, be alert as the smoke goes inside you. You are doing a great job: pure air is available free; to pollute it you are wasting money, hard-earned – enjoy it to the full. The warmth of the smoke, the smoke going in, the coughing – be alert! Make beautiful rings, they all go toward heaven. You cannot go to hell; even your smoke is going to heaven, how can you go to hell? Just enjoy it. And I forced them: “Do it in front of me so I can be satisfied.”They will say, “It looks so awkward. It looks so stupid, what you are saying.”I said, “This is the only way, if you want one day to be free from this urge.” And they will do it, and they will say to me, “This is strange, that for the first time I was only a watcher. I was not smoking – perhaps the mind, perhaps the body – but I was simply watching it.”I said, “You have got the key. Now be watchful, and smoke as much as you can because the more you smoke the more watchful you will be. Smoke in the day, smoke in the night, in the middle of the night when you wake up. Don’t miss the chance, smoke. Don’t bother about your doctors, your wife; don’t bother about anybody. Just take care of one thing: remain alert. Make it an art.”And hundreds of people have found that the urge disappeared. The cigarette is gone, the cigar is gone. Even the desire… Looking back, they cannot believe that they were in such bondage. And the only key to get out of the imprisonment was awareness. You have the awareness; it is just that you have not applied it. So apply it so it becomes more and more sharp. Without application it has gathered dust.In any act – walking, eating, drinking – whatever you are doing, make it a point that side by side a current of awareness will always remain running. And your whole life will start having a religious fragrance.And all awareness is right, and all unawareness is wrong.Osho,The mind warns me that it will cease helping me to feel that I fit with society, and will expose the feelings of guilt within me if I choose to go the way of awareness. It also gives convincing arguments about going for truth and taking risks, but I don't really have the guts to face unpleasantness. Osho, can you comment?Your question has many implications. The first is: everybody has guts. You are not allowed to use them from the very beginning. The whole society wants to make you a coward. Cowards are very much needed because the society is interested in making you slaves.Your parents are interested that you should be obedient – your guts may not allow you to be obedient. Your teachers want you to accept everything that is said by them without any questioning – your guts may raise questions. Your priests want you to believe, to have faith – your guts may create doubts. All the vested interests are against the courageousness which is naturally part of your being.Nobody is born a coward. Cowards are manufactured. Every child is brave. I have not come across a single child who is not brave. What happens? Where does this quality disappear?The same child, when he comes out of the university, is a coward. Your whole teaching, your whole religion, your whole society, all your relationships – the husband does not want the wife to have guts; neither does the wife want the husband to have guts. Everyone wants to dominate everybody else. Naturally, the other person should be reduced to a coward. It is a very strange phenomenon that a woman will destroy the courageousness of her husband. And then she cannot love the man, because a woman loves courage.We have made life so complicated. We are living in such an unconscious way. No woman wants her husband to be a coward, but every woman is going to reduce him to a coward. Then she is caught in a dilemma: she wants her husband to be a hero, but a hero outside the house, not inside the house. But this is not possible. Inside the house he has to function like a mouse, and outside the house he has to function like a lion. And people are managing, and everybody knows everybody’s story – because it is the same story.Parents are very happy with an obedient child. I have never been an obedient child – and my family was a joint family, a big family; uncles, aunts, so many people under one roof. Whenever there would be guests or important people they would try to send me out. They would tell me, “Go, anywhere!” They would introduce other children who were obedient – my brothers, my sisters – and I would come exactly at the right time to introduce myself to the guest: “These people are forgetting; I am the eldest – and there is a code language between these people and me.”My father would look here and there, “Now what?”And the person was bound to ask, “What code language?”I said, “The code language is, that whenever I might have to introduce myself these people send me out. That means certainly somebody is coming, somebody important enough – and naturally, I have to come in the middle, at the right time, to introduce myself. These people don’t have guts to introduce me.”What was their problem? Their problem was that everybody was obedient. They would say, “It is night” and the children would say, “It is night.” And I would see that it was not night, it was day. Now there were only two ways: either to listen to my own intelligence, or to be respected, honored as an obedient child.There was a small piece of land between my house and a temple. Legally, my father had all the papers of the land. Technically, in the courts, he was going to win the case. But in reality the land belonged to the temple; it was just because of the stupidity of the priest that he gave all his papers to my father. I knew the whole story, and when the case started I told my father, “I am coming to the court to tell the reality: technically you have the papers in your hand, but in reality the land belongs to the temple. I will not allow you to win the case.” I was not more than thirteen. So I said, “Perhaps the court may not accept me because I am not yet adult, so I have persuaded my grandfather – I am bringing him with me.”My father said, “You should not interfere in these things. You should concentrate on your studies, go to school.”I said, “I am doing those things, but whatever else is happening… If I see that something wrong is going to happen, I am the last person not to interfere. Withdraw the case.”I brought my grandfather and I told my father, “You can ask your father too. Your son is against you, your father is against you, because we both know what the truth is.”And then my grandfather said, “However disobedient he may be, however rebellious he may be, what he is saying is true and I am going with him. Withdraw the case otherwise you will lose the case and lose face too, because your son will be testifying in the court against you, your father will be testifying against you in the court.”He had to withdraw the case and give the land to the temple.He was angry for many days. I said, “There is no need to be angry. You should be happy that you have a son who has guts, even against you. If it is a question of truth, he will choose the truth; he will not go with you. You can depend on me. And rather than rejoicing, you are being angry.” But this is how things are.In my school, to wear a cap was compulsory. I don’t have anything against the cap, I love it – but because it was compulsory I went the first day without a cap. The teacher said, “It is the first day; perhaps you don’t know, the cap is compulsory. Without a cap you cannot come to the school.”I said, “I am going to come to the school. When I was admitted there was no condition that I have to come with a cap. I can even come naked and you cannot prevent me. I have been admitted, not my clothes.”The teacher said, “You seem to be crazy. Naked?”I said, “Yes, tomorrow.”He took me immediately to the principal. He said, “You tackle him, he seems to be very strange. I have just asked him to bring a cap because the cap is necessary.”The principal said, “What is the trouble? Why are you not complying with a certain rule, a discipline?”I said, “I am ready to follow any discipline which is based on reason, not compulsion. You will have to prove that the cap has something to do with intelligence. As far as I know… In India the Bengalis don’t use a cap and they have the best intelligence in the country. And the Punjabis have the worst intelligence, if they have it at all. You have to prove it to me. I have come to the school to be more intelligent, to be more rational, to be more mature. In what way is your cap going to help me?“And what precedent is there? Gautam Buddha had no cap, Mahavira had no cap, Krishna had no cap. Why should I be forced into something which has no meaning? Tell me the meaning and I will follow it. But I cannot follow anything compulsory. Who are you to make a rule without understanding the psychology of the rule? Why are you using the cap? Has it helped you in any way?”The principal said, “We never had anybody raise such questions. Can you please give me some time to think it over?”I said, “I can give you as much time as you want. I will be seven years in this school, without a cap. And I don’t know – it can become a movement. Others” – there were two thousand students – “may start dropping their caps, I don’t know. If they have any intelligence they should.”By the time I left the school the cap had disappeared because he never could find the answer.And the day I left the school… I went to the university, and came back after one year to visit my village. The cap was back, compulsory. I went to the principal; I said, “This is absolute ugliness. You could not answer me. For seven years two thousand students did not use the cap; you could not prevent it. And now that I have left the school, the cap is back – because these people don’t ask questions, they are simply obedient because it is a rule. But you should have at least this much responsibility, that if you cannot prove anything in support of a certain rule, the rule should be removed. But you have been cunning” – as if he was waiting somehow till I got out of the school.Those seven years must have been long – because it was not only one thing, there were a thousand other things in those seven years. But I have never been mischievous. If I disobeyed anything I had reasons to disobey, and I was ready to obey it if I was convinced intelligently.But the whole society kills your guts. So this is the first thing about your question: drop this idea that you don’t have guts. You have been told again and again that you don’t have guts, and you have believed it. It is only a question of dropping a certain conditioning and you will find a tremendous upsurge of energy which is repressed in you – and that energy will be needed for the transformation.Second thing: you say, “My mind says that if you go in search of truth, if you meditate, if you become a seeker, you will not fit with the society.” The mind is not saying anything wrong. The mind is simply saying something factual; you will not fit in the society. But to fit in the society is not a value. Only idiots fit. The more you have intelligence the more you are unfit.All great artists, scientists, philosophers, mystics, poets, painters – they are all misfits. And to find a man who is a misfit is to find a man of beauty, of courage, of intelligence, a man who is ready to stand alone against the whole world. The very situation brings out the best in him.He functions at the highest level of being, he functions at the optimum – he has to function because the whole world is against him. He is alone facing the whole world; he cannot afford to be lousy, to be sleepy. He cannot afford to be middle class. He has to sharpen his intelligence, sharpen his being. This fight between him and the world is going to give him tremendous qualities.In the whole history of man you can count on your fingers the names of those who have fought against the world. And the very fight has made them a light unto themselves.If you want to fit with the world you have to compromise, and all compromise is wrong. It is ugly, it is unspiritual, it is against your own self. All compromise, without exception, degrades your humanity, humiliates you. The man of no compromise has an integrity. You can kill him but you cannot kill his spirit. You can destroy him but you cannot destroy his vision, his truth.Socrates was ordered to be killed by poisoning, and the chief justice who gave the order was feeling guilty – because Socrates was an innocent man. His only crime was that he was himself and he would not compromise. And in a good world, in a better world, in a more human world, this should be one of the best qualities of man: not to compromise. Those who are ready to compromise will not be counted as human beings, but as cattle.The chief justice was feeling a little guilty. So he said to Socrates, “Because of the majority of the judges” – and it was not much of a majority, only one man’s majority – “we have to give you poison.”Socrates said, “You need not feel guilty, because you are not killing me, you are killing yourself. Let me remind you that your name will be remembered only because you ordered Socrates to be poisoned; you have not done anything else in your life. My name will continue to be remembered as long as man has the urge, the desire to know the truth, to know himself, to know the mysteries of existence. You cannot kill me. You are simply killing yourself, and you are condemning yourself before the whole of mankind that is going to come.” And his prophecy has proved right.Your mind says you will become a misfit. And on the other hand, your mind insists and convinces you that unless you go on the search for truth, your life is a wastage. So you are in a difficulty, because you don’t understand the nature of the mind.The nature of the mind is dialectical, it is opposed to itself. On each and every point, mind is never unanimous – it cannot be. By its very nature it is always divided, a house divided against itself. So on the one hand it will say one thing, on the other hand it will say just its opposite. And this is how mind creates tension, this is how mind creates anxiety, this is how mind creates anguish. You cannot do anything. If you do one thing the other part says, “What are you doing? You will become a misfit.” If you listen to this part, thinking that “I don’t want to be unfit, I am not ready to be crucified or to be poisoned or to be stoned to death,” then the other part says, “You are not man enough. You are a coward.” You can neither go this way nor you can go that way. You are always on the crossroads, and the mind says all kinds of things.It is simple that you have presented only two sides; mind can say many things contradicting each other, and supporting each with reasoning. That’s how people go mad. Mind is the ground of madness, where madness grows. It is where one becomes schizophrenic. For example your question can create schizophrenia in you – whatever you do will be wrong because the other part will go on teasing you, “Listen. You are going wrong. You will become unfit. Then don’t tell me that I did not warn you, I told you everything beforehand. Don’t be stupid. Come back!” If you go back, the other part starts saying, “So after all you are a coward, no guts, afraid of being a misfit. Then what is the point of your living? If you cannot even search the truth of your own being, what is the point of your living?” This is the situation of the mind about every question.I was a student, and the man who had founded the university, Harisingh Gaur, was still the vice-chancellor. We became friends, because I used to go for a morning walk on a lonely street early in the morning before sunrise and he also used to go on the same street, alone. We were the only persons, so naturally… It started with saying “Good morning” to each other. By and by we started walking together. He started asking about me, what subject I was studying, what I was doing, and slowly, slowly the distance of age disappeared. He started inviting me for tea after the walk. And he became interested in my ideology, because whenever I saw that he was saying something which I could not accept I simply rejected it and produced every possible argument against it. He loved it.He said, “You should not have joined philosophy.” He himself was a legal man, he was a world-famous law expert. He said, “You should have gone into law because you, without knowing law, argue with me and I can see that if we were in a court you would win.”But I said to him, “It is just a mind game. I can argue for, I can argue against; mind is ready for both.”He said, “Strange… That reminds me of one of the incidents in my own life.” He was fighting a very big case in the Privy Council for the Maharaja of Jaipur. But he was a drunkard, and the night before he must have drunk too much at a party. So the hangover was there, and he forgot which party he was a counselor for. In the Privy Council he started arguing against the Maharaja of Jaipur.The maharaja could not believe it. Doctor Gaur’s assistant was pulling at his coat, but he would not listen, he would take his coat back… He was finishing the maharaja completely, and he was supposed to fight for him! And the other party, the Maharaja of Udaipur, was also puzzled; he was not leaving anything for them. Their counsel was also worried about what he was going to say: “This man is mad, he’s drunk, but he is giving beautiful arguments.”But as lunchtime came he became a little more sober. He came out; his assistant said – and the Maharaja of Jaipur had tears in his eyes – he said, “What have you done?”Doctor Gaur said, “What is the matter? Everybody looks as if something strange has happened.”The maharaja said, “What can be more strange? We have hired you and you are arguing against us. You have finished our case.”He said, “Don’t be worried, there is still time. After the lunch hour I will see.”After the lunch hour he started by saying, “Whatever I have said before the lunch hour was just preparing the ground: these are the arguments my opponents may produce. Now I am going to argue against each argument that I made before the lunch hour.” And by the evening he had destroyed all the arguments that he had produced before the lunch hour.When the privy council chief asked the Udaipur maharaja’s counsel, “Do you want to say anything?” he said, “There is nothing left, because all that I could say he said it better, and he has already destroyed it. The case is over.” Doctor Harisingh Gaur was victorious in the case.And he said to me, “I can understand that mind is a prostitute. It has no devotion to anything – whoever pays more, it is ready to go with the person.”Your question cannot be solved within the mind. Whatever you do, the mind keeps a balance. If you increase arguments on one side, the mind will increase the arguments on the other side, and there will always remain a balance. Inside the mind there is no solution. But if you can get out of the mind and just be a witness that is the solution. The mind disappears with all its dialectics, with all its dualisms.Watching the mind, being aware of the mind – without choosing any side, choicelessly being aware – that is the secret. And slowly, slowly mind subsides, and there is immense emptiness. In that emptiness you will find the way.I cannot give you the way, nobody can give you the way. Only your emptiness, only your nothingness becomes the way. Nothingness instead of mind is the way.If you remain in the mind you can only go mad – that is the ultimate possibility, the ultimate evolution of the mind. If you don’t want to go mad, then you will remain simply middle class. And by middle class, I mean compromising here, compromising there, a little bit listening to this part, a little bit listening to that part – shattered in fragments, never having an individuality, never having a soul.So don’t try to find an answer within the mind. That’s where the whole philosophy of the world is engaged, without any conclusion; thousands of years of discussions, arguments, and no conclusion at all. And the people who have simply moved out of the mind have immediately arrived to the conclusion.Mind is not the way. No-mind is the way. Mind leads to madness. No-mind leads to ultimate buddhahood, ultimate awakening.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Why can a man not become meditative? How can a movement for meditation be created?Meditation is a danger, it is a risk. It is a danger to all the vested interests, and it is a risk to the mind. Mind and meditation cannot coexist. There is no question of having both of them. Either you can have mind or you can have meditation, because mind is thinking and meditation is silence.Mind is groping in the dark for the door.Meditation is seeing. There is no question of groping, it knows the door.Mind thinks. Meditation knows. This is a very fundamental reason why man cannot become meditative – or why very few men have dared to become meditative. Our training is of the mind. Our education is for the mind. Our ambitions, our desires, can only be fulfilled by the mind. You can become president of a country, prime minister, not by being meditative but by cultivating a very cunning mind. The whole education is geared by your parents, by your society, so that you can fulfill your desires, your ambitions. You want to become somebody.Meditation can only make you a nobody. Who wants to become a nobody? Everybody wants to go on higher on the ladder of ambitions. People sacrifice their whole life to become somebody.Alexander was coming to India. A madness had entered in his mind: he wanted to conquer the whole world. Everybody has a little bit of that kind of madness, but he had the whole chunk. And while he was coming toward India, passing the boundaries of Greece, somebody said to him, “You have been asking many times about a mystic, a very strange man, Diogenes. He lives nearby. If you want to see him, it is a few minutes’ walk, just by the side of the river.”Diogenes was certainly a very strange kind of man. In fact if you are a man you are going to be a strange kind of man, because you are going to be something unique. He lived naked; he was one of the most beautiful men possible. But he always used to have a lighted lamp in his hand – day or night, it made no difference. Even in the day, in the full light of the sun, he was holding his lamp while walking on the streets. People used to laugh at him, and used to ask him, “Why are you carrying this lamp, unnecessarily wasting the oil and becoming a laughingstock?”And Diogenes used to say, “I have to keep it, because I am looking for the authentic, real man. I have not yet come across him. I come across people but they are all wearing masks, they are all hypocrites.”He had a great sense of humor. To me, that is one of the most important qualities of a genuine religious man. While he was dying, he still kept his lamp by his side. Somebody asked Diogenes, “You are dying. Let us know about the man you were searching for. Your life is ending; have you been successful in finding the authentic man?”He was almost on the verge of death, but he opened his eyes and said, “No, I could not find the authentic man. But I am happy that nobody has stolen my lamp yet – because all around there are thieves, criminals, all kinds of robbers, and I am a naked, unprotected man. This gives me great hope: I carried the lamp my whole life and nobody has stolen it yet. This gives me great hope that someday the man will be born whom I have been looking for; perhaps I have come too soon.” And he died.So Alexander had heard and had loved many stories about him. He said, “I would like to go.” It was early morning, the sun was rising. Diogenes was lying on the sand on the bank of the river, taking a sunbath. Alexander felt a little awkward, because Diogenes was naked. He also felt embarrassed, because this was the first time that somebody had continued to lie down in front of him – “Perhaps the man does not know who I am.” So he said, “Perhaps you are unaware of the person who has come to meet you.”Diogenes laughed. He also used to have a dog. That was his only companion. Asked why he had made a dog a friend, he said, “Because I could not find a man worth making a friend.” He looked at the dog who was sitting by his side and said, “Listen to what this stupid man is saying. He is saying I do not know who he is. The fact is, he himself does not know who he is. Now what to do with such idiots? You tell me.”Shocked… But it was a fact. Still, Alexander tried to make some conversation. He bypassed the insult. He said, “I am Alexander the Great.”Diogenes said, “My God.” And he looked at the dog and said, “Did you hear?” – that was his constant habit, to refer to the dog: “Did you hear? This man thinks himself the greatest man in the world. And that is a sure sign of an inferiority complex. Only people who suffer from inferiority pretend to be great: the greater the inferiority the more they start projecting themselves higher, bigger, vaster.”But he said to Alexander, “What is the point of your coming to me? – a poor man, a nobody, whose only possession is a lamp, whose only companion in this whole world is a dog, who lives naked… What have you come here for?”Alexander said, “I have heard many stories about you, and now I can see that all those stories are bound to be real – you are a man, certainly strange, but in a way immensely beautiful. I am just going to conquer the world, and I heard that you are just residing here. I could not resist the temptation to come and see.”Diogenes said, “You have seen me. Now don’t waste time, because life is short and the world is big – you may die before you conquer it. And have you ever considered… If you succeed in conquering this world, what are you going to do next? – because there is no other world than this. You will simply look foolish. And can I ask you, why are you taking so much trouble conquering the world? You call me strange – who is just having a beautiful sunbath – and you don’t think yourself strange, stupidly strange, that you are on your way to conquer the world, for what? What will you do when you have conquered the world?”Alexander said, “I have never thought about it, to be frank with you. Perhaps I will relax and rest when I have conquered the world.”Diogenes turned to the dog and said, “Do you hear? This man is mad. He is seeing me already resting, relaxing – without conquering a thing! And he will relax when he has conquered the whole world.”Alexander felt ashamed. There was truth, so clear, so crystal clear – if you want to rest and relax, you can rest and relax now. Why postpone it for tomorrow? You are postponing it for an indefinite time. And meanwhile you will have to conquer the whole world, as if conquering the whole world is a necessary step in being relaxed and finding a restful life.Alexander said, “I can understand; I am looking foolish before you. Can I do anything for you? I have really fallen in love with you. I have seen great kings, great generals, but I have never seen such a courageous man as you, who has not even moved, who has not even said ‘Good morning.’ Who has not bothered about me – on the contrary, who goes on talking to his dog! I can do anything, because the whole world is in my hands. Just say, and I will do it for you.”Diogenes said, “Really? Then just do one thing: stand a little away from me, because you are blocking the sun. I am taking a sunbath, and you don’t understand even simple manners.”Alexander remembered him continually. All through his journey up to India and back, that man haunted him: that he did not ask for anything. He could have given him the whole world just for the asking, but he asked only that Alexander move a little away because he was preventing the sun from reaching his body.And as he was leaving, Diogenes had said, “Just remember two things, as a gift from Diogenes: one, that nobody has ever conquered the world. Something always remains unconquered – because the world is multi-dimensional; you cannot conquer it in all its dimensions in such a small life. Hence everybody who has gone to conquer the world has died frustrated.“Secondly, you will never come back home, because this is how ambition goes on leading you farther and farther: it goes on telling you, ‘Just a few miles more. A few miles more and you will be attaining the very ambition of your heart.’ And people go on chasing hallucinations, and life goes on slipping through their hands. Just remember these two things as gifts from a poor man, a nobody.”Alexander thanked him – although in the cool morning he was perspiring. That man was such… Each thing he said would make you perspire even in the cold breeze on a cold morning, because he would exactly hit the wounds that you are hiding.Alexander never could attain to being the conqueror of the whole world. He could not reach to the very end of India; he could not reach to Japan, to China, to Australia, and of course America was not known. He turned back from the Punjab. He was only thirty-three, but the ambition and the continuous struggle to fulfill it had made him so tired and spent, like a used cartridge. He was only thirty-three, at the prime of his youth, but in his inner world he had become old and was ready to die. Somehow, perhaps in death, there would be rest.And Diogenes’ shadow was always following him: “You will not be able to conquer the world.” He turned back, and before reaching Athens, his capital – just another twenty-four hours…Sometimes small incidents become so symbolic and so meaningful. Just twenty-four hours more and he would have at least been back in his capital, in his home – not in the real home that Diogenes was pointing at, but at least in the house which we all try to make a home.The home is inside. Outside there are only houses. But he could not even reach the outside house. He died twenty-four hours before reaching Athens.A strange coincidence: the day Alexander died, Diogenes also died. In Greek mythology, like many other mythologies… The same is the case in Indian mythology: before entering the other world you have to pass through a river, the Vaitarani. In Greek mythology also you have to cross a river; that river is the boundary line of this world and that world.Up to now, whatever I have said is historical fact. But after the death of Diogenes and Alexander, this story became prevalent all over Greece. It is very significant. It cannot be historical, but it is very close to truth. It is not factual.That’s how I make the difference between facts and truth: a thing may be factual, but still untrue; a thing may be non-factual, but still true. A story may be just a myth – not history, but of immense significance because it indicates toward truth.It is said that Diogenes died a few minutes after the death of Alexander. They met while crossing the river – Alexander was ahead, Diogenes was coming behind. Hearing the sound Alexander looked back. It was an even more embarrassing encounter than the first one, because at that time at least Alexander was not naked; this time he was also naked.But people try to rationalize, try to hide their embarrassment. So just to hide his embarrassment he said, “Hello, Diogenes. Perhaps this may be the first time in the whole history of existence that a great emperor and a naked beggar are crossing the river together.”Diogenes said, “It is, but you are not clear about who is the emperor and who is the beggar. The emperor is behind the beggar. You wasted your life; still you are stubborn! Where is your empire? I have not lost anything because I had nothing, only that lamp. That too I had found by the side of the road – I don’t know to whom it belongs – and I have left it by the side of the road. I had gone into the world naked, I am coming from the world naked.”That’s what Kabir says in one of his songs – Jyon ki tyon dhari dinhin chadariya. Kabira jatan se odhi chadariya – “I have used the clothes of life with such care and such awareness that I have returned its gift to existence exactly as it was given to me.”The whole society, your parents, your teachers, your leaders, your priests, all want you to become somebody special, Alexanders. But if you want to be meditative they will all be against you, because meditation means you are turning away from all ambitions.I was a student in the university. The head of my department was so worried about my examinations, he said, “I have taught in almost a dozen countries all over the world, hundreds of students, but I have never been concerned about their examinations. It is very puzzling to my mind – why am I so much concerned about your examination? You have to promise me that you will reach the examination hall in time.”I told him, “This is not part of your work. Your part is to teach me. It is my business to be worried about the examination or not. If I can manage, I will reach the hall.”He was suspicious. The old man used to stand every day with his car outside the hostel, in front of my room, to pick me up and to see me enter the examination hall. And then he would leave.I said, “This is too much, you are taking unnecessary trouble. Your house is four miles away. You have to wake up, you are not an early riser.”He was a drunkard. But life is a mystery. Here, the people who are nonvegetarians, drunkards, gamblers, you may find them so loving and so human that it is surprising. And on the other hand, the people who are strictly vegetarian… Adolf Hitler was strictly vegetarian. He never smoked, he never drank any alcoholic beverage, he went to bed early, he got up early in the morning – he was a saint! If you just look at his life-pattern and style, he was a monk. And he killed six million people! It would have been better if he had been a drunkard, nonvegetarian, a chain smoker, but a nice human being.This old man, my professor, did not drink for those few days. He had to wake up early in the morning to pick me up and force me into the examination hall. The whole university knew; they all thought, “This is strange!” I said, “It is not strange. He loves me. He loves me just like his son, and he wants me to be somebody in life. That is the trouble: that love is creating the trouble. He is afraid that I am too careless about being somebody in the world.”He used to instruct the chief examiner, “Keep an eye that he does not leave when I have left – because I cannot wait outside for three hours unnecessarily. Keep an eye on him and don’t let him go. And watch to see that he is writing and is not doing something else.”Sometimes I would finish the answers in two hours but the chief examiner would not allow me to go out. He would say, “Your professor will torture me. Simply sit here; do whatsoever you want to do. Or just go through the answers you have written; maybe you can add something more.”I said, “This is strange. I am finished with the answers; I should be allowed to go. Everybody else is allowed.”He said, “Everybody else is allowed, but nobody else is being brought here like a prisoner every day!”And after the examination the professor would ask me – every day, with the question paper in his hand – “What have you written about it?” Just to console him I would say things which I had not written at all – and he knew it. I knew that he knew it because he was the dean of the faculty, so he was looking at my papers. Before asking me, he had already looked at what I had written. And now I was answering him according to the textbooks, although what I had written was according to myself.But he could not say to me, “I have looked” – because that is illegal. So he would say, “You know; I know…”I said, “What to do? You should not do anything illegal, and if you are caught doing anything illegal I will be the first to report it to the vice-chancellor.”He said, “But these are not the answers that you have written. Do you want to remain a nobody for your whole life? It hurts me. You have the talent, you have the genius; you can become anything you want.”I said, “I don’t want to use my talent and my genius to become anybody. I simply want to relax into myself and be myself, anonymous, because my decision is in favor of meditation, not in favor of mind. Whatever you are saying is mind – and I have to use the mind, but the more you use the mind the farther away it takes you from yourself.”This is the reason why man is not meditative: the whole society forces him to be in a state of mind, not in a state of meditation.Just imagine a world where people are meditative. It will be a simple world, but it will be tremendously beautiful. It will be silent. It will not have crimes, it will not have courts, it will not have any kind of politics. It will be a loving brotherhood, a vast commune of people who are absolutely satisfied with themselves, utterly contented with themselves. Even Alexander the Great cannot give them a gift.If you are running to get something outside yourself, you have to be subservient to the mind. If you drop all ambitions and you are concerned more about your inner flowering; if you are more concerned about your inner juice so that it can flow and reach to others, more concerned about love, compassion, peace – then man will be meditative.And you have asked how we can make meditation a great movement. Don’t be worried about making it a great movement because this is how the mind is very tricky. You will forget all about your meditation and you will be concerned about the movement – how to make it big, how to make it worldwide, how to make many more people meditate. If they are not willing, then force them to meditate. It has been done; the whole of history is the proof.Mohammed founded a religion called Islam – Islam means peace – and he wanted the whole world to be a peaceful place. But people are not willing to be peaceful – then cut off their heads, at least a dead man is peaceful. A living man is a nuisance, you cannot rely on a living man – he may be peaceful this moment, and the next moment he may do something troublesome. On Mohammed’s sword were written the words: “Peace is my message.”Now the message has to be written on the sword, and the message is peace, and people have to be forced to become peaceful at the point of a sword, that is, to become Mohammedans. A Mohammedan is a man of peace. Don’t be concerned about a movement, because your mind is so tricky, so slippery…I have heard…A man and a woman were in love for years. And as expected, the woman was asking every day, sitting on Chowpatty Beach… Who else goes to sit there? She was constantly harassing the man: “When are you going to marry me? We are getting old.”And the man said, “Just look at the full moon.” It was just rising above the ocean.And the woman said, “Shut up! Don’t change the subject. Whenever I bring up the real subject you always try to change the subject. The moon will remain there; we will discuss it later on. First, answer my question. When are we going to get married?”The mind is constantly trying to change the subject.Whenever you will be thinking of meditation, the mind will change the subject in such a way that you will not even be aware that the subject has been changed. The mind will start making a great movement of meditation, transforming the whole world and forgetting meditation itself – because where is the time? You are in a great revolution, changing the whole world.In fact the mind is so cunning that it condemns those people who meditate. It says, “They are selfish, just concerned about themselves. And the whole world is dying! People need peace, and people are in tension; people are living in hell and you are sitting silently in meditation. This is sheer selfishness.”Mind is very cunning. You have to be very aware of it. Tell the mind, “Don’t change the subject. First I have to meditate, because I cannot share that which I don’t have. I cannot share meditation with people, I cannot share love with people, I cannot share my joy with people, because I don’t have it. I am a beggar; I can only pretend to be an emperor.”But that pretension cannot last for a long time. Soon people start seeing that “This man is just a hypocrite. He himself is tense, he himself is worried, he himself lives in pain and suffering and misery, and he is talking about creating the world as a paradise!”So for the second part of your question, I would like to say to you: forget about it. It is your mind which is trying to change the subject. First the marriage, marriage with yourself: first the meditation, and then out of it the fragrance will come, out of it the light will come. Out of it, words will come which are not dead but alive, words which have authority in them. And they may help others, but that is not going to be your goal; it will be a by-product.The changing of other people through meditation is a by-product, it is not a goal. Become a light unto yourself, and that will create the urge to become a light to many people who are thirsty. Become the example, and that example will bring the movement on its own accord.Osho,On our way to realization, there is no “we” there is only “I.” Is there anything to soften this pain?The problem about such questions is they are intellectual, they are not experiential.You have just thought about it, that “On our way I will be alone, I cannot be with people, so the question of there being any possibility of ‘we’ is nonexistent; only ‘I’ will be there alone. It makes one feel afraid, it makes one wonder whether to go on such a path or not.”But this is all intellectual. It is not that you have gone on the path and you have found this question. On the path you will not find this question, because I and we are together. The I cannot exist without the we; it is just a part of the collectivity.The moment you are on the path, first the others leave and the last that leaves you is yourself, the I. And when the I leaves, only then are you alone; otherwise the I is there. There are two – you, and the I. When the I has also gone, you are alone. And the beauty of aloneness… It has nothing to do with I, it has nothing to do with we.They were all together. They exist together. Many I’s together become we. It is simply a collective name of I’s. Have you ever come across a we? Even the people who use it – for example a president of a country or a prime minister of a country is supposed to use we instead of I so that his we becomes representative of the whole land he is the prime minister or the president of. But even the prime minister who uses we is simply an I, there is no we. That we is only a convenience: a linguistic convenience.And when you move on the path it is not that the we leaves you and only I is left behind; the I also goes with the we.I am reminded of a beautiful Sufi story:When al-Hillaj Mansoor went to his master Junnaid, his family, his friends, even his neighbors had all come out of the town to say good-bye. He was going in search of truth. When he reached Junnaid, he entered; Junnaid was alone sitting in the mosque. He asked, “May I come in, sir?”Junnaid looked at him, and looked here and looked there, and said, “First leave the crowd outside! And you have some nerve to ask, ‘May I come in, sir?’ Then why is this crowd all around you?”Al-Hillaj could not believe… He looked all around, there was nobody.Junnaid said, “Don’t look all around, close your eyes, and then look all around. Your friends, your family, your neighbors – they are still there.”He closed his eyes and he was surprised. He was still remembering the people he had left behind: their tears, their last greetings, the elder ones giving him their last blessings. They were all there, the whole crowd was there.Junnaid said, “Get out, with this whole crowd! When you are alone then ask, ‘May I come in, sir?’”It took seven months. Al-Hillaj used to live outside the mosque; the master used to live inside. Hundreds of disciples would come and go, and thinking that he must be a shoemaker or a shoeshiner, they would put their shoes in front of him. And sitting there doing nothing, he thought, “This is not bad,” so he started polishing their shoes.After seven months, one night when there was nobody around, Junnaid came out and said, “Al-Hillaj, come in.”But al-Hillaj said, “Forgive me, sir. Now I cannot ask, ‘May I come in, sir?’ because that ‘I’ is also gone. I am absolutely alone.”Junnaid said, “That’s why I had to come, you stupid! Come in. I knew that now it will be difficult for you to ask the question, because who will ask the question? The crowd is gone, and with the crowd that fellow who used to be ‘I’ – that too is gone.” And the poor fellow is shining shoes. And al-Hillaj belonged to a very rich, royal family.Junnaid said, “That’s why I have come in the middle of the night, to bring you in. When you are not, then you are called in; when you are not, then the whole existence is ready to receive you.”Your question is intellectual. Avoid intellectual questions. If they arise, try first to experience them and you will find the answer yourself.Osho,Playfulness, happiness and creativity come together inside myself when I am in this state – I call it craziness. Can you please talk about this?First, what you call craziness is authentic sanity. When you are not in that state which you call craziness, you are crazy. Creativity, you call craziness. Playfulness, you call craziness. Joyfulness, you call craziness. Then what is sanity? So first, drop that word craziness.Only the creators are sane. What they create does not matter. In India, there have been a few great mystics whose creativity cannot even be recognized as creativity.Kabir remained spinning, weaving for his whole life. He was a weaver. He had thousands of disciples, and they would tell him, “You have become old, and you are unnecessarily tiring yourself. We can take care of you; stop this weaving, and then making clothes, and going to the market and selling them.”But Kabir always said, “You do not understand. You think I am just a weaver. This is not just like other weavers – it is not my business, it is my love affair. I make these clothes for nobody other than God himself. And naturally, when I am making things for him, they have to be perfect.”And he treated his customers as gods. He used to say to his customers, “Take this piece of cloth, but be very careful, Ram” – for every customer he had only one name, Ram; Ram means God – “I have taken so much trouble in making it. Be careful, be respectful. It is not my business; it is my prayer, it is my worship.”Another great mystic, Gora, was a potter, and he continued to make beautiful pots for his whole life. And he had disciples – rich disciples, even kings – and they would say, “It is embarrassing for us that our master is just making pots and selling pots on his donkey in the market. Please stop doing this.”But Gora would say, “It is difficult. It is part of my creativity. Nobody else can make these pots, only Gora can – because all others are making them for money, and I am pouring out my whole love, my whole heart. It is a meditation to me.”A third great mystic was Raidas, who continued to make shoes. In India, particularly, to make shoes is thought to be one of the worst professions. It is only for the sudras, the untouchables. He was an untouchable, but high caste brahmins started coming to him. He was uneducated, but what he was saying was pure scripture. And everybody was trying to convince him, “Stop making shoes. It doesn’t fit. It doesn’t look right that a mystic of your caliber should make shoes” – but Raidas refused.He said, “That is the only art I know. I am a poor shoemaker. This is the only creative talent through which I can serve existence.”Don’t call creativity, playfulness, joyousness, cheerfulness, “craziness.” These are the sanest dimensions of your being. Let your whole life become sane – full of songs, full of flowers, full of love. The world may call you crazy, but please, you should not call it crazy. Let the world call it crazy – it doesn’t matter – but I cannot allow you to call it crazy.It is going to happen to every meditator. What is happening to you, I would love it to happen to everybody. Create something. And whatever you are doing, do it playfully, not seriously. And wherever you are, be in a celebration. Forget words like business. Let your life be simply a festival.To me, only those few people who attain to this state are capable of calling themselves religious – not the Hindus, not the Mohammedans, not the Christians, but the creative people – enriching existence, beautifying existence.Don’t leave this world without making it a little more beautiful than you found it when you came into it.Osho,When the doorbell rings and I open the door to receive the guest, before I disappear will I get a glimpse of her?Milarepa, you are impossible!When he was going to play his guitar in England, although there is no God, I prayed, “God save the queen” – because he is such a ladykiller.Look at his question: he is saying, “When the doorbell rings and I open the door, before I disappear will I be able to get a little glimpse of her!”Just old habits, but no harm… In fact the doorbell never rings.I will tell you a story.Junnaid, the master of al-Hillaj Mansoor, in his young days when he was still a seeker, used to sit in front of the mosque praying to God, “How long is it going to take? Open the doors!”And a mystic woman, Rabiya al-Adabiya, happened to pass by. She hit Junnaid’s head hard with her staff. She was an old woman; Junnaid said, “Rabiya, to disturb somebody in prayer is not right; and you are a well-known religious saint and you disturbed my prayer!”She said, “I had to disturb it. And next time if I hear you praying in this way again – ‘God open the doors’ – then only God can save you. I am going to hit your head so hard!”He said, “But what is the problem? I am not creating any trouble for anybody.”She said, “That is not the point – because the doors are open, they are never closed. Just get up and go in!”Milarepa, the doorbell never rings. And the doorbell is such an ultra-modern thing that there is no mention of it in any scriptures, cannot be.The doors are always open. And the ultimate comes, but you cannot have a glimpse of the ultimate – whether you want to call him “him” or “her” does not matter. As the ultimate comes, you disappear. The happening is simultaneous, there is no gap. It is not that the ultimate comes and you say, “Thank you, sir. Sit down; what will you take – Coca Cola, Fanta, Seven-Up? What will you take?” There is no time, not even to say thank-you. The moment the ultimate descends you are already gone. He comes only in the space where you used to be, in your nothingness.Nobody has seen the ultimate, for the simple reason that to see the ultimate you have to disappear, you cannot be a witness. You can become it but you cannot see it. We call those people who have become it the mystics; they are not the ones who have seen godliness, they have become godliness. It is not an object for them to see. It is their very subjectivity, it is their very being.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Last night I was reading The Book of Mirdad. It was so beautiful and so strong that I couldn't stop reading for hours. Then suddenly I felt that my breath had changed, and I found myself on the edge of crying, and I didn't know whether it was sadness, desperation, bliss, or all three at the same time. I tried to find out by reading the words again, but I realized that my mind didn't really understand when I looked at them. How is it possible that words which the mind doesn't understand can touch one so deeply?There are millions of books in the world, but The Book of Mirdad stands out far above any other book in existence. It is unfortunate that very few people are acquainted with The Book of Mirdad, for the simple reason that it is not a religious scripture. It is a parable, a fiction, but containing oceanic truth.It is a small book, but the man who gave birth to this book… And mind my words, I am not saying the man who wrote this book. Nobody wrote this book. I am saying the man who gave birth to this book – he was an unknown, a nobody. And because he was not a novelist, he never wrote again; just that single book contains his whole experience. The name of the man was Mikhail Naimy.It is an extraordinary book in the sense that you can read it and miss it completely, because the meaning of the book is not in the words of the book. The meaning of the book is running side by side in silence between the words, between the lines, in the gaps.If you are in a state of meditativeness – if you are not only reading a fiction but you are encountering the whole religious experience of a great human being, absorbing it; not intellectually understanding but existentially drinking it – the words are there but they become secondary. Something else becomes primary: the silence that those words create, the music that those words create. The words affect your mind, and the music goes directly to your heart.And it is a book to be read by the heart, not by the mind. It is a book not to be understood, but experienced. It is something phenomenal. Millions of people have tried to write books so that they can express the inexpressible, but they have utterly failed. I know only one book, The Book of Mirdad, which has not failed; and if you cannot get to the very essence of it, it will be your failure, not his.He has created a perfect device of words, parables, situations. If you allow it, the book becomes alive and something starts happening to your being. And naturally, because you have never come to such a state, you are puzzled about what it is – sadness? Blissfulness? There are tears, but those tears can be either of sadness or they can be of immense joy. You have come to a point where you have never been before, so naturally you cannot categorize it. You cannot put a label on it according to your old experiences. But the name does not mean anything. What matters is that you have taken a step beyond yourself. You have never been in this space; you have entered into the unknown, and it is so unknown that you don’t have the vocabulary even to give it a name.Just see the point: it may look like sadness, because for the first time in your life you will become aware that up to now you have not been alive. Life has happened today.And it brings a great sadness: you were alive – but knowing this new experience, your whole life becomes so mundane, so meaningless, that it is better to say that it was more death than life. And a sadness arises: “Why could I not reach this space before?” It is so close – just a step beyond the boundaries of your old mind and the whole sky with all its stars becomes available. You were confined in such a small prison – and nobody was imprisoning you. You were the prisoner and you were the imprisoned. You were the jailer and you were the jailed. Naturally a sadness, looking to the past…But looking to the present, a great blissfulness, a peace that passeth understanding, a silence that is not just the opposite of sound: a silence which is absence of sound, not the opposite of sound… Music without any instruments, a song without any words. For the first time you start feeling, “Up to now I have been living in the head; and only this moment the doors of my heart are open.”There is an old Chinese story, and because of the story a proverb has come into existence – that when the musician becomes perfect, he burns his instruments; they become not only useless, they become a nuisance because they only create noise. Only between that noise are there a few moments of music – why not have it all?And when the archer becomes a perfect master, he drops his bow and his arrows and forgets all about it.A strange proverb – because ordinarily we think that when we become perfect our instruments will also attain a perfection with us; their working will also become perfect.The proverb comes from a story:A man had become a great archer, and he was confident that he had attained perfection. He never missed any target. He was able to kill flying birds without fail. He appeared before the emperor and told him, “It is time that you should declare me the greatest, the master archer of the empire. Otherwise I am ready for any challenge. If somebody doubts it, I am ready for a competition.”The king knew the man, and knew that what he was saying was not bragging; it was a simple fact. But the old servant of the king said, “Wait a minute before you say anything, because I have something to say before you decide.” He was so old that he had served the grandfather of the king, the father of the king, the king himself, and there was a possibility that he would serve the fourth generation also.The king had tremendous respect for the man. He said, “If you have something to say, say it.”The old servant said, “This man knows nothing of archery yet. He can kill animals, he can kill birds, flying birds; he never misses any target. That’s all okay, but that is not perfection and mastery. I know a man who is a perfect archer. He lives in the mountains, and because he became a perfect archer thirty years ago, he has completely forgotten about archery. After perfection, what is the point of remembering?”The archer was puzzled: “What kind of archery is this, that the man has even forgotten archery? He has not practiced for thirty years – if I don’t practice a single day, the next day I can see mistakes happening. Within two days, critics will see that mistakes are happening, and within three days anybody will be able to see that there are mistakes. Thirty years!”And the old man said, “Unless you go to the mountains and meet the great archer… If he approves there is no question of any competition – I will ask the emperor to declare you the champion master of the whole kingdom.”The archer had to go and search in the mountains. On a very high peak, in a small cave, he found the old man. The archer was carrying his bow, his arrows. The old man looked at the bow, looked at the arrows, and he said, “These things I have seen once, I remember. What do you call these things?”The man said, “You are a great archer? You don’t even know the name of the bow and the arrows!”The old man said, “This is a bow and arrows, and what is the function of it? What do you do with it?”The archer said, “Come out and I will show you.” And he killed a faraway flying bird with one arrow – just one arrow and the bird was on the earth.The old man said, “You call this archery? I remember, when I was young I used to call this archery too. Now, come with me.”The old man must have been nearabout one hundred and twenty years old, not less than that – very frail. He took the young archer to a cliff which was hanging over a valley thousands of feet deep. The archer stopped. He said, “I cannot go on that cliff! Just a small mistake and you are finished forever.”But the old man went to the very edge – his feet were half hanging off the edge of the cliff. He was standing with just half his feet on the edge and he said, “Come on – you are a great archer; you should know balance, because the secret of archery is balance. And if you are trembling so much inside, your arrow cannot be perfect, because your arrow will be going through your hands. And you are trembling. Come on! You are young, and as you see I am old, one hundred and twenty years old.”The man tried, one or two feet, and fell down on the rock. He said, “I have never been afraid of death. But I cannot do that.”That old man came back and he said, “If you cannot do this, forget all about archery. The day you can do this you will throw away the bow, you will throw away the arrows. Now look…” There were seven birds flying far away. The old man simply looked at those seven birds one by one, and they all fell down on the earth.He said, “When you have no trembling inside, just your eyes are enough; no arrows are needed. So go back, you are an amateur. I will come when the time has come, I will keep watch on you. I have my people in the city, in the capital; it was one of my people who sent you here. He was one of my disciples and I have a few more disciples who will keep watch. And if I am not alive, then I will tell them to inform the king when you are a perfect archer.”The young man was simply in great despair. He proved to be an amateur; he was thinking himself to be a champion master.After five years… The old man had said, “Learn inner balancing.” I call it meditation; these are different names, in different countries. “Inner balancing” means you are so balanced at your innermost center that there is no trembling at all. You are in such a silent, unmoving space, as if you are not.After five years a man visited the archer. As they were entering the archer’s house, he saw a big bow hanging on the wall. The guest asked, “What is that?”And the archer said, “I used to remember, but fortunately I met an old man… Now I have completely forgotten what it is.”But the guest said, “I have heard that you are an archer.”The man said, “Forget all about it. When a man is young he has all kinds of stupid ideas. I had my stupidities also, but due to the compassion of the old man in the mountains I survived, I moved on.”That very day the king called him and declared him to be the champion master archer of the kingdom.“But,” he said, “I know nothing of archery. What are you doing?”The king said, “I am not doing anything. These are instructions from your master. Of course you could not be the champion master. The old man has left his body, with the message, ‘While I am alive he cannot be a champion, and the poor fellow wanted to be a champion so desperately. But if I am alive in the kingdom it is impossible – I will never come to the capital to contest; the whole idea is childish – but there are my disciples who will not allow it to happen. Only my death… And it is worth it, to make him happy.’ The old man is dead. The message has come that you should be declared the champion.”The king said, “Just out of curiosity I would like to see how far your eyes can function as arrows.” The man looked into the sky. Nine birds – a whole flock – came down to the earth. And the king said, “That old man was never wrong.”This is archery. A musician when he is perfect forgets his instruments; now silence is his music.The Book of Mirdad is one of the greatest devices that have been created down the ages. Don’t read it like any other book. Don’t read it like Shrimad Bhagavadgita or the Holy Bible. Read it as beautiful poetry, as music spread on the pages. Read it as a message from a master of meditation. The words are code words. Don’t look for their meaning in the dictionary. Their meaning is when they strike something in your heart.That’s why you felt, reading Mirdad, that your breathing changed. It has to be understood very carefully: your breathing changes with each of your emotions. When you are angry, watch: you will have a different kind of breathing, unrhythmic, chaotic. When you are in love, just holding the hand of your beloved, your breathing will be different – peaceful, silent, musical, harmonious. And these are small things; I am just giving you examples to understand.When you are sitting with the master, the breathing becomes so harmonious that sometimes you may think it has stopped. There will be moments when you suddenly become aware, “Has my breathing stopped?” – because it will be so silent that even you cannot feel its movement.There was one very significant man in south India, Brahma Yogi – but he got distracted. He was able to bring his breathing to such a harmonious state that doctors declared him to be dead – because if there is no breathing… And not just for a second or two, he was capable of ten minutes. Medical science has its own limits. For ten minutes, no sign of breathing… In Oxford, in Cambridge, in Kolkata University, in Rangoon University – he went all over the world.He completely forgot the mission of his life: that he had been meditating to attain to his innermost self. That’s how people get distracted. He became an entertainer, a showman. He earned much, he became world famous. And the doctors everywhere were shocked. He was examined in every medical college of importance in the world, with all their refined instruments. They had to declare that the man was dead, and after ten minutes he would start breathing again.It was not that he was not breathing for ten minutes; he was breathing, but the breathing had gone so slow that it was beyond the instruments’ capacity to capture its movement.This happened to you reading Mirdad, that you felt your breathing was changing. It was beautiful. And because your breathing changed, that’s why you came to a point where you were indecisive. Whether you were sad or silent, blissful, ecstatic, you could not decide, because the thing was so new and you had no category to put it in. But I will tell you: you were sad, sad because you have wasted your whole life – and this space was so close; you were just to reach and it was going to be available to you. You were sad, just like a beggar will be sad who comes to know that he is the emperor and there has been some mistake; the beggar is sitting on the throne and the emperor is begging in the streets. All those years of begging – a shadow, a sadness.You also felt silence, because The Book of Mirdad has been created by a man who knows the inner workings of human consciousness. He was not a writer; hence nobody ever bothered to give him a Nobel Prize. He was alive in this century, he was our contemporary. His book has not been translated into many languages for the simple reason that the book is unique – it is not a book, it is a device. And it is not meant to be read, it is meant to create a certain atmosphere around you. If you are ready, available, receptive, the atmosphere will be created and there will be great silence. And silence is always blissful.So you got very confused. There was sadness because of the past; there was silence because of the present – and silence is always bringing flowers of blissfulness.You thought there must be something in the words, so you read those words again. But you could not find it; in those words there was nothing, they were ordinary words. From where was this experience happening? It was happening because you are on the path.You are part of a mystery school. You are a seeker. It would not have happened to you if you were not on the path. It happened to you because you were getting ready for this happening, and The Book of Mirdad simply triggered what was already going to happen. It would have happened even without The Book of Mirdad, perhaps a little later. The man on the path may find in his life… Sometimes it happens listening to music. The musician may be an ordinary man; he may not know anything about silence and blissfulness, but his music can trigger something in you. It may be triggered by seeing a sunset; now the sunset is not aware of you at all. It may be triggered by the perfume of a rose.But remember one thing: just because The Book of Mirdad helped you in reaching a new space in yourself, don’t tell others to read it – because they will find it just ordinary fiction, beautiful. They may even destroy your connection that has been created unknowingly; you weren’t ready for this experience. So one thing: don’t tell others, “Read The Book of Mirdad, it brings such beautiful experiences.” It may not bring them anything.Secondly, because it has brought you a beautiful experience this time, don’t read it again and again in order to get it. This time you were not expecting anything; next time you will be full of expectations. You will be waiting and watching for when it happens – it will not happen. Once in a while it is possible, but the basic condition to be fulfilled is, no expectations.And I say to you, because it happened with The Book of Mirdad, it can happen through many other avenues. You are ready, you just need a little push. Be available to all those situations where that push is possible, but without any expectation. Just to enjoy a beautiful dance, beautiful music, a beautiful painting… Just sitting by the side of the sea and the music of the waves, the continuous music, or looking at the moon – anything may help, but don’t expect.The Book of Mirdad can be of immense help if you don’t expect, and it is a book worth reading thousands of times. You cannot understand its oceanic meaning in one reading, because in each page, each turn, each chapter, each line, there is a possibility – because the man who wrote it… I understand that man. He was one of the greatest men of this century. He lived unknown to the world, but just this one book makes him the greatest writer not only of this century but of all the centuries.I myself might have never come across his book, because it was published in the beginning of this century and then it was never published again, it never became a bestseller. It was not available in the libraries because at the most only three thousand copies were in existence all over the world. I became aware of the book in a strange way.I was a student in the university, but on Sundays I used to go to a market in the city where stolen things were sold. I was not interested in anything else, just stolen books. I got The Book of Mirdad as a stolen book. Somebody’s whole library… Three hundred books in all, and all the books were beautiful. And for those three hundred books a man was asking only a hundred rupees, so I immediately gave him a hundred rupees.The man said, “But remember one thing: these are stolen books, and if the police come here I am going to tell them your name, because on each book is the name of the man to whom these books belong and he is a well-known man.” He was a retired professor of literature.I said, “Don’t be worried.”And the police finally came and they said, “This is not good. You were told by the man that these are stolen books, still you purchased them.”I said, “I don’t repent, and I don’t want to talk to you. I would like to meet the owner.”They said, “What for?”I said, “I can settle things with him very easily. He is a retired professor, old. Just take me to him” – so they took me to the old professor.I closed the doors and said to the professor, “You are already so old, what are you going to do with those books? You will be dead soon, and you have found the right man for your books.”He said, “You are strange! You have purchased my stolen books and you have come to convince me that you have done the right thing?”I said, “Yes, I say I have done the right thing. You have used them. You cannot read anymore; your eyes are no longer in a situation to read. If you just want to keep three hundred books on your shelf, I can bring five hundred books, six hundred books. But don’t ask for those three hundred books, particularly for The Book of Mirdad – that I cannot return to you, stolen or not stolen.”The old man looked at me and said, “Did you like The Book of Mirdad?”I said, “I not only liked it – I have read thousands of books; none is comparable to it.”He gave me fifty rupees back. He said, “You have wasted fifty rupees – you are a student; you don’t have much money, I know about you. Keep the books. And I agree with you that the books have reached the right man, and the person who has stolen them needs to be rewarded. I am going to die any day, you are right, and then I don’t know where those books will go.“And I have loved those books, cherished those books. My whole life I have collected the best books. And the moment you said The Book of Mirdad you closed the deal. Just take these fifty rupees, and whenever you need more – because I don’t have anybody; no wife, no children, and enough pension and I don’t have any expenses – you are always welcome to come to me. If you don’t have money to purchase books I am here.“Your love for Mirdad has made you a man of my family. I have loved Mirdad my whole life, and I have tried hundreds of my friends, but nobody could get him. And you are ready to fight for a stolen book; you are ready to go to the court for a stolen book. There is no need. I was in search of you.”“It is strange,” he said, “that The Book of Mirdad has found you itself.”That’s how I found the first copy of The Book of Mirdad. His second edition had not been published; it had not been translated into any other language.It needs to be in every house, it is so precious. And it has touched your heart. Just don’t start having expectations, and it will help you immensely on the way.Osho,Unenlightened enlightenment seems to become more and more popular these days, particularly among therapists. Having recovered from that disease, I say that claiming enlightenment without having attained is the greatest betrayal; and influencing others through authority based on this falseness is the greatest crime possible. Please comment.Gunakar, you are a hundred percent right. Before I answer your question, I would like to introduce you to the people here. They may not know you, and without knowing you it will be difficult for them to understand the proper context of the question.Gunakar is one of my most beloved sannyasins. He is immensely talented, a keen intelligence, and an authentic search. He had come to me many years ago, and he has remained with me in many ups and many downs.The biggest problem with him is that he is a German, and a German finds it easier to be a master than to be a disciple, naturally. So while he was here with me in India he was intelligent enough to understand that he is not a master, and he worked as a disciple. But whenever he would go back to Germany the trouble would arise: in Germany he would become enlightened.There are no outer criteria for enlightenment, so he would get a few Germans to support him also as an enlightened master. And once he got into the trip then it was not only that he would sit silently – that is very difficult for a German – he had to do something. Now that he was enlightened, he started enlightening the whole world: writing letters to prime ministers, presidents, all the ambassadors of all the countries, to the UN, convincing them that except for enlightenment there is no way out.And when he would be going full-fledged, I would send him a message, “Come back to India because you have done enough. A little rest will be good” – and coming back to India, his enlightenment would disappear. Sitting in front of me, he had to become a disciple again. He started feeling very strange because it happened once, twice, thrice…Then he said, “This is a strange thing. We think Osho helps people to become enlightened. I become enlightened when I am in Germany, and whenever I go back to Osho he finishes my enlightenment – I am back to zero!”So he had not come for almost six years. Who wants to lose enlightenment? You come to me to be enlightened, and poor Gunakar had to come here to lose enlightenment.But a false thing is a false thing, an imagination is an imagination. You can brag, you can deceive, you can become a con man, but deep down you will know what you are doing.And finally he realized, in Germany, that once a man becomes enlightened he cannot become unenlightened, that is impossible. That has never happened in the whole of history – except to Gunakar. There is no other precedent. And he is intelligent enough and courageous enough; he dropped it himself.The last time, I was watching what was happening. I was inquiring about how things were going, how far his enlightenment had reached. The last time I inquired of a German sannyasin in America; he said, “A strange phenomenon has happened. I met Gunakar. I had never thought of it…” Because he had a beautiful castle on the Rhine river in a very scenic place, really worthy of an enlightened man, and disciples would come to the castle…The German sannyasin told me, “I met him in a restaurant in a sannyasin commune. When he was enlightened he was not moving like ordinary people, in ordinary places. And he was not only in the restaurant, he was washing plates, serving; he was working there!” And the German sannyasin asked him, “Gunakar, what happened to the enlightenment?”And he said, “I am not enlightened, I am just a dishwasher.”When this was told to me, I really felt tremendously happy for him because to be a dishwasher in reality is better than to be a Gautam Buddha in a dream.And this time he has not come as an enlightened man. This time has a beauty: he has come just as himself – open, available, ready. All those past days when he used to come he was tight. It was bound to be, because he was afraid – he would come to me and I was going to tell him, “Gunakar, just get down. You are not supposed to be enlightened yet. Wait!” He was tight, he was tense, afraid. And he could not live there either, because the inner thirst was there, still unfulfilled. That bogus enlightenment was not going to help. So he had to come, but with a tenseness.This time he has come relaxed, with nothing to lose. He is an ordinary man. And to be ordinary is to be something immensely beautiful. It means relaxed, it means non-tense, it means ready to grow. This is the background.He is saying, “I am out of this disease of getting false enlightenment, pretending to be really enlightened, teaching people.” Now he can understand what harm such people must be doing.And this is what is happening in Europe: there are few sannyasins – they were therapists in the Commune in America. Because I am not there… The whole sannyas movement has the greatest numbers in Europe, particularly in Germany. That’s why the German government is the most afraid of me. I have not applied for any visa. Still, their parliament has decided that, in case I apply, I am not to be allowed in Germany. Their fear is that I have the biggest number of sannyasins in Germany; and these are not just the masses but the intelligentsia. Gunakar is a law expert, somebody is a scientist, somebody is a painter, an artist, somebody is a mathematician – Germany has tremendous qualities – and strangely enough, they have all become attracted to sannyas. And the fear of the German government is that if I come to Germany the people who are not yet sannyasins – the young generation, young intellectuals – are bound to become sannyasins. And every government is afraid of any movement that creates individuals, that creates values of freedom, love, silence, peace, rejoicing.So it is a good chance for a few people – there are two, three persons I have been told about who have become enlightened – knowing that I cannot come into Germany. The Indian government is being pressured by the American government that no sannyasins should be allowed to reach to me. So it is a good opportunity for these people: they have become enlightened, they are gathering followers.And Gunakar is right, that it is one of the greatest crimes to claim enlightenment when you are not – because this is the greatest deception that you can give to humanity. It is the ugliest phenomenon. You can be a con man – cheat people out of their money, their belongings, their houses, their wives, their husbands, anything; that is immaterial, that does not matter much. But a con man as far as enlightenment is concerned is cheating you about your consciousness, about your very being. He is doing some kind of violence which is invisible, but which is the worst that can be done by any criminal.All those three therapists will come back, because soon they will realize that they are doing something which is not only harming others but is harming their own growth. If you are not enlightened and you claim that you are, then you stop progressing toward enlightenment. You are already enlightened; what is the need?All kinds of cheats, thieves can be forgiven, but the people who are playing with your consciousness, with your being, cannot be forgiven.Somebody takes away your money: perhaps he is not doing harm to you, perhaps he is unburdening you. Perhaps from today he will be continuously feeling guilty. And what is he going to do with the money?I have heard…A poor tailor had the habit of purchasing a lottery ticket every month. He had been doing that for thirty years; it had almost become a routine. In the beginning he used to hope that someday he would win the lottery. By and by he had completely forgotten that there was any connection between winning the lottery and purchasing the ticket.But old habits die hard. So he went on purchasing the ticket, and one day suddenly a black Rolls Royce limousine came and stopped in front of the poor tailor’s shop. People came out, carrying big bags full of notes. He said, “What is the matter? What is happening?”They said, “You have won! Your number has come up.”He could not believe it. But he was immensely happy, that at last… He has won ten lakh, a million rupees; now there is no need to be a poor tailor.He closed the shop and threw the key in a well, because what is the need now? – he is not going to open the shop again. Ten lakhs for a poor tailor – it is enough for ten lives!But it was not enough even for two years, because what will you do? He started drinking, he started gambling, he started going to the prostitutes. He was a healthy man; within two years all the money was gone, all health was gone, and he was asking people, somebody, to help him to find the key to his shop.They said, “You are an idiot. Why did you throw away the key in the first place?”He said, “I was thinking that ten lakhs would be enough. I am alone, there is nobody else. I was so poor that I could never get married. But my God, these ten lakhs have given me such hell – from one prostitute to another prostitute, every morning finding myself lying in the gutter completely drunk, the hangover, the headache… I never had any headache in my life; these two years I have suffered hell. If I meet these people who came in that black Rolls Royce I will kill them.”“But,” the people said, “that was not their fault! You have been purchasing the tickets.”Some young man jumped into the well, tried to find the key, and the key to the shop was found. People collected some money for the tailor’s medicine and for his doctor; the poor man really had suffered badly. But again he started purchasing those tickets! Old habits die really hard. And he was continually condemning the lottery: “I don’t want to win.”“But why do you go on purchasing the tickets?”He said, “If I don’t purchase, it seems something is missing – I cannot sleep well, I cannot work well. It has become such a routine. You can imagine, thirty years… But you can be certain that it cannot happen again. In thirty years it only happened once. In another thirty years I will be dead and it cannot happen again.”But by chance it happened again. The next year, the same black Rolls Royce stood before his house. He said, “My God, why are you against me? Have I to suffer that hell again?”The whole neighborhood gathered. They said, “If you don’t want to suffer, you can reject the money, you can donate it.”He said, “Never! It is my earning.”He locked the door to his shop and he said, “Now, I really drop the key. There will be no need for it because I cannot survive these two years anymore. I don’t have enough health; and again those scenes, those nightmares…” And again he went on the same routine.After two years he was a completely shattered man. Back to the shop! He asked the neighbors, “Somehow find my key, and I promise you that I will never accept any money from these idiots who have been killing me.”They said, “Never accept? That means you will purchase, you will go on purchasing the tickets?”He said, “As far as the ticket is concerned, that I cannot stop.”People get into a certain routine.Gunakar, it is good that you got out of it without me. It was good that you stayed in Germany and didn’t come to me for these six, seven years. It has been a great realization to you – that imagination is not going to help, and that any claim about inner realization which is false is the greatest crime in the world.Those people who are doing it will also realize it; help them to realize. Go to them and tell them that you have passed this disease: “Now stop purchasing this ticket. You know perfectly well that you are not enlightened.”And tell them, “If you are enlightened, go to Osho. If you have guts, go to him. And if your enlightenment still remains in front of him, then you can be certain that it is there. But if it disappears and comes back only in Germany, it is not of any worth.”Enlightenment made in Germany is simply useless!Osho,An old hermit living in the mountains said, when asked why he was up there and how long he had been there, “A long time ago there were two bulls fighting by the seashore. They fought and fought, and finally disappeared into the ocean. And from that day to this, I cannot remember a single thing.” I really love the way the old hermit evoked such a vivid image of the duality of the mind, and then its disappearance into enlightenment. Would you please comment on this?There is nothing to comment on; the story is so simple, so beautiful, so clear.Your mind is a duality – because of its constant fight, you cannot know your oneness. The moment that fight disappears you have come home. Then who bothers to remember how many days, how many years, how many lives – all that concern was of the mind.Your inner being has no calendars. Its existence is eternal; it is eternity itself.When you find such beautiful stories, and when you can understand them yourself, don’t make a question out of them. You should bring questions which you cannot find answers for. You should bring questions which are torturing you and there is no way out.Whatever I can say on this story will simply be elaboration, but it will not give you any more insight. The story is complete in itself.Osho,What is the holy fire?Milarepa, I am!

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,For the last week I have known that I have cancer. From that time, except for a few moments of panic and fear, I have felt a deep calmness and relaxation coming into my being. Have I already given up my life, or is this the quietness of acceptance?We have given up our lives at the very moment when we were born, because the birth is nothing but a beginning of death. Each moment you will be dying more and more.It is not that on a certain day, at seventy years old, death comes; it is not an event, it is a process that begins with the birth. It takes seventy years. It is mighty lazy, but it is a process, not an event. And I am emphasizing this fact so that I can make it clear to you that life and death are not two things. They become two if death is an event which ends life. Then they become two; then they become antagonistic, enemies.When I say that death is a process beginning with birth, I am saying that life is also a process beginning with the same birth – and these are not two processes. It is one process: it begins with birth, it ends with death. But life and death are like two wings of a bird, or two hands, or two legs.Even your brain has two hemispheres, separate, the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere. You cannot exist without this dialectics. Life is a dialectics – and if you understand this, a tremendous acceptance of death naturally comes to you.It is not against you, it is part of you; without it you cannot be alive. It is just like the background of a blackboard on which you write with white chalk: the blackboard is not against the white chalk, it simply gives it emphasis, prominence. Without the blackboard your white writing will disappear. It is like day and night – you see it everywhere, but you go on behaving like blind people. Without the night there is no day.The deeper you enter into the dialectics… It is a miraculous experience. Without inaction there is no action; if you cannot relax, you cannot act. The more you can relax, the more perfection will be in your action. They appear to be opposites; they are not. The better you dissolve into sleep in the night, the sharper, the younger you will wake up in the morning. And everywhere in life you will find the same dialectical process.The mystics of Zen have a koan: they ask the disciples to meditate on the sound of one hand clapping. It is absurd – there cannot be any sound of one hand clapping. Clapping with what? For clapping, two hands are needed, apparently opposed to each other but deep down creating a single clap; united in their efforts, coherent, neither opposed to each other nor contradictory to each other, but complementary. The meditation is given for the simple reason so that you can become aware that in life you cannot find a single instance supporting the sound of one hand clapping. The whole existence is two hands clapping: man and woman, day and night, life and death, love and hate. The deeper the disciple meditates… Slowly, slowly he becomes aware that in existence it is impossible to find anything.And the master asks everyone, “Have you found it? Have you heard the sound of one hand clapping?”Many ideas come to their minds: the sound of running water – and they think perhaps this is it. And they run to the master to tell him, “I have got it: the sound of running water.”And they will get a hit from the master’s staff: “You idiot! This is not the sound of one hand clapping. There is duality; just go and see. All those rocks in the water, they are creating a sound; it is not the sound of one, it is always the sound of two.” In fact there cannot be a sound of one.Frustrated thousands of times, each answer that the disciple finds is rejected. He comes to the realization that sound is always of the two.Silence is of the one; only silence can be the answer. It is not a clapping. But going through all this process to reach to the silence… And then he comes to the master and the master asks, “Have you heard it?”And the disciple bows down to his feet, tears of joy flowing from his eyes. He cannot even say, “Yes, I have found it.” That will not be accurate. He has not found silence; on the contrary, he has disappeared in silence. It is not a finding, it is a disappearing. He is no more. Only silence is.Now, who is there to say, “I have found the answer”? Hence the tears of joy and a grateful head touching the feet of the master…And the master says, “I do understand, don’t be worried. Don’t be worried that you cannot say it. Nobody can say it.” That’s why sometimes, when you had come before, rushing with an answer, even before you told me the answer I hit you with my staff and told you, ‘You idiot! Go back!’ And you were puzzled, that you have not even said the answer and it has been rejected.“Now you can understand: it is not a question of this answer or that answer. All answers are wrong. Only silence – which is an existential presence, not an intellectual answer – is right.”You are fortunate to know that within seven days you are going to die, that you have cancer. Everybody has cancer, just a few people are lazy, you are speedy! – American! Most people are Indians; even in dying, they will take time. They are always late, always missing the train.I say you are blessed to know – because everybody is going to die, but because it is unknown when, where, people go on living under the illusion that they are going to live forever. They always see others dying. That logically supports their standpoint that “It is always the other who dies. I never die.” You must have seen many people dying, giving you a strong support, a rational background that it is always the other who dies. And when you die you will not know, you will be unconscious – you will miss the opportunity of knowing death. Those who have known death are unanimous in their opinion that it is the greatest orgasmic experience of life.But people die unconsciously. It is good that there are diseases which are predictable. Cancer means that you have known seven days before – or seven months, whatever the time may be – that death is coming closer each moment. These seven days are not allowed to everybody. Cancer seems to be something you must have earned in your past life – because J. Krishnamurti died of cancer, Ramana Maharshi died of cancer, Ramakrishna died of cancer. Strange… Three enlightened people who are not mythological, who have lived just now, died of cancer. It seems to be something spiritual!It certainly has a spiritual dimension. I am not saying that all those who die of cancer are enlightened beings, but they can become enlightened beings more easily than anybody else because others go on living under the illusion that they are going to live; there is no hurry. Meditation can be postponed – tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. What is the hurry? And there are more urgent things which have to be done today. Meditation is never urgent because death is never urgent.For the man who comes to know that cancer is going to strike him within seven days, everything in life becomes meaningless. All urgencies disappear. He was thinking of making a beautiful palace; the very idea disappears. He was thinking to fight the next election; the whole idea disappears. He was worried about the Third World War; he is no longer worried. It doesn’t matter to him. What happens after him does not matter – he has only seven days to live.If he is a little alert in those seven days he can live seventy years or seven hundred years or the whole eternity – because now meditation becomes a priority, love becomes a priority: dance, rejoicing, experiencing beauty, which were never priorities before.This week, the full-moon night will be a priority because he will never see the full-moon again. This is his last full-moon. He has lived for years. Moons have come and gone, and he has never bothered about it; but now he has to take it seriously. This is the last moon, this is the last chance to love, this is the last chance to be, this is the last chance to experience all that is beautiful in life.And he has no energy anymore for anger, for fighting. He can postpone; he can say, “After a week I will see you in court, but this week let me be on a holiday.”Yes, in the beginning you will feel sadness, despair, that life is slipping out of your hands. But it is always slipping out of your hands whether you know it or not. It is slipping out of everybody else’s hands whether he knows it or not. You are fortunate that you know it.I am reminded of a great mystic, Eknath. A man used to go to Eknath for years. One day he went early in the morning when nobody was there and he asked Eknath, “Please forgive me. I have come early so that there is nobody else, because I am going to ask a question which I have always wanted to ask but I felt so embarrassed that I suppressed it.”Eknath said, “There was no reason to be embarrassed. You could have asked any question, anytime. Sit down here.”So they sat down in the temple, and the man said, “It is difficult for me; how to present it? My question is that for years I have been coming to you and I have never seen you sad, frustrated. I have never seen you in anxiety, in any kind of worry. You are always happy, always fulfilled, contented.“I cannot believe this. My doubting mind says, ‘This man is pretending.’ I have been fighting with my mind, telling it that for years you cannot pretend: ‘If he’s pretending, you try.’ And I have tried – for five minutes, seven minutes at the most, and I forget all about it. Worries come, anger comes, sadness comes, and if nobody comes then the wife comes! – and all pretensions are gone.“How do you manage day after day, month after month, year after year? I have always seen the same joy, the same grace. Please forgive me, but the doubt persists that somehow you are pretending. Perhaps you don’t have a wife; that seems to be the only difference between me and you.”Eknath said, “Just show me your hand.” He took his hand in his own hands, washed it, looked very seriously…The man said, “Is something wrong? What happened?” He forgot all about his doubt and his pretension and Eknath.Eknath said, “Before I start answering your question, just by the way, I see that your lifeline is finished – just seven days more. So I wanted to tell it to you first because I may forget. Once I start explaining and answering your question, I may forget.”The man said, “I am no longer interested in the question, and I am no longer interested in the answer. Just help me to stand up.” He was a young man.Eknath said, “You cannot stand up?”He said, “I feel all energy gone. Just seven days, and I had so many plans – everything shattered. Help me! My house is not far away, just take me to my house.”Eknath said, “You can go. You can walk. You have come walking perfectly well just a few seconds ago.”But the man tried somehow to stand up; he looked as if all his energy had been sucked out. And when he was going down the steps you could see that suddenly he had become old, he was taking the support of the railing. As he was walking on the road you could see – he could fall at any moment, he was walking like a drunkard. Somehow he reached home.Everybody was getting up, it was early morning; and he went to sleep. They all asked, “What is the matter? Are you sick, not feeling well?”He said, “Now even sickness does not matter. Feeling well or not well is irrelevant. My lifeline is finished – only seven days. Today is Sunday; the next Sunday, as the sun is setting I will be gone. I am already gone!”The whole house was sad. Relatives started gathering, friends – because Eknath had never spoken a lie, he was a man of truth. If he has said it, death is certain.On the seventh day, just before the sun was setting – and the wife was crying, and the children were crying, and the brothers were crying, and the old father and the old mother had become unconscious. Eknath arrived at the house, and they all said, “You have come right in time. Just bless him; he is going for an unknown journey.”And in seven days that man had changed so much; even Eknath had to make an effort to recognize him. He was simply a skeleton. Eknath shook him; he somehow tried to open his eyes. Eknath said, “I have come to say to you that you are not going to die. Your lifeline is still long enough. I said that you are going to die in seven days as an answer to your question. That was my answer.”The man jumped up. He said, “That was your answer? My God! You had already killed me. I was just looking outside the window for the sun to set and I would have died.”And there was rejoicing… But the man asked, “What kind of answer is this? This kind of answer can kill people. You seem to be murderous! We believe in you, and you take advantage of our faith.”Eknath said, “Except that answer, nothing would have helped. I have come to ask you: in seven days have you been fighting with anybody, have you been angry with anybody? Have you been going to the court? – which is your practice; every day you are found in the court.”And he was a man of that type; that was his business. He was ready to be an eyewitness even for murders; just pay him enough. In one murder he was an eyewitness in the court, and the court knew that this man could not be an eyewitness to everything – he was a professional witness.The judge asked, “How far away were you standing when this murder happened?”He said, “Seventeen feet, six inches.”The judge said, “Great! So it means you measured the distance between yourself and the man who was murdered?”He said, “Yes, because I knew some idiot or somebody else was going to ask the question, so it is better to be prepared. I measured inch by inch; it was exactly seventeen feet, six inches.” That was his business.Eknath asked, “What happened to your business? In seven days how many times have you eyewitnessed, how much have you earned?”He said, “What are you talking about? I have not moved from my bed. I have not eaten; there is no appetite, no thirst. I am simply dead. I don’t feel any energy, any life in me.”Eknath said, “Now get up, it is time. Take a good bath, eat well. Tomorrow you have a case in the court – continue the business. And I have answered your question – because since I have become aware that everybody has to die…“And death can come tomorrow – you had seven days. I don’t have even seven days; tomorrow I may not see the sunrise again. I don’t have time for stupid things, for stupid ambitions, for greed, for anger, for hate; I simply don’t have time, because tomorrow I may not be here.“In this small span of life, if I can rejoice in the beauties of existence, the beauties of human beings; if I can share my love, if I can share my songs, perhaps death will not be hard on me.”I have heard from the ancients that those who know how to live automatically come to know how to die. Their death is a thing of beauty because they only die outwardly; inwardly the life journey continues. Your coming to know that you have cancer certainly will be shocking, will bring sadness and despair. But you are my sannyasin; you have to make this opportunity into a great transformation of being.These few days that you will be here should be the days of meditation, love, compassion, friendliness, playfulness, laughter; and if you can do that, you will be rewarded by a conscious death. That is the reward of a conscious life.An unconscious life comes to die unconsciously. A conscious life is rewarded by existence with a conscious death.And to die consciously is to know the ultimate orgasmic experience of life and to know simultaneously that nothing dies, only forms change.You are moving into a new house – and of course a better house, on a higher level of consciousness. You use the opportunity to grow. And life is absolutely just, fair. Whatever you earn you never lose it, you are rewarded for it.Accept that death is just part of your life, and accept the fact that it is good that you have come to know beforehand. Otherwise death comes and you cannot hear the footsteps, the sounds of death approaching you. That’s why I said you are fortunate: death has knocked seven days before.Use these days in deep acceptance. Make these seven days as joyful as possible; make these seven days days of laughter. Die with a joke on your face – the smile, the thankfulness, the gratitude for all that life has given to you.And this I say to you: death is fiction. There is no death because nothing dies, only things change. And if you are aware, you can make them change for the better. That’s how evolution happens.That’s how an unconscious man becomes a Gautam Buddha.Osho,Yesterday, when I was coming from my office for your discourse, I was feeling very much depressed, tired and tense; but after the discourse I felt myself so relaxed, energetic and fresh. The next morning I am again depressed and tense. Is it because of my mind or the surrounding atmosphere?Laheru, it is because of your mind. The surrounding atmosphere is always supportive. If your mind is silent, the same atmosphere will support silence; if your mind is tense, the same atmosphere will support your tensions. The surrounding atmosphere does not count; what counts is your mind.If it was otherwise, then it would be impossible for anybody to become enlightened, because everybody is surrounded by the same kind of atmosphere.I am reminded of a small story, an ancient story of a wise king who used to go on a round of the capital in the middle of the night in disguise, to see whether things were going as they should or not. He was always puzzled, because one naked young man used to stand under a tree, even in the middle of the night. He went at different times in the night but the man was always standing there, alert. The king was puzzled: What is he doing? One day he went to him and asked, “What is your trouble? Why do you go on standing here naked in the cold night?”The man said, “I have a certain treasure that needs constant watchfulness. I cannot be unconscious even for a single moment, it is too risky.”The king asked, “Where is your treasure?”The man laughed. He said, “You will not understand. My treasure is within me. And the more I am aware – whether it is day or night – the deeper I am reaching into myself.”It was for the first time the king saw the man so closely – a beautiful man with magnetic eyes, with an invisible aura. The king was touched. He said, “I have always been thinking of finding a master but I never found one. I cannot leave you. I invite you to come with me to the palace. You will have all that you need. But why stand…? That does not suit the master of the king. From this moment you are the master of the king.”The man said, “Of course!” And he jumped on the king’s horse and asked the king to walk by his side: “Let us go to the palace.”The king said, “This man seems to be something!” – naked, he was sitting on the horse, and for the first time in his life the king had to walk – “and what will the guards of the palace say when they see us?”But the man said, “Don’t be worried about the guards or your wife or your children; nobody can interfere. I will declare myself: I am your master.”The king started having doubts: “This man, whom I thought has renounced the world, is standing naked for many days… And he has said yes so willingly. Not only has he said yes, he immediately jumped on my horse!”In the palace he was given the best room, all the best facilities – better than the king. He made it a point, that “I am the master of the king, and it will be insulting to the king that the master has something less than the king.” The king gave everything that was needed and he lived in immense luxury.The king thought, “I have been deceived. This man is not a real saint, he is a con man. He was standing there naked just to befool me, and he befooled me. But how to get rid of this man?”Six months passed. But the king was a cultured man; he could not say, “You have cheated me.” But one day, while walking on the lawn of the palace with the master, the king said, “It is strange, but a doubt sometimes arises in me. You were standing naked under the tree, you have renounced everything of the world, and now you are living in royal luxury. The question that arises in me is this: What is the difference now between me and you?”The young man said, “The difference? You will have to come with me. At the right moment, at the right place, I will give you the answer.”The king and the master both went on horses. When they reached the border of the kingdom the king said, “This is the border. Now we are entering into another’s kingdom, and that is not right for me. What is your answer?”He said, “My answer is this: this is your horse, these are your clothes. Take them home. I am going – this is the difference. You have a kingdom, I don’t have a kingdom. Wherever I live, there is my kingdom.”The king was shocked, but he thought that he had misjudged the man. He fell at his feet and he said, “Forgive me, I misjudged you.”The man said, “Simply get up on your horse and return to the palace, because I am such a simple man. I can again put on the dress, and the horse is waiting and I can come back – and the doubt will again come into your mind. I don’t want to create any doubt. You simply take both horses and these clothes. Naked I was, naked I am – and there are so many trees, I can stand anywhere.”The king tried hard to convince him but the man said, “I can come, there is no trouble; but I know your mind, and it is not… You are being a liar. It is not that the doubt has arisen just now; it had arisen at the very moment I jumped on your horse that night six months ago.“To me it makes no difference: I was as silent and peaceful, as centered, as balanced in myself under the tree as in your palace. The atmosphere, the environment around me makes no difference at all. Wherever I am, there is my kingdom.”Laheru, it is not the atmosphere. This is how we go on throwing our responsibility on others; and that is not right – not right for a seeker. A seeker should be clear about it, that “every responsibility is mine.”You will be surprised to know; the moment you take all the responsibilities on your own shoulders you are the most free man in the whole world, because now wherever you are it makes no difference: your freedom is intact, your peace is intact, your integrity is intact.One of my sannyasins from Germany has sent me a present. His name is Nivedano. I will give it to Laheru because the present is something really significant. Its name is “Mind and Meditation.” Just give me the present.[Osho is handed a picture in a wooden frame, and he holds up the picture for everyone to see.]This is a small present, but with significant meaning.This is meditation – this vast silence, this peaceful blue, this beautiful beach… Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. But turn it…[He turns it upside down. The sky becomes a thunderstorm of swirling clouds.]This is the mind. Everything is disturbed. It is sheer disturbance. That’s how it goes on happening in you.Meditation and mind are made of the same stuff. When the mind is silent, it is meditation.[Osho is holding the picture still.]It is getting silent. The beach is settling, the waves are settling. But turn it…[He turns it.]…and you have Laherubhai! Laherubhai this is for you.Osho,I read the following story in the book, Diary of a Zen Nun. It goes like this: a master and his disciple were attending a funeral. The disciple pointed to the corpse, and asked, “Is that dead or alive?” The master answered, “I cannot say.” The disciple threatened to strike the master, who said, “You can hit me all you like, but I cannot say whether that is dead or alive.” So the disciple struck him. That evening the master told the others what had happened, and announced that the disciple would have to leave because he had struck the master. So the disciple went off to another master and told his tale, hoping to hear that the first master was a cruel monster and off his nut. Instead of which, the second master exclaimed, “What a compassionate master you had there!” – whereupon the disciple began to see what it was all about. Osho, would you please comment on this story?The story is from Gayan. I know the story, but she has missed a few significant things in it and without them, the story becomes very ordinary.I do not know Japanese; the story is Japanese. But I know Zen. And I know Germans; Gayan is a German. Germans have very special qualities: one of them is always missing the most important thing. She must have read it in a German translation; most probably the translator missed it. Whatever is left, she must have done.It is said that if you tell a joke to an Englishman he laughs twice; once just to give company to everybody – everybody is laughing, and if he does not laugh they will think he seems to be nuts – and the second time he laughs in the middle of the night when he gets it.Tell a joke to a German: he laughs only once, because everybody else is laughing, but he never comes to understand the joke.Haridas was one of my oldest German sannyasins, and I must have told more jokes than anyone in the whole history of man. And he was sitting in front of me, and every day, for years, after the meeting he would ask people, “Why were you laughing? What is the matter with you guys? Everybody starts laughing, I don’t get the point at all.”If you tell the same joke to a Jew, he will not laugh. On the contrary, he will say, “Listen. This is an old joke, rotten. Secondly, you are telling it all wrong; first learn how to tell a joke.”This story:The master had an enemy master living close to his monastery. They were contradicting each other, criticizing each other as harshly and as hard as possible. He had gone to the funeral with one of his disciples. The dead body was there, the funeral was being prepared. The disciple asks, “Is it dead or alive?”The master says, “I cannot say.” Remember the emphasis on the word cannot: not that I do not know, not that I do not want, not that I will not; his emphasis is “I cannot say – your question is raising something which is unanswerable. It cannot be brought into words.”The master had the habit that whenever a disciple would not answer his question, he would hit him. Following the same routine, the disciple said, “Then I will hit you.”He said, “You can hit me as much as you want, but I cannot say.”He hit the old master. And seeing that this man – who cannot answer a simple thing, which anybody else could have answered – is simply useless, he decided, “I should go to the opponent.”He was not thrown out of the monastery; that’s where the story goes wrong. He himself went to the opposing master who resided just opposite the monastery. His monastery was there, he had his own following. And the disciple was thinking that the other master would be very happy to receive him, particularly when he described that his master was absolutely ignorant and cruel – because not to answer the question of the disciple is cruelty.He told the second master, “My master is simply ignorant. He knows nothing. Everybody there was preparing the funeral; of course the body was a corpse, it was dead; and this… My master, this dodo, said, ‘I cannot say.’“And he hits every disciple if we do not answer his questions. So following the same routine, I hit him. He said, ‘You can hit me as much as you want, that is your right, but still I cannot say.’ This man is ignorant, cruel, insensitive, stubborn; he does not deserve to be called a master.”He was thinking that he would be praised highly, because the opponent master – who was always criticizing his master – would rejoice and would welcome him with folded hands: “Come into my monastery. Why were you wasting your time with that idiot?” But instead of this he said, “You are ignorant. You do not understand compassion. Your master was very compassionate. Just go back to your own monastery.”Standing outside the monastery, between both monasteries, he was in a dilemma. He had thought that these people were against each other. For the first time he saw they are not against each other; perhaps this is their device to help people, the disciples. And the way the man said, “He is so compassionate and you are an idiot. You could not understand him. Just go back!” Then it dawned on him, the whole phenomenon: that when any ordinary layman could have said that the body was dead, his master refused to say whether it was dead or alive, because this is the basic foundation of Zen and of all great realized people in the world: that existence cannot be divided into either-or. You cannot say it is dead, you cannot say it is alive. You cannot divide existence.Just because this man was no longer breathing did not mean he was dead. He is still part of existence, which is eternally alive. You cannot say he is dead, because in this existence nothing is dead. Nothing can be dead. Everything is alive; only life is.And of course you cannot say that he is alive; otherwise, what was the point of the funeral?So for all practical purposes the funeral was okay, but for philosophical purposes – for deeper and more fundamental purposes – he’s as alive as ever. It is just that before he used to breathe, now he has decided not to breathe. The difference is not much. And whether he is breathing or not breathing, in either case, he remains part of existence. You cannot fall out of it, because it is everywhere. You cannot go out of existence, so you cannot go out of life.The other master was saying, “You don’t understand the compassion of your master. He was compassionate not to answer you, because any answer would have been wrong. And you would have been satisfied very easily; he could have said, ‘This is dead’ – but that would not have been fundamentally right.“His compassion is great, so great that he even allowed you to hit him – because he hits the disciples who cannot answer his questions. Just see his justice: because he was not answering your question – he did not care whether you are a disciple or a master – he allowed you; you could hit him as much as you want. But he said, ‘I cannot answer; I cannot say.’“Just go back to your old master. If he cannot improve you, I cannot do anything. In fact when I fail with people I send them to your monastery – this is our agreement. We quarrel, we contradict each other – this is our joy. All these contradictions and arguments and philosophical controversies, we enjoy; and those who understand it, they also enjoy.“It is just like an old story: two sweet-makers started fighting, throwing sweets at each other, and the whole road was filled with the crowd and people were enjoying the sweets. And they were encouraging both: ‘You did well! Hit him well!’ – both sides. But people were enjoying sweets.“We have been throwing sweets,” the old man said. “Those who understand, enjoy; those who don’t understand, they think we are enemies. We were disciples of one master. It is that master who was responsible for creating this strange device of opening monasteries against each other. He said, ‘Some fools will join you, some fools will join the other; but don’t leave anyone out – divide. Those who are against one will go to the other; those who are against the other will come to you.’ This is our great master’s device that we are following.“But I will not take you in, you belong to him. And he has been so compassionate that it will be ugly of me to accept you.”Mystics have their own way. The ordinary masses cannot understand. Mystics even speak against each other for the benefit of the poor and the mediocre who cannot understand it in any other way. They can only understand something controversial. And for centuries mystics have done that.It is only in this century that humanity is so intellectually poor that you don’t have mystics who are in a deep, loving conspiracy against you – to bring you to life, to love, to laughter.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What are the roots and what are the wings of a meditator?Meditation is a way of settling in oneself, at the innermost core of your being. Once you have found the center of your existence you will have found both the roots and the wings. The roots are in existence, making you a more integrated human being, an individual. And the wings are in the fragrance that is released by being in contact with existence. The fragrance consists of freedom, love, compassion, authenticity, sincerity, a sense of humor, and a tremendous feeling of blissfulness. The roots make you an individual, and the wings give you the freedom to love, to be creative, to share unconditionally the joy that you have found.The roots and wings come together. They are two sides of one experience, and that experience is finding the center of your being.We are continuously moving on the circumference, always somewhere else far away from our own being, always directed toward others. When all this is dropped, when all objects are dropped, when you close your eyes to all that is not you – even your mind, your heartbeats are left far behind – only a silence remains.In this silence you will settle slowly into the center of your being, and then the roots will grow on their own accord, and the wings too. You need not worry about them. You cannot do anything about them. They come on their own. You simply fulfill one condition: that is, to be at home – and the whole existence becomes a bliss to you, a benediction.Osho,What is the difference between the ancient Upanishads and the one which is happening here and now?There is no difference. There cannot be, because it is not a question of time.It may have happened thousands of years before, it may happen thousands of years in the future. The time is irrelevant; the question is of the happening.Can you ask the same question, “What is the difference between the ancient lovers and the modern lovers?” Love knows no time. Whether the love was in ancient times or today or in the future, time is simply not relevant. Love is the same.An upanishad is a love affair – a love affair between a master and a disciple, a love affair where the master is ready to share. He is just like a raincloud, ready to shower. And the disciple is ready to receive – open, with no windows closed, holding nothing back – totally available. Whenever a disciple is totally available and the master is overflowing with his ecstasy, the upanishad happens.There is no difference in the ancient Upanishads, in this upanishad, or in the future upanishads. An upanishad is a phenomenon which is beyond time, beyond space. Don’t call the Upanishads ancient, because that word ancient makes them related to time. Don’t call this upanishad modern, because time has no place as far as the phenomenon of upanishad is concerned. There is no ancient love, there is no modern love.And neither is it confined to space: it can happen anywhere, any time; the only necessity is that somebody is overflowing with blissfulness and somebody else has the guts to be available to this overflowing bliss, is not afraid.People are always afraid of unknown things, and this is the most unknown. People are always afraid of the strange, and this is the strangest experience possible. People are always afraid of the mysterious, and this is the last word in the world of mysteries.Osho,Are the Upanishads and Zen the same?They are not. The upanishad is a happening between the master and the disciple, Zen is the happening in the disciple himself. The master may help him, may create devices, show the path – but Zen is basically an individual experience. It is not like love. It happens in your aloneness. It is not a relationship.Upanishad is the greatest relationship. It cannot happen if the master is alone. He may be full, overflowing; but it cannot happen because the receiving end is absent. It cannot happen if the disciple is alone, however open, however available – but available to what? Open to what?Upanishad is a more human phenomenon than Zen. It is closer to human reality because it is closer to love. It can be understood more easily, because it is very difficult to find a person who has not tasted something of love in some moments. There is some experience which can be used to explain to him what happens when a master and a disciple dissolve into each other. So the first thing: the upanishad is a totally different phenomenon than Zen.And the second thing: the experience is the same. The paths are different, but finally – whether you have followed Zen and reached alone to the peak, or you have allowed a master to hold your hand in deep trust and reached the peak – it does not matter how you reach the peak. Your vehicles can be different, your means can be different; the peak is the same. The experience of finding oneself and simultaneously finding the whole secret of existence is the same.So on the one hand I say they are totally different. On the other hand I say they are exactly the same. And there is no contradiction in these two statements. The paths are different but the ultimate finding is the same.Zen is an arduous path, a hard and long way. But it is up to you – there are people who love to go the hard way. The simple way does not appeal to them; the hard way is exciting.Upanishad is not a hard way. It is a very simple and relaxed experience. It is the shortest way possible to the ultimate reality.But there are different kinds of people in the world; they all need different paths to reach to their fulfillment. These are the two extremes. In this sense, Zen and upanishad are as far away from each other as two points can be; and yet, the final conclusion is always the same. One is a hard way, a long way, but a few people need it.One mystic in Sri Lanka was dying. He declared that the next morning he would be dying. He had thousands of followers; they all gathered. He was old, almost ninety years, and he had been teaching these people for sixty years. And the Buddhist teaching is a very hard way. But the mystic, at the point of death said, “I have been teaching you the way I have followed, the way that has helped me to attain to the ultimate. But I now know that there is a shortcut in reaching to the ultimate too – so short that if somebody wants to go with me, stand up! I am leaving.”People looked at each other, about whom they thought, “These are very religious people, perhaps they may stand up. As far as I am concerned, there are so many problems.”Nobody stood up. Only one man raised his hand.The old man said, “Even that is a great consolation to me. But why are you not standing up?”He said, “Because I don’t want to go right now, but I want to know where the shortcut is in case at some time I want to go. Why bother with the hard and long way? That’s why I just raised my hand. I cannot stand up. As far as the hard way is concerned, we know – because for sixty years you have been teaching it. And at the last moment… You are a strange fellow; at least tell us where the short way is!”The mystic said, “The short way has a condition: it is only for those who are ready to go right now. I give another chance – stand up!”Even that man’s hand went down, and there was utter silence. And everybody was looking at each other…The old man died.People want the way to be hard and to be long because this is a good excuse for avoiding – because the way is so long and so hard, life is so short and so many problems, so many responsibilities; so much has to be done. The children are growing up, they have to be married. The business is not good – or the business is so good that this is not the moment to meditate.Upanishad is the shortest possible way. Neither has the disciple to do anything nor has the master to do anything. Doing is not part of it.I have quoted the great Zen poet Basho many times to you: “Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.” As far as upanishadic methodology is concerned, even doing nothing is not needed. And what are you going to do even if the grass grows by itself? Whether you sit silently or not, it will grow. Whether you sit silently or not, the spring will come. You are unnecessarily taking the credit for the grass growing by itself – because you have been sitting silently, doing nothing! Even when you were not, the grass used to grow; when you will not be here the grass will continue to grow. It has nothing to do with you. The upanishad does not even ask you to sit silently doing nothing. Even doing nothing is a doing.The whole approach of the upanishad is so totally different. The disciple is available, the master is overflowing, and something transpires. Nobody is doing it. Nobody can take the credit for it. Hence I say the way of the upanishad is the most mysterious way in the whole human consciousness and its evolution.Zen is mysterious, but yet it can be understood. Upanishad is simply mysterious; there is no way of understanding it. You can have it, you can dissolve into it, but there is no question of explanation – only experience.All over the world there have been mystery schools. In Greece, Pythagoras founded mystery schools. In the religion of the Jews, Baal Shem founded a mystery school called Hasidism. In China there is the mystery school of Tao, and when Buddhism reached China a new mystery school, a chain of new mystery schools opened, ch’an. The same mystery school, ch’an, reached Japan with the name zen. But the word zen or ch’an, or the Buddhist word jhan are all different forms of the Sanskrit word dhyana.In India dhyana has been known for centuries – that mystery school was there before Gautam Buddha ever meditated.There was the mystery school of Tantra. There were the mystery schools of different types of Yoga.I have gone through all these schools not as a scholar – that is not my approach – but as an experiencer. I can say to you: nothing rises higher than the mystery school of upanishads – because it is the shortest. Nobody is expected to do anything, and yet the miracle happens.Osho,What is the difference between religious scriptures like the Gita, the Koran, the Bible, etc., and the Upanishads?First, the Upanishads are not religious scriptures. They are poetic expressions of those who have known.They are not Hindu, they are not Buddhist, they are not Jaina; they don’t belong to any religion. They are the experiences of individuals sitting at the feet of their master – and when the experience overwhelmed them they danced, they sang, they uttered strange statements. And these were not made by their minds; it was almost as if they were just hollow bamboos. Existence has made them flutes; it was existence itself singing a song. That’s why no upanishad carries the name of its writer.The Koran belongs to Mohammed, the New Testament belongs to Jesus Christ, the Gita belongs to Krishna, the Dhammapada belongs to Gautam Buddha; Ishavasya Upanishad belongs to no one.Tremendously courageous people – they have not even signed their names. In fact it would have been ugly to sign because they were not the writers, they were not the composers, they were not the poets. The poetry was coming from above, from beyond. They were simply vehicles.Because of this, you will be surprised also to know that the whole Koran consists of Hajrat Mohammed’s statements, the Gita consists totally of Krishna’s statements, but each upanishad consists of many peoples’ expressions – anybody who had reached to that beyond and allowed the beyond to descend through him.The Upanishads have not bothered to collect the words of one person. Each upanishad contains the words of many enlightened people, and without any signatures. Words have never been so golden. Words have never taken such high flights, and yet the people who allowed them to happen have remained anonymous. This is so beautiful, immensely beautiful, because they knew, “We have nothing to do. We have just been passages. Something has come through us.”One upanishadic rishi, one upanishadic seer – the name, of course, is unknown – is reported to have said, “If there is any mistake in my statement, that is mine. And if there is any truth, I cannot claim that it is mine. The truth belongs to the universe; the mistake belongs to me, I was not such a good vehicle.” These were rare people, unique human beings, the very salt of the earth.I would like my sannyasins to become this very salt of the earth again.It is because these are not religious scriptures, that’s why there is no religion following the Upanishads. These are the very few books which contain the greatest quantity of truth and have remained unorganized. There is no organization around them; there cannot be – because of the very methodology there cannot be a church, there cannot be a pope or a shankaracharya.I love someone, but I cannot make an organization of it. And when I leave this body I will leave in heritage my wealth, my house, my land, everything – but I cannot leave my love in heritage.These Upanishads are pure love, so there have been no successors, no priests, no followers. These books are the most pure in the whole world, absolutely without any pollution. They have remained just the way they were expressed.Nobody has fought because of the Upanishads.Mohammedans have fought because of the Koran. Hindus have fought because of the Gita. Christians have fought because of the New Testament. Everybody has been fighting for their religious scripture.Who cares about the poor Upanishads? But it has been fortunate that nobody has bothered about them; they have remained as pure as when they were given birth to, as innocent as ever.The statements in the Upanishads – there are one hundred and twelve upanishads; the statements in the Upanishads cannot be made into dogmas for the simple reason that the statements are not rational, logical. They are contradictory.One upanishad says, “I do not know who created the world.” You cannot make a religion on such a statement: I do not know who created the world. Then what do you know? – because that is going to be the basis of any religion: the belief in God, the belief in creation. But like an innocent child, the upanishadic seer says, “I do not know who created the world.” And this is closer to truth: nobody knows who created the world. Nobody knows whether anybody ever created it – it may have been always there. And it seems most scientific that it has always been there, and it will always remain there.The whole idea of creation is stupid. But if you drop the idea of creation you have to drop the idea of a creator God. Then you have to drop the idea of the priest and the pope and the prophets and the messiah and the saviors and the reincarnations of God. There is no God. Then from where are reincarnations happening?I have heard…A crazy man had applied to be given a job on a ship. He was interviewed. The captain and the high officials of the ship asked him, “If the ocean is in a turmoil and there is danger to the ship, what are you going to do?”He said, “Simple…”Whenever a situation like that happens, they drop heavy loads by the side of the ship, to keep the ship anchored. Those heavy loads are called anchors. So the man said, “No problem. I will just drop a big anchor.”The captain said, “But if another great turmoil comes – because these things happen in a chain, a great wave – what you are going to do?”He said, “The same – another anchor. And if the third one comes, another anchor, and the fourth one comes, another anchor.”The captain said, “Stop! First tell me, where are you getting these anchors from?”The man said, “You are just as crazy as I am. From where are you getting all these turmoils? I go on getting the anchors from the same place.”One fallacy, one false statement, one fictitious idea gives birth to another fictitious idea.First you ask who created the world; immediately God comes in – one anchor. But somebody is bound to ask, “Who created God?” – another anchor; a bigger God created this smaller God. But the questions cannot stop. You have started a fictitious thing; now there is no way to stop. You will have to go on creating bigger gods, and the person will have to go on getting bigger anchors.The Upanishads are not religious scriptures. They don’t give you any belief system. They don’t tell you to believe in anything. They don’t have any God, they don’t have any creation. All that they have is a deep harmony between the master and the disciple. And that harmony brings such peace, such serenity, such tranquility, that all questions disappear – not that you found an answer, no. Just all questions disappear. The question of finding an answer does not arise. You don’t have any question, how can you have an answer?So the Upanishads don’t have any answer for anybody. That’s why people have not taken much note of them, because they don’t have any answer for you. You have questions, you want answers.The Upanishads don’t have any answers. They are ready to take you into a different dimension of existence, to transmute you. It is a change of consciousness. And suddenly all doubts, all questions, everything disappears and what is left behind is just a beautiful peace.Hence, every upanishad ends with om shantih, shantih, shantih. That word shantih means absolute silence. Beyond that silence there is nothing, and there is no need. It brings total contentment, absolute blissfulness, ultimate ecstasy.The Upanishads are the only free, absolutely free books as far as religious books are concerned. All religious books are imprisoned – Hindus have their prisons, Mohammedans have theirs, Christians have theirs. Nobody has dared to imprison the Upanishads for the simple reason that those Upanishads are of no use as far as the priesthood is concerned, creating organization is concerned, exploiting people is concerned, giving false beliefs is concerned. Those Upanishads are dangerous; it is better to keep them aside.The moment a book becomes a holy scripture it becomes poisoned. Then it is nothing but a strategy to make more and more slaves.The Upanishads cannot be condemned for doing any ugly thing to humanity. They have given their fragrance, they have blossomed, they have shared their joy – and with such beauty, such clarity; and without any loopholes, so that it is impossible to make them religious scriptures. They are truly religious. They are not scriptures, they are truly spiritual.In the whole of history there are only a very few books which have remained uncontaminated by the cunningness of human mind.The Upanishads are those few books.Osho,What is your business?My business is to keep many people in business! All the religions have been teaching people to renounce the world. My business is to help people not to renounce the world. Be in business!All the religions, without exception, are against life. My business is to destroy the conditionings that have been forced upon you against life; to give you a joy in life, to make you love life, sing, dance – because life is a celebration.My business is to create this whole existence into a celebration.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Broadly speaking, as I understand it, there are two sets of rules: one for the outer world – which is the man-made world concerned with earning money, rearing children, driving on a certain side of the road – and a different set of rules for the inner world, for example, hypnosis, telepathy, mind-reading and so on to attain inner growth of consciousness, leading finally to samadhi, enlightenment, nirvana.To live here, both rules have to be followed, and so it appears to me that friction is created. To my surprise, a farmer in Fukuoka, Japan is doing what he calls “no-farming,” or doing-nothing farming – no ploughing, no weeding, no fertilization, no pesticides – and he has had the highest yield in the last 25 years. Is such a thing also possible in other areas of activity such as business, medical practice, legal practice, service, etc? Is synchronization to some extent possible?Osho, can you please enlighten me?There are many questions in your one question. I will have to take all those questions one by one, only then a satisfactory answer is possible.First you say, “It is my understanding” – it is not. It is only your thinking, and that’s the reason why the friction is felt. The friction is symbolic: you are misunderstanding thinking for understanding.Thinking is of the mind. Understanding is of the beyond. So the first thing to be noted is that to attain to understanding one has not to become a very keen thinker. On the contrary, one has to become a no-thinker. In the state of non-thinking blossoms the flowers of understanding. Then there is no friction.Right now you are dividing life into two kinds of rules, the outer rules and the inner rules. But this is not your vision, this is not your seeing, this is your thinking. And thinking is dualistic; the outer and the inner are categories of thinking. For understanding, there is nothing outer and nothing is inner. Existence simply is.Or, you can say the inner and the outer are nothing but two sides of the same coin, inseparable. The question of friction does not arise, even separation is impossible. But mind lives on friction; its whole existence is that of continuous struggle, struggle against itself.The man of understanding knows no outer, no inner. He knows only a transcendental awareness in which all outer, all inner is dissolved – and resolved.A Japanese king went to see Lin Chi, a famous master of his time. Just as he entered the forest in which Lin Chi lived with his disciples he saw a woodcutter. Naturally he asked him, “Where can I find the master?”For a moment the woodcutter stopped and told him, “It is here,” and again he started cutting.The man thought, “He looks crazy… I don’t see anybody here, and this man cannot be Lin Chi. A world-famous master is not going to cut wood in the hot sun.”Thinking that it was useless to ask him more, the king started moving farther on his way. The woodcutter laughed and he said, “It seems you can only meet him on the inner, not on the outer.”The king was a little afraid. That man had an ax in his hand and was talking such nonsense. He said, “I will find my way. Please don’t get excited about it; just do your work.”When he reached Lin Chi’s house he was surprised. The man who was sitting there in the master’s robe was exactly like the woodcutter. He said, “I am puzzled; do you have a twin brother?”He said, “Yes, the outer is my twin brother. I am the inner. He cuts wood, I show the way toward the ultimate truth – but in fact we are both one.”There is no friction in Lin Chi. But in the king’s mind there is trouble, because he divides according to the categories we have been conditioned for. How can a great master be cutting wood? Or how can a woodcutter be a great master? But can you see that there is any problem? Why cannot a great master cut wood – is there any intrinsic, logical difficulty? Why cannot a woodcutter be a master? And if a woodcutter cannot be a master, then who can be a master? There is no existential difficulty, but only a mind-created duality. There is a transcendental consciousness. Lin Chi has it.I have both these hands. I can use both these hands because I am beyond both these hands, because I am not identified with the left hand or identified with the right hand. They are both my hands, and my existence is superior to both.The outer rules and the inner rules are going to create friction if you don’t have the master inside you. Then naturally your left hand and right hand cannot function together in harmony – because you are dead, the master is absent.One very famous Jaina saint died a few years ago. Now, death does not care about anybody, whether you are a saint or whether you are a sinner. The saint died in a posture which is not thought to be right, according to Jainism.The Jaina saint, if he is really a master, must die in a lotus posture. It is significant; it means the man who is really aware will be aware of death coming. And this will be an indication that he has been ready, prepared for death to come: death will find him in the exact posture described by the Jaina scriptures. But out of a hundred, ninety-nine percent of the time it is a problem.These so-called saints die in all kinds of postures. Then their followers have a difficulty, because if somebody comes to see then they will feel embarrassed that their saint has died in this posture – so they force the dead body into a lotus posture. And this man must have died in the night while asleep, so by the morning the body was so stiff that they had to almost break his bones, and hit him hard to put him in the right shape.One of my friends was there who took all these pictures – and escaped with the camera, because the followers saw him taking pictures. They would have killed him because he could destroy their whole following. And a great saint… He showed me the pictures. I could not believe that followers will not leave you even when you are dead! And they were beating him, putting him into the right shape. Ordinarily, even for a person who has never been practicing the lotus posture, it is difficult. When you are dead, then to practice Yoga is really a miracle!But they managed. For the photographs to be published in the newspaper, they managed – although you could see that the man was sitting very reluctantly. He had been beaten so hard… It is true, he was dead! But the posture was not a harmony, it was forced; the posture was as dead as the man was dead.The problem is that by following the outer rules, following the inner rules, without knowing who it is who is being forced to follow the outer rules, the inner rules, you are going to create a thousand and one frictions. On each step there is going to be difficulty. The outer rule says one thing and the inner rule may say exactly the opposite, and you will be torn apart.The outer rule says: “Love your wife, love your children, love your family, love your neighborhood, love the people around you, because that is the only way to live with these people, that is the only way to be related to them.” And the inner rule says, “Wife? – she is the sure door to hell!” Now there is friction: how to love hell?But people are great artists; they manage both. Deep down they know this woman is hell, and on the surface they say, “Darling, I love you. I will die without you.” And they are hoping inside that somehow, if this woman dies…But the women are so strong that every husband pops off, and the woman remains to see him pop! Unless he pops off, she is not going to leave the world. Women have a five-year-longer life span.I have heard…A woman was dying and the husband was trying to bring tears to his eyes. It is a difficult job when your whole being wants to dance, when you want to burst into a film song. So he was putting some spicy thing into his eyes to bring tears. But you cannot deceive a woman – particularly no husband can deceive a wife; it has never happened.She said, “Stop all this nonsense. Just promise me one thing: that you are not going to marry the woman who lives in the neighborhood.”The man said, “Don’t be afraid. And, anyway, your clothes will not fit her. I promise I will not marry her; your clothes won’t fit her.”You cannot hide. Your inner and outer are constantly in friction, everywhere. You are asked by your elders, by your religious teachers, to be truthful – because lying is one of the worst crimes, a sin for which you will suffer much.One old swami, a traditional swami, Swami Divyanand, used to stay with my family whenever he would come that way, at least once a year. And truth was his main theme. One afternoon he was resting. He had the body of a Hindu monk, and as you know… He was resting, but giving as much trouble to the bed as possible.Hindu monks have a strange way of growing fat. They know no limits. Perhaps they are in the search of the unlimited.And at that very time a man came to the door, and he was asking the servant, “If Swamiji is awake I would like to see him.”And I was sitting with Swamiji, who was fully awake. He immediately closed his eyes. I said, “Swamiji, this is not right; it is against truth.”He said, “Be silent! That man is such a bore.”I said, “Nobody can be a bigger bore than you are. Year by year you have bored this poor family.”He said, “This is no time to discuss it” – and he was with closed eyes, snoring!I shook his big belly and I said, “You cannot deceive me by snoring. This snoring is absolutely false.”He said, “It is authentic.”I said, “You are perfectly awake. How can your snoring be authentic?”He said, “Just… It is so hot, and that man is so boring and he will not leave me for hours. Just go and tell him that Swamiji is fast asleep.”I said, “I will go and I will say exactly what you are saying.”And I told the man, “Swamiji is fully awake, yet fast asleep; fully awake, yet snoring.”That man said, “How can it happen?”I said, “You know, these people are miracle-makers. You can come with me, I can show you.” I took him inside with me.Swamiji was snoring very loudly, as loudly as he could manage. But you cannot snore for long if you are awake, it is so tiring. I told the man to sit in a corner where it was a little dark. Swamiji opened one eye, looked at me and said, “Has that bore gone?”I said, “Swamiji, continue snoring. He is just sitting here in the dark corner.”He said, “How has he managed to come here?”I said, “This is no time to discuss it. Simply close your eyes.” And he closed his eyes and started snoring.And that man said, “This swami is continually talking about being true.”I said, “I think he is being true – eyes closed, snoring; what more do you want? Do you want him to die? Will you leave this place only when he dies?”This was too much. Swamiji stood and said, “I cannot do that.”I said, “You don’t come into this. Don’t interfere. Simply lie down and rest and snore – whether awake or asleep, that is your business. I am just trying to convince this man that Swamiji is a man of miracles: ‘You have just seen how he can open one eye. It is very difficult, only swamis can do that; otherwise both eyes open together.’”He was very angry at me. He talked against me to everybody in the family, that “This boy should not be allowed in my room.”But I said, “I was simply following your teaching.”He said, “Teachings are not to be followed, they are to be taught!”The mind cannot create a harmony; that is not in the nature of mind. Its nature is dialectical, discordant. But if you can go beyond mind suddenly all conflict, all friction disappears. Not that you have to do something, you simply become alert, whatever you are doing. It is no longer a question of inner or outer, it is a question of being aware. And with awareness, you cannot do anything wrong. That is impossible. Nobody has been able to manage it yet.You have been asking about a Japanese farmer who has not been using any scientific technology in cultivating. He calls it no-cultivation. It is in tune with the Zen idea of effortless effort, of no drama. His cultivation is just an extension of a meditative state of consciousness. He has found harmony within himself, and he has found harmony with nature.Once you have found harmony within yourself it is not difficult to find harmony with nature. You are part of nature. You are nature. Nature is bigger you; you are smaller nature. There is no difference, no demarcation line.He used this insight in cultivation, without using any technological support. For twenty-five years he has been bringing up the highest crops in the whole of Japan, when others are using everything. He has slapped the face of man really badly; his small effort is not small. He has indicated a totally different approach to relating with life.But your mind is not in any way in contact with harmony. It is shown in the question. You are asking, can this be done in business? Now, business is not nature. Can it be done in service? Service is not nature. You will create a great rift in yourself, you will create trouble.If you are a government servant and you say, “I follow the philosophy of no-service, like no-cultivation,” you will be thrown out. And it will be very compassionate of your officers if they only throw you out; otherwise they would throw you into a madhouse. No-service? A railway driver saying, “No-driving”; an airplane pilot just in the middle of the air saying, “No-piloting; I am going to leave it to the harmony of nature, and now see the miracles.” You will see only dead bodies and a disaster, no miracle – because these things are not part of nature.Yes, in gardening you can do it. In anything that is not man-made, that is not manufactured by man’s mind but is part of natural growth, it can be done. But before you can do it you have to be in a certain state of consciousness otherwise you are going to fail, even in cultivation.Do you think the whole world is blind to the fact of this strange cultivator who has not been defeated for twenty-five years – with all your technology, manure, chemical support? No, many others must have tried but nothing happens, because the question is not there in the cultivation, the real thing has to be decided in the cultivator. First he has to come to a harmony with nature, first he has to bridge himself with nature.That you cannot see. You can only see his crops growing higher than anybody else’s, growing thicker than anybody else’s, but you can’t see that there is something invisible which is the cause of the whole phenomenon. Otherwise why are other Japanese farmers not using the same method? Why waste money in technology? But you cannot, because the essential point is not in the crops, the essential point is the man’s consciousness.He has come to such a silent merger, to such a silent meeting of love, to such an orgasmic experience with nature that it is not nature growing, it is he himself growing. There is no cultivator, there is no cultivation.You have heard only one thing: no-cultivation. Remember, there is no cultivator either. There is a silent communion, no division between the doer and the doing – both are one, totally one. In their total oneness, the miracle is happening.The miracle can happen all over the world, particularly as far as existence is concerned. But with man-manufactured things it will not be of any help because they are dead. You cannot come to a communion with a dead thing. Existence is alive, vibrating; you just have to get into the same rhythm. The moment you are in the same rhythm, miracles are possible.In fact if this can happen on a wider scale there is no need for any stupid things like plastic. Now all over the world the scientists are concerned, “What are we going to do with the plastic?” – because, at the bottom, all the seas are full of plastic. Plastic is so cheap that it is disposable, you need not use it twice. Even for an injection a plastic syringe is used only once and then thrown away; it is cheaper, simpler, less dangerous.But all that plastic goes on into the earth, into the ocean, and it cannot mix. It is one of the strangest things that man has made – it cannot dissolve back into earth, it remains. It is the only eternal thing you have in the world.Everything that goes to the earth dissolves sooner or later into its basic constituents, but the plastic remains. Its resistance is immense. And it has started showing its effects: in many places suddenly thousands of fish have died because the plastic poisoned the waters. And there is no way to remove it – and where to remove it to?The factories go on pouring out more and more plastic. They are really thinking to change your hearts into plastic hearts – because they will be more reliable, certainly. A plastic heart cannot have a heart failure. Whatever you do – you may fail, the heart will continue! It is the strangest thing we have produced: the man dies and the heart is alive. You take the heart, clean it, and fix it into somebody else.What the Japanese Zen farmer has done, a simple man, can be done all over the earth – just a harmony is needed. And sometimes it happens without your knowing, because you are not alert to the fact, you never take note of it.When I came for the first time to the desert that we had purchased in America, there was not a single bird. It was a strange place, like some modern paintings which give you such a strange feeling. There was not a single bird in over one hundred and twenty-six square miles, and only one kind of tree which is called the camel of the desert, the juniper tree. It is really a great tree; no other tree can remain alive in that desert, but the juniper remains. But they were small: the growth was difficult – they were not green, not lush green.But in five years’ time, as thousands of sannyasins gathered there – as we made lakes, as we started cultivating – strangely enough I saw those juniper trees growing thicker, greener, becoming more beautiful.Birds started coming, water birds started coming, and so many deer that in the night it was impossible to move your car on the roads because they were standing and they would not move; they didn’t care about your horn. One thing is certain: they knew that these people were harmless, that they are not going to hurt them. Otherwise deer immediately run away as they see a man coming, particularly in America where they are continually hunting the deer, killing the deer. In the whole history of America perhaps these five years in the commune were the only years when deer were protected.We had to fight a lawsuit against the government. The people who used to hunt deer filed a suit against us because we didn’t allow them to enter and we didn’t allow shooting. And we had to convince the court: “We are vegetarians and we will not allow anybody to kill on our ground. They can do anything they want on their own grounds, but these one hundred and twenty-six square miles are sacred; they belong to us, and they belong to the deer too. We are newcomers, they are ancient owners of the land. We will be gone, they will remain. We are their guests, and we cannot be so ugly as to kill the host.”The magistrate could not believe what we were talking about! But the deer understood – so from all the surrounding lands they started gathering in thousands, in the mountains, in the forest of the commune. Suddenly, within five years, a desert which had always been a desert became an oasis. And I was watching the synchronicity of life: when there are people, when there are trees, the birds will come. When there are birds, people, trees, the animals will come.We had swans, we had ducks. We had three hundred peacocks. It was a dream come true. Peacocks were dancing and human beings were dancing too, and there was a certain affinity, a friendship. The peacocks were not allowed in the houses because they would make the houses dirty, but they would come to the windows and look inside to see what was going on – the same curiosity, the same consciousness, just the body is different; the same sensitivity, the same desire to relate in some way, to be friendly.This experiment can succeed as far as nature is concerned; not with machines and not with man-created things like business. You cannot just sit with a pile of banknotes – sitting silently, doing nothing, spring never comes – and the pile disappears! Because others are watching… Just let him close his eyes. This idiot is going to close his eyes. How long is he going to sit doing nothing? Sooner or later he will close his eyes and the pile of notes will disappear. And he was waiting to see the notes grow – notes don’t grow.So remember one thing, that first you need a transcendental self which is neither outer nor inner. And second, you have to be aware that you can succeed only with nature, with the cosmos; but that is real success.That poor man in Japan is showing something immensely great, far more important than nuclear weapons – because nuclear weapons can destroy the whole world, still they are not important. This man is showing a harmony which can save the whole of life, can fill the whole of life with new juice, with new love, with new dance, with new song, and that is far more important.Osho,Two sardarjis were driving along in the front seat of their car. As they approached a corner, the one who was driving said to his friend, “Sardarji, will you look out of the window and see if the indicator, the turn signal, is working?”He promptly leaned out of the window and looked at the indicator light and shouted back at his friend, “Yes it is – no it's not, yes it is – no it's not, yes it is – no it's not.”Osho, if anybody were to ask me whether I was witnessing or not, my answer would have to be the same: Yes I am, no I'm not; yes I am, no I'm not.Is it like that all the way home?It is not, because as far as your witnessing is concerned, it may be coming and going, and your answer may be perfectly the same as the sardar who said that the indicator is working, “Yes – no – yes again.”That is the function of the indicator: to be, not to be; to be, not to be.But don’t laugh at the poor sardarji. As far as his awareness is concerned, he is fully aware. Whenever it is working he says yes, whenever it is not working he says no. His awareness of the indicator is continuous. The indicator goes on changing, but the sardar remains fully aware of when it is working, when it is not working, when it is on, when it is off. His awareness is a continuity.If you can give the same answer about your witnessing: yes I am witnessing, no I am not witnessing, yes I am witnessing, no I am not witnessing, then you have to remember that there is something more behind these witnessing moments which is witnessing all this process. Who is witnessing that sometimes you are witnessing and sometimes you are not witnessing? Something is constant.Your witnessing has become just an indicator; don’t be bothered by it. Your emphasis should be on the eternal, the constant, the continuum – and it is there. And it is in everyone, we have just forgotten it.But even in times when we have forgotten it, it is there in its absolute perfection. It is like a mirror which is able to mirror everything, is still mirroring everything, but you are standing with your back toward the mirror. The poor mirror is mirroring your back.Turn, it will mirror your face. Open your heart; it will mirror your heart. Put everything on the table, don’t even hide a single card and it will reflect your whole reality.But if you go on standing with your back to the mirror looking all around the world asking people, “Who am I?” then it is up to you, because there are idiots who will come and teach you that “This is the way. Do this and you will know who you are.” No method is needed, just a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn – and that is not a method. And the mirror is your very being.You may not have looked at the joke in this light. If you tell the joke to anybody he is going to laugh because the sardar is so stupid, because that is the function of the indicator – to be on, off, on, off. But you have brought me a joke. I cannot simply laugh at it because I see something more in it which perhaps nobody will see. The sardar is constant, alert. He does not miss a single point, a single moment.And when you say, witnessing, yes, and then it disappears and you say no – again it appears, you say yes… It simply shows that there is something behind all these moments of witnessing and not witnessing. The true witness, which is reflecting the changing process of what you think is your witness, is behind. It is not the true witness, it is only the indicator. Forget the indicator.Remember the constant mirroring that goes on twenty-four hours within you, silently watching everything. Slowly, slowly clean it – there is so much dust on it, centuries of dust. Remove the dust.And one day, when the mirror is completely clean, those moments of witnessing and not-witnessing will disappear; you will be simply a witness.And unless you find that eternity of witnessing, all other kinds of witnessing are part of mind. They have no value.Osho,You had suggested to me to combine dancing and listening to music, and doing this keeps me happy. But I also have to move to the other side: of sadness. Whenever I go to sleep in the night awareness starts happening naturally and to avoid it I turn and toss in the bed. Sleep is difficult. What to do to forget awareness in the night?I also see that there is no harm in being awake in the night, and I sometimes enjoy it as new spaces are discovered. This awareness also keeps me silent and helps me avoid moving from happiness to sadness, and vice versa. I prefer silence to moving from happiness to sadness, because I hate sadness, even though it may be deeper.What are your suggestions about this? Osho, please comment.Your question has its answer in itself.First, it happens to every meditator – everyone who is trying to be awake and alert – that sleep in the night becomes difficult. But if it creates no problems for you and the next morning you are not tired, just resting without sleep has rejuvenated your body and you feel fresh, there is no problem. It is good. Sleep is no longer your necessity.Secondly, it helps you to remain more balanced. You are no longer like a pendulum moving between sadness and silence. If you remain awake the whole night just resting, relaxing, it is already indicating to you the way, that you are on the right path.Silence is a reward. Tranquility is a reward; being balanced between polarities is a reward.So unless somebody feels that sleep is still a necessity for him – that without it he finds himself tired, without it he finds himself getting crazy, tense – then only does it become a problem. In that case, only in that case, you are not to meditate in the evening. You have to meditate early in the morning. Then get up at four and just meditate for two or three hours and drop it. It will continue to work inside you, but it has to be at least twelve hours away from your sleeping time; otherwise it is such a force that if you are meditating in the night –trying to be aware on the one hand and on the other hand trying to be asleep – sleep cannot win.Sleep is a poor thing. The awareness that is coming to you is so deep and so great, that in the flood of awareness all your sleep will be gone. But if it is not creating any problem, then you are blessed. For almost ninety-five percent of meditators it does not create any problem; only in five percent of people does it create some problem. Those five percent of people can be given different suggestions after looking at their different situations. But for ninety-five percent there is no problem at all; in fact you will feel younger, fresher, more in tune with yourself and the world, more together.The third thing that I want to say to you is: don’t hate anything. Even hate is included, because it makes no difference what the object of hate is; it may be the hate itself. But don’t hate – not simply as a discipline, but as part of an understanding that the same energy which becomes love, becomes hate.When the same energy can become love, then you are being simply stupid in using that energy as hate – because the hate will create wounds in you. It is not going to harm anybody else except you. And love would have created flowers in the place of wounds in you; it was not going to help anybody else except you. So it is simply a question of intelligence.Hate is destructive, self-destructive. Love is tremendous respect for oneself. You may hate anything, anybody, hate itself; but in every way you will find yourself low-energy. Hate sucks your energy, leaves you empty, spent. Love fills you with energy, with overflowing energy; not only healing you, but creating an aura around you in which others may be healed.It is not a question of religion – that hate is bad or immoral. It is a question of intelligence: hate is stupid and love is intelligent.Osho,The more I am able to absorb you, the more thirsty I become. Please talk about meditation and passion.There is no harm in becoming more thirsty for truth. There is no harm in becoming more thirsty for new spaces of experience, new challenges, voyages to new stars in your innermost being. I call it divine discontentment.Only the fools are contented. You can see it. Watch a donkey, how contented he looks! He should be worshipped by all religious people. You cannot find a more contented being – having nothing; but you will never see him frustrated, in despair, freaking out. In the world of donkeys even psychotherapies don’t exist. Donkeys don’t need any psychotherapist. But it is not a quality; it is not to be praised, it is a condemnation. The man of any worth is discontented.The smaller men are discontented about smaller things: money, power, prestige. These are not very far away from the donkeys – cousin-brothers. There is just a difference of a few inches between the donkeys and the presidents and prime ministers.The higher-quality man, the man of superiority, the man who has the potential of growing into a Gautam Buddha, into a Mahavira, into a Zarathustra, will also be discontented – although his discontent is totally different, his dimension is different. He is not discontented because he wants to have more things, he is discontented because he wants to be more – not to have more, but to be more. He wants more being, he wants more awareness, he wants more alertness. He wants more lovingness, he wants more compassion. He wants the whole sky and all the stars within him. His discontent is immense.These smaller people who are discontented for money and power and prestige may find them, and then they will be utterly frustrated. Their whole joy is in the hope, not in the finding. The moment they find, they see that they have been running after shadows.But the really discontented man goes on becoming more and more thirsty, because each step brings him to such immense ecstasies that he cannot stop searching for more. His search is eternal. It is not that what he finds is frustrating, no. It is because what he finds is so satisfying that naturally he wants to go beyond it; there must be more, existence cannot be so limited. It is perfectly good that the more you listen to me the more thirsty you become.Move on. Have an infinite thirst so that your journey toward the truth is unending; you are always, always coming and never reaching.You have also asked that I say something about meditation and passion. Superficially it will look very strange – why are you putting these two together? – but they are together. It is only the more passionate man who becomes a meditator. His passion is so much that nothing ordinary can satisfy it; everything proves small. His passion is so big.This has never been said as clearly as I am saying it: as proof, I can tell you that no impotent man in the whole history of man has ever become enlightened. Strange – if your religious people are right, then all impotent people should have become enlightened because they are the real celibates. Their celibacy is absolutely certain, nobody else’s is certain; everybody else’s celibacy is uncertain.It is the more passionate one who cannot be satisfied by toys, who soon gets fed up with money, with men, with women, with being a celebrity, with fame, with name. They soon become fed up with everything that it is not the real thing. They want the real thing. Their passion is such that unless they find the truth they will not be satisfied.So there is a relationship: only the passionate ones have become great meditators. And the overflowing energy of passion… Unless it is too much it cannot move upward – otherwise it is enough for the biological needs of creating children. When it is too much, then it is bound to rise beyond the boundaries of biology – and that’s how we have found the stages of where it moves in the inner world of man.There are seven stages. At the seventh stage, when it reaches to the highest point in the head, it explodes, as if into thousands of suns. That’s what we have called enlightenment. It is the same energy that expresses itself in sex, creates life; it is the same energy, moving upward in different stages.For example, when it is near the heart it creates a tremendous power of love. When it is near the throat it creates a great power in music, poetry, the authority of every single word uttered. It is the same energy when it reaches to the third-eye center, between the two eyebrows; then a man becomes hypnotic, without his effort. Just to be in his presence, you suddenly find yourself agreeing with him. It is not a question of argument; you fall into the same rhythm.This kind of man never tries to convert anybody. Just by chance, if anybody comes close to him, he is bound to be converted. And this is true conversion because it is a transformation: the man will never be the same again.It is when the same energy is moving beyond the sixth center, the third eye, to the seventh, sahasrar, that one attains to samadhi. But it is the same energy that we used to call passion; at the lowest level it is passion, at the highest level it is compassion.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Lately I find that I am desperately trying to find something to do, or learn something in order to give myself an identity, knowing perfectly well that this is a trap of the mind. Why is it so painful and shocking to not have any identity, to be nobody?The psychology of the crowd is the problem. Your whole upbringing teaches you to be identified as a certain personality. Nobody is worried about who you are; everybody is putting different labels on you. And that is a very easy job, because the search for your own self can be done only by you; nobody else can do it on your behalf.The child comes into the world utterly innocent, a blank sheet of paper. He does not know even his own signature. We have to teach him his name, which is a fiction; and with this fiction every individual starts as a novel. One fiction leads to another. The whole life becomes fictitious, and we have to cling to it because that’s all we have got. Otherwise there is utter emptiness, nothingness, abysmal. We will be lost.A story will help you:A man had lost his way in the mountains and could not reach the village. The sun went down. Darkness covered the whole mountain; the path was very narrow, but to remain in the mountains was dangerous – wild animals… So he was slowly moving: perhaps he might get out of the mountainous region, but his feet slipped on a rock. He was hanging onto the rock – underneath was absolute darkness, abysmal.What do you want? Can you tell that man, “Let go of that rock, it is useless. Why are you holding it?” He is not really holding the rock, he is avoiding the nothingness. That is the only alternative: to leave the rock and disappear into nothingness.It was a cold night, and as it became colder his hands became numb with cold. A point came in the middle of the night when he could not hold onto the rock anymore – not that he did not want to, but his hands were almost frozen. He could not move his fingers. Finally he had to let go of the rock in despair, in utter despair. It was only a question of six hours more, and the morning would have been there and he could have found some way.But in a single split moment the whole story takes a new turn. Here he felt great despair as his hands became incapable of holding onto the rock, but the moment the rock was no longer in his hands, he was standing on the ground!But in the darkness you cannot see the ground. All those six hours that he suffered, he suffered unnecessarily. The ground was not more than six inches away from him.But in darkness, those six inches are infinite.You have been given a false identity. The real identity can be discovered only by you. So nobody is at fault; and you cannot throw your responsibility on your parents, on your teachers, on the society, on anybody. It is just the way things work. You are also not responsible, so don’t feel guilty either. Don’t make others guilty, and don’t feel guilty yourself; this is the way nature works.You begin with a false identity because it is given to you by others, and slowly, slowly more and more fictions are added to it. Each opinion expressed about you becomes you. Somebody says you are beautiful and it is not just an opinion, it becomes part of you. And if many people say you are beautiful, you accept the idea, it is gratifying. You enjoy it, you magnify it. Somebody says you are intelligent; you never deny it. You may have never shown any intelligence in your life, but when somebody says, “You are so intelligent,” you never deny it. It is so satisfying, such a consolation. Now you would like to do something to maintain the fiction, because the fiction needs nourishment.It is a strange phenomenon. You loved a woman, or a man, and before the honeymoon you were telling the woman, “You are the most beautiful woman in the world.” And the woman did not even object to it – that “You have not seen all the women in the world so how can you say it?” But it is so sweet, who cares about logic and reason and rationality? You have given a fiction to her; now she has to feed that fiction continuously.A man was killing two flies in his air-conditioned apartment. How they managed to enter it…? Finally, he killed both and he told his wife, “I have killed both – both the male and the female.”The wife said, “What are you saying? How did you come to know which fly was a female?”He said, “It was easy. She was sitting on the mirror for three hours; only a female can do that. The male was reading the newspaper. I cannot make any other distinction, but I can see that their actions indicate certain ideas. For three hours she was sitting on the mirror, looking from this side to that side. And that idiot fellow was reading that same old newspaper for three hours. He went from the top to the bottom, and again from top to bottom.”Each fiction needs nourishment. That’s why you want to do something; only then can you proclaim that you are somebody. And you want to do something in the best way possible, because it is through your doing that you are going to reach the heights of your ego.It is not a coincidence that painters, poets, actors, political leaders – all kinds of people who have a certain celebrity about them, some fame – are very egoistic.It is very rare to find a poet who is humble, and if a poet is humble he will give birth to an upanishad. But it is very rare to find a poet who is humble. A poet is no ordinary man; he is extraordinary. You cannot do what he can do. His ego… Although he is creative, because of his ego his creativity remains of the lowest kind, mundane.And sometimes if the ego is too much, it can become insane. You can see insanity in the paintings of Picasso and other modern painters, because their egos are touching the stars. Naturally when the ego is so powerful that means the false, the fictitious, has almost become the real. You have forgotten the real completely. If by chance you suddenly meet yourself in your reality you will not recognize it. You can recognize only your unreal self, which we call personality, ego, identity – your somebodiness.And people who cannot find rightful means to nourish their egos try to find unrightful means. Then somebody will “be the greatest thief.” The question is not whether he is a thief or a saint; being a thief or being a saint is immaterial. What matters is being the greatest.There are people who cannot do either, neither the rightful way nor the wrongful way, who are just middle class, mediocre – but they also want to declare that they are somebody, and they find easy means.You can do it. Just cut off half of your mustache – the whole of Mumbai will know within three days who you are. People will even start asking for your signature, your autograph. People are doing that.In Europe there is now a fashion. People are cutting off half of their mustache, half of their hair, and not only cutting them but painting them – green hair, red hair, yellow hair – and half the skull is completely plain! And they are not idiots. They are just normal people. But what else to do in such a competitive world, where every area needs immense effort – and then too you cannot be first in the queue.The Sufi story about Mulla Nasruddin is that he went to listen to a great sage and sat at the very back. But he was feeling very hurt – the saint was sitting on a high stage…Nasruddin started telling jokes to the people around him – and his jokes are really juicy. People started turning toward him more and more. By and by the saint found that everybody’s back was toward him. He said “What is the matter? What is going on? What kind of a meeting is this? Who is this fellow?”Nasruddin said, “My name is Mulla Nasruddin. And it does not matter where I sit; wherever I sit, that is the place of the president. You can sit as high as you want, but if Nasruddin is present nobody is higher.”He could not tolerate it, that this man was sitting there like a king. Something had to be done. The situation could not be simply tolerated. And he managed – just by telling jokes. People started turning toward him – laughter, giggling. Slowly it spread and the whole audience moved. Only the saint was sitting there – at the back of the meeting!Nasruddin used to teach. He was a Sufi master; he had his own disciples. They were going on a pilgrimage, and as they left their campus they had to pass through the main city. And he said to his students, “Listen, I don’t want any trouble. And whatever happens to other people, that is their business. You have to be silent and quietly following me.”They said, “Naturally we are going to follow you. Why are you saying all this to us? We are not concerned with the street and the shopkeepers – they are doing their thing. We have nothing to do with them.”He said, “You will have… But you are not allowed to do anything.” The students could not understand what was going to happen, but soon they understood.As Mulla Nasruddin rode on his donkey they all felt that it was going to be really great trouble – because he was sitting backward. Now to follow such a man… First, he is sitting on a donkey, and you have to admit to people that he is your master. Secondly, he is sitting the wrong way: his back is where his front should be, and his front is where his back should be.And sure enough, businesses stopped; customers, shopkeepers gathered. Everybody was laughing and everybody was asking, “What is the matter with this man? Whenever he comes into the city there is some trouble with him. Now he is not doing anything to anybody so you cannot say… It is his donkey, and he has the absolute birthright to sit any way he wants to sit, but why should he do this? This is not done.” And the students are feeling very embarrassed to be followers of such a man.Finally one student gathered courage and asked, “Master, please let us know the secret: Why are you doing all this? You are becoming a laughingstock, you are making us a laughingstock.”Nasruddin said, “First thing: I will explain to you afterward the reason why I am sitting in this way. But the basic thing is, Nasruddin cannot pass through any street without being recognized.”Even Mohammedan women were turning aside their veils and looking. There was not a single person around; whoever heard that this was happening rushed to the street, everything stopped.Nasruddin said, “This is how I love it. This is the basic, real reason. Now I come to philosophy: the philosophical reason is that if I sit in the normal way, my back will be to your face. That is insulting. And I am a master, no ordinary teacher; I cannot insult my disciples.“The other way is: to avoid this situation you should move ahead of me, but then your back will be toward me. That is even worse. The disciples are insulting the master; this cannot be allowed. Now tell me, what should I do? This is the only scientific solution to the problem: I am facing you, you are facing me. Neither I am insulting you nor are you insulting me.“And as far as the donkey is concerned, he is absolutely indifferent; how I sit does not matter. He himself is a philosopher. He does not mind – it is my business how I sit. He has to carry the load; the load will remain the same. This is the philosophical reason, but this is only for the idiots. The real thing I have told you: Nasruddin cannot go anywhere without being recognized as somebody special.”You want to do something, to be somebody, and you are asking why one is afraid to be nobody. It is because you don’t know that the darkness of nobodiness is not a death, it is authentic life. It is your true life, it is how you were born – without name, without caste, without religion, without country.You were born as nobody and you will die as nobody. And between these two points of nobodiness you remain nobody, just deceiving yourself that you are this and you are that.And because the whole society is of the same kind of people – they are together in the same conspiracy – we are all deceiving each other because we want to be deceived by others. We say to people, “You are great” because we want to listen to them say, “You are great.”When I was a student in the university one of the professors told me… Knowing about me, that I can be a nuisance, he wanted to make some contact, some friendship before his course started. He met me in the garden and he told me, “You are a very intelligent person.”I said, “Stop all this nonsense. How can you know that I am an intelligent person? You are meeting me for the first time; you have not seen me doing anything. But one thing I can say, that you are stupid.”He said, “But I am a professor in the university and you are going to be my student. You should learn etiquette.”I said, “If I am intelligent, that is enough etiquette. If you are stupid, you will have to learn etiquette. Why, in the first place, have you approached me? I can see fear in your eyes, I can see trembling inside you. Just look down and look at your pajama trouser – it is trembling.” And he looked, although the pajama was not trembling.I said, “That proves the point. The pajama is more courageous than you! You looked! You believed because you know that inside you are trembling, perhaps the pajama is also trembling.” But pajamas are utter idiots; they don’t know fear.And I said to him, “About-turn!”He said, “You are strange. You are going to be my student!”I said, “Don’t be worried. Anybody who is going to be my professor is going to be in trouble. You just rest, relax, get ready before the course starts. Do some physical exercise. Stand on your head to give it a little more nourishment.”He said, “My God, I have not said anything and you are bombarding me!”I said, “You said everything the moment you said, without any reason, ‘You are a very intelligent person.’ I can understand this much: that it was a bribe. I don’t accept bribes.”But everybody accepts them. There is a mutual understanding in the whole society that, “You say good things about us, we will say good things about you.”When somebody dies, in every society of the world it is customary, conventional, not to say anything bad about the dead man. You will think that perhaps it is a cultural standpoint; it is not. To not say anything bad about a dead man is really out of fear. It arose in the past when people thought the dead person was going to become a ghost: “He is hearing, he is around; don’t say anything bad about him.” Alive, there was the possibility of fighting with him; now he is a ghost you are absolutely helpless.In one town it was such a difficulty. One politician died. He was a very cunning, shrewd politician, and the whole town was against him. Everybody knew that it was difficult to find a worse kind of man: he was the most corrupted. And then the time came that something good had to be said about him.All the elders of the town looked at each other – “You say something” – because there was nothing good to say about him. They knew his whole life; there was not a single thing. Finally one young man stood and he said, “This man has five brothers. In comparison to the remaining four, he was an angel.”The remaining four were absolute devils – he said something good about him.People are talking about each other, giving ideas to each other. And you have to do something so that you can attract comments, so that you can attract awards, so that you can attract a Nobel Prize.One of my sannyasins is a Nobel Prize winner. He told me, “I was not so interested in winning the Nobel Prize. My whole interest was that only a Nobel Prize winner can propose another name for a Nobel Prize and I wanted to propose your name. And that was my only desire, that if I could get a Nobel Prize then I would be a proper person.”He received the Nobel Prize and immediately, that same day, he talked to the president of the Nobel committee, gave a few books of my discourses to him and said, “If this man does not get a Nobel Prize it is an insult to the Nobel Prize.”And the president said, whispered in his ear, “Never mention this man’s name in the committee; because you have got a Nobel Prize you can mention his name, but you could never get the votes. Nobody is going to support his name. I have read all these books, and most probably every Nobel Prize winner has read all these books, but nobody will mention his name. It is dangerous to be associated with him, to be so deeply associated that you propose his name for the Nobel Prize.”He was shocked. He said to me, “I could not believe my own ears. And all joy that I had because I had become a Nobel Prize-winning economist disappeared. It was sheer politics; there was no question of judging quality. The whole question was how it was going to affect the political atmosphere. And the president said to me, ‘That man is dangerous. You should not mention his name; otherwise you will be condemned.’”So one goes on accumulating fictions about and around. That’s why you want to do something, something special. People have been doing that kind of thing for thousands of years.Somebody is standing naked in the cold, snow falling, and he becomes well-known. I know one man who used to stand in the river, the water up to his neck; he broke all records – for seventy-two hours continuously he stood there. I asked him, “But what is the point? How is the world better because you stood in the river for seventy-two hours? Have you made the world a little more beautiful, a little more juicy? Have you brought a little more song and dance to the world?”He said, “Who cares about the world? As far as I am concerned now I am the most famous man around this area, and that was my purpose.”Every twelve years in Prayag we have a great gathering of people, perhaps the biggest gathering in the world, Kumbh Mela. Thousands of naked Hindu monks march toward the Ganges. At the right moment, determined by the astrologers, they have the traditional right to enter into the Ganges; they have to be the first.I was surprised by one fact – because these thousands of naked monks who come to the gathering at Prayag are never seen again. I had been searching for where these thousands of people disappeared to, and I was in for a surprise. The surprise was that they live in temples, in ashrams, but there they use clothes. They come naked to the Ganges only because it is the traditional right of the naked monk to be the first. Clever! And the whole year they are using clothes, and nobody bothers about them, but when they come naked in a long procession people are falling at their feet. Thousands of people are so much desiring to touch their feet, or at least the dust on which the naked monks’ procession has passed. Even the dust has become divine.And what is the contribution of these people? In what way have they made the world better? Why are they recognized? – just a stupid thing: because they are standing naked. Just because you cannot stand naked; you feel a little ashamed. They are professionals. They do it every time there is a gathering; this is their profession. And you can see from their faces that they are the most mediocre and ordinary people.You want to do something, but all that it will bring is opinions, good or bad. It will give you a certain identity; you are afraid of being without identity.And this is the most significant step toward the ultimate, the absolute, toward your own self: to drop the false identity and enter into darkness, trusting. You trust nature for everything essential, and it is strange – you cannot trust in this small thing.I know one man who could not sleep because he was afraid that if he slept and breathing stopped, then what? Only one man have I come across. The whole family was trying to convince him, “Don’t be an idiot. We all sleep.”He said, “That I know, but my question is that if it stops I will not be able to do anything.”He was brought to me by his parents and they said, “This idiot has got some idea, some original idea! He cannot sleep; he sits. He has disturbed the life of the whole family, because you cannot sit the whole night in silence. So he does this, he does that; he opens this window, he closes that door. He does not allow anybody else to sleep – in fact that’s what the purpose of opening windows and doors is. He is driving everybody mad. And logically we don’t know how to convince him. He says, ‘If my breathing stops, then…?’”I said to that man, “You are perfectly right, but I ask you: if while you are awake your breathing stops then what you will do? What can you do? Where will you be? When the breathing has stopped, you will not be here to do anything.”He said, “I have not seen this side of it. That’s true.”“Now,” I said, “what are you going to do? Neither can you remain awake nor can you be asleep; in either case the question is the same. So just be normal. When the breathing stops, it stops. You cannot do anything.”He said, “True. I have understood; it is pointless, unnecessary trouble.”You believe, you trust, you have a tremendous faith in existence. Every night you go on sleeping without bothering whether the breathing will continue or not. Breathing is still visible – your blood circulation, your heartbeat, the whole functioning of digestion – it is not dependent on you. Once you have swallowed something you are not supposed to do anything; existence takes over. For everything that is essential in your life you depend totally on your trust in existence. And this nonessential thing – a bogus personality which others have made around you – you cannot come out of it.It is a simple insight that you will have to come out of this somebodiness and you will have to go through a passage of nobodiness. Only then will you discover your real self – which is not identity, which is your reality. And to find it is to find everything worth finding.But you have to take a little risk – and it is not a great risk. Borrowed ideas…I used to talk with one of my professors. He was not convinced by me that the whole personality is borrowed. He was a healthy man. He is still alive, retired, an old man. I said, “I will prove it.”I went to his wife and told her, “You have to do me a favor, a small favor.”She said, “What is the matter?”I said, “When Professor S.S. Roy gets up in the morning, the first thing you have to say is, ‘What is happening? Why are you looking so pale?’ and remember exactly what he says in response. It is better if you write it down so you don’t forget. I want the exact words.”I said to the gardener, “When he comes out, you just drop your work and hold him and say, ‘What has happened? You are looking so weak; I thought you were going to fall. Could you not sleep the whole night? Your body seems to have a fever.’”The gardener said, “But without fever… He will throw me out of service!”“You don’t be worried. That is my guarantee: you will be promoted, you don’t be worried. You just do what I am saying.”And the wife of the professor was there and she said, “Yes, he is right. You don’t be worried; you just do what he is saying.”And I told him, “Write down on this piece of paper whatever Professor Roy says, his exact words.”And so on I went, to the post office nearby where he used to meet the postmaster – they were great friends, both were Bengalis – all the way up to the department of philosophy. It was almost one mile. He used to walk; he loved walking.And I told the peon in front of the department, “You have to just pick him up.” He was a wrestler-type of man; I said, “You have just to pick him up and lay him down on the bench.”He said, “What are you saying? Are you crazy or something? I have small children, I have a wife, an old father and mother. This kind of thing… And what is the purpose?”I said, “You don’t be worried. He will be in such a position that this is what is going to be needed.”He said, “But how have you come to know?”I said, “You don’t be worried, this is beyond you. Later on I will explain everything to you. And it is my guarantee that no harm is going to happen to you.”He said, “But your guarantee does not mean anything – you may change tomorrow! You are a strange fellow. You are telling the peon to behave in such a way with the professor that it will be almost a wrestling competition – because if I forcibly put him on the bench, he is going to resist. And if he is going to resist, I am not going to take it either; I am a very angry man. If he hits me or anything, I am going to hit him.”I said, “Whatever happens let it happen, because I know he cannot hit you. He is in a very feverish condition and is not listening to his wife, to his friends, to anybody. He is coming staggering. He may fall on the floor, break his bones; then you will be responsible.”He said, “No, I don’t want him to break his bones.”“Then,” I said, “you immediately pick him up. Whatever he says, you remember – and this is the paper… As you put him inside the office on the bench you write down what he has said, and I will be coming later on to collect all the papers.”Just behind him, I started collecting the papers. To the wife he said, “Pale? You must be mad. I had a perfectly beautiful sleep, I am a hundred percent healthy. Something must be wrong in your eyes; you should go to the optician. Pale? – I have suspected for a long time that you need glasses.”He came out, and the gardener took hold of him and said, “Master, what is the situation, what is happening? Your body is burning, you have fever. Have you slept in the night or not? You would have fallen if I had not stopped.”He said, “I could not sleep the whole night. And really, the body is burning. But I am going to the department because my record is that I have never been absent. So at least I will go. Tell the head of the department and ask him to bring me back home in his car. I don’t have energy to walk one mile, but I have to.”As he went out the postmaster said, “Mister Roy, it seems you have grown ten years older. But what has happened?”Professor Roy said, “I don’t know what has happened. Something certainly has happened. And I was angry at my poor wife; she was absolutely right. How do I look?”The postmaster said, “Just like a ghost, absolutely pale.”He said, “My God! Should I go to the department or not?”The postmaster said, “That is your record, your lifelong record – don’t break it, go. You can manage. I cannot certify that you will be able to come back again. The situation has gone so far down that if you can manage to breathe for one mile more it will be a great achievement. About coming back, I don’t know.”And you could see him coming, like a drunkard…He passed a few more stages where he was checked, and he gave his statements. And when he reached the department the peon just picked him up. He said, “What are you doing?”The peon said, “What am I doing? I am doing what I am supposed to do – lie down!”He immediately followed the instructions of the peon: “Close your eyes, and I will put a cloth soaked in water over them. You are burning and hot with fever – it must be 108 degrees, not less than that.”Professor Roy said, “You are right. I am seeing things that I have never seen. It seems the bench is flowing up – sannipat, delirium. It happens when the fever reaches beyond 105 degrees.” And he had a fever of 108 degrees according to the peon, who knew nothing about what 108 degrees is!And then I came with all the papers I had collected and I told him, “Please go through these papers.”He said, “This is not the time; just a few moments are left. If you have something to say, say it; or just put your hand on my head and sit by my side – but no more papers. What papers?”I said, “You don’t understand; these are not examination papers or anything. These are the papers I have collected behind you.”He immediately sat up. He said, “But what papers?”I showed him: “To the wife you denied that you are sick, denied that you had a fever. You said that you slept perfectly well, that you are a hundred percent healthy, that you suspected the wife’s eyes and you wanted her to go to the optician. These are the papers, and this is the end result – you are lying down on the bench. For what?”And he actually had a fever! I said, “I will take you back home. But it was simply because of your insistence that I had to prove that people’s minds are made by the opinions of others.”People can die just because of the opinions of others; people can live a long life just because of the opinions of others. We are so false.This is not our true reality.Have the courage to get out of the jungle of the opinions of your whole life. Just in the passage you will have to be, for a moment, nobody – and then you are all, everybody. And that freedom of being all and universal and eternal, that’s the goal of all real seekers.Osho,I am a first-grade student in the subject of witnessing. Whenever I am listening to you talking about watching, witnessing, something in me feels so thrilled, excited, joyful, and a big “Ah!” comes up. Recently I have heard you talk about watching the witness. Yet I'm already happy and grateful for the few moments a day when I remember my hands, my body, having a little distance from my thoughts and emotions. Could you please start with the ABC on this subject?The phenomenon of witnessing has no ABC or XYZ. It is a simple phenomenon; it is a single step. It is one process.You can watch the body; the watching is the same. You can watch the mind – the object has changed, but the watching is the same. You can watch the emotions – again objects have changed, but the process of watching is the same. You can watch the watcher – a tremendous quantum leap, but still the subject is the same; only the object has changed.Now watchfulness itself is being used as an object, and you have stepped behind watchfulness; you can watch it. And you cannot go beyond this watchfulness. You have come to the very end of your inner core.So you are going perfectly right. Enjoy it, rejoice in it. More and more silence and peace will be coming your way, more and more blissfulness and benediction. There is no end as far as rewards are concerned, because they are all along the way. From the beginning to the very end, each step brings a new space – but it is the same step.The journey of one thousand miles is done by a simple step, one step. You cannot take two steps at one time. Step after step, just a single step can be stretched to ten thousand miles or to infinity.Watchfulness is a simple step. There is no alphabet in it. There are no beginners in it – there are no amateurs and no experts in it. Everybody is in the middle, always in the middle. You are moving perfectly right. Just go on.Osho,In these rare moments of love and gratefulness, every desire inside me stops, and I feel complete. Can you say more about how love and gratefulness stop my desiring mind?You are one energy. This is something basic to be remembered. It will help in many doubtful moments, in many questioning moments.A man came to Junnaid, a Sufi mystic, and asked him, “What do you say about predetermination, kismet, fate, and the freedom of man? Is man free to do whatever he wants to do? Or is he simply a puppet in the hands of an unknown puppeteer, who simply dances the dance that the puppeteer chooses?”Junnaid is one of the few beautiful mystics. He shouted at the man, “Raise up one leg!”The man was a very rich man; Junnaid knew it. All the disciples, the whole school knew about it – and he had shouted so loudly and so rudely, “Raise one leg up!” And the rich man had never followed anybody’s orders; he had not gone there to follow orders. And he could not conceive even a far-off, far-fetched, off-the-wall relationship between his question and this answer. But when you are facing a man like Junnaid you have to follow him. He raised his right leg.Junnaid said, “That is not enough. Now raise the other, too.”Now the man was at a loss, and angry also. He said, “You are asking absurdities! I had come to ask a philosophical question – that you simply dropped without answering. You asked me to raise one leg, I raised my right leg. And now you are asking me to raise the other, too. What do you want? How can I raise both legs?”Junnaid said, “Then sit down. Have you received the answer to your question or not?”The man said, “The answer to my question has not been given yet. Instead you have been training me in this parade!”Junnaid said, “See the point: when I said, ‘Raise one of your legs,’ you had the freedom to choose either the right or the left. Nobody was determining it, it was your choice to raise the right leg. But once you had chosen the right leg you could not choose the left too. It is your freedom that has determined the fact of your bondage. Now your left leg is in bondage.”Man is half free and half in bondage, but he is free first. And it is his freedom, how he uses his freedom that determines his bondage. There is nobody sitting there writing in your head or making lines on your palms. Even an omnipotent God must be tired by now, doing this stupid thing of making lines on people’s hands. And so many people are coming. Writing in everybody’s head what he is going to be, where he is going to be born, when he is going to die, what disease, what doctor is going to kill him… All these details!Either God must have gone mad doing all this work – just think of yourself if you have to do this kind of work, and for no reason – or he must have committed suicide. Even if he were mad he would have to do his work; so for a few days he may have been mad while he made this humanity, and then he committed suicide – because he does not want to see the world evaporate because of nuclear weapons. But he has written those nuclear weapons in your heads; he is responsible.Nobody is responsible, and there is no God. These are our strategies to throw responsibility into others’ hands.You are free, but each act of freedom brings a responsibility – and that is your bondage. Either call it bondage, which is not a beautiful word, or call it responsibility. That is what I call it. You choose a certain act – that is your freedom – but then the consequences will be your responsibility.I am against Krishna’s idea. He says to Arjuna, in the Gita, that “Only the action is in your hands; the result is in God’s hands.” That kind of split is absolutely illogical, absurd. Action is in your hands and the result will be in God’s hands: this is very tricky. This is the strategy of the priesthood.Otherwise, the simple fact is that the act is yours and the responsibility is yours. Action and its effect, cause and effect, are connected together, you cannot divide them.But why was Krishna dividing it? He was just representing the priesthood. For thousands of years the priesthood has been confronting a simple problem which they cannot solve. They see criminals, sinners becoming successful, rich. They see simple people, innocent people being crushed, exploited, oppressed, and still religion goes on saying, “Be simple, be innocent.”Then the question arises: if innocence and simplicity are never rewarded, only corruption, cruelty, violence are rewarded, then why be simple? To avoid this dilemma they had to create a false theology: that it is because of their past lives’ actions that those people are enjoying success, fame; now God is giving them rewards.But why is God so lazy, so lousy? It seems that there is also some kind of Indian bureaucracy, so that the files move from one life into another life. If it is true, then bribery must exist there; just with the file, a hundred-rupee note, and then Ghanshyamdas Birla enters into heaven and the poor innocent man without a hundred-rupee note is thrown into hell. You have to pass something under the table, otherwise the file does not move over the table. It moves according to how many notes move underneath the table – otherwise why should it take such a long time? No, in existence things are immediate.I am in absolute agreement with the idea of science that cause and effect are together. As far as the cause is concerned, you are free. But then you should remember: the effect is decided by you, by your cause. In fact you are free in that too; it is an outcome of your freedom.Take life in a very simple, non-theological way and you will be surprised: there are no problems. It is a mystery, but not a problem. A problem is that which can be solved; a mystery is that which can be lived but can never be solved.Meditation is nothing but an exploration of the mystery – not an explanation, not a search to find the solution to it, but an exploration. To dissolve into it slowly, slowly, just as a ripple disappears into the ocean – this disappearance is the only religiousness that I know of. All else is nonsense.Listening to me should not be just a listening; it should be a drinking. Only then is there a possibility of understanding. And once it becomes your understanding then it remains with you whether you are with me or not. Then wherever you are – sitting by the side of the ocean or under a tree or under the stars – it is with you.My whole effort is to give you a taste of something that can start growing within you and can make you whole and complete. That’s the feeling that has come to you, that while listening to me, feeling love, feeling silence, you feel a completion; everything is perfect. And all desires disappear, because there is no need.When there is completion, what are you going to desire? Desire is always out of incompletion. Your whole energy is so fulfilled and so contented that it needs nothing.There are only two types of people in the world: the beggars and the emperors. Those who live in desires are beggars; those who live in completion – of silence, peace and love – are the emperors.Osho,Last time I saw you in Pune, you smiled at me and you sent me one of your unforgettable glances. Somehow, deep down I knew that this was the last time I would see you. I was ready to live without your physical presence, I was ready to live without your morning discourses, but that smile… Oh Osho! In that moment my heart was crucified by the most unbearable pain ever felt in my life, and I thought: “Oh my God, I can live without his presence, but how, how in heaven can I live without this smile? I can't, I certainly can't. I will die without it!” And suddenly, at the bottom of the agony I heard a voice inside my heart. It sounded like your voice saying, “Just see! If you can just see, you will realize that all of the existence is smiling at you twenty-four hours a day, in the same way, exactly the same way!” For all these years I've been whispering this secret to myself, every morning, every evening, but now I want to say it loudly. Would you kindly allow me to reveal the secret, the gift for which I will be eternally grateful to my master?There is no need to ask me.It is nice of you that you asked, but when the urge has come to say the secret loudly then don’t wait for anything, not even for my approval. Just say it – because it is neither mine nor yours; it belongs to the whole.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 12 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Why has life all along been a very serious affair for me, and not fun to live and enjoy and celebrate as you say it should be?Maitreya, you have been in the wrong hands from the very beginning of your life. It will be difficult for others to understand the answer if I don’t tell you the background of the questioner.Maitreya is an old politician. He was for three terms a member of the parliament, a close friend of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, a follower of Mahatma Gandhi. He had devoted his whole life to the struggle for freedom. He had never looked at his own being; he was too much concerned with the freedom of the nation. He had no time to think that there is a higher freedom, the freedom of the self. He came into contact with me very late in his life. By that time Gandhiism had made its deep conditioning in him, and that is the fundamental reason for his misery.Mahatma Gandhi and his philosophy represent the ancient idea of the religious man as serious, sad, miserable, suffering. The old religions conceive this earth as a punishment; you are imprisoned here – because of your past lives’ evil acts you have been thrown into this life; this is a punishment. And how can one be joyous when life itself is condemned as punishment? Then the only way out of the miseries is to get rid of life; hence the anti-life attitude of all the religions.And Mahatma Gandhi is a contemporary representative of the whole rubbish of the past: Man has to fight life, man has to fight everything that makes life beautiful, joyous, everything that will make you desirous of life – because the very desire for life has to be destroyed.A point comes when you are against everything in life, so there is no question of desiring a future life. You desire freedom from the body – how can you enjoy your body? How can you enjoy swimming? The body is the enemy. How can you enjoy love? The body is the bondage. How can you enjoy food? You have to uproot all possibilities of enjoying your body, others’ bodies.And the whole world is made of matter. You have to avoid enjoying the surrounding world, you have to avoid a beautiful sunset. It is materialistic to enjoy a beautiful sunset because it is material. To enjoy a roseflower is against religions. To enjoy anything is dangerous because it will lead you deeper into life, and you have to get rid of life. So all the teachings of religion try in different disguises to cut the roots of your joy, of your pleasure, of your blissfulness.Maitreya is a victim, just as everybody else in the world is a victim. On the one hand he was told to be anti-life; that has been the ancient idea of renunciation, of renouncing the world and its joys. And on the other hand he was told to sacrifice himself for the freedom of the country, for others. To think of oneself, to think of meditation was condemned as selfish: “You should think of others, you should think of others’ well-being, you should think of others’ freedom.”“You should think only of others, never of yourself”: that is the ideal of the religious man, the saint. And to me it is the image of the idiot, because a person who is not joyful, who is not meditative, a person who is not peaceful, overflowing with love, cannot be of any help to anybody. You cannot give something to others which you don’t have. You are empty, and you are trying to make others fulfilled. They are empty; they are trying to make others fulfilled. Nobody knows what fulfillment is!The journey begins from oneself; you have to be fulfilled first. Then there is no need for anybody to teach you, “Now, share it.” Once you are fulfilled you are overflowing; sharing is autonomous, it comes by itself. When your heart is full of song it bursts into singing. When you blossom, your fragrance is bound to reach others; you cannot prevent it.I teach selfishness, because unless you are selfish you can never be of help to anybody in the world. All the altruistic teachings are useless, meaningless, because they are based on people who are themselves empty.For example, Jesus says, “Love your enemies just the way you love yourself” – but nobody bothers about whether you love yourself. The enemy comes as number two; the first thing is to love yourself. If you have not loved yourself, how can you love the enemy? You cannot love even the friend. You don’t know what love means. It is a meaningless word. You have heard it so you feel you understand it, but you have not experienced it, and without experience there is no understanding.Jesus is insistent, “Love your enemies just as you love yourself,” but in his whole gospel he has completely forgotten to tell people, “Love yourself.” That will be selfishness.That’s what I teach: Love yourself so much that it starts overflowing you. First, naturally, it will reach to those who are close – to your friends, your lovers, your neighbors – and finally, that is the success, the climax, when your love reaches the enemy, spreading in waves. And when the enemy is covered, nothing is left out of the area of your love. But it must begin from the center of your being.Maitreya’s misfortune has been that he fell into the hands of Gandhians. Gandhi never loved himself. Gandhi never loved anybody; he could not, because of his very ideology. It was impossible to conceive.For example his ideology was so important that he was ready to sacrifice everything. He was a high-caste Hindu. His wife was uneducated, and one thing was impossible for her – to clean the Indian toilet. The modern Western toilet is one thing, anybody can clean it but the Indian toilet was really a punishment. And for an uneducated girl who had always heard that it was done by the untouchables only…Hindus have made a class of untouchables, sudras – because of their dirty work they have become dirty, so dirty that even their shadows are untouchable. If a sudra passes by your side and his shadow touches you, the scriptures prescribe an immediate bath. The shadow is nonexistential – but that poor Kasturba, Gandhi’s wife, carried the same conditioning. And Gandhi was forcing everybody; they had to clean the toilet in turn.Kasturba was nine months pregnant, and one evening she refused. Gandhi was so furious that he threw her out of the house, closed the house, and told her that unless she was ready to clean the toilet she should not come to his house.The ideology, a stupid ideology… He himself could have cleaned it if the wife was not willing. If he had loved the wife, the simple thing would have been to say, “Don’t worry, I will clean it.” No, he would not clean it; the wife had to clean it. And without thinking about the fact that she was just going to give birth to a child, in the middle of the night he threw her out. It was in Johannesburg, in South Africa. She did not understand English, she did not understand any language other than Gujarati. She could not even talk to anybody, ask anybody. In such a helpless condition… And he would open the door only if she first cleaned the toilet. In the middle of the night she had to clean the toilet; then she was allowed in. His ideology came first.His eldest son Haridas wanted to study. Gandhi was against schools, colleges, universities, any kind of contemporary thing – so he was against it. His history stopped with the spinning wheel; after the spinning wheel, whatsoever had happened in the world was wrong, was done by evil.Haridas was really a very intelligent man. I came to know him personally. He said, “I argued with my father, that ‘All that you are capable of is because of this education you have got. Without this education you would not have been able to fight the British Empire. And trust me, I am your son. The education is not going to corrupt me.’ But he said, ‘I have said it, and that is final. None of my children are going to be educated by this corrupted educational system.’” And none of his children were educated.Haridas escaped from the house and lived with one of his uncles, just to get an education. And because he did not obey Gandhi… And love knows nothing of such ugly things as obedience, because obedience means forcing somebody into slavery. Love gives freedom.And the cause for which Haridas escaped – nobody can say that he was wrong; he simply wanted to be educated. But Gandhi told Kasturba and all his other sons, “This house, for Haridas, is closed. If he comes to this house close the door; he is dead for me.”Haridas went there. After he had graduated from the university, he went because he thought he would go, fall at the feet of his father, and ask his forgiveness. He hoped that a man who talks about nonviolence, love, compassion, was going to forgive. And he had not committed any sin; he had simply not followed his father’s order, which rationally he felt was wrong. The order was wrong; his disobedience was logically right. He was not corrupted or anything, he had simply become more intelligent, sharper, more rational. There had been no harm. He had become more individual. But perhaps no father wants any son to become an individual. The ego of the father wants his children just to be obedient carbon copies.But Haridas found that the doors were closed as they saw him entering; the doors were closed. And Gandhi said, “When I die…” In India it is the convention that after death the eldest son gives fire to the dead body on the funeral pyre. Haridas was the eldest son. Now you can see the vengeance – with all the nonsense about nonviolence, love, compassion – in actuality, the vengeance. And the vengeance was such that he was even thinking about after death: “When I die you have to be aware that Haridas should not be allowed to give fire to my dead body. I have disowned him, he is no longer my son.”He never loved himself. He tortured himself as much as possible. But when people torture themselves in the name of spirituality, religion, nobody thinks that something is wrong. If you stop eating without saying anything spiritual or religious about it, you will be thought mad. You have to be treated because the physical body, if it is healthy, the mind, if it is healthy, needs food. And it is an everyday need. If somebody starts enjoying being hungry, psychologists have a name for it: “That man is a masochist; he enjoys torturing himself. He finds ways to torture himself.”But if you understand psychology, ninety-nine percent of your saints and sages will be categorized as masochists, because what were they doing? Somebody was fasting; somebody was standing for years and not sitting down; somebody was standing on his head; somebody was standing naked the whole year, in the cold winter in the mountains, in the snow – and people were worshipping them. In fact these people should have been treated, they were sick. And they will find any excuse. They will rationalize their sickness.For example, Gandhi went on a fast unto death. And what was the reason? The reason was that his secretary had fallen in love with a girl. Strange, if he has fallen in love he will suffer – why are you suffering? It doesn’t seem to be connected with cause and effect. How does Mahatma Gandhi come in? But the problem was that in his ashram it was a rule that nobody can fall in love. Love everybody, but don’t fall in love. Strange things!So love is just simply a word, it does not mean anything. So everybody says to everybody, “I love you” – but don’t mean it! If you mean it, Mahatma Gandhi will go on a fast unto death: “He really means it” – his own secretary! Now the secretary and the girl, who was an ashramite, were embarrassed. And everybody was at their heads: “You have put that old man in trouble.”They said, “We have not done anything to him.” And they were sitting by his side massaging his feet – “Somehow, forgive us. We will never do anything like that again. We will simply love. We will never fall in love, we promise you. But please start eating; otherwise people will kill us. They are threatening us, saying to us ‘You are the cause.’”But do you know what rationalization Mahatma Gandhi had? He said, “You are not the cause. I am simply purifying my spirit, and because my own secretary falls in love, that means my soul is not pure. Something is impure in me; otherwise, how is it possible? It is inconceivable – my own secretary, who lives with me twenty-four hours a day. It is not to punish you; it is to punish myself. I must be wrong; some impurity in my soul must have caused this.”Strange. That means if he becomes absolutely pure, no love affair is going to happen in the whole world – because one mahatma has become absolutely pure, how can you dare to fall in love? Love will disappear. It is because of the impurity of Mahatma Gandhi that it exists! But it exists too much; that means all these mahatmas and saints are really impure. Rationalizations… But they cannot hide the fact.Maitreya was caught in the trap of these people. I simply took him out of the parliament. One of my friends, who was an MP, had arranged a small meeting of a few parliament members who he thought would be able to understand me. Maitreya was also invited, and that’s how he was caught in my net. But he was not aware that this is a totally different kind of net.His whole life he has been a Gandhian – miserable, sad, sacrificing, living for others. With me he started thinking of totally new things: living for yourself, loving yourself, exploring your being; because to me, your individuality is your universe. First explore it. Don’t leave a single corner of your being unexplored. Only then will the things which others had been forcing on you start happening. I want you to love many people, I want you to share your joy with many people – but first you must have it.You are a beggar and you are trying to make others rich.I am reminded:One American, Napoleon Hill, has written a very beautiful book; he is certainly one of the best writers alive. The name of the book is Think and Grow Rich. When his first edition was published, he was standing in the publisher’s shop to sign the first-day copies. There was a big crowd. Henry Ford had also come; he always used to go to look in the bookshop to find some books. Seeing this big line and a man signing books, he went there. He asked, “What kind of book is this?”Napoleon Hill said, “I am happy – I know you, but you don’t know me. My name is Napoleon Hill, and this is my first book. And it is certainly going to be one of the best-sellers in the world.” And it proved true; now that book has sold second only to the Bible.Henry Ford looked at the cover and read the title: Think and Grow Rich. He looked from up to down, from down to up at Napoleon Hill; Napoleon Hill said, “Is there something wrong?”He said, “No, nothing is wrong. Have you come in your own car or on public transport?”Napoleon Hill said, “But that is not connected with the book.”Ford said, “It is connected with the book. Answer me: Have you come in your own private car or on a public bus?”He said, “I have come on a public bus.”Henry Ford returned the copy and he said, “When you have your own car, then you come to me. You yourself are not rich enough to have an ordinary car, and you are writing a book: Think and Grow Rich. So what have you been doing all these years? Not thinking? Think about a car – and it has to be a Ford car!“Now do you see,” he said, “that it is connected? A man who says his philosophy is that just by thinking you can become rich still travels on a public transport bus! This is enough proof that his book should not be in the market at all. You are a cheat. And of course the book will sell, because there are millions of poor people who would love just to think and grow rich.“But my son,” said Henry Ford, “it is not so easy just to think and grow rich. You can think and be poor, but you can’t think and be rich – that is not in your hands. You should come to me to have a few lessons in how to be rich.”He himself was born a poor man. He became rich by his own genius. And when his sons came from the university, he did not allow them to take big positions in the firm. They had to start from ABC, exactly from where he himself had started; he had started by polishing shoes in front of a factory. So in front of Ford’s factory, his own sons were polishing the shoes of laborers who were working in their father’s factory.He said, “Start from ABC. You should learn by experience. This whole business is yours; you will inherit it. But before you inherit it you should be capable of creating it. Otherwise you will not be able to maintain it; the empire will disappear.”Maitreya has been living a life of rift, split. His past is Gandhian, his present is absolutely different. The past is heavy, long; he is trying hard to get out of it. He will be able to get out of it, but it is going to be a hard task. He himself has cultivated a certain personality; now he has to dismantle it and start from ABC again. Now at the age beyond sixty he feels afraid about whether he will be able to manage, or if death will intervene and he will be nowhere.Don’t be worried. Even a single moment of freedom from conditioning – conditioning that you know intellectually is wrong – a single moment of freedom from it is enough; it is equal to eternity. So don’t be worried about death, that there is not much time. There is no need for time. It is only a question of insight, just seeing the point that your whole upbringing in the past has been wrong. Just to see it; it has been an imprisonment, and you will find yourself suddenly getting out of it. Who wants to live in a prison?My whole effort here is to bring you out of your prisons. You have given different names to your prisons: Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, Judaism. There are three hundred religions in the world, three hundred different varieties of prisons. You can choose.And there are many people who go on moving from one to another. In the beginning, the new prison looks better because you don’t understand that these fetters are fetters. You are accustomed to the old fetters of a different prison, a different kind of cell, a different kind of discipline. Here all those old things are absent; you think this is freedom, but soon you are caught in new fetters, new bondages.It is just like getting married to one woman, then divorcing, then getting married to another woman. One man did this exercise eight times. Obviously, it was in California. But he was very much puzzled, because he went on changing the woman but after two or three months the same problems arose. Different nose, different face, different color of hair, different height, different shape – strange, within three months the same trouble, the same problems. When he married the eighth woman, on the second day he discovered that this was a woman he had married once before. This was his second wife. So much time had passed – both had changed, so they could not recognize each other. They met on a beach and got married. Then he started thinking, and he found that although he changed the women, he was always marrying the same woman.It is not a question of changing women or men; it is not a question of changing ideologies, religions. It is a question of living without ideologies, without religions, without philosophies. When you come out of one prison, don’t start entering into another. Remain in the open sky. It is not a question of marrying one woman, divorcing, and marrying another. Marriage is the problem.Love is enough. And love has freedom. Marriage is only a license, an ugly thing, an institution, and to live in an institution is bound to be sad, miserable. And the wife takes revenge because you have made the prison for her; you take revenge because she has made the prison for you. And you are both the jail and the jailers. It is a strange phenomenon. Both are spying on each other, both are watching each other. Both are being jealous. Both are trying to dominate. Both are destroying all that love can give – joy, freedom, friendship.Have you seen any husband and wife being friends? I have known thousands of couples, but not a single couple was in a state of friendship. They were intimate enemies – living together, fighting together. They have decided to live together and to die together, but to continue harassing each other.We only change the superficial things. The Gandhian becomes a communist, there is no problem. The communist becomes a fascist, there is no problem. But to be with me is a problem because I simply drag you out of your prison and leave you under the stars, in the open.You are accustomed to a roof – howsoever miserable, but a roof – and I leave you just under the stars, on the grass, with not even a mattress! And you are so accustomed to a bed…Perhaps you don’t know that ninety-nine percent of people die in bed! That is the most dangerous place in the world – avoid it! When the light is put out, simply slip down on the floor, just for your life’s sake.You are accustomed to your miseries. You become so familiar with them that even if the door is open, you will not go out of it. I can only open the door. I want you to get out by yourself, not to be dragged out, because dragging you out into freedom is not possible. Dragging you into slavery is possible, but dragging you out into freedom is not possible, nobody can do it. You will have to walk on your own feet.And Maitreya now knows perfectly well that the past was wrong, it has not helped him. But still there is clinging. He understands me intellectually, but feels afraid – old age, death and lifelong ideology… But he will have to risk. There is no way of going back. So the sooner you take the jump the better.Osho,The other day you said that only those people are yours who say yes to you. But don't yes and no go together? To say yes, doesn't one have first to say no to many things? Please comment.It is a very fundamental question. It applies to many things, almost to all things of life.There are two levels: one is the level of the mind, and one is the level of meditation. The level of meditation is absolutely silent. The level of the mind is full of dualistic thoughts. So as far as mind is concerned, yes is always connected with no. They are two sides of one coin. Love is connected with hate, just as day is connected with night or birth is connected with death. At the level of the mind, everything is connected with its opposite; you cannot have one without having the other too. This is our ordinary experience.But on the second level, if you can go beyond mind – that is, if you can go beyond the mind’s yes and no, love and hate – there comes a silence, a peace, a tremendous serenity. This silence does not say yes, but it is full of yes because it is absolutely positive, absolutely affirmative; it is isness.So if somebody says yes from the state of meditation, there is no opposite connected with it. If somebody says love from the state of meditation, then there is no hate coming as a shadow behind it. Whatever happens on the level of meditation is one, singular, not dialectical.When Sarjano said yes, it was not from the mind. That’s why I named him. If it had been from the mind, I would have simply discussed the question, because then it would have been for everybody. I named him because it was coming from a meditative state. It was coming like fragrance out of his silence. There is no question of no.It is a problem for me to answer questions because I am answering individuals more than questions. But it will be impossible for me to answer each individual separately, so this is a device. Just before the questions are asked, I go through the names with the questions – just a glance at who has asked the question, just to be sure. If it is of the mind then there is no problem, it concerns almost everybody.If it is of meditation, then I have to indicate the person. Or if there is a certain background without which my answer will not be understood, then I have to name the person. Otherwise I simply take the question as it is, anonymous, not asked by anybody special but simply asked by the whole of humanity, the normal mind – or the normal insanity.Osho,Since I have been with you I have started to accept myself more and more. Yet I am facing a strange phenomenon: many of the people that I meet are more judgmental and condemnatory toward me, as if the fact of my self-acceptance irritates them. Since I am not even talking about that, why are these people getting so offended and being so condemnatory?It is natural. In a society, there is a deep expectation that you will behave exactly like others. The moment you behave a little bit differently you become a stranger, and people are very much afraid of strangers.That’s why everywhere if two persons are sitting in the bus, in a railway train, or just at a bus stop, they cannot sit silently – because silently they are both strangers.They immediately start introducing each other: “Who are you? Where are you going? What do you do, your business?” A few things… And they settle down; you are another human being just like them.It happened here in Mumbai:I was going away. As I entered my compartment the train was leaving, and my friends had come to see me off, so I stood at the door till the platform had disappeared. One man was in the compartment. It was an air-conditioned coupé only for men, for two men. Seeing the crowd that had come to see me off, he thought, “This man seems to be a great saint.”As I entered the room he immediately fell on the floor, kissed my feet. I told him, “Wait! Wait!” but he would not wait. I said, “You will repent! Wait!”He said, “What?” He stood up.I said, “You don’t understand – I am a Mohammedan.” And I could see the man looked like a brahmin – he had the mark of a brahmin on his forehead; a thread – it was too hot so he was not wearing any upper clothes. I said, “I told you… Now you have done it – you have kissed the feet of a Mohammedan.”He said, “No, no; it cannot be.”I said, “It is up to you, you can console yourself. You can console yourself that I am not a Mohammedan – I have no problem with it.”I sat there one minute, two minutes. And he asked, “Just tell me really, are you a Mohammedan?”I said, “Absolutely a Mohammedan.”He said, “My God. Now I have to take a bath. Why did you not prevent me?”I said, “I was preventing you but you wouldn’t listen. I even told you that you would repent – not just in this life, in your next life. No brahmin has ever done this.”He said, “That’s true,” and he was perspiring and trembling.I said, “You just go into the bathroom, take a bath; and if you know Hanuman Chalisa, do Hanuman Chalisa.”He said, “But how do you know about Hanuman Chalisa?”I said, “You – we will talk about it later on. You just take the bath first.”He took a bath, and he was shouting “Hanuman Chalisa” in the bathroom as loudly as possible. Then he came in. I smiled and I said, “You are just stupid.”He said, “What?”I said, “Can’t you see that I am not a Mohammedan?”He said, “No! Are you mad?” and he immediately jumped again and touched my feet. This time he only touched, he didn’t kiss – to be on the safer side: “This man seems to be strange.” And he said, “But why did you tell me that?”I said, “This is my habit – what can I do? In reality I am a Mohammedan, but just habit, old habit.”He said, “In reality a Mohammedan? That means I will have to take a bath again?”I said, “You will have to take a bath many times because this is my old habit; I will change again and again.”He went, shouted “Hanuman Chalisa” more loudly, took a deeper bath, came back – would not look at me.I said, “That won’t do because you were not reading Hanuman Chalisa rightly; the third line is wrong.”He said, “My God, how do you know?”I said, “I am a brahmin, and this is my business – to teach people Hanuman Chalisa.”He said, “I always knew that something was wrong, and I had suspicions about the third line; but you are a miracle. Even sitting outside you got it.” And he touched my feet again.And I said, “Again you are making that mistake.” This time he had not touched my feet, he had just touched the floor. I said, “You are becoming a little more aware, but this won’t help.”He said, “What do you mean it won’t help?”I said, “Scriptures say that even bowing down is enough; you will have to take a bath. If you don’t want to, there is no need to be worried, I will not tell anybody. And anyway I don’t know where you are going, who you are.”He said, “This is not a question of telling anybody: God knows everything, that I am bowing down to a Mohammedan. But this is strange. What kind of Mohammedan are you? Hanuman Chalisa…”I said, “Nothing special. Just by the side of my house there is a small temple of Hanuman, so people go on repeating Hanuman Chalisa. I go on listening daily, so I know where it is right and where it is wrong, otherwise I don’t care a bit about your Hanuman. You can say anything you want – wrong, right, does not matter. I have seen dogs urinating on your Hanuman.”He said, “My God, you must be a Mohammedan.”I said, “I have told you many times that I am a Mohammedan. There is no doubt about it.”He said, “I am caught in a net. If I take another bath… I will come again, things will change.”He called the guard. He said, “First change my room. By the morning you will not find me in this room – this man will finish me! I have never been in such a nightmare as he has created.”The guard said, “But he is a nice fellow and I know him, he travels almost daily. I meet him once or twice a week here and there, all over India. He is a nice fellow. I don’t think that he will create any trouble for you.”I said, “I have not done anything. I am just sitting in my corner. Whatever happens, he does it. Sometimes he touches my feet, sometimes he kisses my feet; sometimes he touches the floor. I have not done anything. I have not yet even given him my blessings.”The guard said, “You should give him blessings, if he is doing so much…”And I said, “He has taken baths many times, but if you say, I will give him blessings.”The man said, “I don’t want anything! I simply want to change the room.”I said, “Wherever you go you will find me. This night you cannot sleep! In the middle of the night I will come and touch you, and you will have to take a bath. No guard can do anything about it, and it is not a crime to touch you. I can simply touch you, ‘How are you doing?’ – that’s all.”Finally he changed his room. And I said, “Listen…”He said, “Don’t give me any suggestions.”I said, “It will help you. Just touch my feet again and I will bless you so you can have a good sleep. I am not a Mohammedan; the guard is a witness.”And the guard said, “He is not a Mohammedan. You are unnecessarily… Who told you he is a Mohammedan?”He said, “Strange; he himself told me.”I said, “Now there is no witness in this room, so you can say anything – but why should I say that I am a Mohammedan? Ask the guard. Have I done anything like this before?”He said, “Never. He has been traveling for years; this is for the first time… Are you okay? Is something – something loose in the head?”The man said, “Then he is not Mohammedan! Then who is saying this to me again and again?”I said, “I don’t know who is saying it. I am simply sitting here.”He looked all around the room, as if he was looking for somebody else. He said, “Whatsoever it is, I am going into the other room.”And in the middle of the night I woke him up. He tried hard not to wake up. I said, “Listen; this means you are awake, because anybody who was asleep would be awake by this time. I have been hitting you so hard on your head.”He said, “You are hitting hard. But I was thinking, ‘It is better to let him hit and let him be gone, so this half a night’s nightmare is finished!’ I am awake. What do you want of me?”I said, “Nothing. I just came to ask you how things are going. Is any Mohammedan harassing you?”People are continuously wanting to be in a crowd in which they fit. The moment you behave differently the whole crowd becomes suspicious; something is going wrong.Now your situation is that something is going better – you are becoming calmer, more peaceful, more accepting of yourself. And you are not saying this to anybody, but there is no need to say it. They know you, and they can see the change. They have known you when you never accepted yourself, and now they suddenly see that you accept yourself.In this society nobody accepts himself. Everybody is condemning himself. This is the lifestyle of the society: condemn yourself. And you are not condemning yourself, you are accepting yourself; you have fallen away from the society. And the society does not tolerate anybody who falls out of the fold because the society lives by numbers; it is a politics of numbers. When there are many numbers people feel good. Vast numbers make people feel that they must be right – they cannot be wrong, millions of people are with them. And when they are left alone great doubts start arising: “Nobody is with me. What is the guarantee that I am right?”That’s why I say that in this world, to be an individual is the greatest courage. The most fearless grounding is needed to be an individual: “It does not matter that the whole world is against me. What matters is that my experience is valid. I don’t look at the numbers, at how many people are with me. I look at the validity of my experience – at whether I am just repeating somebody else’s words like a parrot, or the source of my statements is in my own experience. If it is in my own experience, if it is part of my blood and bones and marrow, then the whole world can be on one side; still, I am right and they are wrong. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need their votes for me in order to feel right. Only people who have the opinions of others need the support of others.”You are perfectly right, accepting yourself, feeling peaceful. Now accept this too, this nonacceptance by others. This is their problem – why should you be worried? They don’t accept it, let it be their problem. They already have many problems; they are very efficient in collecting problems. They even get worried about others’ problems. Not only are they tense about themselves, they are tense about others too.I used to go to my village on holidays from the university. In front of my house there was the house of a goldsmith, a very simple, very good man. And I had nothing to do, so sitting in front of him I would simply put my finger on my lips. He would see it, and he would start looking here and there. And whenever I would find him looking at me I would put my finger up again.He went inside and asked his wife, “What does it mean, and why does he do it to me?”The wife said, “I don’t know. You are sitting outside the whole day; he is also sitting outside the whole day. There must be something…”He became worried. He asked my father. In the night when I went to sleep I heard him knocking on the door, so I listened carefully. He was asking my father, “What is the matter with your boy? Because whenever he sees me he puts his finger on his lips. And strangely enough, it affects me. It affects me so much that I start doing things that I am not supposed to do just to look busy, just to avoid him. And he is such a fellow: he goes on sitting there. For hours he will not move – and I know he is there, I cannot work. My work is fine, and it is with fire, it is dangerous! And he does not do any harm to me so I cannot say anything to him. But whenever he has the chance he will immediately put his finger on his lips.”My father said, “You don’t bother about him. You just do your work.”He said, “But how to do my work? Because today he is doing it, tomorrow others may start doing it.”My father said, “Why should others start doing it?”He said, “You will see – because my wife was saying, ‘Stop him somehow; otherwise others will start doing it and your life will become hell. Whoever passes through the street, they will be passing with their finger on their lips.’”I heard this. I said, “That is a good idea!” So I told two or three boys, “You just pass by slowly with your finger on your lips.”They said, “What does it mean?”I said, “It simply means ‘Our flag is the highest in the world.’”They said, “That’s right, it is so simple! We never understood it.” So they went – with their flags! And the goldsmith saw two, three boys coming with their fingers on their lips. He closed his shop!And when they all were gone he came to me with folded hands. He said, “You are not doing anything to me. But I am a poor goldsmith – now it is the fourth day that I have not done anything; I cannot do anything. I am continuously thinking: What does it mean? And now those three boys… Soon the whole town is going to pass with their fingers up. And my wife is laughing inside, even my children are laughing. And I am afraid that they are such idiots that they may start doing it themselves. When they see that this is such a good way to harass me they will do it, and I will have to bribe them with money. I am a poor man. You please stop it.”I said, “It is very difficult, because it is a national movement.”He said, “National movement? But why in my house, why just in front of me?”I said, “That I don’t know, but it is a national movement. If you want to stop it, you do one thing: to whoever shows you the finger, you also show the finger.”He said, “That is right. But who is going to earn money? Who is going to do my business?”I said, “That I don’t know. I don’t have any business, I am just sitting here. And just sitting, I thought about this national thing.”Years passed, but whenever I would go home, as I was getting down from the train he would be the first man there, with folded hands: “Don’t start that, because everything is going very peacefully. National movement… Let it happen somewhere else – because I am always worried when these summer vacations come, my whole worry is that you will be coming and then, the national movement…”People get worried about things. Now you are accepting yourself; that becomes a problem for somebody: “Why are you accepting yourself?” Strange, but human!That’s how human society has functioned up to now. That’s how they keep you within the fold. If they are sad, you have to be sad; if they are miserable, you have to be miserable. Whatever they are, you have to be the same. Difference is not allowed because difference ultimately leads to individuals, uniqueness. And society is very much afraid of individuals and uniqueness because that means somebody has become independent of the crowd, he does not care a bit about the crowd. Your gods, your temples, your priests, your scriptures, all have become meaningless for him.Now he has his own being and his own way, his own style – to live, to die, to celebrate, to sing, to dance. He has come home.And nobody can come home with a crowd. Everybody can come home only alone.Osho,Meditation, understanding, awareness, love and enlightenment, and now transcendence of enlightenment, seem to be inalienable parts of your teaching. And they also seem to be organically interconnected. Would you please explain to us the whole thing once again?It is so obvious, so simple. It needs no explanation. It only needs description.Meditation is nothing but your mind in a silent state, just as a lake is silent, not even ripples on it. Thoughts are ripples, meditation is mind relaxed. Don’t make things very complex; mind in a state of not doing anything, just at ease.The moment you are relaxed, silent, peaceful, there is great insight and understanding of things that you have never understood before. Nobody is explaining anything to you. Just your clarity of vision makes things clear. It is the same rose, but now you know its beauty in its multi-dimensional way. You had seen it many times – it was just an ordinary rose. But today it is no longer ordinary; today it has become extraordinary because you have a clarity. All the dust is removed from your insight and the rose has an aura that you were not aware of before.Everything around you, inside you, outside you, becomes crystal clear. And as understanding reaches to the ultimate point there is an explosion of light. Clarity, in its ultimate stage, becomes an explosion of light we have called enlightenment. Just don’t use big words – that makes things difficult.It is simply in the intensity of clarity that darkness disappears. It is because you can see so clearly that darkness is no longer there. You know perfectly well that there are animals who can see in darkness; their eyes are more clear, more penetrating. Your insight becomes so penetrating that all darkness is dispelled.In other words, you have an explosion of light. Call it enlightenment, liberation, realization – but you are still beyond it, it is your experience and you are the experiencer. This is an objective experience; you are a subjectivity. You know all this is happening; hence the transcendence, hence going beyond enlightenment. At that peak, at that Everest: only witnessing, just pure awareness, not aware of anything, not witnessing anything – just a pure mirror, not mirroring anything at all. They are all organically related.And don’t bother about the whole thing. Move step by step; the other step will follow automatically.Osho,Sometimes sitting in discourse listening to you it feels like all boundaries disappear, it feels like being in total harmony with you, like a tamboura singing together with the sound of the sitar. It feels like the ultimate orgasm. Is this what you mean by upanishad?Yes, this is exactly what I mean by upanishad.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Please throw light on the difference between a mystic and a master.There is an ancient Tibetan parable. It says, “When one hundred people try to reach the goal only ten ever start the journey; and out of the ten only one reaches the goal.” And those few people who reach the goal are not all capable of being masters. They are all mystics: they have known, they have seen, they have realized – but they cannot help anybody else toward the truth, they cannot explain their experience.The mystic and the master are in the same state of being, but the master is articulate. He finds ways and means, devices, to indicate toward that which cannot be brought into words.The mystic is dumb. He has tasted the sweet; it is not that he does not know that it is sweet. He is full of the sweetness but he cannot say anything about it, he is simply dumb.The master is articulate. And it is the greatest art in the world.The painter brings something of beauty on the canvas, the sculptor brings something of beauty in his works of art. The poet sings songs of the beyond. But the master tries to create a science to help people move into the unknown way toward the unknowable without falling, without going astray. It is difficult – because he has to use words, and words are very small and what he is going to express through them is so vast it cannot be contained in them. He is trying to contain oceans in dewdrops. But the miracle is that the masters have succeeded in something in which success seems to be almost impossible.The mystic lives in his celebration, in his joy, in his inner music, but he is an island. The master is a continent.Gautam Buddha used to say to his disciples from the very first day, “Whatever you experience, however small, try to express it. Find out a way to convey it. Even if you fail that is not important; what is important is that you tried – and go on trying. By the time you become enlightened you will have learned some secrets which make the difference between the mystic and the master.”The mystic is great, but is of no use to the universe. He is fulfilled. As far as he is concerned he has arrived home, he has dissolved his ego, he has become part of the universe, but the beauty that he has seen, the blissfulness that he has experienced, the benediction that has showered over him remains unshared.And remember one thing: there are things, if they remain unshared, they remain imperfect. Only in sharing do they become perfect, only in giving do you start getting more.The mystic is closed. He has no doors, no windows. He blossoms, but his fragrance is not released to the winds.Actually the same experience happens to the master; before being a master he is a mystic – but he is articulate. At the right moment when the flower is blossoming, he opens the windows and the doors and allows the fragrance to reach others. At the very moment when he is full of light, he gathers around himself people who are thirsty. At the right moment he is never alone, he is always surrounded by the seekers.Every master has a caravan of his own – his own people who have tasted something of his being, who have drunk the wine of his joy, who are no longer related in the ordinary ways of the world. Some invisible, mysterious connections are developing. Something is transpiring between the master and the disciple which will finally dissolve the duality of both and there will remain only oneness, a tremendous silence, a profound peace, a great insight.The master is rare, very rare. The mystic also is rare, but not that very rare.Many times you may come across a mystic and you will not understand anything about him. Your heart will not beat faster, you will not feel that something superhuman is close by because the mystic is closed. He has a treasure, but between the treasure and you there is a thick wall.The whole art of mastery is to make windows, doors, and to become a temple. People can enter into the master. He allows people to enter into him. All his effort is somehow to bring you closer – this is only the beginning. And if you come closer to the master and enter into the temple of the master, it becomes very easy for the master to enter your temple. And only when the master and the disciple are capable of entering into each other’s being does the real religion happen. The real religion is not where you think it is. The real religion is only in the master-disciple relationship.The mystic has it, but he cannot give it; not that he does not want to give it, he does not know how to give it. The master comes to experience that the more he gives, the more he has it – it is a new economics. In the ordinary economics, the more you give the less you have.A man stopped his beautiful car by the side of a beggar – had to stop, because he could not believe… The face, the body, the posture, the way the beggar was standing was not that of a beggar, it was that of a king. Even the clothes, although now they had faded away, still they carried the old memories; they were not the clothes of a beggar. And he was begging. The man in the car thought, “Bad times…” and he took a one-hundred-rupee note and gave it to the beggar.The beggar looked at the note and said to the man, “Please think twice.”The man said, “Why? Why should I think twice? I have enough.”The beggar said, “Soon you will be standing here where I am standing. I also had enough, but this is the way… What you are doing, I did; I went on giving. One day all that I had disappeared. I still say, think twice.”The ordinary economics is if you want more don’t give – collect, hoard. The master comes to know a new economics: that the more you give the more you have. Suddenly all the laws are functioning in a totally different way. He enjoys sharing, he wants to bless the whole world. The mystic also wants to share but is incapable; he has no means. The master has means. So mastery is a totally different phenomenon.In the mystery schools it was part of the basic teaching that a few disciples who were capable of expression were trained. Before they became self-realized, they must become articulate enough. Nobody, after becoming a mystic, can learn the art of expression; that is impossible, it has not happened yet. It cannot happen because the man who has known and seen all that is worth knowing and all that is worth seeing has gone beyond. Now to drag him back to learn the art of expression is impossible.In the mystery schools it was a basic rule: the master had to go on watching for those disciples who showed the tendency, the talent, the genius for expression. Even if their enlightenment had to be delayed, let it be delayed. First they should be made articulate enough – because once they became enlightened then there would be no way to teach them the art of expression.And it has been so. There are instances.One of the disciples of Mahavira was immensely capable of expressing things which are very difficult to express. His name was Goshalak. He was so articulate that, even in the commune of Mahavira, many had become his disciples. He spoke so beautifully, so poetically, so authoritatively, that the idea was bound to happen to his ego: He asked Mahavira, “You declare me as your successor, otherwise I am going to leave the commune with my disciples.”And he was not only a disciple. Mahavira loved him, and was training him so that one day he could become a mystic and a master at the same time. But the crowd, and disciples – who were basically disciples of Mahavira – were choosing Goshalak as their master. His ego got inflated.Mahavira said to him, “You were going to be something more than you are asking. A successor is not necessarily a mystic or a master. And I cannot promise anything – it is your own growth that will be decisive, not my promise. This is not a business that I can promise you that you will inherit. It is not something that can be inherited.”Because he was refused, his ego was hurt; he left the commune with five hundred of Mahavira’s disciples who thought that Goshalak was far more advanced than Mahavira himself. Mahavira was very mathematical in his expression, aphoristic – he would speak in maxims which you had to elaborate by your own experience – while Goshalak had no experience but was a perfect imitator. Even though he left with five hundred disciples, it is remarkable how Mahavira responded to this.Mahavira said, “In the coming creation…”In the Jaina mythology creation is a circle. Just like day and night, one creation is followed by another creation, and this goes on. Jaina mythology is far more scientific than any other religion’s. It has no creator, because there is no creation. It is simply an autonomous process: existence goes on creating itself again and again. And because everything moves in circles, each circle has twenty-four tirthankaras, great masters.Although Goshalak betrayed him, his response was that “Goshalak is going to be the first tirthankara of the coming creation – at the next creation he is going to be the first tirthankara, because he has become articulate enough. It is just that he is a little foolish. He does not understand that he does not know anything about what he is saying. He has heard – he has not experienced.“But he is a man capable of it. The day he becomes realized there will be a great master, not just a mystic. Right now he is just making a laughingstock of himself and of those who are following him. He knows nothing. He talks too much. He talks well, he argues profoundly, but there is no experienced content in it. But it is only a question of time. One thing is certain: that whenever he realizes he will become a master.“And I am happy that he has left, because this will give him more chances to be articulate, to express, because under a big tree small trees cannot grow. And I am a big tree.” Mahavira had ten thousand disciples always following him, and millions of other disciples.He said, “It is good that he has left me. This will give him a chance to be sharper, more expressive. And I hope that one day he also realizes that what he is talking is just talk; inside he is empty.”So it is possible: a mystic is full inside but he cannot talk; and a pundit, a scholar, a pope, a shankaracharya, an Ayatollah Khomeini – these kinds of people who go on talking about God, about soul, about religion – have no experience at all.It was in Mumbai, just twenty-five years ago; I had come for the first time to this city. The man who invited me was a very rare man, rare in the sense that there was not a single important person in India who was not respectful toward that old man. And the reason was that that old man… His name was Chiranjilal Badjate, and he was the manager for Jamnalal Bajaj. Jamnalal Bajaj had invited Mahatma Gandhi from Sabarmati, Gujarat, to his own place in Wardha, and had made a beautiful ashram for him there.He gave Gandhi a blank check; whatever he wanted to spend, whatever he wanted to do with the money, he could do. He never asked, “Where does the money go? What happens to it?” And because Mahatma Gandhi was in Wardha, all the great freedom fighters in India, writers, poets, were going to see Gandhi, to meet Gandhi. And for them Jamnalal Bajaj had made a special guesthouse for five hundred people to stay together at one time. Chiranjilal was his manager, so he was the link between Mahatma Gandhi and Jamnalal Bajaj. Jawaharlal Nehru, Motilal Nehru, Madan Mohan Malaviya, all these people were respectful toward the old man. He was the man who invited me to Mumbai.I had spoken at a Jaina conference, and as I came down from the stage – it was a cold night, he was covering himself with a blanket – he threw the blanket on the ground, took hold of me and asked me to sit down, just to sit down for five minutes with him.But I said, “Your blanket will become dirty.”He said, “Forget about the blanket, you just sit down, because I don’t have anything else.” And I had no idea who this man was. He introduced himself; then too I had no idea, just his name.He said, “I am inviting you to Mumbai for a conference, and you cannot say no.” Tears were in his eyes; he said, “In my whole life I have heard all the great orators of this country, but I have never felt such deep harmony as I have felt with you, although what you were saying was against my conditioning. I am Mahatma Gandhi’s follower. I am the manager for Jamnalal, and I have lived my whole life according to Mahatma Gandhi’s principles – and you were speaking against them. But still somehow I felt you are right and I have been wrong.”He must have been seventy years old, but with great courage to say, “My seventy years were wrong” – and he had listened to me only for ten minutes. “And you cannot say no. This conference is absolutely important because I want you to be introduced to my friends in Mumbai and then to my friends all over India.”So I said, “I will come.”I knew nobody in Mumbai, and somehow… Because he was an old man with thick glasses, in the night perhaps he could not see me perfectly well. He described me to the organizers of the conference here, but somehow he told them that I used a Gandhi cap. Just seventy years continuously seeing Gandhi caps, Gandhi caps – he had not seen anybody else without a Gandhi cap – so it must have been somehow completely fixed in his mind.I was standing at the door of the train; all the passengers had left. At least twenty-five people were running from this side to that side. They would look at me from up and down, from down and up, and just as they saw my head they would rush on. I said, “What is wrong with my head? Up to the head they look as if things are going right, and the moment they see my head they are simply gone!” But finally I was the only passenger left, and those were the only people left who had come to receive anybody.One of them came to me and asked, “Have you not put on your Gandhi cap today?”I said, “Now I understand what the problem is. But who told you that I have ever used a Gandhi cap?”And Chiranjilal had got caught somewhere in the traffic. He was coming running! – a seventy-year-old man. He said, “Yes! This is the man, but where is the cap?”I said, “You created this whole trouble. I am standing here for half an hour; these people are running all over the platform looking for the Gandhi cap. If you had told me I would have put on a Gandhi cap. You never mentioned it.”He said, “My God, just old age, and I must be getting senile – just seeing these Gandhi caps day and night. Even in dreams I see people with Gandhi caps! Even in my dreams I don’t see people without Gandhi caps, so just forgive me.”This man, a simple man, a loving man who had known all the great thinkers of this century in India, leaders in different professions, but he could immediately feel some synchronicity, as if the parts of a jigsaw puzzle had all fallen together in one piece and the puzzle had disappeared. He had lived with Mahatma Gandhi for twenty, thirty years and it had not happened.There are people who can speak beautifully about the unknown, but if you are a little alert you can see that their words are empty and they don’t touch your heart, they don’t stir your being.And there are mystics who are complete, whose journey has come to an end. If you are very silent, very peaceful, perhaps the inability of the mystic may not deter you, you may be able to feel the presence of something superhuman – but that will depend on you.The master does not depend on you. He tries in a thousand and one ways; that’s how all the methodologies around the world have been developed. All those methods that have been tried are just an approach to stir your heart, to make you feel something – the fire of the master’s eyes, the grace of his gestures, the wordless silence surrounding his words.The mystics are beautiful beings, but they have not helped the human consciousness to evolve. The whole credit goes to the masters.Osho,Why do I always weep when I can't laugh? Isn't weeping opposed to dancing, singing and celebrating?The phenomenon of weeping is mysterious. It does not mean that you are sad, not necessarily. It is not necessarily against celebrating, against cheerfulness, against laughing; no.The tears have a very strange function: whenever something in your heart is so much that it cannot be expressed by normal means, tears are an emergency method. So they may mean anything.You may be very happy, so happy that laughing will look stupid but tears will look perfectly right. Your tears will show that your happiness is not an ordinary happiness – it is so deep that only tears can express it; it is so extraordinarily deep that an emergency method is used.Two friends meeting after many days, many years, may not feel like talking; talking may look too profane. They may like to just hug each other and weep on each other’s shoulders. They are saying many many things: many many memories, many many questions; unresolved moments of experience, of love. Tears will help to unburden them.In India, particularly in villages, mothers don’t allow their children to laugh too much. They have a saying that if you laugh too much then you will have to weep.In my childhood, when I heard this I said, “This seems to be strange. If I laugh too much why should I have to weep? There seems to be no connection.” But soon I had to find the connection, because when you laugh too much there comes a point when laughter starts flowing above laughter. There is more than laughter can carry… Then tears, and it is a very weird experience that you are laughing and your tears are coming. That makes you laugh more, because these tears… And that makes you bring more tears, because is this the time to laugh? The situation becomes a vicious circle.Your question is that you start weeping easily. Celebration is not so easy, laughter is not so easy, because your surroundings have given you the idea that you have to be serious. Laughing brings down your seriousness.Have you seen any saint laughing? Have you seen Jesus Christ laughing? It would be really a scene, a real miracle, if Jesus Christ had laughed on the cross. It would have been a far bigger miracle than resurrection. He missed the real point when the miracle had to happen.You have been taught to be serious: even if you have to laugh, smile, don’t laugh. Laughter seems to be rustic; you are a cultured being. At the most, just a little smile shows that you are a graduate from Oxford, a serious man.In any profession… If you are a doctor and you laugh too much, patients won’t take you seriously. You have to be serious. The patient may not have anything, just an ordinary cold – which is not a disease, because it goes away in seven days if you don’t take any medicine; if you take medicine it goes in a week. What kind of disease is this? But the doctor has to be so serious that you start feeling as if you have cancer.Seriousness will bring a bigger fee. He writes the prescription in Greek and Latin, because if he writes in a language that you can understand then you are not going to give him even one rupee. But you are going to give him ten rupees and it is nothing; just the rubbish that you can purchase for four annas anywhere – not in Greek and Latin – it will just be available in the market!The doctor has to be serious. The teacher, the professor has to be serious, because if he is not serious then the students are going to take advantage of it. The father has to be serious in front of the children; he is a father. The mother has to be serious. Everywhere laughter is denied.Naturally you learn all this stupid behavior, so when times come for celebrating you start crying and weeping. Your normal ways of celebration are closed, clogged. They have to be opened; you have to clean all your passages, you have to learn how to laugh heartily – not just a smile. Why be so miserly? It costs nothing to have a good laugh.Neither are you allowed to cry: if you are a man then it is “feminine” to cry. And it is a plain fact that women, because they are not prevented from crying, are psychologically healthier than men.Men commit suicide more than women – the number is double, although women talk a thousand times more about committing suicide. They also take sleeping pills, but you will always find them the next day, again committing suicide. They never take too many sleeping pills, either.Women go mad less; men go mad three times more than women. Strange! Why this difference? It is because men are repressing everything. The woman is allowed a little because she is not considered equal to men. She can be allowed to cry – she is after all a woman, not equal to men. She can have a tantrum, she can throw things, but you will always see that she throws things which are worthless, in fact which need to be thrown. She tries to hit you but never hits you; she always makes it a point to miss you.You are not supposed to do such things; you are a man, a serious man: a doctor, a professor, an engineer, a scientist, a bishop, a cardinal. It doesn’t look right for a cardinal to throw a tantrum. But a woman is a woman – crying, throwing things, weeping – she throws out her insanity in installments. You go on collecting wholesale; then one day it erupts like a volcano, then it is beyond your control.To me, it is absolutely beautiful to cry, beautiful to laugh, beautiful to enjoy, dance, sing.The poor sannyasin who sings here… Somebody met him yesterday and they told him, “Unless we kill you, you are going to sing every day.” They followed him. He was very much afraid. He has not done anything to them but they are against singing it seems, and they wanted him to stop singing.There are people who are against singing. There is a whole religion, Mohammedanism – millions of people who are against singing. Strange! Singing is sin. If singing is sin, then what can be virtue? If dancing is sin, then what can be art?But we have made a world on almost insane principles. Just a simple sanity is needed and humanity will start flowering in all ways, in all directions, in all dimensions.It is beautiful to see somebody laughing, or to see tears come into somebody’s eyes. Even though they are of sadness, still they have a beauty of their own because they have a silence; but they can be of joy…All the religions of the world have been against life, so anything that makes life more alive, they have been trying to cut its roots. I am all for life. Everything in life should be accepted – not tolerated but accepted joyously – and only then will we have a man who is psychologically sane.Osho,My parents have shown me many girls for the purpose of marriage. But during the first meeting, if I mention your name, there is no question of meeting again, as if I am unfit and crazy to all of them – including my parents who are fanatic, orthodox types. I think that for my whole life I am going to miss sharing my total love and blissfulness with the opposite sex, with one who has the same state and space of awareness and consciousness which your words so beautifully describe. You have so rightly said that life, love and death happen; so can you indicate how to make love happen in this life?It is so simple. Just avoid your parents! What business do these fellows have in your marriage? It is strange in the first place that you allow them to stand between you and the girl, and to decide. They bring the girl to show to you – do you belong to this century or to some ancient, golden age?Then it was right, because children were married. Now a six-year-old boy cannot go by himself to find a girl. He has to be brought forcibly, because he wants to go somewhere else! He has so many other things to do – what nonsense this marriage is to a six-year-old boy.My mother has said to me that she was seven years old when she was married. The whole house and the whole village was receiving the marriage party outside, and she was tied to a pillar inside the house because she was insisting – she could not understand that everybody was allowed to see the show, only she was not allowed. This is strange! And moreover they all said, “This is your marriage.”“If this is my marriage, then I must be there. Everybody else is there, only I am tied to this pole!”You should be contemporary. Just tell your parents, “What are you doing? You have never loved, you don’t know what love is. How are you going to choose a girl who is going to be my beloved? What criteria have you got? You were married by your parents, they were married by their parents…”Love has not existed in the East at all. We have destroyed love and replaced it with a false, plastic thing – marriage. But it is time.And you are not a small boy, a small girl – that the parents have to decide. So in the first place, put your parents right: “You do your job: fight with each other. And I am going to Chowpatty to find a girl.”What nonsense are you talking about? – “Am I going to live without a woman in my life?” Search for your girl yourself. This is the beginning of seeking! Unfortunately you are going to find, so don’t be worried. It is very rare, very fortunate people like me who manage not to succeed, who go on failing. But you will not fail.And what is the need of bringing my name in when you are looking for a girl? That is certainly dangerous. You can bring my name in when you are married – then it is something great. So whenever you want a good fight you can bring my name in. But as far as the beginning is concerned, even if the girl brings up my name you pretend as if you don’t know anything about me. She may bring it up; you simply ignore it. No girl on Chowpatty… Juhu is different! Here, if you don’t know my name, no girl is going to look at you! Just mention my name and that’s enough; you have said, “I love you,” – and then other things will follow.Just be a little alert about with whom you are talking. If you see it is a girl who looks like a sannyasin… And no sannyasin can hide.The Indian government has informed all the embassies that no sannyasins should be given entry into India, so sannyasins are going there without the mala, without orange clothes, but somehow they are caught. Now letters have started reaching me: “What is the matter? Those people immediately start asking questions about you. They say there is something in sannyasins that makes them different – they look more stable, more centered, more integrated, more together, more graceful; unafraid of the world.”So if you see that somebody is a sannyasin you can drop my name and it will be of great help, but if you see that somebody is not a sannyasin, then avoid my name. Wait a little. You are a sannyasin – you know what waiting means. First just let the marriage be registered; then going out of the registry office you can mention my name – and you can tell the whole thing, because from there begins the story of your tragedy.But you seem to miss it very much, and you must have a taste of it. That is your birthright, and in fact it is absolutely necessary. Unless you go through the tragedy of marriage you will never understand the freedom of sannyas. So I don’t say don’t get married. I say get married as quickly as possible. Finish with that experiment quickly and become a sannyasin.And with marriage I may be able to make two sannyasins – because both have suffered. It is not only you that has suffered.First put your parents right, that “It is none of your business. Now I am going to search – first on Chowpatty. If I fail on Chowpatty, I am going to Juhu.” Here you will not fail, so before you enter Juhu, think twice!Osho,In the past you advocated various paths of self-realization like awareness, Yoga, Tantra, devotion and the rest of them. But ever since you resumed speaking, after three years of silence, you have been putting all the emphasis on awareness alone. Could you please say a few words on this matter?All the methods that lead man to realization are, essentially, awareness. Their nonessential components may be different.I have spoken on Yoga, on Tantra, on Hasidism, on Tao, on Zen, on all possible methods that humanity has tried. I wanted you to be aware of all the ways through which man has been searching to reach the truth that liberates – but each method is essentially awareness. That’s why I am now emphasizing only awareness.So whatever you are doing, whatever method you are practicing, it makes no difference. Those are different names given by different people in different ages, but they were all practicing awareness.In essence, it is only awareness that leads you to the ultimate goal. There are not many paths. There are many names for one path, and that one path is awareness.Osho,Sitting at your feet, drinking from your wine, the ecstasy of your presence, and your smile showering such a grace on us… And do you really think someone here would want to disappear? No way! Certainly not me!It is true, Sarjano. But you have disappeared; I don’t see you anywhere.This is a cunning question. Everybody is present; only Sarjano has disappeared! But I do understand what he means.The master is the last barrier on the path. The love for the master is difficult to drop. One can drop everything – one can renounce the whole world, one can renounce himself – but unless the last thing also is dropped, that small clinging with the master remains the base for your ego.Gautam Buddha has said, “If you meet me on the way, immediately cut off my head.” He is talking metaphorically, because when you are meditating everything will disappear but, finally, you will see the master is there. When the whole world has disappeared, the master is there. That is your last love, and it is so satisfying, so gratifying, that one wants to be in that state forever.Only the master can say, “This is not the goal. One step more: remove this attachment with the master too, so you are absolutely unattached.” In absolute unattachment the ego disappears.And the disappearance of the ego is not the disappearance of you. The disappearance of the ego is really the appearance of you for the first time; the false disappears and the true comes to revelation.Sarjano, you are right; it is difficult, but it has to be made possible. It is not impossible because many have done it. And you are not doing it against the master; you are fulfilling the last message of the master.Let the ego disappear. But it will disappear only when there is no attachment. And the moment there is no ego at all, for the first time you are.Then you will feel grateful toward the master forever because if he had not been insistent, you would have remained in that beautiful state. But there is something beyond, more; and the master would not like you to be stuck on the path.The master wants you to be totally liberated, liberated from everything; he is included in that “everything.” But Sarjano is clever: he has put the question here and he has escaped to Italy! That won’t help – I will haunt him wherever he is. He will have to disappear!

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,There is a statement by J. Krishnamurti that “The observer is the observed.” Will you please kindly elaborate and explain what it means?The statement that “The observer is the observed” is one of the most significant things ever said by any man on the earth. The statement is as extraordinary as J. Krishnamurti was.It is difficult to understand it only intellectually, because the way of the intellect is dialectical, dualistic. On the path of intellect the subject can never be the object, the seer can never be the seen, the observer cannot be the observed. As far as intellect is concerned, it is an absurd statement, meaningless – not only meaningless, but insane. The intellectual approach toward reality is that of division: the knower and the known have to be separate, only then is there a possibility of knowledge between the two.The scientist cannot become science, the scientist has to remain separate from what he is doing. The experimenter is not allowed to become the experiment itself. As far as intellect is concerned, logic is concerned, it looks absolutely valid.But there is a knowledge that passeth understanding, there is a knowing that goes beyond science. Only because that kind of knowing which goes beyond science is possible, is mysticism possible, is religiousness possible.Let us move from a different direction. Science divides the whole of human experience and existence into two parts: the known and the unknown. That which is known today was unknown yesterday; that which is unknown today may become known tomorrow, so the distance is not impossible, unbridgeable. The distance is only because man’s knowledge is growing, and as his knowledge grows the area of his ignorance diminishes. In other words, as he knows more, the area of the unknown becomes less and the area of the known becomes bigger.If we follow this logic, the ultimate result will be that one day there will be nothing left as unknown. Slowly, slowly the unknown will change into the known, and the moment will come when there is nothing left as unknown. That is the goal of science, to destroy ignorance – but to destroy ignorance means to destroy all possibilities of exploration, all possibilities of the unknown challenging you to move forward.The destruction of ignorance means the death of all intelligence, because there will be no need for intelligence anymore. It will be simply something which was useful in the past; you can put it in a museum, but it is of no use anymore. This is not a very exciting picture.Mysticism does not agree with science, it goes beyond it. According to mysticism, existence and experience is divided into three parts: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. The known was unknown one day, the unknown will become known one day, but the unknowable will remain unknowable; it will remain mysterious. Whatever you do, the mystery will always surround existence. The mystery will always be there around life, around love, around meditation.The mystery cannot be destroyed. Ignorance can be destroyed, but by destroying ignorance you cannot destroy the miraculous, the mysterious. J. Krishnamurti’s statement belongs to the unknowable.I have been telling you that as you meditate… And by “meditation,” I simply mean as you become more and more aware of your mind process. If the mind process is one hundred percent, taking your whole energy, you will be fast asleep inside – there will be no alertness.One morning Gautam Buddha is talking to his disciples. The king, Prasenjita, has also come to listen to him; he is sitting just in front of Buddha. He is not accustomed to sitting on the floor – he is a king – so he is feeling uncomfortable, fidgety, changing sides, somehow trying not to disturb and not to be noticed by Buddha because he is not sitting silently, peacefully. He is continuously moving the big toe of his foot, for no reason, just to be busy without business. There are people who cannot be without business; they will still be busy.Gautam Buddha stopped talking and asked Prasenjita, “Can you tell me, why are you moving your big toe?” In fact Prasenjita himself was not aware of it.You are doing a thousand and one things you are not aware of. Unless somebody points at them, you may not take any note of it.The moment Buddha asked him, the toe stopped moving. Buddha said, “Why have you stopped moving the toe?”He said, “You are putting me in an embarrassing situation. I don’t know why that toe was moving. This much I know: that as you asked the question it stopped. I have not done anything – neither was I moving it, nor have I stopped it.”Buddha said to his disciples, “Do you see the point? The toe belongs to the man. It moves, but he is not aware of its movement. And the moment he becomes aware, because I asked the question, the very awareness immediately stops the toe. He does not stop it. The very awareness, that ‘It is stupid, why are you moving it?’ – just the awareness is enough to stop it.”Your mind is a constant traffic of thoughts, and it is always rush hour, day in, day out.Meditation means to watch the movement of thoughts in the mind. Just be an observer, as if you are standing by the side of the road watching the traffic: no judgment, no evaluation, no condemnation, no appreciation – just pure observation.As you become more and more accustomed to observation, a strange phenomenon starts happening. If you are ten percent aware, that much energy has moved from the mind process to the observer; now the mind has only ninety percent energy available. A moment comes, you have fifty percent of energy. And your energy goes on growing as mind goes on losing its energy. The traffic becomes less and less and less and you become more and more and more.Your witnessing self goes on increasing in integrity, expanding; it becomes stronger and stronger. And the mind goes on becoming weaker and weaker: ninety percent observer and ten percent mind, ninety-nine percent observer and only one percent mind.One hundred percent observer and the mind disappears, the road is empty; the screen of the mind becomes completely empty, nothing moves. There is only the observer.This is the state J. Krishnamurti’s statement is pointing at. When there is nothing to observe, when there is only the observer left, then the observer itself becomes the observed – because there is nothing else to observe, what else to do? The knower simply knows itself. The seer sees himself. The energy that was going toward objects, thoughts… There are no thoughts, no objects. The energy has no way to go anywhere; it simply becomes a light unto itself. There is nothing that it lights, it lights only itself – a flame surrounded by silence, surrounded by nothingness.That is Krishnamurti’s way of saying it, that the observer becomes the observed. You can call it enlightenment, it is the same thing: the light simply lights itself, there is nothing else to fall upon. You have dissolved the mind. You are alone, fully alert and aware.Krishnamurti is using a phrase of his own. He was a little fussy about it: not to use anybody else’s phrase, anybody else’s word – not to use anything that has been used by other masters. So his whole life, he was coining his own phrases.But you can change only the expression; you cannot change the experience. The experience is eternal. It makes no difference whether somebody calls it enlightenment, somebody calls it nirvana, somebody calls it samadhi, somebody calls it something else. You can give it your own name but remember, the experience should not be changed by your words.And it is not changed by J. Krishnamurti’s words. They are perfectly applicable, although they are not so glamorous as nirvana, Gautam Buddha’s word, or samadhi, Patanjali’s word, or il’aham, Mohammed’s word. “The observer is the observed” looks too mundane. It certainly points to the reality, but the words in themselves are not very poetic, are very ordinary. And the extraordinary should not be indicated by the ordinary; that is sacrilegious.So there are many people around the world who have been listening to J. Krishnamurti. They will listen to these words: The observer becomes the observed, and they will not have even a far-off notion of nirvana or enlightenment or samadhi.I don’t like this fussiness. I don’t want to say anything against that old man because he is dead. If he were alive I would say something against him, certainly. His whole effort – and he lived long, ninety years – was somehow to prove that he was original in everything, even in expressions.I don’t feel the necessity. If you are original, you are original. There is no need to shout it from the housetops that “I am original,” that “I am fortunate that I have not read any sacred scriptures.” And this is not true, because even to avoid samadhi, nirvana, enlightenment, you have to know those words, otherwise how can you avoid them? He may not have read them himself, somebody else may have read them, and he must have heard it.And that’s actually what had happened: from his childhood he was being taught to become a world teacher, so others were telling him. He was just nine years old, so he was not telling a lie by saying that he had not read the sacred scriptures, but the sacred scriptures were read to him.This reminds me of a milkman. I was a student in the university and he used to come to the hostel with his small son to give milk to the students, and everybody was suspicious that his milk was at least fifty percent water. Already the purest milk is eighty percent water; then fifty percent more… So it is just the name milk; otherwise it is all water. So everybody was telling him, “You are mixing in too much water.”He was a very religious man, worshipping for hours in the temple. And he would say, “I am a religious man. I cannot do this. I can take an oath. This is my son” – and he would put his hand on his son’s head – “Under oath I am saying that if I lie, my son should die. I have never mixed water into milk.”I listened many times. One day I called him inside my room and closed the door. He said, “What are you doing?”I said, “You need not be worried, I am also a religious man. Just a little dialogue…”He said, “But why are you closing the door?”I said, “It has to be very private, otherwise you will be in difficulty.”He said, “Strange, why should I be in difficulty?”I said, “Now just tell me exactly. I have seen you mixing water with my own eyes. I had to miss one morning walk just to hide near your place to see it. Just this morning I have seen it. And if you don’t listen to me… I don’t have a son, but I can use your son, under oath.”He said, “Wait! Don’t do that. You are a dangerous man. You can do it to your son but not to my son.”I said, “What is the harm? Your son is not going to be harmed; truth is truth.”He said, “That means I will have to tell you the truth.”I said, “You will have to tell me the truth.”He said, “The truth is that I never mix water into milk, I always mix milk into water – and that makes all the difference. My oath is absolutely correct. But please don’t say it to anybody, otherwise they will start asking me to take the oath the other way and that I cannot do. I mix them, but I always mix milk into the water. I am making the water also milky. I am not destroying milk, I am just changing the quality of the water.”I said, “You are really a religious man.” Now what he is saying is simply the same.For thousands of years, anybody who has reached to the point of no-mind and only awareness has given names which are far more meaningful than J. Krishnamurti’s words. For example, Patanjali’s word is the most important and the most ancient: samadhi. In Sanskrit, sickness is called vyadhi, and to go beyond all sickness is called samadhi. It has a beauty: going beyond all sickness; attaining wholeness, perfection. It has a beauty and a meaning.Gautam Buddha used the word nirvana, because he was trying to make an effort twenty-five centuries after Patanjali. In these twenty-five centuries Patanjali had been misused. The people who were trying to reach samadhi made it some kind of ego trip. The word samadhi is very positive – beyond all illness, wholeness. There is a loophole in it: it can give you an idea that “I will become perfect, beyond all limitations, all sicknesses. I will become whole.” But the danger is that this “I” may be your ego – most probably it will be, because your mind is still there.The samadhi is true when the mind is gone. Then you can say, “I have gone beyond sickness” because the ego was also a sickness – in fact the greatest sickness that man suffers from. Now your “I” does not mean ego. It simply means your individuality, not your personality. It simply means the universal in you, just the dewdrop which contains the ocean. The emphasis has changed completely. It is not the dewdrop that is claiming; it is the ocean that is proclaiming.But because many people became egoistic… And you can see those people even today. Your saints, sages, mahatmas, are so full of ego that one is surprised – even ordinary people are not so full of ego. But their egos are very subtle, very refined.Gautam Buddha had to find a new word, and the word had to be negative so that ego could not make a trick for itself. Nirvana is a negative word; it simply means blowing out the candle, a very beautiful word. Blowing out the candle, what happens? Just pure darkness remains. Buddha is saying that when your ego has disappeared like the flame of the candle, what remains – that silence, that peace, that eternal bliss – is nirvana.And certainly he was successful: nobody has been able to make nirvana an ego trip. How can you make nirvana an ego trip? The ego has to die. It is implied in the word itself that you will have to disappear in smoke. What will be left behind is your true reality, is your pure existence, is your truth, is your being – and to find it is to find all.But Buddha had a reason to change the word samadhi into nirvana. J. Krishnamurti had no reason at all, except that he was obsessed with being original. What he says describes the fact: the observer is the observed – but it has no poetry. It is true, but it has no music.But that is true about J. Krishnamurti’s whole philosophy: it has no music, it has no poetry. It is purely a rational, logical, intellectual approach. He was trying hard somehow to express the mystic experience in rational and logical terms, and he has been successful in many ways, but he has destroyed the beauty.He has brought the mystic experience closer to rational philosophizing, but the mystic experience is not philosophy, it is always poetry. It is closer to painting, closer to singing, closer to dancing, but not closer to logic – and that’s what he was doing. And my opposition to him is based on this ground. My effort is to bring mysticism to your dance, to your song, to your love, to your poetry, to your painting – to your song, not to your logic.Logic is good for business, it is good for mathematics. It is absolutely useless as far as higher values are concerned.Osho,Since you have spoken about the beard, it reminds me about the problem I face because of my beard. Due to my beard, my face has taken on some resemblance to yours. Some people come and prostrate themselves before me, mistaking me for you. In public places, some comment, “There goes Osho!” I have compared my earlier photographs with yours, but I find no resemblance at all. At home there are many photographs of you, and anyone who visits my home remarks with surprise at why I have so many photographs of myself in my home. Even some sannyasins remark on the resemblance. In spite of being aware about all this, at least at my level, this creates mixed feelings in me – like ego, pride, and a feeling of superiority. Is this some kind of mischief played by the beard, or is there a purpose?Osho, I am extremely grateful and full of gratitude for your unbounded compassion for me. Will you kindly explain what this is all about?The question may sound ordinary to many people; it is not. Before I answer your question…I have remembered asking my father in my childhood… We were visiting a Jaina temple where twenty-four Jaina prophets had their statues in a line. All were exactly the same, and their times were thousands of years apart. The first Jaina master must have lived ten thousand years ago. The last was two thousand five hundred years ago; so many years between those twenty-four tirthankaras but they all looked exactly the same – so much so that even the worshipper in the temple, the professional worshipper who worships every day, could not tell any difference: who is who? So finally they made symbols, under each statue there is a symbol, a small symbol. You may not even notice it that underneath Mahavira there is a line.The worshipper knows it; he can tell you that this is Mahavira’s statue, this is Adinatha’s statue. And you are surprised – there is no difference at all. You can replace the statues and nobody will be able to find out.My father was a very sincere man. He never said to me, “When you are older, more mature, you will understand.” He never said that to me. He simply accepted that he did not know. And he said that if I ever came to know I should remember to tell him, because he did not know.What has happened? It is not possible that in thousands of years’ time twenty-four persons were born absolutely resembling each other. You cannot find two persons on the whole earth resembling each other exactly. Even twins are not absolutely the same; the mother recognizes them, their friends recognize them, and their husbands have to recognize them – just small differences.After my enlightenment it became clear to me, as my clarity became complete, that the reason why those twenty-four statues are exactly the same is not that those twenty-four persons were exactly the same, but those twenty-four persons were doing exactly the same meditation. Their inner being was moving on the same staircase and that was affecting their physical bodies. That is natural. When they became enlightened their outer bodies also started resembling each other a little bit and this fact was noted down by the sculptors.It is a miracle, and to make it clear to the coming generations they made those twenty-four statues exactly alike. They are indicating a fact: that if your inner being moves in the same direction, your outer expressions are bound to change. Your eyes will start having the same light, your hands will start having the same grace, your words will start having the same authority.It is not the beard that is creating the mischief. In fact, the problem is why you started growing the beard!People who have been around me slowly start growing a beard. I don’t say anything to them, but something happens in their minds. They start realizing that the beard is a natural thing to a man, and to shave it is as ugly as a woman starting to grow a beard. Just think of a woman… And it is not difficult – she can just have a few injections, a few hormones that are needed to grow a beard, and she will have a beard! But I don’t think that any man would like her, or that anybody is going to say, “What a beautiful woman!” But the beard, to men, is a natural thing.As you start meditating, your life becomes more and more natural in so many ways. The beard is just a small part of it. You will find it easier to have a beard, more spontaneous. And this is symbolic of other happenings in your life: the way you walk, the way you see, the way you sit.So don’t be angry with those people who prostrate themselves before you. Just bless them on my behalf because they are not prostrating themselves before you, they are prostrating themselves before me – you are simply a medium. So on my behalf just bless them, and you will be surprised that your blessing reaches to their hearts. You can see the joy, the blissfulness that comes to them by your blessing.I can understand your embarrassment, but what to do? To be with a man like me you have to go through many sufferings – these are the sufferings. You have to pay for it. But there is no need to feel ego, no need to feel pride. Just feel humble that you have become a vehicle, that you have become a medium, that people can see me through you.And don’t try to convince them that they are wrong; don’t try to convince them that you are somebody else. You are not! In that particular moment I am absolutely visible, through you, to them. They are not committing a mistake. But you are not aware that you have become transparent. Your meditation will make you more and more transparent. Soon, hundreds of my sannyasins will have to face the same problem.But you should rejoice that your consciousness is growing, that your mirror is getting more and more clean. It is not the beard, it is your growth of consciousness that gives the feeling. And the feeling is so strong that those people will not be able to see the distinctions that you can see. You can compare photographs, and you can see that they don’t resemble each other. Why are people coming to your house and asking why you have your own photographs all around?It reminds me:A great painter wanted to paint Ramakrishna. He asked permission – he painted Ramakrishna, and when the painting was complete he brought the painting to Ramakrishna. It was early morning: his usual gathering, his disciples, visitors, and the painting was brought. And Ramakrishna touched the feet of the painting. The painter could not understand, Ramakrishna’s followers could not understand. They said, “He is really mad. It is his own painting, his own picture, and the guy is touching his own feet!”The painter said, “I am not accustomed to the ways of mystics, but this looks like madness. This is your picture.”Ramakrishna said, “But when you made it, I was in samadhi; it is a painting of samadhi too. I am irrelevant. And when somebody brings a picture of samadhi in front of me, it is impossible that I should not pay respect to it. Let the whole world call me mad. It is Ramakrishna’s body; it could be somebody else’s body – that does not matter. What matters is that you have succeeded in catching the spirit. That moment of silence that was inside me, I can see inside your picture.”Even a picture… A disciple is a living painting of his master. As he comes closer to the heights, more and more people will see the master in him. So what is happening is perfectly right.Osho,For years I have noticed that whenever I bow down and touch your feet, you have never put your hand on my head, which generally you do to others. But late on the night of your arrival in Mumbai I suddenly felt your two hands put on my head, and with it a continuous lightning going on in my forehead at the third eye. First I thought that it must have been my imagination due to my deep longing to have your hand put on my head. But as the lightning was so strong I woke up, and became fully aware that it was actually happening. My heart was full of gratitude, and tears started rolling down. It was all so blissful and beyond words to describe it. In deep gratitude I bowed down and touched your feet, and slowly, slowly everything became normal. Early the following morning my five-year-old granddaughter rushed to me and woke me up saying, “Your Osho has come to Mumbai.”Osho, please accept my deep gratitude for your unbounded compassion on me. If you feel at all that it is necessary, will you please kindly comment?Govind Siddharth, it would have been better if you had not asked the question – because I always touch the heads of the wrong people. They need it; they need all the support possible.The people who are growing on their own do not need any support. I put my hands on their heads only when they have done everything that they could do and they need the last push.Yes, I have been avoiding your head, and avoiding it almost for twenty-five years – it is difficult to remember whose head to touch and whose head not to touch – but now you had earned it, deserved it.There have been very few people who have been with me for so long, with such trust, with such devotion. This is the first time he has asked any questions, and I think the last time – because he has asked all the questions!But he has been growing. Many people have come and gone but he has remained the same: with the same love, with the same devotion – and has continued to work upon himself. And I have not been helping him much, not even this much – putting my hand on his head, which is not a difficult thing. I have been doing it to thousands of heads, but those heads are very thick.I was waiting… One day I will touch Govind Siddharth’s head, but that day will be when he is really in need – when he has done everything, has not left anything undone and only a small push is needed from my side.So what happened to you was not your imagination. And now many more things will start happening, because now the doors are open and you are inside the temple.Osho,Secondly, all these years I have noticed that you address certain sannyasins, including me, by our original name, never using our sannyas name. Not only this, but you affix to our name “ji,” “babu,” “bhai” – a sign of respect shown to elders. Osho, you being my respected and beloved master, I feel painfully awkward and as if I must be lacking something when you address me thus. Why is this so? Will you please kindly comment?Govind Siddharth, this is true. There are a few people who I have known long before the initiation into sannyas started. Even before sannyas they were sannyasins by their attitude, by their gratefulness. So when they took sannyas, as far as I was concerned, there was no change. They were already sannyasins to me. They were unaware of it but to me there was no change. This was the reason that I continued their old names.For example, I am addressing Govind Siddharth for the first time; otherwise I have always called him Lashkariji. Kakubhai, Falibhai, Jayantibhai: I have known them for so many years before sannyas, and there has been no drastic change. They smoothly moved into sannyas, so smoothly that I don’t remember a few of their sannyas names. I don’t know what is the name of Falibhai, and there is no need. Falibhai will become enlightened as Falibhai. He must know his sannyas name, but I have forgotten because I have never used it. And that was the case with Lashkariji. Today I have used Govind Siddharth before you all, but from tomorrow – again Lashkariji! Names don’t matter.I can understand your embarrassment that I am calling everybody else by the sannyas name and not calling you by the sannyas name – “Is there something missing?” No, there is not anything missing. Even before you became a sannyasin there was nothing missing. Your sannyas has not been a revolution but an evolution. You have simply grown; you have not taken any jump, there has not been any need.And you should understand my trouble also: when I see you, I don’t remember Govind Siddharth, I remember Lashkariji. So you should be compassionate toward me too; I have my troubles. Now when Kakubhai comes to see me, I don’t know his sannyas name. But the important thing is sannyas, not the name. And it is something inner, not something outer. So don’t feel that way.I can see the point, that you respect me. And this has been the human tradition all over the world: that if you respect me then I cannot respect you – and that is absolutely wrong.If you go to a Jaina monk and you put both your hands together with deep respect and bow down to him, he cannot do the same to you – because you are respecting him, you are putting him on a higher pedestal; now from that pedestal he can only bless you. Jaina scriptures, Hindu scriptures, Buddhist scriptures all prohibit it: sannyasins should not be respectful toward non-sannyasins. They should be compassionate – compassion keeps you above them.But about everything, my approach is different. I respect all those who respect me. I love all those who love me. The more you respect me, the more I respect you; it is a mutual phenomenon. There is no question of somebody being superior and somebody being inferior.In Gautam Buddha’s life, he liked to tell stories from his old lives. In one of his lives, when he was not enlightened, he heard about an enlightened man and went to see him. He was a man of great charisma. Buddha had come with all kinds of questions and doubts and skepticism, but as he came close to him he forgot everything. He went down, touched his feet with tremendous respect. But as he stood up, he was surprised and shocked that the awakened man touched his feet. Buddha said to him, “What are you doing? You are awakened, you have arrived. Your journey is finished; I have not even taken the first step. It looks so embarrassing that you touched my feet before this whole crowd.”The man laughed and he said, “Don’t be worried. I have not touched your feet, I have touched your future. Yesterday I was not awakened; tomorrow you will be awakened. So what is the difference? – just a question of time. And it is absolutely necessary that I touch your feet because I can see that you are going to become a great master. Millions of people will pay respect to you.“Don’t forget that one enlightened man has touched your feet while you were not enlightened – remember it. Be respectful to those people, because they may be asleep, but what is the difference between the man asleep and the awakened man? So little… The one asleep will become awakened, will have to become awakened – how long can he sleep?”So as far as I am concerned, I am not one of your so-called holier-than-thou saints.I love you. I respect you. I am grateful, as you cannot conceive. I am immensely thankful to every person who has come to me to share my joy, to share my being, to be part of my celebration.Osho,Since shaktipat on that night I am feeling very lazy. For the whole day I lie down doing nothing. Even to eat or take a bath, I have to force myself. I cannot even do meditation techniques. Even if I forcibly try to do them, I am forced to leave them half way. All this is dropping off. A strange transformation is happening. My blood pressure fluctuates, the head remains hot all the time; the sex urge has increased.A different type of understanding, or even better to say, experiencing, is happening. So many things which I had understood with certain meanings before have now been given an absolutely new meaning. A strange acceptance has come to life. I find there is nothing good or bad, nothing new or old; people are as they should be, and cannot be otherwise. I also feel now that people whom I had met before and worked with – there was never a real meeting with them. I now realize that all of them were working with the same love and affection in their own way, but I had my own conclusions and opinions about them – and that was the hindrance in meeting and understanding them.For the first time I feel I have come to know them, what they were doing, and what they are doing cannot have been better than what it is. With this acceptance I have started feeling a strange type of love and affection toward everyone.Osho, what is happening to me? Am I really getting lazy or is it a reaction from one extreme to another extreme? Or has the time come to let things happen? There is also a deeper and deeper and more increasing urge to just sit at your feet and let the grass grow by itself.Govind Siddharth, whatever is happening is absolutely necessary. It is part of the transformation. Just allow it to happen.Don’t force anything, not even meditations. Slowly, slowly this phase will disappear and you will find a totally new experience in everything, meditation included. It will not be any longer something that you do; it will be something that happens.Man starts by doing meditation, but ends by meditation happening. Unless meditation becomes just like breathing – you don’t have to do it – you are still immature, a beginner. When meditation becomes like breathing you forget all about it. It is simply there; whatever you are doing becomes meditative, becomes peaceful, silent, loving. Everything that you do starts having a mystifying touch to it.Small things – a flower, a dry, dead leaf on the grass – start having tremendous beauty. New colors, new spaces around you go on opening. But it is not your doing, because whatever you can do will remain smaller than you. And anything smaller than you is not going to be the miraculous we are searching for.It has to happen. All our efforts are simply a preparation for the miraculous to happen. We cannot cause the miraculous to happen; there is no cause-and-effect relationship. It is not that we will do certain things then the miraculous will happen to us, no. By doing certain things you are not creating any cause, you are simply removing a few hindrances which are blocking the way for the miraculous to shower on you. It is not a question of cause and effect.And when the blocks are removed, you have simply to wait. That’s why the feeling is arising in you just to sit silently – doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I see the beginning with you, but not the end. Please comment.There is no end to this pilgrimage, there is only the beginning. It is a very profound question.Gautam Buddha is reported to have said, “The world never begins but it ends. Enlightenment begins but it never ends. Ignorance has no beginning, but it has an end. Awareness has only a beginning but no end.”So it is absolutely correct that you cannot see any end, you can only see the beginning. It is not my fault, it is not your fault; it is how things are.In ordinary life, in the mundane life, everything is limited; it has a boundary to it. In the spiritual realm, no experience has any boundary; it is oceanic. It simply goes on and on; you never come to a point where you can say, “Now I have arrived.” You are always arriving and always arriving but you never arrive – because that will be nothing but death. If the dimension of spiritual growth comes to an end, that will be a death and nothing else – because there will be no more possibilities opening, no more doors opening, no more flowers blossoming. All has happened. At that point everything is past, and there is no future.That’s what the meaning of “the end” is – when everything is past and there is no future.The very pilgrimage with me begins by dropping the past. The more you are unburdened of the past the bigger your future becomes. When there is no past left, no psychological hang-up, there is an infinity confronting you – growth unbounded, a challenge forever. The more you enter into it the lovelier it becomes.The more you have traveled the path – the goal does not come closer but you are more peaceful, more silent, more rejoicing. Your life goes on every moment changing into a more blissful existence; it becomes a benediction – not only to you but to the whole existence. But there is no end to it; the pilgrimage is endless. It is only for those who are not goal seekers.The goal seekers are mediocre people. They have a certain goal and they reach; they become the president of a country, they have arrived; they wanted so much money and they have found it. But have you seen the misery of the goal seekers? When they have found the goal, have they found anything, really?By finding the goal they have simply found that they have been fools, that they have been running after shadows. Now somebody is president, somebody is an emperor, but so what? It is the same man, perhaps worse, because the journey that he has to make to become an emperor is full of violence, corruption, treachery, cunningness. He can do anything – but he wants to become the emperor. He can sell his own soul. He really sells his own soul to sit on a throne – but a soulless man…Gautam Buddha was born as a prince, and he was the only son of his father. Just before he was going to be enthroned, he escaped. The father was old and he wanted to retire, and he had a beautiful, young, intelligent, well-educated man in Gautama. He was mature enough – he was twenty-nine – and the father wanted him to take charge of the kingdom.In fact that was one of the reasons why he escaped from the kingdom, because he had seen his father’s empty life – riches all around and poverty inside. He had everything that was available in those days and he had no peace, he had no love, he had no compassion. He had never understood what beauty is, what poetry is, what music is; there was no time for such things. He was constantly fighting against other kingdoms. His whole life had been the life of a warrior – and what had he gained? He had simply lost his whole life in futile wars.He had never enjoyed a blissful night with the stars. He had a beautiful garden, but nobody had seen him in the garden. The roses blossomed but not for him; he had no eye for it.Gautama had seen the emptiness of a great emperor, and he was intelligent enough not to repeat the same stupid circle again. He escaped out of the kingdom.His father searched all over the kingdom; Gautama knew that he would search ferociously. His father’s whole army was all over the kingdom – that’s why he left the kingdom to go to another kingdom. But the people had seen his chariot moving on the road in that direction, crossing the boundary line, the checkpost. So the father informed the emperor of the neighboring kingdom, who was his friend, “My son has escaped into your kingdom. Try to find him.” And the neighboring king was overjoyed because he was hoping that Gautama could be persuaded to marry his daughter. He had only one daughter, no son, and he wanted a capable man who could manage two kingdoms together. Both kingdoms were big kingdoms.He found Gautama in the forest in a cave. He knew Gautama, Gautama knew him. And he said, “What kind of madness is this? My palace is there; if you don’t want to live with your father you could have come to me. This kingdom is as much yours as your own kingdom – and this is bigger than your kingdom. And you are just as much a son to me as to your father. We are great friends – you know it. Don’t be foolish; just come with me and sit in the chariot. If you don’t want to go back home, you will not be forced.”Gautama said, “I have not left one kingdom to get another kingdom. I have not left the palace to get a bigger palace – because I know, if in that small kingdom and small palace there was so much emptiness, in your bigger kingdom and bigger palace there must be a much bigger emptiness, futileness.“I can see it in your eyes. Watching my own father’s eyes, I have become almost an expert; I can see a person’s eyes and can say whether he has anything inside, or is just a poor man. He may be an emperor… To me you are just a beggar, just like my father. You certainly are friends. And don’t disturb me. I am in search of something which cannot be taken away from me, which even death cannot destroy. I am in search of something which can bring a kingdom into my heart.“I am not a seeker for anything that is outside me. Peace has to be within me, silence has to be within me, love has to be within me, compassion has to be within me, a sense of beauty has to be within me. Everything that is valuable is inner. I am in search of myself. Just be kind enough and don’t disturb me, otherwise I will have to move to another kingdom.”In the world there are goals. In the spiritual realm there are no goals. It is a pure journey, leading nowhere. Note down the word nowhere. It is a very beautiful word.There was an atheist… And atheists are talking about God more than theists. This is strange: twenty-four hours a day they are arguing against God. He was such a fanatic atheist that even in his office, in big, capital letters on the wall, he had written, “God is nowhere” – so anybody entering into his office had first to read “God is nowhere.” Naturally that became the subject to discuss first; the man would forget what he had come for.One day the atheist was sitting with his small child who was learning to read. He could read small words. God was possible for him to read – it was not that big a word – but nowhere is so big. The small boy read, “God is now here” – he broke the word nowhere into now here. “Nowhere” was too big, but he could manage it in two parts.But his father – who had written it, who had seen it for years – had never been aware that “nowhere” can also be “now here.” A sudden, shocking awakening – and he started thinking about it: “Perhaps the child is right. All my arguments are only arguments; I have no solid proof of God’s nonexistence. I have not explored the whole existence so that I can say he is nowhere. That statement is stupid. That statement can be made only by a person who has been everywhere and has found that God is not anywhere.” Thinking about it, he thought, “What to say about this whole universe? I have not even been into myself, and I am talking about ‘everywhere.’ Perhaps I should start my journey again, from now and from here.”The pilgrimage you are starting begins now, begins here; it ends never, ends nowhere – because it is always now and it is always here. In existence only now exists and only here exists.In language there is there, then – but not in existence. In existence everything is here and everything is now. And now and here are not separate; they are two aspects of one reality. This is one of the most important discoveries of modern physics: that space and time are not two things. Space means here, time means now.Albert Einstein, who worked for his whole life on the problem of time and space, finally dropped the two words time and space. He created a new word, spacetime, because all his research led him to one conclusion – that time and space are not two things, they are one. You cannot divide now from here.And the journey will move from one now to another now, from one here to another here, but it is not going to come to an end. It is an eternal pilgrimage.And one should rejoice that life is eternal, that we are part of eternity, that there is no death, that there is no end, that there is no full-point.Osho,The last six months without you were all right in the outer world, but inside there was always some part of me aching and missing you. Now, being here with you, immediately the aching has stopped. Is there any way to live without your physical presence and be fulfilled without being enlightened?You have asked two questions in one question. Life can be a fulfillment without me – because I can be within you; why should I be without? But life cannot be fulfilled without enlightenment: that consolation I cannot give to you. Fulfillment and enlightenment mean the same thing.There is no problem in being enlightened. It is the easiest thing in existence, for the simple reason that it is your nature. You are born enlightened; you just have to be helped to remember it. It is not an achievement; it is only a remembrance.An old king was puzzled: How to choose his successor? He had a son, but just like any father he could not believe that his son was capable of doing anything. He asked his master what to do. The master said, “The question is not about your son, the question is about you – how can you be convinced that he is capable? You do one thing: renounce him, throw him out of the kingdom and tell him, ‘I have nothing to do with you.’”The father said, “This seems to be too hard on the poor boy.”The master said, “If you want to follow my idea, just do it.”The son was thrown out of the kingdom and told that he was no longer the prince; he had to live his life on his own. He became a beggar – because this is a problem: if somebody is born a king and somehow he loses his kingdom, the only profession that is available for him is to be a beggar. He cannot do anything: he knows no craft, he knows no art. This can give you something of a very deep insight – that inside, kings are beggars. Once their outside kingdom is taken away, only the beggar is left. When the kingdom was there the beggar was hidden, hidden from the sight of other people. But now that the kingdom was removed, the young man had no other way than to beg.Years passed. He even forgot that once he used to be a prince. Years of begging – how can you remember? Remembrance needs a certain climate. Now being a beggar and remembering that once you were a prince does not suit. The climate of the world of the beggar is not supportive to the remembrance; he completely forgot about it.And there was no point in remembering; it was an unnecessary torture. You have to sleep on the street, you have to eat things that you never imagined that you would have to eat, you have to wear rags. You don’t have even a shelter. Just to survive was so difficult that even if he had remembered that once he was a prince, he himself would have thought, “I must be hallucinating. I cannot be a prince, it must be a dream. I must have dreamed, imagined; otherwise what happened?” Because he had not committed any crime, he had not done anything to lose the kingdom, and the kingdom had disappeared. It was better to forget because it was hurting, it was a wound. It was better that it heal.After many years, when he was standing before a poor hotel asking for a cup of tea, a golden chariot stopped on the road and the prime minister… Seeing the golden chariot the prince felt as if he had seen it before – “Must be imagination. And this old man looks like a man I used to know, but he was not so old.” But still he could not remember that he was a prince.But the prime minister touched his feet, and at that very moment when the prime minister touched his feet a cloud disappeared. All those years of begging became nonexistent. He simply said, “Why have you come after so many years?” Even his voice was different – it was the voice of the prince, not of a beggar.The prime minister said, “The king is dying. He has called you back. The days of your test are over. The king wanted you to know the lowest possibility in human existence, to be a beggar, so that when you become a king you don’t forget that the beggar is also human, that the beggar perhaps is a prince in disguise. He wanted you to understand that just by being a king you do not become superior. You may have everything, but deep down you remain the beggar. Your test is over and the king is on his deathbed, and we have to reach quickly to the capital.”The people in the hotel and in the neighborhood who had seen this young man as a beggar could not believe their eyes, because the beggar was completely transformed. His face was no longer that of a beggar – although he was still in rags, the expression of his face and eyes, the very style had suddenly changed. He was a king.It is an ancient story. Ancient stories were not just for entertainment; they had a message. This story contains so much.This story means that your enlightenment, your awakening, is not something that is going to happen from the outside. It is not something that you have to achieve; it is something that you are born with.But you are born among beggars, and seeing beggars all around you have been imitating beggars. Your being a beggar is an imitation. Your being enlightened is not an achievement but only a remembrance.The whole art of meditation is the art of remembering who you are. Fulfillment cannot happen without knowing who you are. How can you be fulfilled if deep within you at the center is darkness, ignorance? If you don’t know yourself, how can you be fulfilled? Before fulfillment, contentment, the basic condition is to remember – and the miracle of remembering is that the moment you remember yourself, contentment and fulfillment come simultaneously, without any effort on your part. They are flowers of your enlightenment, of your remembrance.You can live without me; that is very simple – I can be within you. In fact, even when you see me as without, you are seeing me within yourself. Right now you are seeing me, but what you are exactly seeing is an image which is within you.I may be here, I may not be here; it may be just a dream. You may wake up and you may see that I am gone. And your love can allow me to be part of you. It is absolutely in your hands to open your doors for me to be your guest. Then the outer person is irrelevant.But you cannot divide fulfillment and enlightenment into two things. They are one, and inseparable. Fulfillment is simply a by-product of enlightenment. And enlightenment is so easy. But millions of people are trying to be fulfilled. They can never be fulfilled, because fulfillment is a by-product. You cannot directly be fulfilled; it comes as a shadow of enlightenment.So those who have been searching for enlightenment may not have thought about fulfillment; the moment they become enlightened suddenly they find utter fulfillment. And the people who are looking for fulfillment cannot find it. In money, in power, in politics, in relationships – they go on searching everywhere for fulfillment, and everywhere they come across frustration. Their whole life is nothing but a futile exercise. Although they are asking for fulfillment they always get frustration, because they have forgotten to understand a simple thing – that fulfillment is not directly approachable; it is a by-product: you should not bother about it. You should work for the real, authentic experience; then the by-product is always present.But your question is significant, and it has a long history, as old as man himself. We have seen people like Gautam Buddha, so utterly fulfilled that you cannot think that anything more is needed. Naturally a desire arises in you to be fulfilled like this man. You cannot see his enlightenment – that is the problem. You can see his fulfillment, you can see his silence, you can see his compassion; you can see his kindness, his lovingness. You can see his grace, his beauty, his integrity, his individuality. Everything attracts you.You would like to have such a beautiful personality. You would like to have the same light in your eyes, the same flame in your life, the same joy, but you don’t know that all these are by-products. And if you start searching for them, you have gone on a wrong path: you will never find and you will be utterly frustrated. These things have happened to him because of his awareness, because of his becoming absolutely conscious. These are the flowers of his consciousness.You see the flowers. And the flowers are attractive, the flowers have a fragrance, and you would like those flowers. But you don’t see that those flowers get the juice from some hidden roots – and those hidden roots are in enlightenment.The easiest way is to be enlightened first, and then everything else that you always wanted comes to you on its own accord.Osho,I am very happy that I got a stick from you. I am lucky, and I deserved it. I am surprised that I did not understand the mind game and my hypocrisy. In your presence, and by your insight, I can understand and feel my unawareness defect and my skeleton more and more. I thank you for this, but I need more sticks from you so that I may not continue sleeping.You are getting greedy. You will get more sticks, but not according to your desire.I cannot fulfill your greed. Sticks you will get – whenever the time is right and whenever I see that you need it. Greed is not a need.You enjoyed, you saw things in a different light. Let that understanding go deeper in you; let it become your blood, your bones, your marrow. And wait, wait for more sticks.Osho,During the last months, especially during the time you were in Portugal, a lot of friends of mine and I were really depressed, not knowing where to go or what to do. When we met Hasya, she told us that you said that we were all in a gap, and that living in a gap is one of the most painful and agonizing experiences; and not to miss that moment because it might not happen again. Can you say something more about this gap?You are with me; the longer you are with me, the more and more you start taking me for granted. In other words, the longer you are with me the more and more you forget me.I am available. There is no need to remember me.It happened in the Second World War that Adolf Hitler declared that on a certain day he was going to bomb the Tower of London. And it was a surprising experience: thousands of people who were born in London, who had lived their whole lives in London, had passed by the Tower millions of times but had always postponed – “The Tower is there, we are here. We can see it any day.” And people from all over the world are going to London every day to see the Tower! Those Londoners themselves suddenly rushed when they heard the Tower was going to be bombed. There was such a big crowd that it was impossible for anybody to enter the Tower, and everybody wanted to get in first.English people love queues very much, but that day they forgot all about queues. It was such an urgency; it was not a bus stop where you could go on holding your umbrella and talking about the weather, standing in the queue and being a nice English gentleman. This was not a time to be nice, to be a gentleman. Everybody was being rowdy. Even professors, doctors, very cultured people, were behaving like rustics; they wanted to enter, to see, because tomorrow the tower would be gone. Human mind is such that whatever is available, you become sleepy about it.When the commune in America was destroyed by the fascist government there, America tried with all the countries, other than the communist, so that no country should allow me to enter even as a tourist. This was unprecedented. I have never been to those countries, I have not committed any crime in their countries, against their law, still their parliaments passed orders that I could not be allowed in their countries. Sannyasins were in a great chaos.That’s what I mean: the gap. I was available and they missed me, and now they wanted me and I was not available. They were in a state that just by being lazy, by being sleepy, they missed something that was within their reach. And now they don’t know whether I will ever be available to them. A great desire to be with me – just the mind’s pendulum moves this way: from one extreme to the other extreme.They were with me for five years, and they had accepted it as fact that we were going to be together forever. They wanted to ask something; they postponed. They wanted to meet me; they postponed. They wanted to see me; they postponed, postponed for small things – because the girlfriend was insisting to go to the lake, the boyfriend was interested in going to the disco. They postponed for small things. And now they were not even aware of where I was, because I was being harassed without any reason, thrown out from one country to another.I had not committed any crime, and in the middle of the night the police would come and they would say that I had to leave immediately. They also felt embarrassed because they had no arrest warrant, they had no reason why to show to me. And those who were a little more human were not only surprised, but said, “This is the first time that orders have been given to us, without any reasons, that ‘This man has to be put out of the country immediately; his presence in the country is dangerous to the country.’”And what was the danger? The danger was that the American government was threatening the country: If you don’t throw this man out immediately, all the loans that we have given to you, you have to return immediately. And all the loans, which are billions of dollars for the coming two years, are cancelled right now. If you cannot repay the back loans, then your interest rate will be doubled from today.Now, those countries could not manage: they could not pay the loans back, they could not pay double interest. They could not manage to give up the loans that they had agreed upon for the future two years, because all their two-year projects depended on those loans; their whole economy would collapse.The American president said to one of the presidents, “You can choose between this man and America.” And the president of that country told me with tears in his eyes, “Osho, your coming has at least made us aware that we are not independent. Our independence is bogus; economically we are slaves, and against our will we have to deport you.” And the American president was insisting that I should not be allowed to leave, I should be deported, so that I cannot enter the country again – because I had one-year’s residency in that country. So my card for residency should be taken away and I should be deported.And the president said, “We cannot understand how we can deport you. You have not committed any crime. And how can we take the permanent residency card, which has never been taken before. Unless somebody commits heinous crimes – murders or rapes – that card cannot be taken. And we have told the American president that this is against our constitution, but they insist that it is not a question of constitution or law: ‘You simply deport that man. And because he will not be able to enter into the country he cannot go to the court, so you need not be worried.’”So sannyasins all over the world were in a strange gap. They wanted to meet me, and they had no idea where I was. They were looking all around; they were going to one country, to another country. Hearing that I am in Spain, they will reach Spain, but by that time I have been deported from Spain; by the time they reach Greece, I am deported from Greece.It was important in the sense that it gave you many insights. One: don’t postpone; tomorrow does not exist. And don’t take me for granted, because tomorrow I may be shot dead, because from very reliable sources in Washington – and not from one source, but from three different sources the same message has reached me – the American government is ready to give half a million dollars to any professional killer to kill me.This gap was important – that if I am not there, then whatever I have told you, the meditations that I have given to you, will be with you. If you still want to be with me, then meditation will be the only way. You will not be able to listen to me but you will be able, in your silence, to feel me.It created a chaos because the commune was so settled; nobody was thinking that the American government would prove so fanatically Christian that it would simply like to destroy it.This is exactly how life is. Remember, we are always in the hands of death, so don’t postpone the essential. Postpone the nonessential; the essential has to be done now.It was good that you passed through the chaos. The commune was destroyed, but the movement has become stronger. Only the future will show it, that it was good. According to me, anything that happens ultimately turns out in favor of the good. Because the commune was no longer there, sannyasins from all over the world dispersed to different countries taking the fragrance, taking the message. Now small communes are springing up all around the world. It is good; instead of having one commune, having thousands of communes around the world is far better. It makes the whole world our commune – and a possibility of changing more people, transforming more people.That commune was just an experiment which succeeded completely, so we now know it can succeed anywhere. It was simply putting a certain theoretical conception into practice, and we were absolutely successful in putting it into practice – and those five thousand people who participated in it are now capable of creating five thousand communes around the world without any difficulty.Not a single sannyasin has been destroyed. On the contrary, thousands of new sannyasins have come into the movement. For the first time thousands more heard, started thinking about it, reading about it. It became a world movement.The American government is repenting; they have committed a mistake: they have made a small commune a worldwide phenomenon, a household name all over the world in all the languages, in each nook and corner. People started asking what it is. And people started asking why all the governments of the world and all the religions of the world should be against a single individual – “That man must have something; otherwise there is no need for so many governments and so many religions to be against him.”Just the other day I received a message. One of America’s very significant thinkers, a story writer and a novelist, has given an interview, and in the interview he said, “Osho has not been crucified because crucifixion is no longer in fashion, but the American government has done everything to crucify the man.” He is a Christian himself, but he has said in his interview, “After Jesus Christ, this man is the most dangerous man.”America has not done any harm. They have tried in every way, but somehow truth cannot be harmed.This gap has strengthened sannyasins. Even without me, the movement will go on.Osho,Why do I react against the management and the people in positions around you?It is simple – because you want to be in the management around me, in a powerful position, that’s why you react.You are not a humble person. You are not here for meditation. Here, too, you are a power-seeker. It is so clear, that if you cannot see it then you must be utterly blind.Some kind of management is necessary; it is functional. It is a small place. If one thousand people enter into this house then some kind of management will be needed, and anybody who will be managing will look as if he has power. But what power? It is simply functional, it is utilitarian. And you are reacting to it.You can be put into management – then others will be reacting to you. Then everybody can be put into management; then whom are you going to manage? So just don’t be stupid. The people who are managing are managing perfectly well, and they are managing humbly – nobody is arrogant, nobody is trying to dominate. But there are moments when they have to show you that a few things cannot be done. What do you want?I was in Athens. In my press conference there were forty police officers. Now I said, “Is it a police conference? With whom am I going to talk?” These were the people against whom I had to talk, and they had not allowed anybody else. Only police officers were there in the conference, and the press people.If there is no management here, you will see all the CID’s and all the police officers sitting here just wasting my time – because what I have to say is of no use to them. And they are wasting their time. So somebody has to watch every face and see how many police officers are to be allowed. A few have to be allowed; they are here. Even without knowing I can say who is a police officer, because he is not listening – he is looking here, he is looking there. What is he doing? He is not here at all.So it is nothing, it is simply your ego. Drop it. It is nothing worth discussing; simply drop it.Osho,You never compromised in your whole life, but we need a master. How is it possible to come near you without having any compromise?This is from the same person. Now, he is saying that he wants to come close to me without having any compromise. And he is also saying, “You never had a master.”Now, it is so clear: I never had a master because I never wanted to compromise. And I never went to ask any master, “How to come closer to you without compromising?” If you don’t want to compromise, there is no necessity to come closer to me. Coming closer, you will have to compromise.I never compromised, but I never had a master. So I have paid for it; I have struggled alone. If you don’t want to make a compromise it is perfectly good, but then be ready to pay for it – you will have to struggle alone. You cannot have both things together.Just to think of a master means you are ready to be a disciple – and the compromise has started. You will have to listen to the master. You will have to drop your stupid arguments, because no master has time. The master says, “Be silent.” And if he wants you to be silent for two years, then be silent for two years. That’s symbolic that you have accepted a master.Al-Hillaj, one of the Sufi mystics, remembers that when he reached his master Junnaid, Junnaid simply made a gesture with his hand for him to sit down. He did not even use language; he did not say, “Sit down.” Just a gesture: sit down. And for two years this was an everyday thing – al-Hillaj would enter, the disciples would be there, and Junnaid would make his gesture and al-Hillaj would sit down.After two years, Junnaid looked at him and smiled, and made the gesture to come closer, so al-Hillaj could sit close to his feet.Two years again passed, and Junnaid put his hand on his head, looked into his eyes and said, “The work is done, al-Hillaj, you can go now. The teaching is over.” He was talking to many other people all these six years, but to al-Hillaj he never spoke a single word. These were the only words after six years. al-Hillaj touched his feet, tears of gratitude in his eyes.He himself became a master in his own right, and his disciples used to ask him, “What transpired in those six years?”He said, “It is a miracle. He killed my ego slowly, slowly. On the first day when he simply gestured with his hand, I was angry. He was talking to others and he would not talk to me” – for two years! But you cannot be angry for two years. He became sad – “How long is it going to be?” Anger, when it leaves you, leaves you in sadness; but how long can you be sad?Day in, day out, one month, another month, sadness started turning into silence. And when it started turning into silence, that was the moment when the master smiled at him; that was a gesture that “You have moved rightly.” In anger he could have stopped, not come again – why go to such a man; why compromise to such a man? In sadness he could have stopped – why suffer the whole day unnecessarily ? And this man seems to be hard, made of stone. You are suffering in sadness and he will not even look at you.But each master has his own way. And when he smiled, then al-Hillaj understood that his silence has been taken note of. He has been accepted. He was called closer.You say you want to be close to me? I will behave exactly like Junnaid. If you have guts… Al-Hillaj must have had guts. After four years Junnaid puts his hand on his head; six years, he looks into his eyes. That is the meeting of the master and the disciple. And looking into his eyes he can see – the transformation has happened. There is no need to say anything to this man. He is allowed to go and be a master in his own right. And al-Hillaj Mansoor became a more famous master than Junnaid. He had the courage, the guts.But if you choose not to compromise, that’s perfectly good. I am absolutely happy about it.But your question is stupid. When I think about your question, you are bound to compromise somewhere or other. You cannot be a master on your own.Osho,Come, Osho, my beloved, I provoke you. Kill me. I feel alive today. I may not feel so tomorrow. Kill me now.My God!And you know the police officers are here. Killing you is perfectly okay, but even without killing anybody I am thought to be the most dangerous man since Jesus Christ. And if I start killing people this way, publicly… Come in private.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 16 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,As the world is progressing along a rational path, in less than a hundred years hence people will begin to wonder why you were not being heard and accepted now. Having successfully laid down the foundations of the religion of the future, how does it feel to be persecuted in your own time?There are many implications in your question. First, the world is not moving rationally. It was moving rationally up to Albert Einstein; after Albert Einstein, the rational approach has become invalid. The irrational has exploded in every field of experimentation.Now paintings are no longer rational. If you see the old paintings, you can understand reasonably well what they are; but the same is not true about Picasso.I have heard that in one of the exhibitions of his paintings, a critic was almost obsessed with one painting. He would go around to other paintings, but would come again and again to the same painting. Picasso was watching. Finally he went to the man and asked, “Why are you interested in this painting so much?”The man said, “I am a critic, and this is the only painting for the future.”Picasso looked at the painting and said, “My God! It is hanging upside down.”But even that does not make any difference; you cannot rationally understand the meaning of the paintings of Picasso. But you can be enchanted, thrilled. You can fall in love. You can see the beauty of the colors, you can see the harmony. It can leave a tremendously deep impact on you, but there is no meaning. If somebody asks you what this painting means you will not be able to answer – because even Picasso is not able to answer it.He has written to a friend, “I am very angry at people who ask the meaning of my paintings because they make me feel embarrassed. Nobody asks the roses: What is your meaning? Nobody asks the sunset: What is your meaning? Nobody asks the sky full of stars: What is your meaning? Why is everybody asking poor Picasso the meaning of his paintings? Existence has no meaning. As far as reason is concerned, there is no rationality in existence; it is irrational.”In my words, it is mystical.The world is not progressing toward more rationality. Rationality is already out of date. The genius has already transcended it.In poetry… You cannot ask Ezra Pound, “What is the meaning?” Ezra Pound will say, “It is poetry, and what does poetry have to do with meaning?” Poetry is something that triggers joy in you, ecstasy, silence, peace – for no reason at all.The words of the poetry are not the poetry – the poetry is somewhere between the words, between the lines. So those who only read words never come to know what poetry is; they remain hung up with prose. Prose is rational, poetry is irrational – that is the difference. Prose has a logic. Poetry has a mystery.Looking at a dance, you don’t ask the meaning. The dance certainly affects you, certainly reaches you – the greater the dancer the greater is his penetration within you – but there is no reason. His movements somehow create a situation in which your consciousness starts moving. There is a synchronicity, something within you starts dancing. But there is no meaning.And it is true of all dimensions of creativity, even about science. Physics has crossed the limits of reason, has entered into the irrational. Mathematics has crossed the line of reason.Mathematics used to be the most rational thing in the world, because it is a product of reason. Mathematics does not exist in existence, it is purely man-made. Naturally, man has made it absolutely rational. But even mathematics got into trouble in this century because physics, biochemistry, chemistry – everything was moving beyond reason, beyond meaning. And mathematics has been the base of it all.One great mathematician, Godel, was writing a masterpiece on mathematics. It was going to be the ultimate book about mathematics, and he was capable of doing it. He devoted almost his whole life – thousands of pages, and he was just going to conclude it. At that time another mathematician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell, was also working on a great work on mathematics, Principia Mathematica, to include everything.Mathematics was thought to be the perfect science. But Bertrand Russell came across a small puzzle in a children’s magazine and he could not solve it – and he is one of the great mathematicians of this age. That puzzle has become known as “Bertrand Russell’s paradox.” Godel wrote him that he was just going to conclude his book, and Bertrand Russell said, “Before you conclude it, please think this puzzle over,” and he sent this puzzle to Godel.The puzzle was very simple. The puzzle is that every librarian of the country receives an order to make a catalogue of all the books that are in the library. And he has to make two catalogues: one will remain with him in the library, and one has to be sent to the central library of the country.Many librarians felt the difficulty – what to do about the catalogue? One catalogue is going to remain in the library; now that is a book – has it to be included in the catalogue or not?It was very difficult. You cannot include it; it never existed. It is simply a catalogue. But you have made it, it has come into existence, and now it will remain in the library. If there were three thousand books, now there will be three thousand and one books. What about that one book? Should it be catalogued?But those local librarians simply wrote to the chief librarian of the central library: “We have come across a difficult problem. We are sending the catalogue to you – whatever you decide, we have left a place. If you feel to include it, you can include the catalogue also, but that will mean that the catalogue includes itself. That is absurd.”The chief librarian was going mad. He made a big catalogue of all the books in his library and the books in all the libraries of the country, and finally the same question was again there: whether the catalogue had to be included in the catalogue or not. He had to keep one catalogue in the library, and one catalogue went to the king so that the king knew how many books were in the central library and how many books were in other libraries. If it is not included, it would be a lie; if it is included, it would be an absurdity.Bertrand Russell sent that puzzle to Godel – “You are a great mathematician, old, world-famous, and you are going to conclude a book which is going to be the most important book ever written on mathematics. Please solve this puzzle also; it is a mathematical problem.”And Godel went so crazy he burned his book on which he had worked for almost forty years. The puzzle still remains.There comes a moment where reason fails; where the absurd, the irrational, the mystical, the miraculous raises its head.The coming hundred years are going to be more and more irrational. I do not ordinarily make prophecies, but about this I am absolutely prophetic: the coming hundred years are going to be more and more irrational, and more and more mystical.The second thing: After a hundred years people will be perfectly able to understand why I was misunderstood – because I am the beginning of the mystical, the irrational. I am a discontinuity with the past.The past cannot understand me; only the future will understand. The past can only condemn me. It cannot understand me, it cannot answer me, it cannot argue with me; it can only condemn me. Only the future – as man becomes more and more available to the mysterious, to the meaningless, yet significant…The rose is meaningless – but it is so significant, so beautiful. The whole existence is significant, but not meaningful. Meaning is of the mind, and significance is of the heart.Love is significant but not meaningful. That’s why for centuries parents have been choosing marriage partners for their sons and their daughters. Marriage is meaningful. The parents are experienced; they will choose the right family. They will choose a boy for their girl who has character, morality. They will choose a boy who is a success in the world of ambition, who is somebody, or who has the potential and is going upward and his tomorrow is going to be golden. They will see to it that the boy is going to inherit a large treasure – money, power, prestige. The same is the case for the girl.It is a business transaction; hence kings will only marry into other royal families – to create ties, so that wars can be avoided. If you look at Europe, almost every royal family is connected with the other royal families in some way or other.I had one sannyasin, Vimalkirti – if empires had remained in fashion he would have been the emperor of Germany. But empires went out of fashion; his father was just a postmaster, but Vimalkirti was the grandson of the last emperor of Germany. He was connected with almost all the royal families of Europe. The queen of England is his aunt because Philip, the husband of the queen, is Vimalkirti’s mother’s brother. Vimalkirti’s mother has three sisters, of course married into three royalties: Denmark, Holland, Greece. So all those royalties are connected. This was a strategy, a business strategy – you cannot fight with your own relatives.Secondly, it keeps the royal blood “pure” – as if there is something like royal blood! Man has lived in such fictions. Blood is blood. There is no royal blood.You must have seen in pictures that Queen Victoria and others used such clothes that you could not see their feet. Bertrand Russell himself belonged to a royal family and remembers about his childhood – because he lived long, almost one century. He made the century, and to live one century is really to live too much! He saw so many things happening, so many changes, so many fashions coming and going. He remembers that in his youth, just to see the feet of a woman was enough for a man to be sexually aroused – because any hidden thing creates curiosity. And nobody has seen any queen naked, ever. It was thought that queens’ legs are joined together; that’s why they walked so slowly. They walked slowly because that was the royal way, of grace. But the whole of Europe thought that their legs were joined, and there was no way to find out.Marriage, whether it is a royal marriage or an ordinary marriage, is a business affair that the parents think about. Love never thinks about how much money you have in the bank. Or do you ask before falling in love, “Before I fall in love, just tell me how much you have in your bank account. I’m just going to fall – before the fall happens, at least I should know about the bank account.”You can fall in love with a beggar – because love is not business; love has no meaning in that sense. You may have loved, but you cannot say what meaning it has. It is one of the mysteries available to everybody.That’s why I say love is the door to the divine. The divine is not available to everybody. Love is available to everybody. Now it is up to you to transform your love into the divine; it is the door. But don’t ask for meaning; neither is there any meaning in love, nor is there any meaning in the divine.My grandfather was always arguing with me, “What is this enlightenment business? What are you going to gain out of it?”I said, “That is where you miss the whole thing – the moment you ask what are you going to gain out of it.”But he said, “If you are not going to gain anything out of it, then why all this trouble? One should work for something meaningful.”I used to sit for hours silently, and he would always come. Because my father and my uncles had retired him forcibly, he was not ready to retire. So, in the house, only two persons were useless: I was useless because I had never entered into business; he was useless because he had been thrown out of business. So we almost always had to meet – everybody else was busy. I would be sitting silently and he would come and sit by my side.He would say, “Listen. They have retired me forcibly – and you are a fool! You are already retired, without ever entering into any business. What is the gain? What are you going to get by sitting silently?”I said, “I don’t want to get anything, I simply want to sit silently. It is so beautiful, it is so joyous.”He said, “This is all poetry – in life, real money is needed.” And he was an experienced old man and he was right – in life, poetry will not help. He would say to me again and again, “Listen son, nobody is taking care of you – they are spoiling you. They are all busy in earning money, and they have left you alone for enlightenment. Never mention enlightenment to me,” he used to say to me. “Even that word makes me so angry. From where did you get this idea? Just do something useful! But you are turning good-for-nothing.”I said, “That is exactly the definition, the definition of enlightenment.”We used to go for walks in the morning, in the evening. By and by I said to him, “Listen. Anyway, you are retired and I am not going to enter into business, so drop arguing for the business. What have you gained? You have simply been thrown out. I will remain out from the very beginning; nobody can throw me out, nobody can retire me. And you are retired, now relax. Just try for a few moments sitting by my side with closed eyes.”He said, “But unless I understand the meaning of it… I don’t want to become a laughingstock. Sitting with closed eyes – if somebody sees me they will think, ‘This old man has gone senile.’”I said, “It is up to you, but one thing you should remember: that your whole life you rushed after meaning, usefulness, utility. Now you have come close to death. The day you die, silence can go with you, money cannot; peace can go with you, power cannot. And if you are full of inner light, your death can become the most ecstatic experience. You have lived the world, now try to prepare yourself for death – and in death, the coins of this world are useless.”But he was adamant, and old habits die hard. And to listen to a small child and follow him was against his ego. But when he was dying, out of the whole family he remembered me. I was eighty miles away in the university; I rushed back home. He was just taking his last breaths, as if he were simply waiting for me. He had become a skeleton. He wanted to say something to me; I had to put my ear close to his mouth. I said, “You can say whatever you want to say, and this time I will not argue – because you don’t have any time. You simply say it.”He said, “I only want to say to you that you were right and I was wrong, but now it is too late.” These were his last words.Gertrude Stein, a famous poetess, was dying. She was world-famous, and I love her stories, her poetry, her parables – because they don’t have any meaning, but they are beautiful flowers. You can feel the fragrance, the freshness, the aliveness; there is a message. All her lovers, friends, were surrounding her. She opened her eyes and said, “What is the answer?”Now this was absurd, because she had not asked any question, so how can she ask what is the answer? For a moment there was silence. Then somebody said, “But you have not asked the question.”So she said, “Okay. There is not much time left, so what is the question?” – and she died.There is no question, and there is no answer. Life is a mystery to be lived – not to be questioned and not to be asked, not to be questioned and not to be answered: lived, loved, laughed, danced.After a hundred years people will be able to understand perfectly why I was condemned so unanimously from all over the world. Even here, just today a threat has come that if I am not going to leave this place the house will be burned. Just as I was coming to you I told Neelam to tell Suraj Prakash, from me, that if there is any problem I can move to a hotel – because I would not like his family to be in trouble unnecessarily.After a hundred years they will understand, because the more man becomes aware of the mysterious side of life the less he is political; the less he is a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian; the less is the possibility for his being a fanatic. A man in tune with the mysterious is humble, loving, caring, accepting the uniqueness of everybody. He is rejoicing in the freedom of each individual, because only with freedom can this garden of humanity be a rich place.Each individual should have his own song. But right now it is the crowd, the mob, that decides everything. And it is the mob that is condemning me because I am asserting the rights of the individual – and I am alone in asserting the rights of the individual.There are people, millions of people, but they are all divided into different kinds of mobs. In a Christian country it is the Christian mob which wants to burn me. In Greece it was the Christian orthodox church that wanted to dynamite the house in which I was living, and which threatened the government that if I was not thrown out of the boundaries of their country within an hour then that house in which I was a guest would be burned, with all the people who were in it. It was a big, beautiful old house and nearabout twenty-five sannyasins were living with me. I had not gone out of the house in fifteen days.But the mob is afraid of individuals. The very assertion of individuality is a danger to the mobocracy; and it doesn’t matter whether the mob is Christian or the mob is Hindu or the mob is Mohammedan. The question is not of the adjective; the question is that the mob is always against the individual. And the truth is always individual. It is never in the hands of the mob.The people who are to come after a hundred years will be perfectly able to understand what my crime was. My crime is the assertion of individuality against any kind of mob and its violent pressures.You have also asked how it feels to me to be persecuted. As far as I am concerned it just feels great! I have nothing to lose. The mob is fighting a losing battle, its days are gone. I am fighting a battle which is going to be victorious – if not in my time then some other time. But I am on the right path. It is tremendously fulfilling that I am not among the persecutors, that I am the persecuted; that I am not among those who crucify, but I am among those who are crucified – because those who are crucified are the real salt of the earth. Only they have helped human consciousness to grow. The people who have been crucifying are sub-human.So it is perfectly good; they can kill me, at the most. But killing me, they will be living in a very mistaken idea – because I have come to know a source within me which cannot be killed. Only the body can be destroyed. But the body is going to die anyway – it is far more beautiful that it dies for something beautiful, that it dies in a creative way to bring something into the world, that it is not an ordinary death. I have lived an extraordinary life, and I would love to die extraordinarily.So as far as I am concerned, to be persecuted from one country to another country, from one land to another land, from one mob to another mob, is just a game. Knowing perfectly well, so absolutely certain, that the truth is with me, it does not matter. Even if the whole world is against me it makes no difference.It is joyful and playful – from my side. I am enjoying the whole drama, and I will enjoy it to my last breath – because there is nothing to lose. Whatever life can give, it has given to me.I want to taste death in the most beautiful way possible. And to be crucified for the sake of truth, for the sake of the future, for the sake of the evolution of human consciousness, is the only way one can conceive a beautiful death.Osho,This new phase of the Upanishad is so immensely beautiful. For me, you are indeed closer than ever. I am getting a feeling of urgency, of “it's now or never,” yet I feel my defenses standing in the way of letting you in totally. Where is the hammer to shatter my shell?The hammer is here. Where is your skull? Your skull is hiding behind so many masks, you have grown so many buffers around you.You have to understand the word buffer. Between two railway compartments there are buffers. They are there so that, if by chance there is any accident, the buffers will absorb the shock and will not allow it to reach the passengers inside the compartment. Or like springs in your car: those springs go on absorbing all the shocks of the road and they don’t allow them to reach you.Mind has created all kinds of buffers. So when you are hit by a hammer, the buffer absorbs the shock; it doesn’t reach you. And unless you are alert about the buffers and you drop those buffers, there is no way for any hammer to destroy your conditionings, to destroy your resistances, to destroy your walls that you have created around yourself. You have created them as part of security but they have grown too much and, instead of being a security, now it is a question of how to save you from your own security measures.This is something to be understood. Scientists have found mammoth skeletons, animals four times to six times bigger than elephants, which used to roam around the earth millions of years ago. Then, suddenly, they disappeared. Science has been at a loss to find out what happened, why they disappeared from all over the world. Only recently, science has come with a hypothesis which seems to me to be correct.The hypothesis is that those big animals went on becoming bigger; that was a security measure. They were collecting extra fat for emergency days because food was becoming scarce; those big animals needed immense amounts of food. So small animals were disappearing, and a time came when those big animals were not finding fresh food every day. They started accumulating their own fat inside. That’s a security measure, so that when you are not getting food, your body has a system – everybody’s body has a system.That’s what happens to you when you go on a fast. When you are fasting you go on losing one pound, two pounds of weight every day. Where do those two pounds disappear to? Have you ever asked?I was addressing a Jaina conference and I asked, “You preach fasting as a religious thing and you think fasting is nonviolent. But can you answer me? – where do those two pounds disappear to every day? You have eaten your own meat! Fasting is not vegetarian.”The body has an emergency system. When it cannot get the usual supply of food, then it has a reservoir of its own fat. You will see, women can get fatter than men for the simple reason that they can become mothers. And when a woman becomes pregnant she cannot eat; it becomes more and more difficult for her to eat. The child is growing in her womb – and the child needs food, the mother needs food – and the mother cannot eat. Hence nature provides the capacity to the female body to accumulate more fat than man. So for nine months she can supply a new child, a new life, with food, and also survive herself.Those mammoth animals started getting so much extra fat that movement became impossible. The weight of their bodies was so much that they could not move; they died because they could not chase animals to eat.This I saw in the commune in America – because thousands of deer had come to the commune. Everywhere else they were shot; only in the commune they were not killed. And they had a certain love for a special grass, alfalfa; so I told my sannyasins, “Grow as much alfalfa all around the commune as possible because these poor deer, they have come as guests.”But one day I was informed that it had become a danger, because four deer died for no reason at all. The doctors investigated the case and found that we had provided too much alfalfa for them. They had become so fat – and their legs are thin; a deer needs thin legs to run – and they could not move. Running was out of the question, they could not even go for a morning walk! I said, “Then some measure has to be taken; then somebody has to take care that they should not get too much alfalfa. Otherwise they have come here to save their lives but they will die just from eating too much!”It is a security phenomenon which nature provides you with – to have some fat gathered around your bones in case you cannot get food. You can live for at least ninety days without food; you will become an absolute skeleton, but you can live for ninety days.Mind has created buffers to protect itself because continuously, without your knowing, you are bombarded with thought waves from all around you. Everybody sitting by your side is throwing thought waves toward you; everybody is a broadcasting station. You don’t hear it, the person does not shout it, but those waves are carrying his thoughts toward you. So many times you have found yourself puzzling: suddenly this thought has come to you; there seems to be no reason why it should come at this moment. It may not be your thought at all, it may be just the thought of the person who is sitting by your side. It is just like radio waves carrying messages. They are passing right now but you don’t hear them; but just a small receiving mechanism and you can hear.It happened in Sweden in the last world war: a man got shot in the ear. His ear was healed, but a strange phenomenon happened: he started hearing strange things in the hospital ward – songs, news bulletins. He said to the nurses, to the doctors, “Something is going wrong. I am hearing the whole program of the radio station.” At first they did not believe him because it had never happened before. But finally they had to accept it, because in the other room they placed a radio and from the nearest local station he was catching everything.“Now the news bulletin begins,” he would say, “now this is going on, now this singer is going to sing.” They were checking in the other room, and he was absolutely right. Something happened in his eardrums; they became receptive. It was unique. But the man was going mad because for twenty-four hours… Who wants it?The doctor said, “You are great! – because it is unprecedented.”He said, “That is all right, but unless you put in something so that I can turn the radio off, I don’t want it! Even if I have to be deaf in one ear I am ready; take it out. But twenty-four hours a day, even in sleep… In the middle of the night, when they finish the last statement, then I can go to sleep – that is, up until six o’clock: six hours rest. Again at six o’clock the radio begins. And I cannot listen to other people because the radio is so loud. I cannot talk. I am saying something, and I start saying something else – because that radio goes on mixing with my own thoughts. It is becoming difficult to distinguish what are my thoughts and what are the radio’s.”Part of his ear had to be removed – because we don’t know any way to put a switch on it so he can turn it on and off. But it has shown a possibility, that someday you may not need big radios in your houses; college students may not need to put their transistors to their ears. Just behind your ear there is a knob – you turn it on, you turn it off, and nobody will know. You can enjoy, it will be absolutely private; special programs can be given to those people, private programs.I used to know a man, a very rich man, who would put earplugs into his ears when he would go into his office. You could say anything to him and he would smile and laugh, but he would never comment on anything. Because I was friendly to him, his manager said to me, “Something seems to be strange. Outside the office he talks and he is perfectly well. Inside the office he simply smiles, laughs – and at times it is not the point to laugh. Somebody is saying that his wife has died and he laughs! And it does not look good; it looks as if he is mad. What is the matter?”I said, “Nothing is the matter. He is tired of listening to everybody’s story, so he is completely deaf. He is using earplugs, he is not hearing anything. He smiles just show to you that he has heard you.”Your mind is continuously bombarded from all sides by all kinds of thoughts. To protect itself, each mind has created a subtle wall of buffers so those thoughts are turned back, they don’t enter your mind. It is basically good, but then slowly those buffers have grown so much that now they don’t allow anything in. Even if you want, they are no longer in your control. And the only way to break them is the same way as breaking your own thoughts. Just become a witness of your thoughts. And as your thoughts start disappearing, the need for the buffers to protect those thoughts will not be there; those buffers will start falling. These are all abstract phenomena so you cannot see them – but their effects are there.Only the man who knows how to meditate is the man who knows how to listen, or vice versa. The man who knows how to listen knows how to meditate, because it is the same thing.That’s why it happens here. You are listening to me. You love me, you trust me; you are so eager to drink each word. You are so intensely ready to absorb that your own inner thought process stops. The buffers drop. You feel a silence, you feel a new space. When you are gone, again the old game begins. You just have to understand the strategy, then you can sit by the side of a tree, on your bed, anywhere – just try to listen to the traffic noise, but intensely and totally, with no judgment that it is good or bad. Your thoughts will drop, and with that your buffers will drop – and suddenly a gap opens up which leads you into silence and peace.For centuries this has been the only way for anyone to come close to the reality of his own being and the mystery of existence. And as you come closer you start feeling cooler, you start feeling happier, you start feeling fulfilled, contented, blissful. A point comes where you are so full of bliss that you can share with the whole world and still your blissfulness will remain the same.That’s what one of the Upanishads says: You can take the whole out of the whole, yet the whole remains behind. This is not something philosophical, theoretical. This is something existential, experiential.You can give all your bliss, and still the whole bliss remains behind. You can go on giving, but there is no way to exhaust it. Here you can only learn the method; then you have to use that method whenever you can, wherever you can.And you have so much time – standing in a bus, sitting in a train, lying down on the bed. I see people playing cards, smoking cigars, going to the cinema hall. And you ask them, “Why you are doing all this?”They say, “…Killing time.” People have so much time that they are killing it. They don’t know any other use for it.Please, just those moments which you want to kill – save them for meditation. And I don’t want any other change in your life. I am not asking much: simply don’t kill time. That time which you have been killing up to now, now let that time kill you!Osho,You have been my favorite uncle and my father, my midwife, a laughing child, my best friend, an ancient sage, my favorite storyteller, and my master, my first thought on waking, my last at night. You have been warm brown eyes, a gentle hand, feet for my head; a tingling in my body, sometimes a silence, sometimes a song. You have been a hit, a glance, a presence, an absence; day and night, summer and winter – a man for all seasons. A promise of fulfillment, the only hope, the ultimate destroyer of all dreams; the only refuge – and the one I sought to elude; a magician, and just one ordinary man. You were an enigma, you were me. You were the moon, the stars and all that moved around them. You were the green and brown, the blue and gold of my earth. You were everything, and nothing. Always, you were love.Osho, would you please speak on the evolution of the master-disciple relationship.There are relationships and relationships, but none is comparable to the relationship that exists between the master and the disciple. All other relationships are conditional, even the best.For example, a love relationship is still demanding. The only relationship which is unconditional, undemanding, is that which exists between the master and the disciple. In fact it is so rare, so unique, that it should not be categorized with other relationships. It is the poverty of language that makes us call something a relationship which is not a relationship. It is a merger, it is a meeting – for no reason at all.The disciple is not asking anything, and the master is not promising anything; yet there is thirst in the disciple and there is promise in the master. It is a closeness in which nobody is higher and nobody is lower – yet the disciple is a woman, always a woman, because the disciple is nothing but an opening, a womb, a receptivity. And the master is always a man, because the master is nothing but a giving, a giving for no other reason than that he is so full. He has to give. He is a rain cloud.Just as the disciple is in search, the master is also in search. The disciple is in search of where he can open himself without any fear, without any resistance, without holding anything back – totally. And the master is also in search of such a human being who can receive the mysterious, who is ready to be pregnant with the mysterious, who is ready to be reborn.There are many teachers, and there are many students. The teachers have borrowed knowledge. They may be very scholarly, very knowledgeable, but inside themselves there is darkness; their knowledge is hiding their ignorance. And there are students who are in search of knowledge.The master and the disciple is a totally different thing. The master does not give you knowledge; he shares his being. And the disciple is not in search of knowledge, he is in search of being. He is, but he does not know who he is. He wants to be revealed to himself, he wants to stand naked before himself.The master can only do a simple thing, and that is to create trust. Everything else happens. The moment the master is capable of creating trust the disciple drops his defenses, drops his clothes, drops his knowledge. He becomes just a child again – innocent, alert, alive – a new beginning.The ordinary father and mother have given birth to your body – that is one life, which will end in death. Your father and mother are responsible for your birth and for your death. The master also gives a new birth, but it is the birth of consciousness, which knows only a beginning – and there is no end to it.All that is needed is an atmosphere of absolute trust, and in that trust things start happening on their own; neither does the disciple do them nor does the master. The disciple receives them. The master is the vehicle of the universal forces – just like a hollow bamboo that can become a flute. But the song is not of the hollow bamboo; the hollow bamboo can only have the credit of not destroying the song, of allowing it. The master is a medium of the universal consciousness.If you are available, suddenly the universal consciousness stirs in you the sleeping, dormant consciousness. The master has not done anything the disciple has not done anything. It is all a happening.The ancient stories are significant, to be remembered. Seekers went through hundreds of teachers until they came to a man in whose presence suddenly the trust was there – they had arrived. Masters were moving…There is a beautiful story:Gautam Buddha comes into a town. The whole town has gathered to listen to him but he goes on waiting, looking backward at the road – because a small girl, not more than thirteen years old, has met him on the road and told him, “Wait for me. I am going to give this food to my father at the farm, but I will be back in time. But don’t forget, wait for me.”Finally the elders of the town say to Gautam Buddha, “For whom are you waiting? Everybody important is present; you can start your discourse.”Buddha says, “But the person for whom I have come so far is not yet present and I have to wait.”Finally the girl arrives and she says, “I am a little late, but you kept your promise. I knew you would keep the promise, you had to keep the promise because I have been waiting for you since I became aware – maybe I was four years old when I heard your name. Just the name, and something started ringing a bell in my heart. And since then it has been so long – ten years maybe – that I have been waiting.”And Buddha says, “You have not been waiting uselessly. You are the person who has been attracting me to this village.”And he speaks, and that girl is the only one who comes to him: “Initiate me. I have waited enough, and now I want to be with you.”Buddha says, “You have to be with me because your town is so far off the way that I cannot come again and again. The road is long, and I am getting old.”In that whole town not a single person came up to be initiated into meditation – only that small girl.In the night when they were going to sleep, Buddha’s chief disciple Ananda asked, “Before you go to sleep I want to ask you one question: do you feel a certain pull toward a certain space – just like a magnetic pull?”Buddha said, “You are right. That’s how I decide my journeys. When I feel that somebody is thirsty – so thirsty that without me there is no way for the person – I have to move in that direction.”The master moves toward the disciple. The disciple moves toward the master. Sooner or later they are going to meet.The meeting is not of the body, the meeting is not of the mind. The meeting is of the very soul – as if suddenly you bring two lamps close to each other; the lamps remain separate but their flames become one. Between two bodies, when the soul is one, it is very difficult to say that it is a relationship. It is not, but there is no other word; language is really poor.It is at-oneness.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 17 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Once again, I was sitting in Holland minding my own business when I heard you had landed in Mumbai. It took me three days to decide I had to come and see you, be with you, hang out in your presence. Catching up with you has been quite an adventure. I had no question before I arrived, but before I leave I have two questions. First, how is your health? Second, could you please tell me what your plans are exactly so that I and my friends at The Humaniversity don't have to worry about you.I understand your concern about my health. That is not only your concern, that is the concern of all those who love freedom, truth, individuality.It is not just a question about my health. It is a question that in a world where everybody is living in a traditional, blind, absurd way, even to talk about truth is dangerous. It is dangerous because all the vested interests want humanity to remain retarded so that the human mind does not evolve to its ultimate potential, because once there are individuals of the caliber of Socrates, Lao Tzu, Gautam Buddha, then there is no possibility of any exploitation, physical or psychological; no possibility of any oppression, no possibility of enslaving the human soul. And all the politicians need slaves, and the priests need slaves. They don’t want humanity to blossom and to release its fragrance to the winds, to the sun, to the moon. They want you just to produce more money for them, more power for them, more slaves for them, more population for them.Hence your concern about my health is not just an ordinary concern. Physically, I have been put into every possible situation so that an indirect death can happen, because down the ages the politicians and the priests have learned one thing: that crucifying is not helpful.If they had not crucified Jesus there would have been no Christianity. Poisoning Socrates has not been helpful; it is because of the poisoning that Socrates remains and will always remain in the memories of humanity as a genius, a man who has helped the evolution of man’s intelligence immensely. Without his poisoning, perhaps we would have forgotten him. They have learned one thing: that if you want to kill Jesus again then it has not to be a crucifixion, it has to be indirect – as if it is an accident, as if it is a natural death.That’s what they did with me in America. Ronald Reagan and his government tried in different ways to kill me, but never directly. I was surprised, because as I was arrested… The arrest was illegal, there was no arrest warrant because there was no reason to issue an arrest warrant. The people who arrested me could not even show any cause. I said, “Even verbally it will do – why am I arrested?” The answer was twelve loaded guns pointed at me.I was not allowed to inform my attorney, because they were worried: if the attorney comes then immediately the first question is bound to be, “Where is the arrest warrant?”And I heard the US marshal whispering in the ear of the driver who was to take me to the jail, “Remember, do whatever you want to do but don’t do it directly. The man is known worldwide, and the whole news media is watching. If anything happens to him it will be a condemnation of American democracy.”In twelve days I was changed from one jail to another jail, and each time I was transferred from one jailer to another jailer the same message was whispered, “Do everything, but be careful; it has to be indirect.” I was wondering what they wanted to do – and what they wanted to do so indirectly that the world should not know – but it was not long before I came to understand what they meant by “doing it indirectly.”The first night in jail I was given a steel bench, without any mattress. They knew my back is in a bad condition, that I could not lie down on that steel bench. Neither can I sit the whole night; they would not supply even a pillow just to support my back. They refused – “That’s all you can get.”The whole night I was sitting. Sleeping was out of the question. Sitting was difficult; my back was hurting tremendously. And in the morning when they took me to the court… I have never seen such driving.I am myself a reckless driver. In my whole life I have committed only two crimes, and those were speeding. But it was not speeding, it was a totally new kind of driving. The US marshal himself was driving. He would drive the car at full speed, beyond the limits, and then suddenly stop for no reason at all, just to give me a jerk. My hands were cuffed, my legs were chained – and they had instructions where to put a chain on my waist, exactly where my back is giving me the trouble. And this would happen each five minutes: suddenly fast, suddenly stopping, just to give as much pain to my back as possible. And nobody could say, “You are harming him.”I just said to the marshal, “You are a unique driver – but remember, I enjoyed the whole drive.” And he took me for almost one hour. I thought perhaps this was the distance from the jail to the court. The court was underneath the jail: the jail was on the upper story and the court was on the lower story. There was no need of any car, I had just to go in an elevator, and it was not even one minute’s distance. This one-hour tour was just to give me as much pain as possible, to break the vertebrae of the backbone.The marshal had to leave for some other work, so when the court was finished his assistant simply took me by the elevator to the jail. Then I came to know that that one-hour drive was simply a device; there was no need. When I saw him I told him, “You take a real interest in the health of your prisoners. That one-hour, open-air drive, and with such a unique way of driving – I will remember it.”For three days continually, the court continued to meet, just on the question of bail. Basically my arrest was illegal; the question of bail does not arise. The question was, why I had been arrested without an arrest warrant. But whenever my attorney tried to raise the question, the magistrate simply stopped the attorney. And the government attorney continued for three days making all kinds of efforts, which were so stupid. His effort was that bail should not be granted, and the grounds were that I am an immensely intelligent man – one of the grounds for not giving me bail. Secondly, I have thousands of friends – the second reason for not granting bail. These are my crimes: that I have intelligence, that I have friends. The third was that the people who love me have immense resources of money, so any amount of money is not enough for my bail because the money will be provided.This is so strange. This means no rich person can be allowed bail, no intelligent person can be allowed bail, no person who has friends can be allowed bail – these are crimes.And he himself felt that what he was saying was so absurd that finally he said – his last statement in the court was that “I have not been able to prove anything; still I ask the magistrate that bail should not be given.” In one sentence he is saying that he has not been able to prove anything against me, still he wants the magistrate not to grant me bail. And the bail was not granted.Even the jailer, who was hoping that I would be released – because there were no grounds, and the things that were talked about were so idiotic – told me, “I feel immensely hurt. I have never seen such injustice in my life. First they don’t have any grounds for arresting you and the magistrate won’t allow your attorney to argue the point, to present the case. Secondly, they don’t have any argument for not granting bail.” But the jailer said to me, “I know the reason is that the magistrate has been pressured.”She was a woman, and she wanted to become a federal judge. And she had been given orders from Washington: “If you allow the bail then you will live a magistrate and you will die a magistrate. If you don’t allow the bail, your promotion to a federal judge is absolutely certain.”Why did they want this? Because the distance between the place they arrested me, North Carolina, and the court in Oregon was only five hours, six hours by plane. And that’s what they promised, that “Within six hours we will produce you in Oregon, from where we have been asked to arrest you. So it is up to them to grant bail or not.”It took them twelve days, not six hours; one hour became two days long. And I had to pass through five jails. They would tell me, “We are taking you to the airport,” and they would take me to another jail.I asked them, “At least you can be honest. If you are taking me to another jail, I cannot do anything about it. I will come with you. Why do you say that you are taking me to the airport, and we end up in another jail?”In each jail they tried different ways to affect my life. In one jail they put me into a cell with an inmate who was dying with an infectious disease. For the six months since this man had come, the cell was never given to anybody else; he had lived alone because the doctor had said that anybody living with him was bound to catch the disease. And I was, in the middle of the night, given that cell. The doctor was present, he did not object; the jailer was present, the marshal was present. The man, who was just dying – I heard later on that he died on the third day after I left the jail – could not speak, he had become so weak. He wrote on a small piece of paper, “Osho, I have been seeing you on the television. I know that these people want to kill you, that is the reason they have put you in this cell. Don’t touch anything. Just stand near the door and knock on the door till they come, and force them to change your cell because I am dying, and I don’t want you to catch my disease. For six months they have not given this cell to anybody – and you are not even a prisoner.”It took one hour of me knocking on the door, and then the jailer appeared and the doctor appeared. I said to the doctor, “What has happened to your tongue? For six months you have been saying that nobody should be given this cell. Why have you remained silent?” He was just embarrassed. I said, “You are a medical man. You have taken the oath of Hippocrates in your medical college before you got your degree, that you will serve life, not death. And this is not serving life.”He said, “I am sorry, but orders from above. I am a poor doctor, I cannot disobey; just excuse me.” And immediately my cell was changed.They were giving me medicines – which I never took. I accepted them and threw them in the wastepaper basket because I had no need for those medicines. I told them, “My problem is my back, which you are destroying” – because the same kind of driving continued from one jail to another jail, it was pre-planned; from jail to airport, from airport to jail, the same kind of driving continued for twelve days – “and for my back there is no medicine. What are you giving me medicine for? For my allergies? I have allergies, but for my allergies you have made every arrangement.”In every jail they had put all the heavy smokers in the same cell where they put me. So for twenty-four hours a day people were smoking – because they knew that I am allergic to smoke, dust, perfume, any kind of smell. They managed in every way to destroy my body. And I asked, “What are these medicines for?” Certainly those medicines would have made me sick.I know that in the Soviet Union they have done the same with three Nobel Prize winners. Those three Nobel Prize winners – and they are all geniuses – refused the government. The government wanted them to refuse the Nobel Prize, and they said they could not refuse the Nobel Prize because it is a worldwide recognition of their work. They were arrested immediately and they were given medicines and injections.One scientist was given injections and medicines so that he could not sleep. For twenty-one days they would not allow him to sleep. In twenty-one days if you cannot sleep… And they were also giving him medicines which destroy the small cells in the brain. Then they produce the man in the court and say that he is mad. First they made him mad, then they produced him in the courts and said that he was mad. The court asked him, “What is your name?” and he would not speak because he had lost the power of speech. That’s what they were trying to do for twenty-one days continuously, to destroy his power of speech – one of the best speakers in the Soviet Union.In one jail they told me, “If you don’t like to take medicines orally we can give you injections.”I said, “Never. Don’t touch my body. If you touch my body, if anything happens to me, you will be responsible. It is up to me to take medicine or not. I am not sick, I don’t need your medicines. And the problems that I have, you don’t give any medicine for – for that you have created exactly the situation in which my problem will increase.”In every jail I was put in a place where two television sets were on for twenty-four hours a day at full volume. Sleep was impossible. And the whole place was full of smoke; I could not breathe.They did everything they could. And when they could not manage to destroy me in any way, the final thing was to put a bomb under my chair. It was just that the bomb was compassionate toward me – they could not fix the time; it was a time bomb. I had gone to the court and they were not clear at what time I would be back. They had calculated rightly that the court would be closed at five, so they placed the bomb accordingly. But I came nearabout three o’clock, because there was no question… They had a list of one hundred and thirty-six crimes that I had committed, and they knew that all was fiction, and if it went to trial the government of America was going to lose the case. The government would not have liked to lose the case, a case against a single individual. So before the court started they asked my attorneys for negotiations. It is rare, because when you are fighting against the government you ask for negotiations, not the government. When the government asks for negotiations it means it has no valid grounds, no proof of any crimes. They simply used blackmail.The attorney general of America told my attorneys, “To be frank, we don’t have any proof of any crime, so we don’t want the trial to happen. And we don’t want the government to lose the case either; it is a question of prestige. So we have a solution: if Osho accepts two crimes out of one hundred and thirty-six, then we will drop the trial. For those two crimes he will be punished, and the case is finished. If you insist on going to trial because you know that you will win, we have to make it clear to you: first, if you don’t accept these two crimes we are not going to allow the judge to grant bail. And the case can be prolonged for twenty years; for these twenty years Osho will be in jail. And anyway, if we see that we are losing the case we can finish the man” – clear-cut blackmail.My attorneys came with tears in their eyes, “We have never in our whole lives” – and they were the topmost attorneys of America – “we have never seen such a case, where they themselves say that they don’t have any crimes, any evidence against you. They propose that you accept two crimes and the case is finished; if you don’t accept the crime then they are threatening to prolong the case for twenty years and they will not give you bail. And there is every possibility that if they see that they are going to lose the case they can kill you. But they will not in any way want the world to know that they have lost a case against a single individual.”So my attorneys said, “We are asking you against our conscience – just please accept those two, because there seems to be no way. If you are twenty years in jail your movement will be destroyed, your sannyasins will be destroyed, your commune will be destroyed. And we cannot hope that you will come out of the jail alive; they want to be victorious at any cost.” So the case was finished.I said to my attorneys, “Don’t be worried. I never take anything seriously. There is no harm; I will accept that I have committed these two crimes. And outside the court, in front of the world press conference, I will say that I have lied, and that I had to lie because there was no other way – the American government forced me to lie, under oath that I will speak the truth. So don’t be worried, I will manage.”As I accepted, the case was finished within three minutes. That’s why I reached the jail to take my clothes before the time that they had fixed on the bomb.I can understand not only your concern about my health – it is a concern of millions of my people around the world. They have come to love me so deeply that this body is their body, my life is their life.I am perfectly okay. As far as I am concerned, my consciousness is concerned, it cannot be better than it is. But about the body I can only say that up to this moment it is perfectly okay; I cannot say anything about tomorrow. America wants to kill it; they are ready to give half a crore rupees, five million rupees, to any professional killer – and there are people everywhere who would like to kill me. It is really a wonder that they have not succeeded up to now. And I am without any defense: I am absolutely defenseless.You are asking about my program. I have never thought about tomorrows, and now it has become even more difficult – because I may propose but America disposes. I don’t believe in God; I have to believe in Ronald Reagan.I have been in twenty-one countries searching for a base from where I can start my work again, but America is almost insane. I have not done anything wrong to America, they have done everything wrong to me – and that is what is creating their insanity, because I am exposing them. They have not replied to a single thing, because whatever I am saying is the truth. What happened to one hundred and thirty-six crimes? Even if I accept two… I have to be punished for one hundred and thirty-four; the trial cannot be dismissed so easily. One hundred and thirty-four crimes – what more do you need? It was enough to give me at least one thousand years in jail, so at least for four or five lives in the future I have to be in jail! They are not in a position to say it; their desire is that I should be silenced.In twenty-one countries… My plane would arrive, and just following my plane the American plane would arrive. And before my people had approached the government, the American ambassador had already reached the president, the prime minister, and blackmailed them. It is not that they were saying to them that I am a criminal, because then they would have to prove what crime. They were blackmailing these countries; they were simply saying, “We will stop giving loans to you. So you can choose: either Osho has to be thrown out of the country immediately, or you have to pay the past loans” – which are billions of dollars. “And we will stop loans for the future” – which are again billions of dollars – “which we have agreed to give to you.” Now, all those countries are in economic slavery; nobody can take that much risk. Moving through twenty-one countries, it was the same story again and again.So I cannot say anything about the future. I know my sannyasins are concerned, and their concerns are real. In their own countries they are trying hard, but the government is not ready to listen to any intelligent thing. The government functions in a totally different way: the government listens to its vested interests.Now the American government is pressuring the Indian government that I should not be allowed to make a commune here. The government has started doing harm – I am receiving summonses from different parts of the country, which are politically motivated. The only reason for all those summonses is that somebody’s religious feelings are hurt. So I have to be present in the court – in the south, in Bengal, in Kashmir – just to harass me, from one part to another part of the country, and from one court to another court. I will win all those cases. I have won all the cases of the same nature in the past, because whatever I have said is a truth. And if it hurts you, leave that religion because I am not making up that fact, that fact is in your scriptures.And, in fact, those facts are against the constitution of India. Rama pouring melted lead into a sudra’s ears because he has heard the Vedas; hiding behind a bush where he has heard brahmins chanting the Vedas, and that is such a sin that both his ears are destroyed. Now, this is… If I mention it, it hurts the Hindu mind. Then don’t be a Hindu! It is strange, because it is in your scriptures; I am not creating it. And it is against the constitution; Rama is committing a crime. If I say that a man who can commit such an inhuman act cannot be a divine person, I am simply stating a fact. If it hurts you, it is your problem.And I have been winning many cases. Just the other day I have won one case in Patna; a few days before, another case in Bengal. But they can harass me. Now the parliament has sent… I have said that the politicians are retarded, that their mental age is not more than fourteen years; this insults the parliament. It does not insult the parliament, it simply praises the parliament: what a great parliament – we have given our leadership to innocent children, all saints, because these retarded people cannot commit anything criminal.They have sent three notices to me. I have answered, and I hope they ask me to come to the parliament because I want to show them that this is simply a fact. You can inquire of the psychologists: the average mental age of all human beings is fourteen. You will have to prove that your members of parliament are not average; the burden is on you to prove it. I am a trained psychologist. I was a professor of psychology for nine years; I have the right to test all your members and prove that they are not above fourteen. If I am proved wrong, I am ready for any kind of punishment; but if I am proved right, then this whole parliament should be behind bars.But they will not call me. They know they cannot face me. I know all of them. They don’t have any intelligence or any courage. But they can do things in an indirect way. So a gang of fanatic, chauvinistic people in Mumbai is provoked by the politicians from Delhi: “Make the threat, burn the house. Throw stones.” This they can do, but this will simply prove what I was saying – that they are mentally retarded. If they are not, then they should simply invite me.I am not insulting anybody. If you are sick, if you have a headache and the doctor says that you have a headache, does it mean that you have been insulted? Are you going to court because your feelings are very much hurt by this doctor, his saying that you have a headache?I am simply stating a fact, that fourteen is the average age of all human beings. And I don’t think your parliament has superhuman beings. You will have to prove it. Forty years of Indian independence proves what I am saying, it does not disprove what I am saying. They can burn the house, but that will simply prove that I was right: they behave like stupid idiots.So it is difficult to say where I will be tomorrow, in what country, in what city. Even my sannyasins have proposed an idea that perhaps I will have to go to an ocean liner because at least the ocean, after twelve miles, belongs to nobody. It is possible that I may have to live on a ship, because European parliaments have decided that my jet plane cannot land at their airports. It is not a question of my entry into their country; just for refueling, my airplane cannot land at their airports. One country refused to allow my airplane to fly over its sky.Do you think you are living in a sane world? In this insane world anything is possible, and one has to live moment to moment and face the reality.So I cannot give you a fixed program. I can simply say to you that I will fight for freedom, for the expression of freedom, for individuality – for you, and for all those who want to live a sane life. Whatever form that struggle takes, and wherever I have to go for that struggle, I will continue the struggle.Osho,In every situation, if I say to you within me, “Thank you, Osho,” something happens. This creates some distance from my mind, I become more and more weightless, I begin to float, to fly. I don't know where I will go. But please let me say again and again and now, “Thank you, Osho.”It happens sometimes that you suddenly stumble upon a beautiful phenomenon. That’s what has happened when inside you say, “Thank you, Osho.”It is not only words, it is a gratefulness felt by every fiber of your being – it is gratitude. That’s why you suddenly feel weightless; all the burdens of the mind – worries, tensions – disappear. You feel as if you can float into the sky like a cloud. You have stumbled on a technique without knowing that it is a technique.It is a Tibetan method. It has been used for at least two thousand years. In a Tibetan monastery – you will be surprised if you visit – every lama, whenever he comes across the master during the day working in the field, working in the garden, he simply bows down, puts his head on the master’s feet and says, “Thank you, master.” That is inside, that is not really in words. It is a feeling, a thankfulness.Sometimes it happens that in a day the disciple may come across the master a dozen times. A dozen times he will do the same; and slowly, slowly he becomes aware that those moments are the most precious. He starts seeking the master. Then the master says to such disciples, “Now there is no need to actually touch my feet. Wherever you are, just bow down in my direction with the same feeling of gratefulness and you will have the same experience.”This is a new discovery – at first they were thinking that something is happening because of the master; now they know something is happening because of themselves. The whole focus has changed. The moment they discover that it is their own gratefulness, then the master says, “Now don’t bother about the direction. All directions are the same. Bow down – bow down in any direction; just remember the feeling.” And they are surprised: it is not even the direction of the master; all directions are the same.Finally the master says, “There is no need of bowing down every time unnecessarily. It is only a question of feeling. Standing, sitting, sleeping, in any posture of the body, if you can feel the gratefulness, then you will feel that weightlessness, the silence, and the immense sweetness, all over your being.”You have found some method on your own; rejoice. Enjoy it. Enjoy it more and more, so slowly, slowly there is no need to say it at specific moments. It becomes just your very life – sitting, walking, doing a thousand and one things, but the gratefulness remains inside. It is not gratefulness toward someone in particular. The master is just an excuse. Just for the beginners it is good, because without an excuse they will feel a little awkward. Standing in an empty room and saying “Thank you” will look a little awkward. So it is just for the beginners that the master becomes an excuse – although when you are touching the feet of the master and saying “Thank you, master” you are saying it in an empty room. The master is emptiness.Use it more and more, so slowly it becomes a natural phenomenon, like breathing. And it will bring tremendous experiences to you.Osho,Many of your sannyasins were happy to hear from you that you are our friend, but it was a great shock for me. My beloved master, will you say something about the master-disciple relationship?It is a little complex. You will have to be very attentive to understand it.The master can say, “I am your friend.”The disciple cannot say it. The disciple will say, “No, you are my master.”But there are people who are disciples unwillingly, they would rather be masters. In fact they have accepted being disciples as a bridge, so that one day they can become masters – but their goal is to be a master. So when I declared that I am your friend, these people who were unwillingly disciples, were immensely happy, and the real disciples were shocked.Nirvano came crying to me, “No, Osho, don’t say such things. I cannot conceive myself as being your friend. Just to be your disciple is too much.” And this was happening to many – the authentic disciples were shocked. The phony disciples enjoyed it very much; in fact they wanted it, they were waiting for it.If I had said to them, “I am your disciple, you are the master,” they would have rejoiced even more. That’s what they really want – because to be a disciple means to drop your ego, and it is the most difficult thing. So people at the most hide it. Instead of dropping, they simply hide it; and whenever there is a chance it comes up again.If the master says, “I am holier than you” he is not a master. He is still in the same ego trip which you are in. He is a politician, not a religious man. A religious man cannot conceive himself as holier or higher. The religious man has simply disappeared; there is nothing but pure emptiness. It cannot be compared. The real master can only say, “I am your friend – just to hold your hand, to pull you out of your darkness, to bring you on the path.”The real disciple, even though he becomes enlightened, remains a disciple.It is said about Mahakashyapa, the first patriarch of the great tradition of Zen Buddhism… He was a disciple of Gautam Buddha, and when he became enlightened Buddha sent him to wander, to go to those who are thirsty, who are in need – “Spread the word, share what you have gained.”Mahakashyapa said, “You tricked me. If you had said it before, that after enlightenment I would have to leave you, I would have left enlightenment! Because enlightenment is my nature, I can attain it any time I want. But this is your last life, and I will not find these feet again. The whole eternity is there for enlightenment, but once you disappear then there is no way to find you. Where am I going to see you, to hear you, to touch you? You tricked me badly.”Gautam Buddha said, “But I have to do it. I cannot reach every thirsty person. You are my hands, you are my eyes. Now you are my being. Go – I will be with you.”Mahakashyapa said, “With one condition: that you will not die without me. I have to be present. Secondly, I have to be kept informed of which direction you are moving in so that every day I can bow down in that direction. Although you will be far away – I will not be able to see you – perhaps you may be able to see me. And it does not matter whether I see you or not; what matters is that you have not forgotten me. It does not matter whether you are in my eyes or not; what matters is that I am in your eyes. Give me these two promises and I will go.”Buddha said, “You are asking strange things, because it will be difficult to keep you completely informed every day of where I am, where I am going. Secondly, about death – to promise you that I will die only when you are present, I will have to make certain arrangements with death too – that death has to wait. You are putting me in a strange business! I have never asked anybody anything, and now you are forcing me to ask death, ‘Wait a little, let Mahakashyapa come.’”But Mahakashyapa was very adamant. He said, “Then I am not going.”He went, because Buddha promised him; but it was a trouble. Every day he had to be informed of what direction Buddha was in. And morning and evening he would bow down on the earth, tears of joy in his eyes – just dust in his hands, but he would touch it as if he were touching the feet of Buddha. People would say to him, “Mahakashyapa, you yourself are now a master. It doesn’t seem right for you to behave like a disciple.”Mahakashyapa’s answer was, “As long as Gautam Buddha is alive I cannot be the master, I can only be the disciple – because to be a disciple is so beautiful; under the shade of the master it is so cool, it is so protected. When Buddha dies, of course I will be a master – under the hot sun: there will no longer be any shade over me.“Don’t prevent me, and don’t ask this question again and again – because you don’t understand that being a disciple is not in any way less than being a master. The whole question is of being total. If you are totally a disciple, you have all the glories and all the blessings and all the benediction that a master has; there is no difference at all. It is a question of totality. And how can I forget even for a single moment my gratitude to this man Gautama the Buddha, without whom I would have been still groping in the dark? He came into my life as a song, as a dance, as a light. He transformed me, he gave me a new birth, he made me eternal.”And the day Gautam Buddha died, the first thing was to call Maha-kashyapa. He told his disciple, Ananda, “Find Mahakashyapa immediately, because I don’t want to ask death – I have never asked anybody. But this Mahakashyapa… If he does not come before the sunrise tomorrow I will have to ask death to wait.”Many followers rushed in all directions to find Mahakashyapa. He was found, he came in the right time. Buddha smiled and he said, “I knew it, that you would not let me down, that you would not force me to ask death to wait. Now death can come. Mahakashyapa has come.”Buddha died in Mahakashyapa’s lap; his head was in Mahakashyapa’s lap. That was a rare phenomenon, because Buddha had ten thousand disciples present at that moment. Among those ten thousand at least one hundred were enlightened. Why was Mahakashyapa chosen? The question went around, “Why has Mahakashyapa been chosen?”Sariputra, another enlightened disciple of Gautam Buddha, said, “He is the only one who has become a master but has not left his discipleship. The remaining ninety-nine have become masters and forgotten about discipleship. He is richer; he is a disciple and he is a master. He has much more than anybody else present here.”And it is not surprising that Mahakashyapa became the source of one of the greatest traditions, which is still alive: Zen – which has given to the world more enlightened people than anything else.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 18 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I have just passed a time of deep spirituality, and my life is changed. I understand your work more and more, and with my commune I want to be in more communion with you. I want to know how this is possible.The revolution that spirituality brings is in a way very simple, but in another way it is very complex too. And you have to understand both sides, the simplicity of it and the complexity of it.A man of spirituality becomes innocent. He is just like a child. He is not childish, but he is as if just born in the world, as if for the first time he has opened his eyes. The colors are more colorful, everything has more of a dream quality to it – even stones are not so hard, they are also alive and with heart. This childlike innocence makes the spiritual person in a deep sense unburdened of all knowledge. He knows nothing.This knowing nothing is not ordinary ignorance. The ordinary ignorance knows something; however ignorant, it always knows something. The ordinary ignorant person knows very little but believes he knows much; he magnifies his small knowledge. And what he calls his knowledge is not his either, it is all borrowed, it is stolen. He is a thief. He is bragging about things which don’t belong to him and he is continuously collecting more and more knowledge. He goes on becoming knowledgeable. That is the way of the ignorant man, to go on becoming more knowledgeable.The ignorant man finally becomes a pundit, a scholar, a rabbi, a bishop, a cardinal, a shankaracharya – carrying loads of knowledge. Not a single bit of it is his own experience. He is just a parrot, or perhaps even worse.I have heard that a woman was looking for a parrot in a pet shop. She was attracted toward a parrot who looked really nice, and gentlemanly – cunning people always look like that. He was sitting so seriously, so religiously, that the woman told the shopkeeper, “This is the parrot I would like.”The shopkeeper said, “Forgive me, madam; except for that parrot, you can choose any.”The woman became even more attracted. She said, “Why are you not giving me that parrot? Don’t be worried about the price, I am ready to pay any price. But look how religiously, silently, the parrot is sitting – the grace and the beauty of the parrot. No, I cannot have any other parrot.”The shopkeeper said, “You are insisting – you will repent, because that parrot comes from a very bad place. He belonged to a prostitute, and all this religiousness and niceness and gentlemanliness is bogus; he is one of the worst parrots I have seen in my life. Once he opens his mouth, then there is not a single four-letter word that he does not know. This is the deception. I still ask you: don’t insist. I have no problem; if you insist you can have it, but the responsibility will be yours. Don’t come to me tomorrow.”The woman said, “Don’t be worried. Looking at the parrot I can say with authority I will change him. I have even changed my husband – what is this parrot? You don’t know my husband… Don’t be worried; I know how to change people. And after a few days I will invite you – the same parrot will be reciting the Koran, the Bible, the Gita.”The man said, “I don’t believe it, but it is up to you.”She purchased the parrot. All the way home he remained serious, religious, not a single sign of any mischievousness. In fact when he would see women he would close his eyes; he was almost a saint.The woman said, “That shopkeeper seems to be lying. This parrot is not only religious, he is a saint! He closes his eyes when a woman passes by.” She was very happy to find it.She put the parrot in the place where her old parrot used to be – the old parrot had died – and she covered it with a bedsheet. She wanted to surprise her husband, that she had found a treasure.And the husband came home, looking very religious, very serious. She uncovered the parrot and the parrot said, “Hello, Nasruddin! You are really great – every day new girls, new houses. Where have you found all these girls and women? – really beautiful!”Nasruddin was a customer of the prostitute, an old customer. The wife was thinking that she had cured him. Yes, when he came into the house he was very serious, he started reciting the Koran – but the parrot exposed him badly. Not only him, he exposed himself too!The woman was very angry. She said, “Why have you been so serious all along, and looking so religious, and closing your eyes when you saw women? You cheat! And I had to pay almost three times more than for an ordinary parrot because I thought you were so spiritual.”The parrot said, “You don’t know business. I am coming from a place where one has to pretend to be a saint and behave like a sinner. And you can ask your husband why he is looking so serious, so religious, so saintly.”Man is capable of deceiving others, and of deceiving himself.The ignorant man does not want to be found ignorant, he wraps as much knowledge as possible around himself – and knowledge is available very cheap.The first step toward real spirituality is to drop all hypocrisy, all the knowledge that is not yours – “The ignorance that is mine is far more valuable than the knowledge that is not mine. At least it is mine, authentically mine.”And here is the danger: when a person moves toward being spiritual, this phase comes when suddenly he is utterly naked, bereft of all knowledge. The mind tries hard – “What is the use of being ignorant? Collect all the garbage that you have left. Now you have not only the garbage, the old; you have something new also to proclaim – that you have become spiritual.”The spiritual person cannot proclaim that he has become spiritual. That is fundamentally an unspiritual statement. The spiritual person can only say, “I do not know. I am just ignorant and mystified before this tremendously vast universe. I am no one, nobody special.” Otherwise spirituality becomes a spiritual ego.It is simple if you can remain in this innocence, in this ignorance – available to existence, available to love, available to people, available to all kinds of experiences – but with a simplicity of heart, without any knowledge; available in innocence. And you will grow. Your knowing will grow.Remember, I make a distinction between knowledge and knowing. Knowledge is dead. It is in the books, it is in the words, theories, creeds, dogmas. Knowing is a living, breathing experiencing. It is not in the books. You cannot find knowing in the Koran, in the Bible, in the Gita. You can find knowing only within yourself.Nobody can give it to you. In the very giving, it dies – it is so delicate a phenomenon. You can have it growing within yourself if you allow space, uncluttered with stupid ideas of all kinds of superstitions.Spirituality is the simplest phenomenon in the world; this is one side – one has to be very alert.It goes on deepening; you never come to the bottom, it is abysmal. But the human mind is so stupid that just a little experience and it starts claiming.You are saying that you have passed through a time of spirituality. Nobody ever passes through a time of spirituality. It is not like a tunnel that you enter and you pass through to the other side. One simply drowns, and goes on drowning. One simply disappears. A moment comes when there is nobody to declare, even to declare that “I do not know.” Such silence, such profound silence is spiritual.On the other hand, it is a complex phenomenon – complex not because of itself, but because you are brought up by parents, by society, by schools, colleges, universities. Before you have even asked any significant question about life, you are already burdened with answers.The child has not asked about God, but the parents are forcing him to believe that God created the world. This is pure corruption. The child is innocent – he trusts his father, his mother, his brothers, sisters, elders, neighbors. He trusts – he cannot think that they are all lying to him. There is no basis for him to think that they are all lying to him. They all love him, how can they lie? And this is the complexity…Everybody is lying about ultimate truths, without knowing. Without experiencing, they are burdening their children with such garbage – which is going to hinder the child’s own progress, his own purity of consciousness. It is very unconscious love. They do not know what they are doing; it has been done to them by their parents, and they are simply repeating it.In this way one generation gives all its diseases to the other generation. And for centuries all kinds of idiotic ideas remain prevalent, remain alive because there are people who believe in them. They are ready to die for those ideas, they are ready to kill for those ideas, and those ideas are simply fictions.The complexity comes because the child, out of necessity, has to grow up with people who are unconscious – they cannot but do harm. They are bound to give him their minds, knowing perfectly well that their minds have not helped them, that their minds and their ideologies have not liberated them. Still, they think something is better than nothing: “Perhaps we have not worked hard. Perhaps we have not disciplined ourselves according to our own philosophies. The philosophies are not wrong, we are wrong.”The situation is just the opposite: the philosophies are wrong. And once those philosophies settle down in the child’s mind they become the very base of his intelligence, his intellectual development. That is what creates complexities, and the complexities have become more and more.In the past a Hindu was only burdened by Hindu superstitions; he knew nothing about Judaism, he knew nothing about Confucian ideology. He had no idea what other people in the world were thinking. He lived in his own small well, where everybody was thinking alike. Now those wells have disappeared.Now the Hindu knows about Mohammedan ideas, about Christian ideas, about Jewish ideas; the complexity has grown a thousandfold. He knows not only about theistic theories, he knows about the atheists, the communists, the agnostics. His mind is buzzing with contradictory thoughts. He is full of all kinds of ideas which are against each other. He is crippled because of their contradiction, he cannot do anything – because whatever he wants to do, there is some idea that says that it is not right.If he wants to be a vegetarian… Jainas and Buddhists have been vegetarians for twenty-five centuries. No Jaina has ever thought that he could be anything other than vegetarian, but now questions arise. Not a single vegetarian has been able to receive a Nobel Prize – strange. You have the purest minds; those meat-eaters have thick skulls. You are pure vegetables, cabbages, cauliflowers, beautiful things – but not a single Nobel Prize. Strange. But the meat-eaters…Hindus don’t eat the meat of the cows; Jews do, and Jews receive forty percent of the Nobel Prizes. It is simply inconceivable, out of all proportion to their population. And they are eating cow meat! Questions arise. And it has been found that vegetarians will never receive the Nobel Prize because no vegetable can give them certain proteins which only meat can give them.I have found an alternative. In my commune… It was a vegetarian commune, but I was giving all commune members unfertilized eggs. They are vegetable, because they don’t have any life – but they have all the proteins that are necessary for intelligence to grow.Now the vegetarians are very much against me. They would like to kill me – although they are vegetarians. They don’t want to kill anybody, but as far as I am concerned, they are ready to kill me: “This man is going to teach people to eat eggs.” They don’t see a simple point: that an unfertilized egg is not alive; it is pure protein. It makes the vegetarian food complete and competitive; in fact it gives more protein than meat, especially for intelligence.When you are surrounded with all kinds of ideas, there are bound to be doubts. All the religions of the world have based everybody’s mind on faith. It is not coincidence that religions are called “faiths”; it is on faith that they are based. It was perfectly right not to doubt because everybody had the same faith. It was very difficult to doubt; only very rare, talented people, geniuses, used to doubt. Now the situation is totally different.Mohammedans say God created the world, and God created all the animals for man to eat. Christians believe the same. Jews believe the same, that animals are food: animals are just like vegetables, fruits, they have all been created for man to eat. Now half of the world is Christian; the number two religion is Mohammedanism; the two greatest religions, and millions of people believe.Naturally it creates doubt in the minds of people who have lived with the thought that animals are not to be eaten – that it is insensitive, ugly, unaesthetic; that it degrades you, that it is not human. Now doubts start arising, doubts which are significant – because Jesus eats meat, Mohammed eats meat, Moses eats meat, Ramakrishna eats fish, and still they achieve the ultimate. The doubt is bound to arise in the minds of those who have been told that if you eat meat, your consciousness cannot grow.And this is about everything. For example, Jainism does not believe in God. There is no God in Jainism; in Buddhism there is no God – the two great religions of the East are godless religions. The religions other than Jainism and Buddhism have always thought that God is the center of religion. How can there be a religion without God? – a doubt arises.The whole of Asia has been Buddhist. No Buddhist child ever asks, “Who created the world?” Strange: millions of children; no Buddhist child ever asks who created the world. There is no creator; the question of creation is nonsense. The world has always been here; it is eternal. The very idea of creation and the creator is stupid. Now those who have believed in God as the central theme of religion, their faith is shaken.Almost everybody’s faith is shaken, because they can see that somebody else, without this faith, having absolutely antagonistic ideologies, is living as good a life as they are living – perhaps even better.Buddhists have lived a better life without God than anybody who has believed in God. And the reason is clear: because there is no God, the whole responsibility falls on your shoulders. You cannot pray to God because all prayer is meaningless. Only your actions are going to decide, not prayers. The way of prayer is the way of the impotent man, who is not going to do anything. He is just continuing to live his life and praying that God will help: “When God is there, all-compassionate – and I am such a small sinner in comparison to his compassion – I need not be worried.”Omar Khayyam, one of the poets of the greatest quality as far as poetry is concerned, says that you can drink as much alcohol as you want, and anybody who says “Stop drinking alcohol because it is a sin” is creating a doubt in you about God. His logic looks very strange but is very clear. He is saying, “God is compassionate, and if I don’t commit any sins it means I am suspicious of God’s compassion. Let me commit as many sins as possible – because I trust, I have faith that God is compassionate. He will forgive me.”He was a great thinker. He is saying that to try to live a virtuous life means that you suspect that God will not forgive. Perhaps unconsciously, the people who have believed in God have not lived so virtuously as the people who have not believed in God, because when there is no God, you have to live virtuously. You cannot depend on anybody’s compassion; only your action will bring its fruit. So whatever you are going to do, you are responsible for the fruits that will come out of it. You are the cause, you are the effect. So the Buddhists, the Jainas – who don’t believe in God – have lived more virtuously than the people who believe in God. Strange!All these things – because the world has become small – all these faiths are now no longer closed but have become open to everybody, have created tremendous complexity in the mind. It has burdened the mind with thousands of contradictions.I have heard that a centipede, a small animal with one hundred legs, was going for a morning walk. And a small rabbit was puzzled, he had a philosophical mind and he started thinking, “How does this fellow manage one hundred legs? How does he remember which one is to go first, then second, then third? One hundred legs, my God!”He stopped the centipede and said, “Uncle, forgive me for disturbing your morning walk, but I am a little bit the philosophical type. A question has arisen which only you can solve.”The centipede said, “What question?”He said, “Seeing your one hundred legs, I am puzzled at how you manage, how you remember which one goes first, then second, then third, up to one hundred.”The centipede said, “I have never thought about it! I have been walking since my childhood – the question has never come to my mind. Perhaps I am not philosophical. But I will try to find out. You wait under the tree, and I will walk and see.”Within minutes he fell down on the ground, because to keep count of one hundred legs, and then to remember which one goes behind which one… He stumbled, became a mess, fell down. He was very angry at the rabbit.He said, “Listen, never ask such a question of any other centipede. We are living perfectly well without this philosophy. I was going so well for my morning walk, and now I don’t think that I should go ahead. I should go back and rest. You gave me such a tiring and complex problem – and you look so innocent! But remember, keep this philosophy to yourself.”All these faiths were going perfectly well in a way, because nobody was asking the questions. But suddenly all boundaries have been broken. The whole world has become one.Anybody who has any intelligence is aware that all theories are fictitious. Now a totally new approach is needed. The old approaches have all become out of date. Faith has become out of date.You have to drop all kinds of information that you have received, that is being given to you by the society and the colleges and the universities.I have been a teacher in the university, and there used to be a department: Comparative Religion. I asked the professors, “If you really compare religions you will all go mad. They are all fictions. To live with one fiction is one thing – you are at ease, certain. It may be false, but you have a certainty. But comparative religion… If you start comparing, there are three hundred religions in the world. You will simply go nuts.”The department had four professors, but not a single student. I said, “That’s perfectly right!” Finally the department was closed, because comparative religion… The department was closed because I was in the department of philosophy, and the department of philosophy was the feeding department for comparative religion. And I was teaching those students, “If you want to go nuts you can join Comparative Religion. Remember what happened to the centipede – exactly that will happen in your head, inside. You will be a mess after that.” You cannot compare. Fictions cannot be compared.In fact, remember that all information is dangerous for spiritual growth. Transformation is needed, not information.So on the one hand, drop all the information you have received – and you are continuously receiving it. And on the other hand, become more and more simple, and accept your ignorance as a basic truth. There is nothing wrong in it; it is simply another name for innocence. And your spirituality will grow through your innocence, not through your knowledge. Innocence one day becomes knowing, but it never becomes knowledge.You are asking me how I can help you. Every word that I have been speaking is to help you. Every breath that I am taking is to help you. And my work is simple. If you are ready to drop knowledgeability, this idea that you have passed through a time of spirituality… Drop all this nonsense.Just the other day there was one question which I could not answer because the time was finished. The question was beautiful. It was a question from a sannyasin – “Osho, I am still hanging on the branches of the trees. I am still a monkey. Somehow help me to come down so that I can evolve into a human being.”My suggestion is, don’t come down. I am trying to teach people how to climb on trees. Just meditate there, that is the best place you can find. Those who have come down are in a worse state. They have not evolved, they have simply lost a few things – a tail, a beautiful thing. They have lost the strength of a monkey and they are still monkeys, half-hearted monkeys. They have not become men either. They are really in a very great split: they cannot go back to the trees and they don’t know how to live on the earth. They are preparing for a global nuclear suicide because life seems to be meaningless, and committing individual suicide seems to be old-fashioned; why not commit a global suicide? Perhaps only monkeys will be left.So to the sannyasin who is still hanging on the trees, I will say, “Please go on hanging. Meditate there. Those who have come down have simply lost; they have not gained anything. You who are on the trees don’t have nations – you can move from India to Pakistan without any visa, without any passport. You have far more freedom, freedom of expression.”No court drags any monkey in: “You have done something which has hurt a few people’s religious feelings.” And they are doing all kinds of things every day. And, moreover, if the nuclear war happens then who is going to begin the world again? Then my monkeys hanging on the trees can ask their girlfriends, “What do you say? Shall we start it again?” Somebody has to start it again. Don’t come down, go higher!Whatever I am doing is to help you to evolve toward more peace, more silence, more love, more compassion – very simple qualities.I am not asking you to follow great disciplines – stand on your head for twelve hours a day, or don’t eat food for twenty-one days every year. I am not asking any austerities of you. I am simply asking you to rejoice in small things. Whatever you are eating, eat with joy; whoever your friends are, rejoice in their friendship.Whatever life has given to you, never complain. It is always more than you deserve. Always be grateful. And if you can learn the simple fact of gratefulness, your evolution will happen on its own accord.Osho,Are the feelings that we have when we are separated from you related to the fear of death?Amrito, they are. Being with me, you have tasted something of life. Being with me, you have felt the poetry, the dance, the music of existence. Alone, you are still not able to keep the same state of mind – you fall back to your old chattering mind. You forget the peace, the beauty, the dance, the song.Separated from me, you certainly feel a kind of death. If to be with me you feel a kind of life – a life that you would like to live for twenty-four hours a day – then naturally when you are separated you are afraid. It is a feeling of death on the one hand; on the other hand, you are also afraid of your own death, because you have seen with me that life can become an experience of the eternal. I have given you the name Amrito: it means “the eternal.” It means that life can become an experience of the eternal.Without me, you feel a darkness again gathering around you, and a fear – that your death will soon be coming close and you have not yet experienced the eternal. With me the darkness disappears, you forget death. This very moment life becomes so intense, so total, that if somebody asks you, this moment, you can say there is no death. But alone, you are like a lost child surrounded by darkness, feeling afraid.Death will be coming. You cannot avoid it. It does not matter when it comes; it is going to come. And you have not yet experienced the beyond.It is good that sometimes you should be separated from me, and while you are not with me try to experience all that you experience with me – because I am not doing anything, I am just an excuse. Things are happening to you; they can happen without me.None of my people have to be dependent on me. You can have a taste, you can have a certain experience to give you a certainty, a guarantee; and then you have to move on your way, alone.So whenever you are alone, try to experience the same totality, the same intensity, the same silence. In the beginning it will be difficult, but not impossible. Once you are capable of feeling it in your aloneness, you have become an independent individual. And to me, that is the most rewarding experience in life – to become a totally independent individual. Then all the mysteries of life are yours, all the beauties are yours.Osho,The master speaks, and the disciples listen. What is it that happens, and remains unsaid?The master speaks, the disciple listens – yet there is much which the master does not speak, and the disciple listens. In fact that is the whole secret of disciplehood.If you only listen to that which is said, you are a student. You listen to the words, you miss the wordless. The moment you start listening to the wordless, you are initiated into disciplehood.The master is speaking. Naturally he has to use words, but he is also leaving gaps in between. He is also using wordlessness. He is saying something, and he is also meaning something which cannot be said – but it can be heard.If the disciple is silent he will hear the words and he will also hear the wordlessness; he will hear what is being said, and he will hear also what is not being said and yet is transferred. You are asking what it is.It is the presence of the master, it is his heart. It is his heartbeat, it is his very being. Words are just toys that he plays with to keep you engaged, but the real happening is that he wants to have a communion with your being. And if you are silent, just a listening, that communion happens. It is the master’s enlightenment, his light, his delight – it is his treasure that he wants to share.Of all the great masters in the past, only Mahavira has recognized the beauty of hearing. That is his great contribution. The world knows very little about Mahavira – it needs to know much more about him. Unfortunately he was a contemporary of Gautama the Buddha, and because Gautama the Buddha was so charismatic and his impact was so great, Mahavira has fallen into the shadow. But Mahavira has his own contribution. He was not so charismatic a personality, that’s why his influence has remained very limited. Even today, after twenty-five centuries, there are not more than three and a half million Jainas. If he had converted a single couple – particularly Indian – in twenty-five centuries they would have created three and a half million people without any difficulty.He was a totally different kind of man, unique in his own way, and because his impact on the people was not great, his contributions have not received the praise from the world that they deserve.One of his great contributions was the value of hearing. He said that there are two ways to reach to the ultimate: one is the way of the shravaka, and the other of the sadhu. “Shravaka” means one who knows how to listen, and “sadhu” means one who disciplines himself in austerities. The path of the sadhu is long, tedious. The path of the shravaka, the listener, is simple, a shortcut – all that is needed is that he should not only hear, he should listen. Hearing is simple: because you have ears, you can hear. Why are there two words, hearing and listening? – one is enough. No, it is not enough.Hearing is possible for everybody; listening is possible only for those who are silent. You can hear with your mind chattering inside; it will not be listening. But if your mind is silent, calm and quiet, everything is still within you and the master’s word reaches you, it brings with it something more, something that is not in the word but around it – the wordlessness.The word is coming from the very heart of the master. It is not coming from his head, it is coming from his very being; and if you are open and available, it will reach your being. This bridging, this communion is what transpires between the master and the disciple.Osho,What does “spiritual entertainment” mean?Unless you are in a deep communion with the master, everything else that goes on in the name of spirituality is nothing but spiritual entertainment.In your temples, in your synagogues, in your mosques, in your churches, what goes on is simply entertainment. People go to the church for their whole lives and nothing happens to them. People go to the synagogues and they remain the same. They go into the synagogue and they come out the same – just as they go into a cinema hall and come out the same; it is just an entertainment. And it is very fulfilling to the ego. Going to the cinema hall is not fulfilling to the ego, but going to a temple, to a church, to a gurdwara is tremendously ego-fulfilling. And what are you doing there? Nothing has happened to your life. For their whole lives people go and come back the same – no transformation, not even a slight change in their hearts. It is entertainment and nothing else.I have heard that three rabbis were talking about their synagogues. The first said, “My synagogue is the most up-to-date. We are not old-fashioned. People are allowed to smoke in the synagogue, drink, enjoy. And since we have allowed smoking and drinking, the synagogue is full; otherwise it used to be just a few old women. And there is no need to sermonize them because nobody is listening, they are engaged in their own gossiping – so no gospels, only gossipings.”The second one said, “This is nothing. We have gone far ahead, you are living in the bullock-cart days.”The first rabbi said, “What? My most up-to-date synagogue and you say I am living in the bullock-cart days? What have you done?”He said, “In my synagogue all these things have been allowed. Now we have allowed people even to bring their girlfriends, boyfriends – dancing, lovemaking, everything goes. The crowd is so big that I have to give three shows; people are waiting outside. Never before have people been so religious.”The third one said, “You are both talking old stories. You don’t know anything about what it means to be contemporary. My synagogue is absolutely contemporary.”They said, “What more can you do? This man has done everything.”The third rabbi said, “In my synagogue, on every Jewish holiday it is written: Closed for the Jewish holiday – so people can enjoy all over the place. Why confine them? It is a Jewish holiday, nobody comes. There is no need. Holiday should mean holiday, and a Jewish holiday should mean a Jewish holiday. So they all go on doing all kinds of things. Why confine them to a small space? My synagogue is the most up-to-date.”But this is how things are developing in churches, in temples everywhere. People are going there for wrong reasons – and they are bound to go for wrong reasons because there is nobody there to share his being, to share his light, to share his growth. All these rabbis and the pundits and the priests are people just as drowned in darkness and unconsciousness as you are.I have heard…One Sunday, in a Catholic church, the priest is taking confessions. They have a booth, a small window that the priest remains behind, and the person sits on the other side of the window. From there he confesses, and the priest gives him a punishment.The priest had a great friendship with the rabbi and they both wanted to go for golf. The rabbi finished his things in the synagogue and rushed to the church. When he reached there, confession was going on and there was a queue. He went inside the booth and said to the priest, “We are going to be late!”He said, “You do one thing. I will just change my clothes and get ready – you just sit here and take a few confessions.”The rabbi said, “But I have never done it in my whole life! This business we don’t do.”The priest said, “Simply do as I am doing – just watch one or two cases.”One case came and the priest said, “Five dollars fine.” Five dollars were taken in; the second came – “Ten dollars fine.”The rabbi said, “My God, we were thinking that something spiritual was happening. It is pure business! I am going to open a booth in my synagogue. This is cheating! You just go, I will manage. Now there is no problem. I was thinking that you have to give them spiritual advice, and somebody may notice the difference of voice and…”A third man came and he said, “I am very sorry, but what to do? It is now becoming a habit – I raped a woman.”The rabbi said, “Twenty dollars.”The man said, “Twenty dollars?” But he gave twenty dollars, and he said, “Last time when I raped a woman, you asked for only ten dollars. The rates have become higher.”The rabbi said, “Ten dollars are in advance – you can rape one woman more. Just get out, don’t waste my time.”Unless you are in communion with a master, everything is entertainment. You can call it spiritual, and enjoy a deep ego-fulfillment, but it is nothing. It is corrupting you, exploiting you, deceiving you, destroying you.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 19 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,As I see it, the situation is as follows: you are, and we are not. Or to be more precise, you aren't, and we still are. It seems that the master-disciple relationship is really a kindness on your part to describe, in flattering terms, what is essentially our failure to hear what you have said – more often, more clearly, and more lovingly than any disciples in history could have possibly been blessed with. If, in some way, there is a problem with the process, that problem can only be ours – irrefutably, undeniably and totally ours. Osho, isn't taking this responsibility unto ourselves, rather than projecting our expectations onto you, the very first step?Responsibility is always the very first step of freedom. Throwing the responsibility on somebody else’s shoulders is throwing away the opportunity for freedom. You cannot divide the two, they are inseparably one.It is true that the whole responsibility is of the disciple – the master is only a catalytic agent, an excuse. But to accept responsibility needs guts – everybody wants freedom, nobody wants responsibility. And the trouble is that they always go together. If you do not want responsibility, you will be enslaved in some way or other.The slavery can be spiritual – which is the worst kind of slavery possible. The political slavery, the economic slavery, are superficial; you can revolt against them very easily. But the spiritual slavery is so deep that even the idea of revolting against it does not arise, for the simple reason that this slavery is there because you have asked for it. Other slaveries are imposed on you; you can throw them away – they are against you. This slavery, the spiritual slavery, appears not to be against you but a tremendous consolation – a consolation that your responsibility has been taken over by somebody who knows; now you need not worry. But along with the responsibility, you have lost freedom also.And every expectation is a bondage; it leads to frustration sooner or later. It is destined to turn into frustration – no expectation can be fulfilled because nobody is obliged to fulfill your expectations; he has his own expectations.The master-disciple relationship is not a relationship of expectations. Expectation is the poison that destroys all other relationships. Your love turns into hate the moment there is expectation. Friendship becomes enmity. Just the magic of expectation turns everything beautiful into ugliness.But your whole life is full of expectations. Your mind knows nothing but to expect. Hence when you come to a master your mind brings its expectations, its habits, its old routine. And there are people who pretend to be masters. This has to be the criterion: If anybody is ready to fulfill your expectations he is not a master, he is simply exploiting you.No master can say, “I am going to fulfill your expectations.” He can only say, “I am going to destroy all your expectations” – because unless your expectations are destroyed, your old rotten mind cannot be destroyed. Your old habits which are hindering the growth of your being cannot be removed.The authentic master does not take any responsibility. It is a very strange thing; you would have thought otherwise, that the compassionate master must accept your expectations and try to fulfill them.In reality only a charlatan – at the most a teacher – can enjoy the idea of being a savior, a prophet, a messenger. Only someone who is taking advantage of your weakness can say to you, “Just believe in me and you are saved” – be a Christian and you are saved, be a Hindu and you are saved; surrender all your responsibility to Krishna or to Christ and you will be saved. It looks very cheap, very simple; you are not losing anything and gaining everything.That’s why a man like Jesus Christ could say to you, “I am the shepherd and you are my sheep.” And not a single man stood and opposed him – “What are you saying? You are insulting our humanity. You are the shepherd, and we are just the sheep!” But for two thousand years not a single Christian has raised his hand to say that “I am not ready to become a sheep” – for the simple reason that he is ready to be humiliated, because Jesus is saying, “If you are my sheep I will save you. You have nothing else to do but to be a sheep.”Nobody thinks about the fact that by reducing human beings to sheep you are not saving them, you are destroying them. You are destroying their integrity, you are destroying their self-respect and you are making them slaves. And the bargain is a promised paradise after death.Nobody comes back to say if these saviors are helping anybody or if they have just cheated, lied, exploited and destroyed human dignity. And you rejoiced, because all responsibility was taken by them. The bargain was not bad; you just have to be a sheep, a believer. You just have to be a follower. You are not to be yourself, you have to be just a shadow. You have not to walk a path on your own, alone; you have to follow the footprints.Kahlil Gibran has a beautiful story:A man used to teach: “I am the savior. Whoever is ready, just come and follow me.” But people have so many other things to do – somebody is going to get married, somebody’s wife is pregnant, somebody’s father is dying, somebody’s business is going into bankruptcy. People think, “Some day, when everything is settled, we are going to follow; right now it is difficult.”The man went on from town to town, city to city, declaring, “I am the savior. Whoever wants to be saved, just come and follow me.” People listened, nobody objected – because the man was saying, “If you have any doubt just come and follow me and you will see that you are saved” – but everybody was busy.A life is such that it is never complete. A thousand and one things are always incomplete. If death were to wait for you to complete your things, nobody would have ever died. But death simply comes, without giving even a week’s notice. So you have to leave all things incomplete.But when it is a question of your choice, you would like first to clean up the whole mess that you have made of your life – which you can never clean, because it is you who is the maker of it. Even by cleaning it you will be making more mess – sorting it out, you will get more time to create a few more stupid things: you will start loving the neighbor’s wife; one wife was mess enough, now there are two women. And life is so accidental that nobody knows what shape it is going to take the next moment.So the man remained the savior, became very famous – a great savior – for the simple reason that nobody was ready to follow him immediately.But in one city there was trouble. One young man, who was always a troublemaker, stood up and said, “I am coming.”The savior looked at him and felt that now there was trouble. He himself had no idea what saving means – but one has to save one’s face. He said, “My son, come on.”He said, “I am coming, and I will follow you till my last breath.” And he was young and very healthy – a wrestler-type – and the savior was getting old. Days started passing, and the savior could not sleep because of the worry, and the young man would sleep soundly, snoring loudly. He had given all the responsibility to the old man. Moons rose, moon after moon, month after month.The old man became almost insane, because this young man was continuously following him like a shadow. He could not even preach because now he was afraid – this man was spreading the word to people that “For four years I have been following this fellow; he has not saved me yet. So be ready, it is a long journey.”The old man said to him, “You are my follower, you should not say such things.”He said, “I am not saying any lie. Four years have passed – nothing has happened; just you have become almost twenty years older in four years. That old freshness, that old joy of being a savior and a great man, all have disappeared. But I am going to follow you till my last breath!”The old man said, “You are thinking about your last breath – before that I will be finished!”Six years passed. The old man was almost a skeleton; just worries. Just seeing this man almost twenty-four hours a day was such a heavy load that finally he had a nervous breakdown. The young man served him, brought him back to his senses, and said, “What happened? You were going to save me, and you are drowning.”The old man said, “Just forgive me. I am not a savior, and I don’t know at all what this business means. It is just that I was unemployed and this business of being a savior needs no qualifications. I tried, and I was successful because nobody followed. You destroyed my whole business – you killed me! You are such a stubborn fellow. I was thinking that you would go away after one year, two years, three years; but you are such an adamant person that six years have passed. Now it is certain – unless I die, you cannot leave.“So it is better to say the truth to you: please leave me. I don’t know what this business is. I have simply learned words – savior, paradise, following – but I don’t have any experience. And the little bit of sense I used to have six years ago is lost because of you. You are following me like a ghost, torturing me continuously, twenty-four hours a day, because I cannot get rid of the idea – what am I going to do with this man? And every morning you are doing exercises and becoming stronger – the savior is going to die and the follower is becoming more and more stronger.”And the young man said, “I am becoming stronger so that in case you really want to save me I will be in the right shape. Entering into paradise tattered does not look right. In your situation I would rather go to hell, not to heaven – just look at your face in the mirror!”The old man said, “I know, but this whole thing has happened because of you. I used to know the way to paradise before you started following me. Your company for six years was too much; now I don’t know anymore where the path is, where paradise is, whether paradise exists or not. And I cannot go anywhere; my sheep are waiting all around, in every town, to listen to the great message. But I cannot, because you are standing there by my side telling them that for six years you have followed me and nothing has happened. You just leave me.”The young man said, “I can leave you only on one condition – that you will stop this business of saving others.”He said, “That is stopped already; my sheep have gone to follow other saviors. It will be kind of you if you start following somebody else. I have many competitors, it will be a great mercy to me if you do the same thing to those people that you have done to me. Finish them off. Nobody knows what paradise is.”For centuries, since the very beginning of mankind, there have been people who have been taking advantage of human weakness. One of the greatest human weaknesses is that man wants things for free. And if paradise is available just by believing in the existence of God – or that the savior is the right savior – you are not losing anything and you are gaining everything. You may not get anything, but at least you can live in the hope. All your religious leaders have been giving you hope.Karl Marx used to say that religions are the opium of the people, but he never went into a deep analysis of the fact. What is the opium? – hope is the opium. They give you hope. They are ready to give you everything for nothing. Just have faith; give all the responsibility to them. And you are unaware of the fact that the moment you give your responsibility to them, you have also given your freedom.And they are interested in your freedom. They don’t talk to you about freedom, they don’t say, “Give your freedom,” because nobody is going to give their freedom to them. It is a very cunning business. They ask, “Give your responsibility” – and responsibility seems to be a burden, so it is better if somebody else is ready to take it. But you are unaware of the fact that along with the responsibility your freedom disappears. You become a slave. The whole of humanity is enslaved by different kinds of people, but the slavery is the same.An authentic master will not take any responsibility on himself. That’s why an authentic master will not have a great following – because who is going to follow a man who is not ready to take your responsibility, who does not give you any opium, any hope? On the contrary he takes all your hopes, and all your drugs, and all your opium, and tries to make you as clean and pure and innocent and empty as possible. The true master gives freedom. He insists that you should be free, totally free.You are afraid of freedom. Just see the mechanism of mind. You don’t want freedom. If you look deep inside it, you will see your fears. You are afraid of freedom because that means you have to stand alone, on your own feet, and people are very much afraid to be alone. They think that if there are two persons… There are proverbs in India that two persons are better than one. Why? One is alone; aloneness creates all kinds of fears. You start facing existence directly.You must have seen people who are walking alone on a street: they start talking to themselves, to give an illusion that somebody is with them.I used to live in a house by the side of which there was a small street, very lonely, very dark in the night. And I had seen people talking to themselves, loudly, and I was surprised – what was the matter? Not just one, but anybody who would pass would go fast and would talk loudly.One of my teachers used to live at the other end of the street. I got hold of him one night in the middle of the dark street. He said, “No more – here, no more! Don’t disturb me here. You can come to my house, or tomorrow morning we will discuss it, but this is not the place to stand.”I said, “When I am standing here, you are not alone.”He said, “You don’t understand; don’t waste my time and don’t bother me.”I said, “You have to answer me here – why do you start talking when you enter this street? With whom are you talking?”He said, “With whom? Any imaginary figure will do. I start chanting a mantra, Gayatri Mantra; it gives strength. And I run fast, because the street is not only lonely but it is well known that there are ghosts also.”Why are people afraid of being alone? And if you are with someone, there are only two alonenesses; it does not make any sense that you should be less afraid. You should be more afraid – aloneness has been doubled. Before, you used to sleep in your room alone. Now your wife is also sleeping there – two alonenesses, more dangerous! And then children start coming, and each is bringing another package of aloneness. But people feel very good that now they are no longer alone. Just being in a crowd does not mean that your aloneness has disappeared. It is there.The same is the situation when you give the responsibility to somebody: you think the responsibility has disappeared, it is in somebody else’s hands. It is not possible. You have to be responsible. Without responsibility you are not. Only dead people don’t have any responsibility. Alive… The more alive you are the more responsible you are. The more alive you are the more freedom you need – to act, to create, to be.Why are you afraid? You are afraid because it seems that you are too small, and things that have been projected as goals for centuries are too big.Now a small human being… And the goal is paradise! He does not know the way. He does not know anything about paradise, whether it exists or not. He has been made afraid of hell, he has to avoid hell. He does not know what is being asked. How can he avoid it? – because he does not know what hell is, where it is. If you know it, you can avoid it.Naturally you have been burdened with such great, fictitious goals, that you have to give your responsibility to someone who is a pretender.I was in Surat and I was staying with a Mohammedan friend. There is a small sect of Mohammedans, khojas; it is the richest sect of Mohammedans. When I was staying there I came to know about a strange ritual – and that was because Surat is their headquarters; their chief priest lives in Surat.You have to give… When somebody dies he wills that five lakh, fifty thousand rupees, should be given to the priest, because the priest has a direct line with God – no operators, nothing. You give the money to the priest, the priest gives you a receipt, and the receipt is put with the dead man, in his pocket, when he is being laid in the grave. He has to show the receipt to God and he will get five lakh rupees in cash immediately – a simple transaction of money. And people have been doing that! The chief priest must be one of the richest men in the country because all that money goes into his pocket.I asked my friend, “Your father died; how much have you given?”He said, “It is a question of prestige. I had to give fifteen lakh rupees; that is the highest amount ever given.” And his father had died just a few days before; that’s why I had gone to see him.I said, “Do you think your father has received the cash by now?”He said, “Certainly.”I said, “Then tonight we will go to the graveyard.”He said, “For what?”I said, “I want to open the grave and see whether the receipt is still there or not.”He said, “It has never been done.”I said, “You are an educated man. If the receipt is still in the grave, your father has not received the cash.”He said, “That’s perfectly logical.”“Then we can produce the receipt to the priest and get fifteen lakh back – and remember my commission!”He said, “You are something! First you are telling me to do something irreligious: opening a grave…”I said, “You have to be rational. Just come.” So we went. With trembling hands he opened the grave, and the receipt was there. I said, “Take out the receipt.”It was in the middle of the night, and I said, “This is the right time. We should go to the priest.”He said, “Don’t create any trouble. I have understood that we have been cheated.”I said, “This is not enough; we should make it known to the priest that he should stop this exploitation.”He said, “I don’t want to get into trouble.”And I said, “If you don’t come, I am going alone. Just give me the receipt.” Because of the receipt, he followed me. We knocked at the priest’s door; he opened the door and I produced the receipt.He looked at the receipt and he said, “Where did you get this receipt?”I said, “Give the cash – that was the promise. God has returned it; your direct line is not working.”He said, “Maybe something is wrong.”I said, “You silently give fifteen lakh rupees to this man; otherwise tomorrow you will be in difficulty.”He returned fifteen lakh rupees then and there. And he asked, “Please don’t say anything to anybody. It must be that something is wrong with the line.”I said, “It is bound to be; otherwise, you are such an honest man.”This goes on happening in the twentieth century, with educated people! There have been saviors who are pretending that they are the only begotten son of God. There are prophets who have been pretending that they have brought the last message to the world; after them, there will not be any more messages coming – this is the last edition of God’s message. And humanity seems to be in such a slavery – it goes on tolerating all these people, without questioning the basic, ordinary things.It is reported that in Nanak’s life he was in Hardwar, and it was the time when people worship their dead forefathers and give food to the crows – thousands of crows; forefathers come in the form of crows to take the food. I said, “This is a good idea, but no crow can create this idea.”But the worship and the food that the crow gets is secondary. There is a mediator, a priest, who is praying to God to send the ancestors. It is because of his prayers that crows are coming – and not ordinary crows; they look ordinary, but to the believers they are their forefathers.Nanak saw this happening. He said, “My God, this is great! People are coming who have died centuries ago!”He just went to a well where this ceremony was going on – because people have to take a bath and go through certain rituals of prayer. So he took a bath and started drawing water from the well and throwing it on the road. A crowd gathered; they said, “What is the matter? What are you doing?”He was perspiring, drawing the water and throwing it on the road. He said, “Nothing, just watering my fields in Punjab. If these rituals make it possible to cross the barrier of time, hundreds of centuries… It is only hundreds of miles and I am far away, and right now I cannot go. And it is the time that water should be given to the fields.”They said, “You must be mad. Throwing water here, it cannot reach to your fields.”He said, “Crows are eating the sweets, and they are reaching to your parents – and my water is not reaching just a few miles?”If you look around there are pretenders who are ready to take all your responsibilities – of this life, of past lives, of future lives. All that you have to do is to believe in them, to follow them – blindly. Blindness up to now has been the very foundation of religion. And that’s why all the religions are against me – because I say blindness cannot be the foundation. Eyes are needed. Better eyes, more insight is needed. And for that you have to take the whole responsibility for your life.The master can help – and that help also, remember, is not like ordinary help. The help is something like when the sun rises in the morning and the flowers open. The sun rays don’t come to each flower and knock on its doors – “Please get up, it is time.” No alarm goes around that all the birds have to be awake and start singing. Nobody orders them…just a synchronicity.As the sun rises something starts happening in the birds – some joy, some life, some thrill; a song wants to burst. A peacock wants to dance, opening its tail with all the colors of the rainbow. The flowers suddenly wake up – night is over, it is time to open their petals and release their fragrance to the fresh morning winds. The sun is not doing anything directly. Its presence is enough, and something starts happening in its presence.The master’s help is exactly like that. He has not to do something directly, because that will be interference. That will be entering into your territorial imperative; that will be a crime against you. Even though his intention is good, he cannot enter into your being; he can simply be present. And if you are open, if you are available – and that is your responsibility; to be open, to be available, to be receptive – then without any effort on the part of the master, things start happening within the disciple.The master does nothing. His presence is a catalytic agent, a very indirect persuasion; something more like a whisper – not like a gong that wakes you up, but a whisper. Just like the winds passing through the pine trees, a very silent song, a message pregnant with immense significance but without words. He makes it available to you. Now it is your responsibility – and your freedom – to take it or not to take it.So you are right. All the responsibility is of the disciple, and no expectations should be projected on the master, otherwise there is going to be frustration – those expectations cannot be fulfilled. And when they are not fulfilled, then you are angry at the master, then you turn against the master, then you betray the master. And he has not done anything. It was your expectation which has turned into frustration. Everything has been happening within you; the master unnecessarily becomes a target. And when a disciple expects something…For example today I received a letter; one sannyasin wants recognition – I should pronounce his name and answer his question. Now his question is not worth answering; it will be sheer wastage for so many people, and for the simple reason that the question is not important. He is not interested in the question, the question is secondary. What he wants is that his name be proclaimed by me so he gets recognition. Now, even if the question was right, significant, I would not answer it – because I cannot fulfill his ego. This recognition is nothing but the desire of what is wrong in you.He writes that he is feeling very angry – because it is not the first time; this is the third question. In the other three questions he had not mentioned it that he wanted his name to be proclaimed, but the questions were rubbish. Now he says that he is feeling very angry and very frustrated. Strange; it is your expectation; why should you feel angry at me? I have not done anything. I have not even named your name, and I will never do it.And when a disciple feels frustrated he is in a dilemma – because people start asking him, “Why have you left your master?” His ego has been the cause, his expectations have been the cause. He remained stubborn, closed, unreceiving. He behaved like a stone, not like a flower. But he cannot admit it to people – his ego will not allow it – that he was nonreceptive. Then the only way is to find fault with the master. If he cannot find real faults he has to invent, that’s the only way he can save his ego – he has to invent fictions, that the master was wrong.One man lived with me for almost ten years, and now he has written a book against me – and all lies, everything fictitious. But he has to do it just to save his ego; otherwise people ask, “For ten years you lived with him – then why did you leave?” There can be only two reasons: either the disciple is wrong or the master is wrong – and the disciple cannot be wrong.But just think, a person who lives ten years with me… Ten years is a long time, one-seventh of your life – and the best part, your youth. It took ten years for this idiot to find out that he was with a wrong master. Now how many years will it take for him to find a right master? His youth is gone – with a wrong master – and he cannot live without a master either, because he is not ready to accept his responsibilities. He will again move in the same vicious circle.A few people go on for their whole lives doing the same circular route, moving from one teacher to another teacher, from one philosophy to another philosophy, never seeing a single, simple point: that if you come with expectations you cannot find the right master. To find the right master you have to be in a right attitude; that means you have to be without expectations.You say, “Osho, you are and we are not. Or in other words, you are not and we are.” Both are true in different senses.As far as egos are concerned, you are, I am not. As far as the universal self is concerned, I am, you are not. And the whole problem is that the meeting is possible in two ways. If the master is a pretender, then he is just as you are and there is a kind of communication between you because he is an ego – you are also an ego. He fulfills your ego, you fulfill his ego; it is a mutual arrangement.Or, the second possibility is that the master is not as an ego – you should also become a no-ego. Then a communion happens. Then only has the master-discipleship come into existence. It is a rare flower, very rare: comes into being once in a while.The other kind of communication is a marketplace thing available everywhere. There are teachers in the thousands, every religion produces them. And there are students who go on thinking that they are disciples – they learn only knowledge. The disciple has to grow into being; it has nothing to do with knowledge.Have you ever felt that there are people with whom you feel as if your energy is sucked? You don’t want to meet them, they are parasites. And there are people whom you love to meet, because when you meet them you feel more alive, more fulfilled; your energy level is higher than it was before.So there are people who have being – and if you come across a person who has being you will feel nourished. And there are people who don’t have being – they are just black holes; to be with them you will feel sucked.The teacher and the student have a certain communication, but it is superficial because it is only of words. The master and the disciple have a communion. It is not of words, but of a transfer of being, an exchange of life energy.Osho,To be in your energy again is so beautiful. When I hear and read what you have gone through and endured in order to do your work and be there for us, I am awed. How can we be worthy of you?The very question, how can you be worthy of me, makes you worthy of me. The question arises out of humbleness. I accept you as you are, but the desire to be more worthy simply means to be more humble, to be more absent as far as the ego is concerned.Here, not to be is the way of being. The more you erase yourself, the more you allow me in. Just open your doors, all the windows, and don’t hold anything. If you are holding anything back, that means a suspicion – in case you have to leave, in case this man turns out to be not the right master, you can withdraw. So people give in very cautiously. They take so much time unnecessarily.Tomorrow is not certain; I may be here or I may not be here. Only this moment is certain. Don’t hold back. Come totally to receive me because I am ready to give you my totality. And only totality can connect with another totality; if you are partial, you cannot connect with my totality.But you are on the right path. The very question, how can you be more worthy, is an indicator that you are relaxing, becoming humble, getting ready to receive the guest, to become the host.Osho,If a disciple does not agree with some of what the master says, is he a disciple?The disciple is absolutely free to agree or not to agree with what the master says. But what the master does not say, the disciple cannot disagree about that. About that, there has to be total agreement – because that is the real thing.What the master says is just a game of words; it does not matter. The master is not a philosopher, he is not teaching a certain system of thought. He is not asking you to agree or disagree. You can disagree with everything the master says, but agree with the master.The question is of agreeing with his being. And I don’t think that if you agree with his being then you will bother to disagree with his words.Osho,In December last year they discovered a cancer of my uterus. For me it was like deciding to die and go on suffering, or come out of it. I let you come in totally, and became drowned in your love: the cancer disappeared. The last six months, even when it was not possible to see you, I felt you very close to me. Some friends of mine are sannyasins, and when I tell them this, they say I am running away from reality. Sometimes I think and have doubts about what I feel. Are they right? What is reality?Always listen to your own experience, because that is reality.You had cancer. And it often happens that cancer can become a great opportunity, because now death is certain. Now there is no question of holding yourself back – death is going to take you away anyway. And because death was so close, you remembered me more, you loved me more – because there was no more time to postpone. For the first time you allowed me totally to be with you, and the cancer disappeared.Cancer has many reasons. One of the reasons is that your life is meaningless, loveless, that you are not really living – just dragging. You don’t have any reason to live, and the trouble is you don’t have any reason to commit suicide either. So in a sleepy way – like somnambulists, sleepwalkers – people go on from their cradle to the grave. It is a long journey, yet sleeping, they manage. They reach to the grave – or wherever they reach it turns out to be the grave.But a disease like cancer gives a totally new opportunity. You were not aware, so aware, so intensely aware of death; then suddenly you find you have cancer. Now all engagements of your life – the tickets that you have purchased for the theater, for the football match, for the boxing match – simply become meaningless. You were preparing for an examination, now it is useless. You were getting ready to fight an election, it no longer makes any sense. Now death is so strong – and surrounds you – that everything in your life is nullified, is cancelled.I have been telling you continually to love, to be total. And for these few days there was no other alternative: death was coming already – you loved totally. You allowed me to be within you, and the cancer disappeared. Not that I have done anything; you have done something. If you had listened to me before, the cancer would not have happened at all. If you had loved with such intensity and totality before, you would not have been available to cancer.Now, after the cancer has disappeared, you are again getting into the mind, thinking that perhaps I have done a miracle. I have not done anything. You have done a miracle, and because you have been telling your friends, “My master has done the miracle,” they are telling you be more realistic. And then doubts arise in you.Your friends are right. Be realistic – although they themselves are not realistic. The only real thing is that the cancer disappeared because for the first time you had a totality of being, a togetherness of being which was more powerful than any cancer.Now doubts are arising, and you will ask friends, and anybody will say, “Don’t be foolish. Don’t be superstitious” – although they cannot explain how and why the cancer disappeared. And they are asking you to be realistic. You ask them, “Then you be realistic and tell me how the cancer disappeared.” Let them have a little experience of cancer! Just let them think it over, let them waste their sleep over it – how did the cancer disappear? – because that is where the reality has to be decided.And don’t expect a miracle from me. That is fiction. You have done a miracle; there is no doubt about it. And everybody is capable of doing such miracles. Life is such a mystery that if we really become silent, total, loving, it will change many things in you – in the body, in the mind, in the soul.But don’t get foolish ideas from your friends, otherwise the cancer can appear again – because it is not my doing, it is your doing. If you become doubtful, and if you don’t know how it has happened, your doubt can create the cancer. It was your totality which dissolved it; your doubt can make a way for it to come back. And then none of your friends will say, “Be realistic.” Then you will have to go back to the same attitude, but it will be more difficult this time.It is better not to get into the same trouble again. It will be difficult this time because you will be expecting – which was not there before. The first time you had cancer you were not expecting any miracle. Now if it happens you will be loving, you will be trying to be total – but trying to be total is not total, trying to be loving is not loving. And deep down expecting that the cancer will be dissolved – it is not the same situation.And remember, don’t blame me, that I have not helped you the next time. The first time I had not helped you either. It is always you. Whatsoever happens to you, you are responsible.Osho,Sitting silently, doing nothing, the grass grows by itself – and I fall asleep. Somehow I always feel envy for those people who can sit silently for hours, but I really can't manage it, and I have been trying hard. I'm only good at fighting, at creating troubles, at dancing with creativity, at shouting from the rooftops, at singing loudly. So does that mean that there is no hope for me?Sarjano, the haiku you are quoting is from a great master, Basho. I know him. I can tell him to change it a little just to save a poor Italian. And the change that I can suggest to Basho will not be such that he will feel any difficulty.The haiku is, “Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.”I can tell him to make just a little change: Sitting silently, doing nothing, the sleep comes and the grass grows by itself. I don’t think there is any problem. You have every hope.But don’t try your other things; they will not fit. Sleep is a perfect spiritual activity – but shouting from the rooftops, creating trouble, and doing all the things you are saying in your question, they don’t fit.And as far as the grass is concerned, while you are asleep it has more chances to grow silently; otherwise you are going to create trouble.Basho’s haiku is tremendously important. He is simply saying that if you can relax, godliness grows by itself. It is not the grass. He cannot use the word godliness, but that’s what he means: godliness grows by itself. So sleeping silently is a perfectly right atmosphere for godliness to grow. You have every hope.As far as Basho is concerned, I will persuade him to change the haiku.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 20 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is enlightenment the only way a disciple can truly express her gratitude to her master?Even enlightenment is not enough to express the gratitude the disciple has for the master. There is simply no way.The gratitude of the disciple remains unexpressed. It is one of those mysteries which can be experienced but cannot be explained. It will look strange to you when I say that the closer the disciple comes to enlightenment, the more difficult it becomes for him to express the gratitude – because now he is coming to a point which he has never known before. He has been grateful all the way along, but enlightenment, the experience of one’s own unfolding, is just too much. You can simply shed tears, or dance – but everything is ineffectual; it shows your intention only, but not the gratitude.The depth and the greatness of gratitude is such that no word can express it, no experience can express it. But in a way, becoming enlightened comes closest to showing gratitude to the master – you have fulfilled his effort, his effortless effort. His presence has not been wasted on you, you have proved your mettle. It is better to say you have not been ungrateful, you have not betrayed.Through all the ups and downs, through many dark nights of the soul, you continued having trust, love, never wavering for a moment – your enlightenment indicates that.But there is no need to express gratitude. What is needed is to become gratitude. And then it is not a question of being grateful to the master. When you become gratitude, you are simply a gratefulness toward the whole existence. The master was only a door to the open sky, to all the stars beyond.It is beautiful to think of gratefulness, but there are things where you are dumb. You want to say but you cannot – just the words fail, actions fail. And I am telling you, even experiences fail. It makes you transformed. Rather than just being grateful, it brings a mutation in you, a tremendous revolution – you become gratitude itself. That’s the only way.But it has nothing to do with the master as such. When you pass the door, you don’t thank the door. The master is simply an opening. You will remain always grateful, but your gratefulness will remain unexpressed.This is one of those things which, the moment you express them in any way they are dead. They remain alive only unexpressed.Osho,Is the master-disciple relationship accidental, or is it a conscious choice?It is both. As far as the master is concerned, it is absolutely a conscious choice. As far as the disciple is concerned, it is bound to be accidental. He is not conscious yet.The Egyptian mystics have a saying… And Egypt had a few of the most ancient mystery schools. They were connected with those mystery schools which existed on the continents of Atlantis and Lemuria. Those continents are drowned, under water. But Egypt, for a time – till the fanatic Mohammedans destroyed those mystery schools – continued the beautiful methodologies for finding oneself.The Egyptian mystics say: When the disciple is ready, the master appears. For the master, it is something absolutely conscious. A Sufi story will help you to understand it.A young man with a great desire to know the truth renounced his family, his world, and went in search of a master. As he was leaving the town he saw an old man – he must have been nearabout sixty – sitting under a tree so silent, so blissful, so attractive, so magnetic that he was pulled. Unknowingly, accidentally, he went to the old man and told him that he was in search of a master. “You are an old man, and I can feel the flavor of your wisdom. I can feel a certain radiance around you. Perhaps you will be able to tell me where I should go, and what are the criteria – how am I going to decide that this is my master? There are masters and masters, but who is the master who is going to lead me to the ultimate?”The old man said, “It is very simple,” and he described exactly what kind of a man he would be, what kind of an atmosphere he would have around him, how old he would be – even under what kind of tree he would be sitting.The young man thanked the old man. The old man said, “The time to thank me has not come yet; I will wait for it.” The young man could not understand: “What does he mean, he will wait for it?”For thirty years he was searching for the master in the deserts, in the mountains… But he could not find all the criteria fulfilled. Tired, utterly frustrated, he went back home. He was no longer young. When he left he must have been thirty, now he was almost sixty.But as he was entering his home he saw the old man still sitting under the tree. He could not believe his eyes. He said, “My God. This is the man he described – he even said he would be ninety years old; and this is the tree! I must have been so absolutely unconscious that I did not look at the tree under which he was sitting. And the fragrance that he described – the radiance, the presence, the aliveness around him…”He fell at his feet and he said, “But what kind of joke is this? Thirty years I have been wandering in the deserts, in the mountains. And you knew it.”The old man said, “My knowing does not matter. The question is whether you can know it. I had described it perfectly, but you had to go through all this wandering around for thirty years. Only after this struggle of thirty years would you have a little alertness. That day you wanted to thank me, and I told you the time had not yet come; one day the time would come.“And you are bothering too much about your thirty years’ wanderings. What about me? I have been sitting here for thirty years, waiting for you. My own work was finished long ago, my boat has come and is waiting for me. And I have been postponing and postponing for you, idiot, and you took thirty years! And I even described the tree, I described every feature of mine – my beard, my nose, my eyes. In detail, I said everything, and you rushed in search of me!“But it is still not too late. I was worried that if I died, my word, my promise would not be fulfilled – that idiot is bound to come sooner or later, but if I am not here then my description, my indication to him, will not be valid, will prove false. Just to be authentic, I am sitting under this tree for thirty years! You could have chosen me that very day. But you could not help it, you did not have the eyes. You heard my words but you could not understand the meaning. I was in front of you, describing myself, and you were thinking to find me somewhere else.”The disciple finds the master only accidentally. He just goes on moving, stumbling, falling, getting up again; being cheated by one, exploited by another, befooled by someone else. Slowly, slowly a little alertness comes to him. And it is just by accident that he meets the master.As far as the master is concerned, he is consciously waiting for certain people. He is making every effort to reach those people, but the problem is that those people are all unconscious.Even if Gautam Buddha comes and knocks on your doors, are you going to receive him or just make a laughingstock of him?Dostoyevsky, one of the greatest novelists the world has known, in one of his novels, The Brothers Karamazov, brings Jesus Christ back after eighteen hundred years. Jesus thinks, “Now almost half the world is Christian. The first time was not the right time for me to go there, because not a single person was a Christian, nobody belonged to me.”Eighteen hundred years before, he had come into a world of strangers. Naturally and logically, he decided that now is the time – “When half the world is Christian, millions of churches singing my songs – this is the right moment. Now I have my people.”Naturally, he appears in Jerusalem on a Sunday morning. The people from the great church are just getting out. He stands under a tree. Out of curiosity people start gathering around him, and they are all laughing and joking. And they say, “The man is really clever. What an actor! He looks just like Jesus Christ.”And Jesus is saying to them, “I am not an actor, and I am not trying to be Jesus Christ. I am Jesus Christ.”And they all laugh. They say, “Don’t try to befool us. We are Christians, and it will be good for you that you immediately disappear from here before the archbishop comes out, otherwise you are going to be in trouble.”But Jesus says, “This is strange. You are my followers.”And they say, “Forget all this nonsense. We are followers of Jesus Christ, who was crucified eighteen hundred years ago. You seem to be either a film actor or working in a circus – but we certainly accept that you are doing your act perfectly.”Jesus tries in thousands of ways: “Listen, I am the same man who was crucified!”And the archbishop comes and the crowd immediately gives way respectfully. The archbishop is a great religious man. And the archbishop, with authority, says to Jesus, “Come down from that platform and follow me inside the church. These are simple people, and you should not destroy their faith by such stupid acts.”“But,” Jesus says, “you are my representative.”The archbishop says, “Shut up! You are going beyond your limits. Just come inside with me.” And he tells a few people, “Hold this man. Tie him inside in a cell and later on I will see about it, when I have time.”Jesus says, “This is strange. This is what happened before. But they were not my people; at least there was a consolation that they didn’t understand me. I asked God at the last moment, ‘Father, forgive these people, because they don’t know what they are doing. They don’t know that they are mistreating the only begotten son of God.’ But now even that consolation is not there. These are my people, and it seems I am going to be crucified again – by Christians!”He is tied down to a pole in a dark cell. In the middle of the night the archbishop comes with a candle in his hand and falls at the feet of Jesus. He says, “I recognized you, but I cannot accept you in public. You are a great disturbance, a nuisance. In eighteen hundred years somehow we have managed the whole business of Christianity in a perfectly smooth way. Now everything is going well. You are not needed.“Remain with your father, serve your father, and we are here to serve you. But you are not needed here because you will immediately start disturbing things. The rabbis who crucified you – now we can understand that they had also recognized you; it was really their recognition that ‘This man has the truth’ which led them to crucify you. And if you don’t disappear, forgive us: we will have to do the same – to crucify you again. So be a little intelligent, don’t create trouble.”The unconscious man will not recognize even a Gautam Buddha or a Jesus Christ or a Moses. It is not his fault. The archbishop is a little alert; he recognizes, but his whole business is at stake.The priests of any religion would not like their founders to come back again to the earth. They will say the same words to them – “We are doing your work perfectly well. You are not needed, because you are basically a disturber. You will say things which are going to disturb people’s minds. Somehow we have managed their morality, their character, their culture, and you will start bringing questions.”No religion would like its own founders to come back. The unconscious minds of people cannot recognize them. The priests perhaps may be able to recognize, but they will be the ones to crucify them because the priests can have a business on the crucifixion of Jesus, on the life of Jesus; but if Jesus is alive, then the priest is no longer needed. His whole business is finished. It is simply a question of his livelihood, he is not interested in truth.No priest is interested in truth. No theologian is interested in God, in searching for the ultimate. His interest is in exploiting the unconscious mind.So the seeker, the disciple, is bound to stumble with many pretenders. But if his search is genuine…And what is the symbol of a genuine search? The symbol is if his search is not an ego trip, if it is not that he wants to become holier, higher, spiritual, better than everybody else, more virtuous. If that is his search, then he is going to be a victim of all those charlatans that the world abounds with. If his search is authentic, that he wants to know himself – he is not interested in becoming holier, not interested in becoming higher, not interested in becoming superior, he simply wants to know his ordinary self – then nobody can exploit him. Then sooner or later he is bound to come to a person who can see his authentic search, who is conscious.The master chooses consciously, but for the disciple it is bound to be still another experiment. He has been experimenting with others and failed; now he is experimenting with a new person.But with a master you cannot fail – it is impossible. His consciousness is going to transform your unconsciousness into consciousness. He is a light, and once you are in contact with the light you cannot remain in darkness. Unconsciousness is like darkness, and a conscious man is just a great flame of light. To be close to him is to be transformed.To be close to him does not make you more knowledgeable. To be close to him does not make you a slave. To be close to him does not make you a Mohammedan, a Hindu, a Christian. To be close to him simply makes you a human being – innocent, like a child.He gives you being, not knowledge. He makes you more, he expands you more – not your knowledge but your being, your very life. He does not go on increasing your information about truth, about yourself, about life. A master is not concerned with anything about. He gives you life, not any information about life.He gives you a taste, and then you can grow that taste. He gives you a seed… And you become a soil, and you can bring that seed to its flowering.Osho,You have told us that ultimately our attachment to the master must also be dropped. But how? How do we voluntarily cut off the joy we feel at the sight of you, and the sheer bliss of sitting at your feet?I can understand your difficulty. It is as ancient as it can be.The master is the last attachment. And because it is the last attachment – all your attachments gone – your whole energy of attachment becomes concentrated on the master. So it is no ordinary attachment: because in ordinary life you are attached to your wife, you are attached to your children, you are attached to your house, you are attached to this, you are attached to that – there are thousands of attachments, your power of attachment is divided – but when all other attachments have been dropped your whole life energy focuses simply on the master.The old seers of India have been singing that “The master is the mother, the master is the father, the master is the brother.” The master is everything.Yes, there comes a moment when all other attachments are gone; he is all – and now the master wants you to drop that attachment too. It hurts. One is ready to drop the idea of enlightenment easily because one does not know what it is, one has no experience about it. But the beauty, the joy, the ecstasy of being with the master is now known; it is your experienced fact. Now it is something that you have explored and found so juicy that enlightenment, nirvana, moksha all look like dry words.And it is not only true of ordinary people – even with persons like Ramakrishna the problem was the same: the last barrier proves to be the hardest. It will be helpful to understand Ramakrishna’s situation.Ramakrishna was perfectly happy, although his happiness was just a mind game. But he had dropped all attachments, and he had focused his whole life energy on the mother-goddess Kali. The mother-goddess Kali was his whole world. To others it may be just a stone statue; to him, she was the very source of life. It was all his projection, but he was immensely happy. He would dance and he would sing and he would rejoice. And there was no question about his joy – this has to be remembered: his joy was perfectly real, his ecstasy was real, his blissfulness was real, although it was based on a mental projection. The projection was unreal.It is something like this: I give you a stone which looks like a diamond, and you are immensely happy – you have got a bigger diamond than that Kohinoor. As far as your happiness is concerned, it is real; as far as the diamond is concerned, it is fake.Ramakrishna could have died in the same hallucination that he had been creating – and he had created his hallucination with tremendous effort.First, he was a unique individual, not an ordinary priest. He was professionally a priest in the temple of Dakshineshwar, in Kolkata, but his relationship with the goddess was not that of a professional priest. Sometimes he would dance the whole day till he fell unconscious. Sometimes he would lock the temple and would not open it for a few days.It was reported to the owner of the temple, Rani Rasmani, “This is a strange kind of priest. Sometimes the temple is not opened at all, and sometimes it is not closed even in the night. And this priest does not know how to worship. He brings food for the mother-goddess; first he tastes it, and then he puts it before the mother-goddess. Now, this is absolutely against the scriptures. First it should be put before the mother and then it should be distributed as prasad, as a gift from the divine – and this fellow eats first and then puts it in front of the mother; this is almost a sin.“There is no discipline. Sometimes the prayer starts in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon – sometimes it does not happen at all. Sometimes the mother gets the food, sometimes no food. And you cannot argue with the man, the man seems to be mad because he says, ‘I am angry today, I am punishing her. For three days I have been dancing, and she has not even shown her face in my dreams. I cannot tolerate it; now let her suffer. In three days without food, she will come to her senses. Then she will know that Ramakrishna is not an ordinary priest.’”Rasmani called Ramakrishna and told him, “You should follow the scriptures.”Ramakrishna said, “I have never read any scriptures, and I don’t intend to read them at all. I am perfectly happy. My relationship with the mother-goddess is going as beautifully as can be. Once in a while a quarrel happens in every relationship – sometimes she is angry, sometimes I am angry; sometimes she is nagging, sometimes I am nagging; but this is how every relationship…”Rasmani said, “You are mad, Ramakrishna. It is not a relationship.”Ramakrishna said, “Then you can find another priest, because to me it is a relationship.”And one day, dancing before Kali – there is always a sword in the hand of Kali – he took the sword from the hand of Kali and he said, “You have had this sword in your hand enough; today I am going to have it. What do you think? Just because of having the sword you want to terrorize people? I will show you what real terrorism is. I will dance with the sword. And you have to appear, this stone statue won’t do. If you don’t appear then I will cut off my head. So I give you time: as the sun is setting, make up your mind and appear. Otherwise you will lose your priest, and you will not find another Ramakrishna, I tell you.” And he danced.As the sun was setting, he was going to cut his neck with the sword, and he saw the transformation – there was no stone statue. Kali was smiling; it was human. The sword fell from his hands. He remained unconscious for six days, and when he came to consciousness the first thing he said was – because everybody was trying to bring him to consciousness; medicines were being given, cold water was being poured on him – he said, “Are you my friends or my enemies? These six days I lived in such bliss. I don’t want to become conscious again. Just let me remain in my unconsciousness, because the mother-goddess was present all the time for six days. What am I to do with consciousness? Unconsciousness was far more fruitful.”This man would have died, and would have been worshipped for centuries as enlightened – and it was only a psychological projection. It was a wandering master – perhaps he had gone to Dakshineshwar only for Ramakrishna – who told Ramakrishna, “What you are experiencing is your own creation, and unless you go beyond it you will never know the truth. Just one step more: when you see the mother-goddess in your meditation, take her sword and cut her in two, and as those two parts of mother Kali fall apart, the door will be opened to the beyond.”Ramakrishna said, “Even the idea hurts me. I cannot do it.”But the master said, “You will have to do it.” And the man had such a charisma. Ramakrishna had come in contact with many people; for the first time he had found someone who was worthy of being listened to.The master said, “I am going to stay here for only three days. I have come only for you, because you are living in an illusion, and your illusion can be dissolved. I know your illusion is very sweet, it is beautiful; it is the most significant thing that you have known in your life so it is hard to drop it. But you don’t know that, by dropping it, you will enter into something which is not a thousandfold more or a millionfold more, no. The difference is not of quantity, the difference is of quality. And once you have known it, then you will see that what you were doing was only a mind game. You did it well; very few people do it so well and so totally. You succeeded doing it, but now the final step has to be taken.”So Ramakrishna would sit with closed eyes in meditation, and immediately tears would start flowing, his face would become radiant – the mother-goddess was present, and he would forget. When he would come out of his meditation, the master would ask, “What happened?”He said, “I simply forgot. It was so alluring… I cannot remember what you say, and even if I remember I cannot do it.”On the third day the master said, “This is my last day here, and your last chance in this life,” and he brought a piece of sharp glass.He told him, “When I see your tears and your face becoming radiant I know that you are now seeing mother-goddess Kali: I will cut your forehead with this glass exactly where you have to cut the mother-goddess inside – because it happens exactly on the third eye. Just be courageous, just for one time, because I will be gone tomorrow.”He cut Ramakrishna’s forehead. Blood was flowing all over his face, and Ramakrishna gathered courage and did what the master was saying. The statue of Kali fell in two parts, and the door to the beyond opened. He became utterly quiet and silent, opened his eyes, touched the feet of the master and said, “Your compassion is infinite, that you came just to help this poor man. I had no idea what is beyond, I was just playing with mental toys.”I can understand your question, your difficulty. You love to be in my presence. You feel fulfilled, contented. You don’t want anything more. But I am not satisfied, because I know there is more. This is only the beginning, and I will not allow you to be stuck at the beginning. But I have my own devices.What the master, Totapuri, did with Ramakrishna is a very crude thing, a bullock-cart method. I don’t belong to those kind of people, I have my own methods. I cannot help you, I will not interfere in your growth. I would like you to grow spontaneously.But as far as the attachment to me is concerned, it is a different problem. You need not be worried; I can simply disappear myself. You don’t have to cut me into pieces, I can simply slip out of you – because it is only your imagination.And to slip out of your mind is such a small thing, such a simple thing, that I have always wondered why in the past… Even Gautam Buddha had to say, “When you meet me on the path, just cut off my head immediately.” Why be so hard on the poor disciple? I don’t believe in any kind of cruelty. This is asking for cruelty, and a buddha is asking. Certainly he knows it is imagination.But to the disciple it is not imagination; and the question is not of Buddha, the question is of the disciple. To the disciple it is a reality, the most precious reality. And when I can slip myself out of you and leave the door open for the beyond, there is no problem. For my disciples there is no problem. If you meet me on the way, just remind me, “Hey, what had you said before? Now just move out of the way.” No need of swords and cutting of heads – there is no need.Just nudge me a little – “Move out of the way, let me see what is beyond.” And if you want, I can stand by your side and you can see, so you are not afraid of being alone, so you are not losing my presence either. Once you have known the beyond, then there is no question of my presence. What you are getting in my presence is only a drop, a dewdrop; and once you get the whole ocean you will not cling to the dewdrop.No need to worry. It has never been done, but I am a crazy fellow. I have been doing many things which have never been done. I have tried it – it works. You enjoy my presence as much as you can, you love the presence as much as you can. When all your attachments have disappeared and only I am left, then it is my duty to disappear. You have not to do anything. And you are not going to be a loser; you will be gaining more. You will be gaining the universal.Osho,Is it necessary to develop a sense of divine discontentment, when being around you provokes nothing but divine contentment? Or is it enough just to be sad about not being realized?There is no need to develop a divine discontentment. It is for those who are contented with mundane things – with money, with power, with prestige – they need to develop a sense of divine discontentment.But if you have a divine contentment, you are in a totally different category. You need not be sad that you don’t have discontent, you should be happy and rejoice.Medicines are for those who are sick. When you are not sick, don’t be sad – “How unfortunate I am that I have to live without medicines.” Divine discontent is a medicine for those who are feeling contented with things which are simply rubbish, crap. They have to be drawn out of their so-called contentment, and a discontent for the divine has to be created in them.But you are feeling a divine contentment, you are feeling health; you don’t need the medicine. Now don’t be sad, otherwise you will soon need the medicine, and instead of divine discontentment, there is every possibility that you may fall into a discontentment for material things.One has to understand the logic of life. There is a certain logic: if you are contented with things, you can be made aware that this contentment is sheer stupidity. Then immediately a discontentment will arise in you for something divine, something that is immortal, that is eternal.Your situation is just the reverse. You are feeling divine contentment. Now don’t disturb it. There is no need to be sad. Sing, dance and rejoice, so that this divine contentment grows, becomes deeper. That sadness can destroy it.And if you want discontentment, it cannot be divine for you. You can be discontented because you are not the prime minister, you are not the president, you are not the richest man of the country. From your position, if you don’t go deeper into it you can fall on wrong paths.You are perfectly right.Osho,What is a disciple?A disciple is one who wants to be, who feels that as he is, he is utterly empty, his life is nothing but a futile exercise; who feels that he is living meaninglessly – in one word, who feels himself in despair.In one of the existentialist novels a man commits a murder, but the murder is strange – because he kills a man whom he has never known. There is no question of friendship or enmity, he has not even seen his face. The man is sitting on the beach – he comes from behind and kills him with a knife. He does not escape, he stands there.The crowd gathers, the police come. They ask him why he has killed the man.He says, “Don’t ask me any why, because I have been asking why – no answer comes. Why am I born? Why are you born? Why do people die? Why do people have to live? Nobody answers my why – you should not expect me to answer your why. I simply wanted to do something – having nothing to do, I did it.”But they asked, “You don’t know the man. You have not even seen his face.”He says, “So what?”In the court there is great crowd when the hearing begins because this man seems to be really strange. He is not an ordinary murderer, because there is no reason at all to murder. And when the judge asks why, he says, “I have been asking why, and there seems to be no answer. I also don’t have any answer.”Then circumstantial evidence is produced. One man says, “This young man has been eccentric from the very beginning. He is my neighbor – the day his mother died, he said, ‘That woman has decided to die on Sunday just to spoil my holiday. There are seven days, but she will not die on any other day.’ He was not sorry for the death of the mother, he was complaining: ‘That woman tortured me my whole life, gave me work without asking me. And she could have died on Saturday, on Friday, on any day. But I knew from the very beginning that she would die on Sunday – and particularly this Sunday, because I have purchased tickets to go to the movie – just to spoil it.’”Somebody went to the witness box and said, “We cannot understand this man, because the day his mother died he was seen in a disco in the evening, dancing with a girlfriend. Now that is not right. Your mother has died; at least you should not dance in a public place with your girlfriend.”The judge said, “Is it true?”And the man said, “I want to ask one thing: If my mother dies, have I to dance ever after that or not? What does it matter whether I dance after six hours or six days or six years? – it is always going to be after. So I decided that it is perfectly okay. Why waste time in waiting? And what is the demarcation line – after how many days can you dance, and what is the criterion?”He was asked, “You killed the man. Ordinarily, anybody murdering would have escaped, but you were just standing there with the knife in your hand. You did not escape.”He said, “To tell you, the truth is that before my death I wanted to do a decisive act. Others have been dictating to me my whole life, ‘Do this, do that, go to this school, study this subject.’ I have never been given any chance to decide anything on my own. I had decided to commit suicide, but suicide is criminal, and this society is insane. If you fail in committing suicide and you are caught, then they crucify you – because you were committing suicide, as a punishment they crucify you. Great logic. I wanted to commit suicide. I said, ‘This is the best way – first commit a murder.’ At least I can say that I have done one thing in my life fully on my own, a decisive act. And there was no need to escape because now I want you to crucify me.”A disciple comes to a state where he feels that either he has to commit suicide or he has to change his whole life so that there is some significance, some fragrance, some beauty, some individuality, some decisiveness, something that you have done. Your birth you are not responsible for, your death you will not be responsible for – two of the most important things in life are not in your hands – but you can commit suicide; that is a decisive point.To commit suicide is to accept failure, is to accept that you are defeated. But it is only in such a situation of the mind that a man starts looking – perhaps there are other ways of living than how he has lived up to now, perhaps there are alternative styles of life. This search for an alternative style of life… Because he can see all around – everybody is miserable, sad, feeling lost. Not knowing what he is doing, why he is doing it, where he is going, why he is going there – everybody is just being pushed by the crowd. And he goes on like a sheep – not like a man, not like a lion.A disciple is one who is in search of an alternative lifestyle. One lifestyle is that of the sheep and the other lifestyle is that of a lion. The disciple is trying to find his voice, his roar. He is trying to find his authentic being – who he is.A disciple is in the process of transformation.The society has failed him, the society has deceived him. Education has not been of any help. The leaders – political, religious, social – all have just been cheating, and nobody has been of help so that he can be himself.A disciple is a seeker of truth.The word disciple comes from the same root as discipline. Now he is going to discipline himself in a totally different way than the society wants, than the religion wants, than the parents want. He is going to discipline himself with his own signature.It is a rebellion. A disciple is a rebellious spirit.Osho,Is there any golden rule for the disciple?There is only one golden rule – that there are no golden rules.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 21 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Being with you in India is much stronger than anywhere else in the world. Sitting with you in discourse feels like being in the very heart of the world. Sometimes just sitting in the hotel room, closing my eyes, I feel that your heartbeat and mine are beating in the same rhythm. Waking in the morning, listening to the sounds around – they penetrate much deeper than in any other place. It feels like meditation is happening here naturally, and without any effort. Is your work different in India, or is there something here like a natural buddhafield?India is not just geography or history. It is not only a nation, a country, a mere piece of land. It is something more: it is a metaphor, poetry, something invisible but very tangible. It is vibrating with certain energy fields which no other country can claim.For almost ten thousand years, thousands of people have reached to the ultimate explosion of consciousness. Their vibration is still alive, their impact is in the very air; you just need a certain perceptivity, a certain capacity to receive the invisible that surrounds this strange land.It is strange because it has renounced everything for a single search, the search for the truth. It has not produced great philosophers – you will be surprised to know it – no Plato, no Aristotle, no Thomas Aquinas, no Kant, no Hegel, no Bradley, no Bertrand Russell. The whole history of India has not produced a single philosopher. And they have been searching for truth!Certainly their search was very different from the search that has been done in other countries. In other countries people were thinking about truth; in India, people were not thinking about truth – because how can you think about truth? Either you know it, or you don’t; thinking is impossible, philosophy is impossible. It is absolutely an absurd and futile exercise. It is just like a blind man thinking about light – what can he think? He may be a great genius, may be a great logician; it is not going to help. Neither logic is needed nor genius is needed; what is needed is eyes to see.Light can be seen, but cannot be thought. Truth can be seen, but cannot be thought; hence we don’t have a parallel word in India for philosophy. The search for truth we call darshan, and darshan means seeing. Philosophy means thinking, and thinking is circular – about and about, it never reaches to the point of experiencing.India is the only land in the whole world, strangely, which has devoted all its talents in a concentrated effort to see the truth and to be the truth.You cannot find a great scientist in the whole history of India. It is not that there were not talented people, it is not that there were not geniuses. Mathematics was founded in India, but it did not produce Albert Einstein. The whole country, in a miraculous way, was not interested in any objective research. To know the other has not been the goal here, but to know oneself.For ten thousand years millions of people persistently making a single effort, sacrificing everything for it – science, technological development, riches – accepting poverty, sickness, disease, death, but not dropping the search at any cost… It has created a certain atmosphere, a certain ocean of vibrations around you.If you come here with a little bit of a meditative mind you will come in contact with it. If you come here just as a tourist you will miss it. You will see the ruins, the palaces, the Taj Mahal, the temples, Khajuraho, the Himalayas, but you will not see India – you will have passed through India without meeting it. It was everywhere but you were not sensitive, you were not receptive. You will have come here to see something which is not truly India but only its skeleton – not its soul. And you will have photographs of its skeleton and you will make albums of its skeleton, and you will think that you have been to India and you know India, and you are simply deceiving yourself. There is a spiritual part. Your cameras cannot photograph it; your training, your education cannot capture it.You can go to any country and you are perfectly capable of meeting the people, the country, its history, its past – in Germany, in Italy, in France, in England. But you cannot do the same as far as India is concerned. If you try to categorize it with other countries, you have already missed the point, because those countries don’t have that spiritual aura. They have not produced a Gautam Buddha, a Mahavira, a Neminatha, an Adinatha. They have not produced a Kabir, a Farid, a Dadu. They have produced scientists, they have produced poets, they have produced great artists, they have produced painters, they have produced all kinds of talented people, but the mystic is India’s monopoly; at least up to now it has been so.The mystic is a totally different kind of human being. He’s not simply a genius, he is not simply a great painter or a great poet – he is a vehicle of the divine, a provocation, an invitation for the divine. He opens the doors for the divine to come in. And for thousands of years, millions of people have opened the doors for the divine to fill the atmosphere of this country. To me, that atmosphere is the real India. But to know it you will have to be in a certain state of mind.Because you are meditating, trying to be silent, you are allowing the real India to come in contact with you. Yes, you are right: you can find truth in this poor country in a way you cannot find anywhere else. It is utterly poor, and yet spiritually it has such a rich heritage that if you can open your eyes and see that heritage you will be surprised. Perhaps this is the only country which has been deeply concerned with the evolution of consciousness and nothing else. Every other country has been concerned with a thousand other things, but this country has been one-pointed, a single goal: how human consciousness can be evolved to a point where it meets with the divine; how to bring the human and the divine closer.And it is not a question of one person, but millions of people; not a question of a day or a month or a year, but thousands of years. Naturally, it has created a tremendous energy field around the country. It is all over the place, you just have to be ready.It is not coincidental that whenever anybody is thirsty for truth, suddenly he has become interested in India, suddenly he has started moving toward the East. And it is not only today, it is as old as there are records. Pythagoras, twenty-five centuries ago, came to India in search of truth. Jesus Christ came to India.In the Bible there is no record about Jesus between the ages of thirteen to thirty – and that was almost his whole life, because he was crucified at thirty-three. So from thirteen to thirty, seventeen years are missing. Where had he been, and why are those days not recorded in the Bible? They have been dropped deliberately, because that would have exposed the fact that Christianity is not a new religion, it is not an original religion – that whatever Christ is saying he has brought from India.It is tremendously intriguing. He was born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a Jew. He was never a Christian, he never even heard the words Christian or Christ. Why were the Jews so much against this man? Christians don’t have an exact answer; neither do the Jews have an exact answer why – because this man had done no harm to anybody. He was as innocent as you can imagine. But his crime was very subtle. The rabbis, the learned Jews, saw it clearly – that he was bringing ideas from the East which were not Jewish. He was bringing something foreign, strange.If you look from this angle you can see why he says again and again, “It has been said to you by the prophets of old that if somebody is violent with you, angry with you, then you have to be ready. Your answer has to be a stone for a brick, an eye for an eye. But I say unto you that if somebody hits you, slaps you on the face, give him the other side of your face too.” This is absolutely un-Jewish. He has learned it from the teachings of Gautam Buddha and Mahavira.When he came to India – and there are records still available of his visit – Buddhism was still very alive, although Buddha was dead. Jesus came five hundred years after Gautam Buddha, but Buddha had created such a great storm that the whole country was drowned in it, was drunk with his idea of compassion, with his idea of forgiveness, with his idea of love. Jesus says, “It has been told by the old prophets that God is a very violent God, that he never forgives.” And who are the old prophets? They are all old, Jewish prophets: Ezekiel, Elijah, Moses.They have even put words into God’s mouth. In the Old Testament God says, “I am not your uncle, I am not a nice man. I am very jealous and I am very angry. And those who are not with me are against me.”Jesus says, “I say unto you that God is love.” From where did he get the idea that God is love? Nowhere in the world has there been any record of God being love, except in the teachings of Gautam Buddha.For those seventeen years Jesus was wandering through Egypt, India, Ladakh, Tibet. And that was his crime – that he was bringing strange ideas to the Jewish tradition. They were not only strange, they were absolutely against it.You will be surprised to know also that finally he died in India, and Christian records are simply avoiding the fact. If they are right, that he was resurrected, then what happened after resurrection? Where is he? Because there is no record of his death.In fact he was never resurrected. He in fact never died on the cross, because the Jewish cross is the most crude way of killing a person. It takes almost forty-eight hours to kill a person, because the hands are nailed, the legs are nailed, and just drop by drop the blood goes out. If the man is healthy – there are records that people have survived for more than sixty hours – forty-eight is average. Jesus was brought down from the cross after six hours. Nobody has ever died on a Jewish cross in six hours: nobody can die.It was a conspiracy with Pontius Pilate. He was not a Jew, he was a Roman viceroy, because Judea was under the Roman Empire. And he was not at all interested in killing this innocent young man. He was feeling guilty that he was playing a part in this ugly and cruel drama; without his signature this man could not be killed. And it was a political thing, because the whole Jewish majority was madly after Jesus – he should be crucified. Pontius Pilate was in a dilemma: if he leaves this man alone he makes an enemy of the whole country, which was Jewish. That would not be diplomatic. If he kills this man, he will have the support of the whole country, but in his own conscience it would be a wound: an innocent man who has done nothing wrong is being killed just because of a political situation.So he arranged with the disciples that the crucifixion would be delayed as long as possible on Friday, because Friday evening, as the sun sets, Jews stop all kinds of work. Then on Saturday nothing is done, that is their holy day. The crucifixion was to happen in the morning on Friday, but it was delayed – and bureaucracy can delay anything.Jesus was crucified in the afternoon, and before sunset he had to be brought down alive – although he was unconscious, because blood had gone out of his body and he was weak. And then the guard at the cave in which his body was put… The Jews were going to crucify him again after their holiday was over, but the guard was Roman – and this is how it became possible for the disciples to take Jesus out, and out of Judea.Why did Jesus want to come to India? – because in his youth, for years he had been in India. He had tasted the spiritual, the cosmic, the ultimate so closely that he wanted to go back there. And as he was healed, he returned to India and he lived one hundred and twelve years.His grave is still there, in Kashmir. The inscription is in Hebrew; in India there are no Jews. The inscription says “Joshua.” That is Jesus’ name in Hebrew; Jesus is Greek for Joshua. “Joshua came here” – the time, date – “a great master, lived with his disciples in silence, lived long, one hundred and twelve years, and used to call himself the shepherd.” Hence the place itself became known as “The village of the shepherd.” You can go to the village, it still exists – Pahalgam; that is the Hindi translation of “The village of the shepherd.”He wanted to be here so that he could grow more; he wanted to be here with a small group so that they could grow, and silently. And he wanted to die here, because to live here has a beauty if you know how to live, and to die is also tremendously significant if you know how to die.Only in India has the art of dying been explored, just as the art of living has been explored; they are both part of one single process.Still more surprising is the fact that even Moses died in India, and the graves of Moses and Jesus are in the same place. Perhaps Jesus had chosen the place near to the great master Moses. But why did Moses die in Kashmir?Moses had taken the Jews out of Egypt to find the land of God, Israel. It took forty years, and when they reached Israel he proclaimed, “This is the land, the promised land of God. I am too old, and I would like to retire. You, the young generation…” – because since he started from Egypt almost all the people of his generation had died. New children had been born, the young had become old; the original group that started was no more. Moses was feeling almost like a stranger.He gave the power to rule and to manage to the young people, and he disappeared from Israel. It is strange: Jewish scriptures don’t make any mention of his death, of what happened to him. But we have the grave. Again the inscription on the grave is in Hebrew, and for two thousand years a Jewish family has been taking care, generation by generation, of these two graves. Why did he want to come to India – just to die? Yes, it is one of the secrets. If you can die in a buddhafield, in a field where the vibrations are not only human but divine, your death itself becomes a celebration, a liberation.Down the centuries, seekers have been coming to this land from all over the world. The country is poor, the country has nothing to offer, but to those who are sensitive it is the richest place on the earth. But the richness is of the inner.You are right. Just be more open, more relaxed, more in a state of let-go, and this poor country can give you the greatest treasure that is possible for human beings.Osho,Being with you in these days has been like a shower of love, gratitude, like an open ocean. Being away from you has been sometimes so hard and so deep at the same time. Can you please say something once again about the relationship between master and disciple?Not only once again, but I will say a thousand and one times, again and again, something about the relationship between the disciple and the master – because there are so many aspects, and whenever I say something, it covers only one aspect.One thing, the most important to remember, is that it is not a bondage, a contract, that basically it is a meeting of two free individuals, a meeting out of freedom. If at any point you start feeling that it is a bondage, you have gone astray. It is simply two fellow travelers walking on the road with no bondage, with no promises, with no expectations.One knows the road; he has walked down the road, up and down many times – sometimes alone, sometimes with others. He is so much acquainted with the path he can walk on the road with closed eyes. The other is new, he is not acquainted with the road.The only thing that exists between these two people is a certain kind of love, trust. And that too is based on experience – because the disciple can see that the master is always right. There are so many crossroads, but he is always finding the right road; there so many pitfalls, but the master is always making him aware that a pitfall is ahead – “Be a little more alert.” Slowly, slowly, walking with this man, a trust grows. It is not a belief; it is based on experience.He has seen again and again that if this man were not there he would have gone somewhere else. There were so many beautiful paths, by-paths; the desire to move on them was there. But this man is not only aware of the path, he is also aware of the desires of the fellow traveler. He goes on telling him, “No, don’t think that way, that desire will be disastrous.” So many chances to see the validity, the clarity, the experience of the man, create trust. So it is not simply a belief, it is not faith. It is existential, it is experimental, it is scientific.The relationship between the master and the disciple is one of the most existential relationships – not based on imagination, not based on fiction, not based on opinion, not based on what others say, but based on what you see, your experience. And it goes on deepening. A moment comes when to doubt this man becomes impossible – not that the master says, “Don’t doubt.” On the contrary, the master says, “Don’t miss any opportunity to doubt because that is how you are going to sharpen your intelligence. Doubt, and doubt totally.” And the master can say it because he knows that doubt is meaningless against truth.Against fiction, doubt is dangerous; doubt can kill the fiction – but doubt only enhances the true.The relationship between a master and disciple is of immense intelligence. It is not as people ordinarily think – that the disciples will become slaves, mentally dependent; that they will lose their individuality, that they will not be allowed to doubt, that doubt will be prohibited and belief will be nourished – no. With a real master, the situation is totally different. Doubt is nourished, because the master is not afraid. You can doubt as much as you can, but you will have to accept the truth in spite of your doubts. It is not spiritual slavery, but independence.The master’s effort is to give you more individuality. Yes, he takes away your personality. You have to understand the distinction clearly: individuality is your self-nature, and personality is just a mask. And the mask has to be removed, your original face has to be discovered. If you are unreal, you cannot reach reality. Only the real can meet the real.You want ultimate freedom? Then your first step has to be freedom; the last step can be freedom only if the first step was freedom. If the first step was not freedom, it is impossible for the last step to be freedom – because it is the same thing, growing.The relationship between the master and the disciple is a scientific lab in which the false has to be burned and the original has to be discovered. And it is the original that we are all missing. That is our misery, that is our pain, that is our anguish – that we do not know who we are. All that we know is so stupid.A Sufi story will help you.A Sufi mystic comes to a great fair. All the caravanserais are full; he goes from one place to another, it is becoming midnight, he is tired. One manager of a caravanserai has compassion for him and says, “I can arrange something, but I cannot give you an individual room. In one of the rooms one person is there; he is well known to me, so I can persuade him just to let you also sleep there. Now, where will you go? If you are willing, I can ask.”The mystic was so tired. He said, “Anywhere, just let me lie down. I have been walking the whole day. Give me something to eat, and ask your friend.”The friend said, “I have no objection.” A bed was brought in. When the mystic came in, the man looked at him and he felt he was a little bit of a strange type of man – he was going to bed with his shoes, hat, coat, everything on him. But it was not right to interfere with a stranger, so he kept quiet. And then the mystic was tossing and turning, sleep was difficult. How can you sleep with shoes on, and your hat and coat on? Because of his tossing and turning, the other man was also not able to sleep.He said, “Listen, neither are you sleeping nor are you allowing me to sleep. The simple reason is – just take those shoes off, take your hat and your coat off. Relax, then you can sleep. This is not the way to sleep.”The mystic said, “I know, but the difficulty is that these are the things I am acquainted with. If I see my face in the mirror in the morning and the hat is missing a doubt may arise – ‘Who is this man?’ These are my symbols. And the trouble is… If I was alone in the room, I would have locked the room from inside and taken everything off and gone to sleep. But the trouble is, you are also here. Things can get mixed up and in the morning it will be difficult for me. Who is who? You are simply sleeping naked” – it was a hot country – “and I would also like to sleep naked. But two naked persons in the morning… How are you going to make the distinction who is who?”The other man laughed. He said, “You have a real problem, but I will suggest a solution to you. Somebody who must have been staying here before us, their child has left a small balloon, so I will tie the balloon on your leg. You can sleep naked – just remember that the balloon is tied onto your leg, so in the morning when you see the balloon you will know perfectly who you are.”The mystic said, “Simple solution, good.” He undressed, took the balloon, tied it to one of his legs, and went to sleep. They both slept.The other man, just before morning, took the balloon away from the mystic and tied it on his own leg and went back to sleep. Then a servant knocked on the door for breakfast. The mystic looked at his leg. He said, “My God, it feels as if I am myself, but what about the balloon?” Then he looked at the other man; the balloon was there.He shook the man and he said, “What I was afraid of has happened – the balloon is on your leg, so certainly you are me. Now who is going to tell me who I am? Deep down I know that, balloon or no balloon, I am the same man. But now there is great confusion!”Our identities are no more than that balloon – a certain name which has been given to you, a certain respectability which has been given to you. You are a husband, you are a wife, you are a father, you are a brother, you are this, you are that. All these identities are different balloons hanging around you, giving you a certain feeling that you know who you are. But if all these balloons are taken away, then do you know who you are? You will feel you are yourself, but who are you? The master’s whole function is to take away balloons, one by one, from your personality, and still not let you fall into a confusion. The moment all balloons are taken away, people go mad because they don’t know who they are. What is insanity?I had gone to see one madhouse, and one man was just going “Right, left, right, left, right, left.”I asked, “What is he doing?”They said, “He used to be a captain in the army. The whole day he is just going ‘Right, left, right, left’ – a desperate effort to remember who he is. He wants to find his identity.”It is certainly a tremendous anguish not to know yourself.The whole function of the lab that exists between the master and the disciple, the whole craftsmanship of the master, is that he should take your false identities with such articulateness, with such art, that you don’t fall into insanity. On the contrary, rather than falling below mind into madness, he helps you to go beyond mind into meditation.Madness and meditation have a similarity: one is below mind, the other is above mind. Both are out of the mind. One is a breakdown, another is a breakthrough.Without the master there is every possibility you will go into a nervous breakdown if you lose your identity. The master goes on supporting you, goes on taking your personality, layer by layer. And you allow him to take your identities away because of his love and trust; you know that he cannot harm you. You are ready to risk.The master’s art is to prepare you to risk. And once you have risked, once you have become naked of personality, a pure individuality – and still can retain your intelligence, your sanity – the dark night of the soul is over, the morning is very close. Soon you will see the dawn.Go on asking me again and again, because the relationship has so many aspects I cannot cover them in one answer.Osho,You are the wild, raging falls that pour from the mountains. You are the summer rains that fall from the sky. Osho, my beloved, you are the currents of the ocean. And I am here, but a teacup, available to you. To look into your eyes and to watch you smile, to sit in your presence and to bathe in your grace… I can't take my eyes from you, Osho. I don't want to miss one gesture, one look, I don't want to lose one word, one smile. Thank you, Osho, for this moment with you. Thank you, existence, for this master with me.This is not a question, this is an answer. If you can feel thankfulness toward existence, nothing else is needed; you have known the very essence of prayerfulness, the very juice of all meditations.Just two tears fallen in deep gratefulness are enough.The journey is not long; it is long because we never take the first step. An ancient Chinese saying is, “One step is half the journey. In two steps the whole journey is over.” And what is that first step? – gratefulness.And see the beauty of the word and the reality behind it, of gratefulness. It is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan; it is neither male nor female, neither white nor black – just a sheer joy that we don’t deserve.So much is given by the unknown, and it goes on giving to us. Not to take it for granted is the beginning of religion. And to start being grateful is the first step toward the temple.The second step is not even possible to translate into language. It comes automatically after the first. Thousands of efforts have been made to give it some word, some definition, some explanation; all have failed.One great mystic, Rinzai, was sitting by the riverside on the sand. A man approached who had been looking for him. He had gone to Rinzai’s place and they said, “You may find him somewhere by the side of the river. This is the time he sits there.”The man came, he asked Rinzai, “I have come from a long distance to know – in short, because I am not a scholar and I am a simple man, just give me the essential teaching.”Rinzai closed his eyes and sat silently.The man said, “Have you heard me or not? I have asked a question and instead of answering me you have closed your eyes.”Rinzai said, “That was the answer, the shortest: just close your eyes and be silent – you wanted the shortest answer.”The man said, “This is too short. Just a little longer will do.”So Rinzai wrote on the sand with his finger, “Meditation.”The man said, “That does not help much, it is the same. Again, close your eyes and sit silently – that is the meaning. Can’t you give me a little more?”Rinzai wrote in big capital letters, “MEDITATION.”The man said, “Are you crazy or what? – because it is the same thing.”Rinzai said, “If I do anything more than that, I will move beyond the limits of truth. Then it will be a lie. If you want lies, I can elaborate, but truth is finished. The moment I sat silent with my closed eyes, that was all.”So the first step is gratitude, and the second step will be an absolute silence – not even gratitude, because that too is a subtle disturbance. Just nothingness is the second step, and you have arrived.Osho,It feels to me like after all these years of being with you and working, right this moment there is nothing else to do but to relax and let life take over. Is it so – or am I just getting lazy?It is both. It is so, and you are getting lazy! But to be lazy is my whole teaching.I am the lazy man’s guide to enlightenment.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 22 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I have done nothing to deserve your infinite love and compassion, and therefore no act of mine can be appropriate to express my gratitude toward you. I pray to you, my lord, please give me the strength to fight those ugly and inhuman people who, with the help of their brutal power, are dreaming of destroying you.There are many things to be understood. One – the most fundamental – is that love is not deserved. There is no way to deserve it. It cannot be earned, you cannot do anything to be worthy of it. It is a sheer gift.This is one of the reasons why love is so scarce in the world – because we are expecting that people should deserve it, only then can they get it. And it is something which is not a commodity. It is a value which is not of this world. You love someone, you cannot say why. You cannot answer, you can simply say “I love.” There is no rationality in it. So don’t feel in any way unworthy that you have not done anything active for me, yet my total love is there for you just to take.This has to be remembered not only in relation to me; this has to become your deep insight into the very phenomenon of love. Love people not for any reason at all – just loving is so good, so beautiful, so intrinsically blissful that it is not a question whether the person who is loved deserves it or not. You are in love just like a raincloud – so full of rain, ready to shower. You cannot bother whether the rain falls on rocks or on the thirsty ground, it is not your concern. Your whole concern is you are so full and overflowing that you have to share; otherwise it will be such a burden. The same thing that by sharing becomes bliss, can become a burden if it is not shared.And always be grateful to the person who receives your love. Don’t expect him to be grateful – these are the wrong attitudes, this is how we have made this world loveless. We expect the loved person to be grateful, which is absolutely wrong, because he could have rejected your love. You have to be grateful that he received it, opened his heart, and was available to you. What more worthiness is needed?As you are to me, you deserve my love, my compassion. Just by being receptive, you have earned it. Just by being open, you have deserved it. And now you deserve it even more, because you are feeling grateful.The second thing: you are concerned about my safety, about the people who want to destroy me. Your concern is natural, but remember one thing: however powerful the inhuman forces may be, however powerful the cruel, the ugly and the animal in man may be, it cannot destroy the higher values of life. It cannot destroy love, it cannot destroy compassion, it cannot destroy truth. It can destroy, at the most, the physical body.Here with me, the basic lesson to be learned is that we are not bodies, that we are immortal souls. The house can be burned, the body can be burned, but the consciousness will remain unaffected.And by these acts of violence, the inhumanity, the cruelty goes on condemning itself. Each time a Socrates is poisoned or a Jesus is crucified or a Mansoor is killed, nothing is lost; only the inhuman part becomes weaker, starts feeling guilty, becomes criminal in its own eyes.I am reminded of Judas. Judas betrayed Jesus, sold him into the hands of the enemies for only thirty silver pieces. But at the moment Jesus was crucified, Judas was standing in the crowd. And when Jesus said, “Father, forgive these people because they know not what they are doing” – a great shock; Judas could not live more than twenty-four hours. He committed suicide within twenty-four hours. Within twenty-four hours he was hanging from a tree on the mountain. He killed himself, those thirty silver pieces lying on the ground.The ugly cannot be victorious. It is not power that wins; it is peace, it is love, it is consciousness which goes on winning. Look at the whole history – the powerful have not been of any importance in human growth, and they have not been able to hinder anything that is of authentic value.So don’t be worried. All that you can do is be more loving – because we have to fight nuclear weapons with love, bullets with roseflowers. And don’t be worried about small battles. In a war you can lose small battles; that is not decisive. What is decisive is ultimate victory, and we are moving toward the ultimate victory. Each day in the life of humanity we are becoming closer to Gautam Buddha – not closer to Genghis Khan, Nadirshah, Tamerlane, Adolf Hitler, Ronald Reagan. They may have power, but existence is not with them; existence is absolutely supportive to consciousness and all that brings more consciousness into the world.Existence is a tremendous experiment in becoming conscious and man is the pinnacle of the experiment. There are problems and there are difficulties – but they are the challenges, they keep us alert. They are not ultimately against us, but perhaps they are needed to keep us awake.Existence has staked much on man; otherwise man is just what the word means – it comes from “mud.” “Human” comes from humus. What is the difference between mud and man? There is a difference which is not of quantity, but of quality. Man is not only alive but conscious too, and has the potential to become fully self-conscious.Feel compassion for those people who are still living in the dark, still crawling like animals, thinking in inhuman terms. Perhaps your compassion, your love, may help them. Nothing else can help them.But you can love them only if you don’t condemn them. You can be compassionate only if you feel pity, if you feel a deep concern for their undeveloped souls. This is the only way to help them, and this is the only way to help my work.Osho,The other night it felt so good just sitting at your feet, feeling my heart totally tuning into you, and the mind more and more disappearing. But suddenly this Ramakrishna story hit me like lightning. It felt so right, but it is so painful. Are the emotions for a master, the heart-to-heart communion, also an illusion? Is being totally in the heart not the end of the journey?There is no end of this journey. There are overnight stops. To bring you from the mind, the heart is used. The heart is closer to your reality than the mind; the mind is the farthest: the circumference of your being. The heart is somewhere between the circumference and the center.A master has to be alert not to give you impossible goals, because those impossible goals will make you feel, “It is not for me. It is too much, too big. I am too small.”A Taoist parable is:There is a statue of Lao Tzu, the founder of Tao. And a young man has been thinking for years to go to the mountains and see the statue of Lao Tzu. He loves the words, the way Lao Tzu has spoken, the style of life that he has lived, but he has never seen any of his statues. There are no Taoist temples, so there are very rare statues and they are all in the mountains – standing in the open, carved out of the mountain – no roof, no temple, no priest, no worship.And years pass, and there are so many things always coming in between. But finally one night he decides that he has to go, and it is not that far, only a hundred miles, but he is a poor man, and he has to walk. In the middle of the night – he chooses the time in the middle of the night so that the wife and the children and the family are asleep and no trouble arises – he takes a lamp in his hand, because the night is dark, and goes out of the town.As he comes out of the town to the first milestone, a thought arises in him, “My God, one hundred miles! And I only have two feet – it is going to kill me. I am asking the impossible. I have never walked one hundred miles, and there is no road…” It is a small hill path, a footpath – dangerous too. So he thinks, “It is better to wait till the morning. At least there will be light and I can see better, otherwise I will fall somewhere off this small footpath and, without seeing the statue of Lao Tzu, simply be finished. Why commit suicide?”So he was sitting just outside the town, and as the sun was rising an old man came by. He saw this young man sitting; he asked, “What are you doing here?” The young man explained.The old man laughed. He said, “Have you not heard the ancient saying? Nobody has the power to take two steps together; you can take only one step at a time. The powerful, the weak, the young, the old – it doesn’t matter. And the saying goes, ‘Just one step by one step, a man can go ten thousand miles’ – and this is only a hundred miles! You seem to be stupid. And who is saying to you that you should go continuously? You can take time; after ten miles you can rest a day or two days, enjoy. This is one of the most beautiful valleys and the most beautiful mountains and the trees are so full of fruits, fruits that you may not have even tasted. Anyway, I am going; you can come along with me. I have been on this path thousands of times, and I am at least four times your age. Stand up!”The man was so authoritative: when he said, “Stand up!” the young man simply stood. And he said, “Give your things to me. You are young, inexperienced; I will carry your things. You just follow me, and we will take as many rests as you want.”And what the old man had said was true – as they entered deeper into the forest and the mountains, it became more and more beautiful. And wild, juicy fruits… And they were resting; whenever he wanted, the old man was ready. He was surprised that the old man himself never said it was time to rest. But whenever the young man said it was time to rest, he was always willing to rest with him a day or two, and then they would start the journey again.Those one hundred miles just came and went by, and they reached one of the most beautiful statues of one of the greatest men who has ever walked on the earth. Even his statue had something – it was not just a piece of art; it was created by Taoist artists to represent the spirit of Tao.Tao believes in the philosophy of let-go. It believes you are not to swim, but just to flow with the river, allow the river to take you wherever it is going – because every river ultimately reaches to the ocean. So don’t be worried, you will reach the ocean. There is no need to be tense.The statue was standing in that lonely spot, and there was a waterfall just by the side – because Tao is called the watercourse way. Just as the water goes on and on flowing with no guidebooks, with no maps, with no rules, no discipline – but strangely enough in a very humble way, because it is always seeking the lower position everywhere. It never goes uphill. It always goes downhill, but it reaches to the ocean, to its very source. The whole atmosphere there was representative of the Taoist idea of let-go.The old man said, “Now begins the journey.”The young man said, “What? I was thinking one hundred miles and the journey is finished.”The old man said, “That is just the way the masters have been talking to people. But the reality is, now from this point, from this atmosphere, a journey of one thousand and one miles begins. And I will not deceive you, because after one thousand and one miles you will meet another old man – perhaps me – who will say, ‘This is just a stopover, go on.’ Go on is the message.”To bring you down from the head, the heart is used; the master says that a heart-to-heart communion is needed. It seems possible because the heart is not very far, and you have some experiences of the heart. You have loved someone – you may be a mother, you may be a husband, you may be a brother, you may be a friend – you know that there are things which are not of the head. The heart is not absolutely unknown.The absolute unknown cannot be presented to the disciple – not by the artful master. But something that seems realistically plausible can. That’s why the master talks about heart-to-heart communion.It is immensely deeper than the communication that happens between one head and another head. It is tremendously gratifying, but it is just an overnight stay. In the morning we go again, because your being is there. At just the same distance from the heart to the mind, toward the periphery, the being is in the opposite direction, toward the center.Once you have come to the heart – known its joys, known its song, known its beauty – now you can be persuaded to go a little further. And the master who has brought you to the heart has meanwhile also created a trust that he knows what he is talking about, that he knows the way; that he was not simply a thinker, he was sharing his own experience. He has walked the path many times, each nook and corner is known to him. He says, “There is much more: being-to-being contact, and the communion becomes just as ordinary as communication was.”He allures you, persuades you: “But the meeting with the master at the point of being is only one hundred miles.” The moment you have come to the being, then he says, “Now begins the real journey. Up to now we were only preparing for it; it was preparatory work.”From being to the universal consciousness… And that journey is endless, but the ecstasy goes on deepening.At each step, you are more; your life is livelier, your intelligence is aflame. And nobody stops. Once the seeker has reached to his being, he himself becomes capable of seeing what lies ahead, treasures upon treasures. No persuasion is needed – only up to the point of being: those one hundred miles are the most difficult. After those one hundred miles, it may be one thousand and one miles or an infinity – it makes no difference. Now you know that there is no goal in reality; the very talk of the goal was for the beginners, was for children. The journey is the goal.The journey itself is the goal. It is infinite. It is eternal. You will find stars, unknown spaces, unknowable experiences, but you will never come to a point where you can say, “Now I have arrived.” Anybody who says “I have arrived” is not on the path. He has not traveled, his journey has not begun; he is just sitting on the first milestone.But each time it is painful too – it is a sweet pain. You get to the heart and it is so beautiful, so lovely, one would like to remain. There is no point in going anywhere anymore, it seems everything is achieved.But you will have to leave it, and the departure is a little painful. But the pain will be forgotten immediately because more and more blissfulness will be showering on you. And soon you will learn this: that there is no need to feel pain when you depart from one overnight stay. You become accustomed; you know that the journey is endless. And the treasure becomes more and more; you are not a loser. Stopping anywhere will be a loss. So there is no stop, no full-stop – not even a semicolon.You will have to learn to enjoy even the sweet pain of departing from beautiful spaces to more beautiful spaces.Osho,Why do you always speak of the master in the third person?Because I am only a witness, my function as a master is not my identity.It is just like somebody is a plumber and somebody is a surgeon; I am a master – but it is functional, it is not my reality. That’s why I speak in the third person.So I go on talking about the master as “he” – I don’t use “I” – just to make you aware that I am more than the master, that I am watching the master. Just as you are watching him, I am watching him too. You are watching from one side, I am watching from another side.But I am as different from it as you are different from it.Osho,What sense do all the questions have? In many of them arising in me I can see my ego at work. Some I can answer myself, and many have been asked before.Don’t you see the same ego in this question? Don’t you know the answer to this question? Don’t you know that this type of question has been asked many times before? Then why are you asking the question?First, you think that in all the questions that arise in you, your ego is involved – but do you think that by not asking them your ego will disappear? If your ego is involved, then ask them so I can hammer your ego.You say, “Many questions arise and I find that I know the answer already” – but how do you know that your answers are right? Ask them, so that you can know whether your answers are right or not.You say many questions arise in you but they have been asked many times before. Does that help you? Many people have loved before. Are you going to love in your life or not? Many people have lived before and are living right now. What are you doing? You need not live even for a single moment more, because so many people are living – why repeat it? And so many millions of people have lived before – wherever you are sitting, there are at least ten persons’ graves exactly on that spot.I have always emphasized – have you heard it or not? – that I answer people, I don’t answer questions. So it is possible that the same question may be asked a thousand times. I will answer the question in a thousand different ways, because those people who are asking the question are different from each other. Their questions cannot be the same; it is only the language that is giving us an illusion.I love a beautiful story about Gautam Buddha:One morning a man asked him, “I am an atheist, I do not believe in God. What do you say about God?”Buddha said, “God exists, and God exists more than you exist.” His disciples were shocked, particularly Ananda, who was always just by his side.That very day, in the afternoon, another man came and said, “I am a believer, a theist. I believe in the existence of God. What do you say about God?”Buddha said, “There is no God, and there has never been any. God does not exist at all.”Now it was becoming more puzzling – not to those people, but to those who had heard both answers.In the evening a third man came. Only Ananda was present. The man touched the feet of Gautam Buddha, sat there, and said, “I don’t know anything about God. Will you help me a little?”Buddha closed his eyes, and sat silently.Ananda was even more puzzled, because that man also closed his eyes and sat silently. One hour passed, and then the man opened his eyes and he said, “How can I thank you? I don’t have any words. You have answered my question.” With tears in his eyes of joy and gratitude he touched the feet of Buddha, kissed the feet of Buddha, and went away.Now Ananda was going mad! He was waiting for this moment, when there was nobody else. He closed the doors and said, “This is too much. You will drive us insane! To one man you say God exists. On the same day you say to another man that God does not exist. And on the same day, to the third man, you don’t answer, you simply sit in silence – and he receives the answer and with tears of gratitude he kisses your feet. What is going on? Where do we stand? What is our philosophy?”Gautam Buddha said, “Relax, it is time to go to sleep. And remember, none of the questions were yours. Why did you hear the answers? Can’t you be a little more alert, that I am answering the question of this particular man in a particular context? You are not that man – neither is the question yours nor is the answer for you. Why should you bother? It has nothing to do with you. And as far as I am concerned, I have been absolutely consistent all three times.“The man who said ‘I am an atheist and I believe there is no God’ needed a great hit, because his atheism is only a philosophical approach. He has only been thinking, and by thinking you cannot decide whether God exists or not. To demolish his idea… He had come for a different purpose – he had come to get my support. He wanted me to say ‘Yes, you are right,’ so his ego would be inflated more, and his mind concept – that there is no God – would become more rooted and he could proclaim to other people ‘Not only do I say so, Gautam Buddha also says there is no God.’ He simply wanted my support. I cannot give support to any mind game, I had to shatter his mind. I had to shout at him, ‘God is! God exists, and he exists more than you exist.’“The other man was a theist, but the same mind game. He believes, he does not know. He believes that there is a God who has created the world. He has also come for the same purpose, to have my support – because mind itself is always doubtful and needs many props of other peoples’ opinions. And if a man like Gautam Buddha can support you, then the idea can become very fixed. It is not a question of what the idea was; the question is that it was only a mind game. One was atheist, one was theist, but both were playing the same game. I had to shatter the game. And so to the second man I had to say, ‘There is no God, never has been.’“The third man was a totally different story. He had no mind projection. He said, ‘I don’t know anything about God.’ He was absolutely clean and innocent, and he was ready to listen. He had not come to get support for his own idea, he came to be enlightened about the fact, about the truth: ‘What is exactly true about God? I myself don’t know anything.’ There was nothing to shatter. So I taught him the real answer: to be silent. And when I became silent – he was a man of innocence, just like a child – seeing that I am sitting silent, perhaps this is the answer, he also sat in silence. And one hour of silence, with his innocence, gave him a clarity, an understanding, and he was full of gratitude. He received the answer, although he had not asked the question.”Silence is God; or to be more exact, silence is godliness. Silence is divine.You say that questions arise in you which have been asked before – but not by you! They must have been asked by other people, and the answers were given to those people. Those answers are not for you. And when you are present here, don’t be so stupid. When you can get an answer directly for yourself, why take an answer which was given by me to somebody else? The context was different.Yes, when I am gone, then you will be reading answers given to others from books. But when I am here with you, missing the opportunity is sheer stupidity. Either you know – then no questions will arise in you; or you don’t know – then questions will arise in you. Then it is better to ask rather than to hide them thinking that they are ego trips.Looking at your question, my feeling is that not asking is an ego trip, because to ask means you are accepting your ignorance. Not to ask you remain knowledgeable, you know. These are other fools who are asking.Osho,Is there a difference in the relationship of the master to his male disciples and his relationship to his female disciples?All disciples are female. All masters are male. The very qualities of being a disciple are the qualities which are feminine – receptivity, openness, trust, love, a deep surrender.It is not a coincidence that there have not been many women masters, and those that have been were almost as male in their approach as any male can be. For example I will give you a few names – because there are only a few women masters in the whole of history. They can be counted on the fingers of one hand.The most ancient is Gargi. She’s reported in the Vedas. One of the great kings – five thousand years ago according to Christian scholars, and ninety thousand years ago according to Hindu scholars… And I have not been able to find any fault with the Hindu scholars. Their arguments are immensely valid, and the Christian scholars have not been able to answer them.The Christian scholars have a difficulty, because the Christian ideology says that the world was created six thousand years ago – so they have a problem. The problem is: everything has to fit into six thousand years. The frame is there, so they have to put everything into six thousand years’ time. They cannot go beyond that, because there was no world.But there is a difficulty about the Vedas. One of the great scholars, Lokmanya Tilak, proved beyond any doubt that the Rig Veda is ninety thousand years old. It is now almost more than half a century that his argument remains undefeated, and I don’t think there is any possibility in the future that his argument can be defeated – because it is based not on logic but on astronomy.In the Rig Veda there is a description of a certain constellation of stars that happened ninety thousand years ago. Now the Western astronomers have agreed: that certain constellation has not happened again. It has happened only once, and that was ninety thousand years ago. And it has been described in such detail that it is impossible – if the Rig Veda was written only five thousand years ago, then who was going to describe that constellation which happened eighty-five thousand years before that? And they did not have any modern equipment. Unless they had watched it with their own naked, bare eyes, there is no other way.Gargi is one of the most ancient masters:One of the kings had called a conference of all the great philosophers of his time. That was usual in India, that kings would call conferences of great scholars, philosophers, saints, to discuss problems. And for whosoever was the winner, there was a great prize. This time the king had offered one thousand cows, their horns covered with gold and diamonds; whoever won was going to get those one thousand cows with all their gold and diamonds.One of the most important philosophers of those days was Yagnavalkya. He was so certain about his victory… He had his own small university, his own gurukul, a family of disciples; he had brought his chosen disciples with him to listen. And just in front of the palace were standing those one thousand cows, the most beautiful cows, their horns shining in the sun. He told his disciples, “You can take these cows to our gurukul. As far as the debate is concerned, I will win it – why unnecessarily harass the cows in the hot sun?” He was so certain, he was taking the reward before winning the debate.There were thousands of scholars gathered and none of them was courageous enough to say that this was strange behavior. They all knew that the man was going to win; it was better not to say anything.But one woman stood up, and that was Gargi. And she said, “Stop. You cannot take those cows – Gargi is still alive!” There was a great silence in the conference hall. Even the king could not believe that Gargi would give the challenge. Gargi said, “Don’t waste time with others. Let me ask a few questions, and if you can answer them you can take the cows. If you cannot, my disciples are going to take the cows.”And she really asked questions which are not answerable. She asked, “Who has created the world?”Yagnavalkya said, “This is not a great question. Everybody knows God created the world.”Gargi said, “It does not matter whether everybody knows or not. Do you know? The debate is between me and you – do you know? Were you an eyewitness?”Now, that is very tricky. If he says he was an eyewitness, that means the world had already begun – he was there. If he says he was not an eyewitness, then on what grounds – just public opinion? Is it a matter of public opinion? Yagnavalkya remained silent.Gargi said, “Okay. If you cannot answer that, the king should take note of it. I ask you: Who created God? – because it seems the logic is that everything that is has to be created by somebody; otherwise the existence needs no creator. If the existence needs a creator in God, then the same logic has to be applied to God also. Who created God?”Yagnavalkya became so angry, he forgot all his wisdom; he proved that he was not a master but just a teacher. He said, “Gargi, if you say a single word more, your head will fall down on the earth” – and he pulled his sword.Gargi said to the king, “This is enough proof of defeat.” She told her disciples to take the cows, and told Yagnavalkya, “Put your sword back into the sheath. It is a conference of wise people, not of warriors. Next time, come better prepared.”This woman is the first woman master, but her behavior shows that she is not feminine, not at all – so courageous, so bold. She deserves to be a master, and she was a master.The second great woman is one of the great masters of the Jainas, Mallibai. They changed her name to Mallinath so nobody would know that in twenty-four great masters of the Jainas, one is a woman. Even in statues, all twenty-four are male – and Jaina tirthankaras are naked, you cannot hide the difference between a man and a woman.I have been asking Jaina monks and Jaina thinkers, “How did Mallibai became Mallinath, and how did the body of a woman go through a transformation and become the body of a man?” Nobody has been able to answer. They simply said that it has been so for centuries; there is no other mention in the scriptures or anywhere. But I know the answer; my answer is that Mallibai behaved like a man – she was a master. It is perfectly appropriate to change her name from Mallibai to Mallinath and to change her statue into a statue of a man. This is symbolic: even if a woman becomes a master, she will have to grow qualities which are basically male.And if a man becomes a disciple, he will automatically grow qualities which are female. There is nothing wrong in it. Qualities are qualities, and all beautiful qualities are feminine – love and trust and compassion and gratitude and surrender. All beautiful qualities are feminine.The male has courage, perhaps guts to go alone on the path without following anybody; strong enough to risk perhaps many lives. As a disciple he may have attained in one life, but he prefers the longer path – stumbling, falling, going astray, but not asking for help. He is a warrior, and his path is that of a warrior. He is almost fighting with existence.The disciple is not fighting with existence. On the contrary, through the master he has made a deep communion with existence.So as far as I can see, all disciples are female, all masters are male. This should not be taken in terms of equality or superiority or inferiority. They are unique. Just as no man can be pregnant, he cannot be a mother – that does not mean that he is inferior.There are a few idiotic scientists who are trying to make men pregnant. This is bound to happen when ignorant people are doing all kinds of things. Now, wasting unnecessary energy… On the one hand we are teaching women birth control – these idiots are trying to make men pregnant! They are thinking it is a great idea. And there are bound to be a few fools ready to be pregnant – pioneers. But there is no need; women are enough.It is not a question concerned with your sexuality; your being a male or female has many dimensions. One of the dimensions is that there are qualities intrinsic to females which easily make them disciples. There are men who have those qualities – those qualities are not the monopoly of anybody. There are men who are softer than any woman, more loving than any woman, more grateful than any woman – but the qualities are feminine.You will be surprised to know that I have been asked again and again why so few women have become masters. For a simple reason. Why were all the great masters men? For a simple reason. It has nothing to do with superiority.To be a master needs different qualities than to be a disciple, and both together make a harmonious whole. So once a master and disciple have met there is really one organic unity; otherwise the master is half and the disciple is half. Only when the master and the disciple are together and the harmony is complete, there is a mystery – two bodies and one soul.For this to happen these totally opposite qualities are needed, because these opposite qualities function as complementary qualities.Osho,The more I am with you, the more I realize how little I understand of the surrender of the disciple to the master. Could you say something of what surrender means?It is not a question of understanding. Forget the word surrender. Can you love? Can you trust? Then surrender will come like a shadow, on its own accord.Your difficulty is arising because first you want to understand intellectually what surrender is. Intellectually the mind, the ego – both will say no. “Surrender? You are not going to be subjugated, enslaved by anybody!” – because the word surrender has been used with those connotations.One country surrenders to another country in war. One wrestler surrenders to another wrestler in fight. Surrender has lost its beauty; it has become ugly, vulgar, violent. Drop that word.You simply think of love and trust, and if these two are possible, one day you will find that the surrender is happening.And the surrender is not a kind of slavery. It is a freedom – freedom from the ego. You don’t surrender anything except your ego.The master only takes away things which you don’t have – but you think you have. And he goes on giving you things which you have, but you have forgotten completely that they are your intrinsic nature.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 23 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Before I made my application to take sannyas I had a big problem, thinking that taking sannyas was recognizing that one is ill. I was so confused about it, and I didn't trust telling any sannyasin. I read that you said in Pune that we are all ill until we are enlightened. Can you talk more about the relationship between master and disciple, between doctor and patient?Jean-Luc, the confusion is an indication of what I call sickness. Clarity is health.Have you ever heard of any madman recognizing that he is mad? If he recognizes it, that will be the beginning of sanity. But no madman ever recognizes that he is mad.I am reminded of a few cases:When Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was prime minister of India, there were at least one dozen people in the madhouses of India who thought they were the real Jawaharlal Nehru, and some phony man was ruling the country – while they had been forced into the madhouse so that they could not expose the phoniness of the man who had become the prime minister.In Bareilly, India has its biggest madhouse, and Jawaharlal was going to Bareilly. One madman was thought by the doctors to be cured; they thought it would be great – Jawaharlal was going to visit the madhouse and this madman could be released from the madhouse by Jawaharlal himself. This man would rejoice, and it would enhance the prestige of the institution too.The madman was brought to Jawaharlal. The first question he asked was “Who are you?” The doctors were a little nervous. This is not the way to talk to the prime minister of the country.But Jawaharlal said, “My name is Jawaharlal Nehru.”And the madman had a good laugh. He said, “Don’t be worried. It will take just three years, and you will be cured just as I am cured. These doctors are great. When I came to this place, I used to think in the same way – that I am Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Now you have come – strange coincidence, that I am going out and you are coming in.”It has been happening in many instances throughout the world. During the Second World War, Winston Churchill had gone for an evening walk. There used to be a certain fixed time that a horn would go off around the city. Everybody had to go inside the house, lights had to be dimmed, curtains had to be drawn. It was as if London had disappeared. But walking, and worried about the war, Winston Churchill forgot about the time and when he heard the horn he was miles away from his house. And it was a standing order that if anybody was found on the road after the horn stopped he could be shot, no questions would be asked. In a hurry, he knocked at the first door – it was a question of life and death – and a man opened the door. The man said, “Who are you?”He said, “You don’t know me? I am Winston Churchill, prime minister of this country, and you don’t know me?” And that man grabbed Churchill; Churchill said, “What are you doing?”He said, “Come in, because there are three more Winston Churchills here – this is a madhouse. Now all four of you decide who is the real one.”Churchill told him, “Listen, I am telling the truth. I am the real one.”He said, “They all say the same thing. Everybody is the real one. And we don’t know any criteria to judge – they are all fat like you, they all smoke cigars. They have been practicing being Winston Churchill for years. When you see them, you yourself will understand that you are not real; they are real.”Churchill said, “My God, I have knocked on the wrong door.”But the man was not going to let him go. He said, “Outside is death, you can wait inside. In the morning we will figure out who is the real one.”And when he saw the three others, he himself had doubts about whether he was the real one or these fellows were. They had the same kind of clothes, cigars of the same type. He introduced himself, “I am Winston Churchill.”All three of them laughed. They said, “This is strange, now there are four. This country is going down the drain, all the prime ministers are inside the madhouse. At least one must be real.”Winston Churchill tried, “Can I phone?”He was refused. “That’s what they all ask: ‘Can we phone our secretaries, our ministries, cabinet people?’ This is not allowed. Anything that you want to do, you can do in the morning. If you really are Winston Churchill, they will come. Nobody has ever turned up for these three, now we have to wait for you. Just don’t get mixed up.”No madman is ready to accept that he is mad.Jean-Luc, what is your fear in becoming a sannyasin? – because I have said that unless a man becomes enlightened he is not truly healthy because he is not truly whole; he is a confusion? I am not talking about ordinary illnesses. I am talking about the fundamental sickness of the soul, that you have forgotten yourself and you have become identified with things which you are not.A few years ago it happened in America: they celebrated Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on a large scale, for one whole year. A special drama was prepared about the life of Abraham Lincoln, and the whole of America was searched to find a man who looked like him. And they did find one man who looked like Abraham Lincoln; he was chosen. For one year he was using exactly the same clothes as Abraham Lincoln, speaking in the same way, walking in the same way. He was trained, because he would be going around the country with the drama for the whole year.Abraham Lincoln stuttered a little, so he was taught to stutter. He was also a little lame – walking, one of his legs was a little longer than the other. So great massage, traction was done on the poor man to make one leg a little longer. Obviously he started walking like a lame man, stuttering. Experts in voice training trained him to speak with exactly the voice of Abraham Lincoln. He was made into an exact carbon copy. And for one year continually, every night, he was performing. People loved him, loved his acting, loved it that even Abraham Lincoln could not do better.When the year was finished he came home walking like Abraham Lincoln, lame, stuttering. At first the family thought he was joking, but he was not joking; it had become fixed in his mind that he was Abraham Lincoln. He used the same dress, which was no longer in fashion, and urchins would follow him on the street shouting, “Abraham Lincoln is coming!”He was taken to a psychoanalyst. He entered his office – but it was no longer a part, it was no longer acting. He was so identified that he told the psychoanalyst, “You should be respectful to the president of the country.” The psychoanalyst gave him many sessions, but even in the sessions he was stuttering – and he had never stuttered in his whole life. The voice and everything that he had learned and practiced, and for one year continually had to do…Finally the psychoanalyst called his family and said, “This man cannot be cured, because it is not an illness. He has taken a new identity, and unless he is shot just like Abraham Lincoln he is not going to listen to anybody else. But shooting this poor man will not be a cure; he will be finished, and he will die like Abraham Lincoln. That will be really the proof that what he is saying is absolutely right.”Your confusion is your sickness. Your mind is your sickness. Coming to a state of no-mind is health, wholeness.That is what is meant by enlightenment. You are no longer identified with the body. Have you ever thought for a single moment – you were a child, you became a young man, you became old – which body is yours? And the first day, when your mother got pregnant, on that day also you had a body. If the picture is shown to you, it will be simply a picture of a small egg. Are you going to say that this is Jean-Luc?And if it is not Jean-Luc, then you cannot be Jean-Luc either because that small egg is the beginning, and then for nine months in the mother’s womb you have passed through all the stages humanity has passed through its evolution. First you have been a fish; that’s what has given the idea to the scientists that life was born in the ocean. But scientists have come to this conclusion only just now. In India, for almost ten thousand years, the idea has been prevalent that the first incarnation of God was a fish, Matsyavatar.Strange that God should choose a fish to be his first incarnation – but God simply means life and nothing else; it is just that one is a religious term, the other is a biological term. The scientists would say that life was born in the ocean, but they both agree that the first manifestation of life was that of a fish. Charles Darwin came just a century ago with the idea of a monkey, but in India, for centuries we have worshipped the monkey-god Hanuman with great respect because he is our forefather. Now scientists are agreeing, because the last stage in the mother’s womb is that of a monkey – the child looks like a monkey.If all the photographs from the day you become part of your mother’s womb to the day you come out of the womb are presented to you, you will not be able to recognize any of them as your picture, that it is your album.Even after birth, if detailed pictures are being kept from his childhood up to the age of seventy, a person will not be able to recognize that at some time, some day he has been identified with all these bodies. He is still there; those bodies are gone.Man is not a body. Man is not a mind either. A Hindu has a Hindu mind, a Christian has a Christian mind; a Buddhist has a Buddhist mind. Mind is given to you by the society. What you bring with you is only a brain, and that brain is a tabula rasa, nothing is written on it. You can write Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, communism, or any nonsense. And you are not left in freedom to choose what you would like to be written on your brain. Before you are aware, the society has already filled your mind completely with all kinds of superstitions. You are not a Hindu.It was always a problem whenever there was census in this country. The officers would come to me with their forms, and in their forms it was to be filled in to what religion I belonged. And I said, “I don’t belong to any religion.”They said, “Then you have to write that you are an atheist.”I said, “I don’t belong to atheism either, because if there is no God I am not going to waste my time in denying something which does not exist. A few are worshipping him, a few are denying him – and he does not exist at all. No, I am not an atheist.”They would say, “It is not right, the form has to be filled in completely.”I said, “I am not here to fill in the form. You can take the form incomplete – and anyway I am not going to vote, because it is so difficult to choose which idiot to vote for. I have never voted in my life.”They would take their registers and run away, and they would look again and again at me – “This man seems to be dangerous. He will not fill in the form, and now he says ‘I cannot vote because the problem is how to decide which idiot is less idiotic, it is a very difficult psychological problem. You just take your registers and your forms. I am just myself.’”You are not the body, you are not the mind – these are your sicknesses, your false identities. Enlightenment simply means coming home, coming to the center which you are.Why are you afraid to tell others that you want to become a sannyasin, that you have filled in the form to become a sannyasin? – because they will think you are sick. But the whole of humanity is sick.They will not laugh at you. They will appreciate your courage, that you have accepted your sickness. This is the beginning of dissolving it. The most difficult thing is when a person does not accept his sickness; then you cannot help him. He will throw away the medicine, he will shut the door in the face of the doctor.I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin became old, very old – and as people become old they become troublesome, they become more and more a nuisance. Children are a nuisance, but nothing compared to old people, because old people have experience – their nuisance is supported by their experience, reason, logic; they have known the world. They will not let anybody live in peace.And as people become older they cannot sleep, because the function of sleep is no longer there. The child sleeps in the mother’s womb for twenty-four hours a day because he is growing so much that if he is awake it will be a disturbance to his growth. Nature does not allow him to be awake but keeps him in a kind of anesthesia, fast asleep so he can grow. Scientists say that in these nine months a child grows as much as he will never grow again. In seventy years of life, he will never again grow with such speed.After the birth, sleep starts being cut. Then the child is sleeping twenty-two hours, then twenty hours, then eighteen, then sixteen, then fourteen… And then, by the age of fourteen, he comes to the average of eight hours. But as he goes beyond fifty, less sleep again – because now he has to prepare for death. In the mother’s womb he was preparing for life; his body was growing, his brain was growing. It was a subtle process, a delicate process; it needed complete silence. Now everything is dying; so beyond sixty, people start becoming senile. Then they go on believing in their old memories, their golden days – the future is dark. By the time they reach seventy, two hours of sleep is enough.Mulla Nasruddin had reached ninety years. Now he needed no sleep! It would be okay if he kept quiet, but he would not. He would wake everybody up, start giving sermons and great advice to everybody. And they told him, “In the day you can do everything…”He said, “In the day you have to do other kinds of work, you have to live life. In the night you are all at home and there is nothing to do.” So he would gather everybody, wake everybody up and start giving great sermons which were all nonsense. But he was the oldest man in the town, the most respected – what to do with him?His sons, his grandsons were all in agony: “Every night the house becomes a church. Somehow we have to find somebody who can make him sleep.” Many kinds of doctors were tried – allopathic, ayurvedic, homeopathic, naturopathic, yunani; nobody succeeded. Finally they got hold of a hypnotist who said, “Don’t be worried. This is my business, to put people to sleep.”Nasruddin heard that they were going to bring a hypnotist. He said, “Okay, let him come.”The hypnotist came with his bag. Nasruddin was lying down on the bed. And the hypnotist said, “Listen, it is very easy to sleep. Just relax. I will give suggestions and you simply have to follow. First I will give suggestions to relax the body, each part of the body, so no tension remains. Then I will suggest that you are falling into sleep – deeper, deeper, deeper. Don’t resist.”Nasruddin followed. His family was surprised, because he was not a man to listen to anybody – perhaps the hypnotist had some power. And he started giving him suggestions. Nasruddin relaxed, and the whole family was very happy; they could see his whole body completely relaxed. And then suggestions for sleep… And even the hypnotist was surprised, because he was not only sleeping, he was snoring. The family was very thankful. His fee was ten rupees, but they gave him twenty rupees and they said, “You are the only one who has been successful.”And as they went out to take him to his car and then came back in, Nasruddin opened one eye and asked, “Has that nut gone or not? Now everybody gather, and the sermon begins: You idiots, you should have given me twenty rupees and I would have been silent the whole night. Just give me twenty rupees each night and I will be silent. Don’t waste money this way. Rather than talking business to me, you are bringing these idiots. I befooled him within seconds – and he even believed the snoring. Who has ever heard that people snore in hypnosis? He does not know even the ABC of hypnosis.”Everybody is in confusion, young or old. Sick, sick unto death, but nobody is willing to accept it. On the contrary, he is throwing out the doctors, proving that “I am not sick.”Accepting your sickness is the beginning of gaining health. So don’t be worried; tell sannyasins that you are joining them on the path. They will not laugh at you.And it is not a question of one person; the whole world is in the same situation. Only once in a while a person becomes enlightened. It should not be so, but unfortunately this is the case. Everybody has the potential to be enlightened.But the very first step… And you don’t have guts to say, “I am sick, sick of the mind, confused, split, schizophrenic. One moment I am feeling good, another moment I am feeling bad, and I don’t know who I am, still I go on dragging. I don’t know anything of reality, still I have beliefs about everything. All my knowledge is just a burden. My reality is that of a patient.”And you have put it rightly. What is the relationship between the master and the disciple? – exactly the same as that of the physician and the patient.I will tell you a small story:Gautam Buddha came into a town. That town had a blind man who was a great logician, very rational, and the whole town had tried to tell him that light exists, but nobody could prove it.There is no way to prove light. Either you can see it or you cannot see it, but there is no other proof.The blind man said, “I am ready. I can touch things and I can feel them with my hands. You bring your light and I would like to touch it and feel it.”But light is not something tangible. They said, “No, it cannot be touched or felt.”He said, “I have other ways. I can smell it, I can taste it. I can beat it and hear the sound. But these are my only instruments – my ears, my nose, my tongue, my hands – I am making available to you my whole personality. Should I listen to my own personality, or should I listen to you? I say there is no light; it is simply an invention, an invention of cunning people to deceive simple people like me so that you can prove that I am blind and you have eyes. The whole strategy is that you are not interested in light, you are interested in proving that you have eyes and I don’t have eyes. You want to be higher, superior, and because you cannot be logically, rationally, superior to me, you have brought in something absurd. Forget all about it, you are all blind. Nobody has seen light because light does not exist.”When they heard that Buddha had come to the town the people said, “It is a good opportunity. We should take our logician, the blind man, to Gautam Buddha; perhaps he can convince him – and we cannot find a better man.”They brought the blind man to Gautam Buddha. They told the whole story that was going on: one blind man was proving them all blind, was proving that there is no light, and they were absolutely incapable of proving the existence of light.The words of Gautam Buddha are worth remembering. He said, “You have brought him to the wrong person. He does not need a philosopher, he needs a physician. It is not a question of convincing him, it is a question of curing his eyes. But don’t be worried, I have my personal physician with me.”One of the emperors of those days had given his own personal physician to Gautam Buddha to take care of him twenty-four hours a day, to be with him like a shadow. He asked the physician, “You take care of this man’s eyes.”The physician looked at the man’s eyes and he said, “It is not a difficult case; just a certain growth is covering his eyes, which can be removed. It may take at the most six months.”Buddha left his physician in the village, and after six months the man opened his eyes. All his logic, all his rationality disappeared. He said, “My God, I was telling those simple people that they were cheating me, deceiving me. Light exists – I was blind! Had I accepted the idea of my blindness before, there would have been no need for me to live my whole life in blindness.”Buddha had gone far away in six months, but the man came dancing, fell at Buddha’s feet and said to him, “Your compassion is great that you did not argue with me, that you did not try to convince me about the light but gave me a physician.”Buddha said, “This is my whole work. There are spiritually blind people all around. My work is not to convince them about the beauty, the blissfulness, the ecstasy of existence; my work is that of a physician.”And that is the relationship between a master and a disciple. The disciple comes, openly accepting that “I am sick, I need your help. I am blind, I need my eyes to be cured. I want to see what you have seen. I want to be what you have become.”Osho,How can I become a disciple?What is the need to become a disciple? Why should you ask such a question?Do you feel your life is meaningless, that you need some meaning? Do you feel your life is empty and you would like fulfillment? Do you feel you are in darkness and you would like to be in the light? The whole thing depends on you.If you are contented as you are, if you are not missing anything as you are, there is no need to be a disciple. Why bother a master, and why go into an unnecessary search? But if you have emptiness, meaninglessness, anxiety, anguish, confusion, darkness; if you feel your whole life is nothing but misery, then to become a disciple is very simple. It simply means to contact someone who is fulfilled, who has no questions left, who is only an answer.The disciple is a question. The master is an answer. And as far as I am concerned, there are no conditions on the disciple. Nothing is imposed on the disciple; on the contrary, he is helped to drop unnecessary luggage and be as light as possible.Just be receptive to someone whom you feel is not miserable, whom you feel lives in ecstasy, radiates blissfulness, in whose presence you feel a silence descending on you. Then open your heart to him. You have nothing to lose except your miseries.Karl Marx ends his Communist Manifesto with a tremendously important message, although in a different context – but it is as useful to the disciple as he thought it was useful to the proletariat. He says, “Proletarians of the whole world, unite! And don’t be afraid because you have nothing to lose except your chains.” It may not be correct in the context in which he was talking – because communist revolutions have happened; chains have changed, freedom has not come. First there used to be bourgeois chains, now there are communist chains – which are more up to date, stronger, more difficult to get rid of.But in the context in which I am quoting it, it is tremendously beautiful: a disciple has nothing to lose except his misery – because you don’t have anything other than misery, but you go on hiding your misery as if you have a treasure.And you are asking how to be a disciple.Just drop your misery at somebody’s feet in whose eyes you see some rays going beyond darkness, indicating a path to blissfulness and benediction.Osho,For more than ten years I have been following you from place to place. I can't believe that I am back in India. Am I brainwashed, addicted, or what?You are certainly brainwashed. I use a dry cleaning machine; I am not old-fashioned. And naturally you are addicted. Who will not be?Addiction is not always bad. If you are addicted to beauty, to poetry, to drama, to sculpture, to painting, nobody tells you to drop the addiction. Addiction has to be dropped only when it makes you unconscious. Alcoholics are told to drop the addiction, but here my teaching is of consciousness – be addicted to it more and more.And what is wrong in being brainwashed? – wash it every day, keep it clean. Do you like cockroaches? When I brainwash people, I find cockroaches. Cockroaches are very special animals. It has been scientifically found that wherever you find man you find cockroaches, and wherever you find cockroaches you find man. They are always together, they are the oldest companions.What have you got in your brain? So just washing it is perfectly right. But people have given it a very wrong connotation; those are the wrong people.Christians are afraid of somebody brainwashing Christians, because then they will not be Christians. Hindus are afraid because then those people will not be Hindus. Mohammedans are afraid, communists are afraid. Everybody is afraid of brainwashing. I am in absolute favor of it.There used to be an old saying: “Cleanliness is next to God.” Now there is no God, so there is only cleanliness left. Cleanliness is God.And I am not afraid of brainwashing, because I am not putting cockroaches in your mind. I am giving you an opportunity to experience a clean mind, and once you know a clean mind you will never allow anybody to throw rubbish and crap into your mind. They are the criminals.Brainwashing is not a crime – who has made it dirty? Dirtying other people’s minds is a crime, but all over the world all the religions, all the political leaders, are using your mind as if it is a toilet. These ugly fellows have condemned brainwashing; otherwise, brainwashing is a perfectly good job.I am a brainwasher. And those who come to me should come with the clear conception that they are going to a man who is bound to brainwash, clean their minds of all kinds of cockroaches. Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian – they are all against me for the simple reason that they go on putting in their cockroaches, and I go on washing people’s minds.It is just an up-to-date religious laundry.Osho,I experienced so much energy, insight and expanded awareness when I was a patient of Rajen, Teertha, Amitabh and Somendra. Now, each of their reactions to your comments seems full of the ego problems they each pointed out in me. It is as if each of them saw their own problem in me, and I accepted it as a correct insight into myself. How can such beautiful men, who appeared to be so full of your grace and so devoted to sannyas, also be so dumb?Bodhicitta, it is a simple phenomenon. The people who had allowed me their total receptivity had become my messengers, but their function was not more than that of a postman. When you receive a love letter, don’t start kissing the postman!But Bodhicitta himself is a psychoanalyst and he has developed a few techniques of his own which may look stupid to you, but in America stupidity and spirituality are synonymous. For example, Bodhicitta has developed a psychological technique called “hugging;” so the whole group of twenty or thirty people just go on hugging each other. It is good exercise, particularly in cold countries, but don’t try anything like that here in Mumbai. In Mumbai only enlightened people can hug each other, and it is very rare to find two enlightened people.You had seen those therapists who were working in the commune in Pune under me – and they were going around the world, because I was not going anywhere. I had prepared them to be just a passage; that’s why you felt that they were so innocent, such beautiful people.And what has happened to them now? Just something natural.There is a story:In Jagannathpuri every year the chariot of Jagannath, the Lord of the World, goes around the city. Millions of people gather to see it.Once it happened, a dog was moving ahead of the chariot and everybody was falling, kissing the earth – and the dog was puffed up; he thought, “My God, I never thought that I am Jagannath, the lord of the world. Millions of people have come, and they are all bowing down to me.”The poor dog was not logically wrong; it was happening. He was not aware that they were touching the earth, doing their deep, respectful bowing down to the Jagannath in the chariot. All that he could see was that they were doing it to him.The therapists who went around the world found sannyasins everywhere receiving them with as much love and respect as if I had come there. They had come as my representatives, they were sent by me. But what happened to those poor fellows? They started thinking that all this respect, all this love was for them.So when the commune was destroyed by the American government and there was a chaos, those few therapists started behaving as if they were enlightened, calling themselves enlightened.I have received hundreds of letters saying that, “Osho, we don’t find the same quality in these people as we used to find before. They are the same people, but your presence is no longer with them.”Even the participants in their groups have written to me, “Groups are the same, techniques are the same, but you are not there. And now we know that the miracle was not the technique but your presence.” Their groups are being deserted now; soon they will not find a single sannyasin going to them. If they have a little bit of intelligence, they will come back with a deep apology. They have betrayed. They were only mediums; they are not enlightened.And this is the difference. You can know a technique – but just to know a technique is one thing, to be a master is totally different. That is the difference between a scientist and a technologist. The scientist himself discovers – it is his own discovery, it is his own authority. The technologist simply imitates. He can do perfectly well as far as the objective world is concerned, but as far as the subjective world is concerned it is not possible.Only the master can bring the transformation. The mediums can simply spread his word. The moment they start thinking that the respect and the honor is being given to them they are no longer mediums. Then a dead technique is in their hands, which is not going to help.It happened in Rome…Each year there used to be a great competition of paintings. One year a painting was chosen, but one painter stood up and said, “There is something incomplete in it, it is not perfect. Whoever has done it is a technician but not a painter.”He was asked, “Can you make it perfect?”He came… “Yes, not much is missing, but what is missing is the very soul.” He simply touched the lips of the painting with his brush. It had been looking sad and now it was smiling. He said, “Now it is perfect. Whoever has done it should be given the award, but he is only a technician – a perfect technician – but he is not a master, because this smile is the soul of the whole painting.”And because of that smile the whole painting was changed, the whole context was different.One man in America purchased one of Picasso’s paintings for one million dollars, but he was suspicious about whether it was an original or not – because there are so many technicians who are copying great paintings with such perfection that it is impossible to make a distinction unless you are an expert. He took the painting to one of the greatest critics, and the critic said, “You need not be worried about this painting. Picasso has done this painting in front of me, I was staying with him.”But doubt is such a thing… It does not leave so easily. The American then said, “I will pay the fare and whatever expenses. You come with me to Paris, and we have to ask Picasso himself – and you be present. I want to be absolutely certain that it is a Picasso.”He said, “It is absolutely certain, you are unnecessarily wasting money. But there is no question, I am ready.”They arrived in Paris and they went to see Picasso. The painting was shown to him and the man asked, “Is it an original Picasso?”And Picasso said, “No.”The critic said, “Are you mad? Have you forgotten that I was staying with you at the time you were painting this?”Picasso said, “No, I have not forgotten that. You were staying here when I was painting this, but it is not an original.”The critic said, “What do you mean its not an original? You painted it!”He said, “You have to understand my definition of originality. I had painted the same painting before, and there was no new idea coming to my mind, so I repainted it. It was only a technical job, there was no mastery – any technician could have done it. Does it matter that the technician is Picasso himself? It is not an original painting, it is a copy. And if you don’t believe me you can go to the museum where the original is hanging.”They went and they could not make out any difference between the two. But one was an original idea and the other was only a carbon copy, done by the same man.The therapists who are behaving in an utterly stupid way will have to return, because whoever has been with me cannot become a part of the world again. And once the sannyasins desert them – they are deserting them – those therapists will find that their idea that the respect was given to them was wrong. But they have to learn it the hard way.You are fortunate. You go on doing your hugging meditation – in America; don’t mention it in India. It works in America, because for hundreds of years Christianity has made people so conditioned that even to touch somebody is a sin. If you see a beautiful woman and you just want to touch her face because it is so beautiful, you will find yourself in the police station. And you were not asking anything; you would have touched her face, thanked the woman – and her husband – and gone your way. And the husband should be proud that he has such a wife that wherever he goes people come to touch her face.Christianity has made touching a sin. People have to be separate, particularly men and woman have to be separate. Even in the church they have to be separate, in the synagogue they have to be separate.So your idea is perfectly good – but in a cold country, where people are not perspiring. Let them do as much hugging as they want and they will feel great, because touching each other’s body is touching each other’s energy, and if it is a group where friends are together it becomes a loving phenomenon. There is no harm in it. But don’t mention such a thing here.He has opened an institute in Nepal. I was worried about him; this kind of psychotherapy in Nepal or India is not needed. California… If you have got a crazy idea simply go to California – any crazy idea and you will find followers, ready-made followers who were just waiting for some crazy idiot to come. And now you have been in the East long enough; you will get a good following in California.But don’t be worried about these therapists. They will disappear just like soap bubbles, because there is no reality of enlightenment.Osho,I heard you once compare the work of a master to that of a surgeon. In these terms, being with you as your disciple, I have experienced you cutting very thoroughly through whatever my masks are. How can you actually do nothing, and yet give me such an individual surgical treatment?Nothing is my sword; it is so thin you cannot see it. And the work is certainly so delicate, it cannot be done with crude instruments.Do you see the sword of “nothing” in my hands? It is there.Osho,How much longer will I have to run after you?It depends on you. You can run by my side or you can even run ahead of me, but just don’t run away.Osho,Living in the moment, my memory becomes worse and worse. Doing nothing, my body and mind are getting more and more lazy. Closing my eyes, I see nothing but darkness.All in all, I enjoy this, and feel contented and thankful, but one question disturbs me: how can I know that this is not the contentment of a donkey?Niskriya – it is really the work of a donkey, but you are not an ordinary donkey, you are a German donkey! What do you call a donkey in German? – esel. You are an esel.But German donkeys have always done great things – two world wars, and without them the third is impossible. There are donkeys in every country, but nobody can compete with a German donkey. There are Indian donkeys – you cannot tell them “Sitting silently, doing nothing” because that’s what they have been doing for centuries, and the grass has not grown yet!For the grass to grow, a German donkey is needed, because for the Indian donkey it is simply natural, there is nothing special in it; for the German donkey, sitting silently doing nothing seems to be impossible. And because it seems impossible, if he can manage it, the grass will have to grow. So Niskriya, don’t be worried. Be at ease.And donkeys are not bad people: very philosophical.It is not a coincidence that Germany has produced the greatest philosophers in the world. Donkeys are philosophical, they are continuously thinking. Just watch a donkey. You will never find a donkey not thinking.But the poor donkey has been condemned almost all over the world for the simple reason that he does not write scriptures, does not give sermons, does not get crucified. He is so utterly simple and lives so silently – as if he is not. So much is going on in this whole world, but for the donkeys nothing is going on; they live in a timeless moment.So Niskriya, when I say you are a donkey, don’t feel bad about it. Sitting in your room, just think of yourself as esel, and enjoy it. It is far better than insane human beings, far better than all kinds of sick souls. Have you ever heard of any donkey going mad, or any donkey going to a psychiatrist, or any donkey committing suicide, or any donkey committing a murder, or any donkey committing a rape? Such innocent people… I support them perfectly. So remember, even if the world condemns them, I am here in total support. Relax, however difficult it is.But if a German decides to relax, he will relax. An Indian decides many times to relax, but he never relaxes.I used to stay in a very rich man’s house in Kolkata. His name was Sohanlal Dugad. He was a man of seventy-five or eighty years of age, but he loved me very much and he had taken a promise that I would not stay anywhere else as long as he was alive. I had with me a friend who was a fanatic religious type. He was a celibate, and he was trying to renounce the world and become a monk. In the night when we were sitting and gossiping, Sohanlal Dugad said, “Three times in my life I have taken the vow of brahmacharya, of celibacy.” My friend was very much impressed.I said, “You idiot. For brahmacharya, for celibacy, one needs to take the vow only one time. Three times?”He said, “I never thought about it. Yes, that is correct. We should ask what happened with the fourth time!”I said, “That is an embarrassing question to ask an old man. He himself would have said that after the third time he recognized the fact that it was beyond his capacity. It is better not to bother about it.” But he insisted.Next morning he asked him, and the old man said, “The fourth time? Don’t you think three times is enough? For a fourth time I could not gather the courage – three times failing…”The Indian decides to meditate, to relax, to become a sannyasin. But he is always having good thoughts.You are fortunate, Niskriya, that you are German. If you decide to relax, it can be depended upon, reliable – and it will not disturb your work, I know.He is a master of his work, he is a great filmmaker in Germany, but he decided to close the whole business and just follow me. You might not understand that he has closed a big flourishing business; he was earning immense money, and now he simply takes my pictures and nothing else. This decisiveness is of tremendous value. This decisiveness gives you a spine.And you must see his work, with what concentration he looks after every minute detail. It takes him four hours every day to set up his camera here, and he must be thinking continually about how to improve – because I go on seeing new improvements: these new umbrellas have appeared!So many people have been making the films, and they have all been harming my eyes. He is the first man who has thought about my eyes. That’s why these umbrellas – my eyes are not affected at all. But such minute concern, and a decisiveness to do something to its perfection – the same thing can be turned into any dimension. If it becomes spirituality, it will be the same – the same quality, the same determination, the same devotion.So if you are feeling relaxed, it is not against action. One has to understand that relaxation is the very source of energy; it can be converted into action. In the night you go to sleep so that in the morning you are rejuvenated. The night has not been wasted; the night has helped you to recover the energy that you have used before. Again you are young, again fresh.In meditation, whatever happens is bound to be expressed in creativity. What you are doing is a creative act, and for your creative act you have renounced everything. For your love you have renounced everything. It will be appreciated by people when they come to know of it.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 24 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,When I took sannyas and I first met you, it was like meeting again with an ancient beloved, as if I had known you for a long time. Is it so, or is every meeting with an enlightened being so much a reminder of one's own inner self that it feels as if one has met before?The experience of remembering as if you have been with me before in the past lives has two dimensions – one, which you mention in your question itself.Each meeting with an enlightened person is meeting with a mirror. You see yourself as in reality you are – not the mask but the original face, not the personality but your universal being. The meeting with the enlightened person creates a resonance, a certain vibration that reaches to the very depths of your being.Because you don’t know your self, it seems you have met this enlightened being before – because you don’t know your own enlightenment. It is your self-nature. This is one dimension.But there is another dimension also. You have lived many lives, and it is impossible that you have not come across the awakened, the enlightened, the illuminated beings – perhaps many times.You have met these strangers, these outsiders, on different paths, on different crossroads. The quality of enlightenment is the same. So if you loved me deeply enough, all those experiences – which were momentary, because you never lived with an enlightened being long enough, otherwise you would not be here – just passing moments, but even the shadows, the reflections, are revived again because the taste is the same.Gautam Buddha is reported to have said, “You can taste the ocean from anywhere. It is always salty.” It does not make any difference whether it is the Atlantic or Pacific. So is the case with enlightenment: it is an ocean of consciousness, and the taste is immensely sweet, fulfilling, enlightening. And the person who is before you is no longer important. What is important is the invisible experience that he is carrying within himself.So if you have passed a Gautam Buddha on a crossroad, or a Mahavira, or a Mahakashyapa, or a Kabir, or a Farid – meeting me, all those momentary impressions on your being will be revived again and it will appear as if you have known me before, many many times in many many lives.But the very apparent meaning is not true.I was not enlightened before this life. So even if you have met me, you have not met me – it was just an unconscious being like yourself. And you have been meeting thousands of people. I may have been one of those thousands of unconscious people that you came across – that is not significant.The difficulty with enlightenment is that you can be enlightened only in one life, because that is your last life. Once you have become enlightened, you cannot come again into the human body. You are released from the prison, from the pain, from the anguish, from the meaningless, miserable existence. You are no longer confined in any form; you enter into a formless universal consciousness. Once enlightened, your death is going to be the last death. In other words, only enlightened people die. The unenlightened: very difficult – they go on coming back, they never die. Only the enlightened person can afford death; the unenlightened cannot afford it, he is not yet ready.Life is a school, and unless you have learned the lesson you will have to come back again and again to the same class. Once you have learned the lesson, passed the examination, then even if you want to come back into the class you will find all doors are closed for you. You have to move higher, to a different level of being.We have moved from one form to another form. Man is the last form. Beyond man is a formless, oceanic consciousness.Gautam Buddha says, “I will be coming back after twenty-five centuries.” He is simply giving a consolation. In his place I have come! But the taste is the same. He has not lied, in one sense; in another sense he has lied.Jesus says, “I will be coming back.” Krishna says, “I will be coming back.” No enlightened person can come back. Then why are these people saying these things? They know they cannot come back. But people will be becoming enlightened – and enlightenment has no name. Whether it is in the body of Gautam Buddha or in the body of Krishna or in the body of Jesus or in the body of anybody else, it is the same phenomenon. So apparently they are lying, but fundamentally they are saying a very profound truth.That’s what you experienced when you first met me.Yes, you have been meeting me before – in other enlightened people. But if they can say that they will be coming… And I have to come, then I can say I was there – just lying backward. When you met Gautam Buddha you met me: the experience, not the body, not the skeleton, but the consciousness.I was in Nagpur speaking in a Buddhist conference. I am not a Buddhist – only Buddhists were invited to speak; I was the only one who was not a Buddhist. The president of the conference, Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan, was a little puzzled. I was just sitting next to him. He whispered in my ear, “Have you become a Buddhist?”I said, “I don’t need to be a Buddhist.”He said, “Then why are you here in a Buddhist conference?”I said, “Because I am a buddha.”He said, “My God. Then you should be presiding.”I said, “That’s true. Come down. You are only a Buddhist. And I have just come by the way after twenty-five centuries to see how things are going.”But he could not absorb the shock of my saying that I am the buddha. In the night he came to meet me in the house of a friend, where I was staying. He was a common friend; he was his friend also. And he said, “I had to come, because since the morning I have not been able to drop the idea that a man can say with such authority that he is the buddha. I have been a Buddhist for fifty years, and I don’t have the guts to say that I am a buddha; I am still a Buddhist, trying to follow the principles of Buddha. And you don’t seem to follow any principles at all.”I said, “Those principles are for Buddhists to follow. Buddhas make principles, they don’t follow them. And I can say it with authority, because Gautam Buddha himself has said that he will be coming after twenty-five centuries. Do you think he was lying?”He said, “No, I cannot think that way.”“Do you think he will come exactly in the same body? That body you have burned. Do you think he will be born as a prince? – because now there are no kings. Where are you going to find a beautiful woman like Yashodhara for him to marry?”He said, “My God, in all these details, naturally they cannot be repeated because to repeat all those details means to bring that whole century – the kingdoms, the people – because a single man is not an island, he is connected.”Now Buddha was the son of a king, Shuddhodana. I said, “First you will have to find Shuddhodana, and what about Shuddhodana’s father? It is going to be difficult. You will have to find Yashodhara. What about Yashodhara’s father?“You will have to manage a son to be born, and on the night the son is born Buddha has to be exactly twenty-nine years old and he has to escape in a golden chariot. Where are you going to find these things? You can do it in a drama, but in reality… Trust me, I am the Buddha – this time born to a different father, this time no Yashodhara, because last time it was enough. One has to learn from experience. This time no children, I cannot tolerate them; they are the nastiest people in the world.”He said, “My God, you have made the thing such that one wants to feel that perhaps you are the Buddha.”I said, “It is not a question of feeling. I don’t depend on your feeling. I am the Buddha, whether you feel it or not. There were many fools like you in Buddha’s time who never accepted him as the Buddha, the enlightened, the awakened. It is up to you to be wise or to be a fool.”You must have come across me many times – not in this body, but you must have come across the same experience: sometimes a Mohammedan, Farid; a weaver, Kabir; a shoemaker, Raidas; sometimes a prince, Gautam; sometimes a businessman, Tuladhar; sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, like Rabiya al-Adabiya.Enlightenment is simply realizing one’s universal self. Whosoever realizes it has the same taste – his eyes radiate the same light, his gestures have the same grace, he has the same beauty.If you are receptive, meeting one enlightened person, you have met all the enlightened people who have happened in the whole history of man: not only the past, but even those who will happen in the future.In the enlightened consciousness the past, the present, the future are all dissolved into a single moment.Osho,It is impossible to defend you, and equally impossible to desert you. I am overwhelmingly aware of how much I owe you and how deeply I love you.It is certainly impossible to defend me – unless you become enlightened. That is the only defense you can provide to the world.No logical, no rational, no intellectual argumentation can defend me; but you can become enlightened, which is far easier. Then you will be my defense – the more souls are aflame, the more I am defended.And you say, “It is also impossible to desert you.”That too is possible through the same method, enlightenment – you will be able to defend me and you will be able to desert me. Once you are enlightened, I can say good-bye. There is no need to hang around me. Before that, you cannot defend me and you cannot desert me.And the remaining question is absolutely absurd. You say you owe me so much – all bullshit. You owe nothing to me unless you are enlightened. What do you owe to me? I just enjoy telling stories. And you think you owe something to me? I just enjoy gossiping, telling jokes, talking about things which cannot be talked about – just an old habit. You don’t owe anything to me. Yes, you will owe something to me when you become enlightened – just a thank-you. That too need not be said. I will understand it.Osho,Oh my master, I know nothing, but I know one thing – that you love me. Thank you, Osho.You know that I love you, I know that you love me; and really there is nothing else to say – either from your side or from my side. So we can take the next question.Osho,Often my fellow sannyasins ask what I think about a particular event that took place near you, or how I feel about the organization around you. Being here with you, I find myself more interested in that emptiness which you speak around, that space from where you come. Osho, will you speak to my friends about the crazy events and actions that always surround your presence?There are many things to be said about the question. First, there is no organization around me. I am against organizations, because each organization kills the truth.The ancient story is that a little devil came running to the master devil and said, “Master, what are you doing here wasting your time smoking a cigar? There on the earth one man has found the truth, and if the people of the earth come to know about the truth, that will be a calamity to us. Hell will be deserted. There will not be a single newcomer anymore. Something has to be done urgently!”But the old devil went on smoking the Havana cigar. He said, “Calm down, my son. You are new. I have made every arrangement.”He said, “But I am coming exactly from the spot! There is no arrangement!”He said, “You don’t understand. There are already organizers around the man – priests, interpreters, organizers. A church is being made, and they are standing between the man and the masses. Whatever he says, they interpret it before it reaches to the people. This is my old strategy. Try it, and it always succeeds. That’s how I have killed all the religions.”Truth has been found many times, but it has never been possible to make it available to the people. The organization becomes a wall – power-seekers, hierarchies, bureaucracies. And the man who has found the truth – he is so alone in this crowd of scholars, priests, power-seekers, interpreters, he finds himself absolutely helpless. Whatever he says they distort it. Whatever he says, something else reaches to the people.There are others, who are writing books, and these books will be worshipped, they will become holy books. Sculptors have arrived; they are making the statue of the man who has found the truth. Nobody is interested in the truth, everybody is interested in his own business. They worship the man, and worshipping is another form of crucifying.If you are cultured, you worship; if you are uncultured, you crucify – but there is no difference between the two.The worshippers say, “You are God incarnate. We will remember you forever. Our children will worship you. There will be temples all over the earth, your statues all over the world.”The scribes are writing books, the writers are making great systems of thought. Nobody listens to the man. In fact nobody is there to listen to him. Everybody is there to exploit him.The priest says, “Ask me. He is so far above, that without mediators, there is no possibility of any communication.”Just recently the pope declared that anybody who confesses to God directly, without the mediation of a Catholic priest, is committing a grave sin. Strange – you cannot confess to God directly, it is a grave sin. First you have to go to the Catholic priest. Everything should move through proper channels; you have to tell the Catholic priest, and he will inform God, and God will inform him what punishment has to be given to you.The old devil said, “Don’t be worried. I have my popes, Ayatolla Khomeiniacs, shankaracharyas, Acharya Tulsis – and all kinds of idiots are there. We need not be worried; just take a Havana cigar, relax. You are just new and don’t understand the business yet.”So the first thing: I don’t have any organization. I don’t have any holy book. I don’t have any mediator. I don’t have any interpreter. Whatever you see as organization is not organization, it is simply functional; it is just like the post office.Now so many millions of people writing letters to each other… Some kind of arrangement has to be there; somebody has to sort out the letters, where they have to go. But the postmaster does not have any authority, nor the postman, nor the postmaster general. Who knows the name of the postmaster general? It is just functional work.In a good world, you will not know the name of the president of your country: it is a functional post. You will not know who is the prime minister: there is no need, it is simply functional. They should be doing their work, and they are needed just the way shoemakers are needed and scavengers are needed. The president is not needed more than the plumber; in fact the plumber is needed more than the president. The president is simply sitting there in the capital doing nothing, and when something goes wrong in your bathroom – which happens almost every day – then the plumber is needed. But nobody honors the plumber; the plumber has no authority, he has no power. And bogus people who are not doing anything have power. That is the miracle of organization. Organization creates useless people, but makes everybody feel that without them the whole society will collapse.Stalin never took a single holiday in his whole life, and he was one of the men who ruled longest. And when his daughter, Svetlana, once asked him… He must have been in a very good mood, which was rare. Svetlana was married to an Indian. She has told the story to me herself.Stalin said that he cannot take any holiday because the holiday will make the whole country feel that the country can go perfectly well without him. And the truth is, the country will go perfectly well without him! He has to remain in the chair to make the country feel that, without him, everything is going to collapse.The whole bureaucracy makes you feel that without them everything is going to be wrong. This is their way of gaining power. And the people who are interested in power are the people who are the most empty, who are suffering from an inferiority complex. These are the sickest people in the world.I don’t have any organization. Just functionally, if only a hundred people can sit here and three hundred people come, then somebody has to prevent the two hundred, give them passes – “You come tomorrow.” But that does not make him powerful, so that you have to have his picture hanging in your house – “This man is no ordinary man; this man passes out tickets, worship him.” He is simply serving you; there is no question of power.Secondly, you are not asking your question. You are asking questions that your friends ask you. This is dishonest. You are allowed to ask your question. And I know it is your question, but you don’t have the courage to say, “This is my question.”I used to live with a man for three years. He was an astrologer and a palmist. And it was an everyday experience that people would bring their own birth chart and would say, “This is my friend’s birth chart” – because if the man says something ugly nobody wants to hear it. If things are good it is good, if things are bad it is about the friend. But that man was very clever. He would say, “Good. Leave this chart here, and tomorrow bring your friend with you.” Now, it was a difficulty – where to find a friend? And who is going to be with him, to be in trouble unnecessarily?I said, “Why do you do that?”He said, “This is an everyday thing. They come about other people, and these are their problems. But a person who does not have the courage to say honestly that ‘This is my problem’ will not be able to solve it.”“Your friends ask you about the organization.” It is not true. It is your own question. There is no problem; why can’t you say, “I have a question about your organization”?“Friends ask about things that happen around you.” Strange. Why don’t those friends come themselves? All those friends have sent one representative.Things happen. Wherever there is silence, a certain magic prevails. The more profound the silence, the deeper is the magic.I have seen people changing so dramatically, so unbelievably – one could never have thought before that this man could become so peaceful, so loving; that so many flowers could grow in his consciousness so that he becomes almost fragrant, that his life could become a song, a dance, a celebration.It is simply a question of resonance. Great musicians know it. A great musician can play on his sitar, and can keep another sitar in an empty room far away in another corner. And there comes a moment when he is really lost in playing his sitar that the other sitar – which is simply sitting there, nobody is playing it – starts resonating the same tune, vibrating.In the old days, that was one of the most important things before a man was called a master musician – if he could create resonance only then was he a master; otherwise he was just an ordinary musician.There are stories which look fictitious, but they are not – because now we know something scientifically, that they are possible.The Indian classical music has different ragas for different purposes. There are ragas which can create light, fire; just an unlit lamp suddenly becomes aflame. A certain resonance, a certain hit of the vibrations creates the fire, and the flame comes up.Now – scientists say, and it has been followed by military experts – whenever soldiers pass over a bridge, their ordinary musical walk is broken. They are ordered not to walk the way they have been trained – thousands of people raising their left legs at the same time, creating the same sound – because it was found in the First World War that many bridges were broken, and those bridges were able to carry bigger loads. Just an army passing… What happened? Just a certain rhythm of their legs falling on the bridge, and the bridge was gone, and the people were falling from the bridge.First it was thought to be just an accident, but when it started happening on many bridges then things were looked into. It was found that it is the sound of their musical march that gives a nervous breakdown to the poor bridge.You say, “Crazy things happen around you.” That, too, is said by your friends. I have never seen any crazy thing happening around here. Yes, I have seen crazy people becoming sane; but in a crazy world to be sane looks like being crazy. Just go to a madhouse…It happened to a friend’s father. He is a special kind of insane person: for six months he is insane, and six months he is absolutely sane; periodically his pendulum moves. While he is sane he is always sick – this infection, that infection, and he is always going to the hospital, to the doctor, and the whole family is troubled. And when the six months pass and he becomes mad, then he becomes healthy; in those six months, no infection, no sickness, no illness. His weight goes higher; he looks radiant.At four o’clock in the morning he wakes up the whole village, “Come on to the river!” He drags people out of their houses; “It is time! Go to the river.” Those six months when he is mad, he keeps the whole village taking a bath at least two times a day, morning and evening. He purchases so many fruits – because he does not have to pay, his sons have to pay – and distributes them to everybody. Vegetables, fruits, sweets… The whole town is happy when he is mad. Only his family is sick, ill, because he goes on taking money from the shop; even the small children of the house guard the shop and shout, “Mommy, father is taking money!”And he will say, “Shut up! Am I your father, or are you my father? This is my shop.” All that money goes in distributing sweets and fruits and things to anybody, whoever meets him on the way. But he is so happy, and the whole village is so happy.Sometimes he disappears in those six months – just by chance he reaches the station, and if the train is there, he will sit in it.Once he disappeared. Much searching was done, and he was not found – nobody knew where he had gone, which train he had caught. And all the ticket collectors and ticket checkers all know him, so nobody bothers to ask for the ticket. He reached Agra – it is so far away from my village – he was feeling hungry. He went to a shop. There is an Indian food, it is called khaja – it also means “eat it.” So he asked what it was, and the shopkeeper said, “Khaja.” He said, “Okay,” and he started eating it.The shopkeeper said, “What are you doing?”He said, “Exactly what you said.” And he was so robust…And the shopkeeper said, “This is strange. You ask the name, and you finish the whole thing! You will have to come to the court.” A crowd gathered…He said, “Listen, I am a stranger. I simply asked this fool what it is; he said khaja. I have eaten it, according to him. I am ready to go to any police station, to any court; such a name should not be given to a sweet.”In the court they found that he was out of his mind. They jailed him. He was sent to Lahore – because in those days Pakistan was not divided; now Lahore is in Pakistan. Lahore had the greatest madhouse of those days. After three, four months, his time was over. He was periodically mad and periodically sane; he became sane.He went to the superintendent and he said, “This is the situation: I go mad for six months, and for six months I am sane. Now my madness is gone. Now I remember it was not right to eat that thing; it is the name of the thing, he was not meaning that I had to eat it. But I was mad; now I am perfectly sane. And now there is great trouble” – because there were at least one thousand mad people in that madhouse.And he said, “When I was mad there was no problem – somebody was pulling my leg, somebody was sitting on my head; it was all okay. For mad people nothing is wrong, everything is right. But now that I am sane it is very difficult to live with these one thousand mad people. Somebody comes and starts pulling my nose – and I am not doing anything to anybody! Somebody is sitting on my head… And whatsoever they want to do they do. Somebody is taking my shirt, and I have to fight, and you cannot fight because they are all mad. And my trouble is that when I am mad I have energy, and when I am not mad I am a very sick person. Please release me.”But the superintendent said, “We cannot do anything against the court. You have to be here for six months.”He said, “You don’t understand. When I was mad, it was okay; but now I am not mad. I am the only person here who is not mad. You just live one day inside the madhouse and you will understand my situation.” But nobody would listen to him.He was telling me, “In those two months of sanity in the insane house I suffered hell. But for four months, when I was mad, it was heaven; it was such a joy to be with all those mad people, such a synchronicity – everything was right, nothing was wrong. But for those two months everything was wrong, nothing was right, and I was the only sufferer.”Here, nobody goes crazy. My people are the sanest people in the world.But the world is crazy, and my people are few. And the world is big – they have the majority, they have the politicians, they have the governments, they have the churches. They have everything in their hands, and they are not even alert that they are insane.To be in the mind is to be insane; mind is the place of insanity. Only those people are really sane who have transcended the mind, who have gone beyond it into silence where no thoughts, no desires, no emotions, nothing exists. Only in that peace is your real health. And that kind of sanity happens here.So tell your fictitious friends that people are going sane, and if they want to be sane, bring them here. But before you bring them, at least you should go sane. Mind is crazy.This is the difference between the ordinary psychology and the psychology I teach: the ordinary psychology says that mind can be sane or insane; and I say mind can only be normally insane or abnormally insane, but mind can never be sane. Sanity is always above mind, beyond mind. And only very few people in the world have been blessed enough to be sane.But the mad crowd has treated them really badly – poisoning Socrates, who is one of the sanest men possible. But it is the insane people who decide whether to poison him or not.Al-Hillaj Mansoor was killed by the insane people. Sarmad, one of the sanest men, was beheaded in New Delhi. The insane crowd was immensely happy to get rid of these sane people.Where everybody is sad, don’t rejoice; where everybody is miserable, don’t look blissful; where everybody is living in hell, don’t show your heart and the heaven that you have found there – otherwise you will be punished for it. It is a strange world. Here, those who are sane, blissful, blessed, are punished; those who are miserable, mad, are rewarded.Osho,In Pune, when I first took sannyas, I felt very young and innocent. I had a “yes” for everything, and wanted to learn to be a “good” sannyasin. Watching others, I was learning what it looked like to be a disciple. In Rajneeshpuram, I felt that as long as I was loving you, whatever I did that felt appropriate was fine – thinking that I was a disciple, and the important thing was to come from that space. Osho, now it feels like there is no “being” your disciple; there is only a never-ending process of becoming. It looks as though there is no sitting back, having already become “Osho's sannyasin”; there is nothing but taking each step one after another, walking this path, this endless path. Will you please speak on these changes and on this journey with you?You have described very accurately each step a disciple has to go through. This is the most important conclusion: that there is no question of just being a disciple, it is always becoming. You cannot come to a full stop; the journey is endless, and this is the beauty of the journey. From being to becoming is a tremendous quantum leap.If you look around in life, you will never find being anywhere; you will always find becoming. The fallacy of being is created by language, it is the poverty of language.You see a roseflower, you see it and you say, “What a beautiful flower.” But the flower is continuously flowering, it is never in a state of stopping anywhere. The tree is continuously growing; the word tree is not right. In existence there are no nouns, there are only verbs. It will be very difficult to make a language only with verbs, but the truth is, existence has no nouns. A tree is in fact treeing, a river in fact is rivering.You are growing each moment – either growing old, the ordinary way of the world; or growing up, the way of my people. Growing old, you have not to do anything – you will grow old, biology will take care of it. Growing up means a conscious alertness – so that the body goes on growing old, but your consciousness goes on growing upward, growing up. But it is always growing; even in death a conscious being is growing.The whole existence is a great verb, not a noun – not a stone, but a flower. And there is no end anywhere, because there has never been any beginning. The very idea of beginning and end is just our mind projection. Otherwise we are always in the middle – never at the beginning, never at the end, always in the middle – and we will remain always in the middle.Gautam Buddha loved to say, “My path is the middle path, majjhim nikaya” – there is no beginning, no end. We are always in the middle, growing eternally, flowering, blossoming, finding new spaces.You are blessed to have felt the change from being a disciple to becoming a disciple. Becoming is a higher stage. In language it is not so, in existence it is so.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 25 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Why can't I hear you? Am I deaf?You are not deaf. You hear me, but you are not listening. And you don’t know the distinction between hearing and listening. Anybody who has ears can hear, but it is not necessary that he will be able to listen. For listening, something more is necessary than just having ears: a certain kind of silence, a serenity, a peace – the heart standing behind the ears, not the mind.It is the mind which makes you almost deaf, although you are not deaf – because the mind is constantly chattering, it is a chatterbox.Just sometimes sit in your room, close your doors, and write down whatsoever comes into your mind just to see what goes on in it. Don’t edit it – because you are not going to show it to anybody, so just write down exactly what comes to your mind. You will be surprised: just within ten minutes you will see that you are not sane; your mind is the mind of an insane person. Just somehow you are managing, covering it up, not allowing anybody to know what goes on inside you. And you have become experts, so much so that it is not only that you don’t allow others to know what goes on in your mind, you yourself don’t see it. It goes on, yakkety-yak, yakkety-yak.Because of this constant mind, making noise… Although you are not deaf, you cannot listen. You can hear. Listening needs a silent communication.The words that I am speaking to you are ordinary words, you know them. I do not like to use any kind of jargon. But in another sense the words I am using are extraordinary because they are coming from a depth, from a space within me. And certainly they are carrying with them some perfume, some fragrance of that space. If you are silent, the word becomes inessential and the fragrance that it is carrying becomes essential. If the fragrance reaches you, you have listened.The beauty of listening is that you don’t have to think about it. If it is coming out of truth, it carries truth with it; you feel the truth. If it is just mind stuff – not coming from experience, but is just bookish – you will not find the fragrance in it.But you have to be so alert, so silent, that you don’t miss that which surrounds the word. The fragrance is its validity, its logic, its philosophy. And if there is no fragrance, then it is just a dead flower like you sometimes find in Bibles, in the Bhagavadgita. People keep roses, dry roses in a Bible, with no fragrance, with no life.When you simply hear, if one hundred persons are here there are going to be one hundred versions, because the mind immediately starts interpreting – what does it mean? The mind is blind. It cannot see, it can only grope in the dark. Groping in the dark is called “thinking.” One hundred people sitting here will have heard one hundred meanings.One English historian, Edmund Burke, was writing the history of the world. His effort was to write a complete history of the whole world since the very beginning, not leaving anything out. He had wasted almost fifty years writing it, thousands of pages, and one day, suddenly in the afternoon when he was writing, he heard a great noise behind his house. He opened the window and saw a crowd. He inquired, “What is the matter?”Somebody said something, somebody else said something else… He came out. A man had been murdered, and there were as many stories as there were people present. Somebody was saying that he committed suicide, somebody was saying he had been murdered, somebody was saying it was just an accident; somebody was saying that he was a man with heart disease, that it was heart failure because twice he had already suffered an attack and this time he was certain to die.Edmund Burke could not believe it, that just behind his house he could not be certain about a fact. The dead man was lying there, it was not fiction. But how the death had happened… Perhaps it would never be decided. “And I am writing a book about thousands of years past, and trying to prove that it is factual.” It was such a revelation that he went in and burned all those thousands of pages.His colleagues, his students – he was a professor – were all shocked. They said, “What have you done? Fifty years of such concentrated work!”He said, “It was all just rubbish. If I cannot decide about something which has happened just behind my house, then deciding about Adam and Eve is just foolish.” A great historian – but he dropped history, he resigned from his post. He said, “All history is bunk.”One evening Gautam Buddha was speaking to his disciples, and this was his everyday evening sermon. After the sermon he used to say to his disciples, “Now, go; and before going to sleep, don’t forget your real work” – and that real work was meditation.But that night one thief was there listening, one prostitute was there listening. The thief said, “My God, this man is dangerous. He is saying ‘Before going to sleep, don’t forget to do your work.’ It is time, I must go.”The prostitute thought, “I am sitting so far away, and how did this fellow recognize me – that my work starts in the night?”The thief went to steal. The prostitute went to her work. The sannyasins went to meditate.Buddha had said only one thing: “Don’t forget the work,” but the interpretation is going to be yours. The final decision is going to be yours. The word cannot decide for you; you have to decide what it means.When you are only hearing, your mind is standing there scrutinizing, screening… Now it is an established psychological fact that the mind only allows a certain percentage of information to reach you, there is a censor. And the mind has created very clever ways to censor things: it allows that which fits with your conditioning, and it simply does not allow that which goes against your conditioning. It makes you hear that which fits with you; it lets anything that is not fitting with your conditioning slip by, it does not pay attention to it. It does not take it in.Hearing is not the right method to be with a master. It is good in a school, in a college, in a university; listening is not needed. But to be with a master hearing is not needed, listening is needed. Your interpretations should not hinder what is being said from reaching to your heart – because those words are carrying delicate messages. Your interpretation is going to destroy that delicate message; you should not think whether it is right or wrong.I am not saying that you should accept it – there is no question of acceptance. I am simply saying you should neither accept nor not accept. You should be just a mirror reflecting whatsoever is the case. The master is saying something; let it reach to the heart. And let the heart decide, not the mind.The mind is always wrong, and the heart is always right, because mind knows only logic, the heart knows love. Let love be decisive – and love has never been wrong, and logic has never been right.The father of logic, Aristotle, who created the whole science of logic, wrote in his book that women have fewer teeth than men – because that was the prevalent idea in Greece. It was part of a bigger idea, that women cannot have anything equal to men. How can they have equal teeth? It was a natural corollary.Aristotle had two wives; it would have been so simple just to say to Mrs. Aristotle I or Mrs. Aristotle II, “Please let me count your teeth.” But logic is very prejudiced. He did not bother with that.And strange, for a whole two thousand years in Europe the belief continued. There are so many women, almost equal in number, sometimes more than men – because men are killed in war, armies are finished, so sometimes the number of women is more than men. But no man ever bothered. And what is stranger is that no woman ever tried to count her own teeth and raise her voice that “This is nonsense! Men and women both have an equal number of teeth!”Mind has no eyes; it simply lives in a dark hole – groping, inventing, believing, but never coming to know anything.The heart has a totally different approach: it simply knows. Its knowing is intuitive, not intellectual. It cannot give arguments, it cannot give proofs. But when it knows, it knows absolutely; it can give for its knowledge its own life.No logician will be ready to be crucified for his logical knowledge. Have you ever heard of any logician being crucified? Have you ever heard of any philosopher being poisoned? He will change his philosophy. He will say, “Don’t bother, I am ready to change my philosophy. It does not matter whether this philosophy is right or that philosophy is right.”But you cannot change Jesus, and you cannot change Socrates, and you cannot change Sarmad, and you cannot change al-Hillaj Mansoor. They are ready to die – because their knowing is of the heart, there is no question of its being wrong. There is no doubt anywhere; it is indubitable.To be with a master, you need to learn how to listen. Hearing is not enough.It is a mystery to open the doors for listening, because everywhere only hearing is needed. In the marketplace, in the universities, in the churches, only hearing is needed. Listening is something out of this world; only lovers know something of it, only poets know something of it. Only mystics know the whole miracle and the whole magic of it.And the master is only a door. Once you have started listening to him you will be able to listen to the sound of the running water, you will be able to listen to the wind passing through the pine trees. You will be able to listen to the music of silence in the dark night, you will be able to listen to the music of the birds in the early morning. You will start listening to so many things that you will be in a state of immense amazement that this world was available to you – and so close – but you were not available to this world.As far as I am concerned, right listening is the only way to be religious, because right listening makes you wonder about everything around you: the whole existence becomes a mystery, poetry, a song, a dance.Gone are the days of misery, anguish, tension, death. You have entered on the path of eternal benediction.Osho,The other night you told the story of the Buddha and his disciple, Ananda. Ananda had thought that the Buddha had given contradictory answers concerning the existence of God to three different questioners. When challenged on this by Ananda, the Buddha had retorted, “The answers were not for you. Why do you listen to answers not intended for you!”Osho, when we sit with you, we listen to many answers to questions we have not asked. How should we listen?There are a few significant things to be understood. One: you may not have asked the question; still it may be yours, because human beings are not suffering in unique ways – their misery is the same, their problems are the same. Somebody has the guts to ask; somebody cannot gather the courage, because to ask means to expose your ignorance.So when I am answering questions asked by someone, it does not mean that it is not your question. If I were in Buddha’s place I would not have said to Ananda, “Why are you disturbed?” In fact the very disturbance shows that those questions were also bothering him; otherwise there was no need for him to be worried.Buddha said to him, “Those questions were not your questions. Why did you listen?”I would not have said that. That’s where I differ from every master in the world. I would have said to Ananda, “All those questions were your questions. Those people were courageous enough to ask. And you are a coward; you have found a beautiful excuse. So without exposing your ignorance, you want me to answer your questions. You will have to ask.”And it is not that the atheist is totally atheist – mind is never total in anything. The atheist carries the theist in him, the theist carries the atheist in him, and both are just believers. Neither of them knows exactly what is the truth.In fact, as I see it, there is not a single question which can be asked which is not yours too. Any question asked by any human being is going to be a question of all human beings, whether you are aware of it or not. You may be unconscious of it; perhaps it is not the right time for you, perhaps you may ask a year later. Perhaps you have repressed the question so deeply that you have become completely oblivious to whether it exists in you or not.But let me repeat: There is not a single question which is not yours too.All human beings are part of a continent, nobody is an island. Maybe somebody has become conscious of a certain problem due to certain circumstances.Gautam Buddha himself was not aware of life’s basic questions up to the age of twenty-nine. When he was born, the astrologer said to the old king, Shuddhodana – Buddha was born in the king’s old age – “You have a rare son. Either he will become a chakravartin emperor” – a chakravartin is one who rules over the whole world – “or he will become a sannyasin. There are only two possibilities.” All the astrologers were agreed on the point, and the king was very much worried.The king said, “Then suggest to me how I can prevent him from becoming a sannyasin.” Each father has the same problem, each husband has the same problem, each wife has the same problem.Those astrologers said, “If you don’t want him to become a sannyasin, then make arrangements – luxurious, comfortable, so that he never becomes aware that there is pain, there is anxiety. Fulfill all his desires so that he never comes across a desire which remains unfulfilled and creates frustration. Don’t let him taste despair. Bring all the beautiful girls of the kingdom, let him be surrounded by beautiful women so he is continually indulging in beauty, in luxury. Make beautiful palaces for him, different palaces for different seasons so he never comes to know that there is summer, that there are rains, that there is cold winter.“Never allow him to see any old man, any dead body. Even in his gardens the dead leaves, dying flowers, should be removed in the night so when he comes for a walk in the morning he never sees anything dying or dead, because once he becomes aware of death then the question can arise in his mind, that ‘If things die, one day I will have to die.’”The king said, “Everything will be done. I have the facilities, don’t be worried.”This advice was given by the so-called wise people. To me they are not wise, they are otherwise! It was because of their advice that he had to renounce the kingdom one day, because for twenty-nine years he was kept in such a controlled atmosphere – not a dead leaf, not a withering flower – that when he came to know, it was such a great shock.He was going to participate in the youth festival; he had to inaugurate it. Roads were closed; whenever he had to pass, the roads were always closed. Traffic was stopped, nobody could pass. People had to keep their doors closed – he should not see anybody who is ugly. But that day, when he was going to inaugurate… The story is beautiful.The masters who have died were watching, and they saw that a great master was being prevented. Something had to be done. They were not real people who passed by on the road; they were dead masters, just playing a drama to wake up Gautam Buddha to the reality of life.First he saw an old man coughing, his back bent.Buddha asked his charioteer, “What has happened to this man?”Now another master had entered into the charioteer; otherwise the charioteer would have lied. Rather than the charioteer, the master spoke: “This happens to everybody.” And he waited…And immediately Gautam Buddha said, “Is it going to happen to me too?”The charioteer said, “I feel bad saying it, but I cannot say an untruth: you are not excluded. It is going to happen to you too.”Buddha became sad. He had seen only beautiful girls, flowers, music, dances, alcohol. He was kept drunk, enjoying for twenty-four hours a day.And then another four people were carrying a dead body. And Buddha said, “What happened to this man, and why are they carrying him on their shoulders?”And the master within the charioteer said, “This is the second stage, after the first one that you have seen just now. After that, one dies.”Buddha said, “My God, this too is going to happen to me?”And as they were talking, another master came in beautiful red robes, a radiant face, a tremendous aura around him – a sannyasin. And Buddha said, “Who is this man?”And the master within the charioteer said, “This man is a sannyasin. He became aware, before the first man did, that life is going to disappear into old age, old age is going to lead to death, and death to the funeral pyre. He became so concerned that he left the world, went into silence in search of something which is deathless, which is immortal. And he has found it – you can see it.”Buddha had seen the most beautiful women, the most beautiful young people, but this was beauty of a totally different order. It was not just physical, it was as if some rays were radiating from the man, as if he was surrounded by a cloud of light. And the way he walked, the grace… Buddha said to the charioteer, “Just turn the chariot back. I am no longer young and I am not going to inaugurate the youth festival. Any other idiot can do it. You just take me back. My whole life has changed. Unless I find the deathless, unless I find the eternal in me, I will not rest for a single moment.” That very night he escaped into the mountains in search of himself.I said that those wise people were not wise, because if he had been brought up in the ordinary way – as every child is being brought up – he would not have been shocked so much. Then he would have seen from the very beginning that people die, that people are old, that people are ugly.If the King Shuddhodana had asked me, I would have said to him, “Keep him surrounded with old people coughing continuously, having tuberculosis, cancer. Open hospitals around him: find all the ugly women and make them nurses. Train him – make a funeral pyre near the palace and announce in the capital that nobody is to be burned anywhere else, everybody has to be burned here. So from the very beginning he would start seeing that people get old, then they die, then they are burned.” He would have, by the time he was twenty-nine, grown enough shock absorbers; that’s how we all have grown.Those so-called wise people gave great advice, but they had no understanding of psychology.Buddha himself had the same questions. For six years he was going from one teacher to another teacher asking the same questions. But he was not an ordinary seeker. He was not satisfied by verbal knowledge, he wanted experience, and those teachers only gave him borrowed knowledge.He went on and on, and finally he understood it: you cannot find the truth in this way; you have to look within yourself. Nobody else can give it to you.He dropped all knowledge that he had learned: that was his real renunciation. The first renunciation of the kingdom was not of much value. But even the Buddhists don’t talk about the second renunciation when he dropped all knowledge – scriptural, holy – and just entered into his own aloneness.Without any guide, without any map, he found himself. Hence his first words after his enlightenment were: “Appa deepo bhava, be a light unto yourself.”Ananda was suffering with all those questions, and when Buddha said, “They were not your questions, why should you have listened to them?” – still the coward in him did not allow him to say, “They were my questions too.”Every question that I am answering may be asked by a particular person; it may be, in his context in this moment, significant to him. It may not be significant to you – but it can be significant any day, any moment. It may be lying unconscious in you.I am answering you all. I am answering those questions which you are asking, and I am also answering those questions which you are not asking.It is not a question of your asking. I know what are bound to be, inevitably, the questions of an unconscious human being, because I have been through the same dark night.Osho,In the last couple of months I feel so clearly that not only had we to make an incredible jump, but I also feel that a vast and indefinable change happened to you. Is there any truth in this?Existence knows only one thing which is unchanging, and that is change.I am alive. Only dead people don’t change. I have been changing every moment.You were not perceptive of the change that is my very life because you were not changing; you were dead. Now you have come alive, you have taken a quantum leap, and only now can you understand my continuously changing, riverlike existence. I am not a lake, but a river.But to understand anything, you have to be sensitive to it. I was changing before too – but you were dead. It is as if you are asleep here and I am walking in the room, and then you wake up and you say, “Osho, a great change has happened in me, a quantum leap from sleep to wakefulness. And what I see is that not only have I changed – you are continuously moving in the room.”I was moving even when you were asleep, but because you were asleep you could not feel my change. Now you know the taste of change, the beauty of change, the joy, the playfulness, the life, the dance of change, and because you know it, you can see it in me.My whole approach is that existence is a constant change.All the religions of the world and all the philosophies of the world have been propounding a permanent God who does not change.When I was a student in the university one of my professors was Doctor S. S. Roy. He was an expert, a world-famous expert on Bosanquet and Bradley and Shankara. His thesis on Bradley and Shankara was recognized and praised tremendously all over the world by philosophers. Bradley and Shankara both agree on one point: that the ultimate, the absolute, the brahman is unchanging, it is always the same.He had just received his doctorate, and he was full of Bradley and Bosanquet and Shankara. The first day… S. S. Roy was the person who invited me to his university, because he had listened to me in university debates and he had loved me for years. And he was saying to me, “When you have graduated, then you have to do your post-graduation at my university, wherever I am. I don’t want to miss a student like you.” And he made every arrangement for me – a scholarship, all kinds of fellowships, he did everything that can be done.But the very first day he got into a conflict. I said, “I cannot agree with this idea, because your ‘absolute’ is dead.”He said, “What do you mean dead?”I said, “If it is not changing, if it is not growing, if nothing is happening anymore and will never happen anymore, then can you say it is alive? New leaves will not come on the tree, new flowers will not come, new branches will not come; new foliage will not be there. Springs will come and go – and your absolute is simply a dodo, not God. It has to change.”He said, “My God, I have written a whole thesis, devoted five years; it has been appreciated…” But he was a sensible man. He said, “I cannot deny your point. You give me time. Tomorrow I will answer you.”I said, “You can have as much time as you need, but remember: anything that is not changing cannot be alive. And I don’t want an existence which is dead.”I told him that day, I remember, that once a beautiful woman, a very rich woman, asked Picasso to paint a portrait of her. And she was willing to give anything he wanted; money was no question at all. Picasso was always reluctant about portraits because his paintings are such that you cannot expect him to make a portrait. He can make a portrait but you cannot find where the nose is, and where the mouth is and where the eyes are; everything will be in a mess. But the woman was giving him so much money, so just for a change he made a portrait, only once in his life, which was recognizable as a woman – and a beautiful portrait.And when it was finished the woman came and she said, “I love it. The money you have asked of me is nothing. I will give you double.” And then she saw a picture of Picasso hanging by the side of the portrait, a photograph. She looked at the photograph. It was done by a great photographer, and she said, “This is your photograph? – so beautiful.”And Picasso said, “No, this is not me, because if it were me I would have kissed you. I am here on this side; that side is only a picture which is unchanging, which cannot kiss, which cannot come out of the frame, which will remain the same. I will grow old, I will die. This picture will remain there; it will not grow old and it will not die, because it is not alive.”I told Professor S. S. Roy, “Your absolute, Shankara’s, Bradley’s and all other philosophers’ absolutes and religious peoples’ gods are just portraits, or photographs. Then they can remain static. If they are living, then spring will come, birds will sing, new leaves will grow, new flowers will blossom, and the river of existence will continue.”It has been thought that once you become enlightened then you have reached the optimum of your growth. I say to you, it is all nonsense. If people have stopped there, it was their fault. It is really a beautiful place to stop, and after a long journey it is a tremendous relaxation to stop – but the road goes on ahead.I have not stopped, I have gone beyond it – perhaps the first crazy man to go beyond enlightenment, because nobody goes beyond; at least in the past, nobody has tried.But to me, the journey itself is the end, so there is no stopping, no final stop, no terminus.Osho,My mother is utterly in love with you. My father is really jealous because he is afraid of losing his second woman to you. In my family, which is really huge, there are so many different opinions and feelings about you, like the shades of the rainbow. Even though I am the only sannyasin, there are so many people participating in your life, and so entangled – watching every step and what is happening next. Osho, don't you have many more disciples or people you work with, than only those who took sannyas?There are many grades. The sannyasins are the foremost, the spearheads.There are semi-sannyasins who are a little wishy-washy: morning sannyasin, evening not. That’s how the mind works, like a pendulum, from one corner to another corner they go on moving. But not for long – sooner or later they have to decide.And they cannot decide to remain not sannyasins, because one thing becomes certain to them: that they have been for their whole lives non-sannyasins – what have they gained? And if they continue to remain non-sannyasins they are not going to gain anything – no ecstasy, no excitement. Just for a change it is good to give a chance for a new style of life; your old style has failed.So it depends on their courageousness. If they are courageous, they decide soon; if they are not so courageous, they decide a little later; but finally they are going to become sannyasins.Then in the third grade are the sympathizers. They are in love with me, but they are so much involved in life and its entanglements that they feel that taking a jump into sannyas will be very disruptive, drastic. But in a way they are better than the second grade. They are not wishy-washy; their sympathy is solid. They are with me, and any opportunity… And there are opportunities every day. Somebody’s wife escapes with someone, somebody’s husband simply disappears. Somebody’s father dies, somebody’s mother is found to have cancer – there are opportunities and opportunities.They have to decide that death is not very far away. And death gives you no information, no indication. It simply comes and takes you away. It does not even wait for you to complete your work – “Then why should I wait if death does not wait?” And sannyas is nothing but a struggle against death; it is a confrontation against death. So those sympathizers, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, are going to take the drastic step of becoming sannyasins.And then there is a fourth grade: semi-sympathizers. They are in real difficulty. Their heart is with me, their mind is not. They are suffering and split, and if they don’t decide something they are going to be schizophrenic. And most of them, rather than being schizophrenic, would prefer to be sannyasins; sannyas will make them whole.So, in your family there are all these four grades, and you have to help all those poor fellows.Your father is naturally jealous: his daughter is gone, now his wife is going. Just whisper in his ear, “Why don’t you jump before her? That is more manly than to be jealous – that is a feminine quality. Just be ahead of her. And as far as losing women is concerned: don’t be worried, because there are so many women that the men are afraid.” Perhaps my people are the only people in the whole world where men are chased by women. This is great evolution! Everywhere else women are chased by men – they enjoy the play – and this has been always so. They never run so far, they are always within your grasp, but they keep you huffing and puffing.But here the situation is totally different. Here the women are watching – somebody will be huffing and puffing. Nobody is huffing and puffing; people are simply sitting, doing nothing – they think that spring comes and the grass grows by itself. And it really happens: spring comes, women come by themselves. So why bother going here and there? Just sit silently! If meditation can bring you the ultimate, then just poor women…Just whisper in your father’s ear – and he is a German, he will jump immediately. He has to be a sannyasin before your mother. Make it a point to him, “It will be a shame, a shame on the whole German race if you are behind your wife. Be ahead!”Osho,Is your big smile the only answer?I think you have found it!

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 26 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,The more years I am with you, the less I know who I am. Am I missing you?This is the way of getting me, and this is the way of getting yourself too. You are not missing anything, but the mind will again and again raise the question, because mind needs information – more information means you are getting it, you are becoming more knowledgeable. Here, we are not concerned with information at all.My work is transformation. The less information you have the better, because the more innocent you are. The moment you can say, “I know nothing” you have come very close. Remember, I am saying you have come very close; you have not got it yet – because to say “I know nothing” means at least you know this much, that you know nothing; there is still some information.Let me tell you one beautiful story. I have loved many stories, but this is something that beats them all.One of the greatest mystics India has produced was Bodhidharma. He was born fourteen hundred years ago. He went to China for a strange reason. When asked why he was going to China, he said, “Because people know too much in India, and I need people who are innocent.”In China, he worked for twenty years. Now he was very old, nearabout ninety years. And he said, “It is time for me to go back to the Himalayas, because there is no other place in the whole world which is better as far as death is concerned – so silent, so eternally silent that you can receive death lovingly, meditatively, consciously. But before I go, I would like to give the mystery school that I have created in these twenty years to one of my disciples. So those who feel that they are capable of running my school should stand up.”He had hundreds of disciples. Only five persons stood up. He laughed. He said, “You are the ones who have missed me, so just get out of the school and get lost.”Then he went through the crowd of disciples, looking into each disciple’s eyes, and he found four persons. He brought them out and he said, “I am going to ask a single question. The answer is going to decide who will be my representative when I am gone. What is the essence of my whole mystic approach? Just use the minimum of words.”The first man said, “It is meditation.”Bodhidharma said, “You have my skin. You have penetrated me only skin deep. Just get back to your seat.”And he asked the second man, “What is your answer?”The second man said, “Enlightenment.”Bodhidharma said, “You have my bones; just get back to your place.”The third person said, “Master, I do not know.”Bodhidharma said, “You have my very marrow. It is good, but not good enough; you still know something. Just go and sit down.”He looked at the fourth man. The man just had tears in his eyes, no words. He fell at the feet of Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma said, “You have been chosen, you will represent me. You have my being. You have got it – what they cannot say with words, you have said by your silence. What they cannot say… Although one of them came very close when he said, ‘I do not know,’ deep inside himself he was full of the pride of not knowing, he was full of knowing that ‘I don’t know.’ What he could not say, you managed to say loudly with your tears.”This man became the second patriarch of Zen Buddhism. Bodhidharma, before leaving, advised him, “Take care. I have created so many enemies who would like to kill you. Those five who were the most knowledgeable scholars will take revenge. These three that have been rejected will turn sour against you. Protect – because I’m giving you my very heart.”The more you come close to me the less you will know. One day you will come closest, when you feel “I do not know.” But even to be closest is as far away as the farthest star, because closeness – even the closest point – is a distant phenomenon.The day you have become one, only then… But then there are no words left. Just gratitude, tears, a song, a dance – things which are thought crazy in the world of the intellect, but which are the only possible ways to express the inexpressible.Osho,When I come to your darshan, I feel a fear, as if of death. But with your presence, fear disappears and I feel life. Osho, what is happening?The ancient seers have a very strange statement. I have asked shankaracharyas – because they are technically the representatives of those ancient seers – but none of them has been able to explain even a simple statement. The statement is, “The master is nothing but death.” But it is only a half statement; the remaining half is that the master is a resurrection too.Coming to me, you feel the fear of death. That is absolutely as it should be. I am going to be a death to you. My whole function is to kill you, because whatever you are is not your reality. It has to be destroyed, dismantled, burned. So just like a phoenix bird – out of the fire which is burning your old personality – a new being is born.Hence, the master is also life. That’s why when you are here you feel life. And naturally confusion arises: you were afraid of death, and here you feel more alive than anywhere else. Your life comes to its fullest expression; all the dust that you have gathered is gone, your mirror is absolutely clean.The master is also the beginning of a new life – the end of an old, rotten personality and the beginning of a new, eternal individuality. That is the mystery of the master, his contradiction – that he kills you to save you, that there is no other way.In the mystery school of al-Hillaj Mansoor, on the gate it was written: Unless you are ready to leave yourself outside where you leave your shoes, don’t come in. You are welcome, but leave your rotten self, your mind – which is nothing but rubbish – with your shoes. And you will be fortunate if somebody steals your shoes and your personality too.Another master, the master of al-Hillaj Mansoor himself, Junnaid, had written a notice in front of the doors of his school: Unless you are willing to be killed, just turn back from the door; don’t dare to come in.And these people were saying something absolutely right. They were making it clear, so that you could not say later on, “You deceived us.”But those who entered their mystery schools came out with a new life, with an authentic life, with a joy that knows no ending, with a love that is eternal, with eyes which can only be called divine. And only then could they realize that what they had received is too much, and what they had lost was nothing but sickness, insanity, misery, death itself.Both your experiences are correct. Now it is up to you to choose. If you want life, abundant life, then be ready to die. Dying each moment so that each moment you are reborn is the whole secret of all religion.Osho,The more I am with you, the less I can say I know you. It strikes me that in being with you there is no relationship – just an experience which happens afresh each time I sit at your feet. Osho, can you speak of this mystery?There is no mystery at all. It is simply a reality.Every kind of relationship is, in some way or other, a subtle bondage of expectations, demands, which are followed by complaints, frustrations. Each relationship ends in such bitterness that one cannot believe that this is the same relationship that had begun in such a sweet way. It is a fragrance in the beginning, and slowly, slowly it becomes disgusting. And the reason is not that somebody is responsible for it; the very nature of relationship turns every sweet experience into a bitter experience.I have heard…A great surgeon – one of the most famous of his country – was retiring at the age of seventy-five. People retired at the age of sixty, but the surgeon was so valuable, and even at the age of seventy-five his expertise was so accurate. He had never failed in any operation. He was a brain surgeon. An exception was made, and he was allowed to work for as long as he wanted. At seventy-five, he himself said, “It is now enough.”All his students – and there were hundreds of students who had learned surgery from him – and all his colleagues gathered and they were celebrating the evening to say good-bye to him. They were dancing and drinking and singing, and suddenly somebody became aware that the surgeon was not there. This was strange. Somebody went out to look for him. The surgeon was sitting in the garden, under a tree, in darkness. They were old friends. He asked, “What is the matter with you? We have all gathered to celebrate and you have left us, you are sitting here in darkness.” He was one of the best attorneys in the country, and was also the attorney for the surgeon.The surgeon said, “It is because of you that I am sitting here. You may have perhaps forgotten that fifty years ago, when I was only twenty-five and I had married just two years before… It was a love marriage, but within two years the love turned into hate. You were my attorney. I had come to you to ask, ‘If I kill my wife what will be the consequence?’ And you said, ‘Don’t do such a thing. You will spend at least fifty years in jail.’“And I am sitting here thinking that if I had not listened to your advice, you idiot, today I would have been free. Just because of fifty years in jail, I thought it was better to somehow carry on as everybody else is doing – perhaps out of the same fear. The woman is doing it out of the same fear, the man is doing it out of the same fear. And I am feeling so angry with you that it feels like I should shoot you! You are responsible for spoiling my whole life, and you think you are a great law expert – all bullshit!”Why does love turn into hate? Why does friendship turn into enmity? What goes wrong? It has nothing to do with individuals; it has something to do with the very fabric of relationship. Relationship depends on expectations. And man is not capable, he is helpless; neither is any woman capable of fulfilling anybody else’s expectations. And when those expectations are not fulfilled, frustration sets in; things start going wrong.It is just because of the poverty of language that we have to use the word relationship for the strange experience that transpires between master and disciple. But it is not a relationship, not the relationship that you know; it is a category in itself. And you have understood it perfectly well – it is a moment-to-moment experience, with no demands, no expectations.The master is available, the disciple is receptive, and between this availability and this receptivity some miracle transpires; something happens for which no word exists. And because it is not a relationship it never grows old – it is always fresh, it is always young. Each time you come to the master the experience is not a repetition.It is not the same in your other relationships. But if you have learned the art in the presence of the master this can become your lifestyle: it can happen between you and your wife, between you and your child, between you and your husband, between you and your father, between you and your mother, between you and your friend. It is only a question of knowing that such a thing is possible, humanly possible. And if it is possible between the master and the disciple, why is it not possible between two lovers? – that each time they meet it is not a repetition, it is not a memory. It is not something that they have known before; it is utterly fresh, absolutely young, just born.And if it can spread into all your relationships, you have brought magic to your life. That is my hope and dream: that my sannyasins will be able to bring this magic to their lives, that their whole world of relationships will go through a total change.Ordinarily if you ask a husband to be truly honest about how long it has been since he has seen his wife’s face, perhaps he will say years have passed. Although they live in the same house, they fight in the same house, they produce children in the same house, they do all kinds of things in the same house – he has not looked at the face of his wife for years. So much dust of memories has gathered that even if he wants to see, he cannot see her face – so many faces, so many masks. Neither can the wife say…When two persons fall in love – when it is not yet a relationship but only a dream, a beautiful hope – they look at each other, they touch each other’s hands, they feel the warmth, they see into each other’s eyes. They have thousands of ways to relate, and there is no relationship. There is something poetic; life has not yet become prose. But let them get married, and marriage has a certain chemistry of its own: poetry becomes prose, everything becomes flat.At the most, something of those beautiful days when they were not married hovers over them till the end of the honeymoon – if you are fortunate. But very few people are so fortunate; otherwise the people who go for a honeymoon with suitcases labeled “Just Married” come back home as if they are coming from Hiroshima, Nagasaki. A disaster has happened.A newly married couple in a beautiful holiday resort, a full-moon night – and the woman is lying on the bed waiting for the husband, and the husband is sitting at the window. She asks him again and again, “It is midnight. Are you coming to bed or not?”He said, “Shut up and go to sleep. My mother has said to me, ‘Don’t miss a single moment.’ It is a honeymoon night, and I am not going to sleep. There is the whole life to sleep – you can go ahead.”This idiot is still listening to his mother’s advice – “Don’t miss a single moment” – so he is looking at the moon. Naturally, “honeymoon” is concerned with the moon, not with the wife.Now, their boat has already crashed on the rocks.It is not just an absurd story. It has a whole psychology behind it, because every man is looking for his mother, and he never finds his mother in the wife. It is very frustrating. Every woman is looking for her father, and she never finds her father in the husband. It is a disaster. They have married each other for some unconscious reasons which they are not aware of. Each man has been jealous of his father from his very childhood. He wanted to possess the mother, and the father was the enemy. And each girl has been jealous of the mother: she wanted to possess the father but the mother was always coming in between. All those memories have gone deep into the unconscious mind.That’s why when you fall in love with a woman or a man, you cannot say why, why this woman particularly, because you are not aware. Your love cannot be a conscious decision; it is an unconscious phenomenon. You are just a puppet in the hands of the unconscious. And before the marriage, when you are meeting each other, you are bringing your best mask, the most beautiful personality – not only the best tie and coat but your best personality – and the woman is doing the same. There are four persons meeting; on Chowpatty Beach, wherever you find two persons meeting, remember there are four persons: the real two persons are hidden behind; the unreal two persons are repeating dialogues from the films. Even the dialogues are not their own.But once you are married, you cannot carry this burden. This is a very burdensome affair. You can manage it for one hour on Chowpatty, but not for your whole life. You will have to put away the coat, the tie. You will have to be your real self.One man got married. Before going to sleep, his wife was going to the bathroom. She said, “Turn the light off.”The man said, “But first come out of the bathroom, then turn the light off. Turning the light off now, you may fall in the darkness. It is a new place, a new hotel, and you don’t know where the furniture is.”The woman said, “Are you going to listen to me or not?”The man said, “I am not worried at all about turning the light off – in fact I want to turn it off myself, but I am just being concerned for you.”The woman jumped immediately, “Why do you want to turn the light off?”He said, “The reality is that my left leg is false. It is not real, it is wooden – but I can manage it in the darkness, there is no problem. And sooner or later you are going to know it, so it is better that you know it from the very beginning.”The woman said, “That is very good; that’s why I was insisting that you turn the light off – because both my breasts are false, just flat ground.”He said, “My God. Now I understand why you have a locket made of gold that looks like an airplane – so it is the airport! But if anything else is wrong, just tell me. It is better to be clear from the very beginning rather than to discover something every day and get shocks again and again.”She said, “Yes, my left eye is phony.”The man said, “Now I have to tell you the truth also: that all my teeth are false.”The woman said, “You think in this way you are going to shock me? I don’t have a single hair. This is a wig.”They are both just… Now in reality, what is left?So they said, “It is good, now we should go to sleep. Now, even to think of anything else just looks out of place – lovemaking, etcetera, that is not for us. We are finished the first day; before it began it has ended.”But whether it ends the first day or the second or the third, it does not matter. Every relationship is going to be shattered, because you are always posing your personality, and sooner or later you will have to bring your individuality in. And that will be the point where… You may live together, but you are divorced.The presence of the master has to be a living experience each moment. Neither does the master ask you anything, neither does he impose anything, nor does he expect anything. He is happy and grateful that you have been trusting enough to be open and receptive to him. The disciple has to learn this: not to expect anything, not to demand anything, but just to wait and let things happen on their own accord.Sometimes great statements can be dangerous. For example, Jesus says, “Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.” I cannot say that.I will say: Wait, watch. The moment your waiting and your watching is complete, the doors open of their own accord. Knocking is aggressive, violent.Jesus says, “Ask and it shall be given to you.”I say to you: Ask and you will be a beggar – and it is never given to the beggars. Do not ask. Just wait like an emperor, so centered in yourself, so full of trust in existence that there is no need to ask, existence is going to shower it on you.Jesus says, “Seek and ye shall find it.”And I say to you: Seek, and you shall never find it. Where are you going to seek? It is in the seeker. So wherever you go, you will be going on the wrong path. Just sit silently; withdraw all seeking, all desiring. Become a pool of energy, unmoving, unwavering – and you have found it. It is in the very center of the seeker.Osho,During the discourses I feel more intimacy than ever, and it feels like you are talking now to the individuals who are there in that moment with you. I never had this feeling so strongly in Pune or on the ranch. Is this part of the mystery school, or am I just more open to you?First, I have been talking on different levels at different times; it was an absolute necessity. At first I had to talk indirectly because you might get scared. You have to be persuaded to die and to be reborn, but the new life is unknown to you, the old life is the only life you know of. So at first I was speaking very indirectly.For example I was speaking on Kabir, on Meera, on Thomas, on Heraclitus, on Pythagoras – and inbetween, whenever I found a chance to hit you I would do it. But basically I would keep you engaged with Pythagoras, Heraclitus. I have been digging up graves and bringing dead people to life and keeping you engaged. So while you are engaged in listening about Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Shankara, just once in a while I will hit you to see whether you escape or you remain. Otherwise, what to do? I have nothing to do with Heraclitus; neither had he anything to do with me. He never spoke a single word about me, and I wasted years! But that was a device, needed. Then I dropped that device because I found that there are people who are ready to be talked to directly.For three and half years I remained silent because I was not interested in those people who were only intellectually interested in me; I wanted them to drop out. In those three and half years they disappeared. Then only the people were left who were not concerned with Heraclitus or Pythagoras or Gautam Buddha or Mahavira or Krishna – even if they all go to hell they don’t care, nobody bothers about them. Now I can talk to you directly, and you are not intellectually oriented.Those silent years disconnected me with the intellectually oriented people, because silence can keep people around me only if their heart is beating in the same rhythm as my heart. Hence the new phase. Now it is a mystery school. And I can talk without any reservations, without bothering whether you will be hurt, wounded, brainwashed. Now you are my people, and you have opened toward me without holding anything back.So you are right, it is a mystery school. To find it, I had to work for twenty-five years to find out the authentic, the real, the genuine ones.And it is also true that you are more open. That’s why you feel there is a deeper, more individual contact – as if I am talking to each individual directly, not to a crowd. There is no crowd here.You have to be reminded that, if your minds are chattering, there is a crowd; and if you are all silent then there is only one mind, one peace – because there cannot be one hundred silences in this room. There can be one hundred insane minds, but there cannot be one hundred sane beings. Sanity joins you with the others; insanity keeps you away from others. So now I am not talking to a crowd, I am talking to each individual absolutely directly. But it all depends on your openness.So both your feelings are right; your opening and the mystery school are simply two sides of the same coin.Osho,In the beginning, I thought you knew each of us personally, even though we had never met, and I realized that I believed it because I very much wanted to. Later, I thought I found out that it wasn't true, but I somehow accepted this too. Now I don't know. And also, is it a necessity in the master-disciple relationship that the master knows the disciple personally?The master’s function is to destroy your personality. He knows you as an individual, but he does not know you as a person. Personality is something created, invented. Individuality is something born.The master is deeply concerned with your individuality, just the way you were born, your self-nature, uncontaminated, unpolluted. But he is not interested in whether you are a doctor, an engineer, a plumber, a president; whether you are successful in life or a failure, whether you are Hindu or Mohammedan or Christian, whether you have black skin or white skin. All these nonessentials make your personality. Only your consciousness makes your individuality. And as far as individuality is concerned, it is the same – it is universal.This is the greatest mystery of life – that the most individual thing in you is at the same time the most universal, because it is the same in everyone.I may not be an engineer, I may not be a painter, I may not be a doctor. There are millions of ways to have a personality, but there is only one way to have individuality – and that is a total silence. In that total silence you know the individual that you are, and you also know the universal, because the universal is not different from you.You are just a dewdrop, and as you meditate, the dewdrop starts slipping from the petals of the lotus toward the ocean. When the meditation is complete, the dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean. Or you can say, the ocean has disappeared into the dewdrop – it is the same.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 27 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is it true that whatsoever the master says or does is simply a device to transform the disciple?It is one of the most impossible things in the world to indicate, to explain the ultimate truth. The experience is beyond words. The difficulty is we have nothing else to communicate with; words are our only means of communication.But the ultimate has to be said, it has to be pointed at; it is an intrinsic necessity of the experience itself. The moment you know it, at that very moment a great desire to share it arises too; they cannot be separated.A small story will help:Gautama the Buddha became enlightened. He came to know the very essence of reality – not only to know but to experience; not only to know – he became it. And the first question that arose in his mind was, “How am I going to express it? It is too vast: the whole sky. Perhaps even the sky is not the limit, and the words are so small. It is so deep that even oceans are not so deep; and words – they don’t have any depth. It is multi-dimensional. Words are linear, one-dimensional. How to bring this strange experience to those who are groping on the path, just the way I was groping for millions of lives?”It is natural that a compassion should arise, because those who are groping are not strangers, they are fellow travelers. You are blessed that you have found the door – now don’t be hard; somehow make the deaf listen, the blind see. Make the words dance and sing and express the ecstasy – but how?And there is a great dilemma: on the one hand there is compassion pulling you toward the other seekers, and there is a diametrically opposite pull to remain silent because it is so beautiful to be silent, so blissful, such a benediction. The experience wants you to drown yourself completely in it and the compassion wants you to stay on the shore a little more and shout from the rooftops of the houses to those who are deaf. Perhaps somebody may hear.For seven days Buddha remained silent. He could not decide what to do. It was easier to remain silent and enjoy the sweetness of the experience and not to bother about others – but it was cruel, it was violent, it was not right for a man of heart. But the trouble was, even if he should decide to express, there are no words in human language which can bring the ultimate experience. In communication, explanation, there is no argument to prove it. The only argument is to experience it. If you ask for proof before the experience, there is no way; it cannot be proved. Puzzled, he remained silent.The story is tremendously beautiful, but remember it is a parable; it is not history.The gods in heaven… Buddhism does not believe in a God because that is too much a fascist idea. Buddhism believes in gods, a more democratic approach – and each human being ultimately has to become a god; that is the flowering of your potential. Those who have flowered before have become gods; there is no qualitative difference between you and them. They have not created the world. Once they were the same as you are, in the same way ignorant, the same way blind, but they have found their way and they have blossomed, their spring has come.So in Buddhism the word god is simply an evolutionary term. Man evolves into a god – not that God makes man; man is not a creation of God. Godliness is the ultimate opening of the lotus of your being. Each being in the world is destined to become a god one day, sooner or later.So the gods in heaven were waiting for seven days. They were the only ones in the whole of existence who knew that Gautam had come home, and they all wanted him to speak – because rare is the chance, unique is the opportunity when somebody comes to such a glory, such a blessedness. The flower should not disappear without leaving its fragrance all around. Gautam should speak.But seven days had passed, and he was going deeper and deeper and sinking within himself. Afraid, because it has happened to many – those who have known have never said a word – not to be hard on them, it is really difficult. A few gods representing the whole galaxy of gods came down to Gautam Buddha.I was sitting under the same tree thirty years ago, thinking about the story – a poor place, a small river, the Niranjana. The place must have seen its golden time when Buddha became enlightened on Niranjana’s riverbank. And on the seventh day the gods came and prayed to him, “Please, remember your teachings about compassion. This is the moment to show compassion. Speak! Whatever you have experienced, give words to it, give wings to it, let it reach to those who are thirsty.”Gautam Buddha said to them, “These seven days I have been struggling without coming to any conclusion. The problem is, even if I say it, I know it has not been said. It is so vast – language is so poor, and it is so rich. Now it is not my fault; even if something goes into the words it will not reach people. Their minds are so full of rubbish they will interpret it. Who is there to listen? For listening, innocence is needed.”Here unfortunately, in this country, everybody is so knowledgeable that you cannot find a single person in the whole country who can say, “I don’t know.” He is willing to give a discourse on God, on heaven and hell. Ten thousand years’ knowledge has been gathering and being transferred from one generation to another generation, layer upon layer. Every mind has become so full of knowledge that nobody is ready to listen.So Buddha said, “It is better just to be silent.”The gods went into a nearby bamboo grove to discuss what to do. “What he is saying is right, but somehow he has to be convinced to speak because one never knows when another person is going to become enlightened again. We can understand his difficulty, but we cannot allow him to remain silent. It is very, very difficult to find such a cultured, articulate individual who becomes enlightened. He will find some way.”They came back, and they found a little loophole in Buddha’s argument. They said, “You are right as far as 99 percent of people are concerned – or even 99.9 percent of people are concerned, you are right – but what about the one percent of people? You cannot deny that there may be one person who may listen to you. There may be one person in the whole world who may be transformed by your words, and if you don’t speak he will go on groping in darkness – he is just on the boundary line, needs a little push. Don’t be so hard. Just for a few individuals, speak.”Your question is: Are the words and the works of all the masters only devices?Yes, they are only devices, devices to bring you closer to truth. There is no direct way to transfer it, hence an indirect way has to be found. That’s what a device is – an indirect way. You think you are doing one thing; the master is planning for something else to happen indirectly.For example, I am speaking to you: you think this is a discourse. It is not – it is just a device. While you are listening, I am doing my work. You are playing with words. You are so absorbed, so attentive that your mind is completely engaged, and I can have a heart-to-heart contact and the mind will not disturb it. The mind will not even know about it. That heart-to-heart contact happens simply in the presence of the master, but the mind has to be engaged in some toys.Different masters have used different toys; they are devices. And later on, those devices become religions and people fight over those devices. They are not the real thing. The real thing dies with the master, disappears with the master. It was in his presence, it was in his silence, it was in his eyes, it was in his heartbeat.And you can see the difference. Gautam Buddha speaks: the same words have been repeated for twenty-five centuries by thousands of Buddhist monks, but those same words don’t create the same impact. What is missing? If it was only the words, then whether Buddha speaks or Tom, Dick, Harry, whoever speaks, it makes no difference – just a gramophone record, “His Master’s Voice”; the master is not there. But why don’t those words create the same ringing of bells in your heart?When Jesus spoke, or Zarathustra spoke, the words were the same. Every day you use those words, but unless you have the experience your words are empty – they may be scholarly, they may be that of a great pundit, they may be of a great rabbi. This word rabbi always reminds me of rubbish; I cannot get rid of that.They know the scriptures. Sometimes perhaps they are better orators than Krishna, Mahavira, Buddha; better trained speakers, with all the technological understanding. Still, their words are dead.One great Christian theologian often used to come to India. His name was Stanley Jones. Generally he was the guest of the principal of a Christian college. The principal was my friend; that’s how I came to be acquainted with Stanley Jones. He had written many beautiful books, very beautiful. He was a man of tremendous scholarship.He used to give sermons, and he would keep fifteen or twenty postcard-sized cards; on each card everything that he was going to say was written in shorthand, so nobody would even know what was written on them. And he always used to speak standing, so the people could not see those cards either. He would speak; when the card was finished he would change the card to number two, to number three.One day, before he was going to speak, he had arranged his cards and had gone just to get ready in the bathroom. I mixed the numbers – the fifth was first, the first was fifth, the third was tenth, the tenth was the third. I just mixed them and put them back. He came out, took the cards – I also went with him.He started speaking. Looking at the card he could not understand, “What is happening?” – because the card said something which it was not supposed to say – “Where is the introduction?” He was almost in a nervous breakdown. And in front of a crowd of almost two thousand people, he started looking for the card with the introduction. He could not find it so he tried to start on his own, but he had never started on his own in his whole life.People were very much puzzled: they had never seen such a third-rate sermon from such a first-rate theologian – and they had all heard him before. He was perspiring – and it was winter. Somehow he finished. Neither did he know what he was saying, nor did the people understand what he was doing, what was going on. It was all irrelevant, inconsistent, unrelated, upside down, the beginning coming in the end. Finally the introduction came: “Brothers and sisters…”He was very angry. Back in the principal’s home he said, “I feel like killing you!”I said, “You should feel like that. But I wanted to do it for a specific reason. Do you think Jesus used to have these cards with him? You are more articulate than Jesus. Jesus was uneducated, he did not even know Hebrew, he only knew the local dialect, Aramaic, which only the laborers and poor people spoke. The learned and the cultured and the rich used to speak Hebrew; Aramaic was not for the cultured and the educated. Jesus had no way of carrying these cards because he could not write, but his words have a fire. And your words are the same but there is no fire, there is no warmth. They are not coming from your heart; they are coming from a dead corpse. And you are functioning only like a computer – you are not a theologian, just a machine.”Each master has to create devices according to his own talents, capacities, genius. For example one of the great Sufi masters, Jalaluddin Rumi, had nothing to say, he was not a man of words – but he knew how to dance. His discourse was that of dancing. He would dance, his disciples would dance, and a certain dancing which is called “whirling,” just standing on one spot and whirling. This dancing had made him enlightened, because he whirled for thirty-six hours, continuously, nonstop, till he fell down. But when he opened his eyes he was a totally different man.Whirling still goes on. There are dervishes, Sufi followers of Jalaluddin Rumi, who still go on whirling – nothing happens. It was only a device. With Jalaluddin Rumi it was alive; the man gave life to it. With him, dancing was not just dancing. Whirling with Jalaluddin Rumi, you were all slowly becoming stars circling in the sky, and with his grace, with his beauty and with his experience radiating.Truth is infectious, and there is no antidote to it yet.For twelve hundred years, dervishes have been whirling; nothing happens. You can go on whirling, but you have forgotten that the whirling was significant because there was a man as a source of radiation – while you were whirling, he was reaching to your hearts.A story is that a few people had gone hunting and they came across the camp of Jalaluddin Rumi. Just out of curiosity they looked inside the doors. It was a walled garden, and nearabout one hundred disciples were whirling with Jalaluddin Rumi. Those people thought, “These are mad people. Who has ever heard that by whirling you can get truth? In what scripture, in what religion is it written? There is no record. This man is mad, and he is driving so many young people mad.”They went on. Hunting was far more significant. Obviously it was saner than to dance with Jalaluddin Rumi.After their hunting, they went back. Just out of curiosity about what had happened to the whirlers, they again looked in the door. They were surprised: those hundred people were sitting under the trees in silence, with closed eyes, as if there was nobody – absolute silence; you could hear the wind blowing through the trees.Those hunters said, “Poor fellows… Finished. This happens by whirling – all energy lost. Now they are sitting like the dead; perhaps a few are already dead.”Do you think they started discussing among themselves whether these people had achieved truth? If sitting like this with closed eyes… “What was the need of whirling, you could have sat before.” They went away.The next month, they went again for hunting. Again, just out of curiosity – “Now what happened to those people – are they really dead, or still sitting, or gone, or what happened?” They looked. There was nobody, only Jalaluddin Rumi was sitting there. They laughed. They said, “Everybody has escaped; they must have understood that this man is mad. He was almost killing them by dancing, whirling. He seems to be an expert, thirty-six hours nonstop; anybody would be dead by that time! No coffee break, no tea break, just continuous whirling…”So they went in and asked Jalaluddin Rumi, “What happened to your disciples? We had come one month ago and there was a group of at least one hundred people.”Jalaluddin said, “They danced, they found, they absorbed, and they have gone into the world to spread the message.”“And what are you doing?” they asked.He said, “I am waiting for the second batch. My people have gone out; they will be bringing them.”Yoga is a device. Tantra… All are devices, but only in the hands of the masters. Otherwise everything becomes so ugly, stupid. Now Yoga has become just gymnastics. And the government wants to introduce Yoga in every school, just as an exercise. It is not just an exercise, it is not for the body; yes, the body is used, but it is to realize something beyond the body.Tantra in the hands of those who don’t understand becomes simply sexual orgies. Otherwise it is one of the greatest devices to transform man’s energy from the lowest chakras to the highest reach, the sahasrar, the seventh chakra – where one comes to know oneself as part of the universal being.Whether physical, psychological, verbal, any kind of device, the basic need is a living master. Without a living master, everything goes poisonous, dangerous.I have developed meditations. If you are doing them on your own they can be dangerous, because you don’t know your unconscious mind, your collective unconscious mind, your cosmic unconscious mind. You have so much darkness inside, you can stir sleeping dangers in you. Only with a master is it possible not to fall into the darkness of the unconscious but to rise into the superconscious, into the collective superconscious, into the cosmic superconscious. But the way is always very narrow, a razor’s edge.You need someone who knows the way not only intellectually, but existentially.Osho,Yesterday I saw you again after so many months – all my questions disappeared by seeing and hearing you. Tell me what is really the secret of this happening – because when I am on my own again, my mind starts doubting and wondering again and again. How can I make this little crazy mind of mine my friend? How can I stop not trusting love? How to stop being afraid of it? I have tried for so long now.The effort that you are making is basically wrong; hence, the failure. And it is so obvious, that just being here, all your questions disappeared, your doubts evaporated – you were no more a mind, you became a meditation. You became a silence, a loving, peaceful serenity. And you had not done anything; neither have I done anything.Without my doing anything, without your doing anything, what has happened?Seeing me after a long time, listening to me, you became so totally attentive that there was no space for any questions to arise. You became so intensely aware that doubts died. Now this can give you the clue: what you are doing alone on your own is a fighting; you are fighting with the mind. You will never win, because the mind can be overcome only by a total awareness, watchfulness, witnessing – but not by fighting.Don’t call it crazy, don’t condemn it – because that’s how you get engaged in a quarrel. Just stand aside, by the side of the road, and let the whole traffic of the mind pass without any judgment. Your only work is, nothing should pass without your consciousness. You just be conscious and see.A small story may help:Gautam Buddha told Ananda one afternoon, as they were walking toward a village, “I am feeling very thirsty. You just go back. We have passed, perhaps two miles back, a beautiful small stream of crystal-clear water; so take my begging bowl and fill it with the water. I will rest under a tree.” He was growing old.Ananda went back, but as he approached there, a few bullock carts passed through the stream. The crystal-clear water disappeared. It became all muddy, dead leaves that were lying on the bottom started floating on the surface; it was not worth drinking.He went back. He told Buddha, “That water, we missed. Just as I was arriving a few bullock carts passed and they disturbed the whole water and its purity. It is now all mud, dead leaves; it is certainly not for you. I have not brought it. I will go ahead because I know there is a bigger river ahead and I will bring the water from there.”But Buddha was very persistent. He said, “You should go back. I don’t know your river, but I have seen that crystal-clear water. You just do one thing: if it is not yet clean, sit down by the side till it is clean again.”Now there was no other way for Ananda. He had to go back, reluctantly, unwillingly, thinking that Buddha was being too stubborn – “This is not right, that water is not going to be crystal clear again.”But when he reached the stream he said, “My God, he was right.” The mud had settled, and the leaves had gone down the stream. The water was far better than when he left the last time, although it was still not drinkable. He sat by the side, and within an hour it was again crystal clear.He took the water and he gave the water to Gautam Buddha and he said, “Please forgive me, because I was angry on the way; I was thinking you were stubborn. I had gone unwillingly – I feel so sad that I did something unwillingly. And now I know it was not only a question of water, because water could be brought from the river too. You were teaching me a method. Sitting by the side of that small stream I learned…“Because as the stream was getting clearer, there was nothing else to do. Suddenly the parallel came to my mind: perhaps the mind is also in the same situation. You have just to sit by the side and let the mind settle down. It settles, but not by fighting. To fight with the mind is to give energy to it; to fight with the mind is to keep it alive.”Just sit by the side – no judgment, no appreciation. Do not say anything about the mind: that it is crazy, that it is ugly, that it is disturbing my peace, that it is the only barrier to my spiritual growth. Don’t say a single word; just watch – that is the key, the secret, golden key. Whenever you can, sit silently and watch the mind. And soon a few things will start happening.One will be that you will see that you are not the mind, you are the watcher. Naturally the mind cannot watch itself, and the moment you realize that you are separate from the mind, it is almost half the victory. And let the mind go on – it is its old habit; maybe for hundreds of lives you have trained it in that way. So don’t be in a hurry, and don’t be impatient.Rejoice in watching. See the mind more playfully – not seriously, but just like a drama on the screen. Your mind is full of all kinds of stupidities.This simple process of watching will bring you to the same state that you have felt here. Soon the mud will settle down, the dead leaves will be gone down the stream and there will be a crystal-clear consciousness. To achieve it is the most precious thing in life; from there begins the real pilgrimage toward the divine.Osho,In all the years with you I felt meditations simply “happened” to me. Then in the last time when I was away from you I felt this was not me, but your grace overflowing toward me. For the first time I saw that I needed to give meditation a priority in my life or it would not happen. Now, melting in your presence again, everything I could ever desire is here. Osho, what happens to the disciple when one is without the master?There are only two possibilities when the disciple is not with the master. One is that he goes back to the zero where he had been before he met the master.The second is, if you see that without the master things that were happening in his presence are not happening, it simply means that his presence has not become an intrinsic part of your being.The master need not be outside you. In fact he is always inside you, and if you can remember it: “The master is inside me”… And the master is not asking much, just a small place, a small bedroom with an attached bathroom.Once you start feeling yourself as carrying the master within yourself, everything that was happening in the presence of the master not only continues but grows a thousandfold. Because it was the master outside, there was a distance. Now there is no more distance; even the distance has disappeared. You are not alone. It is only a question of how much you love, of how deep is your devotion, of how great is your disciplehood.Osho,Whenever you call your therapists your “messengers,” I feel weird and embarrassed. It sounds so big – and I feel so small. The only real therapist I've ever come across anyway is you. I loved the postman story, but the postman these days is somebody totally anonymous; one doesn't even notice he's been there, one just finds the messages. I wish I could be a postman, but I'm not yet a nobody either. Beloved master, is it alright for the time being to be your singing telegram?The idea of being a messenger looks embarrassing because you have forgotten the simple fact that it is the message that is big; the messenger is nobody.In fact the messenger has to be a nobody; otherwise the message is going to be distorted. The messenger will mix his own ideas into it, his own mind into it.In India this has happened on such a grand scale that one cannot even imagine it. Shrimad Bhagavadgita has at least one thousand interpretations – these are the well known ones. Now, Krishna must have had a single meaning when he was talking to Arjuna. It is not possible that he had one thousand meanings; that will simply prove that he is insane – and even if he is not, then Arjuna is going to be insane!But down the ages his message has been carried by messengers who are interpreting according to their own prejudices, manipulating words to fit their own preconceived ideas. Nobody is concerned with the meaning of the Gita; everybody is concerned to find his philosophy in the Gita. And now the Gita is dead, it is up to you – you can do any kind of intellectual gymnastics. The Gita has become secondary, the message is no longer important, the messenger has become important. Whenever this happens, you should feel embarrassed. But if the message remains important and the messenger simply remains a carrier, a vehicle, a nobody, a hollow bamboo which can become a flute. But the song is not of the bamboo. The only beauty of the bamboo is that it is hollow, that it is not, that it gives way, that it does not hinder the song. It does not distort the song, it brings the song in as pure a form as possible.To be a messenger is really a device for you to make you a nobody. Don’t become somebody. Don’t think that you are the chosen few – you have been chosen to be the messenger – it is simply a method to destroy your ego and to make a hollow bamboo of you. And once you start feeling like a nobody, you will be surprised how tremendously the message comes, with what clarity, with what authority. The authority is not yours, the clarity is not yours. It is coming from beyond you.My sannyasins, those I have chosen to be my messengers have to understand it: it is a device to make you nobodies. And once you are nobody, you are all. They are synonymous.Osho,The first days I was here with you, I felt only sheer delight, joy, love and gratitude. Now a coolness is there that scares me. From an attitude of wanting to jump up and down and clap my hands in delight, I now feel less excited. Osho, my beautiful master, I do feel my heart beating with yours – and I feel separate. How can I let you penetrate me more, become each breath that I take, part of my very cells? How can I open more to you so that you can penetrate my being totally, so that I can taste more of your silence? Osho, just writing now, there is no coolness, only tears in my eyes, love in my heart, and anguish.It is something to be understood by all, that excitement is not the goal of spiritual growth. Excitement cannot be eternal, it will be tiring. Whenever something new happens there will be excitement because it is new, but the excitement has to disappear into calmness, coolness. Coolness can be eternal because coolness is rest.But there is some fear attached with the word coolness. It reminds one of coldness. Coolness is not coldness. Languages develop in different geographical regions, so remember it. In the West, a warm reception seems to be perfect, but not in Mumbai – here a cool reception with cold drinks will be more appropriate. In our minds these connotations of words cling.Excitement seems to be equivalent to ecstasy; it is not. Excitement is a state of tension; it feels good because the old is disappearing and the new is coming in. A new breeze, a new experience – it is good to welcome it with an excited heart. But jumping up and down continuously, the guest will think you are mad; that much excitement is found only in mad asylums. When the guest comes it is good – one jump, a good hug; but continuously jumping and hugging, the guest may run out of the house shouting, “Save me, I have entered the wrong house! Is that man mad, or what?”Excitement is only a welcome, but the welcome is not the whole story. Then coolness has to come, and coolness is far deeper, far more valuable than any excitement can be. So jumping up and down has to stop. Sit silently, be calm and cool. Ecstasy is coolness, it is not excitement.If you accept coolness, then only will the deeper experience of coolness give you the experience of ecstasy. It will be full of life, but not childish. It will be full of joy, but with a deep contentment. The joy will not be against sadness, the joy will be beyond sadness.But in the beginning this kind of thing happens to everybody. When you enter meditation it is great excitement. Then things start settling – which is natural, that’s how it should be. When they start getting natural and settled, you can be worried that perhaps you are losing – where is that excitement?A few people are running after excitement. One wife will not do; get a divorce. For a few days the second wife will be an excitement, but only for a few days. Even if it is a few days, it is more than enough. Yes, somebody else’s wife is always an excitement. If you want excitement then always look at somebody else’s wife – just don’t torture your wife. With your wife learn to be calm and quiet and cool, which are deeper and more valuable experiences.Excitement is childish. Be more mature. Be a little more alert, centered, and your coolness will become ecstasy. But wait; waiting is the price one has to pay for it.Otherwise people are living in excitement – from this film to that film, from this circus to that circus, from this teacher to that teacher, from this religion to that religion. So for a moment there is excitement. It is something like itching: it feels good, but don’t scratch too much; otherwise you will bloody yourself.But the whole world has been trained for excitement, because excitement is a commodity which can be sold; more exciting things can always be brought to you. Coolness is not a commodity. Excitement is a commodity, a very cheap thing. And those who are with me should be aware to drop all cheap things.Live the precious, the valuable, the eternal.Coolness is perfectly good, far better than your excitement. And if you can remain cool then coolness will deepen, and the depth brings ecstasy. That is a totally different dimension.Never misunderstand excitement for ecstasy. Ecstasy is absolutely cool, eternally cool, abysmally cool.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 28 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What can we do from our side to surrender the ego, when this wanting to surrender it is, in itself, an intrinsic part?The ego is a puzzle. It is something like darkness – which you can see, which you can feel, which can obstruct your way but which does not exist. It has no positivity. It is simply an absence, an absence of light. The ego does not exist – how can you surrender it? The ego is only an absence of awareness.The room is full of darkness; you want the darkness to leave the room. You can do everything in your power – push it out, beat it out – but you are not going to succeed. Strangely enough, you will be defeated by something which does not exist. Exhausted, your mind will say the darkness is so powerful that it is not within your capacity to dispel it, to expel it. But that conclusion is not right; it is German, but it is not right.Just a small candle has to be brought in. You don’t have to expel the darkness. You don’t have to fight with it – that is sheer stupidity. Just bring in a small candle, and the darkness is not found anymore. Not that it goes out – it cannot go out, because in the first place it does not exist. Neither was it in, nor does it go out.The light comes in, the light goes out; it has positive existence. You can light a candle and there is no darkness; you can blow out the candle and there is darkness. To do anything with darkness, you will have to do something with light – very strange, very illogical, but what can you do? Such is the nature of things.You cannot surrender ego because it does not exist. You can bring a little awareness, a little consciousness, a little light. Forget completely about the ego; concentrate totally on bringing alertness into your being. And the moment your consciousness has become a flame, concentrated, you will not be able to find the ego.So you cannot surrender when you are unaware and you cannot surrender when you are aware. The ignorant cannot surrender. And the wise man cannot even think of surrendering it, because it does not exist.Ego is a mirage – it only appears to be. And when you are fast asleep spiritually, it is tremendously strong; naturally it creates problems for you. Your whole misery is created by it, your tensions, your anxieties. Your ego brings the whole hell into your life. Naturally you want to surrender it. And there are religious priests, teachers all over the world telling you how to surrender it.Anybody who tells you how to surrender the ego is an idiot. He does not know anything about the nature of the ego, but he will look rational to you; he will be convincing. He will be appealing because he is speaking your own thinking aloud. He is your spokesman – this is what your mind says. He is more articulate than you are, and he brings all kinds of supportive arguments and proofs and quotations from scriptures, and they all say, “Unless you drop the ego you cannot attain to self-realization.” Naturally, nobody objects to such people.But I say unto you that the reality is just vice versa: it is not that you surrender the ego and the self-realization happens, no. The self-realization happens first, and then you cannot find the ego.That is its surrender.Osho,After eight years as your disciple, I feel that the tide is bringing me toward the shore. I can't swim, but in I come; and there you are on the beach watching me. Is it time I learned to swim?My God! Even if you know how to swim, this is the time to forget it! The tide has brought you to the shore; where are you going by swimming? Are you going to swim in the sand?You are fortunate that the tide has brought you to the shore. Now don’t be stupid. If you start swimming you will be swimming against yourself, you will undo what the tide has done.There are things which only happen, which cannot be done. Doing is the way of very ordinary things, mundane things. You can do something to earn money, you can do something to be powerful, you can do something to have prestige; but you cannot do anything as far as love is concerned, gratitude is concerned, silence is concerned. It is a very significant thing to understand that doing means the world, and non-doing means that which is beyond the world – where things happen, where only the tide brings you to the shore. If you swim, you miss.If you do something, you will undo it because all doing is mundane. Very few people come to know the secret of non-doing and allowing things to happen.If you want great things – things which are beyond the small reach of human hands, human mind, human abilities – then you will have to learn the art of non-doing. I call it meditation. It is a trouble, because the moment you give a name to it, immediately people start asking how to do it. And you cannot say that they are wrong, because the very word meditation creates the idea of doing. They have done their doctorate, they have done a thousand and one things; when they hear the word meditation they ask, “So just tell us how to do it.”And meditation basically means the beginning of non-doing, relaxing, going with the tide – just being a dead leaf in the winds, or a cloud, moving with the winds.Never ask a cloud, “Where are you going?” He himself does not know; he has no address, he has no destiny. If the winds change… He was going to the south, he starts moving toward the north. The cloud does not say to the winds, “This is absolutely illogical. We were moving south, now we are moving north – what is the point of it all?” No, he simply starts moving north as easily as he was moving south. To him, south, north, east, west, don’t make any difference. Just to move with the wind – with no desire, with no goal, nowhere to reach – he is just enjoying the journey.Meditation makes you a cloud – of consciousness. Then there is no goal. Never ask a meditator “Why are you meditating?” because that question is irrelevant. Meditation is in itself the goal and the way together.Lao Tzu, one of the most important figures in the history of non-doing… If history is to be written rightly then there should be two kinds of histories: the history of doers – Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah, Alexander, Napoleon Bonaparte, Ivan the Terrible, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini; these are the people who belong to the world of doing. There should be another history, a higher history, a real history – of human consciousness, of human evolution: the history of Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Bodhidharma; a totally different kind.Lao Tzu became enlightened sitting under a tree. A leaf had just started falling – it was in the fall, and there was no hurry; the leaf was coming, zigzag with the wind, slowly. He watched the leaf. The leaf came down on the ground, settled on the ground, and as he watched the leaf falling and settling, something settled in him. From that moment he became a non-doer. The winds come on their own, the existence takes care.He was the contemporary of a great thinker, moralist, law-giver, Confucius. Confucius belongs to the other history, the history of the doers. Confucius had great influence over China – and has even today.Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu were the disciples of Lao Tzu. These three people have reached to the highest peaks, but nobody seems to be impressed by them. People are impressed when you do something great. Who is impressed by somebody who has achieved a state of non-doing?But Confucius had heard the name of Lao Tzu and was interested – “What kind of man is this who says that real things can be achieved only by non-doing? Nothing can be achieved by non-doing; you have to do, you have to become a great doer.” And hearing that Lao Tzu was very close by in the mountains, Confucius went with his disciples to see him. He had many disciples – kings, princes. He was a great teacher. But he stopped everybody outside. He said, “Let me go inside the cave to see him, because I have heard he is a dangerous man and I don’t know how he is going to behave with me. You simply remain outside. If I call you in, you can come; otherwise I will tell you afterward what happened.”And it was wise of him not to take that whole group of disciples with him, because when he came back he was perspiring. And they said, “What happened? – because it is so cold, and the winds are so cool in the mountains, and you are perspiring.”He said, “You should be glad I am alive. That man is not a man, he is a dragon. He is really dangerous. Avoid him!”We don’t know from Lao Tzu’s side what happened in the cave, but we know what Confucius reported.He said, “As I entered in he did not even look at me. I went around him, but he did not take any note of me. Even that was enough to give me a trembling – in that dark cave, that man sitting there so silent, as if he is not. Finally I had to break the silence, to break the ice, and I said, ‘I am Confucius.’“And that old, dangerous fellow said, ‘So what! Remain Confucius.’ And the conversation would not start because – how to talk with this man? I said, ‘I have come here to talk with you.’“He said, ‘Okay, you can talk. I have never prevented anybody from talking. Talk, but there is nobody here to answer you.’“Gathering courage,” Confucius said, “I asked, ‘But what about you?’ And he laughed and he said, ‘About me: yes, I used to be, but it is for a long time that I have not been. The house is empty. There is no host here, but if you want you can be a guest.’”Seeing that there was no way to have a nice, gentlemanly conversation with this man, Confucius said, “I have come from a long distance” – thinking that he would feel a little compassion.Lao Tzu said, “That shows that you are stupid. You don’t know anything about me; otherwise you would not have come. Now you want some compassion from me. A man who is absent, how can he be compassionate?”Confucius said, “At least give me some advice – how to relax, to rest.”Lao Tzu said, “For that you will have to wait. Death will come, and in your grave you will relax and rest, not before that, because if you want to rest before that, then forget that crowd that you have left outside. You remain here and I will go – just a lion’s roar and they will all escape, none will come back to this cave again. You rest and relax.”So Confucius said, “No, don’t do that. They are my disciples. Some are kings, some are princes; some are great, rich people. I cannot afford it.”Lao Tzu said, “That’s why I said that in life you cannot afford relaxation; only death can help. Those who understand can relax in life and rest in life. And the miracle is: for them there is no death, because they have already done what death does. Those who are stupid don’t rest, they don’t relax. Then nature has managed a device called death, so they can relax in their graves.“Don’t be worried. You will have a good marble grave with great inscriptions on it in golden letters: ‘Here lies the great Confucius, the teacher of kings and emperors.’ But if you want to be with me, you have to understand I am going to be a death to you. Without that – unless I kill you, destroy you – there is no way of saving you.”Confucius somehow said, “I will come again.”Lao Tzu laughed. He said, “Don’t lie. You will never come again. This time you came because you had no idea what kind of man you were going to meet. But I enjoyed it. Now go and tell the crowd all the lies you want.” So we don’t know exactly what transpired in that cave. This much is from Confucius. Much more must have happened there, which needs guts even to report.Lao Tzu’s whole teaching was the watercourse way: just go with the water wherever it is going, don’t swim.You are blessed that the tide has brought you to the shore.But the mind always wants to do something, because then the credit goes to the ego. Now the credit goes to the tide, not to you. If you had come swimming to the shore, you would have come with a great ego, that “I managed to cross the English Channel.”Feel humble. It is not a question of learning swimming; it is a question of understanding why you have asked this question. Your ego is feeling unfulfilled, you cannot take the credit; the whole credit goes to the tide. But why not give the credit to the tide, why not give the credit to existence?Existence gives you birth, gives you life, gives you love; it gives you everything that is invaluable, that you cannot purchase with money. Only those who are ready to give the whole credit of their lives to existence realize the beauty and the benediction; only those people are religious people.It is not a question of your doing. It is a question of your being absent, non-doing, letting things happen. Let go – just these two words contain the whole religious experience.Have you sometimes seen people drowning in water? While they are alive they come up again and again and shout, “Help! Help!” And again they go down, come up, go down, and finally they don’t come up. But after two or three days they come up – and then they don’t go back down – but now they are dead.The village where I was born was by the side of a beautiful river, and I have seen a few people drowning in the river – it was a mountainous river; in the rainy season it became miles wide, and the current was so strong that to cross it was just to risk your life – but when they died, they suddenly came up, started floating.In my very childhood I learned one thing: that there is something which dead people know and the living people don’t know – because the living shout, “Help! Help!” and go down; and the dead simply come up, no shouting. And they float so easily – and no drowning anymore. They must know some secret. I used to ask my father, “What is the secret that the dead people know?”He said, “You are mad, and you will drive me mad. Now how am I supposed to know? They are simply dead, they know nothing.”I said, “I cannot trust that, because I can see them floating so beautifully, there must be a secret that the living are missing.” And when I started swimming, I came to know the secret.In the beginning when you learn swimming it seems so difficult, almost impossible. You get drowned so many times – water goes in the nose, in the mouth – but just within three or four days you are perfect, as if you have been swimming for lives. And just within three or four weeks you can float like a dead man, without swimming, without moving your hands. You can just lie down, relaxed, and the river is no longer trying to drown you.I told my father, “I have learned the secret. It is not a big thing, it is a simple thing: because the dead are not trying to swim, they are relaxed. They are not worried about drowning, they are already dead – what can they do? They are in a state of non-doing, and the living are trying hard hard to save themselves. It is not the river that drowns them; it is their effort to save themselves that drowns them. Because now I know exactly how to be like a dead body in the water, I can lie there for hours and the river is not interested in drowning me. But it is a non-doing, I am not doing anything.”In life you are trying to do everything. Please, leave a few things for non-doing, because those are the only valuable things.There are people who are trying to love, because from the very beginning the mother is saying to the child, “You have to love me because I am your mother.” Now she is making love also a logical syllogism – “because I am your mother.” She is not allowing love to grow on its own, it has to be forced.The father is saying, “Love me, I am your father.” And the child is so helpless that all that he can do is pretend. What else can he do? He can smile, he can give a kiss, and he knows that it is all pretension – he does not mean it, it is all phony. It is not coming from him, but because you are his daddy, you are his mommy; you are this, you are that… They are spoiling one of the most precious experiences of life.Then wives are telling husbands, “You have to love me, I am your wife.” Strange. Husbands are saying, “You have to love me. I am your husband, it is my birthright.”Love cannot be demanded. If it comes your way, be thankful; if it does not come, wait. Even in your waiting there should be no complaint, because you don’t have any right. Love is nobody’s right: no constitution can give you the right of love. But they are all destroying everything – then wives are smiling, husbands are hugging…One of America’s most famous authors, Dale Carnegie, writes that every husband has to tell his wife at least three times a day, “I love you, darling.” Are you insane? But he means it, and it works; and many people, millions of people, are practicing Dale Carnegie followers. “When you come home, bring ice cream, flowers, roses, to show that you love” – as if love needs to be shown, proved materially, pragmatically, linguistically; every now and then uttered again and again so nobody forgets it. If you don’t tell your wife for a few days that “I love you,” she will count how many days have passed, and she will become more and more suspicious that this man must be saying it to somebody else, because her quota is being cut. Love is a quantity. If he is not bringing ice cream anymore, ice cream must be going somewhere else, and this cannot be tolerated.We have created a society which believes only in doings, while the spiritual part of our being remains starved – because it needs something which is not done but happens. Not that you manage to say “I love you,” but that suddenly you find yourself saying that you love. You are surprised yourself at what you are saying. You are not rehearsing it in your mind first and then repeating it, no; it is spontaneous.And, in fact, the real moments of love remain unspoken. When you are really feeling love, that very feeling creates around you a certain radiance that says everything that you cannot say, that can never be said.I have been struggling from my very childhood on each and every point. I told my father, “I will not respect you because you are my father, I will respect you if you are respectable. Whether you are my father or not is irrelevant; it is of no consequence. I will love you if you are lovable, if you are loving; and remember that it is not because you are my father, it is just because you are a man worth loving.”I had to fight with my teachers, my professors: “I will respect you only if you are respectable. If you are not respectable, then don’t ask me to show respect to you – because that is what hypocrisy is. You are teaching me hypocrisy, and I don’t expect any of my teachers to teach me hypocrisy.”There used to be a mock parliament in the university every year, just to give training to the post-graduate students, because a few of them might reach the parliament. And the vice-chancellor himself used to be the president. I was there as one of the members of a mock parliament, and I had to address him. He had to be addressed as “Honorable President.”So I said, “Honorable President – although he is not honorable, I am just fulfilling the formality, and anyway this is a mock parliament.”He was very angry with me. He called me afterward: “What do you mean that I am not honorable?”I said, “Everything that the word means. I have not seen anything worth honoring in you – you have not divorced your wife.”He said, “But is that dishonorable?”I said, “Yes it is, because you don’t love her, you love another woman. To be honest, you should have divorced your wife and married the other woman. But to save your hypocrisy, your respectability, you are playing this game – and the whole university knows it, and you know that everybody knows it. So where is the respectability? Your wife hates you, you hate your wife; for years you have not spoken with each other. Why are you wasting her life? And I respect her more than I respect you, because although she hates you she has not said a single word against you to anybody, and you have been telling all kinds of lies against her just to protect your own dishonesty, insincerity. Do you want me to bring up other things also?”He said, “Just wait. This is enough. But there was no need – you could have come to me and told me.”I said, “That was the right moment. And anyway, it was a mock parliament. Even if I go to the real parliament I am going to do the same. Unless I feel honor for somebody, I have to make it clear that this honor is only formal. The other side is not worthy of it; the honor is being given to the chair, not to the man – so any man can sit on it, it doesn’t matter, I will still call it ‘honorable.’”We live without any rebelliousness – and the ultimate result is that slowly, slowly hypocrisy becomes our very characteristic. We forget completely that it is hypocrisy.And in the mind, in the being of a man who is a hypocrite, anything of the world of non-doing is impossible. He can go on doing more and more; he will become almost a robot. His whole life is doing. Day and night he is doing, because everything that he has is an outcome of doing.But if you suddenly had an experience of happening, take it as a gift from existence – and make that moment a beginning of a new lifestyle. Forget swimming; allow the tide to take you to any shore. Don’t be worried, you will find me on any shore watching you. It is not that on this shore it was just a coincidence that you came on the tide and you found me, no. If you come on the tide, wherever you come you will find me. But come on the tide. If you come swimming, you will not find me on any seashore.My whole approach is of non-doing. Just allow a few moments in twenty-four hours when you are not doing anything, allowing the existence to do something to you. And windows will start opening in you – windows which will connect you with the universal, the immortal.Osho,Your sannyasins, whom I am around at present, are growing at an immense rate; all are in deep gratitude to you for being together, and yet there is no attachment or longing to be close to you. What is happening?It can create a question in anybody – if sannyasins are growing in love, in awareness in my presence, then the natural thing should be that they start desiring to be closer to me, and an attachment is bound to follow. But if there is no attachment and no desire to be close, I can see you are puzzled. Why is it happening, what is happening?It is something very delicate. You want to be attached to someone only when you feel that you are not close. All attachment shows a deep fear of losing, so we cling; attachment is clinging. And you want to be close only when you feel that you are missing something by not being close.If by not being close you are gaining more, if by not desiring attachment your growth is going at an unimaginable speed, you would not like to be close or to be attached. You would like to be more and more independent, more and more individual: no attachment, no desire to be close, because unless you accept your individuality with absolute love and respect, you are not going to grow to your ultimate growth.There are teachers in the world who would force you to be attached to them, who would like you to be in a certain bondage, a contract.Just the other day one sannyasin from Holland wrote to me, “There is a man here; many sannyasins are going to listen to him. Almost eighty percent of his audience is of sannyasins. Is it right? Can I also go to listen to him?”I said, “It is absolutely right. My sannyasin can go to listen to anybody. My sannyasin can go to any well, can drink from any well. It does not take him away from me; in fact it simply makes him more individual – and that is my whole teaching, that he should be an individual, independent, not a slave.” Otherwise, in the name of spirituality, there are so many slaveries all around.One man came to me and he said to me, “I have been wanting to come to you for two years, but I was going to a shankaracharya and he prohibited me: ‘If you go to see this man, you will see me dead.’ I was so afraid – if he dies, the whole responsibility will be on my head, so I had to wait. Now he is dead.” Just the day before, he had died, and the next day the man was here. “Now I am free; otherwise I was so afraid just to think that if I come – he is old, and if he dies…” This kind of slavery… But can you help these people to become real, authentic individuals? And if you are so afraid, you are also afraid about your teaching. You are also afraid about your being, about your experience. No, my sannyasins are absolutely free to go anywhere – to any mosque, to any synagogue, to any temple, to any teacher – because with me they have no commitment. It is a friendship completely born out of freedom.Osho,Wearing the mala and red clothes used to be my statement to the world around me, my rebellion. Now, when I wear them it is out of my gratitude and an ever-deepening love and trust. Osho, what is happening?The two things are two aspects of one phenomenon.In the beginning, when I insisted that you should wear orange and the mala, it was for a particular reason. It was a statement to the world about your rebellion, that you don’t belong to the old and the dead traditions; that you have found a new way of life, a new way of being. And it is not only your conviction; you are devoted totally to it, whatever the consequence.Against the whole world, standing alone, it helped your courage, it helped your intelligence. It helped you to unburden all the past knowledge, traditions, religions. That phase is over. Now there is no need. The second phase of the work has begun.I don’t insist that you wear orange clothes or mala.We have already made the whole world aware of the movement, of its philosophy, of its approach. There is no need to go on struggling with the dead forever.Now, if you choose to wear orange and the mala, it is not my insistence; it is your insistence – then naturally its meaning and significance has changed. Now it is your gratitude, your love, your thankfulness for whatever has happened to you and is happening to you. Now it is not a statement to the world, but an indication to me. Now it is no longer a struggle with the world, but simply a love affair with me. First it was my insistence, now it is your insistence.Osho,Thoughts are many, questions are none. Can you answer what I cannot ask?The mind is full of thoughts; it is impossible that you don’t have any questions.When you ask a question, be sincere. When the mind is full of thoughts, it is bound to have many questions. Perhaps the questions are so many that you cannot find what is truly your question – but don’t say that you don’t have any question. This is one position.So look again, and find out. In your so-many thoughts you will find dozens of questions, and don’t be shy in asking them.There is another possibility, and that is, perhaps you don’t have any question. But then you cannot have any thoughts in the mind.If you don’t have any questions, then I am the answer.You can choose; if you really don’t have any questions, then I am the answer. So tomorrow you think again. You will have to take one position of the two: either you have to accept that you have thoughts – then you will have to accept that you have questions; or you will have to accept that you have no questions – but then it means you don’t have any thoughts. And a person who has no thoughts, for him, I am the answer. No words are needed. Then I come to him without any words.Then just open your doors and let me in.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 29 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,How did you manage to find me?Existence is always a mystery. People fall in love; they cannot answer why, how they have found each other. And when they fall in love there is an absolute feeling that they are made for each other – but how did they manage to find each other in such a big world?Somebody is a born poet, somebody is a born painter. They cannot explain how they became poets, how they became painters, how they managed so that poetic visions happened to them. It simply happens; there is no “how” to it.But our mind is a machine, it is not a mystery. The mind always wants to know the how, the why. And because of this persistent inquiry about how and why, it goes on missing all that is beyond the boundaries of machines. Life is beyond the boundaries of machines.Why are you alive? Do you have any answer? Why in the first place were you born? How did you manage to be born? You have to simply accept the mystery of all that is alive – either consciously or unconsciously.Unconsciously you have been accepting many things: your birth, your life, your love, your death, the roses, the stars, the ocean, the rivers, the sun, the moon – but you have been accepting them unconsciously. If you accept them consciously, you become a mystic. Then it is not a question that you are ignorant and that’s why you don’t know. It is not ignorance, it is the very unknowability of existence.I don’t know how I have found you. Neither is there any need. It is enough that I have found you.Just remember not to get lost.Osho,What is the purpose and task of the new University of Mysticism?Mysticism is one of the forgotten languages. It has to be revived, because in forgetting the language of the mystics, life has lost all color, all joy, all music.Turgenev has a beautiful story:In a village a man comes to a sage and says to him, “Please help me. My whole village, and the surrounding villages too, think that I am an idiot. Whatever I say, however reasonable or rational it may be, they make a laughingstock of me. It has become a nightmare to me. If I remain silent, they condemn my silence saying, ‘What else can he do? He is such an idiot, he cannot say anything.’ If I say anything, everybody is there to laugh. My life has become so miserable that I feel to commit suicide. I heard that a great sage is passing by and I thought perhaps you can help me.”The sage said, “It is a very simple matter. Just do one thing: from tomorrow morning, whenever anybody says anything, immediately criticize it. Somebody says, ‘Look, what a beautiful sunrise.’ You say, ‘What beauty is in it? Who says? And what is the proof, and what do you mean by beauty? Define what beauty is. On what authority are you calling the sunrise beautiful? It is not.’“Somebody says, ‘Look, a beautiful woman is passing’ – condemn. Just remember one thing: don’t assert anything on your own part. Only criticize, and particularly those things which cannot be proved – beauty, love, truth, God – things which everybody is talking about but nobody can prove, nobody can even define. And I will be coming back after one month. Then meet me.”After one month the man was totally changed. He had gone through a transformation. He was not looking sad, he was looking radiant, full of authority – as if suddenly he had roots, had become grounded.The sage laughed and he said, “So it worked?”He said, “It worked tremendously. Now they all think I am the wisest man, just in one month. And they are making apologies that they used to think me an idiot; they are feeling very sorry for it. And I have not done anything other than what you suggested to me. I have not missed a single chance: anything, and I will pose a question and they cannot answer it. They feel embarrassed. Wherever I go people fall silent, they don’t talk, because even to say a word is dangerous. But they have started worshipping me, touching my feet; I have become a sage. You have done a miracle.”The sage said, “I have not done a miracle. This is a simple phenomenon: whatsoever is valuable in life is unexplainable, indefinable, and whatsoever is definable is worthless.”One of the greatest thinkers of this age, G. E. Moore, has written a book, Principia Ethica, and he deals with only one question in the whole book. The question is: What is good? And it is the most fundamental question. You are talking about morality, you are talking about character, you are talking about goodness, badness, virtue, sin; they all basically need a clear-cut definition of what good is. In two hundred and fifty pages of very arduous, logical reasoning, approaching the question from every possible angle, he comes to the conclusion that good is indefinable. It took him two hundred and fifty pages – one of the best minds of our century – to figure out that good is indefinable. You can feel it, you can be it, you can live it, you can taste it, you can experience it, but you cannot explain it. As far as definitions are concerned, it is beyond definition.There are thousands of books written by great philosophers in an effort to define beauty. The effort is as old as man himself, because even the first man must have felt beauty. It is impossible to conceive that the first man did not feel that the roses are beautiful, that the lotus flower is beautiful, that the starry night is beautiful, that the full moon is beautiful, that silent eyes are beautiful, that the face of a buddha is beautiful. It is impossible to conceive that the first man was not aware of beauty. But thousands of years, thousands of efforts of aestheticians, philosophers, poets, painters – all have failed to define a simple phenomenon which everybody experiences. It is not something that only very unique individuals experience; it is experienced by everybody in some way or other – such a vast and common experience.But then the question arises: What is it? When you try to pinpoint it, suddenly it disappears. You know it, but you cannot say.A beautiful incident in Rabindranath Tagore’s life:He used to go deep into the rivers in the lonely silences of the forest on his houseboat. One full-moon night, he was on his houseboat reading a book on beauty by a great philosopher. And they all start with great enthusiasm, as if they are going to define. As you go deeper into the book the enthusiasm starts disappearing and you can start feeling their embarrassment that they have taken on a task which is intrinsically impossible. And as he closed the book, coming to the conclusion that beauty is indefinable… He was reading the book in the candlelight, and because of the candlelight, the light of the moon had not entered through the windows of his cabin. He blew out the candle, he was going to bed, and suddenly from everywhere the moonlight came in, dancing.He said, “My God, what a fool I am. Beauty is standing at the door, almost knocking! I am blinded by a small candle, and I am so much absorbed in reading the book – which is nothing but empty words, which leads nowhere but into the desert of indefinability.”He opened all the windows, all the doors, and came out on the deck of the boat. He had seen many beautiful nights, many beautiful full moons, but he had never seen such beauty, such silence. On the river, it was all silver of the moon. He remained silent, almost moonstruck.In many languages the word moonstruck means madman. And certainly if you open your heart to the moon, it is maddening; it is so immensely beautiful that your mind stops its chattering – you fall into a silence which we call meditation.He wrote in his diary that night, “The beauty can be seen, can be felt, can be experienced, it can drive you mad, but you cannot define it. And I decide from today not to read any book which is an effort to define beauty, because no book can do it.”Mysticism is simply to bring into your life all those dimensions which are indefinable, and make you courageous enough to accept them, knowing perfectly well that definition is not possible, that reason is impotent.Just because idiots have been asking questions: How? Why? – slowly, slowly the whole of humanity has dropped all those things about which they cannot give explanations. Life has become very mundane, profane; it has lost its sacredness, its divinity. It has lost its godliness.To me, God is not a person. God is simply a symbol, symbolizing all those values which are indefinable – available to experience, but not available to reason; available to the heart, but not available to the mind.This adventure of creating a university of mysticism is to bring all those values back to humanity. This is not going to be an ordinary university. It is not going to teach all those subjects which are available to reason. It is going to help you to open yourself to all that which cannot be taught. It will not have teachers, it will only have openers, masters. It will not be situated in a certain place, it will have schools all over the world – I’m calling them mystery schools. All those mystery schools together will be the University of Mysticism.In true spirit it will be universal. A university has to be universal!And its function is totally different: it is not going to teach you chemistry and physics, science and commerce and arts – all that is done already by thousands of universities, and it is all worthless. This I can say because I have been a student in the universities, a professor in the universities; on my own authority I can say that they are engaged in mundane things. They create engineers, they create doctors, they create technicians. They are all needed. But they don’t create poets; they kill the poets. They don’t create mystics. They destroy the very roots on which a mystic can grow.The University of Mysticism will be concerned only with the supra-rational, that which is beyond the mind. And there is so much beyond the mind that if it is not made available to you, your situation is such as it happened in the Second World War:A small airplane was left in the jungles of Burma when Japan was defeated; the Japanese left it there. The aboriginals who lived in the forest found it. They were really very curious, excited – what is it? But seeing the wheels… They figured out that it is a kind of bullock cart, but some idiotic people have made it because this is not the way bullock carts are made. They started using that airplane, small airplane, as a bullock cart. Just by chance a man, a hunter, saw them; he could not believe his eyes – an airplane being used as a bullock cart!He asked them, “Have you made it?”They said, “No, we are not such idiots, why should we make it? We have found it. But we are enjoying it.”The hunter was from a nearby village where he had seen buses, cars. He said, “It seems to be a kind of car. It is not a bullock cart. You just wait; I will bring one of my friends who knows something about buses.” He used to work for a bus transport service. So they brought some petrol, and it did work like a small bus.The people thought it was hilarious. They said, “So we were wrong, it is not a bullock cart; it is a bus. Great idea!” They enjoyed it.Then the mechanic who had come, said, “I don’t know much about airplanes, but as far as I can see it is not a bus. I have seen airplanes only in the air. My village is small. Buses come up to my village and I have worked on the buses so I can help with this airplane – but this is an airplane because you can see the wings. I know a man in the city – I will find him and I will bring him – who knows about airplanes.”And the man from the city came and he said, “What nonsense is this? You are using a beautiful airplane as a bus, and that too in the jungle where there is no road, nothing. You are just dragging it through muddy roads. It can fly.”The aboriginals said, “It can fly? Is it a bird?”He said, “It is a bird – have you not seen steel birds flying?”They said, “We have seen, but we have never seen them on the earth.”The man managed. He took a few aboriginals with him and the airplane functioned as it was supposed to function – it started flying. And the whole village was dancing, beating their drums, singing, “This is great! A bullock cart flying!”Man is not just a mundane physical, material phenomenon. He is not just a bullock cart, but that’s how we are using him. We are all using ourselves as bullock carts. We can be buses – Suraj Prakash can help, he knows transport! – but we are not buses either. We are airplanes.I can help you to fly. Man can exist on many levels. There are levels and levels above. Mysticism simply means… You are not using your potential in its totality; you are using it only partially, a very small part, a fragment. And if you are not using your potential in its totality, you will never feel fulfilled. That is the misery; that is the cause of anguish.You are born to be mystics. Unless you are a mystic, unless you have come to know existence as a mystery – beyond words, beyond reason, beyond logic, beyond mind – you have not taken the challenge of life, you have been a coward. You have wings, but you have forgotten it.The University of Mysticism is to remind man about the wings that he has. He can fly, and the whole sky is his.Osho,Eight years ago you sent me on a journey to go and love myself. This is somehow happening: my heart space is growing. But something is missing since I'm still looking outside for an answer, for the other. Please comment.Gunakar, love has three stages.First you have to learn to love yourself, because only if you love yourself can you love the other. You have to love yourself so much that love starts overflowing. Perhaps that is where you are; you need the other. That is the second stage of love.Loving the other is a difficult job. Loving oneself is simple – because the other need not fit with you, need not fulfill your expectations; the other may start power trips, ego trips, all kinds of numbers. And you will need love enough not to be dominated, not to be destroyed by the other; otherwise, the other always destroys it.Jean-Paul Sartre is not absolutely wrong when he says “the other is hell.” Alone you can be silent, peaceful. With the other everything becomes difficult, everything becomes a conflict. The very presence of the other makes demands on you. You have to be very compassionate, very kind, not to get caught into an intimate enmity; otherwise the other is going to become a hell to you.It is not just a coincidence that all the religions of the world have been teaching celibacy – it is just to avoid the other. Religions have been teaching you to renounce the husband, the wife, the children. Renounce the other; move to the mountains, to the monasteries, be alone. Their anti-life attitude is really an anti-other attitude. They have burned their fingers – but what they are doing is a reaction, it is not an understanding.You have to be so loving that your love transforms the other to such an extent that you can say the other is not hell. You have to be very articulate, very understanding. It is one of the greatest experiments in life. There is no other experiment which is bigger. You have to love in such a way that slowly, slowly it changes the other person, and the other person starts dropping the effort to dominate, the effort to manipulate. It all depends on your love.In each case you should remember that you have taken the step. It is your experiment, and you have to be grateful to the other that he is participating in your experiment. If you want your experiment to be successful, then you have to go on loving in spite of the other, not bothering about small things.Only when you can love the other person to such an extent that it becomes a transformation in him or in her does the third stage of love arrive. Then it is not a question of two persons loving each other; then it is love which engulfs two persons and the two persons become, in a certain deeper sense, one whole.In India we have the statue of Ardhanarishwar – half man, half woman. That is the third stage of love: when the man and the woman are no longer two persons, they have become half and half into one whole. This third stage of love is, automatically, meditation. One who can reach this stage need not do anything else for meditation; this will be his mysticism. This was the whole approach of Tantra, to reach to the third stage of love; then no other religion, no other methods are needed. Love itself becomes your god, your ultimate experience.But the second stage is really difficult; otherwise for thousands of years people would not have escaped into monasteries. What was the fear? Why were they trying to hide in monasteries?In Athos, in Europe, there is a monastery which has existed for one thousand years. There are three thousand monks in the monastery even today. In Athos a man only enters; then coming out is out of the question. He comes out only when he is dead. And no woman has been allowed into the monastery in one thousand years, not even a six-month-old baby. People must be scared, must be living in great fear. Behind the great walls of the monastery they have already entered their graves. Only the graveyard is outside the monastery, so when they die then they can be brought out.And in these monasteries they have been doing all kinds of austerities and they have been suffering all kinds of things imposed by them. Certainly the second stage of love must be a greater torture; otherwise why should these people choose this? And these are intelligent people, more intelligent people than average.I have heard about a Trappist monastery. In that monastery, talking was not allowed. Every monk was given an opportunity, if he had something to say to the abbot, once in seven years’ time.One monk entered, renouncing his wife. Seven years passed. Those seven years were such a torture – because the cell that was given to him was too small and the glass of the window was broken, so whenever it was raining the water was coming in. Day and night he was shivering; he could not ask for more clothes or blankets because speaking was not allowed. For seven years, he had to wait.Seven years he waited, and as the seven years were completed he rushed to the abbot and he said, “This is strange. My window is broken and water has been continually coming in. I was not expecting that I would be alive after seven years; somehow by God’s grace I am alive. Please fix the window.”The abbot was very angry. He said, “It will be done, but remember a monk is not supposed to complain. That is not the attitude of a monk.”The poor fellow went back in his cell. They repaired the window, but in the seven years’ time that the water had been coming in, his mattress had become a mess. Now he remembered but it was too late – what to do with this mattress? Now he has to sleep on this mattress for seven years again. But he has accepted the austerities of being a monk. He remained, although he was not silent, he was completely full of anger and wanted to kill the abbot: “Do something!” But it was not appropriate.Again seven years passed, and the monk rushed, and the abbot said, “I know, there must be some complaint again.”He said, “What to do? Complaint or no complaint, but that mattress is rotten. Seven years of water on that mattress – you just come and have a look.”He said, “There is no need. You just go, the mattress will be changed.”The old mattress was taken out, and the new mattress was brought in. It was too big. Again the glass was broken; while they were bringing the mattress in, the glass was broken. He said, “My God, again seven years, the whole life is wasted.” Again the water started coming…After seven years, when he went to the abbot, the abbot said, “No more complaints – you just get out of the monastery. I have not heard anything from you in twenty-one years except complaints, complaints, complaints – and this is not the way of the monk.”But he said, “At least listen to my story.”The abbot said, “You just get out. You are not worthy to be a monk, just go to your wife.”He said, “My God, again to my wife! After twenty-one years she must be waiting to kill me! It is better that I go to my cell; anyway, in twenty-one years I have become accustomed. But to go back to the wife again…”The second step is really difficult, and because of the difficulty all religions have chosen to escape from life. But escaping from life is not the answer, it is simply cowardice. Life has to be changed through understanding. And if you love, love has an alchemy of its own. If love cannot change the other person, it only means you don’t know what love is; you must be misunderstanding something else for love, because love is absolutely capable of changing people. In fact it is the only way to change.And when Jean-Paul Sartre says, “The other is hell,” it is Christianity that is speaking through him, it is not he. He is unconscious; he is not aware that what he is saying represents two thousand years of Christianity condemning the other. And then, when you come to the other, you don’t have love – naturally you are incapable of changing and the other is incapable of changing you.There is no place where love is being taught. There is no place where love is being nourished. That is one of the functions of the mystery school: to make your love pure, pure of ego and power and domination – just a sheer gift of joy, a delight in the being of the other person, just a sharing of all that you have, holding nothing back.Love is the greatest magic.Don’t be afraid of the other; let the other enter your life. I don’t teach escapism. I teach you to go into the world, to transform the world, because only in that transformation will you be transformed. By escaping to the hills and to the monasteries you will miss transformation yourself. You will shrink, you will not expand. And if you cannot love a single person, how are you going to love the whole universe? And that’s what prayerfulness is – loving the whole universe.People feel that it is easier to love the whole universe, because there seems to be no problem. The universe, the trees, the stars, the moon, the sun – they don’t create any problem.Gautam Buddha used to say to his disciples after each meditation in the morning, “The last thing before you get up from the meditation is to shower the whole world with the blessing that you have experienced in meditation. Don’t keep anything for yourself.”One man approached Buddha and he said, “I can do it; just one small exception – and I hope you will not object to it, it is such a small thing.”Buddha said, “What is that?”He said, “I can share my love, my joy with the whole universe – but not with my neighbor, that is impossible. That I cannot do.”Buddha said, “Then for you, forget about the whole universe. For you, this is the rule: after each meditation you shower all your joy and all your peace and silence on the neighbor.”The man said, “My God, what are you doing?”He said, “I know what I am doing – because the neighbor is the problem.”Even Jesus: in one statement he says, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” exactly as he says, “Love thy enemy as thyself.”I was talking to one of the Christian theologians and I said, “Perhaps both these persons, the neighbor and the enemy, are the same – because where are you going to get the enemy? He is unnecessarily repeating the same thing; it was enough just to say ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ That was enough – because the neighbor is the enemy. Where else are you going to get the enemy?” It is easier to share your love with the whole universe.No, first share your love with one individual, because he will give you real trouble. And unless you have passed that examination, you are not in a position to share your love with the universe. Then the universe is an empty word. Start by finding the person, the more difficult the better.It is a kind of asceticism, just a new way of being an ascetic – finding a woman is far more difficult than going to the Himalayas and distorting your body and doing Yoga exercises. That is nothing; even circus people are doing far better, but they don’t arrive to any superconsciousness. Just one woman, a really difficult woman, and she will open the doors to the whole universe.Gunakar, it took eight years for you to love yourself; now, don’t go on that way so slowly. The second part is the longest, but if you are determined… And Gunakar is a German. If he decides, he will do it.The other creates trouble only because your love is not enough. If your love is overflowing, the other will be showered by it, cleansed by it. And instead of creating trouble for you, the other can become a tremendous help, a complementary part in the organic unity of your being, and can lead you to the third stage. It all depends on how much you can love.I don’t think that one should be miserly about love. It costs nothing. And it is not a quantity – that you have loved one kilo, so now there is one kilo less. It is not a quantity. The more you love, the more you have it. The more you give, the more the universe goes on pouring into you from all sides. There are hidden springs, just as in a well.It happened once that there were no rains for four years continuously, and of course the king closed his well to save the water. He himself started drinking from the public well because the palace was using too much water. And if the rains were not going to come for one more year, the public well would be dry, but then at least the king and his family could survive. The rains did not come. Then he opened his well, but strange, the water had disappeared. Every well is connected with hidden springs. When you take water out of the well, more water comes from those springs. When the water was not taken from the well, the springs started a reverse journey. They started taking water to the public well – and because they are underground you don’t see them.Love has an underground way of filling you, invisible. The only way to know is just give it and see – you are always full. Don’t give it, and one day you will find your well is dry.Osho,I sit before you and my heart aches to know you. The gulf between us seems so great – although I feel this comes only from my part. Please, Osho, help me to understand this.There is no need to know me. The need is to know yourself.Your very desire is basically wrong; hence the gulf. You cannot know me, and there is no need either. That is my work, and I have done it. Now you do your homework. The day you know yourself, there will be no gulf between me and you. Knowing yourself, you will know me and you will know everyone else too.The whole secret is within you, but you are looking the wrong way – outside. Trying to know me means you are still looking outside. Please close your eyes and look inside.Your whole energy has to settle within yourself, in your very center. In that very settlement arises the knowing, the light, the flame.And it is not that you know only yourself; you know the whole universe – because we are made of the same stuff, the same universal consciousness.Osho,This morning my boyfriend was complaining about me, saying that I am not honest with you because I'm showing you just one side of myself, and that he is the one who is receiving all my bitchiness. Is it true that I am hiding something or is it that your physical presence is provoking something so different in me that my dark side is simply dispersing?This is a perfectly good arrangement!I am your master; you cannot be bitchy with me. And he is your boyfriend – if you are not bitchy with him, what are you going to be with him? He will miss – boyfriends need it. Unless they have found a good bitch, they are passing into great trouble. This is perfectly right.That’s why I always want my sannyasins to have their boyfriends, their girlfriends – so that I am left in peace!

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 30 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Each time I come close to you, it looks like my mind doesn't work anymore. I cannot hold on to any concrete thought; everything disappears as if in a white, light cloud. On one side it is like coming home after all this intense longing, and on the other side the fear of becoming crazy comes up. Is this the fear of losing control, or the first step of becoming a disciple and part of a divine madness? Am I on the right path?The mind is the wrong path, and the no-mind is the right path. Mind is basically mad, and sanity is possible only, blossoms only, in a state of no-mind. If this is remembered, then nothing else is needed.Coming close to me, your mind is bound to disappear for the simple reason that I am not a mind. The closer you come to me, the more you will be filled with a silence, serenity, no-mindness.It is also natural that you will feel a little fear, because you have lived your whole life with the mind. And in the world it is being taught to everybody that losing the mind is madness. It is not the whole truth, because no madman ever loses the mind; in fact the madman is lost in the mind – his mind has become a jungle and he cannot find a way out of it. It is not that he has lost the mind, he is lost in the mind. He is more mind than he ever was before.The madman has more mind than you have. Your mind is not so uncontrollable, not so big, not so vast; it is a normal size, manageable. The madman has lost himself in a vast, unlimited jungle of thoughts, desires, dreams.So the maxim that “losing the mind is madness” is not right; it has to be changed. Losing yourself in the mind is madness. And if you understand this, then the definition of sanity is simple: coming out of the mind into the open, into the silence, where no thought, no desire disturbs you.You are just a pool of silence, not even a ripple on it – this is sanity. But because you have lived your whole life in the mind, the first step out of the mind will look dangerous. You are going, according to the world, into craziness. According to me, you are going into sanity. And you can be a witness to it, because when you are close to me and the mind disappears, are you more sane, or more insane than you usually are in your day-to-day life?In the silence of no-mind, how can you be crazy? Craziness needs contradictory thoughts, irrelevant thoughts, inconsistent thoughts dragging you in all directions, pulling you into pieces. You are somehow holding yourself together, but you know that if you drop control even for a single moment you will fall into pieces. And it will be impossible to put those pieces together again – who will do it?The mind is afraid. But this is one part of being with a master: without your knowing, you have already come out of the mind for a moment. You have tasted, experienced that there is no fear of going crazy. And the farther you go beyond mind, the more intelligent you become.Remember, intelligence is not part of the mind. Intellect is, but intelligence is not; hence the intellectual is full of mind but in life he behaves very unintelligently. He has a certain expertise, he is trained intellectually to do a certain thing, his mind is functioning like a computer. But life is not one-dimensional, you cannot exhaust it in one expertise; it is multi-dimensional.It is a well-known fact that the great intellectuals of the world have all been found to be unintelligent outside their field of work. I will give you a few examples.Karl Marx was certainly one of the great intellectuals. Now he rules over half of humanity, and perhaps will rule over the whole of humanity one day. He has defeated all – Gautam Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Moses. Now communism is the greatest religion in the world, and Marx is their god.His expertise was in economics, particularly the economic divisions of society – the classes, the class struggle. He was tremendously accurate, very factual, very historical, and utterly scientific. He called his philosophy “scientific materialism.”He was a chain-smoker, and he used to smoke the costliest and the best cigarettes. And he never worked, he never earned anything; he was talking about capitalism and against capitalism, and he was dependent on a friend who was a capitalist – Friedrich Engels, who was a great industrialist. Engels was supporting him throughout his whole life. And Karl Marx was living exactly the bourgeois life he was against: he was not producing anything, he was not creative, he was not a worker. He was not a member of the proletariat and he was living luxuriously.His wife was disturbed, his friend was disturbed, his doctor was disturbed: this chain-smoking was going to destroy his health. But he was incurable. He could not think without smoking – there was a certain association, because he had always been smoking and thinking. The moment he would stop smoking, the thinking would also stop; they had become associated, entangled in each other. To think, he needed to smoke.One day… His wife could not believe it, he was coming home with big boxes full of very cheap cigarettes. His wife said, “But this is not your brand. This is the cheapest cigarette.”He said, “A great thought occurred to me when I went to purchase the cigarettes. Just as I was standing there, somebody was purchasing this brand of cigarette; I thought, ‘My God, these cigarettes are so cheap that one cigarette of my brand is equal to six cigarettes of this brand. If I start smoking these cigarettes, I can save so much money, and the more I smoke the more I will save money!’” And he was smoking like crazy. He went into his study and started smoking; he was throwing away half-smoked cigarettes and burning new ones.His wife thought he had gone mad. “How you can save money if you are destroying cigarettes like this?”Theoretically, intellectually, he was right: you smoke one cigarette and you have saved the money of five cigarettes. But nothing is actually saved. His friend was called, and his doctor, and he wouldn’t listen to them. He said, “You don’t understand economics. It is absolutely rational and logical what I am doing.”But the friend brought his servants together and said, “Take all the cigarettes out of the house – and what nonsense is this economics you are thinking about? You will burn your lungs!”Karl Marx said, “In my whole life I have found only one thing by which I could have earned some money, but strange… My wife is against it, my friend is against it, my doctor is against it, the neighbors are against it – even my servants are against it! And nobody understands economics.”He was intellectual, but not intelligent. Intelligence is a totally different affair.It happened after the Russian revolution. What is now the city of Leningrad was called Petrograd before the revolution. It was named after Peter the Great – Petrograd. Just in front of the palace there was a big rock, a very beautiful rock. Lenin, the chief architect of the Russian revolution, wanted to remove that rock because the rock was not allowing modern vehicles, cars, buses, to move on the road; they had to go around and take a longer route. It was perfectly okay when there were no cars, but that rock was not needed at all there in the middle of the road. The rock was very big; engineers were called, all kinds of suggestions were made about what should be done. A poor man with his bullock cart was standing there, looking and watching what was happening. Finally he laughed, and Lenin asked him, “Why are you laughing?”He said, “I am a poor man; I don’t understand anything about what these great engineers are thinking. But it is a very simple matter, and they seem to be finding it almost impossible to remove it. There is no need to remove it. Just dig a hole around the rock; go on digging the hole and pulling out the mud. The rock will sit deeper in the hole and it won’t be a barrier. You need not be worried how to take it out; there is no need. It can just become part of the road – it is such a beautiful rock. But I am a poor farmer. I may be absolutely wrong, I don’t know. But this is how we work in our fields if some problem arises.”Lenin has written in his diary, “That day I felt that to be intellectually trained is one thing, and to have intelligence is something else. That poor man had intelligence – no training, no education, but a simple insight.” And that’s what has been done. The rock is still there; it has just been sunk into the road.Mind, at its best, can be a great intellectual, but it can never be a great intelligence. Intelligence needs freshness.Intellect can only do that which it has been trained for. It is just like a parrot; it can repeat exactly what you have trained it for. It is a computer. First you have to feed it, feed it the information; then the computer has a memory system – it keeps it, and whenever you need it the computer is ready to give you the information back. But don’t ask any question which is new; the computer will not be able to give the answer. It has no intelligence.The same is the situation of the mind. Have you observed it or not? It can give answers which you are educated about, informed about, which you have studied, which in some way are stored in the memory bank of your mind. It can give them back to you whenever you need them. But if something new arises – it may be very small – the mind is absolutely impotent to find an answer for it, because the information is not there in the bank; it is not part of the memory.Mind is memory, not intelligence. Intelligence is when you encounter new things, new problems, and your being mirrors those new problems and finds answers for them. You have never been told about them, you have never studied them. Your memory is absolutely incapable of supplying an answer.Great intellectuals, finding new problems, are always in difficulty.It is said that one day Albert Einstein, one of the greatest mathematicians of the world, entered a bus to go to the university and gave some money to the conductor. The conductor gave him the ticket and some money back, the change from the money that he had given. He counted the money and he said, “You are cheating me.”The conductor said, “Perhaps. Just let me count again.” He counted, and told Albert Einstein, “It seems you don’t know figures; you don’t know how to count. Just keep quiet and sit down.”He told his wife, “It was a very embarrassing situation; the whole bus laughed. It was good that there were no professors or students; nobody knew that I am Albert Einstein and the conductor is saying, ‘You don’t know figures.’ And I have dealt with the biggest figures in the whole history of man, my whole work is figures. But I thought it was better not to make any fuss about it. You just count this money and see whether he was cheating me or I was wrong.”The wife counted it, and she said, “It is perfectly right. Looking at your ticket, your money and the money you gave him, it is perfectly right. And it seems that you don’t know how to count! You have become so accustomed to big figures, figures with hundreds of zeros behind them, that you have forgotten small figures. You should never say anything to anybody; if any such situation arises, keep quiet.”One of my friends, Doctor Ramamanohar Lohia, went to see Albert Einstein. Doctor Lohia was educated in Germany and he had arrived exactly on time. Albert Einstein’s wife said, “You will have to wait a little. I cannot be sure how long, because he is in his bath and he never likes to be disturbed while he is in his bath. And one never knows how long he will take.”Doctor Lohia said, “I can wait.” He thought maybe fifteen minutes, half an hour – what more can one do in a bath? Six hours… The wife gave him breakfast, the wife gave him lunch, and he said, “My God, and he is still in his tub? What is he doing?”The wife said, “In the beginning, when we were married, I used to disturb him, and that kept him angry the whole day. He would throw things and he would make all kinds of nuisance and shout. He gets very much disturbed, because he has made all his discoveries about the stars in his tub, in his tub with a bubble bath. He goes on playing with bubbles, soap bubbles; for him, those soap bubbles are stars. And he works out… I don’t know how he works it out, but he works it out – he has written all over the bathroom on the walls. I will show you his bathroom; it is all mathematics.”After six hours Albert Einstein came out and he said, “So you have come? You have come just at the right time. Just as I come out of the bathroom, you are sitting here.”Doctor Lohia said, “I have been sitting here for six hours!”He said, “My God! But just forgive me, because when I am in my tub with the soap bubbles then I forget time completely. Then only stars and all the equations about new stars, their distances… You should see my bathroom.”And Doctor Lohia told me, “They both took me to the bathroom. All the walls had great equations” – beyond his capacity because he was not a mathematician. He said, “You have made the bathroom your lab.”He said, “I have not made it, it has become a lab by itself. These soap bubbles somehow resemble stars.”Now this man is one of the greatest intellects – but he was the cause of an unintelligent thing, an ugly and inhuman thing that happened. He was the cause of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, because he wrote a letter to President Roosevelt of America: “I can make atom bombs. And just that you have atom bombs will be enough; there is no need to drop them. Just having them will be enough for Germany and Japan to surrender.” But this was an unintelligent thing to do.Roosevelt allowed him, gave him all the facilities to make atom bombs. He made the atom bombs, and once they were made they were in the hands of the politicians. And he was writing – Roosevelt was no longer president, Truman became president, and he was writing to Truman – “Those bombs should not be used, that is my first condition.” Truman never replied to the letter. Who cares? You have done your work, you have been paid for your work. You are not the master of the bombs; the bombs belong to the government.And Truman dropped those bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki without any reason. Germany had already failed and accepted its failure, and Japan was ready any day: the experts say that, at the most, one week or two weeks and Japan was going to surrender. Japan could not stand alone without Germany, and there was no need to destroy two cities of civilians who had nothing to do with the war – children, women, old men, mothers, pregnant women, who have nothing to do with war. And not a small number – each city was more than one hundred thousand people. Two hundred thousand people…But Truman was interested to drop those atom bombs as quickly as possible, because if Japan surrenders then you cannot drop them. Then there is no chance – where to experiment? And he wanted to experiment.This was an experiment. Two hundred thousand people died. And for generations the effect of those two bombs will continue, not only in human beings; in the fish, in the animals, in the trees – everywhere, the radiation will continue.At that time Albert Einstein was crying and saying, “I am an unintelligent man. I could not see a simple thing: that once you give power to the politicians it has gone beyond your hands, you cannot do anything.”His dying words were, “In my next life I would like to be born as a plumber, not as a physicist, because I don’t want to commit such murderous acts again. And it was my foolishness…” Although what he proposed was very intellectual, it was not intelligent: “Just the very show of power is enough.” But politicians are so hungry to show their power that without making it actually felt by the whole world, they will not be able to restrain themselves.Have you seen two dogs fighting? Most probably they will bark at each other, jump at each other, and you will see that there is going to be a bloody fight – but nothing happens. They judge and see who is stronger, and once it is accepted by both that one is stronger than the other there is no need to fight. Then one dog simply puts his tail down, gives the signal: “Stop it. You are the winner, I am the defeated, and we can still be good friends.”Dogs are more intelligent than politicians. This is an intelligent way to see it: what is the point now? “It is so clear that I am weaker than the other; what is the point in unnecessarily getting fractured bones and blood? It can be decided just by shouting and jumping, and making the whole show…” It is going to happen, now it is going to happen. But it never happens. One dog understands, and immediately he drops his tail.You must have seen that if you approach a house and the dog is not aware whether you are a friend or a foe, he does both things: he barks at you and he goes on waving his tail. One never knows which way things turn out – if it turns out to be a friend, barking will stop and he is already waving his tail, “Welcome!” So he is just waiting, intelligently, for the time when the owner of the house comes out. Then he can see whether this man is friendly or not. Before that, he is doing both things.Now dogs are not very intellectual, but they are intelligent. You will find intelligence in all the animals.Now they even say that intelligence is in the trees – and it has been found in strange ways. Now trees are not intellectuals, you don’t see them going to school with books or going to the library. No intellectual work is visible, but intelligence is there. Scientists were studying one tree: there was no water near the tree, but there was a pipeline two hundred feet away and the tree in some way found out and all its roots went in that direction – and it was a pipeline; it was not that water was available.But those roots tied themselves around the water pipe so tightly that it broke and they were getting a supply of water from two hundred feet away, and the tree remained green and was giving flowers. And when the scientists were digging, they were surprised: how did the tree roots find out that they had to go toward the north and not toward the south? They went right in the direction of the water, as if there was a subtle intelligence, a sensitivity, and they broke the pipeline and they managed to get the water which was not available from the earth.And now they have found that trees and plants have intelligence in many ways – such deep intelligence that perhaps we are far behind.Certain instruments like cardiographs have been made, which are attached to a tree. And a woodcutter is told to go and cut a branch from the tree, and the woodcutter goes with his axe. As he is coming near the tree, the cardiogram starts showing that the tree is trembling with fear; the graph on the paper starts trembling. It had been going very symmetrically but as the woodcutter comes closer, there is more trembling, more ups and more downs – and the woodcutter has not cut the tree yet.It seems that the very idea in the mind of the woodcutter is in some way being read by the tree – a certain kind of telepathy, a certain kind of thought reading. And they have tried sending another woodcutter, who is not going to cut, he is told just to pass by the side of the tree with his axe – and the cardiogram remains symmetrical. Because there is no idea in the man to cut the tree, the tree is not worried; there is no fear.Our minds are broadcasting every moment whatsoever is in our minds. Trees are getting it. Man seems to be dumb – you don’t know if somebody is coming to kill you or pick your pocket – but the tree knows. A different way of knowing must be…The man who goes beyond mind is not crazy, but enters into a different way of knowing, a different way of understanding the world, a different way of responding to reality – more intelligently, more sensitively, more lovingly, more humanly.Don’t be worried about it. This is the first step, and this is the right step.Osho,I have got the point now that being totally in the heart is only the beginning, and that the journey is never-ending. But still there are some questions: What about Meera – didn't she stop too early, just to enjoy the heart and devotion space? Now I sometimes feel that enlightenment was much easier in the old Pune stories than when you are talking about it now. Is it because we took the first step, and now you are showing us the next one?It is certain that enlightenment appeared to be much easier in my earlier teachings to you. It had to, because I did not want you to freak out. Now I can trust that even if I say the truth you are not going to escape. Enlightenment is not easy – but how to persuade people? They are so much engaged in futile things and if you give them a very difficult idea, which becomes prohibitive, they simply say, “We will see. Perhaps in some life, sometime – and what is the hurry? Eternity is available. The small things that we are engaged in doing right now will not be available for eternity, so let us finish them first.” And they will go on putting enlightenment as the last item on their list.There is an old, ancient story in India about King Yayati. His death came; he was one hundred years old, he had done everything that you can do – conquered lands, had beautiful wives, had one hundred sons from those wives, had all the treasure that one can imagine. But man’s desire is inexhaustible. He said to death, “It is too early, I have not yet completed my experiences on the earth. You will have to give me at least one hundred years more.”Death said, “I can give you one hundred years, on one condition: if one of your sons is ready to die in your place – because I have to take somebody anyway, I cannot go empty-handed. Bureaucracy is bureaucracy, nobody bothers there – just somebody’s body, and the register is marked that ‘Yes, Yayati has died.’ So if one of your sons… And you have one hundred sons.”Yayati said, “There is no problem, my sons love me so much.”He called his sons – and his sons were not children – somebody was eighty years old, somebody was seventy-five, somebody was seventy. They themselves were old, but nobody was willing to die. Just the youngest son, who was only seventeen, as yet unmarried, had just come from his gurukul, from his master’s home – he came forward and he said, “You can take me. If this can give my father one hundred years I will be immensely happy.”Even Death felt tremendous compassion for the boy. Death said, “Can’t you see your ninety-nine brothers? – nobody is willing. They are coming close to their own death. There is not much to lose for the one who is eighty years old – any day his own death is going to come. You are too young – you don’t understand what you are doing. Think twice.”He said, “I have thought about it. Exactly the same reasons that you are giving me: my father has lived one hundred years and is unsatisfied; my ninety-nine brothers have lived and none is yet ready to die. That is enough proof for me that satisfaction is not possible in this life. At least give me this satisfaction, that I have given to my father what he has given to me; I give it back to him. It is useless – life.”Unwillingly, death had to take him away.One hundred years passed and death was back, and Yayati said, “My God, I forgot completely about the fact that after a hundred years you would be back again. Everything is incomplete.”And this went on happening. When Yayati became one thousand years old, ten times death came, and every time the youngest son sacrificed himself for the father.It has tremendous implications. The old mind is not ready to die; even if you give it one thousand years to live, it clings to life. Only the youngest is bold enough to go into death without entering into the ups and downs, days and nights, summers and winters of life.But after one thousand years when death came, Yayati said, “This time things are still incomplete, but I have understood that they will always remain incomplete. You can take me. And I am ashamed that I did not understand at all. I have sacrificed my young sons – who were innocent but more intelligent; they had more insight. They could see that satisfaction, contentment, completion is not possible here in this life.”You are engaged in a thousand and one things, and you will have to leave them all incomplete – houses half built, businesses half successful, lives – yet asking for a little more time. You will die like a beggar, not like an emperor. You will not embrace death; you will be dragged by death unwillingly, reluctantly. Here, if I say to you enlightenment is very difficult, you will put it down at the very bottom of your life. I have to say to people that it is very easy, it is easier than anything else in the world, it is the easiest thing. And once you have become interested in enlightenment, then slowly, slowly I can tell you, “Don’t be stupid.” But I will say it only when the time is ripe.Enlightenment is the greatest challenge to those who really want to understand themselves and the existence surrounding them. However difficult it may be, it will remain their priority. Everything else is secondary, because nothing else is going to give you the taste of eternal life, of immortal being, of peace that passeth understanding. Nothing else is going to help you come out of the darkness in which you have lived for lives and lives – groping, groaning. It can bring you, in the darkest night of your life, the most beautiful dawn.It is difficult in the proportion in which you demand it: if it is your first priority, it is not that difficult; if it is your last priority, it is very difficult, almost impossible. But you have come a long way, and even if I say that it is a journey that never ends you can understand its beauty – you are not going to be afraid of a journey that never ends.When railway trains started in London for the first time, the first train was going for only eight miles. But all the churches, the bishops and cardinals and the archbishop of England were condemning the railway train, saying that God never made the railway train; if it was needed for human beings he would have made it himself. Such a clear-cut logic! It is certainly the Devil’s trick – and the train also looks like a devil, particularly the old engines look like the Devil. And they made people afraid – “Don’t sit in it.”There was no ticket, and lunch was served free. But the bishops were saying to the people, “You don’t know one thing: it will start, but what is the guarantee that it will stop, and if it does not stop, then what? What will you do? Just one lunch – finish! Just for one lunch the whole life is finished.”And certainly nobody had seen a train stopping. Never had a train started, never had a train stopped; there was no precedent. Nobody could say with any guarantee that it would stop. Even the engineers, the scientists, could not say it with a guarantee; they said, “We know it will stop, but a guarantee? How can we give a guarantee? We have to see.”With great difficulty… Only a few people went, half a dozen in the whole train, daredevils who said, “Okay, if it doesn’t stop that will do. If it is going to hell then we will go to hell – but we will see what happens. But lunch we cannot… We cannot pass up a free lunch.”So only half a dozen… And people were trying, their families were trying to convince them, “Come down, don’t go just for one lunch. Don’t kill yourself! Can’t you see the face of the train?” But the train stopped, and there was great rejoicing.People are afraid of anything that is unending. But those who know, should be afraid of things which end. Unending things should be the great attractions.So now I can say you are on an unending journey, where you will have overnight stops but you will never come to an end – no terminus, no Victoria Station.Osho,I am noticing that the questions you are answering are also answering mine. But the questions I have been submitting are not as articulate, and seem to be less clear than those you are answering. Now is the time for us to have you answer all of our questions. What surprises and shocks me is that at one time I considered myself articulate. Now my questions are like flames in my heart – wordless, beautiful, burning. Osho, can you say something about the necessity for a disciple to be able to articulate the questions that are burning within?The disciple who has a burning question but is not articulate enough to put it into words is blessed. It is not something that one should feel sad about. It is something that should make one feel profoundly fortunate – because to have a question which you cannot bring into words is to have a real question.Real questions cannot be brought into words. But real questions will be answered. Whether you can bring them into words or not, it doesn’t matter. In fact I am taking care of all those questions which are in your hearts but cannot find a way into language: they are the most important.So whatever questions you ask me, I use them as an excuse to answer many other questions which are not asked. But remember: if you have a question, it cannot remain unanswered. I am here just for those questions.Osho,In the mad game of master and disciple, I remember hearing you say in Pune that the master chooses the disciple first – before the disciple feels that he has chosen the master. Osho, does the master leave the disciple before the disciple can betray the master?That’s true. The unconscious disciple has no choice, either in choosing the master or leaving the master. It is only the conscious master who chooses the disciple, and if he feels that it is not the right time for the disciple, he drops him. But he drops him with such grace that the disciple always thinks that he has dropped the master.While choosing also, the disciple thinks he has chosen the master. In your sleep you cannot choose who is going to awaken you; in your sleep you can only dream. You cannot have any glimpse of reality on either end – choosing a master or leaving a master.The master chooses a disciple seeing some potential, some possibility of flowering. But there are disciples whose pace of growth is so slow that it may take lives for them; then it is better to leave them. Some other gardener will work on them. It is better not to start working on them, because leaving incomplete work is creating a difficulty for the disciple.The master is not going to come back again in the next life. If I cannot complete your work in this life, I will not begin it. Then it is better to leave you a tabula rasa; somebody else somewhere in your future life may do the work. He will have his own designs, he will have his own devices.Junnun, one Sufi master, used to say to each new disciple that arrived, “Have you ever been a disciple to another master? If you have, then my fee will be double. If you have never been a disciple of any other master, then my usual fee will do.”People were puzzled. They would say, “We thought that since we have learned so much from other masters and now we have come to you, you should not charge a double fee; you should charge half of the fee or no fee at all.”But Junnun said, “You don’t understand: first I will have to undo whatever the other masters have done, because our designs are different, our devices are different, so my work is complicated. A person who comes fresh is simpler to work with.”So if I see that a certain person is not going to develop, that whatever is done he is going to waste time – he is not in any urgency, and I am in urgency – then it is better to say good-bye to him. But it will be hard on him to make him feel that he has been left out. The better way is to create a situation in which he himself leaves, feeling perfectly good that he has left.He is given a false opportunity to think that he has chosen the master and he is given a false opportunity to feel that he has left the master. But on both occasions, it is the master who is basically responsible.Osho,Wherever you are, there is a festivity and celebration. What is this wonderful phenomenon?Festivity and celebration are our natural states; you have just forgotten them.When you come to me, you suddenly remember that there is no need to be sad, no need to be miserable, that life wants you to sing and dance, that life is not serious, but playfulness. The ancient seers used to call it leela; that word can only be translated as playfulness. It is the playfulness of existence. You just have to be reminded.Anybody who knows it, being close to him, you see your face in his mirror. And suddenly there is a remembrance, and your misery disappears – because your misery is false, your sadness is false. Celebration is your truth. It has nothing to do with me, it is just that in my presence you forget for a moment your false mask of misery. Suddenly you feel a joy, a cheerfulness, a fragrance arising in you. It is not mine. I am just a reminder, just a mirror; seeing your face, there is celebration. You cannot see your face without a mirror; that is a difficulty.I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin found a mirror on the road. He had never seen a mirror – some traveler passing by the side of the village may have dropped the mirror. He looked in the mirror and said, “My God, this is my father! And this old cheat used to have a photograph of himself and we never knew about it.”He took the mirror home. He did not want to show it to his wife because unnecessary quarreling would arise – any point was enough – so he went upstairs. The wife was looking out of the corner of her eye… “That old fellow is certainly doing something, the way he has entered.” And as he left the house, she went upstairs. He had hidden it inside a box underneath his clothes, but she found it. No husband can hide anything which the wife cannot find, it has never happened.She looked into the mirror and she said, “My God, in his old age… And he is having a love affair. And with this rotten old woman!”It is the mirror.Without the mirror you would not have been able to know how you look. The mirror is certainly a great invention.The master is also a mirror – not for this body and this face, but for your original face, for your real being, for your inner flame. And the moment you see it, suddenly you feel all darkness, all misery, all sadness gone, and there is celebration.Wherever the master is there is Kaaba, there is Kashi, because there is a possibility to experience your authentic blissfulness. Suddenly a song, a dance – you are no more your old self. At least for the moment you are a new being.And if you go on remembering this, then the master is not needed. Whenever you remember yourself there will be celebration – there will be Kaaba, there will be Kashi.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 31 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,One pair of sparkling eyes after another arrives to be with you here. Is it perhaps that you are surrounded for the first time by disciples who love you as you are, or however you want to be – and who are certainly not looking for any goody-goody saint?The way of love is the way of no-expectation. Love exists only when there is total acceptance and no desire to change anything.The moment you start thinking of how the other should be – whether the other is your lover, your beloved, your child, your master, your disciple – it does not matter who the other is, what matters is a total acceptance of the other as he is. Not tolerance; tolerance is an ugly word. In the very word tolerance there is intolerance. The very word smells as if somehow, against your will, you are managing it: it is not a loving acceptance but an unloving tolerance.It is true that it has taken me a long, long journey to find only those people who can understand me, accept me, love me as I am. I have never asked anybody to be somebody other than who he is. But for thousands of years all the religions have lived in a nightmare, in a very strange and weird situation. The disciples were demanding how the master should be; the master was demanding how the disciples should be.One can understand the demand from the side of the master: you have come to him to be transformed, to be changed; it is understandable if he wants certain disciplines to be followed. But it is absolutely not understandable that the disciples, the followers, should also demand how the master should be. And the wonder of wonders is that the masters have been fulfilling the desires of those who are their followers. The leaders have been followers of their own followers. To remain in the dominant position of being a master, they have compromised; it is a mutual compromise: “I will fulfill your demands, you fulfill my demands.” And this has been going on for thousands of years.A real master, an authentic master, a man who knows, is not going to accept any demand from those who do not know. He cannot fulfill your desires, your idea of how a master should be. But your so-called masters have been doing exactly that. If you wanted them to be naked, they remained naked; if you wanted them to fast, they fasted; if you wanted them to do certain Yoga exercises, they did them. Whatever you wanted they did, in order to remain in power, dominating you, dictating your life.And of course the disciple was the loser, because these people managed to fulfill the demands of the followers, but the followers were not capable of fulfilling the demands of the masters, so they were condemned as sinners. All the religions created nothing but guilt in the human mind, a deep feeling of inferiority, a sense of failure, a kind of hatred for oneself, one’s weaknesses, frailties. They destroyed people’s self-respect. And no crime can be greater than that, because once a person loses self-respect he loses his very soul; he loses his manhood, he falls into a subhuman existence.It has been a very strange nightmare, tremendously painful to the whole of humanity. A few cunning people – unintelligent but stubborn, stupid but adamant – managed to do all kinds of irrational things, and because others could not do them, they became great saints.I used to know one man. Mahatma Gandhi himself had praised the man as a great saint, and all that he had done was that for six months he continued to eat holy cow dung, drink holy cow urine. For six months he did not eat anything else, he did not drink anything else. I was puzzled; certainly the man was crazy, needed psychiatric treatment. And he was a learned scholar, he was a professor; his name was Professor Bhansali. And Gandhi himself called him a great saint. He used to live in Gandhi’s ashram, he was an inmate of Gandhi’s ashram. Now what kind of saintliness is this? – except that the man was utterly idiotic. But in India cow dung is really holy. And in the whole history of India Professor Bhansali is unique; no other saint has been comparable to Professor Bhansali.Hindu saints eat a little bit of cow dung and cow urine during special holy festivals. They call it panchamrit – five nectars. All five nectars have come from the cow: the cow dung, the urine, the milk, the curd, the butter. They mix them all and it becomes something divine, it becomes nectar. They drink it. They have been drinking panchamrit for ten thousand years. But nobody can beat Professor Bhansali.Naturally the people who have been doing a little bit of saintliness accepted Professor Bhansali as a great saint – unique, unparalleled, unprecedented. Even in Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram nobody was capable of doing such a feat, so they all worshipped Bhansali. He became a great master to be followed, to be listened to.Can you see any relevance in his eating cow dung, drinking the urine of the cow, to being a master and advising people how to achieve selfrealization? But nobody raised a question, because to raise a question is not only going against Professor Bhansali, it is going against the whole Hindu mind. And the Hindu mind has been conditioned for ten thousand years to accept such a man as a saint.Now Bhansali is able to dominate, and he can call you all sinners, unvirtuous, non-religious, materialistic, unspiritual.He was almost dying when I met him. He was an old man by that time; in fact he died three or four days after I met him. And I told him, “Stop all this nonsense. All that you have done is that you have eaten cow dung for six months. That gives you no authority of any kind – and you have gathered a following. You should be ashamed. First you did something stupid – and these people are not so stupid, so they cannot do it. Now there are only two ways available to them: either to be stupid like you, or to be a sinner. It seems better to be a sinner than to eat cow dung for six months and then be a saint. And hell is far away, and who knows whether it is there or not? But to eat cow dung for six months is to live in hell herenow.” I asked the man, “Except that, what kind of spiritual quality do you have?”He said, “It is strange. Even Mahatma Gandhi never asked me.”I said, “It was because he himself saw that he could not manage to eat cow dung for six months. He was a little more intelligent than you are. He called you a saint, but that does not make you a saint.”People have been saying, according to their conditioning, how the master should be: what he should eat, what he should wear, how he should speak, what he should speak about – everything is controlled by the followers and the followers are controlled by the master: a mutual arrangement of enslaving each other and enjoying a beautiful feeling that you are on the path of spirituality.I had to fight my way continuously, because people started gathering around me and then immediately they would start expecting. If I refused them, I was not a saint; they disappeared. If I had accepted their ideas, they would have been my slaves for their whole lives. And strange ideas, which have no relationship at all as far as spiritual growth is concerned…I was staying with a family. An old man, almost ninety years old – he was the father of the woman in whose house I was staying… He had renounced the world, he had become a recluse. He used to live outside the city. In thirty years he had never come to see his daughter, but hearing that I was staying there he came to see me, because he was very much influenced by one of my books. He was praising me like anything. He said, “If it was in my power, I would have declared to the whole world that this is the man who knows, and he should be listened to, followed.”I said, “You don’t know me; you just have read one book. Don’t go that far, because then the return journey is painful.”He was a Jaina. And his daughter came and told me that I should get ready, take my evening bath, because my supper was ready. And in a Jaina family the supper has to be eaten before sunset.But I said, “Today can be an exception. Your old father, ninety years old, has walked for miles and he has come to see me and I am talking to him. And it seems inhuman; I can eat a little later, don’t be worried.”The man heard that. He said, “What do you mean by a little later? The sun is almost setting – a little later? And I touched your feet, and you don’t know even the ABC of religion. After sunset nothing should be eaten.” Immediately everything changed – I was no longer the world teacher, he had immediately become my teacher. And he had come as a disciple; he had touched my feet.I said, “That’s what I was saying, that you don’t know me and the return journey will be painful. It is not my fault. You decided just by reading one book. I don’t see that there is any problem in eating in the night.“Mahavira had a problem because there was no electricity, and the people were poor. They used to eat in the dark. Even today in India, in the villages people eat in the dark, not even candle light. And Mahavira was right, that it is possible that some insect might fall into the food, some fly might fall into the food, and unknowingly you will be eating something living, and he was against violence.“But today…” – and we were sitting in an air-conditioned room; no flies, no insects, and more light than the sun brings into the room – “you can bring as much electric light into the room as you want, now there is no problem. Now those who can afford light should be allowed to eat any time when they can afford light.”He said, “You are dangerous, and even to listen to your words is a sin. I am leaving utterly frustrated.”I said, “I am not responsible. You had expectations. I never promised that I would fulfill your expectations – I had no idea of you. If your expectations are not fulfilled it is your fault, it is your responsibility. Never expect again.”Leaving me he said, “But you have lost a great admirer.”I said, “I am going to lose millions of admirers. This is only just the beginning, don’t be worried.”And I have been losing – my whole art is how to influence people and create enemies. First they become influenced, then they start expecting, and their expectations are not fulfilled; they become enemies. I have not done anything at all, it is all their doing – their own minds, doing the whole game.Certainly many people have come to me and have had to drop me for small reasons, because those small reasons, to them, were very fundamental.I had many followers of Mahatma Gandhi around me at a certain time. Even the president of the Congress, the ruling party, U. N. Dhebar, was coming to my camps – Shankar Rao Dev, one-time secretary-general of the ruling party, and many emminent Gandhians.I used to wear hand-spun clothes, and that is something very spiritual to the Gandhians. It was perfectly good in India’s freedom struggle as a token of protest against Britain, that we would not use clothes manufactured in Manchester, in Lancashire. And it had a certain logic behind it. Before the British rulers came to India, India had such craftsmen that even today there is no technology to create such thin material as was spun and woven by the Indian craftsmen – particularly living in Dacca and around Dacca in Bangladesh. Their clothes were so beautiful that Britain was at a loss as to how to compete with them in the local market.And what was done was so ugly: the hands of those craftsmen were cut off; thousands of people lost their hands so that the beautiful clothes coming from Dacca would disappear. This is not human.It was good as a protest, that “We will not use clothes woven by your machinery. You have destroyed our people, for whom it was not only a living but an art, an art that they have inherited for thousands of years, generation to generation.”But now that the country is independent that protest no longer has any meaning. After the country became independent it was idiotic to make hand-spun clothes and the spinning wheel something spiritual. To protest against this I had to drop those hand-spun clothes, because now India needs more machinery, more technology; otherwise the people are going to be hungry, naked, without any roof over their heads.The moment I started using clothes made by machinery, I was no longer spiritual. All the Gandhians disappeared. U. N. Dhebar, the president of the Congress, told me; “You are unnecessarily losing thousands of followers. Be a little more diplomatic.”I said, “You are telling me to be a diplomat, to be cunning, to be an exploiter, to cheat people? Just to keep them following me I should fulfill their expectations? I am the last one to do that.”And this went on happening in small things, small matters.I am reminded of an old Tibetan story:There were two monasteries: one monastery was in Lhasa, in the capital of Tibet, and one of its branches was deep in the faraway mountains. The lama who was in charge of the monastery was getting old and he wanted somebody to be sent from the chief monastery to be his successor. He sent a message.A lama went there – it was a few weeks’ journey by foot. He told the chief, “Our master is very sick, old, and there is every possibility that he will not survive for long. Before his death he wants you to send another monk, well-trained, to take charge of the monastery.”The chief said, “Tomorrow morning you take them all.”The young man said, “Take them all? I have come only to take one. What do you mean – take them all?”He said, “You don’t understand. I will send one hundred monks.”“But,” the young man said, “this is too much. What are we going to do? We are poor, and in those parts, the monastery is poor. One hundred monks will be a burden to us, and I have come here to ask only for one.”The chief said, “Don’t be worried, only one will reach. I will send one hundred, but ninety-nine will be lost on the way. You will be fortunate even if one reaches.”He said, “Strange…”On the next day, a long procession started – one hundred monks – and they had to go across the country. Everybody had his house somewhere on the way and people started dispersing… “I will be coming. Just a few days with my parents… I have not been there for years.” Within just a week there were only ten people.The young man said, “The old chief was perhaps right. Let us see what happens to these ten people.”Just as they entered a town, a few monks came and said that their chief had died: “So it will be very kind of you – you are ten, you can afford to give one lama to us as a chief – and we are ready to do everything, whatever you want.” Now everybody was ready to become the chief. Finally they decided upon one person and he was left behind.In another city, the king’s men came and they said, “Wait, we need three monks because the king’s daughter is being married and we also need three priests. That is our tradition. So either you come willingly, or we will take you unwillingly.”Three men disappeared; only six were left. And in this way they went on disappearing. Finally only two persons were left. And as they were coming closer to the monastery… It was evening and a young woman met them on the road. She said, “You are such compassionate people. I live here in the mountains – my house is just there. My father is a hunter; my mother has died. My father has gone, and he promised to return today but he has not returned and I am very much afraid to remain alone in the night… Just one monk, just for one night.”Both of them wanted to stay! The woman was so beautiful that it was a great struggle. The young man who had come as a messenger had seen those one hundred people disappearing, and now finally… Finally they said to the woman, “You can choose either one, because otherwise there is going to be unnecessary fighting, and we Buddhist monks are not supposed to fight.She chose the youngest, the most beautiful monk, and she disappeared into her house. The other monk said to the young man, “Now come on. That man is not going to come back; forget all about him.”The young man said, “But now, remain strong – the monastery is very close.”And just before the monastery, in the last village, an atheist challenged the monk: “There is no soul, no God. This is all fiction, this is just to exploit people. I challenge you to a public debate.”The young man said, “Don’t get into this public debate, because I don’t know how long it will last. And my chief must be waiting – perhaps he may have already died.”The lama said. “This will be a defeat, a defeat of Buddhism. Unless I defeat this man I cannot leave this place. The public debate will happen, so inform the whole village.”The young man said, “This is too much! Because your master said at least one would reach, but it seems that only I will reach.”He said, “Get lost! I am a logician, and I cannot tolerate this kind of challenge. It will take months. We are going to discuss everything in detail because I know, I have heard about this man. He is also a very intellectual, philosophical man. You can go, and if I succeed in the debate I will come. If I am defeated, then I will have to become his follower; then don’t wait for me.”He said, “This is too much.”He reached the monastery. The old man was waiting, he said, “You have come? How many had started?”He said, “One hundred and one, including me.”The old man said, “That’s perfectly good. At least you have come back. You be my successor; nobody out of those hundred is going to come now.”And the master knew it, that only one would reach.It is an old proverb in Tibet that hundreds go but rarely a single individual reaches – that too, rarely. Many have come into contact with me, have been deeply connected with me, have looked very devoted, but I knew that so many people could not stay with me – it is not a journey for all, it is a journey only for the chosen few. All their devotion will disappear like a dewdrop in the early morning sun. Just a small excuse is enough – and they will find the excuse. And particularly around a man like me who follows no scripture, who follows no tradition, who is a law unto himself. Only a very few courageous people are going to remain.Now I am talking to those people who don’t have any expectations from me. And they are perfectly aware that I don’t have any expectations from them.Now it is a pure love without any conditions attached to it. Only in this purity of love are miracles possible – and they are happening.Osho,Sitting at your feet, feeling all these miraculous things happen which I cannot put into words, I would like to whisper into your ear, “Please, promise me that you will always keep me busy being with you, that you will never let go of my hand, whatever happens!” Is this greed or a kind of disciplehood?It is not greed, because greed has its own symptoms, which are absent.First, greed never exposes itself. It always hides itself in something else; it never comes in the open. It is ugly; it cannot believe that if it opens itself, exposes itself, it will be welcome. Everything ugly in man always comes out with a mask. It is not greed. It is a simple, innocent child in you.Have you seen a child going for a morning walk with his father? The father is holding the hand of the child… And the father may have all kinds of worries, but the child is full of wonder. He has no worries; everything around him is a mystery: a butterfly, a flower, seashells on the beach, anything; all around, there are treasures and treasures. The child is not worried because he knows he is secure; his hand is in his father’s hand. It is enough security, he does not need any more security. Secure in love, safe from any danger – that is his father’s responsibility – he is available to all that is beautiful, to all that is divine and spread all over, all around.Your question has come from your very innocence: “Just keep holding my hand.”You are not asking much. It is not greed at all. I promise: you can enjoy the ecstasies that existence makes available to you. I am your security; just leave all the worries to me. In fact this is what surrender is. People ask what surrender is, but when they ask it becomes very difficult to explain to them, because it is their intellectual question. This is surrender.You are simply saying, “Just keep my hand in your hand; don’t let go of it. The path is lonely, the night is dark, but if your hand is holding my hand then everything is light. Then there is no night, there is no dark, and everything is beautiful.”This small thing I can do for you without any trouble. I will keep holding your hand. I have my own ways, my own strategies. Slowly, slowly it is not me who is keeping your hand, but you are the one holding it. But that’s a secret, I should not have told you!Osho,Since I have been here with you in India, I feel that most of my energy is going more to the inside than to the outside. So often I'm sitting around with the feeling that there is nothing to say; feeling empty much more than I ever experienced before. So many things are becoming exhausting, except listening to you. Am I closing my doors to the outside, or does this feeling have to do with the silence you are talking about?The doors are the same, whether you open them from the outside or the inside. Whether you go out of your home into the world, it is the same door you open; or you come into the home, it is the same door again you have to open. The door is not different; your direction is just different.When you are moving inward – that’s what is happening to you – the outside world is going farther and farther away from you. The doors are open, but your back is toward the outside world and your face is toward the inner. You are more ready to listen to the smallest sound inside than to all the noise outside. It is simply shifting your gear from outside to inside.You will be surprised to know that when Ford made his first car it had no reverse gear; the idea had just not happened. And it was such trouble: if you passed your house by just ten feet, you had to go around the whole town to come back to your house because there was no reverse gear.People said to Ford, “This is a very strange thing, and troublesome. You should make some arrangement so that the car can move backward.” Then the reverse gear was added.You have a reverse gear in your consciousness but you have not used it. You have always been going out, out, out, with as much speed as possible – not knowing where, but one thing is certain: you are going with really great speed.One wife was nudging her husband, “You should look at the map. You are going full speed, breaking all the speed laws, and not looking at the map, at where you are going.”The man said, “Shut up! It doesn’t matter where we are going. What matters is what beautiful speed. Just enjoy the speed.”I have heard that George Bernard Shaw was once caught traveling in a railway train without a ticket. The ticket checker said to him, “I know you; you are a world-famous man. But don’t be worried” – because he was looking for the ticket, opening this suitcase, that bag, this pocket, that pocket, and the ticket was nowhere. And he was perspiring and getting very much disturbed.The ticket checker said, “Forget about the ticket. I know you must have it; it must be somewhere. You relax, I will go, and no one will bother you along the way.”He said, “Who is bothering about the ticket? Don’t poke your nose into my affairs. I am concerned about where I am going, because it is written on the ticket – how am I going to know without the ticket?”But everybody is in this position: speed, great speed, no ticket, no vague idea even where you are going and why you are going. Just because you have nothing else to do, so you are keeping yourself busy.Once you understand that there is a possibility of going inward too, that you can go to your self, then the whole world is left far behind. Then the noise of the world will not reach you. It is not that the doors are closed. It is simply the depth of your own being. The silence is so much that it is capable of absorbing all kinds of noise; it will not be disturbed.What is happening, allow it to happen. Don’t interfere. If you can help it, help. If not, then at least don’t interfere. It is happening on its own. Soon you will start enjoying the flowers that grow only in the innermost core of your being, the fragrances that are only of the inner.And when you are at the very center of your being, there is no world outside. That has all gone so far away that the mystics have thought that it is an illusion, it is a dream. It is not a dream – that is not true; it is not illusory.The world is real – but the mystic’s feeling is also very authentic. His feeling that the world is illusory, maya, is because when he is centered in himself, the whole world disappears as if it has never been there – just the way you wake up in the morning and the dreams and the whole world of dreams disappears. That’s why all the mystics of the world have agreed on one point, that the world is illusory.I do not agree with them. The world is not illusory; the world is very much real. Still, what the mystics say is an authentic feeling. The world goes so far away and you are so much immersed in silence and peace that as far as you are concerned, the world is almost illusory. But remember, I’m saying “almost illusory.”I teach a scientific mysticism. The old mysticism is one-sided: it takes account of the inner and condemns the outer as illusory. I don’t say that the outer is illusory, neither do I agree with the materialist who says the inner is illusory. The inner is as real as the outer. But the materialist has a point – absorbed in materialism, the inner is so far away it is almost illusory.To a scientific approach, both are real. The inner and outer are two aspects of the same coin. But the trouble is, you can see only one side of the coin at one time. When you see the other side of the coin, then the first side has disappeared – seems to be illusory.When you move around and come to the first side, the second side has become illusory. There is no way of seeing the coin with from sides together, simultaneously.But it does not mean that one side is illusory, because if one side is illusory, then the other side cannot be real. Either both are unreal or both are real. And both cannot be unreal. The only possibility is both are real.Osho,If everything in life I see, I feel, I touch, is illusion, what kind of relationship do I have with you?Who has said to you that everything that you touch and you see and you feel is an illusion? Just hit your head on a pillar and then you will know it is not illusory. And if any saint says so, just bring him close to a pillar and tell him, “hit your head.”Even the people who have been talking their whole lives – the Vedantins, who are the most fascinated with the idea of the world being illusory – just watch them: they don’t pass through the walls, they always go through the doors.One shankaracharya was staying in the same temple where I was staying, and he was very insistent that everything is illusory. And he used to have a walking stick – it was lying just by his side. I took the walking stick in my hands and I said, “I will hit you on the head.”He said, “What? Don’t do that. I am an old man; you may break my skull.”I said, “This is all illusory – the walking stick, the skull, the breaking.”He said, “It is, theory is one thing, but that does not mean that…”I said, “Theory is one thing and life is another? That shows your insincerity.”Theory and life should be one. That is what is meant by being authentic. You must have been reading these so-called great saints who have been saying that the world is illusory. You know perfectly well that it is not.Just don’t eat one day, and in the night you will know that food is not illusory, hunger is not illusory – and you will be found in the kitchen opening the fridge, knowing perfectly well that it is all illusory. Why are you taking such trouble to open the fridge and take out things which are illusory; unnecessarily eating things which don’t exist?Nothing is illusory. Everything has its own reality. There are realms of reality, levels of reality. The spiritual is more real than the material, but the material is not unreal.You are asking me: “If everything in life is illusory then what is the relationship between me and you?”If all is illusory, then I am illusory, you are illusory. What relationship can happen between two illusions? Nothing is illusory. And my relationship with you is more real than the reality of things, because love is more real than anything else in the world.Poetry is more real than prose. The inner experiences are more real than the outer experiences, because with the outer experiences there is a distance between you and that which you are experiencing. With the inner experience, you and the experience are one; it has more reality. The greatest reality in the world is your realization of yourself.And the relationship with me has a reality far greater than any relationship can have, because this is the relationship that is going to lead you to the ultimate reality, the self-realization.But don’t just bring questions from books, from listening to all kinds of idiots. They may be worshipped as saints, but if they are not practicing what they say, then they are not even sincere men – what to say about their saintliness?In my childhood, one of my father’s friends in that area was a great physician, and also a very learned scholar. So saints, mahatmas, scholars used to stay in his home. And because of my father’s friendship with him, I was allowed in his home. There was no barrier for me, although whenever there was any guest he wanted me not to come. He used to say, “This is a strange coincidence, that whenever I want you not to come, you immediately appear” – because I was constantly watching from my house so that if some saint arrived, then the second person to arrive would be me. And I found out from my very childhood that these people were almost all Vedantins, the philosophy that teaches all is illusory.One of the famous Hindu saints, Karpatri, used to stay there. One day he was sitting; behind him was a door going inside the house. I simply dropped a book on his head. Now, a clean-shaved head, and the book was not just dropping, it was really hitting. And he said, “What are you doing?”I said, “Nothing, it is all illusory.”The physician was not present. He said, “Let the physician come. You should be barred from entering this house.”I said, “Strange, you believe in the house? You believe in the physician? He is sitting there just in front of you.”He looked. He said, “There is nobody there.”I said, “It is illusory, how can you see illusions? I can see him perfectly well; he is sitting in his seat surrounded by his medicines.” He looked again.I said, “It must be that you are getting old and you need glasses.”He said, “I can see everything else perfectly – tables, chairs, the walls – it is just the physician I cannot see.” And at that very time the physician came out, and he said, “Here is the physician!”I said, “The whole day you are talking about illusion, illusion, illusion, but in your life I don’t see any impact of your philosophy. And what is the point of having a philosophy of life which is just verbal, intellectual?”Avoid these people. In my childhood, when these people would be giving discourses in the temple, I used to stand up – and this was one of the points I would make to them: “Don’t mention that things are illusory. If you mention it, I will prove that they are not. And you know me perfectly well, because we have met at the physician’s place in the morning. I have already proved it.”It started happening that they would avoid coming to my village. The physician told my father, “Saints used to come to my house. Your son is such trouble that when I go to the railway station to receive them they say, ‘We are not coming, because it becomes such an embarrassing situation: before thousands of people he stands up and he says he can prove… And he can prove, and we cannot prove, that is true. It is only a philosophy that the world is illusory.’”Always remember that philosophies are worthless unless they can give you an insight, unless they can give you a new vision of life, unless they can transform you, unless they are alchemical.Osho,Why is it always so difficult to understand you and your work?Narendra, you must be really dumb, very thick. Whatever I am saying is so simple, so obvious. There is no question of understanding it; just listening to it is enough. And if it is difficult, that simply means you have not listened.Forget understanding. Put your whole energy into listening and understanding will come on its own accord, just like a shadow that follows you.I am not saying anything difficult; I am not a philosopher. I am saying very simple things, so obvious that people have forgotten them. But I can feel your difficulty.Narendra is a psychologist, more in the mind. His whole training is of the mind, and here the whole approach is to put the mind aside. The psychologist is really in a difficulty because his whole training is of getting deeper into the mind, its mechanics. And here it is a question of getting out of the mind, forgetting all the nonsense that goes on in the mind. That must be your difficulty.The difficulty is not in my teachings; it is in your training, in your education. You will have to unlearn your psychological training, because we are going beyond psychology. And if you cling to psychology, then anything that is beyond psychology will appear to be very difficult to understand.Psychology is one of the strange professions in the world. Their effort is to help people, to bring people mental health, but more psychologists commit suicide than any other profession; more psychologists go mad than any other profession; more psychologists get into perversions, sexual and others, than any other profession. Something is basically wrong, and this is what is wrong: they have been told that man is mind and nothing else. There is no soul; there is no beyond. Mind is all, and with the death of the mind everything ends.”This is a lie. Mind is not all; mind is only an instrument. You can use it rightly; you can use it wrongly. If you use it wrongly then there are going to be perversions, murders, suicides, madness. If you use it rightly then you can step beyond it.If you want to understand me, use your mind rightly.Meditate, step beyond it.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 32 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,When the Communist Party tells a lie, we know it is a lie. When the pope tells a lie, we know it is a lie and we say that he is telling a lie. But when you tell a lie, we always say it is a “device.” I would like to know why you tell us so many lies-devices. Whether I connect with you as a master or as a friend, it is still for me a question of trust. Osho, my hand, and my whole being, is trembling as I write you my first question since I became your sannyasin. Please make it clear for me once again. I love you.The first thing that has to be noted is that you are a new sannyasin; you are not acquainted with my ways or the ways of other masters. But your question is significant, and I would like to go deep into it from all possible aspects.A stone on the path can either be a stopping stone, hindering the path, or it can be a stepping stone, helping you to go higher on the path. The stone is the same, but how you use it all depends on your use.Gautam Buddha has defined truth as “that which works” – a strange definition, but immensely profound.The question is not whether something is a lie or not; the question is whether the lie is an arrow pointing toward the truth or away from it. What is the direction of the arrow? For the seeker, the lie that becomes an arrow pointing toward the truth is as valuable as truth itself. And sometimes the reverse can happen: a truth may not lead you to the ultimate truth; it may lead you toward more darkness, more mortality. Then it is not worth choosing.The Communist Party has nothing to do with devices; it has nothing to do with truth either. Its domain is that of facts, hence it is very easy to say what is factual and what is not factual. But the world the master deals with is not the world of facts.You have to understand the difference between the fact and the truth: fact belongs to the material world; truth belongs to the transcendental. What is fact today may not be fact tomorrow. You are young today, it is a fact; but tomorrow you will be old, and the fact will no longer be a fact. The truth is always the same – today, tomorrow, for the whole eternity.It is easy to find out if somebody is saying something against the factual reality; the lie is so apparent and so meaningless. But about the transcendental world, all words are lies. So it is not a question that I lie once in a while – the moment you utter a word about the ultimate you have uttered a lie.Lao Tzu never wrote in his whole life, not even a single letter. And he was known, it was felt by many, that he had found the treasure and he was not saying anything about it – what a miser! Even the emperor called him and told him, “This is not right. You should say what you have found because it radiates from your being; you come close and we can feel the coolness, the silence, the beauty. You are pregnant with something that is not of this world. Say it, write it, so that those who are groping in the dark can find the way.”Lao Tzu simply said, “Do you think I have not thought about it? I have been crying and weeping; I have shed tears in the darkness of the night when nobody could see that I was crying and weeping, because I know it. But simultaneously I also know that the moment I say anything about it, it will be a betrayal. It cannot be confined in words; no explanation is possible for this experience. So please just excuse me, I am utterly helpless. When I look at people I feel to say something, but when I go in and look at my own being, the luminosity of it, I see my utter helplessness – how am I going to pour this luminosity into words? This living truth cannot be forced into dead words, and I am not going to commit this crime.”His whole life he remained silent.A few disciples still followed him, came close to him. Although he had not spoken, they heard it. This is the mystery – they heard it like silent music, they heard it like a fragrance arising, they heard it in the beauty and the depth of the eyes of Lao Tzu. But this was possible only for very few people.Those who can understand without words don’t need any devices. You are not one of them. You will need words. You are not so innocent, so open, so available, that you can hear silence. That silence can become a sermon.Yes, there are people for whom stones are sermons; they don’t need words. But those rare people have become fewer and fewer in the world. The world has become more and more knowledgeable. People have forgotten that there are other ways of communication; now they know only one way of communication and that is the words. And in the words, the truth cannot be expressed. Then the only possible way is to tell you lies which point toward the truth.Slowly, slowly, the moment you see the truth you will understand the compassion of the person who was ready even to lie for you. Lao Tzu was not so compassionate as I am. Lao Tzu was more concerned about the purity of truth; I am more concerned about the evolution of your being. Without your evolution, the truth will disappear from the world. But if you need a few devices I don’t hesitate at all. I am ready to tell you anything that can help to bring you even a single step closer.In the end, when Lao Tzu was going to leave China and go into the Himalayas to die there, the emperor gave orders all over the country that wherever he crosses the boundaries he should be caught, and forced – unless he writes his experience he cannot be allowed to go out of the country.He was caught. The man who caught him had always loved him. With tears in his eyes, he said, “I have to follow the orders. This is my cottage; for miles there is no other house. This is the boundary – I will not let you go. You can rest in my cottage and write down your experience.”Lao Tzu had to write it down. In three days he completed his only book – just a small book, only a few pages. The first sentence is: “The truth cannot be said; the moment you say it, it becomes a lie. So reading my book, please remember it. I am writing it under compulsion. I will try my best, but even then it remains only a beautiful lie.” He was completely unaware that in the hands of an articulate master even lies can become stepping stones.He was a mystic, but not a master. He had come to know, but he was unable to lead others to know it.A man comes to me asking, “Is enlightenment possible in this life? Is it so easy? – because I have heard saints saying that it is so difficult that hundreds of lives are needed.”What do you want me to say to this man? – that hundreds of lives are needed? Then perhaps in thousands of lives also he will not be able to get it. I say to this man, “Enlightenment is possible right now. It is not a question of lives, not even of days, not even of hours. If you are ready, this very moment…” This gives him courage. Although he knows that it is not possible this very moment – but perhaps tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, at least in this life.I say to the man, “It is the easiest thing in the world because it is your self-nature. It is not something to be achieved; it is something to be remembered. You have simply forgotten it. So don’t be worried.” In a sense I am lying. I know that perhaps it will not be possible in this life, but it is a “perhaps.” Perhaps if I can give him enough encouragement, if I can give him enough inspiration, if I can give him enough challenge, it may be possible.I am ready to lie, because I am not going to lose anything by lying but he may get something. There is no harm. I am lying for his benefit. I am not lying to cheat him, because I will not be benefited by it. I am not lying to exploit him. I am simply making it clear to him that time is not important but your intensity, your longing, is important. If your longing is dull, if you don’t have any intensity, if you are lousy, then perhaps it will take hundreds of lives. But if you are ready to risk, risk your life, then this very moment can become an opening.Life is not arithmetic; it is a mystery. You cannot calculate and you cannot predict. Anything is possible – why not hope for the best? Why not create the situation for the best? If it has happened to me, one thing has become absolutely certain: that it can happen to you. I don’t put myself on any holy pedestal. I am not holier than you, I am not higher than you, I am not a prophet, I am not a savior, I am not a messenger of God. I am not the only begotten son of God; I am just a simple, ordinary man like you. And if it is possible for me, it is possible for you; the difference is only that you believe that it is very difficult. Your belief makes it difficult – that too is a lie. And when there is no other way except lying, why not make it easy?I say, “It is the easiest thing in the world.” It is a lie, but it is a better lie. It is compassionate.That’s why when communists tell a lie, it is a lie, and when a master tells a lie, it is not a lie, it is a device. It is a device to help you in some way, to bring you closer to the truth. There is no direct way; hence, indirect ways are needed. A device is only an indirect way.I have been telling the story often:A man’s house is on fire and his small children, very small children, are playing inside. They are very excited, they don’t know… They have never seen any house on fire, they are not afraid, they are absolutely innocent, and they are dancing and enjoying because they have never seen such flames.The whole village has gathered around the house and people are shouting to the children from outside, “Come out, you will get burned!” But there is so much shouting that nobody hears, and those children are so enchanted with the flames dancing all around the house, and they are just in the middle, dancing and enjoying and giggling. It is such a great excitement to them.Just then their father, who had gone to the city, comes back. And people gather around him and they say, “We are sorry, we cannot bring your children out. We have tried hard, we have been shouting, but they don’t listen.”The father goes around the house. Just near a window there is still no fire. He calls to the children, he says, “Listen, I have brought all the toys that you asked for. Just come out and get your toys.”And they all jump out of the window and they start asking, “Where are the toys?”He says, “Just come out. I have left them there in the crowd.” And when they reach there he says, “Just forgive me, I lied. I had to bring you out, and there was no way and no time to explain to you that you will be burned to death. This is fire; this is not entertainment. I have forgotten to bring your toys; I will bring them tomorrow, certainly. Forgive me for lying, but without lying it was impossible to save your lives – only your toys could bring you out of the burning house.”What are you going to say to this father? – that he is a liar, that he should feel ashamed that he lies to his own children? Or can you see his compassion, his love? And who has told you that lies are always bad? In this story they are not; they proved to be life-saving devices.If I tell you things which are beyond your mind right now, perhaps you may get scared.Do you know Buddhism disappeared from India just in five hundred years. The greatest man in the history of religion, and his religion could not survive for even five hundred years; after five hundred years his religion disappeared. Something was basically wrong in his approach – not that he had not realized the truth; he had realized the truth, but he was telling things to people which he should not have told them. He was telling the truth, but the people were not ready to hear the truth, they wanted a sweet lie. He should have told a sweet lie in such a way that they could swallow the bitter truth with it too. Every truth has to be sugarcoated; otherwise you cannot swallow it.Buddha said to people, “When you come to your innermost point you will disappear, anatta – no self, no being, no soul. You will be just a zero, and the zero will be melting into the universal zero.” Very close to the ultimate truth, but told in a very crude way.Now, who wants to become a zero? People have come to find eternal bliss. They are already tired, miserable, in deep anguish, suffering all kinds of insanity, and they have come to the master and the master says, “The only medicine is that you become a zero” – in other words: the disease can be cured only if the patient is killed. Translated exactly, that is what it means. Naturally the disease will disappear when the patient is killed, but you had come to be cured, not to be killed.The religion disappeared within five centuries. It has intrinsic reasons, and the basic reason is that people did not find it tasteful, alluring, attractive. It was naked and true, but who wants naked truth?I have to talk about bliss, about benediction, about thousands of lotuses blossoming in you. Then you think that it is worth it. Just sitting silently for one hour every day, if thousands of lotuses open inside, thousands of suns rise, then it is worth it to find one hour in twenty-four hours.But the truth is: no lotuses, no suns – just pure nothingness. That’s what Gautam Buddha was telling people.Because of his influence people followed him, but then he died. He had left great disciples; somehow the stream continued, but it became smaller and smaller. And within five hundred years it disappeared completely because nobody new was even interested in it. Nobody wanted to become just a zero and disappear; then it is better to be miserable, but at least you are, and you have some hope that some day you may get out of your misery. You are poor, but some day you may be rich. Today it is not good, but tomorrow is there. Don’t lose heart; tomorrow may bring good news to you. But this man is saying, “Renounce the world, renounce all pleasures of the world” – for what? To become a zero!The people who had followed Buddha had not followed because of what he was saying, but because of what he was. When he disappeared only his sayings remained, and nobody was ready even to hear about it.If you put zero on one side and hell on another side, people would rather go to hell; at least there they can find some restaurant, some disco. Something is bound to be there, because all the nice people have been going to hell. Only dry bones, so-called saints with no juice at all are going into heaven. All juicy people – poets, painters, sculptors, dancers, actors, musicians – they are all going to hell.So if you have a choice between zero and hell, anybody who has any intelligence will choose hell willingly. But zero? From hell there is a possibility to get out one day, even to reach to heaven. But from zero, nothing is left, not even a xerox copy – gone, gone, gone forever.I have been trying to help you move toward truth by using all kinds of devices, methods, meditations, stories, words, theories, arguments. They themselves are not true, but they indicate toward the truth. When my finger is pointing toward the moon that does not mean that my finger is the moon. It simply means: look at the moon, not at the finger – the finger is not the moon. If you cling to the finger then you will say, “You have been lying, this is not the moon.”But I myself am saying that anything that has been said or can be said is just an indication, a finger pointing. Look at the pointed at, the unknowable, the mysterious – move…Even if I have to tell you things which are not going to happen, if they can lead you toward that which needs to happen… They are lies but not just lies; they are devices. And they are out of compassion; they are just to help you. So whatever you want, whatever you desire, whatever you long for, I use it because I know that once you have started moving in the right direction you will stop longing for anything that is a hindrance. In the beginning it may have been a help. As you go closer to the truth, you yourself will see that now it is a hindrance. You will drop it.When Edmund Hillary went to Everest he had a group of at least thirty people and tons of luggage, food, materials, tents, emergency equipment, cameras, all kind of things – but he reached to the top. As he went higher and higher he had to leave things behind because each thing became heavier. As air becomes thinner, things become heavier; one has to sort out what is non-essential and drop it on the way. Coming back, you can pick it up again.Finally when he reached very close, just a few feet more, the last thing he dropped was his coat. Even the coat was feeling too heavy. Breathing was difficult. Just a few feet before he had left his camera that he brought just to take pictures. He gave it to Tensing, his associate, saying, “You keep it and you take the pictures, I cannot carry it anymore. It has become so heavy, and breathing is so difficult.” Just standing on Everest, he had nothing. He was just alone.Almost exactly the same happens in the journey of truth. You start with much luggage; you have to. If I tell you to drop all luggage right now you will say, “Then I am not going.” So I say, “You just collect as much junk as you can” – because I know you will go on dropping it by yourself. I don’t need to tell you.As you move higher, you will start dropping the junk. Even if I say, “You are dropping such valuable things – keep them!” you will say, “Now it is impossible; either the things can go on, or I can go on. Both cannot go on together, they will kill me.” And they were valuable things at one moment; now they are dangerous to life.And, finally, you will be alone. All words, all devices, all methods have been left because they all became burdensome. But in the beginning it is better not to say it; it is better to give you as much burden as possible so you enjoy the journey. At least in the beginning, you are going great. The journey itself transforms you, takes all the lies, and finally just the pure truth remains.That’s the function of a device.Osho,I am a gambler whose heart is drawn toward you like a magnet; yet when I am physically close to you I feel like a teenager on my first date, not knowing quite how to be, afraid I will do, say or write the wrong thing. Is there some gamble I am afraid to make?It is the greatest gamble of life. To be with me you are going to lose yourself sooner or later. That creates an unconscious fear.Each love affair is dangerous, because one has to lose oneself. From a distance it is perfectly good. Lovers think of so many things in their minds that they are going to say when they meet their beloved, their lover. But when they meet, they suddenly become dumb. Just the closeness creates a change – the chattering mind is no longer chattering. And there is a fear. If love is authentic there is bound to be fear.If love is not authentic, then there is no fear. Then you can say anything you like – just repeat dialogues from films you have seen and the novels and poetry you have read, and there is no risk because it is all phony.Do you understand the word phony? It comes from “telephone”. Lovers on the telephone are great talkers. Hours will pass, and they are on the telephone. They become so articulate, because there is nobody around – the woman is so far away, the man is so far away, maybe miles. The word phony comes from telephone, because the telephone changes the whole situation. It is no longer authentic, it is false. Even your voice is not your voice; on the telephone it sounds like somebody else’s voice.But face to face, if there is real love, silence descends and fear surrounds you – and the fear is of being dissolved into the other.It is one of the most important things to understand: the more you are attracted to a person the more you are afraid of the person, because the attractiveness simply means it is irresistible. When you come close you will not be able to keep yourself separate, you will forget and take a jump and become one with the other. This is about the ordinary love.When you come to a master things become even more difficult. To be with a master is to be ready to die; to die as you are, to be born again as you should be. You don’t know about what you are going to be after the death. You know what you are, and it is very natural to cling to it – because who knows whether you will be reborn or not? There is no guarantee, nobody has promised anything. And even if somebody promises something, if you are not here what is the point of the promise? Who is going to fight the case and sue the person in the court, that “This man has promised me that I will be reborn.” The dead cannot fight cases in the courts. To be with a master is the greatest gamble. You are putting everything at stake not knowing what is going to happen afterward, what the result of it is going to be.The master says that you will be reborn, that you will be born in glory, that you will be born in your immortality, in your deathlessness. Hence trust becomes the foundation of religion – not belief, but trust. Belief is in theories, in philosophies. Trust is in individuals. If you trust, you can risk.And trust is the rarest quality in the modern man. That’s why you don’t see many people who can be representatives of the divine, whose very presence can be the argument that there is something beyond the visible, beyond the tangible. There used to be many more people on the earth of that quality, but that quality has been destroyed. Religions have destroyed that quality. It will be a surprise to you, because that is the very foundation of a true religion. But a true religion can only be one without any name – it cannot be Hindu, it cannot be Mohammedan, it cannot be Christian. It can only be a quality of religiousness.Now all religions are against religiousness, want to prevent religiousness. On that point the shankaracharyas, the popes, the ayatollahs are all in agreement. So they have created something similar to deceive humanity, and they have deceived for thousands of years. Instead of trust, they have handed you belief. Now belief is just a toy – you can play with it, it cannot transform you. Millions of Christians, for twenty centuries, have not been able to produce a single Christ – what can be more of a failure?Twenty-five centuries, and all the Jainas have not been able to produce a single Mahavira. To where have these people disappeared? Now even their names seem to be suspicious, seem to be mythological. They don’t seem to be historical personalities because nothing similar exists in the world today.The priests of all the religions are the enemies of religiousness. They have given belief to people: believe in God, believe in heaven and hell, believe in a thousand and one things. But they have taken your fundamental right, they have taken your guts away from you. They have made you all businessmen. Religiousness needs gamblers.A businessman is always thinking of profit, how much he can gain out of a certain deal. The gambler is not thinking of profit. He is simply enjoying the moment when he stakes everything and waits for the unknown to happen. In that waiting, he tastes something of religiousness. But that is momentary; with a master it becomes a constant phenomenon. The closer you come, the more you are on the stake, the more you are on a funeral pyre.The day you die, the disciple is born – and the fear of death is there. You have to risk in spite of the fear, otherwise you can never be a disciple. And without being a disciple one cannot enter into the world of religion.Then you can go into a church, you can go into a temple, you can go into a mosque. You can repeat like parrots words written in scriptures – but with nothing of your own experience.The master is a jumping board from where you can jump into the unknown. Nobody has ever come back again the same. Passing through the master, everybody has come with a resurrected individuality, with a new light in the eyes, and new grace in the being – new joy in your step, a new dance surrounding you.Osho,Though I love you so much, I seem to always find reasons not to come too close. Am I avoiding your physical presence?I have just answered you.Osho,When I look inside I can see your face, when I smell inside I can smell you, when I feel inside I can feel your touch. When I heard your voice two weeks ago saying, “Come,” I could hardly believe it. But when I looked, you had this huge smile, so I am here. Can you please talk to us about the different ways of communication with you, or about communication between master and disciple?There are only two ways: one is between the teacher and the student, and one is between the master and the disciple. The first I call communication, and the second I call communion.I am speaking to you. It is possible just to be concerned with my words; then you are a student here, and as far as you are concerned I am only a teacher to you. You will become more knowledgeable, you will know more about and about, but your ignorance will remain the same.If you listen to me, not only to the words but to the heart that is beating behind them, then there is communion. Then you may not become more knowledgeable but your ignorance will start disappearing into innocence. A moment comes between the master and the disciple when just looking in the eyes is enough, or just sitting, with the disciples allowing your presence, is enough. In the silence a synchronicity slowly starts happening – a music between heart and heart which is not heard but felt.I don’t want students anymore. I have wasted enough time with them. My whole concern now is with the disciples. And for the disciple there is no other way than communion, a merger – two consciousnesses meeting and merging, losing their boundaries, overlapping.Whatever I have experienced starts overflowing in you, waking you up, waking your deepest spiritual sleep so that the disciple one day is no longer a disciple; he has come home. He has become a master himself. It is not a question of knowledge, it is a question of being, how much being you have.At a certain point your being starts merging with the universal being. There, the master’s work is finished; he can say good-bye to you. Now you have reached the point of no return. You cannot fall back; you can only go on and on to the ultimate.Osho,The mind is the sickness, the heart is a cure. Beyond that, your presence indicates silence, where words are no longer useful. I feel healthy with love, remembering you and meditation. Osho, could you say something about love, remembering you, and meditation in our daily lives?They are not different. Just concentrate your whole energy on meditation. Become silent, watch your thoughts moving on the screen of the mind. Just by watching, they will disappear one day. Don’t be in a hurry. You cannot do anything except watch and wait.Remember these two key words: watch and wait. Whenever the time is ripe, your watchfulness is perfect, thoughts will disappear – and their disappearance means the opening of the whole existence. This is what I call meditation.In this moment there will be a very subtle remembrance of me, but don’t emphasize it. Let it come as a breeze and let it go. It should not be a hindrance, it should be only a simple gratefulness – just a whiff of fragrance for a moment, surrounding you and then disappearing into the cosmos.As you become open to existence you will find for the first time what love is. It will not be addressed to anybody in particular; it will be unaddressed – to the stars, to the trees, to people, to animals, to the mountains, to the rivers, to the ocean, to everything that is. Your love will be showering on it. But you need not worry about it; these are by-products of meditation.So don’t think of three things – meditation, remembrance of the master, and love. Just concentrate totally on meditation. When the meditation is complete there will come a moment when you will remember the master; it is bound to be so. And then there will be just an overflowing of love for no reason, just because you are so full, a raincloud. You will be a lovecloud wanting to shower.The ordinary love is always toward someone, always addressed. And the addressed love is dangerous.I am reminded of a beautiful story:A Buddhist nun had a beautiful golden Buddha, a small, golden statue of Buddha. She was staying in a temple in China: perhaps it is the only temple in the whole world with so many statues. It is called the temple of ten thousand buddhas. Ten thousand statues of Buddha – the whole mountain has been carved, the whole mountain has become a temple.But she was so much attached to her small golden Buddha that although there were beautiful statues of Buddha in different postures – sitting, walking, sleeping – she would worship her own golden Buddha every day in the morning. But there was a difficulty, and the difficulty was that she would burn incense. Her Buddha was very small, and you cannot depend on the winds. The winds would come and would take the smoke of the incense to other buddhas. And there were ten thousand buddhas – her own poor Buddha was so small that he was not getting any incense. She was really angry: “This is too bad. Other buddhas are getting it, and I am not burning it for them. This is simply fraud, and my poor Buddha is suffering.”She thought of a device. She made a small bamboo, a hollow bamboo, and put it over the smoke of the incense and attached it to the nose of the small Buddha. And she was very happy because all the incense was going to the little Buddha, her own Buddha: “Who cares about buddhas? The question is my Buddha.”But that created a new trouble: the face of the Buddha became black. She went to the priest of the temple and she said, “Help me. I am an old nun and I don’t know what to do now.”He said, “But how did it happen?” She explained the whole thing. He said, “You are stupid. They are all buddhas, they are statues of the same person. You should not be so attached to your own small Buddha.”This is what happens whenever love is addressed: it blackens the face of both persons, because both are addressing each other. So you can see lovers nagging, bitching…Let the fragrance go, because all are one as far as life is concerned, all are one as far as existence is concerned. Nobody is “the other.”

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 33 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Waduda and I are leading a group called ”Meditation in the Marketplace,” which includes teaching people how their minds create their reality. One of the exercises is showing people ways to fulfill their desires. Does showing people how to fulfill their desires bring them to a state of meditation, or does it lead them further away from it?Wadud, meditation in the marketplace is my whole message, but the sense in which you have understood it is not right.Firstly, meditation is not something within the mind.The world is within the mind. Meditation is beyond the mind.The mind creates the world but the mind cannot create meditation. The mind can create frustration, satisfaction, pleasure, pain, anxiety, anguish or an animal-like contentment, the buffalo contentment – but the buffalo is not in meditation. You are right when you say the mind creates its own world; it projects itself upon objects. The same object can be a beloved, a friend, or a foe. You can die for a person; you can kill the same person too. You can desire riches, power, prestige, respectability; you can even desire desirelessness. You can create a world empire, you can be Alexander the Great; or you can renounce the world and can be a recluse in the mountains, in the Himalayas – it is your mind game.It is true that your world is your mind projected on a screen. But you are going to help people to be satisfied with their desires.You have asked a very significant question: Is it going to help them toward meditation, or is it going to take them away from meditation?It is going to take them away from meditation. You are not going to be a friend; you are poisoning people if you help them to be contented with their desires.A divine discontentment is a basic step toward meditation, not contentment. If a man is contented with his money, with his power, with his respectability, why should he meditate? You have given him the opium, you have drugged him.This has been done by all the religions down the ages – giving opium to the people, making them contented, teaching them that being contented in the world is spirituality. They consoled people, but consolation is not religion. Religion is revolution. And revolution never comes out of contentment; it comes out of tremendous discontentment.Just for an example, you can look at the history of India. For ten thousand years it has suffered all kinds of humiliations, slaveries, poverty, sickness; yet there has not been any revolution. Strange! For thousands of years millions of people in India are being treated almost like animals or even worse, but they have not revolted. They have been perfectly content because the religions – Hindus, Buddhists, Jainas – were all teaching one thing: if you are contented in the world, you will be rewarded in the other world a millionfold. To be discontented is unspiritual. If you are poor, accept it as a gift of existence.Have you not heard Jesus saying to people, “Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the kingdom of God”? In his small statement the essential religious approach toward poverty is expressed: be contented. If you are a beggar, it is only a question of a few days.And to console the poor, Jesus says, “A camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but a rich man cannot pass through the gates of paradise.” It feels good. The poor man feels proud of his poverty – it is something unique, special, divine. The rich man is stupid – just a few days of richness and then an eternity of hell. A few days of poverty, and then an eternity of all the pleasures that you can imagine, that you can dream of – and forever and forever! If both are given to you to choose from, what are you going to choose: richness or poverty? Richness for seventy years and an eternity of hellfire, no exit, no way to escape from hell, you can only get in, you cannot get out; or seventy years of poverty. It is simply a test of your trust. And blessed are those who pass the test joyfully without any complaint; theirs is the kingdom of God.Ten thousand years of all kinds of inhuman living – humiliation, slavery, poverty, death, starvation – but in ten thousand years not a single voice for revolution, that we should change this whole structure, this whole society. The vested interests are happy, those who are in power are happy. The priests are happy, and the poor and the downtrodden are contented.Karl Marx was not wrong when he said, “Religions have proved to be the opium of the people.” On that point I agree with him absolutely. Wadud, you are going to do the same thing. You are my sannyasin, and you are going into the marketplace to help people to be contented.Take meditation to the marketplace – but meditation does not mean contentment. Yes, contentment comes, but that is not in the beginning of meditation, that is the ultimate fulfillment of meditation.The first contentment is against human beings, and the last contentment is the fulfillment of all your potential: that is the kingdom of God. But that is nothing to be practiced by you; hence there is no need to talk about it. It comes on its own accord. As your meditation deepens, as you become more silent, as you become more peaceful, as you become more balanced, centered, alert, conscious, a contentment starts following you like a shadow; but that is not your doing.I do not teach contentment. But people have been cheated and befooled. You will be loved and respected by people if you go into the marketplace and help them to be contented with their desires, with the situation in which they find themselves. You will not sharpen their minds, you will not bring more intelligence to them. You will make them dull; you will make them mediocre. Idiots are always contented.You will not be helping them toward a transformation of being, because for that discontentment is needed. A man has to be so discontented with the world that he is ready to be transformed whatsoever the cost, that he is ready for any risk. And meditation is a risk. It is a risk because your ego has to be sacrificed. Either you can exist, or meditation can happen.Ordinarily you think, “I am going to meditate.” You do not understand the phenomenology of meditation. You cannot meditate. You are the barrier, you are the only disturbance. If you want meditation to happen, you have to disappear. You have to drop this idea of yourself being somebody. You have to become a nobody. The moment you are nobody a silence descends on you, followed by a contentment. It is not contentment with the world; it is contentment with existence, with the stars, with the roses, with the ocean, with the rocks, with the mountains. It is not contentment with being a president of a country or a prime minister, it is not contentment with being the richest man in the world. It has nothing to do with your so-called world of ambitions. It is a very non-ambitious state. You are utterly empty, even empty of yourself. Only in that emptiness contentment blossoms, flowers – but that contentment is divine.It is not something that you have done; it is something that you have allowed to happen. You have not been a hindrance; you have become a hollow bamboo, a flute, and you have allowed the song to pass through you. It is not your song. It has not got your signature. It is the song of existence itself.Go to the marketplace, take meditation to the marketplace, but understand exactly the implications of it. It is not meditation to help people to be contented as they are – you have drugged them, you have stopped their transformation, you have somehow consoled them that “You are perfectly right as you are, there is no more in life. You have already got more than you deserve.”And people will listen to you. They have listened for thousands of years to this kind of nonsense. There are reasons why they have listened to it: because it is very consoling, relaxing, making you free from any struggle to grow, helping you to remain wherever you are. And you are in the ditches! All the religions, through different theoretical explanations, rationalizations, have been telling people, “Wherever you are, whatever you are, just silently do your duty and you will be benefited.”Revolution, transformation, are not religious words. But to me there is no authentic religion without revolution, without transformation.I would like to say, first you need divine discontentment to begin the journey of transformation. You have to be so utterly disgusted with the world you are living in, with the personality that you are living in, that you can start a journey of transformation. The beginning of the pilgrimage has to be a tremendous discontentment.Otherwise man is lazy. If you tell the man, “There is nowhere to go, you are already where you are supposed to be and God is taking care of everything. You need not worry; all that you can do is pray. Thank God for your poverty, thank God for your sickness, thank God for your old age, thank God for your slavery…” What else have you got to thank God for?Any revolution, means revolution against God, because he is the creator, he is the maintainer of the world. He is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. He can see everything that is happening, has happened, has yet to happen – past, present, future. He can reach every nook and corner of the world, he has thousands of hands. You have seen the pictures of God with thousands of hands: those thousands of hands are saying, “Don’t be worried, there is one hand for you too.” He will take care. Any complaint is disrespectful. Any complaint means you are more intelligent than God – you are saying that you can create a world better than God has created. You can create a human personality more luminous, more cheerful, more integrated than God has created. Any complaint, any grudge, any grumbling is against God. Accept your slavery with thankfulness, accept your humiliation with prayerfulness – this is what religions have been teaching to the people. This is how they have taken meditation into the marketplace.This is an ancient story. You are not doing anything new. All the priests of all the religions have been giving the same consolation: “Keep the status quo as it is. God above, everything is okay with man, with the world.”My approach is totally different. There is no God with thousands of hands. Even thousands of hands will not be enough. Right now there are five billion people on the earth. At least five billion hands will be needed – there will not be any God, only hands! It will be a very weird looking animal, like an octopus. And looking at the world you can see that nobody is taking care of it, that it is accidental; there is no order, no harmony. There is everywhere disorder and disharmony.Can you conceive a God and Adolf Hitler at the same time? And God is omnipotent, all-powerful: just with one hand he could have taken Adolf Hitler up. But no hand came down, and Adolf Hitler killed six million people. And now Adolf Hitler is out of date. Ronald Reagan can kill the whole world, but God is still nowhere available. At least take up Ronald Reagan! Just for a change give one proof of your existence!For thousands of years man has been arguing and waiting – the proof must come – but the skies are silent, no answer comes from anywhere. There is nobody there. You are unnecessarily waiting.If you want to change, you will have to do something. You have relied on God for long enough, and the situation has been going from bad to worse. It is time to take the situation into your own hands; at least you should feel responsible for your life.Meditation is not a social revolution; it is an individual revolution. It is an appeal to the individual soul: you take responsibility in your own hands. Don’t be contented, because there is so much more potential in you. You are only seeds, and if seeds become contented that is suicide. You have to become sprouts, you have to become trees, you have to dance in the breeze, in the sun, in the moon, in the wind. You have to blossom, you have to release the fragrance that is hidden in you. And unless your fragrance is released you will not find contentment, authentic contentment that comes on its own – not created by you; that is simply hypocrisy.Somehow you can manage, convince yourself that “This is my fate.” Nobody has any fate. Strange lies, repeated for millions of years, have become truths. You don’t have any fate. Your birth chart is just an exploitation by cunning people, because the stars are not interested in you. It is very ego-fulfilling that all the stars are interested in you – when an idiot is born, all the stars are interested in the idiot.I used to live on a university campus as a teacher, and in front lived a professor who was very much interested in astrology. He himself was a professor of mathematics. I told him many times, “You must have a split personality, because a man of mathematics cannot be so stupid as to be interested in astrology. You must be two persons together. Sooner or later you are going to fall into a nervous breakdown; you are schizophrenic.”He said, “Strange, I have not asked you anything. You came to see me, and you are condemning me like anything.”I said, “I have to condemn, because I see that the whole day people are coming to show you their birth charts. You are reading their hands, the handlines; you are telling them who to marry, and who not to marry. And what about your own marriage?”He said, “Speak quietly because she is just listening.” His wife used to beat him.I said, “Where was your astrology when you married this woman? Your stars did not say anything about the fact that this woman was going to beat you.”In this country every marriage is according to the astrologers, and every marriage is a failure. Strange world we are living in: you cannot find a single marriage which is a real meeting of the hearts. And if you find it, you will be surprised – it is not decided by the astrologers. Astrologers are, without fail, failing.But man feels a great consolation that all the stars are interested in him. God is so interested in him that he is looking after him, that he made man in his own image. Just look at your face in the mirror. This is God’s face? Strange god. But because man has been writing all these fictions: “God made man in his own image” – but not the woman, no.He made man from mud. The English word human comes from the word humus; humus means mud. The Arabic name Admi comes from Adam; “adam” means mud. And he could not make a woman from mud – as if mud was so precious. To make a woman from mud would have made them equal. So God had to make the woman by taking a rib from the man, and out of the rib he made the woman.Man just wants himself to be superior – although he is made of mud. But the woman is not even made of mud; she is made from a rib taken out of man.I have heard that three men were discussing whose profession was the oldest. One man who was a priest said, “My profession is the oldest because the first thing man did was to pray and thank God.”But the second man said, “All nonsense. My profession is older.” He was a surgeon. He said, “God has taken a rib out of man to make woman. I am a surgeon, and the first surgery was done by God. Before that, there was nothing but chaos.”The third man laughed and he said, “That makes the point, that my profession is the oldest.”They said, “Your profession? Before that there was only chaos.”He said, “Yes, but the point is, who created the chaos?” He was a politician. Without him, of course, it is very difficult to create chaos.There is no God – we are still living in chaos, and the politicians are still creating it. It is not that once upon a time they created the chaos; they are still on the job.Meditation is a revolution in the individual.Social revolutions have failed. There have been social revolutions: the French revolution, Russian revolution, Chinese revolution – they all failed. Something in the very mechanics of revolution is such that it is bound to fail, because the people who succeed in throwing off the old regime, the old power, the old government, the old society, are part of the old society; that’s one thing. They have been conditioned, educated by the old society. They have been fighting with the old society with the same means, same lies, same strategies, and they have been successful because they proved more cunning, more violent, more powerful than the old power. Once they come into power, power corrupts – and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And because they have come into power after a struggle, they make every arrangement so that nobody can overthrow them.The Soviet Union is the country where revolution is the most difficult thing, almost impossible. They have closed all the loopholes, because they know how they succeeded against the czars. Now they will not allow anybody else to succeed, to throw them out of power – impossible.In the Soviet Union revolution is simply impossible, you cannot even talk about it. You cannot talk about it even with your wife or with your child – because your child will report to the Communist Party, your wife will report to the Communist Party. And they get rewarded. Everybody is spying on everybody else: children are spying on their parents, husbands are spying on their spouses. You cannot trust anybody.When Stalin died and Khrushchev came to power, in his first meeting with the communist executive body he exposed Stalin and said, “I have never seen such cruelty. Millions of people have been killed; just suspicion was enough. Somebody makes an anonymous phone call against somebody else saying that he is anti-communist, and that man disappears that very night and is never heard from again.” Stalin alone killed one million people in Soviet Russia itself, single-handed.Khrushchev had been in the executive body. One man shouted from the back, “When you were in the executive body and you knew all that was happening, why didn’t you say it then? Now Stalin is dead.”Khrushchev remained silent for a moment and then said, “Comrade, whoever was asking the question, will you please stand up so I can see your face?”Nobody stood up. Khrushchev said, “Do you get the answer? You are in the executive body. Just like you, I was also in the executive body. Just stand up, and you will know what happens: tomorrow nobody will have ever heard about you. Stalin is dead, but his strategy has to be followed; there is no other way. He will be punished” – and he was punished, but how do you punish a dead man?They punished him; he had willed that his grave should be placed by the side of Lenin’s, the leader of the Russian revolution. Lenin’s body lies in a grave in the Kremlin Square. Stalin’s body, according to his will, should lie by his side in a marble grave. Stalin had the grave made before he died. As a punishment his body was dragged out of the grave, dragged down the streets of Moscow and taken back to a very remote area where he was born, the Caucasus. He was buried there in an ordinary grave which has not even a stone with his name on it.Khrushchev did the same as Stalin did; and after Khrushchev, the people who came into power did the same with Khrushchev. Power has a strange way. It gets into people’s heads.All social revolutions have failed, and in the future also there is no hope that any social revolution will ever succeed because the very mechanism is self-defeating. Hence I teach the only revolution that can be successful, and that is a revolution in the individual. Make the individual more discontented so that he starts asking, “Is there a way to go beyond this discontentment? Is there a way to get out of this anguish?”Meditation is the way to go out of discontentment, out of anguish. You have to become just a watcher, a witness of the mind.You say mind creates the world – true. But meditation is not mind, and mind cannot create meditation. Meditation is getting out of the mind, becoming a watcher of the mind, witnessing all the stuff that goes through the mind – the desires, imaginations, thoughts, dreams, all that goes on in the mind. You become simply a witness. Slowly, slowly this witnessing becomes stronger, becomes more centered, rooted, and suddenly you understand one thing: that you are one with the witnessing, not with the mind; that the mind is as much outside you as anything else.The market is outside you, the mind is outside you, the body is outside you. You are the innermost core – everything is outside you.This experience of the innermost center brings contentment. You don’t bring it, it comes, it simply rains over you. A contentment that you have practiced is false. A contentment that comes to you on its own accord is authentic.Go to the marketplace, teach people how to be watchers of their minds, but remember not to teach them to be contented with their desires. We have to make them more discontented, till the real contentment comes. If you make them contented, then the real never comes. You are satisfied with something plastic; that becomes the barrier.Wadud is a psychotherapist. His wife Waduda is also a psychotherapist. They both work together; they are experts as far as mind is concerned. But mind has to be transcended. Mind is not our game, mind is not our world. Our world is beyond the mind.Meditation in the marketplace is a beautiful idea, but understand exactly what meditation is – not only intellectually but existentially. Experience something that you are going to share with people, otherwise you will be just parrots repeating something which you know not.I prohibit my sannyasins from repeating anything that they don’t know. Unless you know, it is better to say, “I am ignorant, I do not know.” That ignorance is yours: at least it is true. Knowledge borrowed from somebody else is against your self-respect. It is not yours and you cannot share it – you don’t have it.All that you know is in the mind, and meditation is an experience of the heart. So first let your heart sing and dance.Rejoice in meditation. Then go to the marketplace.Osho,The other day when you said something like, the more devoted one is, the more one can absorb you I got scared. I don't know what devotion is. In fact I know it less now than I did five years ago. Am I missing?Whatever you thought you knew five years before, was not “knowing.” That’s what I was just saying – it was knowledge. You have heard words, you have read the words; you have accumulated information. It was not your experience. That’s why, as you have come closer to me, those words, that information, has disappeared.To be close to me means to be innocent, as innocent as you were when you were born. Only from there is a real new beginning possible.You are asking, “What is devotion?” Devotion is the ultimate stage of disciplehood.A man ordinarily comes to a master as a student, curious, wanting to know more. If by chance it happens that the master is not only a teacher… Because a teacher is one who deals in information; with a teacher, you become taught.With a master you are caught. It is no longer a question of giving you more information; on the contrary, the master starts cleaning you of all the information that you have collected before.A master really washes your brain; it is a dry cleaning process. It brings you into a state of tabula rasa, nothing is written on you – a pure consciousness which knows nothing. But as knowledge disappears a strange phenomenon starts happening: you start feeling yourself more. You know less, but you are more. You start growing roots, you start growing wings, your being starts expanding.I am reminded of a beautiful story:A master had a monastery. There were two wings of the monastery, and just in the middle was the master’s home. He had a beautiful cat, and all the disciples loved the cat. One day the master had gone out. When he came back, both wings of the monastery were fighting over the cat: to which wing does the cat belong when the master is out, to the right wing or to the left wing? The master was amazed, seeing this stupidity.He pulled out his sword and told the disciples, “Anybody from either wing should come out and give me an authentic answer that comes from the being, not from the mind, only then can you save the cat. Otherwise I am going to cut it in two and give half to the right wing and half to the left wing, because I don’t want any kind of struggle here.”The disciples were very much shocked. Nobody wanted the cat to be killed – but they knew their master. And nobody could manage to find an answer that was coming from the being. Many answers were coming, but they were all from the head, and they knew that if they came with those answers, instead of the cat, their heads would be cut! So everybody remained silent.The cat was cut up and given to both wings.Sad and crying, they went back to their rooms, cottages, utterly shocked – not only that the cat was killed, but five hundred disciples, and not a single one could come out with some authentic answer.Then one disciple, who had gone out with the master and had stayed behind to do some work in the market, came back. He heard the story. He went to the master and slapped him as hard as he could.The master said, “Good! If you had been here, the poor cat would have been saved. But now nothing can be done. The cat is dead.”The whole monastery was agog with this new situation – that the disciple slapped the master, and the master had laughed and said, “It is unfortunate that you were not here, otherwise the cat would have been saved.”This was the right answer. What a foolish thing the master was doing, cutting in two the cat who had done no harm, who was not responsible at all for the quarrelling that was going on. The master needed a good slap! But to slap the master one needs a disciple who has come to the point of devotion, otherwise it will be insulting. Anybody else hitting the master would have been an insult; in fact nobody could even conceive of it.Devotion is the ultimate flowering of discipleship. When love is so deep, the respect is so immense that everything is forgiven. The disciple can slap the master and yet the master simply laughs – because he knows his devotion. He knows that this slap has not come from a logical mind; it has come from a loving heart. It is as if with his own hand he has slapped himself – no distinctions are there any longer. Even to say that the devotee is close to the master is not right, because closeness is still a distance.The devotee is one with the master. His oneness is something not of this world.I will tell you another story, because there is no other way to explain it:A master is staying in a temple. The night is cold. And in Japan the statues of Buddha are made of wood. There are many statues in the temple, so he finds one big statue, starts a fire with it, and sits by the side of it enjoying the warmth of it, the crackling sound of the wood.The priest of the temple suddenly hears the noise, and the light. He runs from his room to see what is happening. And what he sees he cannot believe. He has allowed this wandering master to stay just for the night and what has he done? The most beautiful statue of the temple! He is very angry.The master says, “What is the problem? Why are you getting so angry? Just sit down. It is so cold, and here it is so warm; and Buddha is always helpful. Just come here.”The priest said, “I am not going to listen to this nonsense. You have burned the statue of our lord, of our god.”He said, “Is it so?” He took his staff and started poking in the ashes of the burned statue.The priest said, “What are you doing?”He said, “I am looking for the bones.”The priest said, “You must be mad. This is a wooden statue, there are no bones in it.”He said, “That settles the matter. You have so many statues, the night is long – just one more; just bring one more.”The priest said, “Get out of the temple! I will not allow you inside. I don’t want to stay awake the whole night and watch you because you are dangerous – you may burn other buddhas. Just get out!”“But,” the master said, “it has been proved that it was not a buddha. There are no bones in it.” But the priest simply pushed him out of the temple and closed the door.The master said, “Listen, it is too cold, and you have too many buddhas. It does not matter. In fact you will have to worship less, and nobody is going to cut your salary. You are simply a priest, you don’t understand anything.”But the priest would not open the doors. He said, “Simply get lost.”In the morning the priest opened the door, and could not believe… That master, that crazy old man who had burned the statue and was asking for another, was sitting by the side of the milestone. He had found some wildflowers and he had put those wildflowers on the milestone and he was worshipping: Buddham sharanam gachchhami.The priest came close. He said, “What are you doing?”He said, “Just my morning prayer.”The priest said, “You seem to be really crazy! This is a milestone.”He said, “It doesn’t matter. When you can make wood into a buddha, why can’t I make a milestone into a buddha? It is only a question of putting a few flowers on top of it. And you don’t see my devotion? I could burn the buddha because I love him and I know him; I know that the statue is just wood. And I can worship this milestone because I am not worshipping the milestone – it is just an excuse, a stand for my flowers. And anyway I have to worship Buddha in the morning, and this milestone was so handy. Only a sculptor is needed and he could make this milestone into a statue of Buddha, and then idiots like you would start worshipping it.“I can see the buddha hiding in the milestone. You will see it only when a sculptor cuts the stone and brings out the buddha who is encased inside the stone. I love him. And I knew that it was just wood, and the night was so cold; I have to take care of my inner buddha too. And when it is a question of taking care of my inner buddha, I can burn all the outer buddhas without any difficulty, because that is his teaching: Appa deepo bhava – be a light unto yourself. My buddha was shivering, and those wooden idiots were sitting – not cold, not hot; they don’t feel it at all. And you threw me out, a living buddha, because I burned a wooden buddha.”This is devotion. Devotion has its own strange ways. It is not something rational, logical – something that can be explained to you. But it is something, and if you go on growing from a student into a disciple, from a disciple into a devotee, you come so close to the master that there is no distinction at all.A third story, which will help you:Mahakashyapa, one of Buddha’s great devotees, had come to such a point that if Buddha had a headache, Mahakashyapa would also have a headache. And before Buddha had said anything about his headache, Mahakashyapa would have called the physician: “Buddha must have a headache, because I have a headache.”And the physician said, “But if you have a headache, that does not mean that Buddha should have a headache.”He said, “It does mean…” And he was always found to be right.Just one day before the day he died, Buddha was saying to somebody, “Soon I will be coming to your city, Vaishali” – one of the greatest cities of those days, and one of the cities where most of Buddha’s lovers lived. In forty years Buddha passed almost twenty times through Vaishali.He went only once to Varanasi. Asked why, he said, “Varanasi is so full of knowledge – nobody is interested in being. It is a city of scholars and pundits; it is a sheer wastage of time.” He never went back there again.And to this man he was saying, “In a few days’ time I will be coming to Vaishali.”Mahakashyapa was sitting there. He said, “Don’t believe him. He is not going to live long. As far as I am concerned, he is going to die within two days.” Such empathy – it is not sympathy. In empathy you start feeling the same, exactly the same – as if one soul in two bodies.Buddha looked at Mahakashyapa and said, “This is not right. You should not say such things.”Mahakashyapa said, “But why unnecessarily give a promise that you are not going to fulfill?”The man from Vaishali said, “Strange; Buddha is saying, ‘I am coming,’ and you are saying that he will not come. And you start arguing with each other!”Mahakashyapa said, “He is going to die the day after tomorrow, and if you don’t believe me, remain here. It is just a question of a few hours.” And Buddha died at exactly the time Mahakashyapa had said.The man from Vaishali had asked Buddha, “Why were you telling Mahakashyapa not to say it?”Buddha said, “I know I am going to die, he also knows – but he is so one with me, it makes no difference to him whether I am alive or dead. But to you, my death will make your journey home unnecessarily miserable. Just out of compassion I was preventing him. But he won’t listen to anybody. And because he is right, I cannot insist too much.”Buddha died in the morning – and within just fifteen minutes, Maha-kashyapa died. That is devotion. Those hearts were beating together so much that it was impossible to carry on with only one heart; and the soul was gone, only the body had remained.There were great disciples of Buddha, but nobody has the distinction of being a devotee except Mahakashyapa. His death proved it. While everybody was just preparing the funeral pyre, people were weeping and crying, Mahakashyapa closed his eyes and was gone.Devotion is the ultimate state of disciplehood – when you become one with the master, when the dewdrop slips into the ocean and becomes one with it.Osho,The longer I am with you, the less I am able to define anything or anybody, including myself, or even master and disciple. I used to think that I knew what these words meant, but now I don't even know if I am what you call a disciple. Would you please explain what is happening?I have just answered you – you are coming closer and closer. Perhaps you may become a devotee. But no need to die with me!

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 35 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is this a question, a realization, or a declaration? Something beyond forces me to put this on paper; though I am writing this, the words are not mine.It is past midnight, about five o'clock on the full moonlight night of the Indian month known as “Bhadra the Thursday,” the Guruvar master's day in Indian language. I am in Vipassana meditation. As my eyes open, a dazzling light brightens the room. I cannot keep my eyes open, as the light is too dazzling.After a few minutes, I can open my eyes and I become quite aware. Two figures are standing before me: one is beloved Osho with folded hands and that gentle, beautiful smile; and the other is Gautam Buddha in gyan mudra. It is Buddha's third body. He looks at beloved Osho, and after a few moments he touches the feet of Osho and merges with his body, smilingly. I hear him saying: “I have fulfilled my promise. I was to come as Maitreya after two thousand five hundred years, and I have come. If you have eyes, you will see me; if you have ears you will hear me; if you have a heart you will feel and recognize me. My third body I had kept in existence to rebirth, to help whoever wanted my help. With due respect and adoration, I have to state that I could have merged with Krishnamurtiji, but due to his insistence on being original I could not merge and help individuals through him. I was hopeful, as he was especially prepared for my appearance – but he was adamant. His body suffered a lot due to his resistance to accepting me. He preferred and chose ceaseless pain and suffering for this.My third body now cannot remain in existence if it is not accepted for rebirth or merging. The time I had decided for it is coming close to an end so I cannot wait any longer, and hence I am merging my third body with Osho's energy without disturbing his individuality. He is like an ocean; many small and big rivers merge with it, but still the ocean remains, unperturbed. Its identity remains as an ocean without any change. In him, all enlightenments – past, present and future – have become alive and active; a unique event that has not happened before, nor will it happen again. Osho is total acceptance, total emptiness, total nothingness, and unbounded compassion. He is both purna and shunya incarnated. From my third body, I address him as ‘Osho,' but from now onward he will not be only ‘Osho,' he will be ‘Osho, the Buddha Lord Maitreya' – a buddha, a true friend to all. Thus saying, Buddha's third body merged with our beloved, beautiful Osho. Osho's radiance was increasing and filled the whole universe.I remember the prophecy of Lama Karmapa, who had predicted this event, but had asked me not to talk about the event till it happened. Now it has happened and flowers have showered. So let it be known to all, let it be shouted from the rooftops that Osho, the Buddha Lord Maitreya, is here; Buddha has fulfilled his promise.The light was fading, the full moon was setting slowly in the West with its cool, silent fading light; and in the East the new sun was rising with a light orange glow, silently bringing a new day, and with it a new journey. Beloved, beautiful Osho slowly, slowly disappeared with a gentle smile and folded hands, leaving me in that gentle morning light with a heart full of gratitude and eyes full of tears.Osho, I bow down to you, announcing to the world that Osho, the Buddha Lord Maitreya, is here and the flowers have showered. To date, masters have declared themselves, but today a disciple declares with gratitude that the master, the buddha, a real friend, has come with a new radiance to help all. Osho, I have nothing to offer – not even a flower – and yet I offer everything. Thus, something is given and something is taken.Oh beloved sannyasins, devotees and friends who are present here, you are the blessed ones – to hear this declaration and witness this unique event. Oh sannyasins, rejoice, celebrate and sing, “Buddham sharanam gachchhami; sangham sharanam gachchhami; dhammam sharanam gachchhami.”Osho, I was reluctant to write this to you, but something unknown forces me to write to you. I do not know whether this is right to do or not. Will you please comment on the event?Govind Siddharth, it is not a question. It is a realization, and it is a declaration.Whatever you have experienced was not a dream. Your whole life may have been a dream, but this experience is absolute reality. That’s why you felt an unknown force compelling you to declare it. You had to declare it – it is impossible to hide the truth.It has not only happened to you alone; there are two other persons present here to whom the same experience has happened at the same time. They are also hesitating whether to declare it or not. The hesitation is natural, because the declaration is so big and you feel so small, but you cannot keep it within you. It is just like a pregnant woman – how long can she hide that she is pregnant? One day she is going to give birth to a child.Every truth is a living experience. And the very nature of life is expression, expansion, declaration. Each flower declares it, each morning the sun declares it, each night millions of stars declare it. Of course their language of declaration is different – a flower declares it by its fragrance, the star declares it by its light, the moon declares it by its beauty.But truth, beauty, good… These three – satyam, shivam, sundram – are the basic, the fundamental trinity of existence. You cannot hide them.One feels embarrassed – how to say it? And to say it in a world which is skeptical, in a world where people are deaf as far as truth is concerned, where people are blind as far as beauty is concerned, where people don’t have hearts as far as feeling, sensitivity is concerned… One feels alone to declare such a thing.But it is not out of egoism – you cannot declare such a thing out of egoism because the ego will feel very embarrassed, and ego does not like to feel embarrassed. It is out of humbleness that one declares such experiences.I was waiting. Who, out of those three persons, is going to declare it first? Govind Siddharth has proved really humble, courageous. Whatever he is saying, he has seen it – not in sleep, not in dream.It is true that J. Krishnamurti was prepared for exactly this phenomenon.Gautam Buddha had promised that after twenty-five centuries he would be coming as Lord Maitreya. Maitreya means “the friend.” Of course his own body was burned, and could not be kept for twenty-five centuries; the technology was not yet developed. Now it is possible. There are ten bodies in the world which are being kept. They are dead, it is very expensive to keep them, but those people were very rich people and they have willed that their bodies should be kept – because science is saying that within ten or twelve years, at the most twelve, we will be able to revive dead bodies. These rich people have allowed their bodies to be kept, so that when the technology is ready to revive them, they can be revived back to life again.Gautam Buddha had to use a totally different kind of technology – not scientific but occult. The physical body died, but there are other bodies within this body which don’t die, and he has lived with his third body. He cannot be born through a womb; that is impossible, that is against the nature of things. Once you are enlightened you cannot be born through the natural process, through a womb.It is his compassion. No one before him has ever tried. Perhaps no one before him had such compassion.The story is that Gautam Buddha reaches the door of nirvana – and once you enter the door you disappear into the universe. The doors are opened, the doorkeeper welcomes him. But he refuses to enter the door and says, “I will stay here outside the door, because millions of my fellow-travelers are groping in the dark. I will try in every possible way to help them. Unless every living being has passed through the door, I will wait. I am going to be the last.”This is not just a parable, not just a fictitious story, but something absolutely factual in the world of mysticism. It is not factual in the world of matter, it is factual in the world of the spirit.J. Krishnamurti was prepared by very learned scholars who had found in all the scriptures – Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Indian – the promise of Buddha that after twenty-five centuries he would be coming back: “I will find a way. I cannot come through a womb but I can enter into a living being, can merge my soul with his soul.” When the theosophists found this, they started searching for somebody who could be prepared – in purity, in discipline, in meditation, consciously – so that he can become a vehicle of Lord Maitreya.They worked really hard on J. Krishnamurti. He was not the only one they worked on. They had chosen at least five children of immense intelligence, and they worked on all five. One of the five was Nityananda, Krishnamurti’s elder brother. He died; he died because of too much arduous discipline. He was immensely intelligent. He would have become a great scientist, a great philosopher, but he was not meant to become a great mystic – and perhaps not a vehicle of Gautam Buddha.Training those five – and when Nityananda died, the four – slowly it became clear that Krishnamurti was the best out of the four. One was Raj Gopal, who was made personal secretary to J. Krishnamurti. And he betrayed J. Krishnamurti because he carried that resentment for his whole life. He was chosen for the same purpose, and finally he was just made a personal private secretary. He was angry, resentful, but he didn’t show it.He was the managing trustee of all the properties that belonged to the organization which was created for Krishnamurti – its name was “The Star of the East.” The royalties for all of Krishnamurti’s books were going to Raj Gopal. And just five years ago, he simply betrayed J. Krishnamurti. He simply said, “You have nothing to do with the organization, the money, the books, the royalties.” At the age of eighty-five, Krishnamurti had to begin again from ABC.This man, Raj Gopal, must have had tremendous patience, because for sixty years he kept the resentment repressed in himself, waiting for the right moment when Krishnamurti was so old that he could not do anything. At that moment he would desert him. He took away all the assets of The Krishnamurti Foundation – he was the head of the foundation – and Krishnamurti was left, at the age of eighty-five, just a beggar.Another boy who was trained was a German. Seeing that he was not going to be chosen, he behaved just like a German: he created a new organization and revolted against the theosophical movement, created a split in the movement, and the German section of the theosophical society became a separate party. He became the leader of it, hoping that he would compete with J. Krishnamurti, not understanding at all that these matters are not of competition.Krishnamurti himself, after years of training and discipline, rather than becoming pure, rather than becoming a right vehicle, became so hateful toward all the ringleaders who were torturing him – telling him to fast, telling him to wake up early in the morning at three o’clock, have a cold bath at three o’clock – with all good intentions, but they never realized the fact that you cannot make anybody a Gautam Buddha. It is not a question of training. However good the intentions are, the result is going to be a disaster.When Krishnamurti reached the age of twenty-five, they gathered the chief leaders of the theosophical movement in Holland, where Krishnamurti was going to declare that Gautam Buddha had entered into him and he has become the world teacher.But he was a sincere man. Gautam Buddha did not enter. If he had been a man like the pope or Ayatollah Khomeini he could have said, “Yes, Gautam Buddha has entered in me and I am the world teacher.” But he refused. He said, “No Gautam Buddha has entered in me, and I am not the world teacher. Not only that, I am not going to be a teacher at all.”It was such a shock to the six thousand leaders of the movement who had come from all over the world, they could not believe it. They had prepared this man, they had fought for this man in the courts, they had done everything that was possible to give him the best education. He never gave an indication that he was unwilling. And at the last moment, when he stood up, he declared, “I dissolve the organization: The Star of the East. I am not the world teacher.” It was a reaction. You cannot force anybody into paradise. A forced paradise will become hell, because the basic element of freedom is missing.Gautam Buddha’s third body has been hovering around the world to find someone to become a vehicle, so that whatever he said twenty-five centuries ago can be updated, resurrected, made fit for the modern man – for the new man who is going to be born. In twenty-five centuries so much dust has gathered that unless something absolutely fresh begins…There are millions of Buddhists, there are thousands of great Buddhist monks; it looks simply absurd that he should not choose a vehicle from these people. It will be just natural and logical to choose a Dalai Lama or a great Buddhist monk, learned.But you have to remember – that is one of my basic emphases – that these people cannot be chosen, because they are still hanging onto the Buddha that was twenty-five centuries ago. To choose them as vehicles is just meaningless; they will be repeating the same.I love Gautam Buddha as I have not loved any other master, but my love is not blind. I have criticized him as severely as possible. I have praised him when I have found him right – right for today, right for tomorrow, right for the new humanity to come. And I have criticized him severely whenever I have found that he is twenty-five centuries old, still carrying conditionings, rotten ideas which are of no use to the new man, but will be a great hindrance.Govind Siddharth must have been puzzled seeing what he has seen, because I would appear to be the last man that Gautam Buddha would choose to be a vehicle. But this is the beauty of Gautam Buddha: he understands that the message has to be for the present and for the future, that he needs an absolutely fresh being – unattached to any old tradition, his tradition included – a man absolutely untraditional, unorthodox. A man of today, as fresh as today’s rose – even if the man goes many times against the teachings of the old Buddha.I was not going to declare it for the simple reason that then it would become difficult for me to criticize the old man. So I was keeping completely aloof, so that my freedom and my independence are not in any way curtailed.I have my own message. If Gautam Buddha finds that my message has the essentials of his message too, then it is his choice. It is not a burden on me. I will go on criticizing him whenever I find anything that is not right for human growth in the future.But Govind Siddharth’s difficulty was that he could not keep it a secret. One of the most difficult things in the world is to keep a secret – and such a secret!But I will remain exactly as I am – no compromise. Gautam Buddha and all the masters of the past can choose me as their vehicles, but I will not allow any pollution. My message will remain my message.Yes, they can. But Govind Siddharth says it rightly: the river can fall into the ocean; thousands of rivers can fall into the ocean – they don’t make the ocean sweet. They themselves become salty.Gautam Buddha chose me as his vehicle because now it was difficult to keep hanging around in his third body any longer. Twenty-five centuries have passed; in fact a few more years have passed. He had to choose, but he has chosen a person who has his own message. It will surely be beautiful if it coincides with his essentials, but if it does not coincide, then I am going to be as hard on him as I have been before. It will not make any difference. I am not going to be his voice, I am going to remain my voice.But what Govind Siddharth has seen is a tremendous experience, a great realization.There are two more persons present here – if they gather courage, then their questions will be coming. If they cannot gather courage, then they will always remain burdened with a secret. It is better to bring it in the open and be free of it – and anyway, it is in the open; Govind Siddharth has done almost ninety-nine point nine percent of the work. Nothing is left for you.Anybody who has been close to me has felt it many times, that I bring Gautam Buddha, his life, his stories, more than those of anybody else to illustrate some of my ideas. Gautam Buddha comes very close to me. The difference is not of twenty-five centuries – maybe only twenty-five centimeters – but the difference is there.I am not a person who compromises. I will not be compromising with Gautam Buddha either, but whatever is ultimate truth is nobody’s possession, neither Gautam Buddha’s nor mine. Only the nonessentials are different; the essential is always the same. And my effort is to cut all nonessentials and give you only the pure, essential message, because only the essential religion is going to survive in the future. The nonessential rituals are all going to be dead. With this century ending, there will be a religiousness in the world but no religions.Perhaps he has chosen a right man. And he has also chosen a right man in Govind Siddharth to declare the fact. I was not going to declare it, because declaration from my side brings a certain compromise, as if I have become a vehicle of somebody else’s message.I am nobody’s vehicle. In fact my message and Gautam Buddha’s message are almost parallel – so parallel, so similar, that it can be said that he was my vehicle or it can be said that I am his vehicle. But it is not going to change my approach in any way. Now I will be even harder on Gautam Buddha, so that only the most essential and the purest part of him reaches to humanity in the future.Osho,How can the master help the disciple to live religiousness without religion?It is the most simple thing in the world.Vice versa is the most difficult – to be religious and to be part of an organized religion is almost impossible. But just to be religious, without being part of any religion, is the simplest thing.You have to understand what I mean by religiousness: by religiousness I mean gratitude toward existence. It has given so much to you, and you cannot pay it back.I have heard…A man was going to commit suicide and a master was sitting on the riverbank from where this man was going to take the jump. He said, “Wait just a moment! Wait! Are you going to commit suicide?”The man said, “But who are you to prevent me?”The master said, “I am not preventing you. In fact I would love for you to commit suicide, but before committing it, if you can give both your eyes – because the king of this country has gone blind. And the doctors say if somebody can donate their eyes – not the eyes of a dead person, but a living person – then those eyes can be transplanted and the king will be able to see again. And whatever you want as a reward, as a prize, you say it and it is yours. So just before committing suicide, why not do a little business?”The man said, “How much will he give?” He forgot about his suicide.People are so business-minded.The master said, “Whatever you want, just say.”He said, “I am a poor man, I cannot ask much – you suggest something. And I am going to commit suicide…”So the master said, “You think it over – twenty thousand rupees.”The man said, “Twenty thousand? My God, I never thought that I would have twenty thousand rupees.”But the master said, “You can still think… I can even tell the king, ‘He needs twenty million.’ It all depends on you. The king wants the eyes at any price.”The man said, “Twenty million? But then why should I commit suicide?”The master said, “That is up to you, but living a life without eyes, even having twenty million rupees will not be so much joy.”Just on the way toward the palace, the man started saying to the master, “I am having second thoughts.”He said, “What second thoughts? Have you raised your price again?”He said, “The price is not the question. I am thinking that twenty million just for two eyes – what about the ears, the nose, the teeth, my whole body? How much is the price of my whole body?”The master said, “You can calculate; just for two eyes, twenty million…”The man said, “I am not going to sell. I am going home.”The master said, “What about suicide?”He said, “I used to think you are a religious man. You are a murderer! You want me to commit suicide? Now for the first time I have recognized what existence has given to me – and I have not paid a single pai. These two eyes which have seen all kinds of beauty, these two ears which have heard all kinds of music, this life which has experienced so much – and I have not paid anything and I have not even said a thank-you.“And suicide is nothing but the last complaint, the ugliest complaint against existence; you have given me so much and I am destroying it. Rather than being grateful, I am betraying. No, I cannot commit suicide and I cannot sell my eyes; they are priceless. You can tell the king that I cannot give my eyes even for the whole kingdom, although I am a beggar.”Have you ever realized how much existence has given to you? No, you simply take it for granted, as if you deserve it, as if you have earned it.You don’t deserve it. You have not earned it; it is a gift. It is a blessing; it is simply out of love that the existence has given you so much. And it is ready to give you much more. You are just not ready to take it.Religion prevents you from being religious – sends you to the mosque, to the temple, to the church. It teaches you to pray to a hypothetical God that you have never met, that nobody has ever met. And the real temple is all around you – under the stars, under the green foliage of a tree, by the side of the ocean. The real temple is all around, and the real truth is nothing but the living, the alive, the conscious phenomenon in you.Wherever there is life, wherever there is consciousness, there is godliness. And when you come to the ultimate experience of consciousness you become a god. Everybody’s birthright is to become a god – not to worship “God” but to become a god.All the religions are preventing you. They don’t teach you non-ambitiousness, they teach you ambition, they teach you how to be virtuous so that you can reach paradise. They don’t teach you fearlessness, they teach you fear – that if you do certain things you will be thrown into hell and you will suffer for eternity. All the religions are basically an exploitation of humanity; they enslave you, they humiliate you, they call you sinners, they destroy your self-respect.Religiousness is a humble gratefulness toward existence. And because existence has given so much to you there is a humble self-respect – but humble; it is not egoistic, you are not bragging about it.It teaches you to love, it teaches you to be more alive, more playful, more celebrating. Your life should be a song and a dance and a festivity.What is the need to belong to a crowd? All these things are your individual experiences; they don’t have anything to do with any crowd. You need not go to a church, you need not worship a God, you need not worship a book which is dead and full of all kinds of nonsense, stupidities, superstitions.Religiousness is absolutely an individual phenomenon. It is not something to do with collectivity; you are not going to fight with somebody: “So, be united.” Mohammedans have to be united against Hindus, Hindus have to be united against Christians; Christians have to be united against Jews. These are not religions. These are insane crowds which want to do violence in the name of religion, in the name of God.I have seen a few riots, and I could not believe: very nice people suddenly become like animals.I knew a person who was a professor in the same university where I was teaching, I knew him as one of the nicest persons. But he was a Mohammedan, and when there was a riot among Hindus and Mohammedans, I saw that professor raping a woman. I could not believe it. I dragged the professor away. I said, “What are you doing?” He came back to his senses, as if he was doing it in a state of sleep.He said, “I am sorry, just forgive me. The whole crowd was doing it and I simply became part of the crowd. I forgot my individuality completely, and the animal within me started doing things. First I was trembling, ‘I should not do it – what I am going to do is not right.’ But the animal is too strong and too ancient, and when the whole crowd was doing it…”I have caught hold of people burning temples, burning mosques – people whom I knew – and I have dragged them away and asked them, “What are you doing? Can you do it alone? If there is no crowd, can you burn this mosque? What has this mosque done to you? It is a beautiful piece of architecture – why are you destroying it? It has not harmed anybody.”And the man would say, “Alone? Alone I cannot do it. But everybody is doing it, and I am also a Hindu, and Hindus have to be united.” United for what? To kill, to burn people alive!For thousands of years, religions have been just killing, murdering, burning. And their whole strategy is that the crowd has a psychology of its own. Just don’t let the individual stand aloof; otherwise you cannot make him rape a woman, burn a house, kill a child. Just let him be within the crowd and when everybody else is doing something he will start doing it, his animal will surface.Once I was sitting in a bookstore and suddenly a riot… And just in front of me there was the most beautiful shop full of watches, clocks. And people started taking away watches and clocks. And one man, one old man was shouting loudly, “This is not right! If Hindus and Mohammedans are fighting, you can fight. But taking things from shops… I don’t see any religion in it.”I was listening from the bookstore. Nobody was listening to the old man. I knew the old man; we used to meet on a morning walk once in a while and discuss things. He was a very nice man and had a very philosophical approach toward life. He was a Mohammedan, and it was a Mohammedan crowd which was destroying a Hindu shop. When the whole shop was looted there was only one big wall clock left. It was too big, so nobody took it out because he would be seen. Wherever he would go people would see – you would have to carry it on your back. The old man took the big clock.I could not believe it. I had to come out of the store and I said, “Wait! What are you doing?”He said, “What else can I do? They have taken everything; only this is left. So I said to myself, now what is the point? They did not listen to me – I tried my hardest to save the shop. And when I saw that all the watches and all the clocks were gone, suddenly a desire arose in me: what are you doing here standing like a fool? Just take this one and go home – and I am going.”I said, “You are perfectly right. You have earned it. You have been shouting, you have been… You are not stealing – I am a witness. If any problem arises you can always name me. You have done your work, your religious work of teaching people. Nobody listened to you, and the man whose shop it was had escaped out of fear that he would be killed. Now it is just pure earnings. You have wasted your whole day, and in old age… Can I help you?”He said, “Don’t make me feel ashamed. This clock is so big, and my house is so far away.”I said, “Let me help you, otherwise… You are a Mohammedan, you may be caught by some Hindus. And nobody will believe that you have purchased this clock at this moment, when people are taking everything.”He said, “You are right. Just do one thing: if you can call a taxi, it is too heavy.”I said, “I will call a taxi.” I called a taxi. Meanwhile we were standing by the side of the road; many people gathered there to see what was happening. I said, “Nothing, there is no problem. He has earned it, he deserves it.”He felt so ashamed that by the time the taxi arrived he said, “No, it is not right. Put it back, leave it, somebody else will take it away.”I said, “Somebody else is going to take it away. It doesn’t matter who takes it away, just sit in the taxi and take it away.”He said, “You are a strange man. You are supporting a Mohammedan.”I said, “I am not a Hindu, not a Mohammedan. I simply see that in old age you have done enough work; you should be paid. Now there is nobody here to pay for it, you can just take it away.”The next day when I saw him in the garden I said, “How is the clock working?”He said, “I could not sleep the whole night. It makes such a tick-tock, tick-tock that it reminds me, ‘My God, I have stolen it – against all my philosophy and all my religious teachings.’ And I was advising people that this is not a reward, this is a punishment. And my wife was angry; she said, ‘You have become old but you are really an idiot. When people were taking beautiful wristwatches, you have brought this tick-tock. You cannot even sleep. Throw it out.’ So my wife has put it out in the garage and I have been thinking to somehow return it.”I said, “That’s a good idea. Should I call a taxi? You should not go to return it. I will go, because you will be caught.”So I had to go to return the clock. And the shopkeeper said, “But how did you get involved in it?”I said, “It is a long story, but we could save only one – this big clock. About the others, I know who has taken them, I was watching. I can give you a few names if you can find them, but it will be very difficult. This was taken by an old man, and because his wife could not tolerate this tick-tock… He was coming himself but I said, ‘It is dangerous, there is still tension.’ So you just take it. But when the tension subsides, remember that old man; he has really tried his hardest, but finally the animal surfaced and when he saw that nobody was listening: ‘Only I am the loser, everybody is gaining something’ – just sheer economics.”Religions are nothing but crowd psychology, mob psychology, and the mob is still in its animalhood. They are still not human beings. There are individual human beings, but there are no crowds which are human. The crowd immediately slips back and becomes unconscious.So there is no problem for the individual to become religious. You just have to understand what religiousness means.Be grateful to existence, enjoy the beautiful life that surrounds you.Love – because tomorrow is not certain. Don’t postpone anything beautiful for tomorrow. Live intensely, live totally, here and now.And there is no need to be a Mohammedan or a Hindu. And you will find a tremendous blissfulness arising. That is your paradise. Paradise is not some place, somewhere. It is a space within you.Osho,The only trust I know which is indestructible, is my trust in you. Since having left the commune, I can see that I have withdrawn my trust from all others. I feel that I would rather spend a thousand lives traveling alone than ever to allow others to have any say in what I do or feel – even if what they say is helpful. At the same time, I feel your light within my heart calling me constantly, and I am too thick to understand what you are saying. Please say a few words to me.Trust should not be dependent on the trustworthiness of others. Trust should be a quality in you, not a relationship.You trust somebody because he is trustworthy; this is not trust. There is no dignity in it, there is no glory in it. “He is trustworthy” – you have to trust him.Trust as a quality; whether the other is trustworthy or not, whether the other deceives you or not, it should not make any difference in your trust. Your joy should be in trusting itself. It should be intrinsic; it should not be dependent on the other.I have heard that a man was brought for the tenth time into court. The magistrate said, “You should be ashamed. You have been brought before me ten times. And just look at who you have cheated – the most innocent man in the town.”The criminal said, “My lord, if I don’t cheat the innocent, then who am I going to cheat? The innocent are the easiest to cheat. What do you want me to do – cheat people who are not innocent?”The magistrate said, “You seem to be very cunning, distorting what I am saying.”The man said, “My lord, you said that I should be ashamed that I have been brought ten times before you in the court. This is not my fault. Tell these policemen, these idiots who go on catching me. I told them that the magistrate would feel ashamed. It is time that I should not be brought to the court, but nobody listens.”If you are trusting, people are going to cheat you. And naturally, when a few people have cheated you, your trust in humanity disappears. That is very strange – five persons have cheated you, and five billion people on the earth lose your trust. You should just try to understand a little arithmetic. And the people who have cheated you, what can they gain? Perhaps some money, but if you can still trust them, you have gained something which no money can buy.I used to travel in trains continually. Once, from Indore to Khandva, I had arrived and there was a one-hour gap before the other train that I had to catch for Mumbai. So I was sitting in the compartment alone – the other passengers had left; it was the terminus for that train. One man came, tears in his eyes. I said, “Don’t… Just wipe your tears. Just tell me the story.”He said, “Story?”I said, “Whatever it is – it may be real, unreal – just tell me the story.”He said, “You are strange… My mother has died.”I said, “I knew it.” I gave him one rupee.He said, “I need it. I am very thankful. Nobody gives nowadays.”He went away, but he thought, “This man seems to be very gullible. He gave me one rupee without inquiring in detail.” He simply put on a coat and a cap, and came back again. I said, “Where are the tears?”He said, “What tears?”I said, “You are another person, but what is the story?”He said again, “My father has died.”I said, “You take one rupee, because I give one rupee to anybody who brings a story – mother died, father died… Soon somebody will come and his wife has died, somebody will come and his child has died. There is one hour’s time, and I have enough money for one hour. Just go, go fast!”He said, “Why fast?”I said, “You will have to change clothes. Just go.”He said, “My God, have you recognized me?”I said, “No, I have not recognized you. How can I recognize you? The cap, the coat, so new! I have never before seen you in the coat, in the cap. And your relatives are dying so fast, just go.”The third time he hesitated to come, but greed is such that he could not resist his temptation. He put away his coat, his shirt; he came just with a lungi on.I said, “That is great, that fits. It is so hot that I was worried – shirt and coat and cap. Now who has died?”He said, “My God, it is strange, but a very unfortunate day. You were right, my wife died.”I said, “Take one rupee. Go home and find out if somebody else has died. And no need to come naked, you can just go on wearing the lungi, otherwise the police may catch hold of you and you might be in trouble. And I will be in trouble.”He said, “Why will you be in trouble?”“Because I am here waiting for you, waiting and waiting. If you are caught by the police it will be a real anxiety to me: ‘What happened to the poor guy?’ So many people have died, and I have not even asked your name; otherwise I could come to your home. But remember not to die yourself. Otherwise who is going to come for the rupee?”He was really shocked. The fourth time he came with four rupees, saying, “You take them back, I cannot accept them.”I said, “But what happened? What will happen to your father, your mother, your wife – they have all died. You can take more if you want, if it is not enough.”He said, “Nobody has died. This is just my profession – I cheat people. But I cannot cheat you.”I said, “Why can’t you cheat me? I am so available to be cheated. I am just sitting here; there is no other business except to be cheated. You need not take such a long time, just go around the railway station and come back, take one rupee. No need from now onward to tell me any story. Just come with your hand out, I will understand that somebody has died.”He said, “No, this is… Nobody has died; everybody is alive. You just accept your rupees back.”I said, “But why are you feeling so guilty? There is no problem; I am enjoying the game. Sitting here, there is nothing else to do. And you are bringing such entertainment – one rupee is not bad.”But he would not accept; he said, “Nobody has ever trusted me, and you are either just crazy or I don’t know what, but you go on trusting. Do you really believe that my wife is dead?”I said, “I really believe it, because man is mortal, people die. Your wife is not immortal. Don’t be afraid – she will die. If she has not died today, tomorrow she will die. Keep the rupee with you; perhaps you are telling the story a little ahead of time.”He said, “I will not take any money from you, and from today I will stop this business of telling lies to people. The whole day I have to say, ‘My father has died, my mother has died.’ Sometimes in one day my wife dies twelve times. Only you are the first person who has believed me, and is ready to believe.”I said, “Simply go and count all the people who are alive in your house and who are dead. For the dead you have already taken; for the alive you can more take rupees. Someday they will die and then you may not be able to find me because I am here for only one hour and then I will be gone.”I used to pass Khandva continually, because it is a junction going to Nagpur, going to Indore, going to Jabalpur, going to Mumbai – and that man would always come with some fruits, some flowers.And I would say, “This is not right, you are poor.”He would say, “I am poor, but not so poor that I can’t see that you cannot insult me. You cannot insult a human being, you cannot distrust. And what can I take from you? A few rupees, but I cannot take your trust in humanity.”And to be trusting in humanity is such a joy. It is part of being religious.You say you trust me, you say you trust only me. That is not enough; that is a very poor trust. When you can have an ocean of trust, you are taking a drop of trust.Trust everybody, including those who cheat you. They have their difficulties; they have their problems.Mulla Nasruddin was sleeping just on the veranda of his house with the doors open. A thief entered. At first he was a little hesitant – because people don’t keep their doors open in the night. A strange house, but he entered. And when he saw that somebody was lying on a blanket, he went in. It was dark.Nasruddin followed him, lit a candle. The thief was very much shocked, tried to escape – but Nasruddin was standing at the door. He said, “Don’t escape, I have just come to help you.”He said, “What help? I am a thief.”Nasruddin said, “That’s perfect. I needed a thief. For thirty years I have been living in this house and I have not found anything. I wanted an expert. Now you try; I will help you. And whatever we can find, half and half, fifty-fifty.”The man said, “You are a strange fellow. For thirty years you have not found anything?”He said, “No, I have not found anything. But I am not an expert; you are an expert. And you were trying in darkness! I thought you might fall, might stumble; something might go wrong, some accident might happen. And I know this house; it is utterly empty. But one more try with an expert… I am feeling very enthusiastic. Just go on!”They looked. They could not find anything. They came out. The thief had left a big bag outside the house full of things, which he had stolen from the other neighbors. Nasruddin threw his blanket also on the bag.The thief said, “What are you doing?”He said, “Nothing. I am coming with you. What is the meaning of living in this house? Wherever you are going, I am coming with you.”The man said, “You are a strange fellow. I cannot take you with me.”Nasruddin said, “Then fifty-fifty: just the agreement, remember?”The man said, “We have not found these things in your house!”Nasruddin said, “You have found this bag just in front of my house. Open the bag – fifty-fifty.”The thief said, “My God, I have brought those things from your neighbors.”Nasruddin said, “That will not do. Either you have to take me with you, and I will be living with you in your house and you will have to take care of me, because you have looted, cheated, everything; or fifty-fifty. And from tomorrow night, remember: be watchful. If I find you anywhere doing business, fifty-fifty, that is decided.”The man said, “You can take all of it, but please cancel the agreement.”Nasruddin said, “No, that is not right. I will cancel the agreement if you don’t want the agreement, but you put all these things into my house. In the morning I will distribute them to the neighbors. Never come to this neighborhood, otherwise the agreement.”The thief said, “I have been stealing my whole life. I have never stolen in a house where you have to make agreements with the owner of the house.”Nasruddin said, “I trust. I never keep my doors closed; that is just an invitation for thieves. You are not new, this happens almost every day. This is how I make my living – fifty-fifty. You are not the only thief. In this city there is no thief who does not have an agreement with me, and they are trustworthy people. Even though they steal in other places, they bring fifty percent to me, knowing perfectly well that an agreement is an agreement; a man should stick to his promise.”Today the world is not of those old days when people used to stick to their promises. On every step you will find people breaking promises, going against their word, cheating you when you trusted them. But what can they cheat? Just material things! If you lose trust, then certainly they have destroyed you. Trust is nonmaterial, it is spiritual.If you trust me, and if you feel happy with it, then trust the whole world. These five billion people have not cheated you, these millions of stars have not cheated you, these trees and oceans and rivers have not cheated you. Just a few people may have cheated you – and because of those few people you are going to distrust existence? This will be a loss. You will be losing your own beautiful quality.I am in favor of trust as a quality, not as a relationship. Don’t make it dependent on the other person, on what he does. You trust him because he is human. And human beings have their weaknesses, their frailties, their limitations; you trust them in spite of all their weaknesses, all their frailties, all their limitations. This trust will become a solid rock within you, a foundation of a new being, of a new life. And perhaps if you had that solid foundation, even those people who have been cheating you may not be able to cheat you. Just your very being…I was asleep in the train, and there was only one other person. I was in the upper berth. In the middle of the night the person was getting out of the train. It was a beautiful chance, because all my luggage was on the floor and he saw that I was asleep. So he told his servants to take everything. Just my money was in a pocketbook.So when he had taken everything out, I said, “Wait!”So he said, “Are you awake?”I said, “I have been awake all the time. You have taken everything; just this pocketbook is left with the money I have. Take this too. Always do everything totally.”He said, “My God!” He said to his servants, “Bring his things back, he is dangerous.”The stationmaster came running, and the driver and the conductor, “What is the matter?” And the man was trembling in case I told them that he was stealing everything.I said, “It is nothing. Just by mistake he has taken everything out. His mistake was not complete, and I am against things which are not complete. So I was giving my money to him, telling him, ‘Take this too, so everything is complete.’”They said, “Should we catch hold of this man and give him to the police?”I said, “No, because he is a nice fellow. He didn’t accept the money and he has brought all the things back.”He was in such a nervous state that he left one of his bags also with me. I had to send his bag back from the next station, telling them, “Find this man.” At least there was a name on the bag – “So find him.” He was really a good man. He got so nervous – perhaps it was his first effort to steal things.But human beings are human beings. What was he doing? Just taking a few things which don’t belong to me. Nothing belongs to anybody, but trust belongs to you.Things don’t belong to you, so let your trust be as cosmic as possible.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 36 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,The other day I had narrated an event, and yesterday you replied in your own way. The event, the question and answer, is known to you and me only. Now I can understand what must have transpired between Buddha and the disciple Mahakashyapa. Beloved, beautiful Osho, it's not the language but the silence that has and had asked, that has answered and had answered. Words are not spoken, but I have listened. There was a flower between Buddha and the disciple Mahakashyapa. Between you and me there was something else. You know and I know what it was – something that you brought and gave, and something that I received. Everybody has seen it, and yet no one knows it. The disciple Mahakashyapa laughed, and I shed tears. My beloved, beautiful lord, my heart bows down to you full of gratitude and thankfulness, and eyes full of tears of joy and happiness. The event is repeated again on September the twenty-second, nineteen eighty-six. Let this be recorded. Would you like to comment?Govind Siddharth, the laughter of Mahakashyapa and your tears do not mean different things. Perhaps you laughed more deeply than Mahakashyapa. When laughter is abysmal, it can only come out into tears – tears of joy, tears of gratitude, tears of blissfulness.Yes, something has transpired between me and you. And the date that you are giving is absolutely accurate; it will be on record.The master can give only something which cannot be seen by the ordinary eyes.Even though Gautam Buddha had given the flower to Mahakashyapa, it was not the flower that made him laugh, it was something else. The flower was just an excuse. Everybody saw the flower. Only a few – those who had eyes to see the invisible and to hear the unsaid – were able to understand that the flower was not the real thing, it was a cover-up.And for twenty-five centuries, mystics have been discussing what was really transmitted. It cannot be just the flower; the flower can be given to anybody. Something else was given. But Buddha was very kind, even to those who are blind. If he had not given the flower and just transmitted the wordless message, Mahakashyapa would have laughed all the same. But the people who could not see the invisible would have thought either that Mahakashyapa was mad, or would have felt ashamed that they could not see what had transpired between the master and the greatest disciple.After twenty-five centuries man has come of age; and I hope that I can transfer the unseeable without hiding it behind an excuse. Neither has Govind Siddharth to feel ashamed for his tears, nor do the others have to feel that he must be mad because they can’t see anything happening – and particularly in this temple of the mystery school. Only those few people are present who will understand at least the possibility of something mysterious, miraculous happening. You are here only for that miracle; you are not here to listen to a talk, to listen to words, theories, philosophies. You are here to taste something of the beyond.And that day, Govind Siddharth tasted something of the beyond. He experienced the flowering. I have not given a flower to him, but he has experienced the flowering of his inner lotus.Every one of you, sooner or later, is going to taste, to experience the same mystery.He has, as Gautam Buddha used to say, “Become an elder.” He has arrived to the point which we call enlightenment. And you should rejoice in it, because one of you becoming enlightened makes it easier for you to become enlightened, makes it possible, brings it within your reach.It is not an impossibility. You don’t have to be special, unique – a savior, a prophet. In your very ordinariness, in your very simplicity, in your very humanity you have the potential.Govind Siddharth becomes a proof for your potential.You should rejoice as if you have become enlightened. His becoming enlightened is your becoming enlightened; it is only a question of time. But he is enough proof and a guarantee.Enlightenment is not something that comes from above, it is something that grows in you – the seed everyone is carrying for lives together.Jesus used to say, “You can throw the seeds: some may fall on the rocks and will never grow. Some may fall on the footpath: they will grow but will be crushed by people continually passing on the footpath. Some will fall into the right soil and will grow and realize their ultimate flowering, will dance in the wind, in the sun, in the rain – expressing their gratitude to existence.”This is a garden. Whatever I am saying to you is just providing you with the right soil.Slowly, slowly a few seeds will start sprouting. Each seed sprouting should fill you with great celebration because it reflects you. It reflects your future, it indicates all the possibilities that are hidden in you.The day I had given sannyas to Govind Siddharth… I remember it. Why had I given him the name Siddharth? Siddharth is Gautam Buddha’s original name – when he became enlightened, people slowly, slowly forgot “Siddharth.” “Buddha” means the enlightened one; Gautama is his family name. He was Gautam Siddharth, now he had become Gautam Buddha. Siddharth was the seed, his buddhahood was the flowering.Siddharth is a beautiful name. It was given to him by a very strange man – nobody knows his name. He had come the day Gautam Buddha was born. He was an old, very old, almost ancient saint living in the Himalayas. He rushed, because his death was very close. His disciples asked, “Where are you going? At this age don’t go for any traveling, it can prove dangerous.”But the old man said, “It doesn’t matter. I will have to go, because if I don’t reach in time I will never be able to see a child who is going to become an awakened being. I have been doing everything to become awakened – I have failed. Perhaps whatever I was doing was wrong, perhaps whatever I was doing was not intense enough, was not total enough, although it may have been right. But a child is born, and I want to see him.And he reached, down the hills… Gautam Buddha was born just near the Himalayas on the boundary line of Nepal and India. As he reached… The king Shuddhodana, Gautam Buddha’s father, had never seen such an old man. He touched his feet, asked him why he had come – he could have called on him, since he was too old to travel.He said, “There was no time. I want to see the child that has been born to your wife.” The child was brought. The old man touched the feet of the child.The king could not believe it. He said, “What are you doing? You are a great, respected saint and you are touching the feet of a child?”That old man said, “I am old, I am respected as a saint, but I am not yet awakened. My spiritual sleep still continues. But this child is going to become an awakened soul. This is his last life. I give him the name Siddhartha.”The father said, “But what is the meaning of this name Siddhartha? It is not common” – it was at least not common in those days. The old man explained the meaning of Siddharth: it means one who is going to achieve the meaning of life.When I gave sannyas to Govind Siddharth I thought for a moment for his name, and I felt so definitely that he was going to achieve the meaning that I gave him the same name, Siddhartha. And he has fulfilled my feeling of that moment. He has fulfilled a promise that he had not given to me. It is not only his enlightenment; it is yours too. Participate in it; celebrate it. That should be the way of every disciple. Anyone coming home, a part of you has also come home with him – recognize it.Govind Siddhartha is doubly blessed: my blessings are with him, and now Gautam Buddha’s blessings are also with him.And you should accept this celebration as a challenge too. It opens a door. Forget all the nonsense that has been imposed on you for centuries – that Krishna becomes enlightened because he is already born as an incarnation of God. In fact, if he is born as an incarnation of God, then his enlightenment is not much to be celebrated. He is already God, he cannot be more than what he is: he is dead.If Jesus is enlightened because he is the only begotten son of God, that is not something to be proud of – because to be the only begotten son… Now, enlightenment cannot be an addition to your being in any way; you have all that a man can be. And because of these people, millions of human beings have shrunk back from the journey thinking that it is only for those toward whom God is especially favorable – “It is not for us ordinary human beings.”And the priests have done everything in their power to make these people special. Jesus is not born like any other human being; he is born out of a virgin mother – just to make him special, otherwise it is absolute nonsense. Nobody can be born out of a virgin mother. Yes, there are unfertilized eggs, but nothing is born out of them. They are born out of virgin mothers but they are pure vegetables, there is nothing alive in them.If Jesus was an unfertilized egg… But then these priests cannot be forgiven – to make him an unfertilized egg, and then crucifying the poor egg! First he is dead, no life, no possibility of life, and then putting him on the cross. The whole story is so fictitious.Life is possible only with the meeting of man and woman. The woman alone is not capable of giving birth, neither is man capable of giving birth alone. Life is a harmony between the man and the woman, a meeting between two polarities. But just to make him special…Gautam Buddha is born – the mother is standing. Now no woman gives birth to a child standing! But perhaps she was practicing some Yoga discipline and was able to stand up while giving birth. Even up to this point it can be accepted rationally – but then Gautam Buddha is born, also standing. The first thing he does is, he walks seven feet. And the second thing he does is to declare that “I am the most awakened being who has ever walked on the earth.” Not even seven minutes old!But, to make them special, these fictitious stories are created around Krishna, around Mahavira, around everybody. These stories are, in a subtle way, to prevent you from becoming enlightened. These are to create a distance between you and those who have become awakened, and the distance is so vast, so unbridgeable, that it is better not to try because you are going to fail. There is no possibility of succeeding.My basic standpoint is that all these people were as ordinary as you are. Yes, they became extraordinary, but so can you become. That extraordinariness is the flowering of your seed, of your potentiality.What has happened to Govind Siddharth, I hope and bless you all that nobody should be left behind.You all have to claim your birthright.Osho,What is innocence? Why are innocent people suffering the most?I have never seen any innocent person suffering. Innocence is such a deep blissfulness that whatever happens around it makes no difference to its bliss. Even death is irrelevant.But I can understand your question. It is not only yours; many people have asked me why innocent people suffer. First, they don’t understand what innocence is. Secondly, when they suffer, they think it is because of innocence that they are suffering, not that the cause must be somewhere else.The same kind of question has been asked from different angles – why good people, virtuous people, religious people suffer. I have never seen any religious person suffer – or a good person or a virtuous person. But what they mean is that they think themselves good, religious, virtuous, innocent. And all that is not right.Perhaps they are good – but out of fear, not out of love. They are good because they are afraid of hell, they are virtuous because they are desirous and greedy of the pleasures of heaven.And they are not innocent, but simply ignorant – and there is a very delicate, fine line between ignorance and innocence. A child is ignorant, not innocent. And when you are reborn in a spiritual way you become again like a child. Remember, I am saying “like a child.” I am not saying you become a child – you become like a child, innocent.The division between ignorance and innocence is so fine, but the ignorant person is always trying not to be ignorant. These are the symptoms: he is trying to become knowledgeable. The innocent person is trying to be more innocent. If any knowledge has remained somewhere hanging around him, he is trying to throw it away. He wants to be completely clean.One man came to me – and I know the type; certainly he is not a bad man, but that does not mean that he is a good man. He is simply a coward. He wants everything that bad people have, but he is cowardly. He wants all the riches, he wants prestige and power, he wants to become a president or a prime minister, but he is not ready to go through all the gutters that you have to pass before you become a president. It is a long, winding way through gutters and gutters, and it becomes more and more dirty the deeper you get into it. He does not want to do that. He simply wants to become a president because he’s a good man.He wants to be the richest man, but he does not know that the rich man has earned through tedious effort, all kinds of cunningness, has been doing every type of cheating. All that makes him afraid, he does not want to go to jail. If you are afraid of jail, then forget about being rich. Richness means a certain boldness, a daredevil courage, a readiness to fight, to compete without bothering whether the means are right or wrong. The rich man, the powerful man, the successful man, for them the end makes every means right – whether you have to cut throats, kill people, does not matter. Your goal is absolutely to succeed, and you are ready to pay everything for it.Now, this man wanted all these things, and also wanted to remain good, also wanted to remain virtuous, also wanted never to be cunning, never to be deceiving. You are asking too much.If you are really in love with goodness, in love with innocence, in love with virtue, you will be ready to sacrifice everything for it – all success, all respectability, all prestige, everything. Even if the laws of existence change and it is declared from the skies that now only bad people will be able to enter into paradise and all good people will have to go to hell, you will be ready to go to hell but you cannot leave your goodness.I am reminded of a beautiful incident:It happened that Edmund Burke, one of the great historians of England, had a friend who was as famous as Edmund Burke, but as a theologian. Even the king and queen used to come to listen to his sermons on Sunday, but Edmund Burke never went.One day the friend asked him, “This is a little hard on me. I have been expecting that one day you would come. Even the king, the queen, the whole royal family comes. All the great scholars of the university come. You, who are my only friend, are the only person… Just for courtesy’s sake, you should come at least once.”He said, “It is because of that, that I have not come. But you are insisting. This Sunday I am coming – be ready.”He said, “What do you mean by ‘be ready’?”He said, “Everything will be clear when I come into the church.”The friend prepared a really beautiful sermon. All Christian priests prepare their sermons. This is something unknown to the mystics – preparing a sermon. Are you a teacher in a school, a professor in a college? Don’t you have anything spontaneous to say? At least those who have experienced should have each moment a spontaneous flow of fresh water, fresh energy. A prepared speech, however articulate, is basically false because it is not of the heart.Edmund Burke came. The friend had prepared his best sermon; he wanted to impress Edmund Burke. He continually watched the face of Edmund Burke – but no emotions, no feelings, no impact of what he was saying. He started stuttering, he became nervous: that man was sitting in the front row like a stone statue.Then there was the question hour, and the first to stand up was Edmund Burke. He said, “I have a question. You said in your speech that a man who is good, virtuous, a believer in God, goes to heaven; and a man who is not good, not virtuous, does not believe in God, goes into hell, into eternal fire. My question is,” he said, “that you have simplified things too much. I want to know: if a man is good and virtuous and does not believe in God, where does he go? A man who is bad, who is not virtuous but is a believer in God – where does he go?”The theologian was at a loss, because any answer would be troublesome. He said, “Forgive me, I cannot answer it spontaneously.”Edmund Burke said, “I knew it, because the whole speech was not spontaneous at all. You are a parrot. How much time do you need to look into scriptures and libraries and find out the answer? You don’t have the answer, and you have the nerve to say, so emphatically, who goes to hell and who goes to heaven. And I have asked a simple question.”The theologian said, “I want seven days. Next Sunday I will answer.”Those seven days were really hellfire. He tried hard, this way and that way, “But whatever you say seems to be wrong. A man who does not believe in God but is good, is virtuous – you cannot send him to hell. Then what is the need of being good and virtuous? A man who believes in God but is not good, is not virtuous – you cannot send him to heaven, because if you send him to heaven then what is wrong in being a sinner, being bad, not being virtuous? Just believe in God. Then drop all this nonsense, make it simple: those who believe in God go to heaven and those who don’t believe in God go to hell. Then why unnecessarily bring these qualities of goodness and virtue?”He was going crazy. He could not sleep and Sunday came – and it came fast. Time is very nasty. When you want it to go slowly it goes fast, and when you want it to go fast, it goes very slowly. It always goes against your wishes.He went to the church one hour before he had to give the sermon. Still, he had no answer. He thought he should pray to Jesus Christ: “Help me. Scriptures are of no help. Libraries… For seven days I have worked hard, but no answer. In fact Edmund Burke was right; it was out of courtesy that he was not coming. I unnecessarily dragged him in, and now he has created trouble not only for me but for my whole congregation. Now it is up to you to help me.”So, bowing down before the statue of Jesus Christ, putting his head at his feet, he said, “Help me because it is not a question of my prestige; your whole religion is at stake. I am simply a representative.”He had not slept for seven days, so he fell asleep just at the feet of Jesus Christ. He had a dream, a dream in which he saw that he was sitting in a train, a very fast train, and he inquired, “Where is this train going and where am I going?”They said, “This train is going to heaven.”He said, “This is good. It is better that I should see with my own eyes what kind of people are there.” So he figured it out: if he can find Socrates there, that means that just goodness, innocence, sincerity is enough; there is no need for belief in God. “If Socrates is there, Gautam Buddha is there, Mahavira is there… But if I don’t find these people there, then I can see what kind of people are there – because Adolf Hitler believes in God, Napoleon Bonaparte believes in God, Alexander the Great believes in God and goes on killing people. Nadirshah believes in God, and his only joy is to burn people alive. If I find these people there then I am finished; I have to say the truth to the congregation.”He reached heaven. He could not believe his eyes. He cleaned his glasses, looked again. The station was looking just like a wreck, a ruin. There was written Paradise, but the word had faded; it was perhaps millions of years before, that somebody had written it. And all over, it was dirty.Perhaps he thought: had he come to India or what? This is not paradise, maybe Vileparle. What kind of paradise is this?But he got down from the train, went to the inquiry office – there was nobody. He tried to find out… “I want to inquire about a few people, whether they are here – Gautam Buddha, Socrates, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Epicurus, Mahavira, Lao Tzu.”People said, “Never heard of them.”And he saw people – just dry bones, as if all juice had been taken out of them, skeletons. He inquired, “Who are these people?” And somebody was a great saint – he had heard the name. Somebody was Saint Francis; somebody was Eckhart…He said, “My God!” Dust, layers of dust on all these people – and the whole place looked as if the rains had not come for centuries. Everything was dry, nothing was green – no flowers, no foliage. He had never seen such a place. He said, “My God, if this is paradise, God Save the Queen! This is a dangerous place.”And the saints were there, sitting under trees which were naked, without any leaves. He asked whether spring comes here or not – they said, “Never heard of it before. What do you mean by spring?” No dance, no song, no joy…He rushed back to the railway station and inquired whether there was any train going to hell. They said, “Just now it is standing on the platform.” He went on the train to see hell, what the situation was – because if this is the situation in heaven, you cannot conceive what the situation will be in hell! But as he went closer, the breeze was becoming cooler, fragrant. And when he reached the station he saw beautiful people – men, women, children. He said, “My God, there seems to be something wrong. This place should be paradise, everybody looks so happy.”He got down and he asked somebody, “Have you heard about Socrates, Gautam Buddha, Bodhidharma, Basho?”They said, “Those are the people who have changed the place. This place used to be so rotten, but since those fellows came here they have changed the whole place. Now everything is green, an oasis. There is love, there is song, there is music. Wait for the night, when everybody dances, sings; right now everybody is working in the fields. Look at that man – he’s Socrates, working in the field.”It was such a shock. He woke up, and it was time for the congregation to arrive. People had started coming and they were standing around him and watching him: “What is the matter? Has he fallen asleep, is he unconscious or what?”Edmund Burke had come to listen to the answer.The theologian said, “I tried my hardest but could not find the answer. Just now I have had a dream – I will relate the dream to you and you can draw your own conclusions. My conclusions are this: I’m sorry, but what I have been telling you was not right. It is not the fact that the good people or the virtuous people go to heaven; on the contrary, it is just that wherever the virtuous people and the good people go, they create heaven. And belief in God is irrelevant. It is your individual whim – you can believe, you can not believe. It does not matter in the ultimate conclusions of life.”You are asking why the innocent people suffer.One thing is certain: they are not innocent. They don’t know the beauty of innocence. The innocent person cannot suffer. Wherever he is, he is in paradise. And the cunning person, wherever he is – he may be in paradise – he is going to suffer.But if you are innocent out of fear, out of fear that you may be caught by the police so you don’t commit any crime, out of fear that there is law and there are courts and you have to be good… If your goodness, your innocence, your virtue is out of fear, then you are not really virtuous. You are simply a coward, and cowards suffer; they deserve it. To be innocent means to be really brave. In this world of cunningness, to be innocent means to be really brave. And you will enjoy being innocent – suffering may surround you, flames may surround you, but they cannot burn you.I have never come across a good man who has suffered, because each good act is a reward in itself, and each bad act is a punishment in itself. There are not rewards and punishments afterward, beyond death, beyond this world. If you put your hand into the fire it will be burned right now – not in the next life, not in hell. Cause and effect are connected; they cannot be separated.So if you are suffering, then think again whether your innocence is innocence. Your suffering should become a question mark. And you will find that your innocence is not innocence, you are simply a coward. If your innocence is innocence, the whole sky can shower suffering on you and you will remain untouched.Remember always that life is cash, it is not a promissory note; you do something and immediately, in that very doing, is the result.But people are very strange.I remember one friend; he has known me for at least forty years. When I came back from America, he came to see me. Naturally he was very sad because I had been illegally put into jail and must have been tortured, harassed. And he had tears in his eyes.I was talking to a journalist so I could not say anything to him, but he sat and listened to me. And I told the journalist, “It has been a beautiful experience: you can handcuff me, you can put chains on my legs, you can put chains on my waist, but still I am the same, my freedom is untouched. You have caught my body but not me.”And after I had been in the jail for three days, even the jailer himself told me, “You are strange. We have never seen anybody enjoying the jail so much.”I said, “This is the first time I have been in jail, and I don’t want to miss a single moment. I am enjoying everything, because everything is new; this is a totally different world.”They had orders from above to torture me in every possible way, and they did whatsoever they could.But as time passed, one day, the second day, they started asking me questions– the jailer, the doctor, the nurses. When thousands of telegrams and telephone calls and telexes started coming, and thousands of flowers started coming from all over the world, and inquiries about me, they became aware that this is a rare opportunity: “We should not miss it. If there is something we have to ask…”The nurses told me that the jailer used to come once a month to the hospital section. Now he was coming six times a day. The whole staff was coming and going to the hospital section just to see me – somebody wanted my autograph, somebody wanted a picture, somebody had brought his wife and children to have my picture taken with them. I said, “You are making my jail time such a joy.”On the third day, when I left, the jailers told me at the airport, “When you came you were looking tired; now you are looking fresher. It is strange.”I said, “Three days of complete rest,” because the whole day I was not doing anything except lying down silently. Sleep was impossible because they had arranged two television sets just by my side. They were going loudly, from the morning till the middle of the night.They arranged all the chain-smokers… Because they knew about my allergy, they had filled all the cells around me with chain-smokers. So it was full of smoke, and continuous television. So there was nothing else to do but to lie down and just be inside, not to come out at all.Continuously in the smoke for three days, strangely, my allergy was not disturbing me. Otherwise just a little perfume, a little smoke, a little dust, and I will have an asthma attack. But I left the body outside, and I slipped as deep inside as possible to be far away from the smoke – let the body tackle it.The doctors said, “You are allergic to smoke, but there is continuous smoking and you are not affected.”I said, “It is because I have not been in the body for three days. I have been trying hard to keep myself as much inside as possible – indoors.”I was not eating much, because it was all non-vegetarian food, and the orders from above were that no special attention should be given to me. So they would not give me vegetarian food. I said, “Don’t be worried.” The inmates of the jail would bring their fruits, their milk. And they would say, “You are not eating anything and they are not giving you vegetarian food, but we get one apple every day, one glass of milk every day – and we are twelve people. Don’t be worried; you can have twelve glasses of milk, twelve apples.”But I said, “It is better not to eat. I will take a little bit of the fruit you have brought with such love and I will drink the milk, but I simply want my body not to function much. Digestion means making the body function. So let it sleep – almost dead, no function. I don’t want them to know that they can create my asthma.”For twelve days they tried hard, but they could not create any problem for me. And every doctor from every jail had to write that my health was perfect and fine.The situation was totally destructive to my health. I lost eight pounds of weight, but there was no suffering. In fact, as I came out of the jail, Nirvano told me, “You are looking better than you ever looked before.”I said, “I have lost eight pounds of weight.” Amrito, my doctor, had tried hard to bring my weight down. “He was not successful, but these American idiots have done it. I enjoyed it; I cannot say that there was any suffering in me. From their side, they were completely determined to make me suffer, and because they could not make me suffer they felt so frustrated.”I was talking to this journalist, and my friend was listening. And when I was finished with the journalist I asked him, “How are you?”He was very much shocked. It is something very important for you to understand. He had come from far away; he would have enjoyed being able to sympathize with me because I had been tortured, I had been harassed, and something should be done against the American government. But when he heard that I had enjoyed the whole trip, his face fell; he looked very frustrated. He said, “We were thinking something else…”I said, “You were thinking just according to your mind. When you came you were sad for one reason; now you are sad for another reason – because you cannot sympathize with me. You missed a chance.” In fact nobody can sympathize with me, in any situation. I will not allow it, because I am capable of enjoying every situation.Innocence cannot suffer. If it suffers, it is not innocence; it is simply cowardice. Anything that is sincere is always going to give you joy.It is absolutely certain that wherever the good people are, there is heaven – not that the good people go to heaven; heaven comes to the good people.I don’t want you to be prepared as it is being done in all the churches and temples and mosques and synagogues. They are preparing you to go to heaven, and if you don’t listen to them you will fall into hell. I am preparing you for a totally different experience. I am preparing you so that heaven enters into you. It is a psychological space, it is not geography.When the first Russian astronaut, Gagarin, came back from space… He was the first man to go into space. He went around the earth taking photographs, and when he came back the first question was asked, which is natural in Russia – “Have you met God there?”He said, “No, there was no God.”And in Moscow they have made a museum of all the things that the astronauts have been bringing from outer space, from the moon. On the front door, Gagarin’s sentence is written in golden letters: We have explored space and there is no God anywhere.I would like to say to the Russian people and to the whole world: by exploring outer space you will not find God. Explore the inner space and it is there. It is not found as an object, it is found as a subject, as your very subjectivity. You are it, and once you have found it there is no suffering for you, no hell for you, no misery for you.Then the whole life is simply a magical, miraculous dance of festivity.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 37 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Never before have I felt so much at home with you. This place has such a beautiful vibration, and I feel a lot of it is created by your Indian disciples. Sometimes it feels that their gestures are in such a melting with your gestures and grace that I start asking myself if we, your Western sannyasins, are missing out on something. To see Indian sannyasins bowing down to you touches my heart deeply, and sometimes I feel that I am missing out. To do the bowing does not feel right, and only once in a while the bowing down happens to me – which I feel is one of the beautiful moments. Please comment.India has a different vibe from any other land. The vibration depends on thousands of years’ constant search for one’s self. No other country is devoted to such a project; it is special and unique. Not for a single moment has the Indian consciousness wavered from its search. It has sacrificed everything for it, it has sacrificed itself for it. It has suffered slavery, poverty, sickness, death – but it has not accepted defeat in the search. The search is so ancient, it has gone into the very blood and bones and marrow of the people of this land. They may not be conscious of it, but they certainly have a different vibe: it is not their own, it is their heritage. They are born with it.I can understand your question. The question has been asked in many ways, but you have put it very clearly: there is a distinction between the Indian disciple and the Western disciples.The West has carried out a totally different tradition. Its basic motivation has been to explore objects. Objects are dead, and when you have been exploring dead objects for centuries, a certain kind of deadness is bound to enter into your own being. A man is known by the company he keeps.The Western mind is surrounded by objects. It is interested in faraway stars… Only in one thing is it not interested, and that is its own being. The obvious is ignored, and the far away becomes the focus of your interest. Naturally your very being starts moving farther and farther from your center.The Western mind lives on the periphery – that is its centuries-old concern. Naturally it has created a different kind of culture, a different kind of approach among human beings. It has created the psychology of the ego. The whole of Western education from Aristotle up to today emphasizes that your ego should be stronger. It is a natural conclusion, because you are going to be a competitor, in a world with so many people fighting for the same objects. You cannot be polite and you cannot be nice and you cannot be nonviolent. And you cannot bother about your means – you cannot think that a good end needs good means.If the means are not good, then the end cannot be good – because it is the means that ultimately transforms into the goal, into the end. It is the path that finally becomes the goal; a wrong path cannot lead to the right goal.But when it is a question of competition you have to be cunning, because others are cunning. You have to be more cunning than them; otherwise you will be defeated. If you want to be richer, you have to fight tooth-and-nail. You don’t have any time to think about means and ends. You have to keep your eyes only on the goal that you have to become powerful, rich, prestigious, respected. It does not matter by what means you achieve these goals.And to achieve these goals is nothing but fulfilling your ego: “I am higher than anybody else, better than anybody else. I am the first, everybody else comes after me.” In such an atmosphere, bowing down to the feet of a master is impossible; it is against the very ego.You can see in small things how East and West have developed – out of the same human material, the same human energy – different patterns.In the East you welcome each other with folded hands. In the West you shake hands. Do you see the difference?When you greet someone with folded hands you are saying, “I bow down to the divineness in you.” When you are shaking hands there is no question of divineness. In fact shaking hands was developed to be sure that you are not holding some weapon in your right hand, to be certain that you are not an enemy. You offer the right hand, you show that your right hand is empty – “I am not your enemy.” At the most, that is what it says: I am not your enemy. It does not say, “I am your friend.” And it keeps you on the same status; you both shake hands. But it has no mystery in it; it is just a strategy, a diplomacy.The right hand is dangerous, it can hold a weapon; and if you don’t see it clearly open, hold it, feel it, then there is suspicion, the man can deceive you. This shaking of hands developed in the West out of distrust. Now the Western historians are agreed about it, about the origin of shaking of hands.But bowing down to each other with folded hands takes you to a totally different level. It has a different context; it makes you feel respected, honored, and not in an ordinary way, but in the most extraordinary fashion. It reminds you of your divinity, of your godliness. Those folded hands are not for you or for your ego. They are for something hidden behind you, beyond your ego – your essential nature, your very soul.Secondly, the folded hands also signify that I am bowing down to you not half-heartedly, that both sides of me are together as a totality – not as a split personality, not holding anything back – because, when you shake hands, it is only with one hand. It is only representative of one side, half of you. What about the other half? The other half may not be in agreement with the hand that you have given in friendship. It is a split, divided, half-hearted reception, and you can feel it.When you shake hands with someone, you can feel whether the hand is cold or warm, whether the hand is alive or just like a dead branch of a tree. If it is half, it cannot be warm; if it is half, it cannot be alive. It can be only formal, just etiquette – it has no depth. Only once in a while will you find some hand with warmth, and then it generally happens that whenever the hand is full of warmth, the other hand will also come to catch hold of your hand; both your hands will be together.Both the hands folded – in the same way that the East worships the ultimate, the absolute, with no difference at all; it receives the human with the same folded hands.Here, to bow down to a master’s feet is a tremendous blissfulness, because those are the moments when you have put your ego aside. For those few moments you are pure being, and to be pure being is to be pure bliss.But for the Western disciple there is a difficulty. He has been told to keep his head high. He has been educated not to surrender, in any case; it is better to die than to surrender. His whole education is nursing the ego in the name of individuality. And this is simply a deception, because individuality is a totally different phenomenon – it has nothing to do with ego. In fact the more ego you have, the less individuality you will have. If you are full of the ego, there is no space for individuality.The ego is afraid to bow down. The individuality is not afraid, because the individuality feels enriched – it loses nothing, it gains. Flowers of blessings shower on it; it feels a newness, a coolness, a silence descending upon it. But for the ego it is death. For the individuality, it is becoming really alive.The West has been deceived by its religions, by its educators, by its politicians to believe that “Ego is your individuality; sharpen your ego.” And certainly it helps in the market place; it helps you to fight, to compete mercilessly. It allows for a cutthroat competition. It does not matter what means you choose: your ego should be fulfilled; then everything is right.It is not strange that two world wars have happened in this century in the West, and the West is preparing for a third world war too. It is not strange that in all the centuries of the Middle Ages the West was continually killing, murdering, burning living people in the name of God, in the name of love. It was easy for the West to spread its imperialistic desires all over the world.In the future, minds who have known something of meditation, reading about the past, will be surprised that countries like India – so vast – were so easily conquered.The credit does not go to the conquerors remember. The credit goes to the defeated, the conquered – because these people have lived in a totally different atmosphere, a different milieu; they have been nourished on different vibrations. Fighting and killing for land, for money, was not in their minds. They were conquered not because they were not brave enough; they were conquered because they were not foolish enough to fight. They allowed the way; they said, “A few idiots have got this idea to conquer the whole world – let them conquer. What are you going to gain by conquering, the whole world?” A totally different approach to life: that the very idea of conquering is ugly, inhuman.But to the Alexanders, to the Napoleons, to the Hitlers, to conquer was the greatest thing in life; there was nothing more.India knows much more. India knows that there is certainly a way of conquering – but it is not concerned with conquering others, it is concerned with conquering oneself.Alexander was asked by a sannyasin – because Alexander wanted to take a sannyasin with him to Athens. His master, Aristotle, had asked him to bring back a sannyasin. He had heard so much about these people, and they seemed to be of a totally different quality. “So bring back at least one sannyasin.” Aristotle was interested to know what kind of vibe a sannyasin has, what it was that was keeping the whole East on a different wavelength.The sannyasin was naked, standing by the side of a river, and Alexander introduced himself: “I am Alexander the Great, who has conquered the whole world.”The sannyasin laughed. He said, “Don’t be foolish. Just answer me one question: have you conquered yourself?”Alexander had never thought about it. It was so alien, so foreign a thought; it had never occurred to him that one has to conquer oneself.And the sannyasin said, “You have some nerve. Without conquering yourself, you started conquering the whole world. Be ashamed! First conquer yourself; that is the only true victory.”I am reminded of a small story which Western historians never mention:When Alexander invaded India, he was camping on the bank of the river Sindhu, which was the boundary line of an Indian empire. The king of that empire was Poras. It was the rainy season, and the river Sindhu was almost like an ocean. It is a very big river, but in times of rain it becomes hundreds of times bigger. Alexander and his forces were waiting so that when the water subsided they could manage to cross it.But one boat from Alexander’s camp was sent across the river, and the boat was carrying Alexander’s wife. It was the month of shravan. In India, in the month of shravan, the women tie a thread on their brother’s wrist – it is called rakshabandhan – and the brother promises that he will protect the sister even if he has to lose his life.The wife of Alexander was received with great warmth and taken to the palace. Poras asked, “Why have you come? You could have called me, informed me, and I could have come to your camp. It was dangerous to cross the river.”But Alexander’s wife said, “I had to come because it is the month of shravan. I don’t have a brother and I want to make you my brother.”Poras said, “This is a great coincidence – I don’t have a sister. I am immensely happy to have you as a sister.” She tied a thread on his wrist, and he promised that he would protect her even if he had to lose his life.She said, “I trust your word. Just remember, soon you will be fighting with my husband. Remember that he is your sister’s husband and don’t make me a widow.”The time came when the river subsided, and Poras and Alexander faced each other, fought. There came a moment, because Poras was sitting on his elephant – in India the elephant was used in wars – while Alexander was sitting on his horse… A moment came when Poras killed the horse. Alexander was down flat on the earth, and Poras was just going to kill him with his spear.At that very moment he saw the thread. A single moment, and the great Alexander would have been finished. But the thread and the promise is far more valuable to the Eastern mind than victory or defeat: he pulled his spear back.Alexander said, “What happened? You just had to kill me and you would have been the world conqueror.”He said, “It is impossible. I have promised your wife that as long as I am alive she will not be a widow, I will protect her. So get up. I cannot kill you.”Poras was defeated.You can see the difference of attitudes: he was put into chains, handcuffed, chains on his feet, and dragged into the camp where Alexander was sitting on the throne. Now this is simply an inhuman way to behave with such a man who has saved your life. But even in chains Poras was a far greater individual than Alexander. His integrity, his individuality… You cannot enslave such a person. You can put him in chains but you cannot enslave him.And Alexander asked, “How should I treat you?”Poras said, “Don’t you know a simple thing? An emperor should be treated like an emperor.”Alexander had nothing to say, he was just shocked. The authority, the voice, the power of the man alone among enemies… In chains he still had the same attitude as he had in his palaces: “You should treat an emperor like an emperor.”Alexander turned back. He did not enter further into India. No one can say exactly why he turned back – because he had won the battle; now the doors were open to the whole of India. He could have entered into other kingdoms. Poras’ kingdom was small, just on the border.But I have a definite feeling that facing Poras he understood it: that his cunningness worked once but it might not work again and again. It was not a victory – at least to him it was clear; it may not have been clear to his armies. It was clear to him that he was facing a different kind of people.A strange man! For just a thread he lost the whole kingdom; just for a word given to a strange woman who was just a trap, who was sent by Alexander himself.For Alexander it was diplomacy, no question of means; the end was all in all. But to Poras it was a totally different matter. Even in his defeat I say he was victorious. And if people write history with some intelligence, then Poras should be the victor and Alexander the defeated one. But the world is strange: Poras is forgotten, and Alexander becomes the great conqueror of the world. And we know only about what happened to Poras here. We don’t know what Alexander had been doing all along the way from Athens to India.India has certainly a different attitude, a different approach about everything. So I can understand.A Western disciple, when he sees an Indian disciple touching the feet of the master with tears of joy, is in a strange dilemma. His whole education, conditioning says, “This is not right.” And his heart can see that this is right; these tears, this joy cannot be wrong. Between his conditioning and his actual experience here, there is a conflict. So once in a while the heart overcomes the conditioning and the Western disciple also – in spite of his mind, in spite of his whole Western heritage – bows down, touches the feet of the master and feels the tremendous joy. And a strange experience: that he is not losing his individuality, of which he was afraid, of which he has been made afraid. On the contrary, his individuality is nourished, his individuality is becoming more human, and one day it will become divine.Yes, the ego feels hurt. The ego will try to say, “Don’t do such things.” The ego stands for all your conditioning and heritage. But the ego cannot give you any nourishment and the ego cannot give you those tears of joy and gratitude; the ego can give you only misery, anguish, tension. It is up to you to choose.The difference is this: for the Indian there is not much problem in choosing; it comes easily, whole-heartedly. For the Westerner it comes with difficulty – the dilemma, the dichotomy between the heart and the mind: there is a struggle.But I should remind you of one thing: for the Indian there is some other problem that you don’t have to face. They don’t have to face your problem; their problem is that touching the feet has become just formal – they touch anybody’s feet. They touch the feet of their father, mother, anybody older. So touching the feet is not something phenomenal; it is very ordinary, usual, an everyday thing.So when they touch the feet of the master, it is possible that they may be doing it just as a formality; this is their problem. They may not get anything out of it. A formality is just a routine. It has to be done so they are doing it, and they have been doing it their whole lives. It is not something new, it does not open up a new door – it is just an exercise, just bowing down and touching the feet and finished.So the Western disciple need not be worried that the Indian disciple is in a better position. It is not so. He has his troubles, you have your troubles.And if you ask me, I will say your trouble is better than the trouble of the Indian disciple because the Indian disciple never becomes aware of it. Not even a single question… For thirty years I have been answering questions and not a single Indian sannyasin has asked, “How to get out of this formality? How to make it authentic, heartfelt?” They go on doing the exercise and feeling, “What more can be done?” – and they are not doing anything.I used to go for a morning walk with one of my neighbors. He had a habit of bowing down to every temple. And in India, God has more houses than man has. After each one or two houses there is a temple; if not a temple, then underneath a tree Hanumanji is sitting, Ganeshji is sitting. And that man was continually bowing down here and there.I said to him, “Listen, if you are going for a morning walk with me then you have to stop all this nonsense. You don’t feel anything, neither for this temple nor for that temple. When you don’t feel anything, why do you bother to do this exercise?”He said, “What to do? It is just out of fear. Since I have been taking morning walks with you I have become aware that it is routine and once in a while I miss one Hanumanji or one Ganeshji – I just don’t look at them – but then I start feeling a deep fear in me, that if Hanumanji becomes angry… And I have not lost anything just doing a ritual. But I have to go back. When you have gone to your house, I have to go back to the Hanumanji whom I have left out to pray to him: “Just don’t get angry, I was in wrong company. That fellow suggested that I stop so I stopped; it was not my fault.”So I said, “Then you can do it – but you cannot go for a walk with me.”He loved to go with me, to talk with me. He was very sad. He said, “I will try – just one more chance. Tomorrow, whatever happens… What can happen? I have one wife, one child and myself – three persons. At the most these people can kill us, that’s all. If the worst comes to worst, I am not going to take care of anybody.”He went with me not more than just one furlong, and we had passed only two or three places of his worship, and he started trembling. I took his hand in my hand. He had a fever. I said, “My God, why do you have a fever?”He said, “Just… I am trying, but my whole being is in such fear, a nightmare. I am afraid that when I reach back home my wife will be dead, or perhaps my child will have gone mad – one knows not what is going to happen today.”I said, “You go back and do your exercise.”He said, “Thank you, you are such a good person. But can I come for the morning walk?”I said, “Yes, you can come. You just do whatsoever you want to do.” And when he came back after paying his respects to the three temples that we had passed, I took his hand and the fever was gone.The Indian has a formality which he has learned, and he goes on repeating it like a robot; he does not mean anything. Hence I have never been asked by an Indian sannyasin, “What to do with my formality? How to make it a heartfelt experience?” They are in a far more difficult situation.From the Western sannyasins, questions have come many times – “We see Indians, we see their joy, we feel their vibe and certainly it looks like we are missing something.”You are missing something. And if you can put aside your ego, your gain will be better and more and deeper than any Indian disciple’s for the simple reason that it will not be a formality. You have gone through a transformation to do it; it is a conscious doing. For the Indian it is an unconscious, sleepy thing. So don’t feel that you are a loser. Anyone, whether Indian or non-Indian, who cannot put his ego aside is a loser.The whole mystery of the path is to be in a state of nothingness. And out of that nothingness comes gratitude.The master is the closest. It is difficult for you to feel the invisible, or to touch the intangible, or to hear the music which can be heard only by the heart, but the moment you are surrendered to the master, you are surrendered to a door from where you may get a fresh breeze of the divine, a fragrance from the beyond, a glimpse of the unknown. Then tears will come to you, tears of deep thankfulness – tears, because words cannot say it.But because you are aware, I hope you will be able to put the ego aside, just to experiment. And once you have tasted the sweetness of the beyond then there is no question of experiment, and there is no question of your ego making any trouble for you. Your ego will start disappearing in the shadows. It will haunt you till you have something of the real in your hands.The master is the closest door. Soon you will be able to experience the same bowing down before a rosebush or before a sunset or before the sky full of stars. Once you have known, then millions of doors open.Just open one door – that is for you to do – and then existence opens millions of doors for you, unasked, unsought. Wherever you look you find something that reminds you of godliness; that reminds you of truth, beauty, and fills you with gratitude.Osho,When I look at my life, it seems that the first twenty-one years were spent in being programmed for an existence which was not my own. When I began to drop this programming, energy became available for the search for the truth. After fourteen years I found you, my master, and dropping this search, I received energy to explore the nature of love. Now, another seven years later, I am sharing the joy of your presence in love with a beautiful fellow disciple, and it seems I have nothing left to wish for. Will these moments of perfect contentment last forever, or are they merely preparation for something else?There are moments on the path when one feels that this is the end of the journey – not only feels it, but wants it, because it is so tremendously blissful that one cannot conceive that anything more can be possible. You are at such a moment, and in such a moment the desire is natural that it should remain forever.But I would like to say to you that you are asking something against yourself, because there is much more to happen. There will always be much more to happen. There will never come a point which can be said to be the full-point. Never think that this moment should last forever because if this moment lasts forever, then what about those beautiful moments that are still unexplored, still ahead?I would like to tell you a beautiful story:Rabindranath, one of the greatest poets the world has produced, says in one of his poems that he has been searching for God for thousands of lives. Sometimes he found his shadow near a faraway star; he had rushed toward the star, but by the time he reached there God was gone; he was always moving. Sometimes he would see God’s face somewhere far away… And again and again, the same story. Although he was coming closer, and each time he was seeing something more. From the shadow he had started seeing God himself. At first it was only a vague figure. Slowly, slowly he could see the face, the eyes, the smile… He was coming closer and closer and closer.One day he came across a house, a beautiful golden house with a plate on the door saying: This is the House of God. He was immensely joyful. Thousands of lives’ journey, so much trouble, so much arduous, tedious… But finally he had made it. You could feel his joy – he danced, and then he went up four steps to knock on the door.Just as he was going to knock on the door, an idea came to his mind: “If this is really the house of God and he opens the door, then what am I going to do? All I know is searching, seeking, journeying. I have become an expert in millions of lives, an expert in seeking and searching. What am I going to do sitting in this house for eternity? It may be made of gold, but this is dangerous. It is entering into your own grave; life is finished. You have met God – what more do you want? Now there is no challenge, nothing to explore, nowhere to go. Everything is finished; it is simply death.”He became so afraid that he took his shoes off his feet so that no noise would be made, because who knows? – just a noise on the steps and God might open the door, although he had not knocked. And God will say, “Where are you going? Come in.” And then he ran away.And in the poem he says, “Since then I have been running. And people ask me, ‘Where are you going?’ and I say, ‘I am searching for God.’ And I know where he is. There is one good thing about it,” he says, “that now I know where he is so I avoid that place. And the whole universe is available for me. God is in his house, and the whole universe, with all its beauty and all its joy and all its journey, is available to me. I don’t look in that direction and I am not going to enter that house.”His poem has a tremendous insight.There is no end, because every end will be death. And life knows no death; it goes on and on and on. So this is simply a preparation; it is always a preparation for a new journey.You can have a little rest, but remember: it is just an overnight stay in a caravanserai. In the morning we have to go, so rest well, be ready. As the sun rises, our journey starts again.Life is from eternity to eternity.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 38 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Why is it so difficult for the world to accept you as you are?There are many implications. First, the world never accepts anybody as he is. This is something very fundamental about the world and the way it treats individuals.The individual is small; the individual is born helpless, a child. The world is always big; it has all the power to create or to destroy. The child has no idea who he is – and certainly he needs an identity. The world gives him an identity. The world starts making him, manufacturing him according to its own needs.The world does not exist for the individual. The whole effort is how to make the individual exist for the world.The world is always there when the individual comes. All its vested interests are there: its religion, culture, civilization, its way of living, its system of beliefs. And to make the individual function as a cog in the wheel, the world programs the child just like a computer is programmed.The child is not accepted as a divine guest to be respected, to be loved, to be allowed to grow, to find his own identity. The child is accepted as a commodity: the whole question is how to make him more useful to the already-existent interests.The whole education system, the priest, the politician, the leader, the so-called wise people – they are all conspiring against the individual. Their conspiracy is to kill the individuality, the freedom, the intelligence – any possibility of revolt. There should not be left in the individual any seed of saying no. He should be programmed in such a way that he becomes an obedient servant.Hence obedience is so much praised: parents like the obedient child, teachers like the obedient student, the society likes the obedient citizen. Those who are not obedient are thought to be misfits, they are condemned. Nobody wants to be condemned, and when the whole world is on one side, a single individual feels so tiny – a dewdrop against the whole ocean – that he cannot think himself to be right; the ocean must be right.A strange split is created in the individual. If he follows the ocean, the collectivity, then he goes against his self-nature, he commits suicide. He will live a posthumous life. He will breathe, he will walk, but he will not be himself. He will be simply programmed, conditioned – “His Master’s Voice,” a record which goes on repeating the same song. The song is not his own; it has been handed over to him. The society wants him to repeat it.The society hates the individual. The society wants you to mix with the crowd, to fit with the crowd. Stop being yourself; just be a carbon copy of the ideal that the society has determined is how a person should be. It has not asked you how you would like to be – the ideals are determined by others. You are simply victims. Every individual on the earth is a victim of the crowd.So the first thing to understand is that it is not only me, my individuality, that the world finds difficult to understand. It is not in the very program of the minds of human beings to accept any individual. This is the fundamental approach of all cultures, all civilizations: to destroy the individual in favor of the collective mind.We have created a world of slaves. There are Hindus, there are Mohammedans, there are Christians, there are communists. But you will not find somebody who is simply himself and not a communist, not a Catholic, not a Hindu – because these are the names of the crowds.As far as I am concerned, things become more complicated – to accept me is difficult, very difficult. Now because what I am saying is difficult – my teaching is very simple, very obvious – the difficulty arises from the side of the crowd. To accept me means to reject their whole ages-long conditioning. To accept me means to reject their religions, their scriptures, their so-called leaders, their saints, their whole way of life. And they have cherished it up to now as the most significant thing, as the rightful path.And to drop all that heritage just for one individual… Although it appeals to your reason, it appeals to your heart, to drop thousands of years in favor of one individual is certainly difficult.I am reminded of one of the great philosophers of this age, Bertrand Russell. He lived long, almost a whole century. He passed through many phases, he saw the world moving through many phases: one hundred years is a long time.He was brought up as an orthodox Christian. He belonged to the noble families of England; he was a lord. But as he started studying philosophy in the university it was impossible not to see that Christianity is a very third-rate religion, because he became acquainted with Gautam Buddha.He remembers in one of his memoirs:He rejected Christianity. He wrote a book, Why I Am Not A Christian, and in the book he gave all the reasons why he was dropping Christianity. The book must have been in existence now for sixty years, unanswered. No Christian theologian has been able to answer that book, because his arguments are so simple and clear-cut. Intellectually, he tried to deprogram himself from Christianity; that book was an exercise in deprogramming himself.Just one night when the book was finished… He was happy that he had finished with something superstitious, ugly, which had been the cause of so much bloodshed for two thousand years, which instead of teaching love had only created more hate in the world.Bertrand Russell was tremendously impressed by Gautama the Buddha. Certainly, Gautama the Buddha had a refinement of arguments and the courage to go with his intelligence, not with tradition. Jesus still believed in God. Gautam Buddha also had the tradition of believing in God but his intelligence did not allow it.It is a simple argument: if God creates man then there can be no freedom; the choice is between God or freedom. The choice is not between God or no God, the choice is between God or freedom – because if God creates humanity, we are simply puppets, manufactured. And God seems to be whimsical.For no special reason he created the world at a certain moment – and before that, for eternity, what was he doing? And what was the cause that motivated him to create the world at a certain point? And if he is simply whimsical, crazy – the idea just comes to his mind to create so he creates – if the idea comes to destroy, who is there to prevent him? He can destroy it at this very moment.Gautam Buddha said, “I cannot accept God because I cannot accept that consciousness is manufactured. I cannot accept that there is a whimsical creator, because that implies a whimsical destroyer. Then what is the point of my being virtuous? If even the creation of the world is whimsical, and all its laws are just in the hands of God, then perhaps up to now good people have been going to paradise and from tomorrow they will start going to hell. What can you do? To whom are you going to protest? God is not visible, not available.”And Gautam Buddha also said, and he pondered over it – if in the first place it is God who creates man, then he creates anger, sex, greed, jealousy, violence in man. And then there are religious priests and saints and mahatmas who condemn it. Looked at straightforwardly, they are condemning God.George Gurdjieff used to say that all mahatmas, all saints are against God, because God creates sex and these people teach celibacy. You have not created sex, you have not created ambition, and all the mahatmas of all the religions are together in condemning it. Certainly they are against God.Gautam Buddha said, “Rather than accepting this position, I choose to reject the very idea of God and his creation.”Bertrand Russell was immensely impressed. Gautam Buddha lived five hundred years earlier than Jesus Christ, but he had the courage to reject God in favor of freedom, in favor of evolution, in favor of man’s own efforts to transform himself, to bring more consciousness and more being.That night he thought, “Certainly Gautam Buddha was a far greater human being than Jesus Christ. But can I write this?” He closed his eyes, and then he wrote in his diary, “Rationally I understand that Gautam Buddha is a far superior human being, but my conditioning… Although I have rejected Christianity, somehow in the darker corners of my unconscious it is still lingering. I cannot put Gautam Buddha above Jesus Christ. At the most I can put them as equals, understanding clearly that Jesus is just a pygmy before Gautam Buddha. Rationally I understand, but there is the irrational part, which is dominated by thousands of years of conditioning.”The world finds it difficult to accept me.There have been individuals in the world – the world has found it difficult to accept them, but the whole world was not against them. A part of humanity was always ready to accept them, because they were supportive to that part and its programming. For example, Christ is not accepted by the Jews, but now almost half of humanity is Christian – they accept him. Mahavira may not be accepted by the whole world, but he is accepted by a small section of humanity, the Jainas. Karl Marx may not be accepted by the whole world, but almost half of the world is communist and accepts him.All these individuals were in a better position than me: at least a certain section of humanity, a certain crowd, was accepting them. I am standing absolutely alone. The Hindu cannot accept me, the Mohammedan cannot accept me, the Christian cannot accept me, the communist cannot accept me, the capitalist cannot accept me. It is a unique situation.One of the richest men in India was Jugal Kisore Birla. He heard me on the radio and he was very much impressed, so he inquired about me and said he wanted to meet me. When I was in Delhi he invited me, and I went to his palace. He was old.He said, “I can give you a blank checkbook. And you can always take as much money as you want out of the bank, you need not ask me. You just have to promise me two things: propagate Hinduism in the world, and second, create the idea that cow slaughter is the biggest sin.”I said, “You have got the wrong person, but your blank checkbook is saved. You wait, you may find someone. I cannot propagate Hinduism, because I can see that Hinduism is one of the oldest religions. Being the oldest, it needs much renovation, it is almost in ruins. Being the oldest, it does not have contemporary values.”He said, “What do you mean by contemporary values? Hinduism has all the values.”I said, “It is so simple. You call Yudhishthir as Dharmaraj, ‘the king of religiousness’; he is a gambler. Not an ordinary gambler: he gambles his whole kingdom, he gambles all his properties, and finally he gambles his own wife. In the first place it is so ugly, that he is a gambler. In the second place, he has no respect for a human being, his wife. He treats the woman just like any commodity. And still Hindus call him ‘the king of religion.’ I cannot. It is impossible for me, I will have to condemn him.“Hindus have not been courageous enough to go on refining their religion. They have carried the old exactly as it was, without changing anything. In fact, the more ancient something is, the more valuable it is in the minds of Hindus.“Parasurama, one of the incarnations of the Hindu god, obeyed his father and killed his mother. His father was suspicious – perhaps every husband is suspicious – and he had a beautiful wife. And Parasurama, who kills his own mother just because the father is suspicious, the father is jealous, is accepted as one of the incarnations of God. In the first place, jealousy is wrong, suspicion is wrong. In the second place, if your suspicion is right, then divorce is the way, not beheading the woman.”And I asked Jugal Kisore Birla, “If the mother had told Parasurama to cut off the head of the father, what do you think would have been the situation? Would Parasurama still be accepted as an incarnation of God? The god is a man, the father is a man, the son is a man – this is a man’s world; to kill the woman is okay.”And this man Parasurama was a brahmin, the highest Hindu caste, and the suspicion was that the mother was having a love affair with a warrior. You cannot find such stupidity in the whole history of the world, that because the mother was suspected… And it was only a suspicion, there was no certainty; the mother was never asked. There was no proof. Not only did he kill his mother, the story is that he killed all the warriors on the earth – because it was not known who the warrior was, “So finish all of them. Whoever he is, he will be finished.” Such a violent man! I don’t think there has ever been such a killer. Single-handedly, without any atom bombs or hydrogen bombs or nuclear weapons, he destroyed the second highest caste, the kshatriyas, the warriors.But you find kshatriyas all over the world – where have these come from? There was a system, and in the Hindu scriptures there is no condemnation of it: the system was that any woman could go to any Hindu mahatma, Hindu sage, and ask for a child. And it was just sheer courtesy that the mahatma would make love to the woman. So whenever you come across a kshatriya, a warrior, he is not pure; the brahmin blood has destroyed their purity completely.And the whole doing was because of Parasurama: he killed the men; now all the women were left without their husbands. And just to continue the race they had to go to the brahmin mahatmas. All those women were prostituted by the brahmins, and still there is no condemnation.I am just waiting for a summons. In the newspapers, the news has come that a summons is on the way from a court in Kulu Manali because I have said that in Hindu scriptures you cannot find truth. This has hurt somebody’s feelings so much that now I have to be present in court. And these idiots don’t think at all that it is better not to provoke me – because all your Hindu scriptures are nothing but pornography. Searching for truth in Hindu scriptures… You cannot find truth in any scriptures, Hindu or Mohammedan or Christian.So I told Jugal Kisore Birla, “You just forgive me. I am perfectly in agreement with you that cow slaughter should be stopped, but what about other animals? What about bulls?” The cow is the mother of the Hindus. And the bull, the father, is being slaughtered. So I asked him, “What about the father?”He said, “What father?”I said, “Your father.”He said, “He is dead.”I said, “I mean the bull.”He said, “You are a strange man.”I said, “I am not a strange man, you are strange people. In calling the cow your mother, you yourself are accepting that the bull is your father. You cannot deny that. And what about other animals? No Hindu is bothered about any other animal, so it is not respect for life, it is just superstition. The cows should be saved, just as every other animal should be saved. Life should be respected, and life should not be destroyed in any form.”With me, the trouble is that I am absolutely honest.I was in Amritsar. And because I had spoken on one of their basic texts, Japuji, the Sikhs were very happy – because nobody other than Sikhs had ever spoken on it, and spoken with such a deep analysis. They invited me into their gurdwara, and the chief of the gurdwara asked me, “We will be very pleased if you speak on our other gurus too.”I said, “That is impossible. I can speak, but you will not like it.”He said, “Why?”I said, “I can speak on Nanak. I feel a deep affinity with the man. But the remaining nine of your masters, none of them are masters, just politicians – and continually fighting and killing. Have you seen any picture of Nanak with a sword? But the other nine…”Sikhs have ten masters. The other nine have swords; so much so, that to be a Sikh you have to have five things: “the five K’s” it is called. In Punjabi, the sword is called katar – one K, katar. Another K is kesh, hair. The third K is a very strange thing that I have never been able to understand why. I have asked the Sikh priests, “All the K’s are okay, but the third K…”They said, “Leave it.”I said, “I cannot leave it because it is an essential part.” The third K stands for kachchha. Kachchha means underwear.I said, “This is strange; to be a religious man you have to wear underwear! I don’t see any relationship between religion and underwear. But if you want me to support such things, I cannot. Neither is kesh important, nor is katar needed. And kachchha certainly is not needed.” Strange people.So they said, “You cannot speak on our other masters?”I said, “They are not masters. And such things I will have to criticize.”Mohammedans have been coming to me with their Koran so many times: “Speak on the Koran.” And many times I have tried to look into it, to see if something can be found worth speaking on. But I have failed to find anything worth speaking on.The religions of the world cannot accept me, because to accept me is not a simple matter. First they have to reject whatever has been there in their minds, their idea of religion. There is the difficulty.The politicians of all types are worried because their basic game is the same: how to dominate people. And my whole effort is how to make people so strong, so freedom-loving that nobody can dominate them, so intelligent that nobody can exploit them. Naturally no politician is going to be in favor of me.Many parliaments of the world have passed resolutions so that I cannot enter into their countries. I have never been in their countries, I have not said that I want to enter their countries, but they are taking precautions “in case.” Even the German government, which was the first to give orders to all its embassies that I should not be allowed in Germany… Not only that, my jet airplane should not be allowed to land at any German airport, even for refueling; I am not even getting out of the plane! I never thought that Adolf Hitler had left such cowards behind him. These are the grandchildren of Adolf Hitler – so impotent. Adolf Hitler must be tossing and turning in his grave at what kind of politicians his country has.And they all go on lying. Here in the parliament, the opposition leader asked, “Has the government made it a condition for Osho that no foreign disciples should be allowed to come to him?” And the minister concerned said in the parliament that no such condition has been made. Any foreign disciples will have the same opportunity to come to India as other tourists have. But I am receiving letters from sannyasins that they are being refused at Indian embassies.In Athens they refused. Because the sannyasin had read the statement of the minister, she went to the embassy in red clothes. They immediately rejected her application and said, “No sannyasin can go to India.”Just two days ago, one sannyasin came from Australia and he said, “Two other sannyasins – who were not wearing red, who were not wearing the mala – were rejected. They asked, ‘Why are we being rejected?’ and the ambassador insisted, ‘You are sannyasins.’ They said, ‘We are not sannyasins; we don’t know who Osho is.’ But the ambassador said, ‘I know the very vibe of sannyasins.’”They have taken a written statement from the man, because I have informed my sannyasins all over the world: whichever embassy refuses you, take a written statement that they are refusing you and that the cause is that you are sannyasins. Then we can sue them in those countries, and we can sue the government in this country – “Your ministers in the parliament are lying and deceiving the whole country. You say one thing in the parliament and you order your embassies to do just the opposite.”These politicians cannot accept me. They have neither any understanding of human nature, nor do they have any understanding of human consciousness. They have no understanding of human evolution, nor do they desire that man should evolve. Man should remain retarded so that they can remain leaders. It is easy to be a leader in a retarded crowd. When people are intelligent, things become different.I was a professor in a university. Doctor Radhakrishnan had become the president of India. Before becoming the president of India, he was the vice-chancellor of Varanasi Hindu University; so all educationists felt glorified in his glory and his birthday was made Teacher’s Day: “A teacher has become the president of India.” In my university also, there was great celebration. The vice-chancellor was presiding, and there were great speeches in praise of Radhakrishnan. They had asked me to speak also. They had no idea that I don’t believe in hypocrisy.I asked the vice-chancellor, “Just a single question I would like to raise before the students and the professors: A professor becomes the president of the country and all the professors are feeling very gratified, their ego is satisfied. I don’t agree that this day should be called Teacher’s Day. We should wait for a president to become a teacher, to renounce the presidency in favor of being a teacher. Then we should celebrate that day as Teacher’s Day. This is President’s Day – you are celebrating it because a teacher has become president, but the value is in being a president, not in being a teacher. A president should become a teacher – that will certainly glorify the teacher. A president should say, ‘To be a president is nothing in comparison to being a teacher.’”There was a great silence. The vice-chancellor looked at the chancellor, the chancellor looked at the deans – “Somebody should answer.”I said, “Is anybody going to answer, or do I have to answer myself?” And I had to answer myself: “This is not a teacher’s day. Wait. And I don’t think it is going to happen ever, that a president will renounce the presidency in favor of being a university teacher.”Radhakrishnan was very angry. One of my friends, who was a member of the parliament, met him; he was very angry. Zakir Hussain was very angry. He was vice-president of India and he had also been a vice-chancellor of Aligarh University; both were teachers. When I passed through Delhi, I said, “If they are still angry I would like to meet them.”Radhakrishnan simply said that he was feeling very sick, but Zakir Hussain met me, and I asked him, “What is the sickness of Radhakrishnan? – because this morning he was at the airport to receive some president of a foreign country; this afternoon he was in the parliament. And suddenly, just to see me, he has become sick. Then tell him that I will stay here in Delhi – if I am his sickness, then I am not going away from here. And you should be sick also, because if you have any guts you should renounce your vice-presidency and become a teacher, and we will celebrate the Teacher’s Day.”Zakir Hussain said, “But there are difficulties.”I said, “There are no difficulties, there is only one difficulty: that Radhakrishnan’s term is going to be finished and you are going to become the president. That is the only difficulty.” And that’s what happened. And when Radhakrishnan retired, the whole country completely forgot the man whose presidency had become a celebration in every school, college and university all over the country. From the day he was out of power, nobody knew where he was. People came to know only when he died; then just a small item was in the newspapers that Doctor Radhakrishnan died last night. Nobody bothered about his death.The politicians are power hungry. My whole approach is that power-hungry people are psychologically sick people, they are suffering from an inferiority complex; they are feeling a wound deep in themselves. They want to be in power to convince themselves that they are something, and to convince you that you cannot take them as ordinary, they are extraordinary people. And remember, this is the most ordinary desire – to be extraordinary. A very ordinary, common desire found in everybody. The only extraordinary person is one who has no desire to be extraordinary, who is completely at ease with his ordinariness.It is difficult for the religious people, for the political people, for the rich people, because I am continually teaching that now science has enough technology, that there is no need for anybody in the world to be poor.This point is a little subtle to understand. Poverty can be erased, but the problem is that there are sick people who want to be rich, and if nobody is poor how they can be richer? How can they compare themselves? Poverty can be destroyed, but the people with money who are in power are preventing in every way that poverty should not be destroyed – because once poverty is gone, their richness is gone too. It is a comparative thing.Every year, America goes on dumping billions of dollars worth of food in the ocean. For the last year, Europe has been dumping so much food every six months that each time it costs two hundred million dollars to dump that much food. This is not the value of the food; it is the cost of dumping it, the labor charge. And the world is dying from poverty!Who are these people? It is not that only in the East people are dying, so why should they bother. In America thirty million people are dying on the streets, and America goes on dumping its food – mountains of butter – and people are dying on the streets.There is something to be understood: something is sick in the psychology of people. The rich people can remain rich only if there are poor people around; poor people are absolutely needed for a few people to feel rich. Ugly people are absolutely necessary for a few people to feel beautiful; otherwise all ugliness can disappear, all poverty can disappear – science has provided the technology for both. But that technology is not being used. It is prevented from being used by a few people whose whole enjoyment is in somebody being poor, in somebody being ugly.In Kolkata, I used to stay in a house; the man was very beautiful, and always happy because he was always succeeding in being richer and richer. But one day when I landed in Kolkata – he had come with his wife to receive me – he looked very sad.I said, “This is not like you. What has happened?”The wife told me, “I will tell you. He will not tell you. He has suffered a great loss; he has just lost five lakhs, fifty thousand rupees.”I asked him, “What is the matter? Is she right?”I asked the wife, “Tell me the whole story. How has he lost five lakhs?”She laughed, she said, “It is such a hilarious thing: he was hoping to gain ten lakh rupees in a certain business and he gained only five lakhs. I am saying to him, ‘You have gained five lakhs,’ and he says, ‘You be silent, I have lost five lakhs – ten lakhs were certain.”There are these kinds of people, who are losing money which is only in their minds. They have gained five lakhs – that is nothing; that is not making them happy. They are miserable because they have lost a projected profit that was just their idea; they have not lost a single rupee. He has made a profit of five lakhs, but that does not make him happy.The rich people don’t want poverty to disappear from the world. Yes, they would like to open schools for poor children, hospitals for poor people, for orphans, for aboriginals. They will give Nobel Prizes to Mother Teresa. These Nobel Prizes are given to keep the world poor, to keep the world full of orphans.Their difficulty in accepting me is very clear: to accept me they will have to change the whole world, the whole world outlook, and that seems to be too big a thing. It is easier for them to destroy me rather than to change themselves. But even if they destroy me, they will have to change themselves sooner or later.It may take a little time, but truth is going to be victorious.Osho,The art and the culture in the West are born out of the mental perversions and suffering provoked by the Christian religion. In the West, we don't know the art of celebration. What can we do to change this paranoid pattern?Christianity has to be declared dead. Just as Jews one day had to crucify Jesus, we have to crucify Christianity. It has created a very perverted, morbid mentality in all dimensions of creativity. And the reason is that the religion is based on the crucifixion of Jesus. It is a religion of death; that is the source of perversion. It is not a religion of life.In a Christian church, when Jesus is hanging on the cross it creates a certain sadness; the sadness of a graveyard, the sadness of a young and innocent man being crucified. You cannot sing a beautiful song, you cannot dance; it will be simply out of tune with the whole atmosphere of the church.Christianity has made its impression on painting, music, other forms of art. They are all sad, morbid, sick, pathological. Unless Christianity disappears the West cannot be free to dance, it cannot be free to celebrate.Christianity teaches that this life is a life of sin. You are all sinners, you are born in sin – now with this background, how can you sing? Feeling guilty, how can you dance? Psychologically, it is an impossibility.The attorney general of America declared a few days ago in a press conference… He was asked why Osho had not been jailed. He said three things, which are very significant to remember.The first thing he said: “Our priority was to destroy the commune.” But why should their priority be to destroy the commune? The commune was in a desert; the nearest American town was twenty miles away. We were almost an independent country. Nobody was going to visit the American towns. We were so blissful with our meditations, with our work, with our dances, with our singing, with transforming the desert into an oasis – and we had succeeded.That land had remained a desert for centuries. It had not seen a single flower; the day I reached there, there was not a single bird. It was one hundred and twenty-six square miles of land; it was not a small space. Just barren, dead. We made it alive.Five thousand sannyasins made houses, roads, cultivated the land. We were producing our vegetables, our milk products. Five thousand people were meditating in the morning, listening to me in the morning, being with me in the morning; in the day they were working. Five thousand people were eating together in one kitchen; even the lunch or suppertime was a celebration. And then people were dancing late in the night, playing their guitars – we were not concerned with America at all.We were not part of America at all, we had nothing to do with America. Why does the attorney general of America say, “Our priority was to destroy the commune”? The priority was to destroy our celebration, our smiles, our dances, our laughter. They had never seen such a thing.Their churches are sad and serious. We were also meeting, but our meeting was a meeting of laughter, joy. And it was hurting their pride very badly that in the desert… At first they were thinking that we were going to fail. We succeeded; that was a wound. They were wondering what were we going to do in the desert? We created a school for children, we created a hospital, we created a university, and people were coming from all over the world.America had no place which could be called a holy place, like Arabia has Mecca and Medina, or Israel has Jerusalem, or India has Kashi or Girnar. America is without any holy place. We had created the first holy place in America, where people were coming on pilgrimage. And Americans started coming to see it, and they could not believe that people could be so happy, so loving, so peaceful.In five years’ time, five thousand people, nobody had hurt anybody, no fight had broken out. There was no government, yet there was no insecurity. There were no small family units; it was one big family – my idea of the future family, the commune. And people had the best of food. There was no currency, because you could not purchase anything in the commune. All your needs were fulfilled by the commune; money had disappeared. I myself have not seen what a dollar bill looks like.The whole Christian Church of America was against us because their very foundation was shaking. We don’t believe in God, we don’t believe in Jesus Christ. We don’t believe in any religion, and yet we are so happy – and we had created a paradise of our own.The attorney general has unconsciously spoken the truth: “Our basic priority was to destroy the commune.”Secondly, he said, “Osho had not committed any crime, and we had no proof, no evidence for anything against him, so how could we jail him?”And thirdly, “Even if we could jail him, we would not have done it because we never wanted him to become a martyr. Jailing him would have created a tremendous wave of sympathy around the world.”They had seen it. For just twelve days they had kept me in jail and they had seen that all over the world, America included, there was such tremendous sympathy that they simply wanted me to get out of America.But his statement makes many things look very weird. He admits that he is the highest law authority in America; he admits I had not committed any crime – they had no proof, no evidence – yet I was fined four hundred thousand dollars. For what have I been fined? I am thinking to sue the attorney general of America, because if he is right, then that money should be returned.But they had to fine me, just to show the world that they had not kept me in jail for twelve days without any reason. They were not ready to go to trial, so before the start of the trial the attorney general called my attorneys: “Why don’t we negotiate rather than going into trial?”They had a list of one hundred and thirty-six crimes that I had committed, and he was saying that I had not committed a single crime – can you think of bigger criminals in the world? They invented one hundred and thirty-six crimes, and they said to my attorneys, “If you want to save Osho’s life, it is better that you accept any two crimes and then there will be no trial. For those two crimes we will fine you a small fine, and you can take Osho out of America immediately – within fifteen minutes. We don’t want him in America more than fifteen minutes.”Now I can understand why they did not want me to be there more than fifteen minutes – because all those crimes were bogus; I could have gone to a higher court, because this was blackmail. They threatened my attorneys: “If you want to save his life, you simply accept two crimes. And just a little fine… And for five years he cannot enter America.”My attorneys came to me with tears in their eyes – because after these twelve days they were no longer professional attorneys, they had almost become my disciples. They could not sit on chairs in front of me. Even when they came to see me in the jail they would sit on the floor. I would say, “This is not right. You are not my disciples; you are professional people. You have never known me before.”They said, “It feels strange. It feels better just to sit on the floor.”I said, “But why do you have tears in your eyes?”They said, “We have tears in our eyes because we have to accept two crimes which you have not committed, and we have to accept them because we don’t want your life to be at risk. It is sheer blackmail.”They said, “We have never seen in our lives…” And they were the topmost attorneys in America. “We have never seen such a thing, that the government threatens that ‘If you go to trial then his life will be finished, so don’t go for a trial.’ Because they know that in a trial they cannot prove anything against you. But the pride of the government, the pride of the country has to be saved. So we have accepted the two crimes.“We had come to fight for you, and we have tears in our eyes because we are not fighting; on the contrary, we are knowingly agreeing with lies. We can prove that these are absolute lies but your life is far more valuable to us. So please don’t disagree with us in the court, otherwise we will be in a very difficult position.”So I let them accept two crimes. And this was again a lie, that it would be a “small fine.” Four hundred thousand dollars is not a small fine – and for two bogus crimes which have never been committed, nobody has done anything. And then five years with no entry in America, so that I cannot go back and fight, that what they have done is blackmail.And ten years’ suspended jail sentence… I only came to know here what a ten years’ suspended jail sentence means. I said, “What does it mean?” It means that if I go into America after five years, then any small crime and the judge can send me into jail for ten years – there will be no trial. So the police just have to bring me before the court saying that I have committed such and such crime and there will be no trial, and the judge has permission to put me into jail for ten years. So in fact they have prevented me from entering America for fifteen years.Now the attorney general is saying that I have not committed any crime and they don’t have any proof.And they said that I had to be out of America within fifteen minutes. They did not give me even one day to remain in America, because even in one day things could be different – I could go to a higher court. So directly from the jail to the airport – just exactly within fifteen minutes, I was out of America.These are the politicians. How can they accept me? Their fear that humanity might become a celebration is very valid, because it is out of human misery that they are in power. If you are not miserable, their power is gone. If you want the West to become a place of celebration, Christianity has to die. And it is not much of a death because it is really a dead corpse that you are carrying on your shoulders. It is rotten, but your attachment…In India we have a beautiful story about Shiva. He loved his wife Parvati so much that when she died he would not believe that there was not a physician somewhere in the universe who was not capable of curing her. Everybody tried to persuade him, “You are mad. In your attachment, you are blind – she is dead; now no physician can do anything.”But he wouldn’t listen. He took his wife on his shoulders and went around India searching for a physician who could cure her. By and by the rotten body started falling – a hand fell, another hand fell, a leg fell, and it was stinking – but so is attachment. Blind, utterly blind! There are twelve places, still marked with temples of Shiva, where one of the parts of his wife had fallen.Finally when her head also rolled away, only then could he be brought to his senses: “Now it is enough. Even if you can get a physician there is just the head, and that too is no longer a head – just a skeleton. You cannot even recognize who this is. Now come back home.” It took twelve years for him.Christianity is dead. All religions are dead. But our attachment is ancient, old, and we are still carrying them. And under their weight we are dying.Just to save yourself, let these dead ideologies be in the grave. You cannot dance with dead bodies on your shoulders, and it won’t look right either – everybody having a dead body on his shoulder and everybody dancing, it will be a very weird scene, very ghostly.Let the dead disappear. Be clean of the past – that’s what I mean when I say let the dead disappear.Be fresh in the present, and celebration will arise out of you just as new leaves come in the spring.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 39 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Beside you now, I feel like a happy bubble newly created at the bottom of a waterfall, laughing and dancing its way downstream to the ocean. If I should make it in this life to reach the ocean, does it really mean that you and I must say good-bye? I find myself here now in loving gratefulness to you. It seems I have no more questions, but a deep need, born out of my gratefulness to you, for all that you have done for me, for all that you are. The world has nothing left now but you. I would like to be near you now and until I leave this earthly body, even if it means that this little bubble has to hold back a little bit. Is it absolutely necessary to say good-bye when one has reached the ocean of bliss?The moment you meet the ocean you will meet me. The question of saying good-bye does not arise at all; you will have to say good morning! And don’t be worried whether you will be able to make it in this life or not. Once you have started flowing, you have already made it.Every river is constantly moving to be the ocean. The problem is only with those who have become ponds, closed, not open to flow, having forgotten that this is not their destiny, this is death. To be a pond is to commit suicide because there is no growth anymore, no new spaces, no new experiences, no new skies – just the old pond, rotting in itself, becoming more and more muddy.To be a seeker means dropping this static state and becoming a changing, moving, flowing river. It does not matter when you reach the ocean. The beginning is the end. The whole beauty is in the beginning, because once you have started moving, the end, falling into the ocean, is absolutely determined. The beginning was in your hands; it was your freedom, hence the beauty of the beginning.Falling into the ocean will be tremendously ecstatic, but it is not in your hands. What was in your hands was the beginning, and you gathered courage; you jumped out of a static, dead situation into a living being: alive, singing and dancing.Who cares when the ocean comes? The beginning is enough, more than enough – because falling into the ocean is bound to happen.You have started flowing. Rejoice in it. Don’t think of tomorrow. Today is enough unto itself, a blessing, a benediction. And you are the ocean – what more are you going to gain when you fall into the ocean? It is simply the realization that the water, whether in a dewdrop or in the biggest ocean, is of the same nature; every dewdrop contains oceans in it, and all the oceans are made only of dewdrops.So the real seeker is not concerned about the goal. The real seeker is concerned about the right beginning, and you are blessed because the right beginning has happened.Osho,You are against seriousness. You have laughed about everything, including gods, godmen and scriptures. How come you think that people should take you and your teaching seriously?Who has told you that I expect people to take me and my teachings seriously? I want to be understood joyously, not seriously. I want to be taken playfully, not seriously – not with a long British face, but with beautiful laughter.Your laughter, your playfulness is the recognition that you have understood me. Your seriousness shows that you have misunderstood me, you have missed it – because seriousness is nothing but sickness. It is another name of sadness; it is a shadow of death.I am all for life. If it is needed for your laughter, your dance, even to reject me, then reject me – but don’t reject the dance and the song and the life, because that is my teaching.Why should you take me seriously?And that’s why I am not taking anybody seriously. Still you don’t understand: I am not taking anybody seriously, simply to make it clear that you are not supposed to take me seriously either. Laugh about me, enjoy me, rejoice in me – but for God’s sake, don’t be serious! Seriousness has killed humanity. It has proved to be the very cancer of the soul.My only contribution to human evolution is a sense of humor. No other religion, no other philosophy has accepted humor as something religious; it seems to them that it is something profane. To me, humor is the most sacred experience in life.And there is enough to prove it: except man, no animal in the whole existence has a sense of humor. Can you expect a buffalo to laugh? Can you expect a donkey to have a sense of humor? The moment your saints become serious, they fall into the category of buffaloes and donkeys: they are no longer human, because this is the only special quality that human consciousness has. It shows that only at a certain point of evolution does humor manifest itself.The higher you go, the more playful will be your approach toward life and its problems. It will not be a burden, it will be a joy to solve them. Life will not be a sin – these are the serious people who have made life a sin – life will be a reward, a gift. And those who are wasting life in seriousness are being ungrateful to existence.Learn to laugh with the flowers and the stars, and you will feel a strange weightlessness coming into your being, as if you have grown wings and you can fly.Osho,In a book I read about Gurdjieff, it was said that two of his disciples, who had been with him for a long time and in a very intimate way – for example, de Hartmann, who played his music – suddenly left him. Can you explain why this seems to happen again and again in the master-disciple relationship?The question is something of deep significance and with profound implications. There is something in the very nature of things that this kind of thing happens again and again, and will continue to happen again and again; it cannot be stopped.De Hartmann lived with George Gurdjieff for perhaps the longest period of any of his other disciples, perhaps forty years or more. He was a great genius as far as music is concerned, and he was playing music for special meditations, which Gurdjieff had devised. The music also was devised by Gurdjieff – de Hartmann had to bring the device into reality.Gurdjieff was a strange master, everything about him had the quality of strangeness. He himself was not a musician, but he understood what kind of vibrations could create certain states in man. His understanding was about man: his meditation, his mind, the possibility of his receiving certain vibrations and being affected by them.He would explain his whole program to de Hartmann, and de Hartmann had become such an expert that he would make it a reality. But de Hartmann was not a disciple – this was where the trouble arose. He had come to George Gurdjieff to be a disciple, but his genius about music took him on a different route: rather than being a disciple, he became an associate. He started working for Gurdjieff insofar as he needed music for his special dances, and he forgot completely why he had come.Gurdjieff reminded him many times: “De Hartmann, you are a perfect master as far as music is concerned, but you had not come here to play music. And now your ego is feeling so fulfilled and contented that you don’t want to sit among the disciples. You have forgotten that your basic motive was not to play music here.”The separation was bound to happen one day, because finally Gurdjieff became very hard. And he said to de Hartmann, “You have to stop music completely, because music has become a barrier. Your music has helped others tremendously, but for yourself it has become a barrier. You stop music completely! Burn all your musical instruments.” This was too much for de Hartmann. He was not an ordinary musician. He left Gurdjieff rather than leave music. And because he had lived for forty years with George Gurdjieff, and had remained in a very intimate relationship, but not as a disciple; remember – that was forgotten, that was why the problem arose. The intimacy was because of the music; Gurdjieff needed a musician. He was taking his disciples around the world, showing people the immense effect of vibrations.In New York, in one of his shows, the disciples were dancing. They have to dance intensely and totally; they have to forget the whole world. But if the music stops, then they have to stop in whatever position they are in – if the hand is up, it remains up; if their eyes are open, they remain open, they don’t blink – a total stop. If one leg is up in dancing, it remains where it is.And when the dance came to its climax, he gave the indication to de Hartmann to stop. As the music stopped, every dancer had to stop – just like statues, as if suddenly they had become marble statues, no movement.It is a tremendous experience. In that gap, when all movement has stopped, you simply feel your existence, your isness. But when he said to de Hartmann to stop, the dancers were moving in a certain round and they were so close to the edge of the stage that, with the sudden stop, one dancer fell from the stage and because there was no way, you could not do anything – whatever happened, happened, you had to stop. Another dancer fell on top of him. A whole line of dancers went on falling from the stage, as if they were dead bodies.The people who had seen that show could not believe the silence of the disciples, their becoming centered created a new vibration. Even the people in the audience who had no idea of any meditation certainly felt a new breeze, a silence surrounding them, and peacefulness.For years, the intelligentsia of New York talked about the dance. They could not believe what had happened; it was simply sheer magic. But nothing happened to de Hartmann. He was just a technician, he played the music; he was an expert – when the indication was given he stopped it.But he remained in close proximity to Gurdjieff for forty years, and people naturally thought that he was a disciple, and a very close disciple. And when he left Gurdjieff he maintained the illusion – perhaps he himself was in the illusion – that he was a disciple, that he had learned everything that Gurdjieff knows: forty years is enough. That’s why he went to America to open his own school.A desire to become a master is a simple ego number. His statement when he said to people, “You are more important to me than Mr. Gurdjieff,” is simply shameful – but this is the category of the Judas.In every master’s life there are bound to be Judases. It seems to be the law of nature that the people who come to a master don’t come with the same motivation. A few come to seek the truth, a few come to learn how to be a master.In the life of Basho, one of the great mystics of Japan, there is a beautiful incident.He was sitting with his disciples and a man came and he said, “I also want to join.”Basho said, “There is no barrier; the doors are open, you can join. But let me tell you: disciplehood is an arduous thing. Are you ready for it, or is it just curiosity? If it is just curiosity then don’t waste your time, because soon you will have to leave. If it is a sincere search, that you are ready to stake everything, life included, only then can you be a disciple.”The man said, “I am not prepared. I never thought that to be a disciple costs so much.” Then he said, “Then what about the master? – I can become the master. If it is easier, then I can drop the idea of being a disciple; I can become the master.”Basho said, “We will not prevent you from being a master, but unless one has passed through the arduous path of disciplehood one cannot be a master – although it is very easy. If there was some back door, I would have allowed you in. But there is no back door; you will have to come through the right channel of being a disciple.”The man said, “Then I will think it over, and I will come again,” and he never came again.A few people simply come to the masters because they see a certain dimension of fulfillment of their ego, their ambition. To them, it is the same: to have power, prestige, respectability, richness, or to be a great master with thousands of disciples. They have no desire to know the truth, no search for knowing oneself. To them, to be a master is just like any other ambitious project of the world – to be a rich man, to be a politician, to be a prime minister, to be a governor. And you cannot prevent them, because sometimes when they come and they try to understand, they change. They see that when they came they had come with a wrong motive, but now that motive has been dropped. So they cannot be prevented from the very beginning, and one never knows when they will change; it may take years.The master has to be patient. But these people are in a hurry, because life is slipping out of their hands.Judas betrayed Jesus not for any other reason. It was not for thirty silver coins that he betrayed Jesus, he betrayed Jesus because he was the only educated disciple. He was more educated and cultured than Jesus himself. Moving with Jesus, seeing his teachings, he could easily visualize himself as a great master, greater than Jesus: “Because this man is simply a carpenter’s son, knows nothing much; still he has created a great stir in the country.”It was a very simple arithmetic: Judas could see that if this man is removed, he can prove himself to be a great master; but if this man is alive, he will always remain a disciple. Either he had to revolt against him and create totally different disciples, which is more arduous… This was far better, if Jesus could be removed in some way. And Judas was bound to be the leader, with established disciples.It is just like a shop with a credibility of hundreds of years. Rather than opening a new shop… You may be offering better things to the world, but still the old name has credibility, an established credibility. The competition is going to be tough and very difficult. The best way is somehow get the name of the old shop – just old bottles filled with new wine. Nobody bothers about the wine, everybody looks at the bottle – but the bottle has to be old. The old bottle is the proof of old wine. Simple logic.And to remove Jesus was easy, because the Jews were after him and things could be done in such a way that nobody would ever know that Judas had done it. But he forgot one thing: nobody would ever know that Judas had done it, but how can Judas forget it? That realization came only later on. That realization came only when Jesus was crucified. Judas was in the crowd. He could not believe that he had done this – just to become a master he had betrayed a friend, a master who loved him, trusted him. Now he forgot all about the old ego trip. Something new that he had never thought about, a great repentance, a guilt… Within twenty-four hours he committed suicide.De Hartmann was not a disciple at all, but he knew certain techniques that Gurdjieff was practicing with disciples. He had become a technician and because he had to supply the music to every technique, he knew the techniques in every detail – but he had never practiced them; his work was to supply the music.But this is how the mind deceives you. Your own mind leads you astray.De Hartmann could not prove himself to be a master – without Gurdjieff, the music fell flat. He knew the technique, he knew the music, but he was not aware that the technique, the music, all were alive because of the living presence of a master. He was only a technician.That is the difference between a technician and a master.Now if something goes wrong with the electricity any technician can come and fix it, but that does not mean that he is Edison who discovered the electric light. Although he knows everything, he is not Edison. That master touch will be missing.It took three years for Edison to discover the electric light. He started with many colleagues and students – he was a professor. And by and by, because every experiment went on failing, people started deserting him: “He seems to be mad, he is trying to do something impossible. Hundreds of experiments have failed, but that man seems to be strange. Every day, early in the morning, he comes back to the lab with the same enthusiasm, the same zest.” All his colleagues were feeling that it would be better to do something else – “We are wasting our time.” They were all frustrated. Except for Edison, nobody had any enthusiasm, and within three years all his colleagues and students had left.But Edison continued and one night, at three o’clock – the whole night he had been working, because he was coming so close… And that was his logic – he was saying to his colleagues, “Don’t desert me; you are deserting at the wrong time. We have tried hundreds of experiments and they have all failed. That means that the one experiment which is going to succeed is coming closer. Finally we will sort it out. We are dropping those which are going to fail, they are not on our list anymore. The list is becoming shorter; soon we will be able to find the right method.”They said, “Three years have been wasted, and we cannot imagine how long this ‘soon’ is going to take.”That night he started to feel from the very beginning of the evening that he was coming closer: “Things are fitting; the puzzle is to be settled tonight.” He went on and on and on, and by three o’clock he saw the first electric bulb. It was so much light! No human eye had ever seen it before; people had seen only candles. His wife was sleeping in the other room. She had been calling him again and again – “It is time to go to sleep.”He said, “Not tonight; you just go to sleep and don’t disturb me. I am so close, and I don’t want to miss. Tomorrow things may be different; I may have forgotten something. Today I cannot leave it.”At three o’clock, suddenly the light… It was almost like lightning in the house.The wife said, “You idiot, put that light out! Neither are you going to sleep nor will you allow me to sleep – and from where did you get this light?”And he was sitting with unblinking eyes in a state of awe. Unbelievable! It has happened.And the poor woman was saying, “Turn the light off.”He said, “This light is never going to be turned off. Now it is going to be on forever and ever.”Now every electrician knows, but he is only a technician, he is not an Edison. He can fall into the illusion that he is also as knowledgeable as Edison himself, but the charisma is not there, the genius is not there. Those miracle-making hands are not there.De Hartmann tried hard in America, because in America Gurdjieff had been such a success. He went through the same cities giving the same shows, but everything fell flat. He could not figure out what was wrong because the songs were the same, the dances were the same, the music was the same, the musician was the same. “And that man Gurdjieff was not doing anything, he was simply standing there. All that he used to do was to tell me, ‘Stop!’ Just that much, anybody can do. And I myself know at what point he used to say stop, so I stop myself at those points, exactly at those points – but the magic is not there.”He forgot that he had never been a disciple – and he had become a master! He forgot that he had only been a musician. If he had remembered that he was only a musician – and in that too, he was brought to such refinement by Gurdjieff, not by himself – things would have been different.The same thing happened with Ouspensky, who really was a disciple. De Hartmann can be simply cancelled; he never was a disciple. But Ouspensky was a disciple, and one of the foremost disciples. But again something took him away, and that something was similar to de Hartmann’s music – that was Ouspensky’s intelligence. He was a world-famous mathematician, a great writer. Even before meeting Gurdjieff he was known all over the world. Nobody knew Gurdjieff.In fact it was Ouspensky who made Gurdjieff’s name known to the world; the whole credit goes to Ouspensky. In this whole century there has not been another writer of the same caliber. He writes with such authority, with such beauty – and that became his fall, because Gurdjieff became famous through his books.Gurdjieff was not a writer; he had no special talent which is recognized by the world. He was purely a master. He could transform human beings, their consciousness, but that is not an art recognized by the world.And when Ouspensky saw that he had made Gurdjieff world-famous, why should he bother? “I myself can teach.” He knew everything about what Gurdjieff was teaching, he had written everything down; through him the whole world knew about the teaching of Gurdjieff. He started a school in London. And such ungratefulness: he would not use Gurdjieff’s full name, he would simply call him “G.” Just to avoid the full name, Gurdjieff, he would use only the first letter, G.And he made it clear to his students: “Gurdjieff was right as long as I was with him. I left him because he started going wrong. So his teaching is valid till I left him – beyond that, it has no significance.”But he was just a schoolteacher, a professor, with no aura of a master. It was really ridiculous to see him pretending to be a master, because even in teaching higher principles of consciousness he was using a blackboard – just the old habit of being a mathematician. So he would write on the blackboard, as if the people who had gathered were students. He would not look into anybody’s eyes. He was not an impressive personality. He would have been perfectly good as a professor in a university, but to be a master, to belong to the category of Gautam Buddha, Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti, is a totally different matter. He tried hard, but he could not manage anything; nothing happened.And you will be surprised to know that the whole world condemned Gurdjieff, nobody condemned Ouspensky, nobody condemned de Hartmann. In fact they had nothing worth condemning either. Gurdjieff had a teaching, a methodology to transform humanity.But these persons wanted to be masters. Seeing the power of Gurdjieff, they became power hungry. Seeing his influence, they started feeling inferior; they wanted to move away and create their own sphere of influence. They all failed.So it seems to be in the very nature of things that this will go on happening. Wherever there will be a master, there will be Judases, Ouspenskys, de Hartmanns.With Mahavira there was Goshalak. With each great teacher, these people have followed like shadows – hungry for power. But to be a master is not an ego game. The power of the master is not of the power of the ego; it is the power of his humbleness, it is the power of his nothingness.So these people will continue to happen, but they don’t make even a dent in human evolution. They simply spoil their own life and a great opportunity that was given to them.Osho,Full with the sweetness of your fragrance as I walk this path with you, I feel that to trust and wait is all that is needed of me. A wondering comes up in me as to whether some knowledge about esoteric subjects – for example, chakras, collective unconsciousness, energy fields – could be helpful along the way or not. Osho, is such knowledge useful? Or will whatever is needed come to me through experience, in its own time?Anything that is needed will come of its own accord, in its own time. All this so-called esoteric knowledge about chakras, energy fields, kundalini, astral bodies, is dangerous as knowledge. As experience it is a totally different thing. Don’t acquire it as knowledge. If it is needed for your spiritual growth, it will come to you in its right time, and then it will be an experience.If you have an acquired knowledge, borrowed knowledge, it is going to be a hindrance. For example Hindu Yoga believes in seven chakras, Jaina scriptures mention nine chakras, and Buddhist scriptures say that there are dozens of chakras and that these are only the important ones which have been chosen by different schools. They don’t give any fixed number. Acquired knowledge will be confusing: How many chakras? And what are you going to do with that knowledge, whether there are seven or nine or dozens? Your knowledge is not going to help; it can only hinder.My own experience is that perhaps Buddha’s experience is correct – and that does not make the Hindu Yoga or Jaina Yoga incorrect. Buddha is saying that there are energy fields, whirling energy fields, from the lowest point in your spine up to the very peak of your head. There are many; now it is only a question of a particular teaching which ones are important for it. That particular teaching will choose those. Hindus have chosen seven, Jainas have chosen nine. They don’t contradict each other, it is simply that the emphasis is on whatever chakra the teaching feels to emphasize.As far as I am concerned, you will come across only four chakras which are the most important.One you know is your sex center. The second, just above it, which is not recognized in any Indian school of thought but has been recognized in Japan alone, is called the hara. It is between your navel and the sex center. The hara is the death chakra.My own experience is that life, that is the sex center, and death, that is the hara, should be very close, and they are.In Japan, when somebody commits suicide, it is called hara-kiri. Nowhere in the world does such a thing happen except in Japan. Suicide is committed everywhere, but with a knife: just two inches below the navel, the Japanese forces a knife – and this is the most miraculous death; no blood, no pain – and death is instantaneous.So the first chakra is the life chakra; it is a whirling energy. Chakra means wheel, moving. Just above the life chakra is the death chakra.The third important chakra is the heart chakra. You can call it the love chakra, because between life and death the most important thing that can happen to a man or to a woman is love. And love has many manifestations: meditation is one of the manifestations of love, prayer is one of the manifestations of love. This is the third important chakra.The fourth important chakra is what Hindu Yoga calls the agna chakra – just on your forehead between the two eyes. These four chakras are the most important.The fourth is from where your energy moves beyond humanity into divinity. There is one more chakra, which is at the top part of your head, but you will not come across it in your life journey. That’s why I am not counting it. After the fourth, you have transcended the body, the mind, the heart, all that is not you – only your being remains. And when death happens to such a person…That’s why in India the hara has not been taken note of; in the Hindu or Jaina or Buddhist Yoga they were not considering people who commit suicide. They were thinking about people who were transforming their energy from the physical to the immaterial.So the fifth chakra is the sahasrar. The Jainas count it, the Hindus count it – because a person who dies after transcending the fourth chakra… His energy, his being leaves the body, cracking the skull into two parts; that is the sahasrar chakra, but because it is not part of your life experience, I am not counting it. The four are your life experience. This one is the death of a person who is enlightened. He does not die from the hara.That’s why in India no school has taken note of the hara chakra. But in Japan they had to take note of it, because in Japan suicide was a form of etiquette.You will be puzzled: the Japanese have such a totally different culture from the whole world; from small things to big things, they have their own approach.I am reminded of one incident. A Japanese can commit suicide for small things, because he cannot live a life of shame. If he feels ashamed, that is enough to finish his life – and you will not be able to conceive of what small things are thought so important that life is nothing.A master, who was the greatest archer of Japan, was called by the king. The king wanted his son to become as great an archer as the master.Now, it is Japanese etiquette, that even when two people are going to fight with each other, first they will bow down to each other’s divinity with folded hands, even though they are going to kill. Before killing, they will respect each other. So in ordinary life, in Japan, you will find people everywhere bowing down to each other – on the road, in the restaurants. It is disappearing as the modern Western influence is changing the whole world.But the master archer was such an egoist that even in front of the king he waited: first the king should fold his hands, and then…The king’s court condemned the man and said, “You have committed such a shameful act. Just go back and commit hara-kiri.” It was not such a big thing, but when the whole court had said it, the whole country would know about it.The man went directly to his home and committed hara-kiri.He had three hundred students. When they heard that their master had committed a shameful act, all three hundred students committed hara-kiri, because it was so shameful that their master should have behaved like this.Now this cannot happen anywhere else in the world. If the master had done something shameful – although it was not much of a shameful act, but even if it were, the students were completely innocent. But because they were the students of that master, it was enough to feel ashamed – you had followed such a man.People have been committing hara-kiri in Japan for centuries. So when Buddhism reached there for the first time, about fourteen hundred years ago, and they started meditating, they were the first people to discover the hara center – because they had been using that center for centuries, so it was throbbing and vibrating and alive.It all depends. In different cultures it may be a little bit different where the center is.For example when Japanese started coming to me for sannyas I was a little bit puzzled – because all over the whole world when you want to say yes, you move your head up and down. And the Japanese, when they want to say yes, move the head from side to side – which means, no. All over the world that is the sign for no – but that is their sign for yes, and the head moving up and down is their sign for no.So when I would ask them something I would be very puzzled; I could not believe that they had come to take sannyas. They were sitting before me and I was asking, “Are you ready for sannyas?” – and they would shake their heads. “Then why have you come? You have unnecessarily traveled here from Japan and you are sitting here in front of me just for that purpose, and you are saying no?”Then my interpreter said to me, “You don’t understand; that person is saying yes. In Japan, the head moving from side to side is yes; the head moving up and down is no.” So you have to remember it when you are talking with the Japanese. Otherwise there is going to be great confusion – you will say something, they will understand something else. They cannot speak but they can understand.In the Caucasus, where Gurdjieff was born, they have a system of chakras which is slightly different. It seems to be the difference between the people of the Caucasus and other people.In India, three religions, Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, all have exactly the same points. They may count five or seven or nine, but the places are exactly the same. The centuries have affected their bodies in a different way.In the Caucasus there are thousands of people who are older than a hundred and fifty years. The Caucasus is the place with the oldest people in the whole world – and they are not old; at the age of one hundred and eighty a person is still young. He is working on the farm just like any young man.In the Caucasus people always die while very young; they don’t grow old. Naturally their bodies have developed in a different way. Their food has something to do with it, their climate, their geography, their land. It has created a different psychology.Throughout the whole world it is thought that seventy years is the time for everybody to die – that is the average; you can be five years earlier or five years later, but the average is seventy.When George Bernard Shaw became seventy he started looking in the small villages around London at the gravestones in their cemeteries, to see how long people in that village had lived. His friend said, “You are mad. Why are you wasting your time?”He said, “I don’t want to die at seventy. I have never been average in anything, and I cannot be average in death. So I am looking for a place where people don’t believe that seventy is the average age to die, because that place will have a psychology of its own.”Finally he found a village where, on many stones in the graveyard, he found that it was written: This man lived one hundred and eight years, and died untimely.He said, “This is the right place – where a man lives one hundred and eight years and still people think the poor fellow has died ‘untimely,’ that it was not yet time to die.”After seventy years he moved from London – he had lived there seventy years – to a village, after checking the cemetery. And he lived a hundred years. He proved it – that village had the psychology, that village had the vibe, that village had the idea that one hundred years is nothing.When he would ask people if he could live to one hundred, they would say, “One hundred is nothing; everybody lives to one hundred. You can go to the cemetery and see – one hundred and forty, one hundred and thirty; people live that long very easily. A hundred? – that is too early.”He lived one hundred years.Certainly he proved one fact: that your psychology, your mind, your body, are impressed by the vibrations in which you live.So you will come to experience chakras, you will come to experience energy fields, but it is better not to be knowledgeable, because that is a difficult problem. You may read a book written five thousand years ago by a certain kind of person and you may not be of the same category. You may not find that chakra at the same place, and you will feel unnecessarily frustrated. And you will find a chakra in a place where the books don’t mention it; then you will feel that you are abnormal, something is wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with you.Energy fields, chakras and all the esoteric things should be experienced. And keep your mind clean of all knowledge so that you don’t have any expectation; wherever the experience happens, you are ready to accept it.Each individual has differences, and differences come in such small things that you cannot conceive. For example, in the East, people sit on the floor. In cold countries people cannot sit on the floor; a chair is absolutely necessary. Naturally their backbones, their spines will have a different shape than those of the people who sit on the floor, and the experiences of their kundalini will be different.There are people who eat only once a day. For thousands of years they have never eaten more often than that. In South Africa there are tribes which eat only once in twenty-four hours. When they came across American missionaries, there was such laughter. “These idiots are eating five times a day! Breakfast – there is no fast at all – and they are having ‘break-fast.’ And the whole day, something or other; and then coffee break, and tea break, and they go on… And in between they are chewing gum. These people have come to teach religion to us and they are simply mad!”In a way they are right, because they have beautiful bodies, they live longer, their bodies are not fat. Their bodies are like a deer’s; they can run like deer – they have to, because they are hunters. Their eyes are very clear, very perceptive; their bodies are very proportionate.I am reminded:There is a small tribe in Africa even today who are cannibals, who eat men too. In the beginning of this century they had a population of three thousand; now they have only three hundred left, because when they cannot find somebody else then they have to eat from their own stock. So that is the only place where the population is falling: from three thousand, in fifty years there are only three hundred left. By the end of this century they will be finished, without any war, without anything – they will have eaten themselves.The first Christian missionary came, really fat – and when they caught hold of him they were so happy and dancing, and the Christian missionary thought they were happy because they had found a religious man. And he said, “I have brought you good news, gospels.”They said, “Yes!”They carried him on their shoulders, and he was very happy. He was not expecting that these people would give him such a great reception. And they then put him in a big pot. He said, “What are you doing?”They said, “You wait, you will see.”Then he understood what was happening; they were going to boil him! He tried somehow to convince them, “Don’t do it, this is not good. I have come here to give you some taste of the Christian religion.”They said, “Don’t be worried; soon we will have your soup, and that will give us a real taste of Christianity.”Now these people will have a totally different experience of their physiology. The meat-eaters and the vegetarians will find differences to one another.So it is better not to memorize from scriptures. Those scriptures are the experiences of certain people, of certain times, of certain circumstances; they were not written for you.The scripture that is for you can be written only by you, by your own experience.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 40 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I have no words to express your love and compassion showering on me. My gratitude and thankfulness cannot be expressed in any word or language. Please forgive me for my shortcomings. Also, please forgive me, my dearest lord Osho, that you had to bend down to take my head into your hands. I know how painful your back is. It was so painful for me that because of me you had to bend down. On the day of my sannyas, you had taken my hand in your hands. Yesterday you had taken my head in your hands. I hope, pray, and beg everyone's blessings that I can become worthy of it. My beloved master, please tell and explain to all that the journey has only begun. I am not yet worthy of their respect. Instead of respect, let all give me their blessings so that one day I can become worthy of really touching your feet. I am requesting and pleading with folded hands to you to tell all to save me from embarrassment, giving respects to me which I do not deserve yet.Govind Siddharth, the laws of spiritual life are diametrically opposite to those of the ordinary mundane existence. In the world, one wants to be respected, whether one deserves it or not. In fact the less people deserve, the more they want. In the spiritual realm, the more you deserve the less you want.I am happy to know that you feel embarrassed by people respecting you. That is the sign of real humbleness. And to say that you do not deserve it makes you worthy enough to be respected.In the world, people declare themselves “the great.” When Alexander the Great met Diogenes, he introduced himself as “I am Alexander the Great.”Diogenes laughed and he said, “If you were really great, you would not have used that word for yourself. You should be ashamed. The true greatness does not assert itself, the true greatness radiates itself. It needs no language, it needs no expression, it needs no words – its presence is enough.”And I know the difficulty. When people suddenly start looking at you with respect for the first time, a humble person, a person who deserves it, feels embarrassed, because it is the ego that demands respect, begs for prestige, power, respectability. True greatness is simply oblivious to it. The moment you respect such a person he feels embarrassed – “What are you doing?” – because he is not expecting it, it is so unexpected.And the humbleness, the simplicity, the innocence does not make anyone holier-than-thou. It makes you stand last in the queue, because you are so certain of your integrity, you need not go shouting about it, you don’t need any recognition from anybody. Your own feeling is so absolute that even if the whole world rejects it, it makes no difference.Recognition from others is sought only by people who are suffering from inferiority. A real superior man is not aware of his superiority, is not in any need of recognition from others. His superiority is just his nature.Govind Siddharth, don’t feel embarrassed if people respect you. You will have to learn and to see people’s respect in a new light; when people respect you, they are respecting their own potential. They are respecting one of their brothers who has arrived. They are recognizing you not as you; you have become a mirror and they can see their possibilities opening. They are thankful to you because you have made them feel, for the first time, not inferior to anybody; you have given them their humanity, their respectability. You have become an argument, a proof for their own possible fulfillment.So when they respect you, accept it with love, with respect, realizing the fact that they are seeing themselves in you. You have been of tremendous help to them because you come from them, you have been a fellow traveler.As far as you are concerned it is certainly a beginning, but it is also an ending; it is a death and a resurrection. One chapter is closed, another has opened. One life that you have been living is now just a memory and another life is opening its doors – which you have dreamed about in thousands of ways, in thousands of lives, and for the first time the dream is becoming real. It is a beginning. And remember it; it is always a beginning.Changes will be coming, old chapters will be disappearing, new doors will be opening – and a moment comes when your sensitivity is such that each moment you die and each moment you are born. You die to the past and you are born for the future.But it is tremendously beautiful on your part to feel that you don’t deserve it. That is felt only by people who deserve it. That’s what I meant when I said that, in the spiritual life, laws are diametrically opposite to what they are in the ordinary mundane world. Here you have to try to be somebody, because you go on feeling that you are nobody; you feel so empty, so meaningless, so faceless, that you are begging everybody – “Give me a face, a name, an identity.” And people give it to you but those faces are just masks, those identities are just false. They make you hypocrites. They make you believe what you are not. And you have wasted many of your lives in believing in things which you are not and you have never been.In such a moment of transformation as Govind Siddharth has passed through, one for the first time drops all the masks, all the old identities. One accepts oneself as nameless, as a nobody. And this is the tremendous miracle: that the moment you accept yourself as nobody, for the first time you have become somebody. For the first time you have attained to your original face.And if people see it happening, it is good for people because it will become a remembrance to them. Something that they had forgotten, your presence may make them remember. And you cannot take away their right to thank you. That’s what “respect” means.The word respect is beautiful. It does not mean honor; that is the dictionary meaning. Existentially it means re-spect, a desire to see again. Somebody looks at you, remembers something, wants to remember more, wants to look at you deeper, wants to be closer to you, wants to look into your eyes, wants to hold your hands. It has nothing to do with honor, it is simply an effort to remember his own forgotten treasure.Osho,The discourse of Govind Siddharth's declaration was so beautiful for me. I strangely believed in everything, feeling very happy about Govind's insight and felt a push for me to go more inside. Was that your intention?We are together here only for a single intention: to remind you that you are not what you have been taught that you are, that you are somebody else. And you will remain miserable till you find your reality. Your whole tension, anguish, anxiety consists only of a single thing: that you are trying to be somebody which you are not. Your whole life has become so strained, and it will remain so, until you realize that your personality is only a drama and it is time to go home.Sometimes a shock is needed, sometimes an accident, so that your mask slips down – and suddenly you look in the mirror; it is not your face. Sometimes a certain device is needed so that you can uncling yourself.I have always loved a small incident:In India, every year in every village, people dramatize the life of Rama. They are not great actors, but it has become almost a religious tradition, for thousands of years. And there are many difficulties.There is a war between Rama and his enemy Ravana. Rama’s young brother, Lakshmana, is hit by Ravana’s arrow and falls down, unconscious. The greatest physician of those times is called. He says, “Something is possible, but it is very difficult: a certain plant is needed to prepare the medicine, and that plant grows on a mountain far away.”Hanuman, a devotee of Rama, says, “I will go and I will bring whatever is needed. Just describe it to me, because the mountain will be full of vegetation.”The physician says, “There will not be much difficulty, because in the night this certain plant gives light as if it were a candle. So you can recognize it without any difficulty.”Hanuman flies, reaches the mountain, waits for the night, but he is very much puzzled, because there are many plants, all different, which are radiant with light. He had forgotten to ask, “Is this the only plant which is radiant, or are there other plants too?” Now it is too late; he cannot go back. But he is a monkey god…The only way is to take the whole mountain, so he takes the whole mountain so that the physician can choose the right plant for the medicine.Now in the drama it is a very difficult problem: writing all these miracles and fictitious things in stories is one thing, but to dramatize them is a real difficulty. The first difficulty is to make people see that Hanuman is flying – and he is not flying, he is just hanging on a rope and the rope is being pulled from the other side of the stage, and he is going fast, on the rope. Then he comes back with the mountain – and the mountain is nothing but a plastic mountain with beautiful small plants; each plant has candles hidden in it. And he comes with one hand on the mountain and the other hand on the rope.But something goes wrong – the wheel, on which the rope has to be rolling, is stuck. In a village, particularly in India, it is expected! Now Hanuman is hanging in the middle of the stage, getting very embarrassed, and people are shouting and clapping and enjoying as they have never enjoyed: the mountain in one hand, the other hand on the rope, and the poor fellow cannot get down.The manager rushes backstage, tries hard, but it is just a mistake of the carpenter who has made the wheel on which the rope has to move. The situation is becoming so hilarious that just out of nervousness he cuts the rope – something has to be done.Lakshmana is lying down flat on the platform, dead. Rama is standing there. Although he can see Hanuman is just over his head, he is still saying, “Hanuman, it is getting very late. Come soon! Where have you gone?” And people are laughing, because this is stupid.Even Lakshmana, who is supposed to be unconscious, on hearing so much laughter opens his eyes and looks at Hanuman and starts laughing. And Rama says, “Shut up! You are not supposed to laugh, you are unconscious.” So the poor fellow remains unconscious.At that moment the rope is cut and Hanuman falls on the stage. The whole mountain is shattered all over the stage. And he has a fractured leg, and he is one of the wrestlers in the town, so he forgets completely that he is Hanuman.And Rama goes on repeating the dialogue that is supposed to be, “Hanuman, you have done great.”He said, “Oh, shut up! First tell me who cut the rope!”Rama said, “But my brother is dying.”He said, “Let him die! My leg is broken. Where is that physician?”Now the manager sees that things have gone from bad to worse. People are jumping and enjoying, and poor Rama is somehow trying to manage but Hanuman is really angry; he has forgotten completely. The curtain is dropped; the manager can see no other way. And somehow Hanuman has to be taken behind the stage: “Don’t create such a scene. Have you forgotten that you are Hanuman?”He says, “Who says I am Hanuman? First my broken leg! And I don’t care whether Lakshmana dies or not; let everybody die. First my leg has to be taken care of.”But they say, “You have forgotten completely that you are Hanuman?”He said, “Nonsense, I have never been Hanuman, it is just a drama. I am myself: Ram Kishore Pande is my name. ‘Hanumana, Hanumana…’ In being Hanuman this has happened! Next year, I will see who becomes Hanuman. I am not going to become Hanuman, and I will not allow anybody else to do it either. In this village, nobody is going to become Hanuman. If you cannot manage things rightly, you should not impose such things on us poor people. Now I will remain lame for my whole life. My leg… Neither is Hanuman going to help, nor Lakshmana, nor Rama. And where is that physician?”The physician had escaped, because he was afraid – that rascal is dangerous, he may start beating him or doing anything: “You were trying to revive a dead man. Now at least make my leg right.”The identity that you have got is a drama. It is not your reality.And this is our whole intention – and this has been the intention for millions of years, at least in this country, of all those people who are intelligent – to discover the original face, to find out who exactly you are.It looks surprising that, except in this country, nowhere in the world have people been sitting and trying to find out, “Who am I?” This is the only country where, for centuries, people have been trying to find out “Who am I?” They are not asking you, they are not asking anybody else, they are trying to dig deeper and deeper within themselves to find the very source of their life and being.Yes, this is my intention. And this should be your intention. We meet only because of this intention. There is no other meeting ground between me and you.Osho,What is the meaning of an authentic man? What is his nature, and his way of life?The authentic man means one who has come out of his personality. You have two words: personality and individuality. Personality is the false identity given by the society to you. And individuality is what nature has given to you. Individuality is existential. Personality is social.Ordinarily everybody is living as a personality; hence his life is not authentic. It is false, it is deceptive, it is a hypocrisy. He is not only cheating others, he is cheating himself. He is deceiving others and he is deceiving himself too.The word personality comes from Greek drama. Greek drama has a speciality: in ancient Greek drama all the actors have masks. You cannot find out who the actor is, you see only a mask, but the voice that comes through the mask is of the actor. It was called persona in Greek: sona means sound, sound coming through a mask. You cannot find out who the real face is.Slowly, slowly we have forgotten the origin of the meaning of the word personality. But watch yourself, and you will be surprised: everything that you are is borrowed. All your thoughts are borrowed. Even about feelings you are not certain.People write letters to me, and they say, “I think I have fallen in love.” Great! “I think that I have fallen in love.” They cannot trust their feeling, they are thinking.The personality is surrounding you from everywhere, and your individuality becomes almost a hidden thing. You never allow it to live – because the society does not want you to live in freedom according to your nature; the society wants you to live in the way that the society finds useful.The personality is very useful: it is never rebellious; it is always a slave. It has no guts to say no. It knows only to say “Yes sir.” Even in moments when your innermost being is saying no, your personality goes on saying, “Yes sir.” You are living a split life. Society supports your personality; hence the personality has become very powerful.There is nobody to support your individuality; hence individuality – which is your nature, which is your real power, which is your authentic being – remains in darkness, repressed.You are asking me: What is an authentic man? An authentic man is a man of rebellious spirit. He rebels against his own personality, whatever the cost. He is not ready to compromise as far as his freedom is concerned; he would rather die than to be enslaved. My whole teaching is to bring the authentic being to the surface, from the hidden corners of darkness where you have pushed it.You are enemies of yourselves; you have crippled your own being. Then you go on complaining that life is miserable – it is your doing! You have compromised, for small comforts from the society. And for small comforts from the society, you have sold your soul. Now you have comforts but no soul – good furniture, good house, good salary – but for whom? You are nonexistent. This is the misery, this is the hell that every man is passing through.And there are people who are exploiting the situation. The politicians become your leaders because they say they will bring a utopia into the world – “Soon there will be no poverty, there will be no suffering, no exploitation, no inequality.” All their slogans give you a consolation, and a feeling: follow this man. Although for thousands of years these same people, the same kind, have been giving you the same idea of utopia, the utopia never comes.Perhaps you may not be aware that the very word utopia, in its roots, means that which never comes.The politicians are giving you great utopian ideas; the religions are giving you great ideas of heaven, paradise, moksha. But if you have an authentic life you don’t need the priest; you are so fulfilled, you are so blissful that no paradise can become in any way an improvement on it. You are living this day in the most beautiful way possible – loving, in friendship. No utopia is going to make your life richer. You have to see the strategy: keep people false, so they remain miserable. Miserable people need priests, politicians, psychoanalysts, all kinds of charlatans, because they are in such misery they are ready to fall in anybody’s trap – whoever gives them hope. Hope is almost like opium: you forget your misery, you start dreaming beautiful dreams.I don’t know what the situation is now, but in my childhood I have seen laborers working on the farms or making the roads, and they were so poor that their women also had to work – with small children, a six-month-old child. Now what can the woman do with the child? How can she manage to work and keep the child? I was surprised to see that whenever there was any road being made, there were children lying in the grass by the side of the road – enjoying, so blissful.I inquired, “What is the matter?” – because these children are such nasty people. The whole day they will sleep, and the whole night they will cry; they have strange ideas. But here are the mother and the father working on the road and they are just by the side, under a tree in the shade, so blissful. I asked, and I found out what they did: they gave a little opium to the child so that the whole day, whether they were hungry, whether they were lying in the heat, it didn’t matter – the opium would keep them unconscious of their reality.Hope is the opium of the people. And they go on giving hope. Hope is the greatest business in the world. For thousands of years priests have been exploiting, giving hope: “In the next life…” And nobody has asked them, “Why not in this life? – and this life must have been ‘the next life’ in the previous life! We have been miserable in the past life, and we waited for this life – we are miserable. And you are again saying ‘next life,’ or in paradise.” Not a single eyewitness, no proof, no evidence exists of any paradise. But the miserable person is ready to believe in anything; the belief has to be a consolation.Why are people, the masses, against me? The psychological reason is that I am trying to destroy their hope – and if their hope is destroyed, their reality is misery. And I want them to realize that they are miserable so that I can point out to them why they are miserable. They are miserable because they are not authentic.Drop the personality. Live naturally, live intensely. Do not allow anybody to dominate you; you have allowed too many people to dominate you.I was staying in a home. A small child was playing. I asked him a few questions and we became friends. I asked, “What are you going to become in life?”He said, “As far as I know, I am going to become insane.”I said, “Why? Why you are going to become insane?”He said, “Because my mother wants me to become a doctor, my father wants me to become an engineer, my uncle wants me to become a professor, my other uncle wants me to become a scientist. My whole family wants me to become this, to become that. I know that if I become all these things, one thing is certain: I will become insane. And nobody is asking me – ‘What do you want to become?’ Nobody seems to be interested in me; they have their own ambitions, and I am simply an excuse to fulfill their ambitions.”Everybody is in a place where he should not be. The poets are making shoes, the shoemakers have become prime ministers. Everything seems to be topsy-turvy, and everybody is miserable.The authentic person has to rebel. He has to say to the whole world, “I am going to be myself, whatever the cost. If I want to be a musician… Perhaps everybody cannot be Yehudi Menuhin or Ravi Shankar. Most probably I will be a musician on the street, begging, but still I will be happy that I am fulfilling my own desire, that I am not being dominated by somebody else.”Those who are dominating may have good intentions. Nobody is doubting their intentions, and perhaps if you had followed their intentions you would have been the richest man in the country, and now you are just a beggar with your guitar on the street. But I say to you that to follow your own nature and to be a beggar with a guitar in the street is more fulfilling, more blissful than to be the richest man in the country, if it is not your desire.One great surgeon, the greatest in his country, was retiring, and his friends had gathered to celebrate. His students had gathered – because he was really a master surgeon; there was no comparison at all with anybody else. He was a brain surgeon. Even at the age of seventy-five his hands were not shaking a bit – because while you are performing surgery on the brain, if your hand shakes just a little bit it can cut thousands of small nerves in the brain. You can damage the person for his whole life. Your hand has to be almost like steel, and you have to hit the exact point, because there are millions of nerves in the brain, and seven hundred centers in your small skull. The instruments are very fine, and the man has to be really an artist not to cut any other cells, any other nerves, which are so close knit: millions in a small skull. And to remove exactly the nerve that you want to remove… It is the most delicate job in the world.And he was successful. No operation of his had ever failed. He was respected all over the world, rewarded with a Nobel Prize, but on the day that he was retiring he was not happy. Everybody was enjoying, drinking, dancing. He was standing in the corner, sad, lost. A friend came close to him and asked, “What is the matter? We are celebrating here for you, and you are standing so sad – as if somebody has died.”He said, “I am thinking of something which makes me utterly sad.”The man said, “You, and sad? The world’s greatest brain surgeon; everybody is jealous of you.”He said, “But you don’t know my inner feeling. I never wanted to become a surgeon in the first place. I wanted to become a musician, but my parents forced me to become a surgeon. My whole life has been nothing but a long slavery. I would have been far happier to be an unsuccessful, unknown, anonymous musician than to be a world-famous surgeon – because this is not me.“This was my parents’ desire, it was their ambition. I have been manipulated, exploited, my whole life has been destroyed just in fulfilling my parents’ desire. Now I am too old, and I don’t think that I will be able, but I am going to try – because this was not my life. I lived somebody else’s idea.”The authentic man is one who lives his life according to his own innermost core, who lives his individuality. It needs guts, it needs courage, because you are moving into an unknown area.While your parents and your well-wishers are experienced people – they know what will be right for you, they know what is going to produce more money, more respectability – you don’t know anything.But the authentic man lives the unknown, allows the unknown, moves on the unknown path, risks everything. He may not find gold mines, but he finds a tremendous satisfaction. His life is a life of blessings; his death is a death of fulfillment.Osho,In Rajneeshpuram I was your gardener, and it was the best and the most beautiful and fulfilling time in my whole life. Now, sitting here at your feet, I suddenly realize that you are my gardener. Is it so?It is so. But the realization has come a little late, because in Rajneeshpuram also I was the gardener. Think it over again. With me, you cannot be a gardener.My disciples are my garden, and when they blossom and flower I rejoice as any gardener rejoices. With each of my disciples coming to flower, I attain enlightenment again, because from my side there is no distinction at all, no distance. Particularly as you become blissful, the distance starts becoming less and less. In your misery – you have to forgive me – I cannot be with you. The greater your misery, the further away we are.But in your blissful moments, you are are so close that there is no distance at all. In your enlightenment, you are not even close – you are one. I feel that again another spring has come to me.So this time you are right. The last time you were wrong. Those two years there in Rajneeshpuram in my garden, working as a gardener, were only a device to keep you close to me – but I was the gardener. And from now onward, wherever you are, I will remain the gardener. So behave like a beautiful rosebush – bring as many flowers to your being as possible.Osho,You must be the only enlightened man in this world of almost five billion people. Osho, please be straight with me: How easy is it to become enlightened?It is very difficult for me to be straight. I am not a straight guy.Enlightenment is very close, but it all depends on you whether you allow it to happen or you keep yourself closed. I know the night is very dark, and in the darkest part of night to believe that the morning is very close is very difficult. But that’s how it is: when the night is darkest, the dawn is closest.But the sun can rise, and still you can keep your doors closed, you can keep your eyes closed. And the sun is a gentleman; it will not knock on your doors – “Open! It is morning.” It will come up to your door and wait.The question is very relative. Enlightenment can happen any moment if you are really bent upon it; otherwise you can go on postponing for lives. You have been doing that.How have you passed your many lives before? It is not that you have heard the word enlightenment for the first time. It is not that the desire to be enlightened has arisen in you for the first time. Perhaps thousands of times… But it never became intense enough, it never became total enough, it remained lukewarm. So it depends on you: if your desire for enlightenment is lukewarm, it may take many, many lives; if it is intense, there is no need to wait for tomorrow – it can happen this very moment, herenow. And please don’t ask me to be straight. These matters are not for straight guys.It is not simple arithmetic, that I can say three years, two years, one year, one life – it all depends on you. You can go on sleeping forever, you can wake up right this moment.Osho,With each new step into the unknown, how can I be sure that I am on the right path?The indications that you are on the right path are very simple: your tensions will start disappearing, you will become more and more cool, you will become more and more calm, you will find beauty in things in which you have never, ever conceived could be beautiful.The smallest things will start having tremendous significance. The whole world will become more and more mysterious every day; you will become less and less knowledgeable, more and more innocent – just like a child running after butterflies or collecting seashells on the beach. You will feel life not as a problem but as a gift, as a blessing, as a benediction.These indications will go on growing if you are on the right track. If you are on the wrong track, just the opposite will happen.Osho,Where is my heart? Where before I could feel it even physically with a lot of warm energy and an expansion inside my chest, now it feels empty most of the time, or like a hole, not there, or I cannot locate it.Your heart is with me. I am a master thief.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 41 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I cannot understand what enlightenment is. Oh, my beautiful master, will you please say something about the taste of enlightenment?There are things in life which cannot be understood. They can be experienced, but they cannot be explained. To explain them is to explain them away. About such things, you have to go through a transformation.You are asking for information. Information can be given about objects; the whole of science is information. The whole of religion is transformation – the moment religion becomes information, it is dead.You are asking me to give some taste of enlightenment to you. Can’t you see a simple fact? – that tastes cannot be transferred; either you have them or you don’t have them. Even ordinary tastes: the taste of a sweet fruit is unexplainable. You will have to taste it yourself.I can show you the way, where the fruit is available, where the ripe fruit is waiting for you, where the flowers have become tired, because they have been waiting for you for many, many lives, still hoping that one day you will come.I am reminded of a beautiful incident in the life of Ramakrishna’s wife, Sharda Devi.Ramakrishna died, but before dying he told Sharda, “Remember, I have been here always and I will be here always, so don’t think of yourself as a widow. Only my body is going to die – but you are married to me, not to my body.”In India, when a husband dies – and particularly in Bengal it is more severe for the woman, for the wife – her head is shaved because half of the beauty of a woman is in her hair. She cannot wear any colored clothes; only white is allowed. She cannot use any ornaments, particularly the glass bangles that are used by married women. When the husband dies, she has to break her glass bangles.Just by the way, I have to inform you why the glass bangles have been chosen as a symbol of marriage: because here in this life, everything is just like glass – breakable, easily breakable. And when the husband dies, she has to break her bangles on the floor. They need to be made of glass, not of metal, not of gold.But Ramakrishna prohibited her: “In spite of the whole tradition, I prohibit you. Continue the way you have lived with me. I have loved your food, your sweets. Every day, prepare my food, my sweets; and sit just the way you used to sit before me while I was eating. One day I will be coming.” Ramakrishna died.Everybody tried to convince Sharda, “Don’t be mad, don’t go against the tradition. Ramakrishna was always half mad, and it seems that before death he has lost his mind completely!”But Sharda said, “I am not married to the tradition, not married to the convention – I am married to this beautiful half-madman and I am going to follow him.” She did not cry. She continued using ornaments, glass bangles, colored clothes; she did not shave her hair.People said, “We used to think Ramakrishna was mad; this Sharda is even more mad. She is a widow, and she is behaving as if she is newly married.”And she would prepare the food with the same enthusiasm and would bring it to Ramakrishna’s room and sit in front of him with a small fan in her hands, as she used to sit – as for thousands of years in the East, wives have sat with a fan, so that no fly or anything can sit on the food.People said, “You are mad. There is nobody there.” And twice every day the ritual was repeated, and she lived many years.Whenever she was asked she said, “Whatever happens, I know he is going to come one day.” Such patience.I reminded you of this incident because your fulfillment, your enlightenment, is waiting with infinite patience, for millions of years. One day you are bound to come.Ramakrishna may come, may not come, but one day you will be sitting under a bodhi tree, enlightened – that is guaranteed. That is intrinsic in your nature. It all depends on you: you can be lazy and you can reach to your own bodhi tree in many, many lives’ time. You can be total, your intensity can make you an arrow, and you can move with the speed of light.And certainly enlightenment is nothing but your becoming light, your inner being becoming light.Perhaps you are aware that the physicists say that if anything moves with the speed of light, it becomes light – because the speed is so great that the friction creates fire. The thing is burned, there is only light. The material disappears, only immaterial light remains.Enlightenment is the experience of an explosion of light within you. Perhaps your desire to be enlightened is moving with the speed of light, like an arrow, so that your very desire, your very longing becomes a flame, an explosion of light. There is nobody who becomes enlightened, there is only enlightenment. There is only a tremendous sunrise within you.You cannot borrow the experience from somebody else, but you can have the experience. Why borrow in the first place? You do not understand what enlightenment is? – you will never understand, unless you experience.In the world the law is: first understand a thing and then move toward experiencing it. But in the inner world just a diametrically opposite law applies: experience first, then move toward understanding it.Osho,I have held the following events close to my heart over the years. I relate them to you now because they may have some connection with the beautiful revelations of Swami Siddharth at darshan several evenings ago. The events may not be described as momentous, but they have a significance of their own, and I bring them before you in grave humility and from the depths of my being.I was thirty-two years old. By then I had four babies, and was kept tied to the house. To keep my spirit alive, I was taking on a correspondence course. On the day of your enlightenment, my husband was out, the babies were asleep. I was drawing a life study of my left hand; suddenly the room was filled with a white shimmering light –no light was ever like it. I could see nothing but the light. I do not know how long it was there; I only knew that something tremendously significant had occurred. It left me breathless. When my husband came home, I tried to explain what had happened, but there were no words to describe it so we did not discuss it. I had to wait another thirty-two years before the truth of that event became clear.I had been taking a theater class with seventeen year olds, two of whom came to me distressed, with feelings of helplessness because they had seen a film depicting the effects of a nuclear war. I took their pain home with me. Once inside the door, I threw myself face downward on the floor, arms outstretched. I was in an empty dark space, opening myself to existence for some kind of answer. I was there for a long time. Later I went into my bedroom and lay on my back on the bed. Suddenly the same white shimmering light enveloped me; the room seemed to disappear, and after a few moments the head and shoulders of the man came into the light, his eyes toward me. Soon the head and shoulders of the woman appeared in profile in front of his left shoulder, her hands cupped together in front of her and against her breast. Into her hands came a small child. All was encompassed in this light. I cannot say how long they were there, but then they and the light were gone. I was panting as if I had been running.I knew then that the first light thirty-two years before had been Osho's light as it filled the world and was available to all those open to receive it. I was now ready to receive him. I knew that the second event brought me to the one who was the truth of our time. The first reality was when I was thirty-two and you were twenty-one, the light was your enlightenment and it filled the universe. The next day, my sannyas friend – who was doing some work for me – observed a great change in me. It was not long before I was at the feet of my beloved master.I write these things because this light within us cannot be hidden. I bow down to the ultimate truth of the enlightened one. My beloved master and friend, I realize these events may seem small beside the others that are revealed to you at last; but they are brought to you from my loving heart.Jivan Mary, the path of spiritual realization knows no differences in experiences. There are not big, significant experiences and small, insignificant experiences. All experiences on the path are exactly of the same significance, because each experience takes you a step deeper into reality, deeper into yourself, deeper into existence.Your first experience of suddenly encountering a white, shimmering light, and after thirty-two years you came to know that it was the day I had become enlightened. You are not alone in experiencing that; perhaps ten more persons have related the same experience to me. Naturally they were amazed, and there was no clue available to them. Only later on, years afterward, it became clear to them that there seemed to be some correspondence between my enlightenment and their experience.There were great distances between me and all these people. But as far as man’s spiritual being is concerned, space and distances do not matter at all. If you are open, if you are available, if you are receptive, then one man becoming enlightened… The experience, the vibration, the light goes around the whole earth. Wherever there are people who can receive it, who can welcome it, who can take it in, they will not only see a shimmering white light – that is the outer manifestation – there is something more hidden behind it. In their seeing, their being has taken a quantum leap.They will never be the same as they were before. The experience of the light has drawn a line, a discontinuity in their life. Something new has entered: they have become available to the beyond; they are no longer only psychological human beings. Something of the spirit has come out of the darkness, just like an iceberg – a part is above the water, one-tenth. Most of the iceberg is still underneath the water, but a revolution has started.Your second experience is of even deeper mystery. It is also connected with the first experience. The first experience was my enlightenment. You shared it, you participated in the celebration. You were a welcomed guest. The second experience is indicative of my whole philosophy: I have gone beyond enlightenment; something new is born.Enlightenment has been, up to now, the ultimate. It is not the ultimate anymore. I have broken the ice. I have opened a small door – a new birth, of a new man, of a new humanity, of a new future.Enlightenment will always remain of tremendous value, but up to now it was the end. Now it will be again a beginning of a new journey. This breakthrough has immense implications. A few are worth remembering.One, the old idea of enlightenment was partial. It was partial in the sense that all the religions of the world have emphasized the fact that the man has to renounce the woman, to renounce the world, renounce all the pleasures of the world. He has to become an ascetic – in reality he has to become a self-torturer, because to cut man from woman is the beginning of torture.Man and woman are part of one whole; they are not opposites, they are complementaries.My emphasis is: no more renunciation, no more self-torture, no need to create a painful, miserable life for yourself.The woman is not against the man. The new humanity has to create the right atmosphere where men and women are friends, fellow-travelers, making each other whole. The journey becomes a joy, the journey becomes a song, the journey becomes a dance.And if men and women in total harmony can give birth to children, those children will be the “superman” we have been dreaming about for thousands of years. But the superman can be created only out of the harmonious whole of man’s and woman’s energy. Then he will be born enlightened.In the past, people had to seek enlightenment. But if a child is born out of a couple who are in total harmony, in absolute love, he will be born enlightened. It cannot be otherwise. Enlightenment will be his beginning; he will go beyond enlightenment from the very first step. He will seek new spaces, new skies.Your second experience is indicative of my whole philosophical approach.I am bound to be condemned by the old religions. I cannot even complain against them. I accept it, it is just natural – because I am trying to bring a totally new religious experience into the world. And with the new religious experience there is bound to be a new world, a new humanity, new eyes to see and new hearts to feel.Jivan Mary, you are blessed that, far away from me, you experienced my enlightenment and you also experienced my transcendence of enlightenment. You are absolutely ripe, mature, to explode into the beyond, the unknowable, the ecstatic existence.You are old, but only in the body. Your heart is younger than the so-called young generation. You have not just grown old, you have grown up, you have matured. And I can say it without any hesitation: this is going to be your last life. You will not die without experiencing your immortality, your eternity.It is very difficult to predict any such thing because there are so many hazards. One can go astray from the very last step – just one step more and he would have arrived home, but one can go astray.There is a Sufi story:A king who was not just a king but also an enlightened human being, was talking to the court astrologer. He told the astrologer, “Your science is the most difficult one. Predicting anybody’s behavior, future, is almost an impossibility, because on each step there are crossroads, and one never knows where the person will start moving and changing. And life is so accidental and everything is in darkness; people are unconscious.”But the astrologer said, “No, that is not so.”The king said, “Then you will have to prove it by an experiment. I know a beggar who sits just in front of the palace.” In front of the palace there was a beautiful, big river, and the beggar used to come across the bridge to sit in front of the palace. And certainly he was the richest beggar; he was the royal beggar. He was a very strong man – he had made it clear to all the beggars of the capital that this place belonged to him, nobody should ever try to enter here.You may not know that beggars go on doing this. You may not be aware that you belong to some beggar, that no other beggar can approach you; you are a possession of some beggar.In one of the cities where I used to go, I always used to find a beggar at the railway station and I would give him one rupee. One time I went there, the beggar was not there. A young man was standing there. I said, “What happened? What happened to the old man?”He said, “I am his son-in-law.”I said, “Son-in-law? But where is the old man?”He said, “He has given the railway station as a dowry to me. Now it belongs to me.”Only then did I become aware that we may not know at all who the beggar is who possesses us, our house, our street – nobody knows. That is their decision among themselves; there are divisions.So the palace of the king was the kingdom of the beggar. The king said, “Tomorrow, when this beggar comes toward the palace, we will put a golden pot full of gold coins in the middle of the bridge. He comes so early that he is almost the first man to cross the bridge, and he will get hold of the pot and all the money that the pot contains.”The astrologer and the king and their other friends were waiting and watching from the palace. The beggar came, but they were all surprised: he was coming with closed eyes, with a walking stick to find the way. He was not blind; he had never been seen with a walking stick.The astrologer said, “This is strange.” And the beggar certainly missed the pot, because the bridge was big, and he was walking with closed eyes.He reached the palace. The king called to him, “What is the matter? You are not blind.”He said, “No, I am not blind.”“And you have never carried a walking stick.”He said, “Never.”“What happened today?”He said, “Just this morning, when I was coming out of my home, the idea arose in me that if I should become a blind man – anything can happen in this world; people become blind – will I be able to find my way to the palace? So I said, ‘It is better to try.’ I am not blind, but it is better to try, as a rehearsal, in case I become blind.”The king said to the astrologer, “Do you see my point? This man passed by the pot full of gold. But an idea in his mind – ‘If someday I become blind, it is better to have some rehearsal beforehand.’ And it is a coincidence that he has chosen today to practice it.”It is very difficult to predict that somebody is going to become enlightened, because people have slipped from the very last step – they were just at the door of the temple and they turned back – some idea…But about Jivan Mary, I am saying she is going to make it in this life. Her experiences show the purity of her heart. She is not a woman of the mind. Her purity has been growing, and death cannot be so cruel. She is going to become enlightened any day, but certainly before her death.She should go on just as simply, as ordinarily, as humbly as she has been going up to now. She should not start thinking that she is going to become enlightened; otherwise the idea has entered and can distract.She should not bother about enlightenment or no-enlightenment. She is perfectly good as she is, and she should continue in her humbleness, in her love, in her purity, in her compassion. Enlightenment will come on its own accord. She is not to desire it, she is not to expect it.Osho,Today's question is beyond belief: how to die utterly without grief? I have heard you saying that you are a murderer and that you do nothing. Is your ultimate inactivity your invisible sword? Perhaps the force of my overpowering and mysterious love for you impales me on the point, an invisible hara-kiri.The question has its own answer in it. I certainly am a murderer. And also I never do a thing, so I am a murderer of a very strange category. Just like the candle, and the moth comes toward it, dancing, and dies on its own accord, the candle does not do anything – but certainly it kills.The whole function of the master is to create such energy, such a magnetic force that you are pulled in and slowly, slowly start disappearing. And a point comes when you have become one with existence. This I call real death.The ordinary death that you see every day is not real death, it is only a change of the house, or a changing of your clothes. The master is the real death – because once you are consumed in the energy that the master makes available to you, you will not be returning in any form; you will disappear into the vast universe.It is death from one side: you will not be this small, imprisoned soul. It is life eternal from the other side: you will be freed from the prison and you will become one with life itself. You will not be separate; you will be immortal, you will be universal. Just all your misery, all your limitations – the birth, the death, the old age – all these will disappear. You will be simply young, vibrating, eternal life.On the one hand the master is a death.On the other, he is the resurrection.Osho,Whenever I sit silently, doing nothing, a deep sadness surrounds me. What is this sadness? Am I not sitting silently in the right way?It is the right way. In the beginning silence feels like sadness, because you have always been active, engaged, busy – and suddenly all your activity, all your busyness-without-business, all your doings are gone. It feels as if you have lost everything, your whole life. It looks like sadness. But just be a little patient – let this sadness settle. This is the beginning of silence.As sadness settles, you will start enjoying the peace, the inactivity, no turmoil, and a point will come where you will see that it was a misunderstanding: it was silence, but you misunderstood it as sadness. You just have to become acquainted with it. A little deeper friendship with what you are calling sadness, and the same sadness will become your deep, cool silence.But we are so much accustomed to being busy. Nobody allows himself or others just to relax, not to do anything. People condemn such people.I have heard that one day, as the archbishop of New York entered the church, he saw a young man who looked like Jesus Christ.He thought, “It is impossible: Jesus Christ? He must be a hippie; many hippies look like Jesus Christ. So keep your courage, don’t be afraid.”He went in and asked the young man, “What are you doing here?” – although inside he was trembling: “Who knows? He has said that he would come again; perhaps he has come.” But New York? He should go to Israel.The young man laughed. He said, “Don’t be worried, and don’t tremble inside.”He said, “My God, so you know that I am trembling inside?”“Yes,” he said, “I know, and you are thinking I am a hippie. You idiot! You can’t recognize your lord Jesus Christ?”He said, “I had recognized you. In fact, when I first entered, I had the idea: ‘My God, the man looks exactly like Jesus Christ.’”He said, “I do not look like Jesus Christ, I am.”The archbishop said, “Just wait a minute” – because he thought, “Now what to do?” He had never in his life thought that he was going to meet Jesus Christ. And if you meet Jesus Christ, what are you going to do? So he immediately made a long-distance phone call to the Vatican in Rome. He asked the pope, “It is very urgent. Jesus Christ has come into my church. And the guy seems to be really Jesus Christ, because he even reads my thoughts!”Even the pope started trembling inside: “This is strange!”The archbishop said, “What should I do?”The pope said, “Do? – just look busy, and inform the police! What else can we do? Just look busy so the lord does not think that his archbishops and bishops are wasting time and doing nothing. Just do something, anything will do. Don’t bother me. It is good that he has not come here! And inform the police.”Looking busy… Even if you are sitting silently in your shop or your office and somebody comes, you start looking busy – putting this file there, and that file there, and you know it is useless. But just sitting in your chair not doing anything looks somehow not right. What will the man think? Business is accepted; busy people are accepted.I was a student of a professor who was a very traditional man, and he had taken the vow of celibacy. Just teaching Indian philosophy, by and by he became so much involved in it…Just like all the Bengalis – he was a Bengali – he used to keep an umbrella. But all other Bengalis feel embarrassed that whether there is rain or not, heat or not, they carry their umbrellas; the umbrella is something essential. But this Professor Bhattacharya was not embarrassed, because he was always using it. He was using it to save his celibacy: he kept his umbrella so close to his head that he could see only two or three feet ahead, so he was saved from all kinds of women in the university.The most troublesome thing was that there were only three students in his class – two were girls, and I was the third one. And because of the two girls he used to teach with his eyes closed, because you cannot keep the umbrella up while you are teaching, that will look really too much!And it was a great joy for me; because he kept his eyes closed, I kept my eyes closed. Really, I slept; that was my time to sleep. And he thought that perhaps I was also a celibate; he had great respect for me.One day it happened that those two girls were absent. He started teaching with his eyes open, but I was accustomed to my sleep, so I closed my eyes. He said, “You can open your eyes, because those two girls are not here.”I said, “Girls or no girls, this is my sleeping time.”He said, “My God, and I had so much respect for you and I thought that you were also a celibate.”I said, “All nonsense. If I were a celibate I would always have an umbrella with me! You could have figured it out, that this man never carries any umbrella. Without an umbrella, can anybody be celibate?” I said, “You can go on teaching, it does not disturb me. You have trained me so well, because for two years I have been listening to you, and sleeping perfectly well. It has been a discipline. Now I can sleep anywhere.”He said, “Then what is the point? You sleep. I should go home.”I said, “That is up to you.”He said, “But these girls not coming has revealed a fact.”I said, “It has not revealed anything. In fact, first you see the girls, then you close your eyes. You have seen the girls – do you accept that or not? – otherwise how do you decide whether to close your eyes or not?”He said, “That’s right.”“And why have you not closed your eyes today? – because you have seen that the girls are not here! So you are seeing girls unnecessarily – why are you creating trouble for yourself? And I suspect that even under your umbrella you must be watching who is passing by, whether it is a man or woman. You cannot see the face, that is true; but you can see the feet, you can see the legs. And your celibacy is so thin; even a girl’s naked legs and it is finished. The umbrella cannot save it; no scripture says that celibates should carry umbrellas. From where did you get this idea? Just being a Bengali, conventionally…“You are not a celibate, because a celibate need not be so afraid. He should be fearless, and you are so full of fear. In this state of fear, forget all about celibacy.”The question contains its own answer. But it seems that you are writing your question with closed eyes, or you are writing your question unconsciously, not even thinking twice about the fact that you have answered it also.The moment you come in contact with a master you start dying. It is a slow process. It is so slow that you are not aware of it. You become aware of it only when you come to a place which I call the point of no return – from where you cannot return, because almost three-fourths of you is dead. Even if you return, people will think you are a ghost; nobody is going to recognize you again.The same is the situation about sadness. You ask the question, but you have not allowed the sadness to penetrate your being. You have not allowed yourself to be acquainted with it. If you had allowed it, you would have seen that sadness is just the beginning of silence.Because you are coming from a world of too much activity and suddenly you have stopped everything, it looks sad. Before entering into silence, you have to pass the transitory period, which will be sadness. But sadness has its own beauty. It has tremendous depth, it has its own calmness, quietness, softness. It is a beautiful experience.So don’t try to avoid it. If you avoid it, you are avoiding the door to silence. Enjoy it, receive it with open hands, embrace it. The more you are welcoming the sooner sadness will start changing into silence.And silence, slowly, slowly, becomes music without sound.Osho,I married twelve years ago. After two years, I was initiated into sannyas by you, and then I started doing meditation. But strangely, after my sannyas, my wife and I started growing in love. She also loves you, Osho. But the sages are saying that to love one's wife is a hindrance in attaining the ultimate. Are we on the right path? Please guide us on our further pilgrimage to the ultimate.Anybody who says that love is a hindrance on the path of self-realization is not a sage. But I can understand your question.In the past, many so-called sages have been teaching people to be unnatural, unpsychological. These people were basically sick; they were not sages. But they were capable of doing certain things which normal human beings cannot do, and because of their doings people thought they had special powers and that those powers were coming from their sagehood.For example, you will find people in Varanasi lying down on a bed of thorns – they are worshipped as sages; thousands of people come to worship them. Naturally you cannot lie down on a bed of thorns because you don’t know the trick. The trick is very simple; once you know it, you will laugh. It is not any power; this man is befooling you. On your back, there are spots which are sensitive spots and there are spots which are insensitive spots. Just tell your child or your wife or your friend to take a needle and prick you in different places on your back and you will be surprised: in a few places you will feel the pain and in a few places you will not feel even that the needle has been inserted into your body. There is no sensitive nerve there, these are blind spots.Those beds are made by experts in such a way that the thorns only touch the non-sensitive parts of the back – but the man becomes a sage. He has not done anything creative, he has not shown any talent, he has not shown any intelligence, but through a simple trick of cheating he is befooling people.There are people…I was passing through a village and I saw a big crowd, so I stopped the car. I inquired what was the matter. They said, “In our village we have a great sage.”I asked, “What is his greatness, what is his sagehood?”They said, “He has been standing for twelve years.”I said, “Even if he is standing for twelve centuries, that does not make him a sage.”I went to see the man. He had a support for his hands, and his legs had become elephant legs. It is a certain disease: if you go on standing for twelve years the blood goes more and more into the legs, and the legs start becoming thicker and thicker. The upper side of his body had become shrunken, his whole weight had gone to the lower side. His face was that of an utterly tortured man. There was no intelligence in his eyes. He was not even capable of speaking. Those twelve years had taken everything from him, but it had given him tremendous honor.And there was a circle of priests around him, continuously chanting songs, day and night, collecting money, donations. People were coming and worshipping him. The ego is such that it can make you do stupid things if it feels a certain gratification in it.Now he was known around many villages as a great sage – and so cheaply.If you look at your sages, you will rarely find any intelligent person, any genius. You will find all kinds of retarded people, but they have managed at least one thing: they have done something which you cannot do, and that makes them special. It seems as if they have attained to something spiritual.You are saying to me that sages have said that the woman is a hindrance. Anybody who has said it, the woman must have been a hindrance to him, that much is certain. That much can be said with a guarantee – that he was suffering from sexual repression. Now he is trying to make a general theory out of it. His own repression is a sickness, and he is creating a theory for all human beings that women are hindrances. They are not.I used to know a saint who was continually teaching against women. I asked him, “If women are hindrances to men, then women are in a far better position to reach heaven because nobody is hindering them. Men are not hindrances to women; no sage has said that, no scripture says that.”So it seems that all women have reached heaven, and all men are suffering in hell – naturally, because if there is no hindrance where will women go? You will have to make some place for them too. And all men have suffered and suffered badly – but they were responsible for their suffering. Not the women, because they escaped. And whenever you escape from anything it follows you. It becomes your fantasy, it comes in your dreams. They did not solve the problem; they were cowards.My people are not escaping from anything.Life is a beautiful experiment to solve problems. The more problems you solve, the more intelligent you become. Escaping is not the way.If the woman is your problem, then find out the reasons why. Perhaps you are the cause. Perhaps you want to dominate the woman. And naturally, if the husband wants to dominate the woman, the woman reacts in her own way: she starts trying to dominate the husband. Their methodologies are different. Men are responsible for keeping women ignorant, uneducated, uncultured – are responsible for keeping women almost imprisoned in their houses. Now, if they react, who is to be blamed?You have taken all their freedom, you have taken all their independence. Financially, they cannot stand on their own feet. Educationally, you have deprived them completely. They cannot fight with the man in the competitive world. The man has all the privileges; the woman has no privileges. This is a man’s world in which for centuries the woman has been simply accepted as a slave, in every culture, in every country.Now if she reacts, if she nags you, if she makes your life miserable, I think it is perfectly right. And by escaping from her… Where are you going to escape? You can escape from the woman, but you have an instinct within you that wants a woman – that instinct will go with you. You can escape from your wife, but then that instinct within you will create problems somewhere else.I have heard a story…A great sage was dying, and he called his chief disciple and told him his last message. There was great silence: because it is the last message it has to be something immensely important. And the sage said to the disciple, “Remember one thing: never keep a cat in your house” – and he died.Everybody was shocked. A great sage, and what a message!People will ask; what will he say? The chief disciple was at a loss. He inquired of the elders in the society what to make of it.They said, “You don’t know the story of your master; we know it. He escaped from his wife. He remained in the forest near a village where he used to come to beg for his food.“The villagers said, ‘We are poor people, and every day you have to come – in the rains, sometimes it is too cold, sometimes it is too hot – you have trouble. And we are poor people. So we have a suggestion, a simple suggestion, and it will help you also with the problem for which you come again and again’ – because there was a problem.“He had two langotis – that is special saintly underwear – and the trouble was that there were rats in the forest, and they would make holes in his underwear and he would have to come to the town so somebody could mend it.“And the villagers said, ‘It is unnecessarily tiring. We suggest to you… We have gathered money and we have purchased a cow. You keep the cow, and we will clear some land by the side of your cottage so you can cultivate some grass. And what are you doing the whole day? So the cow will be supported by the grass, and you will be supported by the cow’s milk.“‘And we have a beautiful cat, so take the cat also. The cat will take care of the rats, and your underwear will not be damaged anymore. But you have to give the cat milk also, because just the rats will not be enough.’“He thought that this seemed to be a good plan, so he took the cat, he took the cow. For a few days things went well, but then troubles started arising.“Living just on the milk was difficult; it was not full nourishment. It is full nourishment for small babies, but not full nourishment for a grown-up man. So he went back to the town: ‘It is okay for me, and your cat has been very helpful – she has finished the rats, and the problem with the underwear is no longer a problem. But a new problem has arisen: just living on the milk, I am feeling very weak.’“So they said, ‘There is no problem. We will clear a little more land for you. There is so much land around you. And we have a widow in our town who needs some work. She is a nice woman, so take her with you.’“He hesitated a little: ‘I have escaped from one wife…’ But this was not a wife.“And the people said, ‘Sometimes you will be tired – she can massage your feet. And if you have a headache, she can massage your head. She will take care of the cow and the cat. And she was a farmer’s wife, so she will start farming, and you can help her also – so you can grow your own food. You need not bother us anymore.’“So he took the widow. The widow was really nice, and beautiful. He was trembling inside, but he said, ‘Now this seems to be the only solution.’“The widow started working. She took charge of the whole house and managed everything beautifully. She would massage his feet, and she would give him a good bath. And by and by, as things grow, they grew; love comes through such strange doors. Soon there were children, and there was the whole world again.”So the elders of the town said, “That’s why he said to you, ‘Never bring a cat into the house,’ because that is where things start going wrong.”But you cannot avoid. Man is half, so is woman half. The whole idea of separating them is creating unnecessary misery, and in misery there is no development of consciousness. Consciousness evolves only in a blissful, happy way – when you are in a dancing mood, when you are in a singing mood. So what has happened to you, that with your wife…You are a sannyasin, your wife loves me, you are both meditating and you have been feeling to go deeper into meditation. Don’t be bothered by any sage who has said that women are hindrances. Look at your own experience: your wife has been a help.The sage who has said that women are hindrances must have been an escapist. Never listen to the escapist.The world is for those who can live in it and not allow the world to enter into them; who can be in the world, and will not allow the world to be in them. That is the whole secret of sannyas.Osho,It is said that to take human birth is a great fortune, but to get an enlightened master is even more fortunate: and if a disciple is deeply in love, devoted and surrendered to his master, he attains everything. He is the most fortunate and blessed one; love does everything. I am not the blessed one; I am a small disciple. Please shower light on the path.There is no one who is a small disciple or who is a great disciple. One is either a disciple or not a disciple.You cannot be a small disciple. What do you mean by a small disciple? – the size? the weight? Discipleship is the same. It is not a quantity which can be more or less – it is a quality.So it is perfectly right that you are a disciple. You are as blessed as any other disciple has ever been. And because you think you are a small disciple you are even more blessed, because that feeling of being small is nothing but humbleness.Osho,When I took sannyas, I heard you saying that with constant effort the highest peak is possible. Although I am German, I realize that I am a lazy one who once in a while makes some effort, gets a glimpse, and falls asleep again. It seems that I haven't got it yet. Do I have to make more effort?No one has to make any effort. One has to be more relaxed. You are feeling a difficulty because you are a German; hence relaxedness looks like laziness.You don’t have to make any more effort. You just open your eyes and look around: you are sitting on the top of the mountain where you want to reach.Everybody is where he wants to reach. It takes time – sometimes years, sometimes lives – to go round and round and round in the world. And finally one comes to a place, and is amazed: this is the place where he had been sitting in the very first place.There is no need to make any effort. Just once in a while, when you can open your eyes, just have a little glimpse of the place where you are, who you are.Nobody is a German and nobody is an Indian. Nobody is an Italian. You are a sannyasin. What nonsense are you talking, that you are a German? After being a sannyasin, you cannot be a German.That’s why the German government is so much afraid. They won’t allow me into Germany because they know that if I am in Germany, Germany will disappear. So many Germans have already disappeared; they are no longer Germans. Whoever becomes a sannyasin immediately drops his religion, his nation, his race. For the first time he realizes that just to be a human being is so beautiful, why carry unnecessary luggage?So it is perfectly good; as far as I am concerned, to be lazy is perfectly good. Just once in a while, when you open your eyes, just see where you are. Enjoy that moment.Don’t think of any goal. Don’t be goal-oriented. Sannyas is not goal-oriented. Sannyas is a realization of the moment, now and here. No effort is needed – because you are already here, you are already now. And the laziest person can, just once in a while, see where he is, who he is. In fact the laziest may reach before the so-called active people.And the active German is dangerous. A lazy German is perfectly good. If the whole world becomes lazy, we will have such a beautiful world with no wars, no atomic weapons, no nuclear weapons, no crimes, no jails, no judges, no policemen, no presidents, no prime ministers. People will be so lazy that they won’t need all this nonsense that our activity makes absolutely necessary. Just think sometime: has any lazy person in the world done anything wrong? And still, poor, lazy people are condemned.Two lazy persons were lying down resting under a tree, a beautiful mango tree. And the mangos were ripe, and one mango fell from the tree. It was just by the side of one lazy person, but he didn’t move. Just by stretching his hand he could have picked up the mango.Just then the other lazy person said, “What kind of friend are you? A dog has been urinating in my ear and you never did anything.”The other said, “Why should I do anything? A beautiful, juicy mango is lying by my side, and you pretend to be my friend and you have not done anything – and you have heard it fall, you have seen it fall.”Lazy people have never done any harm to anybody – they cannot. They will not go through that much trouble. It is the active people who are the real problems.So don’t be worried about your laziness. It is totally acceptable as far as I am concerned. I want the world to become less active, more enjoying laziness: relaxing on the beaches, taking sunbaths, playing on their guitars: doing everything that is allowable to a lazy person, and not doing anything that only active people have been doing up to now.The active people have created Nadirshah and Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin and Mussolini and Ronald Reagan. The world needs to get rid of these active people.And nobody writes about the lazy people, there is no history about them. There must have been lazy people in the world, but nobody writes any history about them.And they are the very salt of the earth.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 42 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I understand perfectly well why you are driving us, slowly, slowly, to be independent of your physical presence, but I wonder how. The other day you said that you have your own methods. I trust you totally, and I know that you will not hurt the delicate veil between us and you; and if you do, it is because something is missing in our journey. But I cannot avoid thinking and being worried: “How will he” – you – “move away from our beings?” Beloved one, you are the king of the world now, and your coming to India to me is a tremendous analogy to Jesus coming back to Jerusalem. Is it true?The moment you cross the boundaries of personality the consciousness is one.It can be of Gautam Buddha, it can be of Jesus Christ, it can be of Chuang Tzu. These names are names of the personalities. These names have nothing to do with the beyond, with the pure consciousness. It is always the same: wherever superconsciousness exists, it is Jesus coming back to Jerusalem.I understand your fear, because you do not understand my method. It appears to you as if there is only one way of disappearing so that I am no longer a hindrance to you, and that is by leaving you alone. That’s why I have said I have my own methods.I can merge in you; I can allow you to merge in me. We need not be two. We can become one, and the hindrance disappears. The idea that the hindrance has to be removed is very crude; there is no need to remove it. If you are ready, you can merge with me. If you are afraid, I can merge with you.The basic question is that the gate of the paradise is very narrow and only one can enter – two cannot enter together. Now it is not my fault! – simply old architecture.Osho,As a Christian I was taught, “Jesus loves you and lives within you.” I could never find him – not within me, not within others, not in churches – not to mention God, whose house a church is supposed to be. Now I've met you. I feel your love; and seeing others, I feel something in them. Yesterday I saw you in the house. I didn't even have to look for you; you were just there. When I trust, everything goes wonderfully. Is it you who enters me, who comes in?It is your trust that creates miracles. Nobody else can create a miracle for you, but your trust is the source of all miracles.You were brought up as a Christian; that is a misfortune, but nobody can avoid it. If you had not been brought up as a Christian, you would have been brought up as a Hindu, as a Mohammedan, as a Jew – and all these diseases have the same quality of destroying you and your trust. In fact to destroy your trust is to destroy you.Because you were brought up as a Christian, you were told that Jesus loves you, Jesus is in you. But these were words told to you, not your experiences. They were false; they never tallied with your own understanding, intelligence, intuition. Still, you had to believe in them because everybody else believed in them. Not to believe in them would have created many kinds of troubles.It is easier to go with the crowd, otherwise the crowd can be very crude, very primitive. It respects people, gives them honor if they are obedient to its superstitions – and naturally everybody wants to be respected, honored. A natural instinct to be respected is exploited.A natural desire to live a comfortable, easy life is exploited, because if you start raising questions about beliefs you will be continuously struggling with your neighbors, with your family, with your teachers, with your priest, with your husband, with your wife, even with your children. Your life will become a chaos. Nobody wants to make his life a chaos.These are natural longings of every man, and these can be exploited very easily. And the best way to exploit is to give you beliefs – beautiful beliefs, but they remain superficial. They never ring any bell in your heart. “Jesus loves you” – you hear the words, but nothing happens in your heart. “He will come to you, he will come to your rescue, he is your savior.” But these are just empty words to you, and you go on carrying these empty words your whole life. They become more or less just part of the formalities; your religion becomes a formality, something of the same category as etiquette.You have to live with so many people – naturally you have to adjust, to adapt, and not to create an unnecessary nuisance, not to become a target of their enmity. But this is not going to help your growth. On the contrary, because these words, these beliefs remain empty for your whole life; deep down a suspicion settles that all religion is bogus. It is very difficult for an intelligent man not to come to this conclusion – a whole life of belief, and your hands are empty and your heart is empty. There have been no golden moments, no experiences that go beyond this world.So you perform the ritual: you go to the church just as you go to the Rotary Club; there is no difference at all. Perhaps going to the Rotary Club or Lions’ Club or some other club, you feel more excited than going to church. Going to church seems to be a burden, a duty that has to be done.Remember, duty is a four-letter, ugly word. Love knows no duty. It does many things, but it loves to do them – it is not duty. The moment you utter the word duty it means there is no love. You have to do it because you have to do it; the pressure of the crowd is so much. But it is deep down a humiliation, an insult, a destruction of your self-respect.Naturally, you live a so-called religious life – Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan – but absolutely superficial, it has no authenticity. And the trick is very simple: they have substituted belief in place of trust. Trust is something that grows in you, it is not imposed on you; it is not a plastic flower but a rose that grows, blossoms, releases its fragrance. Trust is the most poetic experience of life. But the basic necessity for trust to happen is that you should not be burdened with beliefs.Beliefs are false coins; they look like trust, and they can deceive small children very easily. And once you have accepted those beliefs as trust, you will never try to find the distinction – and the distinction is abysmal, unbridgeable.If you love your children, don’t give them any belief. Help them so that they can grow trust. If you don’t know something, never lie to the children because sooner or later they are going to find that you lied – and when a child finds that the father lied to him, the teacher lied, the priest lied, all possibilities of trust are destroyed. He could not have conceived that the people he has loved – and has loved totally, because a child loves totally…An innocent child, absolutely dependent on you, and you have the nerve to deceive him, to say things which he is going to find one day that you never knew! If he asks about God, if you are an authentic father, sincere, honest, you should say, “I am seeking, I have not found yet.” Give your child a desire to seek, a desire to search. Help him to go on a pilgrimage, and tell him, “It may be that you find it before I find it. Then don’t forget me; then help me to find it. Right now, I don’t know.”Your child will never disrespect you; your child will never come to a point when he will say that you were dishonest toward him, that you lied. And your child will have tremendous honor for you because you made him, his innocence, his questioning, into a search. You created a seeker, not a believer.Real parents will not create Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans. Real teachers will not create believers, only authentic seekers.I had to leave my professorship for a strange reason – perhaps nobody has ever left for such a reason.I had to teach Shankara, Bradley, Kant – and I don’t agree with these people, so I made it clear to my students: “For half an hour I will go into the minutest detail of Shankara’s philosophy – unprejudiced, remaining absolutely aloof – and then in the remaining half hour I will give you my opinion, because I cannot teach you something which seems to me to be creating belief, not creating search. I will create doubt in you – not faith, not belief.”The students were very much confused. I was doing the best that I could do when I was teaching them Shankara, Ramanuja, Nimbarka. I was as fair as anybody can be, but after half an hour I was just as critical – creating doubt, creating questions, making it clear that their whole philosophy was not based on any foundation of experience. The students were in a difficulty.They said, “What are we going to do in the examination?”I said, “That is your problem. That is not my business; I have nothing to do with the examination. My function here is to teach you. The examination is your business, and that of your examiners.”Finally they reported to the vice-chancellor, “We are getting into a mess. Naturally he is very fair about anybody he teaches, but when he comes to criticize, then it is something of his heart. When he teaches, it is only his mind; and when he criticizes, it is his heart. And our problem is that we are left in an absolute uncertainty: we cannot answer any question because we know that if we listen to him, Shankara is wrong. And if we write that Shankara is right, then we are not only betraying him, we are betraying ourselves too – because we have also felt that the whole philosophical system is based on belief, not on experience.”The vice-chancellor told me, “It is a strange way of teaching. We have never heard…”I said, “It has to be strange – have you ever heard of me? – I am doing my best. You should look at my situation: I am walking on a razor’s edge. I am being fair to people whom I would like to crush completely, still I am giving them as much support, reason, logic, as humanly possible. But I cannot lie to my students.”My vice-chancellor suggested, “You’d better resign; you are not supposed to be a professor. These people have come here to get some degrees to become clerks, to become teachers, to become stationmasters, postmasters. They are not interested in God, they are not interested in truth.”I resigned.If every teacher, every parent is honest, there will be Christs and there will be Buddhas and there will be Mahaviras; but there will not be Christians, there will not be Buddhists and there will not be Jainas.There is no need for believers. When you can become a Christ yourself, why become a Christian?Being a Christian means you are avoiding being a Christ. You are avoiding the crucifixion; you are avoiding the resurrection. You have found a very cheap escape – you have become a Christian. You go to the church every Sunday. For six days there is no difference between Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans – no difference, because there are only Sunday Christians, and that, too, for one hour. And you can see the difference: if you are a Christ there is a possibility you may be on the cross, but if you are a Christian, at the most you can have a beautiful, golden cross hanging around your neck: an ornament. Jesus did not have an ornament.A single insight: that if you are carrying borrowed knowledge, please drop it. Drop it totally, not in installments – because that is sheer wastage.I am reminded of a beautiful incident:One man came to Ramakrishna and he had brought one thousand golden coins to present to him. Ramakrishna said, “I don’t need them, but I don’t want to hurt you either, so I will accept them.” He accepted the golden coins – and in those days it was a lot of money, one thousand golden coins. Then he said, “Now, I have accepted them. Now these coins are mine?”The man said, “Yes, I have given them to you.”He said, “Now take them and throw them into the Ganges” – which was flowing just behind the temple where they were sitting.The man was shocked, but now there was no way to refuse. They were no longer his coins; he had already given them away. So he went with the coins to the Ganges. Almost half an hour passed.Ramakrishna said, “What happened to that man? Has he jumped with the coins into the Ganges? Just the shock was so much – I had seen it in his face. Just go and look what has happened, what he is doing, why he has not come back.”Somebody went there, and came back and reported, “That man is throwing the coins one by one. A crowd has gathered, and he is counting ‘one, two’ and slowly, and making the crowd bigger, and enjoying.”Ramakrishna went there, took hold of the man and he said, “What nonsense are you doing? I told you to throw the coins in the Ganges. Why are you counting?”The man said, “Just old habit. I have collected them one by one, counting every day: ‘Now I have that many, now I have that many…’ This was my desire, to present one thousand golden coins to you.”Ramakrishna said, “When one is earning, counting is relevant. But when one is losing all, then throwing them one by one is sheer stupidity. Just throw them all. And if it is too much, you jump too.”A single insight – like lightning!But your Christianity is borrowed, your Hinduism is borrowed, it is not your experience – hence renounce it. And because it is just on the surface, renouncing it is so easy that it can be done in a split second. You will feel immense freedom, an expansion of consciousness, an openness: eyes fresh, to look at things again with no prejudice.Here with me, you can be as close with me as your knowledge is less. If you are innocent, you will find existence loves you.“Jesus loves you” is just an expression. “Buddha loves you” is just an expression – so that you can understand. You may not understand that existence loves you, because existence seems to be so vast and you seem to be so small and you cannot conceive how existence will love you. Jesus or Buddha or Mahavira are small windows: you can accept those small windows from where the rays of the sun enter and a pure breeze comes in, and you can see the sky.But when the whole sky can be available to you, why get attached to any window? And at each window there is such a crowd that there is not much chance that you will be able to see from the window.At the Christian window, half of humanity is hanging around; just the Catholics are seven hundred million. Don’t torture poor Jesus.I had to stop going to Punjab for a small reason. You know Punjabis, and particularly the Sikhs – they are loving people, and it was difficult for me. At the stations they would come and I would have to hug so many people – and hugging a sardar is like hugging a wolf. And there is a limit, but sardars don’t know any limit: you may leave, but they go on. When I started feeling that these people were going to fracture my ribs, I finally stopped going to Punjab. This love was too much.Seven hundred million Catholics… You should think of poor Jesus, too. First you crucified him, and now you are torturing him for two thousand years, hugging, hugging.Just come under the open sky. Drop these windows – because every window is so crowded and the queue is so long, and the hierarchy is such that you don’t have much chance. In hundreds of lives perhaps, you may come close to the window.Why not come out in the open? The moment you are not a Christian, not a Hindu, not a Mohammedan, you come into the open and you understand for the first time that the whole existence is made of the stuff called love.It is not that it is loving toward you; it is made of the stuff called love. It has nothing to do with you especially; it is simply love energy, a love phenomenon, an ocean of love.Here, you are close to me, and at least while you are in front of me you forget your knowledge, your prejudices, your beliefs. And suddenly your eyes are clear, and you can see things which were always available, but you were blind – blinded by your prejudices, blinded by your opinions, blinded by your beliefs.Let me repeat again: it is your trust that has created the miracle that you have seen Christ in me. These are just names. The reality is nameless, so whichever name you prefer makes no difference.And you have felt love from me, you have felt love from the sannyasins here. The love that you had been taught from the very beginning has become a reality for the first time – not in a church, not with a bishop, with a cardinal, not with the Christians, but here – with people who have dropped all kinds of nonsense, who are simply human, natural, whose very presence is love.It is not that they are making an effort to love anybody; there is no effort here. It is just that when you are unburdened of beliefs a trust arises which is natural to your being – and that trust has the aroma of love. And whoever comes close to you feels that you are a very loving being. You may not even be aware that you are loving; you may not be even thinking of love, but your very presence becomes love.And this is one of my basic principles: that unless your very presence becomes love, all talk about love is empty.So if you have found love in me, love in my people, remember: it is not the fulfillment of what you were taught in your childhood as a Christian. For so many years you missed this love because of that teaching. If that teaching had not been there, this love would have happened long before. It is our intrinsic nature.Everybody is full of love. If there are no hindrances, the springs of love start flowing in all directions, without any address.Osho,Gurdjieff calls whatever is happening between master and disciple “objective doing” as far as the master is concerned. He says that only a master can do something. Please comment.My approach toward life and George Gurdjieff’s approach are very different. I love Gurdjieff as one of the great masters history has produced, but it is not my path. I will explain to you what he is saying, first according to him, second, according to me.Gurdjieff had a division between subjective and objective actions: ordinary, unconscious people act subjectively; alert, conscious, crystallized beings act objectively. Now this is a totally different language and a different philosophy, so you have to understand it clearly.Sometimes you see somebody, and for no reason you feel a certain dislike. Or sometimes you feel a deep liking but you cannot give any reasons. These are unconscious, subjective emotions – there must be reasons, but they are hidden in your unconscious mind and you will behave according to these reasons.According to Gurdjieff, unconscious people are not doing anything; they are almost robots, machines. Their unconscious mind is driving them, and they are doing it: they cannot answer exactly why they did it.Objective action needs awareness.Gurdjieff’s father died. He was only nine years old. The father called him – he was an extraordinarily intelligent child. The father said, “I have nothing to give to you. I am a poor man, I am not leaving any inheritance. I have condensed my whole life’s experience in a simple statement, so that you can remember it. You are too young: right now you may understand it, you may not understand it – but you can remember; you are intelligent enough to remember it. Later on you may be able to understand it, and when you understand it, start behaving accordingly.”The principle he gave was, strangely, very simple. He said, “If somebody insults you and you feel angry, don’t act out of anger, because that way you are becoming a slave. That man is your master: he insulted you, he manipulated your anger, he managed you in how to act. You think you are behaving on your own – you are not. So if somebody insults you, just tell him, ‘I will think it over, and after twenty-four hours I will come and answer you.’ And this has to be your lifestyle about everything: don’t be in a hurry, take twenty-four hours’ time to think.”Gurdjieff was very intelligent. He started behaving exactly like that from the next day. Somebody would insult him – and people were shocked when he would say, without any anger, as if nothing had happened, as if you had proposed a certain theoretical problem for him, “Please give me twenty-four hours just to think it over. It is possible that you may be right; then I will not come back. If you are not right, then I will see whether it is worth coming back to answer you or not – but twenty-four hours are absolutely necessary. My dying father has told me, and I have to follow him.”People were simply at a loss to understand what this boy was saying. And for twenty-four hours he would think it over: most of the time, the people who had insulted were right. So he would go just to thank them: “You were right, and I have come just to thank you. And please remember, whenever you find anything wrong in me don’t hesitate, just tell me. Tell me as harshly as you can.”He became phenomenal. In his youth, people started looking at him as if he were a sage. Or he would come and say, “Whatever you said was not right, but it is not worth quarreling about it; it is below me. So I have come only to remind you: you can say anything you want, but say something that is a proof of your superiority, of your intelligence. This was such that it is even below me, and I am just a child. I don’t want to answer it.”Sometimes he would not come at all, and people would find him afterward and say, “You did not turn up.”He would say, “It was so meaningless. It was not even worth coming to say to you that it was meaningless, it was so meaningless.”Gurdjieff remembers later on that that simple statement of his father changed his whole life. He started behaving objectively: emotions, sentimentality disappeared, because you cannot remain angry for twenty-four hours; these things are momentary. Most often it happens that somebody insults you and you become hot and you become angry and you do something, and later on you repent: it was not worth it, you unnecessarily made a scene. It would have been better if you had remained calm and quiet; it would have shown your integrity, your strength. You proved to be very weak.Gurdjieff divided everything into subjective and objective. For example all the paintings and music of modern times he calls subjective. His statement is that the modern paintings are like vomiting: you are subjectively filled with a certain idea and you paint it. You are not concerned with the people who will see it and what the effect will be on those people, whether it is going to be beneficial or not. You are not concerned at all. Your whole concern is how to unburden yourself. You are feeling sick; you will feel relieved.And that’s why you will see so many paintings, particularly the most ultra-modern paintings… You cannot keep them in your bedroom, they will drive you crazy. Just look at them long enough and you will start feeling nauseous – because they have come out of nausea, naturally their effect will be nauseating. These are subjective paintings, subjective stories, subjective fiction, subjective poetry. There is no concern at all for the person who will be reading the poetry.Objective art is a totally different thing. For example Gurdjieff used to say that the Taj Mahal is objective art. On the full-moon night, if you sit silently near the Taj Mahal watching its beauty, you will fall into a deep serenity, into meditativeness. The whole architecture, the stone work, everything has been made in such a way that it will create in you a peace that passeth understanding.So when he says that a disciple cannot do anything, because a disciple is one who is asleep… For example, if you are all asleep here, what can you do? Only the person who is awake can do something.The master is awake.I am reminded of an old story:A master had two disciples. He had many disciples but two were the chief disciples, and there was great competition between the two over who was going to be the successor.It was a hot afternoon and the master was taking a nap, and both the disciples were massaging his feet. One disciple was on the right leg, another was on the left. The master turned, and the right foot went on top of the left foot. The disciple who was in charge of the left foot said to the other disciple, “Remove your foot! Remove it. Otherwise I will take my staff and hit the leg so that it will never be of any use at all.”The disciple said, “Nobody can touch my foot – and it is my foot, and it will do whatever it wants to do. You think only you have a staff? I have my staff here. If you hit my leg, I will hit your leg.”They were shouting and fighting, and the master woke up and listened to their talk. He said, “Just wait a minute! You idiots, both legs are mine! And you were going to make me crippled for my whole life.”But this is how the unconscious man behaves.Gurdjieff’s idea is that as far as doing is concerned, only the master can do something – because he is awake, and you are asleep. This is his approach, and it is perfectly right in its own context.As far as my work is concerned, neither can the disciple do anything nor can the master do anything, because it is not a question of being asleep or being awake. The disciple is asleep; certainly he cannot do anything except dream. The master is awake; hence he cannot interfere. Even to wake you is an interference in your life which a wakeful person cannot do. It is your life; he cannot trespass. Waking you up, disturbing your dream or your sleep, is a trespass.In my work, neither the master does anything nor the disciple – but things happen. There is no doing on either side, but things happen. The master goes on creating devices without interfering with the individuals.For example I am talking to you. It is possible that you may start at first by just hearing my words, and then hearing my silences – first the visible, and second, feeling the invisible presence.This is only a device. I am not doing anything to you in particular. I am just available here and if by chance, by coincidence, you open your eyes, you wake up, you see something, you hear something, you feel something and it starts working on you… I am not doing anything, you are not doing anything, but something starts happening.You must have seen, and you must have wondered: a woman gives birth to a child, the first child; she has no experience, but in the night, perhaps a dozen times, a small movement on the part of the child and the mother wakes up. And there may be clouds, thunder, the house may be on fire and she will not wake up, but just if the child… Something, perhaps the blanket, has slipped off the child’s body and she wakes up. It seems that she is asleep for the whole world but not for the child. There is a link – you can call it telepathic – a subtle link, so that every movement in the child is immediately transferred to the mother’s heart.Something similar happens between the master and the disciple.The master is there with his immense presence, and the disciple – although he is asleep, he is not unconscious. He has somehow stumbled and found the place where the master is, perhaps from a faraway country.Already there are three hundred sannyasins here from faraway countries, and we are preventing them because we don’t have any space, we don’t have any arrangement for them. So every center around the world is trying to prevent people: “Don’t go, because right now there is no arrangement for you, and you will not be able to see Osho more than once or twice a week.”But still three hundred sannyasins have arrived. We are preventing them, the Indian government is preventing, the American government is preventing, other governments are preventing – still they have come. And soon you will find Mumbai full of my sannyasins. You are not seeing them because I have allowed them not to use red clothes, not to use the mala. For a few years, the sannyas movement has to go underground.There must be some part of them which is awake, some part of them which is not only awake but is capable of finding the way, and they have reached here. Now, being with me, that small part that has brought them here will become bigger, stronger, nourished, and things will start happening.Gurdjieff is a great doer. His whole philosophy is a philosophy of action. My whole approach is of relaxing and allowing the existence to do whatever is right.Trust the existence. And existence has never betrayed anyone.Osho,Whenever I hear sannyasins talk about their relationship to you, I hear them say that they have fallen in love with you. For me, something else seems to be true. Mostly, I am afraid of you and of what you are giving. Is there something wrong with me? Am I not a sannyasin?Nothing is wrong with you. You are just not understanding what is happening. The others who are saying that they have fallen in love with me may be simply talking. You have really fallen in love with me; hence the fear. When you are not in love, you can talk about it easily. You can discuss and gossip about it and there is no problem. But you are in trouble – you have fallen in love, hence you are afraid of coming closer. Otherwise why should you be afraid of coming closer?Love is fire, and if you come close you will be consumed by the fire. Love consumes, transforms, brings the death of the old and the birth of the new.You are a sannyasin, but you are not very clear about your own heart. Your heart is throbbing with love. Your head is full of fear. You are watching your head, but you are not looking at your heart. Forget the head.I am reminded of a great Sufi mystic, Sarmad. The story is strange – it may be true, may not be true – but it is significant. I don’t care whether it is factual or not, all that I care about is whether it signifies something, and it signifies something tremendously beautiful.Sarmad was killed in New Delhi. Mohammedans have a mantra; every Mohammedan is expected to repeat it. The mantra is simple: There is only one God. That’s what the mantra means: There is only one God, one prophet, one message – the prophet is Mohammed, the message is the Koran. This is the meaning of the mantra.Sufis repeat it, but only half; they simply say, “There is only one God,” and full-point. They don’t go beyond that. They don’t say that there is one prophet, one holy message – Hajrat Mohammed is the prophet and the Koran is the message – that they don’t say.The emperor was Mohammedan. The priest, the high priest informed the emperor about Sarmad: “He is a heretic, because he is not repeating the whole mantra, and his disciples are also repeating only half the mantra. And that half of the mantra has nothing to do with Mohammedanism, because to say that there is only one God, that has nothing to do with Mohammedanism. The real Mohammedanism comes in the second part, that Hajrat Mohammed is the only prophet and the Koran is the only message. And this Sarmad is simply teaching his disciples that the first part is enough, that the second part is unnecessary and there is no need to repeat it.” Sarmad was called to the palace and the emperor asked him, “What is your mantra?”He repeated the mantra: “There is only one God.”The king said, “Are you not aware that this is only half?”He said, “No, this is full. Anything added to it will be unnecessary.”The emperor said, “That means your head has to be cut off immediately, so that everybody knows what will be the result if half of the mantra is left out.”So from Jama Masjid – from the top there are many steps – his head was cut off. Before his head was cut off Sarmad said to the thousands of people who had gathered, his disciples and others… This is what is significant in the story: he said, “What you are cutting off is the place of your half of the mantra, and what you are leaving with me, my heart, is the place of my half of the mantra. ‘There is only one God’: that is my heart. And ‘Mohammed is the only prophet and the Koran the only message’ is just your head. Cut off my head. But even without my head, my heart will repeat the mantra, because that mantra has nothing to do with the head.”His head was cut off, and thousands of people heard…The head was rolling down the steps, and the dead body was standing on top of the steps, and from nowhere in the body the sound was coming, “There is only one God.”I say this may not be factual, because it is difficult for the heart to speak – and particularly when the head is cut off!There are some other stories of that kind in the world, but this is the most significant. The others may have some fact – this seems to be nonfactual, but many books of that time repeated that it happened, that there were eyewitnesses who heard it.Life is mysterious. Sometimes things can happen which may not be immediately explainable.A similar story is told about Rana Sanga, a great warrior who was fighting – and his fighting method was his own.When warriors fight in the war, in one hand they have their sword and in the other hand a protective shield. That was not the way of the man, Rana Sanga. He used to fight with two swords, one in each hand, and with no protective shield, and he used to rush into the army of the enemy like a whirlwind, cutting this way and that way. It was almost impossible to see him, to see where he was. He was simply cutting off heads; heads were falling all along the way, and he was doing it so fast!The story is that the last time, when he died… He had cut off many heads, and somebody cut his head off, but he was in such a momentum that, without the head, he went on! That seems to be possible. There was such a momentum – perhaps he never understood that his own head was no longer there. Just the hands were so expert…It is just like when you are bicycling and coming down a hill: you need not do the pedaling; you can just sit, and just from the momentum the bicycle will go on. When you have come down the hill the bicycle will go for one mile even on the plain road without your pedaling, just from the momentum.Perhaps Rana Sanga had such a momentum, was in such a mood, and was doing his work so totally that he never became aware that his own head had been cut off, and he went on cutting. This is possible. This story too had its eyewitnesses. And these people are not very ancient; Sarmad and Rana Sanga have both lived within the span of the past two thousand years.But Sarmad’s story has a significance. It may not be factual, but the significance is that the head has its own way: it is always afraid of death, it is always afraid of love. These two things – love and death – are the most fearful objects for the head. Perhaps these two things are not two; perhaps they are two sides of the same coin.But the heart is immensely willing to be drowned in love, even if that drowning in love means death. Even if it is at the risk of life that love becomes possible, the heart is ready.You have fallen in love. Now only your head is afraid. Others, your friends who are saying that they have fallen in love, are just talking through their heads; they are not afraid.You should be alerted. If you want to escape, escape soon, because tomorrow escape may not be possible. Once you find that your heart is pulling you toward love, then the head cannot prevent it. The head has no power; it is simply a chatterbox, it goes on chattering. Its only function is to chatter. The heart cannot chatter and cannot say anything, but it makes it possible for miracles to happen.If you are still here, perhaps you cannot escape.Tonight, just try to find out what your heart says. Your mind is saying – which is very indicative – that the heart is in love; otherwise, mind is not afraid.Osho,What is the difference between trusting and being naive?The difference is vast, yet the dividing line is very subtle. Being naive means being ignorant. Trusting is the most intelligent act in existence. And the symptoms to be remembered are these: both will be cheated, both will be deceived, but the person who is naive will feel cheated, will feel deceived, will be angry, will start mistrusting people. His naiveness will sooner or later become distrust. And the person who trusts is also going to be cheated, is also going to be deceived, but he is not going to feel hurt. He will simply feel compassionate toward those who have cheated him, who have deceived him, and his trust will not be lost. His trust will go on increasing in spite of all deceptions. His trust will never turn into distrust of humanity.These are the symptoms. In the beginning they both look the same. But in the end, the quality of being naive turns into distrust, and the quality of trusting goes on becoming more trusting, more compassionate, more understanding of human weaknesses, human frailties. The trust is so valuable that one is ready to lose everything, but not the trust.Osho,How can this world, we people, have such a beautiful Osho among us?It should not be a question. The question should be: When everybody has the potential to become enlightened, how is it possible that so few people have ever achieved it?It is like a garden in which you have millions of rosebushes, and once in a while one rosebush brings one roseflower. What should the question be? Should this roseflower be the question, or should the question be: How is it possible that there are millions of rosebushes and only one roseflower, and that too, after centuries?Something is wrong with our gardening. Something is wrong; perhaps the garden is in the wrong hands. Perhaps enough water is not made available. Perhaps it is in the interests of the powerful people that many roses should not be in the world.I remember, I used to have a beautiful garden and a very intelligent gardener. Every year he used to win the first prize in the city competition for growing the biggest roseflowers. I asked him, “How do you manage it? – because whatever you are doing, any gardener can do; every gardener is doing it. I don’t see you doing anything special.”He said, “I cannot be dishonest with you, but please don’t tell anybody my secret. I am your servant. I will tell you the secret.” He told me the secret.I said, “This is absolutely wrong! No more participating in the competition.”What he was doing was that he was not letting many flowers grow on the bushes, he would cut off the buds and just leave one bud. Naturally the whole juice which was going to create hundreds of roses will create only one roseflower.I said, “This is murderous. Just to win a competition, you are killing hundreds of flowers.”And naturally I would have never become aware of it, because he used to do it in the night so that nobody would ever know the secret. Naturally, if you cut all the buds and leave only one bud, that bud is going to get more juice, out of all proportion, and is going to become a big roseflower. Perhaps our whole way of life is such that only once in a while a Gautam Buddha blossoms. Perhaps the society does not allow it; it goes on cutting the buds.So the real question is that among so many people, five billion people in the world, you don’t have even five Gautam Buddhas. This is shameful, this is ugly. It seems there is a conspiracy against human evolution, against the evolution of consciousness.I am doing everything to make it clear what the conspiracy is and who the conspirators are. And because these are the people who are in power, they want to stop my voice from reaching the people. If the people come to understand and realize that they have been continuously cheated, for centuries – not from small things, money and power, but even from their souls, from their consciousness; they have been prevented from their potential of becoming enlightened just to serve some vested interests – there is going to be a tremendous rebellion in the whole world.I do not call it revolution, I call it rebellion. Each individual has to rebel – there is no need to make a party, there is no need to make a collective organization. Each individual can manage to protect himself from the conspirators and allow his consciousness to grow, and to become the blessed one. In a really human world, the situation will be just the opposite: almost everybody will be a conscious human being. Only rarely will there be someone who is lagging behind and is asleep; that will be a rare case. Gautam Buddha should be the rule, not the exception. And I don’t see any difficulty at all.Osho,What is the fear behind wanting to be declared enlightened by the master?It is very simple: you are not enlightened yet.You will have to wait a little, because there is a long queue ahead of you!

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 43 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,With what love and compassion you fold your hands and do namaste to us – thank you, thank you, Osho. I have never asked – yet, all my questions have been answered. Could you guide us as to what kind of question a disciple should ask?The disciple is not to ask but to drink. He has no questions but only a quest. He is not inquiring. He has felt the truth, he has seen a glimpse of it, he wants to become it. The distance hurts.The disciple is not a student full of curiosities, full of thousands of kinds of questions. The disciple is silent. There are no questions at all.And you know it. You yourself have written that you have never asked a question and all your questions have been answered.To ask a question does not mean that you will get the answer, because the very mind that asks the question is not the receiver of the answer, and cannot be the receiver of the answer. This is something very fundamental to understand: questions come from the mind, and the answer happens in the heart.The heart never asks, and the mind is never satisfied with any answer. Give an answer to the mind and it will create a hundred questions out of that answer. And only the mind can ask.The heart knows no language – it knows how to love, it knows how to be grateful, it knows how to be open, it knows how to come so close to the master that you are consumed in the very silence of the master.His silence becomes your silence. His truth becomes your truth. This is the mystery that happens between the master and the disciple, but never between the teacher and the student.The disciple has learned one thing, perhaps in hundreds of lives: that the head is a factory where questions are manufactured – put anything into it, and out comes a question. The head never receives any answer, that is not its function. And we should not ask something from a certain faculty that is beyond its capacities and limitations.You never ask to see music, because you know your eyes cannot see music. You never ask to hear the light, because you know that your ears are not meant for that; they are specialized parts of your body for a special function.The function of the head is to create questions, doubts, suspicions, skepticism. It is helpful as far as scientific research is concerned, as far as the objective world is concerned. A man with a heart cannot be expected to become an Albert Einstein. To be an Albert Einstein you need a trained head, which can go on asking questions infinitely.The poet, the mystic – they know the answer. The poet knows it once in a while. The mystic knows it every moment – waking or asleep, living or dying – because it is not something separate from him; he is the answer.For the poet the answer is separate; once in a while the window opens, a little breeze comes in and poetry is born, a song arises, a dance takes birth. But the poet is not in control of the window – it is only rarely, in certain moments, when the poet becomes available to existence. Hence I always say to my people that if you love someone’s poetry, someone’s music, someone’s dance, someone’s painting, sculpture, never try to see the man because that is going to be an utter frustration.But if you hear and feel a statement of a mystic, forget about the statement, search out the man – because the statement is bound to be wrong and the man is bound to be right. The very presence of the mystic will be his argument, his evidence. He is an eyewitness.The poet has also seen something, but from a faraway distance; and that too for a few moments and then it is gone. And when you reach for a few moments to a high peak and then the peak disappears, you fall far below the ordinary man. The ordinary man is at least on solid ground, on the plain – he never goes up, never goes down. But the poet goes up and down.The poet will be found drunk, lying in a gutter, and you cannot believe that this man has such golden moments and is capable of bringing them to language. You will find the painter in the house of a prostitute – and this man has talked about beauty, has painted beauty, beauty that surpasses the material world, that seems to belong to the beyond – but the man…? The man is absolutely just the opposite of his painting, of his poetry, of his music, of his dance.The poet also gets the answer from the heart, but it is accidental. It is not in his hands; sometimes it happens and sometimes it does not happen. Sometimes months are barren, sometimes years pass like a desert and the poet cannot do anything. He is at the mercy of existence.The mystic is not at the mercy of existence, he has become one with existence. He has the answer each moment, just like his breathing, just like his heartbeat. It is not something that he has to see again, something that he has to go on remembering otherwise he will forget.A disciple means someone who has found a master, someone who has come close to a mystic. And as you come closer to the mystic, your questions will start disappearing and his answer will start spreading in you. There is only one answer and there are millions of questions, and that one answer can only be experienced in a deep, loving at-one-ment with the master.So there are no special questions for the disciple. There are no questions for the disciple; the disciple has to learn how to drop questions. I allow you to ask questions so that they can be dropped. Remember, I am not answering your questions; that is not my business – although from the outside it appears that I am answering your question. I am not answering your question, I am trying somehow to take the question away from you. I am not giving you the answer, because it cannot be given to you – only the question can be taken away. And one day, when all questions are taken away from you, the one answer will be found, in the oneness of the disciple and master.You have also said that my greeting to you with folded hands means a great humbleness on my part, and you are thankful for it.Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not a humble man. By the very nature of things, I cannot be a humble man; only an egoist can be a humble man. When there is no ego, there is no humbleness either – one simply is.But our mind is such that it moves like a pendulum of a clock, from one extreme to another extreme: either ego or humbleness, either love or hate, either friendship or enmity. And the reality is somewhere exactly in between, where you are neither an egoist nor a humble man – you are simply without any attributes of ego or non-ego.When I greet you with folded hands it is not my humbleness.Secondly, I don’t greet you. I greet something which is within you and beyond you. My greeting is nothing but an effort to remind you that you are not what you think you are, you are not where you think you are. I am greeting you deep inside – not on the circumference where you exist, but at the center where you never go. I am greeting you just as a reminder that you are carrying within you something divine, something that is waiting to be fulfilled. It is a seed, but it is ready to become a sprout at any moment; new green leaves, ready to become a flower. I am greeting you as you should be – I am greeting your future.Right now you are only your past. You are not even your present; you are just all that has passed by, a collection of memories. I am not greeting that. I am utterly against it.I want you to look into the new, into the coming, into the future – the moment that has not come but is going to come any moment.Don’t just thank me, because the danger is that by thanking me for my greeting you may feel that the chapter is closed, the work is done: I have greeted you, you have thanked me.No, you can thank me for my greeting only in one way, and that is by realizing the godliness to which the greeting is addressed. There is no other way to show your gratefulness, your thankfulness to the master.Osho,Although you have been teaching us to enjoy all pleasures of life, and not to be led by some kind of morality or disciplines, my life with you starts to look more like that of a monk – a life of detachment from the usual kicks of life, and more of simplicity and silence. Is this a natural happening? Or am I creating a new discipline for my life?It is a natural happening. Not only that – it is my whole intention. I want you not to repress, because the person who represses anything remains stuck with the repressed thing for his whole life. Repression is the way to drive people insane.I have heard about a man who was brought to a psychoanalyst because his family was tired, his friends were tired. He had taken a vow of celibacy, but he was continually talking in roundabout ways about sex. And the easiest way for such people is to condemn sex – that is their only joy in life. The whole day he was condemning everything. The psychoanalyst listened to him and he said, “Wait, I will draw a few figures and you tell me what they remind you of.”He drew a line on the paper, and the man closed his eyes; he said, “Don’t do it, don’t do that! It is pure sex and nothing else.”The psychologist said, “It is pure sex? I will draw another thing.” He drew a triangle.The man simply covered his eyes with both hands and he said, “You will kill me! You are reminding me of such things. I am a religious monk, and if I go to hell you will be responsible. Are you a psychologist or a psychopath? You seem to be neurotic. And my friends and family, those idiots, have brought me to you for treatment! You need treatment; I can treat you.”The psychologist said, “Just one more figure.”But before he could draw the figure, through the window they saw that a camel was passing by on the road. So he said, “Forget the figure, you just look outside; a camel is passing – what does it remind you of?”And the man jumped on the psychoanalyst, hitting him hard and said, “You idiot! You will destroy my whole religion. That thing is pure sex! I never look at camels – sex, and ugly sex – they harass me in my dreams, and they do such ugly things that I would rather remain awake the whole night than go to sleep and see the camels doing ugly things. From drawing lines, you suddenly went to the ultimate in obscenity.”All the religions of the world, with good intentions, have created a very crazy and pathological world because they had no idea how the mind functions: you try to repress anything and you will become obsessed by it. It does not matter what it is.You have laughed at this man because those were just lines and triangles, geometric figures, having nothing to do with sex. You try – and you will not find yourself in a different position.Just don’t think of three. Take a vow: that “I will not think of three.” Whatever happens, three is renounced – you have become a celibate as far as three is concerned – and from that moment you will be tortured by three. Wherever you look, you will be surprised: before you also used to see these things, but you had never thought that they were three. In some way you will work it out so that everything turns out to be three. It is you, who without understanding a simple mind-process…Repression is creating obsession. And when you repress vital things like sex, when you repress things which you feel are pleasant… Nobody represses painful things. Have you heard of anybody repressing headaches, heart failures, cancer? Strange world – if you want to be a great saint, renounce all these things. “I renounce headaches, I renounce tuberculosis.”No religion asks you to renounce any painful experience. They want you to renounce everything that you enjoy.I was taking a morning walk with a Jaina monk, and I showed him a beautiful roseflower. He would not look at it. And when I said, “It is so beautiful,” he said, “Please, don’t disturb me.”I said, “I am disturbing you?”He said, “Because I am a monk, anything pleasant is not allowed for me.”Certainly the fragrance of the rose is pleasant, the color of the rose is pleasant, the petals’ opening is a miracle. This man cannot see the full moon, this man cannot allow himself to enjoy beautiful music.Mohammedans have abandoned music: before their mosques you cannot go dancing, singing, playing on instruments; there will immediately be a Hindu–Mohammedan riot. Music is worse than murdering hundreds of people!You have been told by religions to repress anything that is pleasant. Naturally your mind is obsessed. All that is left to you is pain, misery – have it as much as you like. Your religions are really very compassionate to you: you can have as much pain as you want. Just avoid pleasure, and in avoiding pleasure much pain is created. Life becomes just a long, stretched-out anguish.My strategy is diametrically opposite to all religions, although my intention is the same. They wanted you to go beyond pleasure – because there are more blissful experiences but they are beyond pleasure. If you get stuck and glued to pleasure you will never reach to the blissfulness, to the silence of the universe. Their intention and my intention are the same, but our methods are diametrically opposite – and they have failed.I tell my people to enjoy everything – only renounce pain; avoid pain, there is no need. If you have a headache, just a small aspirin tablet and it is gone – why suffer unnecessarily? That aspirin has been found by human intelligence, and human intelligence is part of the intelligence of the universe. It has not come from somewhere else; it is our creativity. Why suffer a headache? Why suffer tuberculosis? Why suffer any pain of any kind?So, basically, renounce pain, destroy pain; and don’t miss any opportunity to enjoy pleasure. And a miracle happens. That’s what has happened to you.When you enjoy pleasure, there is a point where you become fed up with it. How long… Even if you have a beautiful woman like Cleopatra or Amrapali, just get married…Mulla Nasruddin and his wife had gone to see a picture. Mulla was very reluctant because even if the picture is good, the wife is sitting by your side. She is such a pain in the neck that you cannot enjoy it, no aspirin helps. Against the pain in the neck that a wife creates, medical science has failed – up to now they have not been able to come up with anything.So he was reluctant. He wanted to go to the picture; he had been planning to go, but his wife suddenly gave him the news that she had bought two tickets. He said, “My God, she has spoiled a chance to sit with somebody else’s wife.” He had been thinking and planning and enjoying, but this chance was also gone. So he had to go.The picture was beautiful, everybody was enjoying it except Mulla Nasruddin, who was sitting so seriously, so saintlike, as if he were sitting in a church.The wife asked him once or twice, “Why you are sitting so silently?”He said, “I don’t see much in it. I know this man, the hero in the picture – he is such a nasty fellow. And he is kissing that woman! It is good that I have not brought my gun with me; otherwise I would have shot this fellow: ‘Somebody else’s wife, and you are kissing her publicly!’”The wife said, “Are you mad? This is just a film on the screen and you were thinking of bringing your gun? And moreover, you are wrong! That woman is not anybody else’s woman, that woman is that same man’s woman. They are wife and husband in real life also.”He said, “My God, that means they both need to be shot. This is too much. His own wife and he is kissing her so joyously? Such a cunning fellow, a hypocrite. I was thinking it was somebody else’s woman. That would be acceptable, okay, but his own wife. My god, he is really an actor! But I am not going to let them get away with it. And what do you think, that I will shoot them here on the screen? Just let me get home and I will take the gun and go directly – I know their house – and shoot both these fellows, because they are spreading such lies in the society.”You are bound to get fed up with everything. Enjoy all the pleasures, and soon they will lose their attraction. Slowly, slowly you will start moving beyond them and looking for something more in life.Your religions have stopped you from looking for something more in life because they taught you to repress, and you are stuck.My whole effort is that all the pleasures of life should be made available to man. My own calculation is, that after each seven years life goes through a completion of a circle, and a change. The first seven years are of childhood, innocence, playfulness, trust; life is certainly golden. Memories of those days haunt people to the very end, because never again in their lives, are they able to manage to find something better.The next seven years are the maturing of sex energy. At the age of fourteen, one is sexually mature – the mind starts functioning in a totally different way; the body starts functioning in a totally different way. Fourteen is the biological age for man: he is now able to produce children. As far as biology is concerned, man has come of age.That’s why the psychological age of humanity remains at fourteen: because now biology takes no interest in your psychological development unless you yourself are interested. Nature has brought you up to that point for its own purposes, for reproduction; its work is done. It is now only up to you if you want to be a seeker, to grow psychologically, to grow in your awareness. If you want a spiritual experience then everything is left to you; now it is up to you. Nature has ended its work. And because nature has stopped, ninety-nine point nine percent of people stop with nature. They were not evolving, it was the push of nature that brought them up to the age of fourteen.From fourteen to twenty-one man has the greatest sexual power, he reaches to the climax. And the problem society has created is that nature brings the climax of sexuality between fourteen and twenty-one, but the society wants you to study in the university up to the age of twenty-five, or twenty-seven if you are going to become a PhD. But by that time, after the twenty-first year, sexuality starts declining. People get married nearabout the age of thirty in the advanced countries. That is the wrong time to be married – your energy is declining. Marriage gives no satisfaction and it creates a thousand and one complexities, conflicts.By the age of twenty-eight, you have come to a point where your sexual energies are at their lowest. At this age, and afterward, you cannot have sexual orgasm, you can have only sexual ejaculation – and those two things are totally different. Ejaculation is just like a sneeze: you were full of a certain quantity of semen that has to be thrown out of the body. Because the body is creating new semen and you have only a certain capacity to contain it, it has to be thrown out, but you don’t have any orgasmic experience.So your scriptures and your monks and your saints appear to be right, that you are unnecessarily wasting your energy. You feel weak, you feel the hangover the next day. You feel that it is unnecessary, and for this unnecessary thing you have to go through so much trouble – earning a livelihood for yourself, your wife, your children, because children are produced even without orgasmic experiences.By the time you are thirty-five, if you have not been repressive you are finished; you are completely fed up. You start withdrawing all your desires, longings, ambitions.Forty-two is the time… It is as important as fourteen.The story of pleasures – physical, biological, psychological – begins at fourteen, and if nobody interferes and you are allowed to experience them, at the age of forty-two you will be naturally free of all kinds of bondage. It does not mean that you will escape from the world. It simply means that your wife will become your friend, your husband will become your friend. You will both understand that it was a certain biological force, which is spent, and now there is no need to harass each other unnecessarily. Now it is better, rather than harassing, to sit in meditation.And I am saying this: if everything goes naturally, then reaching the age of forty-two will automatically bring a tremendous change in your life. You will remain in the world but absolutely unattached. This is true renunciation – no obsession, nothing repressed. The heart is clean; there is no garbage inside.But if you are intelligent and you live in an intelligent society, one need not wait for forty-two – because nature moves slowly. And we have been forcing man and women to live apart. If by the age of fourteen we allow boys and girls to come closer, we teach them birth-control methods, we allow them to enjoy… And that is the time when they will enjoy the most, because they have the energy. And all other enjoyments are connected with your sexual enjoyment. If your sex is starved, then everything else becomes disturbed.For example, if somebody’s sex is not fulfilled, he may start eating too much. It is now a well-established fact that after marriage, women start becoming fat. Not before marriage: strange. It is just that once they get married there is no problem; they have got a lifelong servant. Now they can eat and rest, and they start becoming fat. And the fatter they are, the more their husbands start looking at other women. The more the husbands look at other women, the more they eat – because eating becomes a substitute; they are very much associated. Life begins with sex, but life remains because of food, so sex and food are both associated with keeping life in existence.And it is strange – why don’t you feel attracted to a fat woman, why are you not attracted to a fat man? There must be some basic reason, and the reason is that the fat man is showing clearly by his fatness that he has replaced sex with food. He is no longer interested in sex; he is interested in food. The fat woman is saying she is not interested in sex; her fatness is a signboard: “Keep off!” – she is going toward the fridge.If society is intelligently arranged and we give a chance to young people to live their lives as fully as possible, there is no need to wait for forty-two years. Perhaps by the time they are thirty they may be ready, without any repression, to go beyond. And you can go beyond only if you are not repressed.If you are repressed, you are pulled down. Your repressed feelings are like anchors: they go on keeping you down. And you can’t see them, they don’t appear on the surface; they are down in the water. But if you don’t have anything repressed and you have never listened to any kind of inhibitory principles and theologies – you have simply lived a natural life, uninhibited – by the age of thirty or even before it… It will depend on your intelligence. The more intelligent you are, the earlier you will become fed up.And this is not renouncing; you are not escaping, you are simply finished. You are not escaping from pleasures – now they are no longer pleasures, there is no question of escape. This gives you such a weightless feeling that you can look beyond. Then there is nothing in this mundane life that can hold you back. You have lived it out.This has been the experience of my sannyasins, particularly in the commune where five thousand people had been with me for five years. They had no idea what my intentions were. They had come there to enjoy; they had heard that I teach people to live life totally and intensely, without inhibition. The young people had come there not knowing my design, but within two years, three years’ time it became clear to them that something strange was happening: they had come to enjoy; now those pleasures didn’t look like pleasures.The first to report to me were women: “It is a strange place. Everywhere in the world men are running after women. Here in your commune, we women have to run after the men – and men are running so fast! In the outer world women also run, but they don’t run so fast. They don’t really want to run, it is just a game. They run in such a way that they can be caught. But here, your men run in such a way that it is impossible to catch up.”In the first place, women are not naturally trained to run after men; they are doing something unnatural. They want men to chase them, but nobody chases them. They stand there in the marketplace and nobody looks at them. They go on talking by the side, about great things – esoteric, occult, spiritual. How long can you stand there?Finally the women started chasing. I suggested to them, “Don’t wait; they won’t start chasing you. This is a totally different place. You start chasing them.”Then they reported, “We chased them. We have been chased before, but we always allowed ourselves to be caught. But these fellows simply run away, and you never see them again or where they have gone. They don’t stop to look back, they are so much afraid.”It was the old story repeated millions of times by millions of people: every day the husband will come and the wife will turn to the other side and say, “My head is hurting. Don’t disturb me, just go to sleep.”In the commune the women started coming to me and saying, “We had never heard of men turning to the other side and saying, ‘I have such a headache, you just leave me alone. Go to sleep, or anywhere you want, but leave me alone’ – and they are absolutely lying. But what to do when somebody says that? We also used to lie, but then the men used to persuade us and we used to be persuaded. But these men don’t know how to be persuaded. They really maintain that they have a headache! They don’t have one. What is happening?”I said, “Nothing is happening. Soon it will happen to you too, but it will happen to you a little later than men” – because there are physiological differences between men and women. A few things happen later to women. For example death happens five years later to women than to men, and that can be a criterion.Meditation is a self-willed death. So there will be a five-year gap: men will become bored five years earlier than women. Women will try for five years more and then, seeing that the whole thing is useless, it is better to meditate. That five-year gap is bound to be there, because it is built into their life pattern.But the commune, which was known all over the world as a “free-sex commune,” was the least sexual place in the world. Men came into contact with so many women, women came into contact with so many men, that the old idea that “Perhaps this man that you have got is wrong,” that “Everybody seems like a hero and this stupid guy that you have got is just a mouse, not even a man,” so that the desire remains that perhaps with somebody else… One thing is certain: that you were not made for this man; neither was this man made for you. It is something wrong, some accident that you are caught up with each other. So both are looking for somebody who is made for them.Nobody is made for anybody. But it takes a little time. A few women in your life, few men in your life – then you understand that it is the same game. Faces change, bodies change, but the game remains the same – and a boring game! Not only boring, but if you keep all the lights on, then disgusting too.Strange type of thing… Just this game of sex is enough proof that no God has created man, because if this is what God has created then he seems to be really a rascal. Some better arrangement could have been made. But this is the arrangement – that everybody feels ashamed of it, that people go in the dark, turn the light off.I have loved a beautiful story:One couple from the Earth reached another planet, Mars, and of course they met people. The first couple they met, they invited them into their house. And it is very natural, because life is the most important thing, they were interested in how children were produced on Mars, because they were getting fed up with the way they are being produced on the Earth: it seems like such a bullock cart method – no improvement, absolutely unintelligent.As they went on talking soon they came to the topic, and the couple from the Earth asked, “How do you create babies?”They said, “Very simple. On Mars, it is such a simple thing.”They said, “Can we see?” – fearing, and a little shaky also, that God knows what type of thing they are going to see now, and wondering whether it was right to ask.But the Martian couple said yes, and the woman ran to the fridge, opened the fridge, brought out two bottles. The couple from the Earth could not understand what was going on. And in a third bottle she poured some liquid from one bottle, some liquid from the other bottle – some red liquid, some green liquid, looked at the bottle – “Right proportion” – went, put it into the fridge and said, “After nine months we will get the child.”They said, “My God, this is so intelligent, and so spiritual!”And now it was their chance: the Martians asked, “How do you produce children?”They felt very ashamed. They said, “You have to forgive us, but this is the only way we do it there; we have never heard of this new method that you are using. But there is no harm – because we are alone here, there are no other Earth people.” So they undressed.The Martians started laughing, “What are you doing, going to have a sunbath or what?”They said, “Just wait.”So they waited with great curiosity: “What is happening? The woman lying down, and the man doing pushups.” And they said, “Is it some kind of Yoga? So much trouble, and the man is perspiring and huffing and whuffing, and the woman is lying down dead, with closed eyes. What is… And you think this is pleasure? Then what is pain?”And they said, “Now, for nine months the baby will be in the woman’s belly.”They said, “My God, now she has to carry the baby for nine months in the belly? And then…?”They said, “Then there is more difficulty: the baby has to come out of the belly.”The Martians said, “Don’t spread such ugly ideas to this planet. You please go back. If some idiots get the idea and start doing such things our whole serenity and silence will be disturbed. But one thing is strange, and before you leave we would like to ask you – what was your feeling about our method of creating babies?”They said, “Our feeling? We make instant coffee that way.”The Martians said, “My God, and what you are doing is the way we make instant coffee, so there is not much difference. Our saints are very much against instant coffee, and they condemn it: ‘Never make instant coffee.’ And our monks take a vow not to make instant coffee, and they go into the monasteries and they never make instant coffee. But this is strange, that it is the same method, exactly. For instant coffee it seems good, but for making children? Nine months waiting, the woman suffering, it seems to be arduous for the poor woman.”The more intelligent you are, the more availability of experiences you have, the sooner you will see that this cannot be the meaning of life. All these pleasures – sexual or nonsexual – pale, and finally create boredom. And life cannot be just to create boredom. There must be something more.So your question is perfectly right. You are not moving in any wrong direction; it is absolutely right. If things change on their own accord, smoothly, without repression, without any effort on your part but just your understanding, no repression of any kind, then if you drop all your pleasures of life it is perfectly right, because along with dropping all those pleasures you will be dropping all pain – they are together. And by going above pain, pleasure, you will find in yourself for the first time something of bliss, something of benediction, something of eternal beauty, immortal life – something that you can never be bored with. The deeper you go into it, the more and more interesting, the more and more blissful it becomes.Gautam Buddha is reported to have said: The worldly experiences are sweet in the beginning but very bitter in the end; and the other-worldly experiences may be a little bitter in the beginning, but are always tremendously sweet in the end, and forever. Their sweetness goes on deepening.Osho,Being near you, I feel very centered, silent and straight. Why is it so? Is it because of the greed to achieve something, or is it a part of your blessings? Please explain.It is neither. If it was greed to achieve something, you could not have felt the silence, the blissfulness that you are feeling. And it is not due to my blessings, because there are people who sometimes insist on coming out of curiosity, and then have to leave in the middle, as you can see. If it were in my hands, if it were my blessings, then anybody who was here would not be able to leave the place. No, it is something else. It is my presence and it is your availability, your openness, your receptivity.Have you seen the flower called sunflower? It opens its petals in the early morning when the sun is rising, and it is facing toward the sunrise, toward the east. And as the sun goes on moving, the flower also goes on moving. By the evening, when the sun is setting, the flower is facing west, not east; it has gone the whole journey with the sun. And as the sun sets, the flower closes its petals again.This is actually the relationship between the master and the disciple – the sun and the sunflower.Osho,Is there any significance in a disciple working for the master besides working on himself? Or are they the same?They are the same. If you are working on yourself, that’s exactly the work of the master – because as you become more and more silent, more and more fragrant, more and more magnetic, you will start spreading the message of the master without any deliberate effort.I hate missionaries. I don’t want anybody to be a missionary. A missionary is one who is spreading some message but he has not worked upon himself. What he is saying to others is not his own experience.My sannyasins first have to become what they want to say to others. Their very becoming will be their message. Their very life will be their mission. They will not be missionaries.Osho,A new university and new institutes have been announced to spread your vision. Is every disciple also always a medium to spread the vision of the master?Certainly. I am against any kind of organization because every organization has proved an enemy of truth, a murderer of love.I trust in the individual. Each and every sannyasin, alone, is my medium. Each and every sannyasin is connected to me directly.There is no organization between me and you. There is no priesthood between me and you. So the more empty you become, the more you will be able to receive my vibrations, my heartbeat, my song, the more you will be able to dance in tune with me – and that is the only right way to spread the message because the message is not of language, the message is of being, of experience.We cannot create catechisms, principles, ten commandments, five mahavratas – we cannot do that. I can only do one thing: to help you to be empty, so that you can radiate me as totally as possible.And no religion in the past has ever tried to spread its message by word of mouth, individual to individual. They have all been dependent on organizations, churches. And all those churches and organizations have betrayed them because those churches and organizations, sooner or later, start having their own interests. Then the real message is put aside.I want my message to remain from individual to individual – pure and simple, immediate, without any mediators.

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The Osho Upanishad 01-44Category: THE WORLD TOUR

The Osho Upanishad 44 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Why is it that we are all so afraid of a hit from the master? When it is happening, it is proof that it is just what we needed, yet the fear remains. Is cowardice an essential part of the ego?The ego is cowardice. Cowardice is not an essential part of the ego, it is the whole of the ego. And it is bound to be so, because the ego lives in constant fear of being exposed: it is empty within, it is nonexistential; it is only an appearance, not a reality. And whenever something is only an appearance, a mirage, the fear is bound to be there at the very center of it.In the desert you see the mirage from far away. It looks so real that even the trees standing by its side are reflected in the water, which does not exist. You can see the trees and you can see the reflection; you can see the waves in the water and also the reflections shimmering with the waves – but it is all from a distance. As you come closer, the mirage starts disappearing. There has never been anything; it was just a by-product of the sunrays being reflected by the hot sands of the desert. In this reflection and the sunrays returning, the mirage of an oasis is created. But it can exist only when you are far way; it cannot exist when you come close. Then there are only hot sands, and you can see the rays of the sun being reflected back.It will be easier to understand in a different context.You see the moon, you see its beauty, you see its cool light. But the first astronauts were shocked because, as they came closer to the moon, there was no light. The moon was just a flat, barren piece of earth – no greenery, no life – a dead rock. But standing on the moon, when they looked at the earth they were amazed: the earth was radiant with beautiful light.In comparison to that light, the moon and its beauty were nothing, because the earth is eight times bigger than the moon; its light is eight times more intense, all silver. And the astronauts knew that it was all false, but they were seeing it. It is not there. But a strange thing: when they were on the earth, they were seeing the beautiful silver light shimmering from the moon. Now they were on the moon, and it was just a dead rock, and the whole beauty was radiating from the earth. And they knew the earth, they have lived their whole lives on the earth; they had never seen anything of the sort. To see the reflection of the sunlight, you need a distance.The earth is also radiating: when the sunlight comes, some of it is absorbed by the earth, but most of it is reflected back. That reflected light can be seen only when you are far away from the earth; otherwise you cannot see it.The ego is a nonexistential phenomenon – the people who are farther away from you can feel it, can see it, can be hurt by it. Your only concern is that they should not come too close. Everybody is keeping everybody else at a distance, because to allow people to come too close means opening the doors of your emptiness.The ego does not exist. And you are so identified with the ego that the death of the ego, the disappearance of the ego, feels as if it is your death. It is not so; on the contrary, when the ego is dead then you will know your reality, your essential being.The egoist is going to be a coward. He cannot allow anybody closeness of any kind – friendship, love, even companionship.Adolf Hitler never allowed anybody to sleep in his room. He always slept alone, locking the door from within. He never got married for the simple reason that if you are married then you have to allow the woman inside the room – not only inside the room but in the bed. This is too close and too dangerous.He had no friends. He always kept people as distant as possible; there was not a single person in his whole life who had ever put a hand on his shoulders – this much closeness he would not allow.What was the fear? Why was he so afraid? The fear was that the moment he allowed anybody such closeness, his greatness – “the great Adolf Hitler” –would disappear. You would find a very tiny and pygmy creature, nothing of greatness; that was all on the posters, that was all part of a great propaganda.The more egoist a person is the more he has to remain lonely. And to be lonely is miserable, but one has to pay. You have to pay, for a non-existential ego to appear real, with your misery, with your pain, with your anguish. And anyway, even if you succeed in not allowing anybody to be close to you, you yourself know perfectly well that it is just a soap bubble – a small pinprick, and it will disappear.Napoleon Bonaparte was one of the great egoists in the history of egoism but he got defeated, and the reason he was defeated is something worth consideration.When he was a small child, just six months old, the nurse who was his caretaker left him in the garden and went for something in the house, and a wild cat jumped on the child. Now a six-month-old baby… The cat must have looked like a big lion. Things are always relative and in proportion, and to that small child it was a big lion. The cat was just being playful, but the child was so shocked, and the shock went so deep… When he became a young man, he fought many wars, was a great soldier, was able to fight with a lion – but he was afraid of cats. The moment he saw a cat he would lose all his courage; he would suddenly become a six-month-old baby.This fact was known to the English commander-in-chief, Wellington; otherwise Wellington was no comparison to Napoleon Bonaparte. And this was the only war in which Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated. Wellington brought seventy cats in front of his army, and when Napoleon Bonaparte saw seventy cats – one was enough for the poor man – he had a nervous breakdown. He simply told his assistant, “You take charge of the army. I am not in a position to fight; neither am I in a position to think. These cats have killed me.” And of course he was defeated.Historians who say he was defeated by Wellington are wrong. No, he was defeated by a psychological trick. He was defeated by the cats – he was defeated by his childhood, he was defeated by a fear over which he had no control.He was kept imprisoned on a small island, Saint Helena. There was no need for handcuffs, because the island was small and there was no way to escape from there.On the first day he was going for a walk, and because of the nervous breakdown and the defeat he had been given a doctor to take care of him. The doctor was with him. They were walking on a small footpath, and a woman carrying a big load of grass was coming from the other direction. The path was very small; somebody had to give way. Although the doctor was English, he shouted to the woman, “Stand aside! You don’t know who is coming. Although he was defeated, it doesn’t matter: he is Napoleon Bonaparte.”But the woman was so uneducated she had never heard the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. So she said, “So what? Let him stand aside! And you should feel ashamed. I am a woman carrying such a load, I should stand aside?”Napoleon Bonaparte took the hand of the doctor, stepped aside and said, “The time when mountains used to give way to Napoleon Bonaparte is gone; the soap bubble is no longer there. I have to give way to a woman who is carrying grass.”In his defeat he could see what had happened: for his whole life he had been repressing a fear. It was kept as a secret, but now the secret was known, the fear exposed. Napoleon Bonaparte was just nobody. This is the situation of a great egoist.So don’t think that cowardice is an essential part of egoism; it is the whole of it. Ego is cowardice. And to be without ego is to be fearless – because now nothing can be taken away from you; not even death can destroy anything in you. The only thing that can be destroyed by anybody is the ego.The ego is so fragile, so much always on the verge of death that the people who are clinging to it are always trembling deep inside.Dropping the ego is the greatest act a man can do. It proves your mettle, it proves that you are more than you appear; it proves that there is something in you which is immortal, indestructible, eternal.The ego makes you a coward. Egolessness makes you a fearless pilgrim of the eternal mystery of life.Osho,When I sit with you, sometimes I hear you say that enlightenment is a sort of death and it means never coming back to this life again. My mind freaks out about this, and I am not sure if I want this or not. Then I ask myself, “Well, then what are you doing with this crazy guy?” Then all I know is that you are irresistible to my heart and that is why I am here. What is happening?You have heard only half of the truth, and a half-truth is far more dangerous than a full lie.Enlightenment is ultimate death, but this is only half of the truth. It is also the beginning of an eternal life. You have not heard the other half. Perhaps the first half was so much of a shock that you started thinking about it, and missed the other half.It is true: after enlightenment you will not be coming back to this life. But that does not mean that you will be dead; that means you will be having a real, authentic, universal life.And what have you got in this life that you are so much afraid to lose? – very precious misery? What have you got except anxiety, pain, anguish, and a constant feeling that all is meaningless, that you are not living but simply moving toward the grave? Your living is nothing but a slow kind of death.You should write down what it is that you have got that makes you so worried that you will not be coming back. Perhaps there are enemies – you have not been able to take revenge, and you want to come back.I have heard about a man who was dying. He called all his four sons and he said, “My dear sons, I am dying and I hope that you will fulfill my last wish. Promise me…” But nobody would raise his hand. They looked at each other. The old man said, “Now this is not the time to think. My breaths are numbered. Gather courage.”The youngest raised his hand. He said, “I will fulfill the promise.”The three said, “What are you doing? Are you mad? You are too young. You don’t know this man.”But the old man blessed the young boy and he said, “I have always known that you are my real son, my blood, my bones, my marrow, my everything. And these three idiots, they will not even promise a dying father a simple thing; they won’t even ask what the thing is.”The young boy said, “You forget about them. You just tell me what the thing is that I have to do.”He said, “It is very simple, but I will whisper it in your ear. These three idiots should not hear it, otherwise they will disturb you. But don’t listen to anybody. It is a question of keeping your word – and to a dying father.”The boy said, “I promise. You just tell me.”So he whispered in his ear, “You do one thing: when I am dead, cut off my hands, my feet, my head – cut my body into as many parts as you can.”The boy said, “What are you saying? For what?”He said, “Wait, I have the whole plan – then throw each part into all the neighborhoods, into everybody’s house, and go to the police station.”The boy said, “But what is the purpose of this?”He said, “Just a spiritual peace. My whole life I have been trying somehow to send all these neighbors behind bars. Now the chance has come. And when my soul sees all of them chained, going in the police lorry toward the police station, I will feel the only bliss. My whole life has been a life of misery. And my bliss will become a blessing for you.” And the man died.And the boy said, “My God, what kind of a father…?”All the three said, “We told you before not to listen to him. He is the nastiest man you can find. Although he is our father… But that is an accident, what can we do? What has he said? He must have said something really nasty.”The young boy said, “Really nasty? I cannot conceive of anybody thinking at the time of death… He was bothered about the neighbors. He was planning… This is the plan: we have to cut his body into as many parts as possible and throw those parts into everybody’s house and inform the police that these people have killed our father – not only killed, they have cut him into pieces – and let them be caught red-handed. And he was saying that his soul will feel so blissed out that his life has been successful!”What are you missing? What do you want to come back for? Is this not misery enough?I know why people want to come back again and again, a simple arithmetic: this time you are married to a man or to a woman and you are fed up, and you see so many beautiful men and beautiful women, they seem to be almost other-worldly, and you are caught up with this ugly fellow, disgusting. But in this life it is very difficult to get rid of him; next life, there is a chance.Remember the proverb: The grass on the other side of the fence is always greener. It looks like the neighbors are living so beautifully, so blissfully; only you are in hell. So perhaps next time things will be different. In this big world, five million people – forgive me, not million, billion – five billion people, it is a very rare chance that you would find the same wife again, the same husband, the same nasty children, the same neighbors. A great hope of change – for that, more time is needed. You have to come again and again. But just look backward, just a single glance. Millions of times you have come here, and each time you were hoping that something was going to change. Nothing changes. You have different husbands, different wives, different children, but they are all the same. Just different models but manufactured in the same company; the same mechanism inside the bonnet. All differences are only in the bonnets.After each life you go on forgetting that you have lived so many times. It is time to realize that you are moving in a vicious circle. You have to come out of the circle. Here in this circle, in this circus, nobody has ever been happy.Yes, people go out to the club, to the cinema, to the beach, smile, but these are not their real faces; these are masks which go on deceiving everybody. You know it perfectly well.Husbands and wives are fighting, and somebody knocks on the door and immediately they start having a very nice, beautiful conversation. The guest is welcomed and he cannot conceive that just a moment before these two fellows were at each other’s throats – and they are just waiting for the time when you are going to leave so they can start again where the story has stopped, with vengeance.One man used to pray to God, “I must be the most miserable man in the world, and I have been praying my whole life. And I don’t want much – I simply want to exchange my miseries, with anybody you like, because everybody seems to be so happy. I am willing. You choose.”That night he had a dream. He heard a voice thundering from the sky: “Everybody take out his misery, put it in a bag and rush toward the temple.”He thought perhaps his prayer had been heard. So he filled a bag with every misery that he had. And what he found on the road… “My God,” he said, “this is strange” – because his bag was just a small one. Others were carrying such big bags; a few were even supported by servants.He said, “My God, these are the beautiful people! I have seen them. Now I know why God was not listening to my prayer. But it is too late. If I can save my bag and come back home, I will remain grateful to God forever.”And in the temple they again heard the voice: “Everybody hang your bag on the wall, then the lights will be put off and a bell will ring; that will be the signal – in the dark you can choose any bag that you want. So while it is light, look all around. And stand near the bag that you want, so that in the darkness you don’t miss it.”The man who had prayed was just holding his bag.But he was surprised – another surprise, surprise upon surprise – everybody was standing with his own bag, holding on. He asked a few people, “Why are you holding your bag?”They said, “Why are you holding yours? – for the same reason. At least we know what these miseries are. Somebody else’s miseries, unknown, unacquainted… Now at this age, to begin from scratch – it is better to live with our old friends.”The lights were turned off and everybody grabbed his bag, ran out of the temple, and they were all happy and hilarious that they had got their own bags.The man who had prayed was so grateful: “God is really compassionate, otherwise today I was going to be in a mess. Those big bags – my God, what kind of miseries people are hiding! And these are the people… I was thinking they were happy and I was the most miserable person, and my bag was the smallest!”Nobody is showing his real face.For what do you want to come back: just to have another mask, another bag of miseries, some other woman to torture you, some other man to beat you, some other children to drive you crazy? For what do you want to come back? Certainly not to repeat this life, you are hoping for some change, some possibility of change. But here there are only differences of bags; the contents are the same.When I said enlightenment is ultimate death and you will not be coming back to this life, if you had understood the misery and the pain and the anguish and the meaninglessness and the boredom of your life, you would have rejoiced. But this was only half of the statement.The other half is an eternal life, with no form. You don’t have any idea of it. You can have an idea of it if you go deep in meditation. You will find that you are not the body; you are not the mind. You will find your formless consciousness – and that is your real being, and it is always blissful.There is tremendous possibility if you can get out of the rut of the wheel of life and death that you have been following since eternity: again and again doing the same thing, with a slight difference – maybe in the color, maybe in the shape – but the experience is basically the same. Just one life is enough for a man of intelligence to see that this is not worth repeating.When I was a student, one of my friends never passed his master’s degree. At least before he became my friend, he had failed ten times. And he was the son of a very famous professor in the same university.The man was strange – I liked his idea. I said, “You seem to be loving this class too much – you have failed ten times.”He said, “What else to do? Because if I pass; then I have to do some job. My father is after me, but he cannot manage because I go on failing. My mother is after me. Now they have all become tired; they have decided there is no hope. And I am enjoying immense freedom: no worry, no job, no anxiety to pass the examination – because I am not going to pass it, unless this university decides to pass me whatever I do.”I said, “I like your idea; it resembles people’s lives. They go on being born into the same world again and again. Unless existence itself forces them to become enlightened, they are not going to become enlightened. You are ready to suffer every kind of comment – everybody is condemning you, every professor is condemning you, every student thinks that they have never seen such an idiot. Ten years in one class!”But he said to me, “Who cares about these people? I am enjoying my life.”Finally the university had to decide to pass him: “Whether his attendance is enough or not, don’t bother; whether or not he writes anything in his examination paper, don’t take any note of it. Whatever he writes, it is right – he has to be passed. He is torturing his father, his mother. He is their only son. They are getting old.”They were very respected professors – both the father and the mother – and he was simply cheating them and just being a vagabond.Finally, he was passed. After I passed my examination, he was still there for two more years, but twelve years were enough. The university decided that whether he writes anything or not, he knows; he should be released. And you will be surprised that because he was forcibly passed, they could not give him a first class degree, they could not make him a gold medalist, so he was passed with a third class one. And he was very happy.He met me. I said, “I have heard that you have passed. That is some news.”He said, “It is. I have passed with a third class degree. Now my father and mother cannot torture me because I am not passing, I am not trying enough. For twelve years I have done as much work as possible – but who gives a job to a third-class graduate in India? So now I am still free. They have been successful in persuading the university to pass me, but they have passed me with a third class degree, and a third class one does not matter. I am freed from the university too. Now I am completely free.” But free for what?He was drinking alcohol, he was a gambler, he was going to prostitutes; he was taking all kinds of drugs – freedom for what?He died just two years ago. He lived a rotten life, condemned by everybody, and destroyed himself in the name of freedom. And all that he was doing was simply trying to escape from responsibility. But anyone who tries to escape from responsibility cannot experience freedom. Freedom goes together with responsibility.Your life: you have never thought about it, that it is empty, that it is more or less a nausea, that it is simply boredom. That’s why you need so many entertainments.But where are you going? You are not growing. You have not accepted the basic responsibility toward yourself: that you have to create a meaningful life, a life which has significance, a life which has light in it, luminous, a life which is joyful, a life which in itself is a poetry.The eternal life I am talking about is a life of eternal creativity. You will not be in the body, you will not be confined in any form, but your energy will have absolute freedom to be creative, to make this existence more beautiful, more lovable, more conscious, more enlightened.That’s why, although you are afraid, you still feel some irresistible attraction to this crazy guy. That irresistible attraction shows that inside you are empty, hollow, meaningless. You have come close to a presence which attracts your heart in spite of your head.If you are courageous, listen to the heart; if you are a coward, listen to the head. But for the cowards there is no paradise. Paradise opens its door only for the courageous.Osho,Who is the modern man? Have science and technology corrupted the modern man?The modern man has not yet come into existence. The people in the world are all very old and very ancient. It is rare to come across a contemporary.Somebody belongs to a religion founded ten thousand years ago, somebody belongs to a religion two thousand years old – these people are not contemporary. They are living in modern times, but they are not modern.And this has created a tremendous problem: technology, scientific progress needs the modern man to use it, and the modern man is not available. Technology is available, science is available, but the people who can use it creatively are nonexistent.The result is disastrous, because to these people who are not contemporaries, science has placed technological instruments in their hands, machines, which are dangerous. It is like putting a sword in the hands of a child: he is going to hurt somebody, or himself; he is not a swordsman, he is not trained for it.Man is lagging behind, and the technology has gone far ahead of him. He does not know what to do with it, and whatever he is going to do with it is going to be wrong.Atomic energy could have been a great blessing to humanity. It could have removed all poverty. But instead of removing poverty, instead of making man’s life richer, it destroyed innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who had done no harm to anybody. And now the atom bombs that destroyed Nagasaki and Hiroshima are like toys, because now the nuclear weapons are so powerful that they can destroy the whole earth seven hundred times. And they are in the hands of people like Ronald Reagan, who is certainly not a contemporary.He is a fundamentalist Christian. The fundamentalist Christians are the worst Christians, they are the most fanatic people. They believe that Christianity is the only religion, all other religions are wrong, and that the whole world should be converted to Christianity. These are not contemporary ideas. These are very primitive ideas.And one cannot hope, either, that Ronald Reagan and people of his kind will be contemporaries.He used to have a chimpanzee; that was his only friend. In these billions of human beings, he could not find anybody worthy of friendship – a chimpanzee! And it shows something about you, the company you keep.When he became the president of America, on the first day he went to the beach with his chimpanzee for a walk. An old man saw them, and he could not believe his eyes. He thought that this was an insult to the whole country: that the president should go for a morning walk with a chimpanzee. He went ahead, stopped both of the fellows and said, “President, sir, do you think it looks right to be president of a great country and have a chimpanzee as a friend?”Ronald Reagan was just going to say something and the old man said, “Shut up! I am not asking you; I am asking Mister President.” He was thinking that the chimpanzee was Mister President – and perhaps he was right.Sometimes, jokes are serious.And if Ronald Reagan is angry with me… I know you cannot expect anything much more from a chimpanzee.Now he has in his hands such powers to destroy – modern technology and science has not corrupted man. Man is not capable of using modern science and technology in the right way. The modern man is not born yet.I am reminded of H.G. Wells, who has written one of the best histories of the world. When the book was published one interviewer asked him, “What is your idea of civilization?”H.G. Wells said, “My idea? Civilization is a good idea, but it has still to happen. It is still an idea, somebody has to make it a reality.”Technology and science are not the problems. The problem is the retarded man. But we are strange people. We always think in strange ways.Mahatma Gandhi was thinking that if all the science and technology that has been developed by man and his intelligence, after the spinning wheel, could be drowned in the oceans; then all problems would be solved. And this country believed him, and not only this country, millions of people around the earth believed him – that the spinning wheel would solve all the problems.Railway trains have to be stopped, airplanes have to be stopped, post offices have to be closed, telegrams, telephones have to be destroyed – because all these things have come after the spinning wheel. In fact nobody knows what can be saved. Electricity? No. Medical science? No. In fact one will have to find out when the spinning wheel was invented. Perhaps bullock carts can be saved, fire can be saved – that’s all: fire, bullock carts, the spinning wheel, and everybody is a mahatma – and all problems disappear automatically.The question is not technology – that’s what Gandhi was insisting, that technology is corrupting man. My fight with him is that it is man who is retarded, that he is not capable of using the technology rightly.How can technology corrupt man? Do you think if Mahavira comes and sees a gun, the gun will corrupt Mahavira and he will start firing here and there, this way and that, because the gun corrupted him? Technology cannot corrupt anybody. Technology is just a means in your hands, and whatever you want to make of it you can make of it.Medical science thinks man can live three hundred years: old age can be simply avoided, diseases can disappear, man can live young, healthy, for three hundred years. But nobody is interested in that, no politician is interested in that. Their interest is in how to create death rays. And if death rays can be created, do you think it is inconceivable to imagine that life rays can be created? The same genius, the same scientist who can create death rays is capable of creating life rays.But nobody is asking for life rays. The demand is for death rays, and most probably they already have death rays in Russia and America both. Then there is no need to send a missile with nuclear bombs; death rays can just be directed toward a certain spot and they will pass through people, killing them in such a way that they will not destroy anything else. Your furniture will be saved, your houses will be saved, your cars will be saved – they will only destroy life. A strange kind of world – if death rays are used, houses will be standing, cars will be there, trains will be there; only life will not be found anywhere.Is technology corrupting man? No, I do not agree with that Gandhian idea.I hope that we will be able to create life rays, so that if life rays pass through a village the whole village becomes young, full of life. But religions will not like my idea, because even old people will start falling in love. Life rays? – no religion will be ready. Death rays are perfectly okay.Life rays passing through the Vatican: the pope falls in love, starts dancing in a disco, finds a girlfriend… As far as I am concerned, I would love for that to happen.Contemporary man has to be brought into existence. That is my work. That’s why everybody is against me – because they are not contemporary people. I am fighting a fight against everybody, because they are old, ancient, dead skeletons.If contemporary man comes into life, the whole of technology will be a servant. There is no need for any human being to function as a servant; technology can do that. Man’s labor hours can be almost finished. Machines can do that, and can do it more efficiently than man can ever manage. And if all the work can be done by technology and machines, man is free to evolve his consciousness. He has enough time to meditate, to transcend this life, to enter into the transcendental, the immortal.And machines can do miracles. You have heart attacks – so many people die of heart attacks – and now it is practically possible to exchange your hearts for plastic hearts. That does not mean that your love will become plastic, but the heart will become so strong that there is no possibility of its failure. Man’s body can be improved in every possible way. Plastic surgery can make human beings as beautiful as you can dream of.But the political idiots are concerned only with how to destroy. They are not concerned to beautify human life, to prolong human life, to help human beings to remain young, youthful, playful. They don’t want this earth to be a place of festivity, of joy, of song and dance; and they don’t want to give humanity time enough to evolve into new dimensions of being. They are perfectly satisfied with the old, out-of-date humanity.So I repeat again: the new man, the contemporary man, has not yet come on the stage. We have to herald his coming.Osho,My imagination is very strong. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I see myself sitting with you and there are no more questions. Then I feel loved and accepted. Whenever I experience this, I feel so joyful. Is this real, or just a mind-game to keep me away from reality?If you can manage it exactly the same, again and again, then it is not imagination. Then it is not the stuff dreams are made of, because you cannot repeat a dream. But if you can imagine such a thing only once, and you cannot manage to experience it exactly the same again and again, then it is a dream; then it is a mind-game. Don’t waste time on it.This is the distinction between dream and reality: reality is that which remains as it is. Dream is something that happens once and is gone. And it is not in your hands to bring it back; you cannot manage to dream it.Every morning you will open your eyes – your room will be the same. Every night you will close your eyes – your dreams will be different. That which remains the same is the real, and that which goes on fleeting, changing, and is not under your control, is a dream. Don’t waste your time in dreams.One night Mulla Nasruddin suddenly nudged his wife and said, “Be quick! Where are my glasses?”The wife said, “Are you mad? What are you going to do with your glasses in the middle of the night?”Mulla Nasruddin said, “No argument at this moment, we can discuss things later. First my glasses!”So the wife gave him his glasses. He put the glasses on, closed his eyes.The wife said, “What are you doing?”He said, “Nothing. I was having such a beautiful dream but because my eyes are not the same as they used to be in my youth… It is old age, so I could not see clearly; things were vague. From tomorrow I am going to sleep with my glasses on, because one never knows.”The wife said, “Can I ask you what the dream was?”He said, “It is better if you don’t ask. Such a beautiful woman, but she just slipped out of my hands because of a simple mistake: I had no idea where you had put my glasses. And I tried my best – by putting on my glasses, praying to God, that ‘just once more’ – but nothing happened. Instead what I saw… It is better not to say.”She said, “What did you see? You have to say!”He said, “Don’t create any trouble in the middle of the night. I saw you! That was the last thing I ever wanted to see.”You cannot repeat dreams. They are not objective, you cannot share them; you cannot invite friends and have a dream party. Reality is objective; even the inner reality is also objective.So you can check it. Try again.If you can manage the same experience, then don’t be worried. It is not a mind-game; it is a beautiful meditation.Go deep into it with all my blessings.

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One Seed Makes Whole Earth Green 01-04Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

One Seed Makes Whole Earth Green 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,One day, when Master Rinzai went to Ho-fu, the governor asked him to take the high seat.Then Ma-yu came forward and asked Rinzai, “The great compassionate one has a thousand hands and a thousand eyes. Which is the true eye?”Rinzai responded, “The great compassionate one has a thousand hands and a thousand eyes. Which is the true eye? Speak, speak!”Ma-yu pulled the master down off the high seat and sat on it himself.Approaching him, Rinzai said, “How do you do?”Ma-yu hesitated.Rinzai, in turn, pulled Ma-yu down off the high seat and sat upon it himself.Ma-yu went out, and Rinzai stepped down.Friends, the other day, the hilarious drama of procession against me reached to the very peak. I have heard that three hundred donkeys surrounding one bodhisattva reached to the police commissioner’s office asking for me to be arrested, because I am destroying the culture of a self-styled city which dreams of being cultured.The one bodhisattva was carrying my effigy. The one bodhisattva looked like a donkey, and the three hundred donkeys looked like human beings. Even the donkey was laughing, because he was the only authentic being in that crowd: “What has happened to this cultured city and these so-called cultured people?”Donkeys by their very nature are very silent people, very philosophical, very cultured. And this donkey was wondering, “Except me…all the three hundred donkeys who are hiding behind human masks, are doing my work, ‘cheepon, cheepon.’” [Hindi for “hee-haw, hee-haw.”]These so-called human beings, self-styled, cultured ones, thought that they were insulting me. Nobody in the world can insult me, because it is in my hands: if I accept the insult, it is okay; if I don’t accept it, you have to carry it to your home. Nobody can humiliate me. Humiliation needs my acceptance.On the contrary, these people were proving everything right that I have been saying to you. They were thinking that they are destroying my arguments by such processions. No procession can be an argument. No procession proves intelligence, it only proves retardedness. And carrying my effigy on a poor donkey simply exposes their real face: they are donkey-worshippers.All human beings are not human beings. There are so many categories: a few are still chimpanzees, a few are still gorillas, a few are still monkeys, a few are still donkeys, a few are still Yankees.But in this so-called, self-styled cultured city, not a single person objected to these people, that “You are exposing yourselves, your vulgarity, your unculturedness.”And why are you harassing a bodhisattva? I call that donkey a bodhisattva.And not only I, but since the day twenty-five centuries ago when Gautam Buddha gave Mahakashyapa a lotus flower, and told to the whole commune of ten thousand sannyasins, “What I could say to you I have said. What cannot be brought into language, I am transferring to Mahakashyapa. This lotus is just a symbol of transferring something which does not come into words.”And why to Mahakashyapa? – because he was the only one who had remained for years utterly silent. This day, when Buddha came for his morning discourse, everybody was puzzled. He had never carried anything in his hands, and today for the first time he was carrying a beautiful lotus flower. They were all waiting with excitement for what he was going to say, but he did not say anything. On the contrary, he simply went on gazing at the lotus flower for one and a half hours.Everybody was puzzled, disappointed: “What is going on?” And at that moment, Mahakashyapa, after twenty years of silence, laughed so loudly.At his laughter, Buddha called him close to him and gave him the lotus flower, and told the commune, “All that I could bring into words I have given to you. That which has remained beyond words, I am transferring to Mahakashyapa.” That was the beginning of Zen. Mahakashyapa was the first patriarch of Zen.Since that day, all these twenty-five centuries, hundreds of enlightened, awakened buddhas in the very thin stream of Zen have been asked again and again a question: Is the dog also a buddha? It can be changed to: Is the donkey also a buddha?And all the masters in these twenty-five centuries have said, “Yes,” without any hesitation. Every living being has the seed of the buddha. To have the seed of the buddha is expressed by the word bodhisattva. Fundamentally, a buddha may have gone far away, may have become a donkey, may have become a dog. It does not matter. At the very center of his being he is carrying the seed. Someday, sometime, somewhere, the spring will come and the seed will start growing into a plant with foliage, and the seed will become a lotus flower.So I say that, amongst these three hundred and one donkeys who had made a procession against me to the police commissioner, the three hundred were just phony human beings; only one was a bodhisattva – the donkey.It was not an insult to be carried by a bodhisattva. I take it with great respect.But these people are trying to prove me wrong, and they don’t see that there is no connection: carrying my effigy…you can burn it, but why torture the poor bodhisattva, the donkey? Even that will not refute me.I am going to take the issue of poverty.All the religions are responsible for human poverty.Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the kingdom of God.” Reading such statements, Karl Marx said that all these religions are nothing but opium to the people.Jesus was consoling the poor: Don’t be worried about your poverty, it is a test. Without complaint, patiently, just wait a little while, and you will be the inheritors of the kingdom of God. Just one life’s poverty, and then an eternity of being a king in the kingdom of God. It is a good bargain.And Jesus also said – just to console the poor so that they don’t revolt against the rich, against the vested interests, against the exploiters and oppressors – he also said, “A camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but a rich man cannot pass through the gates of paradise.”It is not only Jesus, the same story is repeated in different forms, in different ways, to keep the poor poor.In India it takes a different framework, but the conclusion is the same. All the three religions born in India don’t agree on anything except this one point. You can understand why. They have their philosophies, mythologies, completely antagonistic to each other – Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism – but they all agree on one point: that the poor man is suffering because of his evil acts in the past life, and the rich man is rejoicing because of his good acts of his past life. They transfer the whole issue and misguide people.You are exploited right now, and they are talking about past lives. It is not a coincidence that all the founders of these three religions had the patronage of the kings and the super-rich. Gautam Buddha was surrounded by kings and princes and the super-rich.Who was there to give food and clothes and shelter to his ten thousand disciples? He moved with ten thousand disciples from one village to another village. The people were so poor, they could not afford food for themselves; how could they manage for ten thousand people?But kings, super-rich people, followed the traveling caravan of Gautam Buddha, and provided them with shelter, provided them with food, provided them with clothes and every necessity that was needed. Why were they so much interested in Gautam Buddha? – because he was also saying that the poor are suffering from their evil acts in the past life.It is very strange. The same is the logic of the Jainas, and the same is the logic of the Hindus: transfer the poverty to evil acts in the past. Nobody knows about the past; all that we know are the evil acts of the super-rich right now! They are exploiting in as many ways as possible.You will not believe it, but even today in India there are five million human beings almost functioning as slaves. They are called bonded laborers. Rich people give them money in advance, and then they give them work, dangerous work in coal mines, in marble mines, and they are paid such a small amount of money per day that they are not able to repay the advance – and until they repay the advance they are bonded laborers. This is a very tricky phenomenon. Nobody sees it as slavery.They have given one thousand rupees to a poor man so that he can make a hut, so he can get his daughter married, and then he has to work in a coal mine. Six rupees per day! – and he has to look after his whole family with six rupees. He will never be able to pay back that one-thousand-rupee advance, and until he pays that he has to remain in the coal mine.People have suffered their whole lives in a strange, tricky slavery. Now, nobody can directly call them slaves, but the fact is they are bonded laborers; they will die, they will never get the money to pay the advance. The advance is given just the same way as in the past human beings were auctioned.You will not believe that neither Buddha nor Mahavira nor Krishna nor Rama…nobody has said a single word against slavery. People, particularly women, were simply auctioned in the marketplace, and all these great religious leaders had nothing to say about it. Perhaps they are suffering from their evil acts of a past life.And the most amazing fact is that not only did they not oppose it…I am reminded of an Upanishadic Hindu seer – of course, self-styled and so-called – who was known as Gadiwan Raikva, because he used to travel in a bullock cart. Raikva was his name, gadiwan means a man who owns a bullock cart.He was also in the marketplace bidding for a beautiful woman, but a king came – and of course against the king he could not win. He went ahead as much as he could, because Hindu seers were not poor people; they had many wives, they had plenty of land, and their disciples worked on the land to pay for their discipleship. They gathered much money, and that money was used to purchase women.Gadiwan Raikva was one of the most famous self-styled, so-called saints. What kind of saint is ready to purchase human beings as a commodity?But because he was defeated and the king gave more money for the woman, he was very angry – and all these people have been saying, “Don’t be angry, don’t be greedy.” He was waiting for his chance to take revenge – and these people have been talking about, “Drop all revengefulness, be kind, be compassionate, love your enemies.”After many years the king who had purchased the woman became fed up with his kingdom and riches and the whole crowd of women, and he wanted some peace of mind.Forgetting the incident that had happened twenty years before, he went to Gadiwan Raikva to find some peace of mind, taking lots of money, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, to offer to the saint. He had taken with him his prime minister.He touched the feet of Gadiwan Raikva and offered the whole lot of money. But Gadiwan Raikva was still boiling with rage. Twenty years had not made any difference, the fire was still alive. He pushed aside the king and said, “Get lost, and take all your money!”The king could not believe it. He asked his prime minister, “What is the matter? Why is this man behaving so angrily? I used to think he was a great saint.”The prime minister said, “He is a great saint, but you don’t remember…. Twenty years before you were both bidding for a young woman, and you defeated him. Bring that woman, offer that woman to the saint, and he will give you peace of mind.” Peace of mind, my foot!And he brought the woman, and Gadiwan Raikva accepted the woman, and he agreed to initiate the king into peace of mind.A man who has been burning for twenty years with revenge, is he capable of offering peace of mind to anybody? He does not know anything about mind or peace!These are the founders of religions. He is still respected by the Hindus.All these three religions console the poor; that’s why in India there has never been a revolution by the poor against the oppressors, exploiters. They take it as a matter of course that their poverty is because of their sins in the past, it has nothing to do with anybody else; there is no question of any revolution.Mohammed said to his disciples – and they are still following his idea and being poor – he told his disciples one of the most absurd ideas: “You should not take interest on money, and you should not give interest on money.”Now the whole world of economics depends on interest. The more the money moves, the more money you have. That’s why another name for money is currency: it has to be a current, continuously moving. But why should it move if I am not going to gain any interest on it? Why should I give it to anybody and take the risk? He may not return it.So Mohammedans don’t give interest on money, they don’t take interest on money. Their whole economics is basically false, goes against the whole science of economics. The game of money depends on interest. Mohammedans have remained poor, utterly poor, and they are still following an out-of-date idea, thinking it is something spiritual.All the religions are against money.All the religions are praising the poor.When you praise the poor, you are destroying all his possibilities of becoming rich. When you talk against money, you create a non-productive society. You can see it in India: five hundred million people are living in starvation at this very moment. And those who understand how an increasing population is going to create more poverty, they all predict unanimously that by the end of this century half the country will die because of starvation: one man amongst two. You will be surrounded in this country with corpses; you won’t have enough wood for their funeral pyres, you will not have enough people to carry them to the graveyard. They will deteriorate, they will stink. The only people who will be happy will be the animals, the birds, who eat human flesh.Amongst five hundred million corpses, do you think you will be able to live? I don’t think any man of any intelligence is going to tolerate it. He would rather commit suicide, the scene will be so ghastly, so agonizing; such a tremendous anguish it will create.But still the religious leaders are against birth control methods.The pope comes to India and says to the poor people, “Using any birth control methods is against God.” And the shankaracharyas, the heads of Hindu religion, talk in the same way. And the Jaina acharyas, who are the heads of the Jaina sects, are all against birth control methods. There is not a single religious leader who is in favor of birth control methods. These religious leaders will be responsible for the death of millions of people!But why are they against birth control methods?They say, “It is God who is giving you a child. To refuse it is against God.” But to allow it to starve…? God seems to be a monster. He rejoices in children dying on the streets. He rejoices in the poor people who can’t afford a single meal.I have come across poor people who eat nothing but water. I cannot say they are drinking water, they eat water, and put on their stomach a brick to feel that their belly is full.God loves these people…. God seems to be a greater devil than any other devil – and all these preachers, religious leaders, represent God. And they are all against humanity living in comfort, living an educated, cultured life, enjoying great paintings and literature and poetry and music and dance.A hungry man cannot enjoy Beethoven.A hungry man cannot enjoy Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci.I am reminded of a great poet, Heinrich Heine. He got lost in a deep forest in Germany, where he had gone hunting. But he could not find his way out of the jungle for three days…and then came the night. Three days hungry…and he was afraid all the time of the wild animals, so in the nights he was sitting in the trees.And then came the full moon night. He has written such beautiful poems about the fullmoon. No poet can afford not to write about the full moon; it has such a hypnotic power. It is the purest poetry.Heinrich Heine has written many beautiful poems about the moon, but that night, after three days of hunger and tiredness and being afraid of death any moment, sitting in a tree he saw in the sky not a moon, but a loaf of bread. He could not believe his eyes. He rubbed his eyes, he looked again: it was a loaf of bread floating in the sky.When he was found by a search party and brought back, he wrote in his diary, “Now I know how a poor man can enjoy the full moon, how a starving person can enjoy a lotus or a rose.”A poor hungry man has no time or mind to think about the greater mysteries of life; he thinks only of bread and butter. And God loves this drama…and the representatives of the gods are all in favor of poverty.The world would have been finished with poverty long ago. It can still finish it! – but the religious leaders will not like it, because the religious leaders have power over the poor, not over the rich.Who will give Mother Teresa a Nobel Prize if there are not orphans to be found on the streets in Calcutta? Just a one-day-old child, and the mother or the father has dropped it by the side of the road because they cannot manage its upbringing. And Mother Teresa and her seven hundred nuns are running around Calcutta, finding children who have been left by their mothers or fathers, and collecting them with great joy. Everybody is counting how many you have got. The joy is to convert them into Catholics.Of course the pope is against birth control. If there were birth control, there would be no Mother Teresa, and there would not be six hundred million Catholics. These are all the poorest of the poor.In India I have been searching for thirty years for a single rich man who has been converted by the Catholic missionaries. I have not found one yet – but I have found that the people they have converted are the poorest of the poor. They don’t understand a word about religion. They don’t understand – they are not in a situation to understand. Mind needs a certain nourishment; they don’t have that nourishment. And if somebody offers food and clothes and shelter, they are very willing to be called whatever you want: Catholics, Protestants, Christians – whatever you want.Aboriginals, the primitive people who live in the forest almost naked – they don’t have clothes, they eat the roots of the trees, they don’t have food, and Christian missionaries are very happy to move into those parts and convert them to Christianity.I was staying in the state of Bastar, which is inhabited by aboriginals, very primitive people but very simple and innocent.The king of Bastar was my friend. Just because he was my friend, he was killed by the politicians – because he was supporting me in Bastar to help the poor people of his state to understand something about meditation. He had fallen in love with me, because he had learned meditation, and he wanted his poor people to learn meditation. So I used to go to Bastar…and to prevent me from going to Bastar, the king of Bastar was shot dead by the politicians.I was staying in a small village where a missionary was managing to demonstrate to the aboriginals who is more powerful, Krishna or Jesus. I was sitting behind the crowd, so he would not recognize anybody from the contemporary world – and it was a dark night. He had a bonfire, and he set down a bucket of water and said to the people, who were very much excited to know who is more powerful…He had made two statues, one of Krishna, made of wood…. No, the Jesus statue was made of wood, and Krishna’s statue was made of steel! – but painted, they looked exactly the same. He took both the statues and put them into the bucket of water. Of course, Jesus remained swimming on top, Krishna drowned. People said, “Certainly Jesus seems to be more powerful than Krishna.”He said, “I have been telling you again and again that Jesus will save you, and Krishna will drown you, remember! Be converted to Catholics.”At that point, I could not resist. I stood up, and I said to the crowd, “It has been a very good experiment, but I want to ask you, have you ever heard of any test like a water test?”They said, “We have never heard about it, but we have heard about the fire test.”So I said, “Now we should check both these fellows in the fire.” And I told the people, “Catch hold of the missionary so he cannot escape,” and I put both the statues in the bonfire, and Jesus burnt to ashes and Krishna came out.They said, “My God! This man was deceiving us.”But this is the way they have been converting utterly primitive, poor people. And they want these people to be poor, otherwise they will not be able to convert them.The Hindus have a difficulty: it is a non-converting religion just like the Jews. These are the two ancientmost religions of the world, and both are non-converting. You are born a Jew, never converted to be a Jew; you are born a Hindu, never converted to be a Hindu. Because these are the ancientmost religions, there was no need to convert anybody. Everybody was Hindu.And more particularly, the Hindus have a caste system: the brahmins at the head, then the warriors, number two, then the business people, number three, and then the sudras – the poorest of the poor, the oppressed of the oppressed.If you convert somebody, where will you put them, in which class? The brahmins will not allow anybody…Brahmins are born; it is their past lives together with austerities and purifications and discipline and virtue that has caused them to be born as brahmins. You cannot convert anybody to Brahmanism. Neither are the warriors, the kshatriyas, willing to accept anyone – they are high caste – nor the business people; they are the richest people. They don’t want anybody to be converted, unnecessarily sharing their money.The only class that remains is the sudras. But nobody would like to be converted to be a sudra, because they have a definite work to do: cleaning the Indian toilets, which are the worst toilets in the whole world, so primitive and ugly. And these sudras are carrying all kinds of shit on their heads! It is dropping on their faces!Hindu society is immobile; nobody can move from his caste to another caste. The question of converting somebody from another religion does not arise. So it has been a good place to convert the sudras into Christianity.I had a friend who was the principal of the greatest Christian theological college in the whole of Asia. Once or twice I went to visit him. I asked him, “Are you a born Christian?”He said, “No, I am a born sudra,” and he took me into his sitting room, and he brought an album to show me a picture of his father, who was a beggar. He and his children were converted to Christianity. The principal was educated, not only in India, but in Western countries. He showed me his picture before conversion and after conversion, and then he called his daughter.I have come across millions of women, but she was a rare beauty, unbelievable. The grandfather, an ugly, starving beggar, and she was educated in America, had a doctorate, and was married to an American psychiatrist. They both used to come to India six months a year to convert poor people into Christianity, and six months they used to go to America to teach in the universities.The old man, the principal, asked me, “What do you think?”I said, “It is sheer exploitation of poverty. You are not converted on religious grounds; you are converted on financial grounds, and financial grounds cannot make a man religious. You are the head, the principal of the greatest theological college in Asia, and what is your work? – preparing missionaries to go around Asia to convert more poor people. None of these people…”He had five thousand students in his college. He took me around. I said, “None of these people are convinced of the truth of your religion. You yourself are not.”He said, “I don’t know anything about religion. All I know is about the scriptures, which I have been taught.” And he took me to a class, which was so hilarious. This was the last postgraduate teaching for the missionaries, where they were taught how to speak, how to be great orators.I watched for a few minutes; I could not resist laughing. I said, “This is such stupidity.” They were being told when to speak loudly and when just to whisper, when to raise the hand, and when to beat on the table. I asked him, “Is this a college for actors? I thought you said to me it prepares missionaries. These are missionaries?”When a man has something to say, then that very truth finds its way, its expression, its gesture. It has not to be taught.But when you don’t have anything to say, obviously you have to learn every gesture, every word. These actors are pretending to be missionaries; they will convert people to Christianity – and this they think one of the most virtuous acts. But for it they need poor people.In the West, in the East, the framework may be different, but the outcome is the same. Don’t allow the poor to rise upwards, keep them repressed, because they are the people to work and labor and do all kinds of things.I have heard…A Rolls Royce stops before a hotel in Miami Beach. A woman comes out and shouts, “I need four persons to carry my son inside the hotel.”The son was not more than eight years old, but was really fat.Four waiters came, and they said, “The boy looks so beautiful, can’t he walk?”The woman said, “I can afford for him to be carried by people. He does not need to walk! He’s not crippled, he’s rich.”On one hand, millions and millions are dying of starvation, and on the other hand, a few people have gathered all the money. Even their children have to be carried, because they can afford it. On one hand people are dying in the streets….In the cold winter, three million Americans are living on the streets; nobody is going to take any care of them. And there are millions of people who do nothing; they simply sit before their television sets. The average time given to television in America is seven and a half hours per day. They cannot even move; they are so hypnotized by the television that now there are services from hotels available: they just have to phone for them to bring anything they want. These people go on becoming fatter and fatter…ice cream and Coca-Cola.Now they have made a society – the society of the couch potatoes. They have become potatoes, they are no longer human beings.You will not believe me, but there are people who cannot leave the television for any reason – even for making love. So they make love doggie-style, so both can watch the television!This whole mess is created by your religions!I blame everybody.Moses destroyed the Jews by telling them a lie – that God has chosen them as his people. Because of this lie, the Jews have been tortured for four thousand years around the world, everywhere. Nobody can tolerate them, because they all think they are the chosen people.Brahmins think they are the chosen people; God has written their scriptures himself. Mohammedans think they are the chosen people; God has sent his own last messenger with his message in the Koran. And, of course, Christians think God never sent to any other race in the whole world his only begotten son, Jesus Christ.Everybody thinks…And Moses was the first to bring the lie, without knowing the implications. If you try to impose yourself as the chosen few of God, you will be destroyed, you will not be tolerated.He went on Sinai mountain and after many days brought back ten commandments. Those ten commandments can be written on a small postcard. What was he doing for that long?And if God was preparing the ten commandments on tiles of stone, could he, who created the whole world in six days, not create ten tiles in six days? Moses is lying; he was preparing those tiles, they are nothing to do with God. He deceived his people, just as all founders of religion are deceiving their people.In the first place, God is a lie, the most fundamental lie. Out of the fundamental lie arise many lies. Lies don’t believe in birth control either; they are very religious, they go on producing. One lie produces thousands of lies.When God is accepted, how can you deny his only begotten son?How can you deny his reincarnations in Rama and Krishna?How can you deny his messenger, Mohammed?Once you have accepted the fundamental lie, then you have to accept all these people, who seem to be a little bit insane. And these people have written your scriptures in the name of God – because the holy Koran is so faulty linguistically that it shows who has written it.And if there is only one God, what is the need of so many religions, and so many scriptures, and so many prophets? Is it because God loves bloodshed, Mohammedans killing Hindus, Hindus killing Mohammedans? Just after India became independent, one million people were killed by Hindus and Mohammedans together, in the name of God.An old Jew was dying. He had never gone to the synagogue. The rabbi came to tell him, “Now at least, make peace with God.”The old man said, “I have never quarreled with him in the first place. I have never gone to the synagogue, you know it well!”The rabbi said, “You have always been strange. At this moment of death, pray to God!”He said, “I am praying. I am praying that ‘It is enough! We have been tortured enough because you have chosen us! Now choose somebody else!’”Religions don’t have any reason to exist in the world. Yes, religiousness is a totally different affair. One can be religious without belonging to a religion. In fact, those who belong to any religion cannot be religious. They can be Christian, they can be Jewish, they can be Hindu, they can be Buddhist, but not religious.If you want to be religious, you have to stand on your own feet and look withinwards. God is nowhere outside. There is no person like God in existence. Inside you will find an eternity of consciousness. That is the only divineness, that is the only godliness – but there is no God.To experience the godliness in your being will bring a great transformation, a metamorphosis. You will become a new man, with compassion, with love, with understanding, with intelligence, without any fear of death, because you know your eternity, because you know your very center.A new series begins today: One Seed Makes the Whole Earth Green.Maneesha has asked:Osho,One day, when Master Rinzai went to Ho-Fu, the governor asked him to take the high seat.There have been men of intelligence even in such strange positions as governor. The governor asked Rinzai to take the high seat, higher than the governor. He knew.Rinzai is one of the most beautiful masters. He had more enlightened disciples than any other master. His very air was that of enlightenment. His eyes were those of any awakened buddha. Those who had eyes to see and ears to hear, those who were sensitive enough to feel the fragrance of the man, immediately understood. He is in the crowd but not of the crowd. He looks just like a human being, but he has gone far beyond. He radiates his beyondness.The governor must have been a man of great intelligence, understanding. He must have tasted something of meditation, otherwise it is impossible for a governor to tell somebody to take a higher seat.Then Ma-yu came forward and asked Rinzai, “The great compassionate one has a thousand hands and a thousand eyes….”This is just a metaphor for any awakened man. It simply means he can use his two eyes almost as if he has one thousand eyes.You know my eyes: I have ten thousand eyes, and I look into every one of you. You may not know, you may not find it out, but I am watching continuously at the deepest core of your being.It is a metaphor: the awakened one has one thousand hands. Can you see in my two hands, ten thousand hands?The metaphor simply means that a master, just with two hands, manages to work almost as if he has a thousand hands. He works on thousands of disciples. He is the greatest creator in the world. He does not paint, he does not play the guitar, he does not sing. But what he creates is…he peels every disciple, uncovers the hidden treasure at the very center of every living being. His two hands are not just two hands, because he is working on thousands of people – hence the metaphor.But there are idiots who will not understand metaphors, who will try to find out, “Is it true?” They want facts. As far as facts are concerned, Buddha has only two eyes and two hands, but as far as truth is concerned, he has ten thousand eyes and ten thousand hands.To see what the tree contains one should look at the fruit of the tree; the fruit is decisive. If one awakened master creates a tremendous atmosphere in which unlit souls become afire, with his two hands he is doing miracles. With his two eyes he is looking in thousands of souls to awaken them. But it is a truth, it is not a factuality. You cannot take a photograph of it.Ma-yu asked Rinzai,“The great compassionate one has a thousand hands and a thousand eyes. Which is the true eye?”“In one thousand eyes,” he is asking, “which is the true eye?” He is behaving just like an average, blind, sleepy, unconscious human being, because those thousands of eyes are nothing but reflections of the one eye that is just in the middle of your two eyebrows. We have called it the third eye. These two eyes look outwards, that third eye looks inwards; that is the true eye. But that true eye can function on a thousand people, on ten thousand people, on ten million people.The master never gives you any carbon copy; all are as authentic as the original. He always shares with you the original, the authentic. His clarity, his vision, is so vast that millions can share it. That is the meaning of the metaphor.But the stupid persons would always ask questions about metaphors. They don’t understand that there are things which cannot be said without metaphors – and those are the great things and great experiences in life, which cannot be expressed without metaphors, without poetry, without symbols.Rinzai responded, “The great compassionate one has a thousand hands and a thousand eyes. Which is the true eye? Speak, speak!”Perhaps you know; that’s why you are asking.It is one of the greatest fallacies with people who have accumulated some knowledge – all borrowed from scriptures, from teachers, from missionaries – all rubbish, because unless it is your experience, it is not true.Rinzai must have looked into this man, Ma-yu. He seems to be a scholar who has been reading scriptures; hence the question. He already knows the answer – the answer from the scriptures, not the answer from his own experience. That’s why he said,“The great compassionate one has a thousand hands and a thousand eyes. Which is the true eye? Speak, speak!”He wanted to expose Ma-yu: “Your knowledge is not your knowing. Your knowledge is all borrowed.”Don’t depend on borrowed knowledge. That simply burdens you, makes you heavy, binds you into chains, imprisons you in words, and you forget completely your wings and the whole sky that is yours. But chained with religions and churches and scriptures, you cannot fly across the sun into the faraway blue sky; you cannot become one with the cosmos.Ma-yu pulled the master down off the high seat and sat on it himself.It is a very beautiful anecdote. Because Rinzai did not answer, and on the contrary started asking him, “Which is the true eye? Speak, speak!”He thought, “This fellow does not know even the scriptures. He is not a scholar.” To show this, he pulled the master down off his high seat and sat on it himself. That’s what scholars have been doing always.Scholars are the arch enemies of those who have experienced the truth. That very experience of the truth makes the scholars feel so inferior that they become almost enraged. They lose all rationality and sensibility. They become insane.Ma-yu pulled the master down off the high seat and sat on it himself.Approaching him, Rinzai said, “How do you do?”That’s the beauty of a man who knows how to treat the idiots:“How do you do?”Ma-yu hesitated.He could not understand what to say. “How do you do?”…and because of his hesitation he exposed himself.The authentic master never hesitates. Hesitation comes out of doubt. Hesitation comes because you don’t really know, you are only pretending. And just a small question – not a metaphysical or a philosophical question – just a simple question, “How do you do?”, and Ma-yu hesitated.That was enough.Rinzai, in turn, pulled Ma-yu down off the high seat and sat upon it himself.Ma-yu went out, and Rinzai stepped down.He was not interested in sitting on the high seat. He was interested in making Ma-yu understand that he does not know, but still he is pretending as if he knows.All your scholars, all your preachers, all your so-called bishops and cardinals and imams and shankaracharyas are of the same category: they know much without knowing anything. They are very well trained parrots.One bishop was very much in love with his parrot, but the parrot died. The beauty of the parrot was that he used to say the whole authorized Catholic prayer to God so phonetically, so accurately, that it amazed everybody who came to visit the bishop. But the parrot died.It was a great despair how to find another such parrot, but he went to the pet shop and he told the sad story of his parrot dying. The shopkeeper said, “It will cost much, but I have the right parrot for you – far more refined than the one that has died.”The bishop said, “Money is not the problem. You just show me the parrot.”He took the bishop inside the shop, where he had put a parrot in a golden cage – a very beautiful specimen. The bishop asked, “What is so great about this parrot?”He said, “You look closely. There are two threads hanging from his two feet. If you pull the right thread, he will immediately give the Sermon on the Mount.”The bishop said, “My God! And what about the left?”“If you pull the left, he will recite what your parrot used to do. He will recite the Catholic authorized prayer to God.”The bishop was amazed, and he said, “If I pull both the threads together?”The parrot said, “You idiot! I will fall on my asshole!”Even parrots are far more intelligent than your so-called knowledgeable people.Kikaku wrote:A brilliant full moon!On the matting of my floorshadows of pines fall.Always visualize these haikus.A brilliant full moon! – and because of the brilliant full moon, On the matting of my floor shadows of pines fall…and a deep silence, and a tremendous blissfulness.Those things are not said. They have to be understood by visualizing.The next time there is a full moon, just watch the shadows of the trees falling on your floor. They don’t disturb even a small particle of dust. They are there, but almost absent – just like the awakened being. He is here, but you can also say he is everywhere.You can say about the awakened person that his presence and his absence are in equal parts – a higher mathematics for those who are searching for the highest pinnacle, the highest expression of their potentiality.Neither does the moon want in any way to make shadows, nor are the pine trees interested in making shadows, nor is the matting of your floor interested in keeping those shadows. They come, they go, they move with the moon. Nobody is interested…but everything is happening so silently and so beautifully.For a man who comes to his very being, life becomes just like that: everything happens so silently, so peacefully. There is not even a small disturbance in the dust.Maneesha has asked a question:Osho,I have understood that the witness is pure consciousness, unaffected by the body and mind it takes temporary residence in. So, first: how do personality traits and conditioning persist from one life to another?And second: does not that which makes us unique individuals have a continuum?Maneesha, first you have to understand that you have not only this body of flesh and bones and blood, not only this brain which is part of the body. Behind the brain you have a mind – that mind is abstract – and behind the body you have an astral body. The word astral comes from stars; it means a light…. Instead of flesh or bones, only a body made of light. This body of light, the astral body, has the mind in it.When you die, your physical body and your physical mind are left behind. But the astral body travels with you, with the mind, with all the remembrances of the past life and the body, remembering all the scars and the wounds that have happened to the physical body. This abstract phenomenon travels with you; hiding within it is your ultimate, existential center.Until you know the center, you will have to travel continuously from one body to another body. You have been traveling already for thousands of lives, gathering more and more memories in your astral mind, more and more memories in your astral body. Although your center is unaffected, it is surrounded by the astral body, and the astral body goes on from womb to womb, from grave to grave. That is your individuality; it has a continuum. But the continuum comes to an end when you become a buddha.When you penetrate deeply to the center, you are also cutting the astral body apart, making a way through the mind, beyond the mind, through the astral body and beyond the astral body, to the center of your being. Once you have reached to the center of your being, the continuum of your individuality stops. Now begins the universal existence. You will not enter into another womb again, and you will not be burnt on another funeral pyre again. Now you will be one with the whole.Of course, everything has a cost. You will have to drop your long-cherished love of individuality. Millions of years you have loved your individuality, but your individuality at the final stage is a hindrance.Now take a jump out of the continuum and become one with the whole. You will disappear just like a dewdrop in the ocean. But it is the ultimate bliss, it is the most profound ecstasy to become the oceanic, to become the cosmic. You will never repent that you have lost your individuality.What was in your individuality?Have you ever thought?Your individuality was a light prison, which carried you from one womb, passing through the grave, to another womb, and repeating the same things again and again and again. That’s why in the East they call it the life and death cycle. To jump out of this cycle is the whole purpose of meditation – to come out of this continuum, which has been just a deep anguish, anxiety and angst, and to disappear into the blue sky.This disappearance is not your death. This disappearance makes you one with the whole. And to be one with the whole is the greatest joy, the greatest blissfulness. Nothing is more significant, more full of splendor, more majestic. Here all the buddhas have disappeared in the ultimate eternity of existence. It is freedom from individuality, freedom from yourself.You have known freedom from others, but you don’t recognize that you are still a slave of your own individuality. It is a cage…it may be golden.Open the cage and fly across the sun into the blue sky and disappear, without leaving any footprints, any trace behind.This Gautam the Buddha used to call anatta, no self, no mind, no you, no I. This in fact can be said in another way….I have told you about Kabir, one of the great mystics of India. When he was young he became enlightened, and he wrote a small poem, in which comes the line: The drop has disappeared in the ocean.When he was dying, he called his son Kamaal and told him to change that line. Kamaal said, “It is so beautiful – the dewdrop has disappeared in the ocean. Why are you changing it? And what is the substitute?”Kabir said, “These are my last breaths; don’t argue, simply do what I am saying. You write instead: The ocean has disappeared in the dewdrop. That was my first impression, this is my last impression.” And he closed his eyes.But both the impressions are beautiful. In the beginning, of course, you will see the dewdrop is disappearing in the ocean. But finally you will realize the ocean has disappeared in the dewdrop.Now it is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.Miss Goodbody says to her class one afternoon, “Okay, children, the one who gives me the right answer to the next question may go home right away.”Immediately, Little Albert throws his schoolbag out of the window.“Who did that?” snaps Miss Goodbody, angrily.“I did!” says Albert. “See you tomorrow!”Paddy decides that it is time to get a full-time job. A new salami factory has opened in town, so he goes to apply. He picks up his application form, and he meets Mussolini McVey, the manager.“Now, Mr. Murphy,” says Mussolini, “we have got many applications for these jobs, so we have included two intelligence-testing questions. Come back tomorrow with your application and the answers to the questions.”At home, Paddy looks at the form.Question 1 reads: How many seconds are there in a year? Question 2 reads: How many days of the week begin with the letter “T”?The next morning, Paddy goes for his interview at the appointed time.“Good morning, Mr. Murphy,” says Mussolini McVey. “And what is your answer to the first question – How many seconds are there in a year?”“No problem, sir,” says Paddy. “The answer is twelve.”“Twelve?” asks Mussolini. “How did you get that?”“Easy,” replies Paddy. “The second of January…the second of February…!”“Okay, okay Mr. Murphy,” says McVey. “What about question two: How many days of the week begin with T?”“No problem, sir,” says Paddy. “The answer is two.”“Very good,” says McVey. “and by the way, what are they?”“Easy,” replies Paddy. “Today and tomorrow.”Farmer Scrumpy has been in the city for a couple of days, and when he gets back, Homer, his hired hand, collects him from the train station in the old farm Ford.“How is everything, Homer?” asks Scrumpy.“Ah, so-so,” replies Homer.“Anything much happen while I was gone?” asks Scrumpy, climbing into the car.“Nothing much to speak of,” replies Homer, driving off. “The dog limps a little.”“Really?” asks Scrumpy.“Yup,” says Homer.“How did that happen?” asks Scrumpy.“Well,” explains Homer, “I guess the old horse was acting kind of crazy, running out of the stable, half scorched, in the middle of the night, and kicked him.”“The horse?” cries Scrumpy. “Half scorched?”“Yup,” explains Homer. “When the barn burnt down and all the hay went up in smoke, the horse got scorched.”“Really?” cries Scrumpy. “The barn burnt down?”“Yup,” replies Homer. “I guess a few sparks must have jumped from the house to start it. I got out of the house just in time.”“Really?” cries Scrumpy. “The house was on fire? How did you get out?”“Well,” explains Homer, “your wife kicked me out of bed and woke me up!”“Really?” shouts Scrumpy. “You were in bed with my wife?”“Yup! We were drinking your homemade whiskey.”“Really?” shouts Scrumpy. “You were drinking my whiskey and in my bed with my wife? Where is she now?”“Well,” explains Homer, “she got crisped in the fire, but don’t worry! I saved the whiskey!”“Thank God!” cries Scrumpy. “Did anything else happen?”“Nope,” explains Homer, “it was a pretty quiet weekend!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent…Close your eyes…Feel your body to be completely frozen.This is the right moment to look inwards, with your total consciousness, with your total life energy, and with an urgency as if this is your last moment on the earth.Go deeper and deeper, penetrating every layer.As you go deeper, you will find deep silence descending on you.Deeper…a great peace that passeth understanding.Still more, deeper…and flowers start showering on you with a fragrance you have never known.At the very center of your being you will find yourself – not the way you have known up to now, but in a totally new way. You will find yourself one of the buddhas, alert, awakened.And the buddha has only one quality: witnessing.Now witness: the body is not you, the mind is not you – even the astral body is not you. Neither the silence, the peace, nor the fragrances are you. They are all around you, but you are only a witness.Your only quality that is eternal is witnessing.To make it clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax…Let go, but remain a witness, remain a buddha.This moment, you are the most blessed people on the earth. Ten thousand buddhas are melting, dissolving, and the Buddha Auditorium has become an ocean of consciousness.Drink as much from this divine juice as possible, and persuade the buddha to come with you. He has been hiding in you for thousands of lives. Tell him to come out to the periphery, to the circumference of your life. Carrying water from the well, chopping wood, buddha has to be present every moment – waking or sleeping.The day your circumference and center become one will be the greatest day of your life. The continuum of your birth and death will disappear. You will be enlightened.And when you will drop this body, this mind…with this body and this mind you will also drop your astral bodies, your inner mind. You will become just a dewdrop – either disappearing in the ocean, or the ocean disappearing in the dewdrop. This is the ultimate peak of human evolution. The whole existence is waiting for it.Whenever one man becomes one with the whole, the whole existence dances, sings, showers flowers, celebrates.Gather as much as you can before Nivedano calls you back. Persuade the buddha…. It is your innermost core, it is nobody else’s monopoly. Hold his hand, show him the way, the golden path that you have traveled to the center.Now don’t come alone. Come with the buddha following you. He has to become your everyday life, your breathing, your heartbeat. He has to sing with you, he has to dance with you.His being with you all the time will make your life a continuous festival.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come…but don’t come alone.Come as a buddha: peacefully, silent, with great grace.Sit for a few minutes just to remember where you have been, just to remind you of your inner splendor, the great silence you encountered, and the buddha who has come as a shadow behind you. Each day he is coming closer and closer to you.The day you and the buddha dissolve into each other, you are awakened, you are enlightened.This is true religion.This is authentic spirituality.It does not depend on any organization or church. It is absolutely your journey towards your home. It is remembering a forgotten language.And if one man can become a buddha, it is a proof that every man can become a buddha.One seed makes the whole earth green.

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One Seed Makes Whole Earth Green 01-04Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

One Seed Makes Whole Earth Green 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Sansho, a disciple of Rinzai, once said to Seppo, “The golden carp is out of the net! Tell me, what will it feed on?”Seppo said, “When you have got out of the net, I will tell you.”Sansho said, “The renowned teacher of fifteen hundred monks cannot find even one word to say about this topic.”Seppo said, “I am the chief abbot and have much to attend to.”On another occasion, some time later, Sansho said to a monk, “Where have you just come from?”The monk said, “Kwatz!”Sansho said, “Kwatz!”The monk again said, “Kwatz!”Sansho said, “Kwatz!”The monk said, “If you strike me blindly, I shall say ‘Kwatz!’”Sansho picked up his staff, and the monk put himself in readiness to receive a hit. Sansho said, “When you go down a slope, there’s no pleasure unless you run down it,” at which he struck the monk.The monk said, “You robber!” and went off.Another monk present at the scene asked, “The monk just now – how can he enter?”Sansho commented, “That chap had been to see the former teacher.”Friends, I have heard about an editor who was bitten by a mad dog. When he reached the hospital the doctor said, “It is too late, you are going to be mad.”The editor just said, “Bring me a paper and a fountain pen immediately.”The doctor said, “There is no hurry to make your will.”He said, “Who is making a will? I want to write the names of the people whom I am going to bite when I become mad!”I have been searching for this editor, and I have found him. He works here in this self-styled cultured city, in a daily newspaper, Prabhat. He has been writing in editorials absolute nonsense about me.Before I answer him, I want to thank him, because anybody who writes any nonsense about me simply gives me an occasion, an opportunity to expose this self-styled religiousness, this so-called culture, utterly rotten. Before I answer him, I would tell you one thing more.The editor did not die. On the contrary, the dog who had bitten him died. There are a few people so poisonous that if a snake bites them, the snake dies.He is trying in every way to bite me, but I am not so available, so the poor fellow goes on writing editorials. I would love him to continue. I am absolutely grateful to him, for the simple reason that he gives me an occasion to expose this rotten society and its religion and its culture.He has written about me that I am a “lecherous professor polluting the social and cultural climate.” Okay…This editor should remember that I have not made the statues of Khajuraho; they are one thousand years old. I have not made the sensuous, utterly obscene statues of Puri or Konarak. These statues of naked women in perverted postures in thousands of numbers…it must have taken hundreds of years for the sculptors to make these temples. And these statues are not just pure works of art, they are part of religion; otherwise why put them in the temples?India has known the first lecherous man in Vatsyayana. Three thousand years before Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis, he wrote the first book in the world of sexology, Kamasutra, aphorisms on sex. Hindus have been calling him Maharishi, the great seer. His sutras are so ugly and obscene. He has also a few sketches of sexual postures. Those sketches are so obscene, so ugly, so unnatural – and you will not believe that he describes eighty-four postures of making love. You know only one posture: that is the missionary posture.This man is not called lecherous, he is called the great seer. And this man for three thousand years has never been criticized by anyone; they have worshipped the man. And this poor editor calls me lecherous….All the scriptures of the Hindus are full of lechery, full of obscene sensuality. I will describe the milestones.The second man is a Kashmiri brahmin who wrote the Kok-Shastra. Koka is his name, Pandit Koka. His sketches are far more ugly than Vatsyayana’s Kamasutras, and he used to have a love affair with a woman of the lowest caste, the kolas; they are the aboriginals.Sometimes I wonder…Joining “koka” and “kola,” perhaps the secret of Coca-Cola is there! That’s why the manufacturers of Coca-Cola don’t allow the secret to be known by anybody.And this poor fellow calls me lecherous, and Koka is called a great scholar, a great researcher in sexology!In one of the Hindu scriptures you will see the whole scene, what it means to be lecherous.You have seen the shivalingas all over India. Perhaps there are more shivalingas than anybody else’s statues – shivalinga simply means Shiva’s sexual machinery, and it is based in the yoni of Parvati, his wife – and openly, on the street corners, in the marketplaces. Shivalinga does not need even a temple, not necessarily. Even the poorest can afford it. Just find a piece of marble looking like a phallic symbol and make in the marble the vagina of a woman. Place the phallic symbol in the vagina and you have got the Hindus’ mahadeva, the great god.How did it come to happen that no other god has such symbols? I would like to tell you the story to explain the word lecherous.Just as the Christians have the trinity, the Hindus have trimurti – the three faces of God. The first face is Brahma, who created the world. He has only one temple in the whole of India, because who cares about him? – he has already done his job, and nobody knows where he has gone.The second face of God is Vishnu, who has thousands of temples, because his work is to maintain what Brahma has created. Of course, if you can persuade him by your prayers and rituals, it will be a great blessing to you. He is constantly maintaining the universe till the moment when Shiva destroys it. Shiva is God the destroyer.How did it come to happen that Shiva has got just a phallic symbol to represent him?One morning, Brahma and Vishnu were arguing about something, and they could not come to a conclusion, so they thought, “It is better to go to Shiva. Perhaps he can help us to come to a conclusion.” So they went to Shiva early in the morning.Americans should not think that only they make love in the morning. Millions of years before, Shiva was making love to Parvati in the morning – with the door open.Brahma and Vishnu never thought that this is the time to make love – but Shiva is a very strange god, a hippie god. He takes marijuana, he takes opium, he drinks alcohol. There is not a single drug that he is not addicted to. Naturally, he has no sense of time, whether it is night or day, or whether the door is open or closed.So Brahma and Vishnu entered and they could not believe their eyes. I call these fellows lecherous. If they had any gentlemanliness they should have gone out of the house, but they remained there for six hours, because that drug addict, Shiva, went on and on and on, not knowing when to stop. He did not bother that these two fellows were going around, watching what he was doing. These are the lecherous gods of the Hindus!And when after six hours he came to his senses and recognized these two fellows, they cursed him. They should have cursed themselves, because they had entered into somebody’s privacy. Seeing that he was making love, they should have gone out and waited outside. But they went round and round, watching and enjoying: this is lechery. You will not find another example of such divine lechery.They should have cursed themselves, but rather than cursing themselves, they cursed Shiva – “because we were standing here for six hours, and you did not take any notice of us, and you went on making love. It is so uncultured that we curse you, that you will be known in the world only by your genitals.” That’s the reason for that shivalinga you see all around the country.Now, I would like the editor of Prabhat to answer me: Who is lecherous? Your gods…?And then I come to the father of this nation, Mahatma Gandhi.While his wife, Kasturba, was alive…Her grave is just beyond the river in the Aga Khan palace; she died here in the custody of the British Empire. Mahatma Gandhi was also under house arrest in the Aga Khan palace.Kasturba was very jealous of Gandhi, because he was mixing with so many people, men and women. She kept a constant vigilance.Once India’s great poet, Rabindranath Tagore, was staying in Gandhi’s ashram, and Gandhi wanted to discuss many things with him, so he said, “It will be good if we sleep in the same room.” Kasturba freaked out. She did not allow them to stay in one room.So while Kasturba was alive, Gandhi was talking about brahmacharya, celibacy. In fact, everybody wants to be celibate as far as his wife is concerned. He wrote a book saying that celibacy is the true life, but it was just the fear of Kasturba and nothing else.When Kasturba died, he started sleeping with naked women. All his followers have been trying to hide the fact, because they were worried that his image of the father of the nation would fall down into the mud. And unfortunately the three persons who were constantly harassing him not to do this were all from Maharashtra.One was Kaka Kalelkar, a long-time, lifelong friend of Mahatma Gandhi. The second was Vinoba Bhave, one of the most intimate followers of Mahatma Gandhi. And the third was Dada Dharmadhikari, a man who has been trying to philosophize Mahatma Gandhi’s ordinary statements. All three belonged to Maharashtra, the self-styled cultured and religious society.But Mahatma Gandhi did not listen to anyone.Because of his constant repression that he had been calling celibacy…even after fathering five sons he was repressing his sexuality, sensuality, and only repressed people become lecherous.Once his wife was dead, he forgot all about brahmacharya, celibacy, and started in his old age, at the age of seventy, having sexual dreams. And he is called the mahatma, the great soul – and he started at the age of seventy sleeping with naked young girls, and the whole of his following was trying to hide the fact.But they could not hide it for a simple reason. Mahatma Gandhi’s secretary, Pyarelal, was one of the most efficient secretaries one can have. But because he fell in love with a woman, Gandhi kicked him out of the ashram. In Gandhi’s ashram nobody can fall in love; that is the greatest sin.Pyarelal was writing a biography of Gandhi. He knew all the secrets – his sleeping with naked girls – and because he was kicked out of the ashram he may have had some revenge also in his mind. “The man talks about celibacy to the public, and from the backdoor he sleeps with young girls, and the girls have to be naked.”He wrote the biography, and it is such a big volume, with such accuracy of evidence – almost two thousand pages, two volumes, so it is beyond the reach of the ordinary public. Who is going to read two thousand pages? And the sleeping with the naked girls comes in the last one hundred pages, with all the details – who the girls were, with all the letters that he received from Kaka Kalelkar, Vinoba Bhave, Dada Dharmadhikari, persuading him to stop this practice: “This may destroy your image.”But it was the last period of his life, and what he had repressed for forty or fifty years had become a volcano. It was beyond his control.And this man, utterly immature, ignorant, calls me lecherous!Call Mahatma Gandhi lecherous!Call Brahma and Vishnu lecherous. Call Shiva lecherous – the first hippie of the world!But this is the situation with all the religions. Hinduism is not an exception.Five hundred pages in the Old Testament of the Bible are absolutely obscene. One friend of mine has taken out all the five hundred pages and made a new book, The X-Rated Holy Bible. Now the Christians are after him. But the book has gone ahead – although banned by many countries, it has reached an underground market.Five hundred pages? And no Jew, no Christian – because both believe in the Old Testament – has ever objected? Call these people lecherous. And these were the prophets who have been writing all these things.I am determined to expose everything, without holding anything back. So it is perfectly good that these people should continue to write against me. That will give me material, subject matter. Soon they will realize they are cutting their own heads.I am not a man who can be suppressed by just calling me names. Criticize what I am saying, look at your face in the mirror, and find the passages in your own scriptures. You will find much more, because I am only giving samples to my people.Another Marathi newspaper editor has asked me that, “How can two souls live in one body?” – as if he understands what a soul is!The soul is pure light, and in a room you can have one candle, you can have one thousand candles, because the light does not take space. The light is not the thing that takes the space. You can have one thousand…You can see around you thousands of bulbs and thousands of lights. The lights are not struggling for space, for territory. Light is not a space thing – and the soul consists only of the purest light, which does not need any fuel. So there is no question…The editor has asked if I can prove this.It is an already proved fact; I don’t have to prove it.All over the world people know it already, that a man can be possessed by spirits – and not only one. The highest count has been sixteen, sixteen souls possessing one man’s body.And if you want more data and research on the subject, you should go to Rajasthan, to Jaipur, to have a look in the University of Rajasthan – that is the only university in India which has a department for parapsychology. They have been collecting all the cases of possession by spirits – so you will know that it is not a question at all of space. Two souls can be in one body without any difficulty. They don’t have any conflict of territory.Just watch light and you will understand. One candle or one thousand candles in a small room – do you think there will be great chaos? One thousand candles? – where will they find the space?Light does not need space.I am answering this question, not for your sake, Mr. Editor, I am answering this question for my people to understand that the soul is pure light. That’s why it has no weight, it does not occupy space. It has no limit as far as time is concerned.Hundreds of experiments have been done around the world by the scientists. In one experiment in Germany, they put a man who was just on the verge of death in a box made of absolutely transparent glass, so they could watch him while he was alive, from the outside. The box was completely sealed. They wanted to know that, if the soul leaves the body, how can it leave the box? “We will catch hold of the soul.” And if the soul leaves the body, the body must lose some weight, so they weighed the body as accurately as possible.But the man died, and nothing left the glass box, because for the soul, matter is not a hindrance.You know that X-rays can enter your body and the body cannot prevent them; you don’t feel even that the X-rays are entering in your body when an X-ray is taken. The soul is a far more refined, ultimate light, so when it leaves the body you cannot see it. If you have not seen it already within yourself, you will never be able to see anybody’s soul leaving him.Then they opened the case, and they could not find it. So they weighed the dead man again: he had the same weight. For the materialist it is enough proof that there is no soul, because nothing has left the box and the man’s dead body weighs the same as when he was living. For the materialist scientists it was enough to prove that there is no soul.It is not enough for me.The soul does not have weight.Do you think light has weight? Try…put one candle on your weighing machine, unlit. Weigh it, then give light to the candle and see whether it weighs more. There is no need to go to such lengths as finding a dying man; you can just try to weigh the light. It has no weight, but it does not prove that there is no light. It simply proves that light belongs to a different category. It is not a thing, hence it has no weight.When you blow out a candle, do you see where the flame is going, finding the door outside into the street? You don’t see anything. The flame simply disappears into the universe, leaving no trace behind.The same is true about the soul.And the first editor continues that I am “polluting the social and cultural climate.”What social and cultural climate have you got?It was a man from this social and cultural atmosphere who killed Mahatma Gandhi – the first murder of its kind in this country. It is perfectly okay in America, but not in India.In America, twenty percent of the presidents have been murdered – that is routine – but Mahatma Gandhi’s murder was the first of its kind in this country. And the man who murdered him belonged to this cultural, social society. He was a citizen of this city.An attempt has been made on my life in this city, by throwing a knife to kill me! I was informed by the police headquarters, before the morning discourse, that “We have received an anonymous phone call that somebody is going to throw a knife at you and kill you, so allow in twenty high-ranking police officers.”But the whole thing was totally different; it came finally to a very different conclusion. Those twenty police officers were sitting behind the man who had thrown the knife at me. They immediately surrounded him, in order to arrest him.Unfortunately for the poor man, he was not an archer, or a man who could manage to hit the target. The knife fell almost six feet away from me. What a great man they had found to kill me! If they had told me, I would have sat six feet away from myself!They did not allow my people to bring a case. Ten thousand sannyasins were present here, eyewitnesses; you could not find so many eyewitnesses for any murder, or any attempted murder anywhere else. But the police officer said, “We are present, we will take the case to the court ourselves. It is a police case. You don’t need to bother at all.” That was the strategy.They took away the knife also, saying, “We have to present it to the magistrate.” The knife was never presented, and the magistrate simply dismissed the case: “There is no case. Where is the evidence?” And those twenty police officers remained silent.It was a good conspiracy between the magistrate and the police officers and the cultured citizens of this city.How am I polluting the social and cultural climate? I don’t enter in your city at all; it is too polluted for me. It is the most polluted city in the whole of Asia, and soon it will be the most polluted city in the whole world.I talk to my people; I never see the editors of Prabhat, and editors of other Marathi daily papers, weekly papers, monthly magazines. I don’t see people from the city here. My people belong to the whole globe, and those few people from the city who are here, they have been with me for twenty years. They are now beyond any cure. I have corrupted them so much that now there is no medicine, no deprogramming that can bring them back to the normal lunacy of this city.Just by the way, I would like to tell you a very beautiful case of a great evangelist who had millions of listeners on the radio, and watchers on the television.In America, a new phenomenon is growing: TV evangelism. What is the need to go to the people? You just give the sermon in the television studio and it reaches to millions of homes.This man, television evangelist Jim Bakker, has returned to American TV again. Where had he gone and why? He had admitted to having sexual intercourse with his secretary and homosexual relations with a male preacher.This happened a few months ago. Then he went into seclusion just to avoid the public – because he was a great preacher, and they thought that God speaks through him. But when they found that he was having intercourse with his secretary, and is not only heterosexual, he is perverted – he was having a relationship with a male preacher…And on the television he was talking to everybody about the greatness of celibacy.These are the people who really destroy humanity and its trust.Now he is coming back. What excuse has he found? – a great excuse, but it won’t do as far as I am concerned.Now he is saying that the Devil made him do it. He was a representative of God, and God even did not care to interfere. And it was not only one time, but for years the Devil was telling him to do it, to make love to the secretary, to have homosexual relations with the preacher; it was the Devil.What was God doing? If he cannot save his own preachers, do you think he will save you? The Devil seems to be more powerful.He said, “The Devil was jealous because I was forming a new church.”But what about God? You were making a new church for God…. God seems to be absolutely impotent; the Devil was directing you for years. And you had been preaching about celibacy…. You could not say to the people, “The Devil has been forcing me to do things which I don’t want to do.” You were found red-handed making love to the secretary, and there was no Devil present who was forcing you, on the point of a gun, to make love. You could have at least reported to the police station.It is not a coincidence that Devil-worship is growing all over the world, particularly in Christian countries. In England, there are now thousands and thousands of people who worship the Devil. In Australia, thousands of people worship the Devil. And these Devil-worshippers are Christians who have seen that God is impotent; the Devil is a far more powerful being. Obviously, everybody wants to be on the side of the victorious.These Christians are throwing stones at churches, throwing stones at Christian preachers, saying “You are misleading people. You are telling people that God will save you. God cannot do anything! The Devil is more powerful.”It was the Devil to whom Adam and Eve listened, not to God. God behaved like a self-styled, cultured Pune-ite. Rather than persuading them, or going with them, the way the Devil had argued, God had told Adam and Eve that they should not eat the fruits from two trees: one was the tree of wisdom, and the other was the tree of eternal life.I cannot in any way…I have tried in thousands of ways somehow to see the point. A father is preventing his own creation from being wise, from having eternal life? What kind of father…? He must be counted as the greatest enemy, the archenemy of humanity.It was the Devil who argued with Eve. He said, “Do you understand why God has prevented you from eating from these two trees? It is because he is very jealous. He is afraid if you eat from these two trees you will be a god yourself. He does not want you to be a god, he wants you to live naked like animals in the forest.” And he said, “If you don’t believe me, you just eat and see.”Eve could see the argument clearly. If the father loved you, he would have insisted, “Eat more of the tree of wisdom and of the tree of eternal life, so that you will soon be grown up, so that you will soon realize your godliness.” That would have been compassion, love. This is simply cruelty, violence, evil.The Devil was the first revolutionary friend of humanity. And when Eve ate the fruit, her eyes opened. She saw a totally different world. She ran to Adam and told him to eat the fruit. They were caught red-handed by God. Rather than giving any argument against the Devil, he behaved just like an idiot. He drove them away, out of paradise.In a small school a teacher was telling the story, and she asked, “Can you say something about the story?”One small boy, Albert, stood up, and he said, “As far as I can understand, he must have driven them in an old Ford car.” Driving them out of paradise…what kind of car was he using? It must have been a Model-T Ford car, the oldest, the ancientmost.The teacher was aghast. She said, “I had never mentioned a car.”Albert said, “You said he drove them out…”This is ugly behavior on the part of God.Telling them, “You have committed the greatest sin…”Wisdom is sin? – then ignorance must be a virtue. Searching for eternal life is sin? Then committing suicide must be a virtue.Adam and Eve could not reach to the other tree. Since then man has been searching for eternal life. Have you ever realized what you are searching for?You are searching for more wisdom – enlightenment. You are searching for eternal life – a force which has no beginning and no end.I cannot say anything against the Devil worshippers. They are doing the right thing. It is perfectly good if Devil worshippers and god worshippers fight and destroy each other. It will be a great blessing to humanity. Whoever remains out of it will have all the joys of this planet, and all the possibilities of growing in his potentiality to ultimate wisdom and to eternal life.Those two trees have to be found! If God comes in between, throw him away. Adam and Eve were very poor, naked – only two! Now humanity is big enough. Rather than being driven by God, it can drive God out of paradise. He has lived in paradise long enough. Now just get lost!Strange…you don’t read me – the self-styled city of culture – you don’t listen to me. Just my presence…?I never go out, I never come into the ashram either, except these two hours in the evening. Living in my small room almost twenty-four hours a day, if my presence is corrupting your city, then it needs to be corrupted. Then it is not worth saving.This ugly city will be destroyed by this egoist attitude, not by me; by these people who have been puffing the balloon of the ego that the city is cultural, religious. Go on puffing: soon the balloon will burst. It will be you, the editors and the political leaders, and the religious fanatics, who will destroy whatsoever culture you have. I don’t know whether you have any or not.As far as I’m concerned, culture has not happened yet in the world. And you are giving all proofs of being uncultured. Making a procession with my effigy on a donkey, you are showing your real faces.Not a single newspaper, not a single citizen has condemned the procession, that it is polluting the culture and the religious heritage. No, this is your culture.Bring as many donkeys as possible into your city, and they will purify your city. The day is not far away when only donkeys will be living in this city. Of course, donkeys don’t corrupt anybody’s culture; they are such silent, philosophical creatures.I have always loved them from my very childhood. I have always wondered why these poor creatures are condemned. They look so silent, standing in the shadows of the walls or the trees. Just watch their faces: they look like Aristotle or Kant or Hegel or Feuerbach – great philosophers, thinking, thinking about great problems. Once in a while they give a shout – that is the shout that wakes other donkeys who are falling asleep.Except that shout, they don’t do any harm to anybody. They don’t make processions, they don’t shout ugly slogans. They are not worried at all that somebody will corrupt their culture.If you have culture, nobody can corrupt it.If you have religion, nobody can destroy it.Because you don’t have them – you have only fallacy, fantasy, imagination, belief, but no reality – that’s why you are so afraid. Anybody can destroy your false belief systems. That is the fear, the paranoia.But I am going to strike hard on all your false shadows, so you can be discovered in your true, authentic, original face.The sutras:Osho,Sansho, a disciple of Rinzai, once said to Seppo, “The golden carp is out of the net! Tell me, what will it feed on?”Zen always has many similar puzzles that cannot be solved. The ancientmost puzzle, out of which many such puzzles have arisen, is that one man was growing a goose in a bottle. When the goose was small, just out of the egg, he put it into the bottle. Then he went on feeding the goose in the bottle, until the whole bottle was full of the goose.Now the goose is too big, it cannot be taken out from the mouth of the bottle. And the Zen masters have been asking: How to take the goose out without breaking the bottle, and without killing the goose? And people have been meditating on this: how to take the goose out without destroying the bottle, or destroying the goose. There seems to be no solution.These riddles, these puzzles, are not for solutions; they bring a revolution when you get an insight. Hundreds of people have become enlightened through such small, absurd puzzles. Months and years they would meditate, and they would not find any way. There is no way…there is no question of finding any way. But because they were thinking only about the goose in the bottle for years, the whole mind dropped, all thinking stopped. Their only concern was how to bring the goose out from the bottle.All logic failed, all reasoning failed, all thinking failed; the mind was of no help. They put the mind aside, and as they came to the space of no-mind, they laughed. They ran to the master, and seeing their smiling faces, the master would say, “So, the goose is out?” And the disciple would touch the feet of the master. He would say, “Yes, she has always been out. The bottle was an illusion.”You are always a buddha; your not being a buddha is an illusion. The bottle is an illusion, you are always out of the bottle. All prisons that surround you – of the mind, of the body, of money, of the world – are all irrelevant. As far as your innermost being is concerned, it is not touched by anything. It is always out. It just needs you to see the fact, and freedom comes from all directions to you.Seppo said, “When you have got out of the net, I will tell you.”Seppo was a great master, just as Rinzai was a great master. Sansho was only a disciple.Seppo said to Sansho, “When you have got out of the net, I will tell you. Right now, I don’t see the point of wasting my time. You are not out, you will not understand. Just go and meditate. First get out of the net, and then I will answer you. In fact, then there is no need to answer.”This is the beauty of Zen. It brings your own consciousness to a point where there is no question, and no answer is needed. You have simply gone beyond questions and answers. You can sing a song, you can paint a beautiful painting, you can play music, you can dance, you can laugh, but you cannot say anything about what has happened to you.Seppo said, “Just get out of the net, then come to me and I will tell you.”Sansho said, “The renowned teacher of fifteen hundred monks cannot find even one word to say about this topic.”Seppo had a great monastery of fifteen hundred disciples. Sansho taunts him, provokes him:“The renowned teacher of fifteen hundred monks cannot find even one word to say about this topic?”In fact, nobody can say a single word about the innermost freedom. Either you have it or you don’t have it, but nobody can say anything about it. Even when you have it, you will not be able to say a single word. That, Sansho does not understand yet.Seppo said, “I am the chief abbot and have much to attend to.“You just move away. First get out of the net and then come. Right now, I don’t have any time to waste with you.”It seems to be very unkind of Seppo, but it is not. He is helpless, as every buddha is helpless; there are things about which nothing can be said. You have to find them on your own accord.If somebody says something, he is your enemy not a friend, because whatever he says will become a block in your search. You will start thinking you know the answer, what is the need of seeking? And the answer is borrowed, it is not yours.If I drink water, my thirst is quenched.If you drink the water, your thirst is quenched.So are the eternal waters of life. Drink out of them. Nobody can give you an explanation – not even a single word – to indicate the direction.Seppo was not unkind, he was simply telling him, “You are too childish, you don’t understand what you are asking. You will have to find it yourself. First, get out of the net. Right now I have to attend to many affairs of my commune. I am the chief abbot.”On another occasion, some time later, Sansho said to a monk, “Where have you just come from?”The monk said, “Kwatz!”Sansho said, “Kwatz!”The monk again said, “Kwatz!”Sansho could not understand. He said, “Kwatz? You are coming from Kwatz?”The monk said, “If you strike me blindly, I shall say ‘Kwatz!’”It will be easy to understand if you just for a moment look at the scientific theory of from where the universe has come. It was an explosion: Kwatz! – just a tremendous explosion, a chaos, and out of the chaos slowly things started solidifying.The word kwatz does not mean anything; it simply means an explosion of sound. That’s what our Yaa-Hoo means.When you shout “Kwatz!” – watch where it hits you. It hits just under your navel. That’s where you are coming from. The life center is just under your navel, two inches under the navel.Hence in Japan – where they have found exactly the right center from where life has arisen in your body – when they want to commit suicide, they don’t shoot themselves in the head, they don’t shoot themselves in the heart, they stab underneath the navel, exactly two inches underneath. Just a good knife, and without any sound, without any torture, the man simply falls dead. Once the knife enters the center of your being, your life immediately leaves this body; this body is of no more use.That is spoken of in Japan very respectfully, because unless a man knows through meditation where exactly the point is, he cannot commit suicide by hitting that point. Hitting that point is just like making a puncture in a tire. The air goes out. Hitting at the center of your being, the being simply flies out, searching for another womb if you are not yet enlightened. If you are enlightened, it disappears into the blue sky of the ultimate.But “Kwatz!” is a beautiful sound. There are very few sounds which have no meaning, but immense significance.When Sansho said again, “Kwatz!”The monk said, “If you strike me blindly, I shall say ‘Kwatz!’”I am always coming from Kwatz, if you are coming from Kwatz.It looks very absurd to the outsiders, but not to the Zen people. Zen has a multidimensional environment of its own. It is very difficult to understand Japan if you don’t understand Zen.Here in the therapy groups there is a problem. So many Japanese are coming – and more will be on the way….Sigmund Freud, and Carl Gustav Jung, and Alfred Adler, and Assagioli, and Fritz Perls – all the psychoanalysts of the West know only Christianity and Judaism. Christianity is just a branch of Judaism, nothing more. They don’t understand anything about the East. All these therapies were developed in the West.So every therapist tells his participants, “Deep down you must hate your father” – because Sigmund Freud’s idea is that every girl is competitive with the mother, she hates the mother. She is jealous because the mother is monopolizing the father. She wants to have the father. So every girl hates the mother and loves the father, and vice versa: every boy loves the mother and hates the father. All these therapies basically are founded on father or mother fixation.But therapists have been coming to me saying, “We are in a difficulty. If you tell a Japanese that he hates his mother, either he will kill himself or he will kill you.” In Japan, to tell somebody that “You hate your mother,” you have insulted his dignity. And when the dignity is insulted, humiliated, there are only two ways: either he kills you or he kills himself. But both cannot exist together anymore.So the therapists have been asking me, “What to do? Our whole therapy is Jewish and Christian, and with the Japanese it does not apply at all.” They have been brought up in a totally different atmosphere, where the mother is respected and loved, where the father is respected and loved. From the very childhood the father and mother persuade the child to go to the monastery to learn meditation, to go to a Zen monk to sit by his side just absorbing his fragrance, his presence, “because ultimately you have to reach to the flowering of buddhahood.” It is a totally different orientation.How can a boy hate his mother who has been telling him just to be himself? “Go to the monastery. Learn how to be self-centered” – and ultimately how to dissolve the center also, just to be nothing and pure, utterly empty. Only in emptiness no dust gathers; otherwise, everywhere dust gathers.The father is persuading the child to learn from the masters, great masters. Even the emperors are sent by their fathers, “to learn something of your innermost being. If you don’t know yourself, you are not worthy to be an emperor. First be an emperor of yourself.”How can you hate your father, who made you an emperor of yourself before giving you the succession of the outside empire? He has given you the inside empire.Zen has certainly created a tremendous rebellion against all cultures, all civilizations.As far as I can see, Zen is going to be paving the path for the new man to come, and for the new humanity to emerge. That’s why I am talking so much on Zen. It is not without purpose. I want you to understand as deeply as possible.Sansho picked up his staff, and the monk put himself in readiness to receive a hit.Can you find anywhere else in the world, somebody getting ready, bowing down, giving his head to be hit? Nowhere in the world. Either, if you are powerful, you will jump upon the person who is going to hit you; or if you are weak, you will escape in time before he hits you.But this is absolutely Zen. The monk gets ready, on his knees, as if to pray, bowing down, giving his head – “Hit me.” He has not said it, but his readiness says it: “If you hit me…even the hit from a master is a gift, a present which has no value in the marketplace, but which has value in the eternity of time.”Sansho said, “…you go down a slope…. When I hit you, you go down the slope of the mountain. There is no pleasure unless you run down it. And remember not to go slowly: “there’s no pleasure unless you run down…– with a tremendous urgency as if you are going somewhere.“Then the cool breeze, and the beautiful sun rays, and your running down…Perhaps you may understand what you have not understood while you have been with me.”I am reminded of my own days of search.I used to get up early, three o’clock in the morning, when it was absolutely dark and there were still three or four hours before the sunrise.I was living by the side of a beautiful park, and there used to be nobody there. I used to run – it is a tremendous joy. You are again a deer in the park, again a lion in the forest. Something of tremendous spirit arises in you.One old Sindhi used to have a small teashop – that was the only shop, by the corner of the garden – for people coming in the daytime to the garden. That was the only garden, with very beautiful and ancient trees. He had a good business selling tea. He used to sleep in a small shelter in the night.When I used to run, many times he said, “Forgive me, sir. You wake me up. I know it’s you, but I come out of my sleep perspiring and trembling, because at this time nobody comes here, and sometimes you are too much” – because sometimes I used to run backwards.There was a huge field full of bamboos. They made such a great shadow that in the fullmoon night the road was covered with the shadows of the bamboos. So when I used to enter the shadows, nobody could see me, and when I would come out of the shadows suddenly, that old Sindhi would jump up from his cot.He would say, “Again? How many times I have convinced myself that this is that same young man, utterly crazy! But you will kill me one day, my heart beats so hard. Suddenly out of the shadows somebody comes, and that too, running backwards…!” In India, the mythology is that ghosts run backwards, that was the trouble. “How to make the distinction that you are really you, not a ghost?”One day it happened – it was three o’clock – a milkman must have awoken early. He used to come nearer five or six, but perhaps he was not having a good sleep, perhaps there were too many mosquitoes, something may have been…He arrived early, and he had two buckets full of milk.When I came out of the shadows, dancing backwards, he threw away both the buckets and ran. And I, thinking that he had misunderstood me, ran after him! The more I ran, the faster he ran. I said, “It is strange….”The old Sindhi was watching the whole scene. He said, “You will kill him! Why are you following him?”I said, “I simply want to tell him that I am not a ghost.”The old Sindhi said, “Nobody will believe it. Ghosts always say that! You just give me those two buckets. In the morning that fellow will come, and I will give him the buckets and explain the situation.”For years I inquired of the old Sindhi whether the man had come. He said, “No, those two buckets are still there.”I said, “Have you got any idea where he has gone?”He said, “No idea. Oftentimes I think you have killed him. He could not have survived that strange experience of a ghost following him.”But I made every effort to find the man. Finally I found him; he lived in a nearby village. So I went there with those two buckets.The moment he saw me, he started, jumping. He said, “No! Don’t come here!”I said, “I have come just to give back your buckets.”He said, “I don’t want anything!” – with closed eyes, so he wouldn’t see me.I said, “At least see me, just look at my feet. They are not the way ghosts’ feet are, backwards!”The man looked at my feet. He said, “So you are not a ghost?”I said, “One day I will become one, but right now I am not.”He said, “My God! I have been going around almost two miles unnecessarily just to avoid that spot where you came running backwards! Don’t do that. Anybody…”I said, “You don’t know the beauty of it.”He said, “Beauty?”I said, “You don’t know the blessing of it.”He said, “Don’t persuade me.”I said, “Just once, you come along with me.”He thought for a moment, and he said, “It is better I should come so that the fear of that place is gone.”So the next day I picked him up from this village in my car, and brought him to my house, and we both went jogging backwards.The old Sindhi jumped out of his cot. He said, “My God! Where have you found this other ghost?”I said, “He is not a ghost.”He said, “I have told you, all ghosts say that!”I said, “This is the same man who has dropped his milk buckets.”He said, “Where did you find him? You dug him up from the grave?”I said, “You bring your torch and look at his feet. He is a live man, he has not died. And look at the buckets: you know the buckets, they have been lying with you for years.”He said, “It is better I should change from this place; it is becoming too heavy. Tomorrow you may bring a third one – and in the darkness it is very difficult to distinguish. Can’t you stop this jogging backwards?”I said, “It is so beautiful…it is such an ecstasy.”He said, “What?”I said, “Unless you taste it…” I said, “Ask the milkman.”The milkman said, “It is true, it makes you feel so free.”The old man said, “Then I will try tomorrow.”His wife said, “No! You are not going to join these people. They are crazy, and they are persuading you.”I said, “Let him have a taste. Don’t be worried, nothing will happen. I take the responsibility. And one day you will join us.”She said, “You think I will join you? Then it is better we both join together. If something happens, it happens to both of us. I don’t want to live alone without my husband.” So they both joined.I used to live with a friend, a very rich man. He had given me half of his bungalow. When he saw four people – three men and one woman – he freaked out!He said, “It was okay when you were doing it alone. I know you. But I don’t know these people – whether they are men, women, or just ghosts. And where have you found this woman? Either you drop this or you take possession of the whole bungalow. I have another bungalow, I will leave.”I said, “That will be just great, because then I can entertain new ghosts, even allow them to sleep here just to get them up in time – three o’clock.”Actually he moved.Sansho is saying rightly,“When you go down a slope, there is no pleasure unless you run down it” at which he struck the monk.The monk said, “You robber!” and went off– running on the slope.Zen creates beautiful anecdotes.What he is trying to say, I am telling you every day.Go in – not slowly, but with your total consciousness, with an urgency as if this is the last moment, just like a spear, piercing more than running, because the slope is very small. From your head to your being, there is very little distance. Unless you go really fast, breaking all the bridges, breaking all the obstacles, you will not reach to your ultimate being.That’s what Sansho meant, and the monk understood when he said, “You robber!” It is a very loving expression. He is saying, “You have robbed me completely. You have convinced me completely. My heart is your heart, my being is in your hands.”Another monk present at the scene asked, “The monk just now – how can he enter?”He understood – he was a follower of Sansho – he understood what Sansho meant by running and not going slowly.The monk asked, “How can he enter by running down the slope?”Sansho commented, “That chap had been to see the former teacher.”“He has gone running to see his old master. The old master could not convince him; I have managed to convince him. The old master was saying the same thing to him, but he missed. Now he has gone back to the old master saying, ‘You were right. It was just my thickness of intelligence, my hard skin, that nothing penetrated. But Sansho did the job within a minute. He gave me such a hit on the head, and I ran down the whole slope of the mountain.’”He was right. These are symbolic words.Sansho is saying, “I am hitting you, and from that point there is a slope from the head to the heart to the being. Go running, don’t stop anywhere, and don’t be slow. Nobody knows about the next second; this second may be the last one.” So he has gone to pay his respects to his old master.Buson wrote:The sea at springtime.All day it rises and falls,yes, rises and falls.You have to visualize again:The sea at springtime. All day it rises and falls, yes, rises and falls.He is saying, without saying it, the ultimate truth of your being: “You rise but you don’t rise to the ultimate peak from where there is no fall. You rise a little bit and fall again. Again you hear another master, you rise a little more and you fall again.“Unless you rise to the ultimate peak, to the hilltop from where there is no coming back, you have been doing just a futile exercise like the ocean waves: rising and falling, rising and falling, since eternity. When will you stop this? When will you rise and rise and rise to where there is no fall again?”This I call buddhahood.This I call the awakened being.Maneesha has asked a question:Osho,Do we really have to come back from the let-go? Last night, especially, it felt as if you could have talked us into enlightenment!Maneesha, I have Nivedano ready. The moment I see you are going beyond the limit from where you will not be able to return, I immediately call Nivedano.You have to be here with me. So much has to be done for humanity. So I take you to the point, but not to the ultimate point. I just allow you a glimpse, and the moment I see you are going ahead, I immediately call you back.You have to be here while I am here. So much remains undone. The whole of humanity, without knowing it, is waiting for someone to make them conscious, alert, to help them to become buddhas. They may not know, they may even fight you.It used to happen…The most important German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, never married – not that he was in favor of celibacy, but because he was a great thinker.A woman had asked him; he said, “I will have to think about it, it is a great matter.”He took three years of deep research about all the points in favor of marriage and against marriage. They were equal.His servant said, “Don’t waste time. Although you have found the pros and cons equal, one thing more remains in favor of marriage.”He said, “What is that?”The servant said, “The experience. Without marriage you will not have any experience. With marriage you will have some experience – I don’t say good or bad – but some experience certainly. That remains one point more in favor.”It was so convincing that he went immediately to the house of the woman and knocked on the door. The father opened it, and Kant said, “I am willing to marry your daughter.”He said, “My son, you are too late. She is married, she has two children. What have you been doing all this time?”He said, “I have been researching all the points pro and con.”The old man said, “You found more points favorable?”He said, “No, it was my servant who said to me that it is always better to have the experience than not to have it. One never knows, something good may come out of it. And even if it turns out something bad, it makes you more experienced.”So he remained a bachelor. No other woman ever asked him, and he was not a man to ask anybody.He was dependent on this servant. The servant went on asking for more salary, and he had to give it, because no other servant was able to stay with him. He was a very strange fellow, and the most strange thing was that he used to work like a clock.When he used to go to the university, people would fix their watches. It was enough that he was going; that meant their watches were not right. When he would come back, every day at the same time…Even on Sundays when there was no need to go to the university, just to keep the routine he would go to the university, sit in the library and come back at the same time as usual.At three o’clock in the morning he had to be awakened, and at nine o’clock in the evening he had to be forced into bed. That all had to be done by the servant. He was paying him an immense salary, with the condition that when it was nine, “Whatever happens – I may fight with you, that I have some immediately urgent work to do – don’t listen to me. You have to force me into bed. Even if you have to beat me, you are allowed. But remember, I will give you a good fight!”It was a strange scene. Every evening at nine o’clock, every morning at three o’clock – it was such a chaos that the whole neighborhood woke up. The servant would be pulling him out, and he would be going back under the blanket. He would be shouting, abusing him, and the servant would be beating him, slapping him.This is the situation of the whole of humanity.Maneesha, you all have to live to wake up people even against their will, in spite of them. Don’t bother if they hit you, if they cry, if they shout; you go on pulling them. They have to be made buddhas!That’s why I don’t allow you to go beyond the limit. I am watching everyone closely.It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.Hiram T. Horace III, the American diplomat in Paris, is approached by his son, Hiram Junior.“Dad,” asks Hiram Junior, “what does inflation mean?”“Well, son,” says Hiram Senior, “it means a general price increase.”“Really?” asks Hiram Junior. “And what difference does that make?”“Well, son,” explains Hiram T. Horace III, “I would put it this way: here in Paris, before inflation, for me life was wine, restaurants and women. Since inflation, now it is beer, eating at home and your mother!”Ziggy Zoldoz, a Czechoslovakian citizen, is condemned to a jail sentence of fifteen years for calling the Communist Party chairman an idiot.Bernie Beanball, the foreign correspondent for the New Age Times, asks a government official why Ziggy’s sentence is so severe. “Surely,” says Bernie, “the jail sentence for personal insults is never more than twelve months?”“That’s right,” snaps the party man, “but he was not condemned for insults. He was convicted for revealing a state secret!”Farmer Scrumpy decides to pay a call on his old friend, Farmer Zeke. He finds Zeke leaning on the fence of the hog pen, smoking his pipe and humming a song.“Hi, Zeke,” says Scrumpy, looking around the farm. “How have things been with you lately?”“Ah, pretty tolerable,” replies Zeke. “I had some trees that needed cutting down, but a tornado came along and saved me the trouble.”“Really?” asks Scrumpy.“Yup,” says Zeke. “Then the branches were lying there and needed burning, but lightning set fire to them and saved me the trouble.”“Really?” asks Scrumpy. “So what are you going to do now?”“Well, nothing much,” replies Zeke, sucking on his pipe. “I figured I would just wait here until the potatoes get shaken out of the ground by an earthquake!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent…Close your eyes, and feel your body to be completely frozen.This is the right moment to look inwards. But go running, with your full consciousness, your total life energy, and an urgency that – one never knows – this may be the last moment of your life.You have to become a buddha. Go just piercing your astral body to the very center of your being.As you go closer, as you go deeper, a great silence descends on you. A little more…and a peace that you have never known before surrounds you. A little more…and you are at the center of your being. This moment you are the most fortunate beings on the earth.A great ecstasy starts flowering in the very center of your being, like a lotus. The fragrance is of another world.The only quality you have to remember is: Witness everything, but don’t get identified with anything.You are not the body, you are not the mind, you are not the astral body full of light. You are only a witness, centered, just watching, reflecting like a mirror. On this mirror no dust ever gathers.To make it clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax, but remember to witness.Just be a witness of everything that is happening.The moment you are only a witness, you will feel you are melting into an ocean, just like ice melts.Gautama the Buddha Auditorium at this moment has become an ocean of consciousness without any ripples. You have merged into each other. This is the first experience, the first glimpse.This seed will grow in time, and suddenly one day you will find the spring has come! You are a buddha, the awakened one – the ultimate search of all seekers of truth.Collect as much ecstasy, as much blissfulness, as much benediction…and persuade the buddha to come with you to the circumference of your life. In your everyday work, in your words, in your gestures, in your silences, he has to be present.Slowly, slowly you disappear, and only buddha remains. From that point, when only the buddha remains, you can jump into the cosmos, a quantum leap, and disappear without leaving any trace behind.This is the ultimate goal of existence for all living beings – particularly for human beings, because they are the highest evolved.Before Nivedano calls you back, persuade the buddha. It is not someone else, it is your very being.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back…But now come back as the buddha, filled with joy, blissfulness, grace, a deep silence.Sit for a few moments just to remember the path, the golden path that you have traveled. And just rejoice in the fact that you have been able to melt and merge, that you have been able to encounter your authentic self, the buddha.And remember to share your fire, to share your gold with all and sundry, friend and enemy, the acquaintance and the stranger. The whole humanity is ours – they may not know, but we know. They may struggle against us, but we can only feel compassion for them.Remember, one seed can make the whole earth green.

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One Seed Makes Whole Earth Green 01-04Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

One Seed Makes Whole Earth Green 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Once, a monk asked Fuketsu, “What is the buddha?”Fuketsu replied, “The bamboo whips of Mount Jorin.”Another monk then asked, “What is the buddha?”Fuketsu answered, “What is not the buddha?”A third monk said to Fuketsu, “The Western Patriarch came bringing his message; I ask you to tell me it point-blank!”At this, Fuketsu replied, “When one dog barks at nothing, a thousand monkeys really show their teeth.”On another occasion a monk asked, “What is the meaning of Daruma’s coming from the West?”Fuketsu said, “We know all the windings of the mountain stream, but not the mountain itself.”Friends, today I am going to talk first about religion and the crime that it has committed against humanity, nature, environment, ecology.Religion’s crimes are many, innumerable, but the worst crime is that it has placed man at the center of existence. It has given the idea to the whole of humanity that the whole existence is for your use: you are God’s greatest creation.A man-oriented vision of existence is bound to create catastrophes in nature, it is bound to destroy the ecological balance, it is bound to give man the strange idea of an ego.The Bible says God created man in his own image, and man has believed it. Just look at your face in the mirror: is it God’s face in the mirror?The truth is that Christianity has been befooling humanity. It is not that God made man in his own image, it is man who has made God in his own image. And all the scriptures of all the religions have given man a strange licentiousness over nature, over animals and birds. That has culminated in destroying many species of animals, birds. It has destroyed millions of trees for no reason. Every second that passes, one football ground is cleaned of all greenery, all trees.When India became independent, it had thirty-three million hectares of trees. Today it has only eleven million hectares.This man-centered view begins with Genesis, in the Bible. In Genesis it says:“Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”This is the ultimate crime that has made man violent against nature, given him the freedom to conquer innocent animals, to destroy them. It has made man barbarous.Now we are suffering because all those trees have been destroyed and more are being destroyed continuously. There is a certain balance in existence. These trees are your brothers and your sisters, there is no question of dominion. You exhale carbon dioxide, they inhale it. They exhale oxygen, you inhale it. Such a deep relationship…You cannot exist without trees, nor can trees exist without you; your existence is so deeply rooted in each other.As trees have become less and less, the level of oxygen in the air has gone down and down and down. Now you are living only a fragmentary life. You may not have thought about it….Why don’t you breathe fully? Your lungs have six thousand sacs which have to be filled, but you breathe shallowly, so only two thousand sacs are filled, and four thousand remain stagnant, filled with dead carbon dioxide which is the cause of millions of diseases. It reduces your lifespan, it weakens your spirit, it destroys your intelligence. You are living at the minimum just because of this statement in Genesis that you “have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”Man has killed so many beautiful species of animals just for his food, has killed so many birds – whole species have disappeared.In India, the lion was the national animal, but stupid hunters – particularly the British hunters, who have been in power in this country for almost three hundred years – destroyed all the lions, the most beautiful animal in existence. Such a dignity, such power, such grandeur! And what were they doing? – just decorating their sitting-rooms with the stuffed heads of the lions.Today the whole species is on the verge of disappearing. There are not more than two dozen lions in the whole of India. The Indian government had to change its national animal from the lion to the tiger, because lions are going to disappear. When a lion dies, it is never replaced.And it is not only the British Christians who destroyed them; even Hindu monks sit on a lion’s skin. You will not believe how stupid people can be.Religion seems to give a certain stupidity to people who were born intelligent.The Hindu monks sit on the skin of a lion – and of course, one lion has to be killed for one monk – and the ideology that they preach is that by sitting on the lion’s skin you can remain celibate. My foot! Stupidity has no limit.What does the lion’s skin have to do with your celibacy? Lions are not celibate; one has never heard about a lion who was celibate. What scientific proof is there? I don’t know a single monk who is a celibate, and I have known thousands of monks – Hindus, Jainas….Just now two books have come out about one of the richest sects of the Jainas, Terapanth. The sect is headed by Acharya Tulsi. Seventeen hundred monks are under him, and three times more nuns – and all are sexually perverted.These two books that have just come out, Acharya Tulsi tried hard to get the government to ban them. But the publisher of the books is also a follower of the same sect. He knows that what is written in those two books by ex-monks of Acharya Tulsi is absolutely true. He said, “I will fight against the government and go to the Supreme Court. They cannot prevent a truth!”Once I was in Acharya Tulsi’s camp for seven days. I could not believe…so many monks, so many nuns came in contact with me, and they told me that such perversion is going on behind the scenes – and even Acharya Tulsi is not an exception. Homosexuality is widely prevalent, heterosexuality is widely prevalent. Those nuns are used almost like prostitutes. They go on preaching about celibacy, and their own reality is all kinds of perversions.One of the ex-members of the cult had come to me directly when he left the cult. He wanted to write the book, but I said, “Wait a little. Nobody will listen to you. You just create some status for yourself and then write the book. The book is absolutely essential” – because he himself was the victim of Acharya Tulsi’s sexuality, not to say of other monks.Beautiful Jaina girls are invited to become nuns. It is thought, it is preached, it has been propagated for hundreds of years that to become a nun is to become holy: you bring prestige and blessings to your family too. So when they see a beautiful girl, they invite the family: “The girl has such spiritual powers that she needs to be initiated as a nun.” The family is happy, the community is happy, the girl is happy that she has been chosen as a spiritual being of tremendous possibilities. But the reality is totally different. She has been chosen because she is beautiful, young, and the monks are sitting there hungry.I made this statement, and not a single Indian newspaper had the courage to print it! And when my press office asked, inquired what had happened to my statement – I take the whole responsibility for it, you need not be worried! – they said, “We are feeling very nervous to print it.” And it has not been printed.Perhaps they have been bribed by the followers of Acharya Tulsi. Perhaps the government is behind it, because Acharya Tulsi has a hold over many votes and much money that he manages through his followers to donate to the political parties who are in power.All religions are sexually perverted. They have to be. Their only creative and positive act through the centuries is Aids-positive.And because Genesis says, “Be fruitful” – that means populate the earth more and more – “and multiply” – not even double, but multiply – that’s why the Christian pope and the bishops and the cardinals and the priests are all against birth control: because it goes against Genesis, the very foundation of their religion.So this whole population explosion, which is going to kill half of humanity through utter starvation, who is responsible for it? Genesis – and these stupid bishops and popes, and cardinals and priests.You will be surprised to know that when Ronald Reagan came to power, he immediately cut the budget for controlling the poor countries’ population, because he was a fundamentalist, fascist Christian. Since he has been in power, he has fulfilled the statement of Genesis: “Be fruitful and multiply.”When India became independent, it had only four hundred million people. Now it has nine hundred million people, and by the end of this century it will be one billion human beings. After forty years it will double: there will be two billion people in India. From where are you going to get food?Right now, half the country is starving, and more than half the country is undernourished. Even a politician, the chief minister of Haryana, has come with the statement – because his state is starving – that if this situation continues, India will become a subhuman species. It will lose all intelligence, it will lose all strength and power, it will lose all the dignity of human beings.It is very rare to hear the truth from a politician, very rare to hear the truth from a religious man.In his book, In God’s Name, David Yallop exposes the corruption of the Vatican. He tells how Pope John Paul – the pope before this Polack pope – had ordered an investigation of the Vatican Bank after reports that it was involved in money laundering.The pope had also made it clear that under his direction the church would approve of birth control.Suddenly, after these two radical moves, thirty-three days after being made pope, this healthy man died of a heart attack. His personal notes, will, and medicine bottles mysteriously disappeared. Before the cause of death could be confirmed, his body was embalmed, a process which makes it impossible to detect the presence of poison. Many people feel he was murdered.The new pope, a Polack, promoted the head of the same bank to archbishop. For this man who had been the head of the bank, the government of Italy has issued an arrest warrant – but they cannot enter the Vatican. The Vatican is a country of eight square miles just in the middle of Rome, the capital of Italy. The sovereign head of the religion and the country is the pope. Of course, nobody can enter there to arrest him. And they know perfectly well that he has to be arrested by the Italian government if he goes out of the Vatican, because of what they have been doing through the bank…It is the greatest Mafia. All the heroin money – not a small account, six hundred million dollars per year! – they are turning into white money. This is the whole function of the Vatican Bank. John Paul was a man of great intelligence. He wanted to find out the facts about the bank, because it is committing the greatest crime, for which millions of young people are suffering in jails.After only thirty-three days…This is the least time any pope has been a pope. He was perfectly healthy; he had no record of any heart diseases, and he was found sitting in his bed, dead, clutching a paper in his hand, in which he had written his will and made two points clear: that the bank should be completely investigated, and if there is any crime being committed, the persons should be punished. And second, the situation has changed completely since the days of Genesis. Birth control should be allowed, and all kinds of birth control methods, pills, should be allowed to humanity – particularly to Catholics. It is not the time to multiply.This paper that he was clutching in his hand – and he was dead – this paper also disappeared. And they did not get a certificate from a medical expert that he had died naturally; they immediately embalmed the body without telling anyone. After embalming the body there is no way to find whether the person has been poisoned or not.As far as I can see, he was certainly murdered because he was going against the criminal bank, and against the criminal attitude of the Christians – they go on being against abortion, against birth control pills, against any kind of method that can prevent the population explosion.This is not a unique case.Who crucified Jesus? The religious rabbis, the high priest, the head rabbi of the great temple of the Jews in Jerusalem. They all, without any exception, wanted this innocent young man, who was only thirty-three years old, to be crucified, for no reason at all. He had not committed any crime. He had not murdered anyone, he had not raped anyone.Even the Roman governor of Judea was surprised to know that they wanted to crucify Jesus. And the Roman governor present in Jerusalem, Pontius Pilate, wanted to free him, because he could not see any harm. “Perhaps he says things which Jews don’t want to hear, so close your ears and go on your way. Don’t listen! But this is not a cultured and human way. Because you disagree with him and you cannot even give arguments to this uneducated Jesus, crucifixion is the answer…?” But Pontius Pilate hoped that at the last moment…Every year when the Jewish holidays start, the criminals who have been condemned are crucified. Three persons, three criminals were going to be crucified, and one was Jesus, who was not a criminal at all. Pontius Pilate was hoping that the high priest of the temple – the highest post for the rabbis, the learned scholars of Judaism, who had the right to release one person from crucifixion – would ask for Jesus to be released, because he had not committed any crime. But even the high priest, with all the thousands of rabbis surrounding the temple, shouted that Barabbas, a criminal beyond conception…Barabbas had murdered seven people, he had raped many women; he was a perfect drunkard. He had remained in jail almost his whole life. Every time he was released, within two days he would be back – he had murdered somebody or he had raped some woman. Now finally they decided he should be crucified – he was incurable. It was a shock to Pontius Pilate, but all the rabbis, including the chief rabbi, shouted, “We want Barabbas to be released.”Even Barabbas could not believe it. He knew Jesus. Once in a while he had heard him, and he had loved the young man. He was saying beautiful things. He had hoped that if he could remain out of jail, he could listen more to this young man.Jesus had been talking to people for only three years, and not to many people, because everybody was afraid of the religious hierarchy: if you are found in company with Jesus you may be punished also. So only a few young people, who had the courage and the guts, followed him and listened to him.Barabbas, whenever he had the chance to be out of jail, went to hear him. And when he saw that he was to be released, and this poor fellow with great ideas, with beautiful visions, is being crucified, even Barabbas said to the people, “It is absolutely criminal. It is perfectly right for me to be crucified, I have done enough crimes! But this young man…he has not even started living, he is only thirty-three.”And within seven days Barabbas killed another man. But it was the rule of the Roman empire that once a man is released from crucifixion by the mercy of the emperor, he cannot be condemned to death again. It is a tremendously dramatic story – far more dramatic than the story of Jesus.Christians say Jesus did many miracles, but no contemporary Jewish record exists. If those miracles really had happened – a dead man had been resurrected, water had been turned into wine, with one loaf of bread he fed thousands of people, he walked on water – do you think a man like this would go unnoticed by the contemporaries? Not a single reference even to the name of Jesus is made by any contemporary literature.But Barabbas really was a man of miracles. This was a miracle. After committing seven murders, many rapes, he is released…and it is asked that he be released by the most holy and religious rabbis, unanimously! Is it not a miracle?And after seven days – it was just his habit – he killed a man, he raped some woman, he was arrested again. But now he could not be crucified, so he was sent to Greece. That was the way. If somebody cannot be crucified, once he has been released out of the mercy of the emperor, he was sent to the coal mines in Greece. Those coal mines had become so deep, and the technology was almost nil, that almost every month thousands of people died, because the mine would collapse.Just when Barabbas entered the coal mine, the third day the mine collapsed. Everybody down the mine – and there were almost two thousand people – everybody died except Barabbas. Don’t you call it a miracle?Even the emperor, the Roman emperor, was impressed. His queen too was much impressed – “This is the real man of God!” – so he was called to Rome, the capital. The games were going to begin, and in the games one special event was fighting with a lion who had been kept hungry for many days.The emperor wanted to know whether this Barabbas was really a man of God, so Barabbas was put into the stadium. A hungry lion was released, and Barabbas fought with his totality, because there was no need to save anything; the lion was going to kill him.But you will be surprised: he killed the lion. With such totality and such urgency, when life is at stake, who cares for anything? Even the lion became afraid – and he killed it with his bare hands!Even the emperor could not believe his eyes. It had never happened before! And the queen wanted at least to touch the robe of Barabbas, so she stood outside the stadium gate, and when Barabbas was taken out, she just touched his robe, and she said, “You are a man of God.”But all these years he could not forget the face of Jesus. That innocent face, that young face, that peaceful and silent face had been haunting him day and night. So as he was released – the emperor had to release him – he immediately found an underground group of people who had turned to Christianity. He joined the group, and the day he joined the group and accepted a cross to hang around his neck, he was caught immediately and crucified. No miracle happened. He died as a Christian.Why was Jesus crucified?Religion cannot tolerate any man with new visions, with new dreams, with new hopes for mankind, with new promises to be fulfilled. No religion can tolerate the emergence of anybody who has a new image of man. They feel hurt. That means their scriptures have been wrong, that up to now what they have been worshipping has been stupid. For this single man they cannot leave their whole heritage.They have no argument against Jesus, or against Socrates, or against al-Hillaj Mansoor; their only argument is crucifixion. Religion has committed so many crimes for centuries. Every religion thinks others are wrong, and to put them right, the simple way is to cut off their heads. Christians have been killing Jews, Mohammedans; Mohammedans have been killing Christians, Hindus; Hindus have been killing Mohammedans, Buddhists – in the name of God! What kind of God have you got?According to a book by Corrado Balducci, a diplomat of the Vatican, the Devil’s army consists of exactly one billion, seven hundred and fifty-eight million, six hundred and forty thousand, one hundred and seventy-five devils. Certainly this Vatican diplomat must have visited hell!And how many people are in the army of God, may I ask? Just those three fellows – God, the Holy Ghost, and the only begotten son, Jesus? Is there any possibility of God winning against the Devil?I will repeat the number so you can remember it. The Devil’s army consists of exactly one billion, seven hundred and fifty-eight million, six hundred and forty thousand, one hundred and seventy-five devils. There is no hope for humanity.Perhaps that’s why God has escaped to some faraway star, with his only begotten son and the Holy Ghost – seeing the situation.One wonders how these people come to these conclusions. This diplomat, if he has been to hell…In Christianity you cannot return from hell. Once you are in hell you are forever in hell, for eternity. How did he manage, against his own religion, to come out of hell? And without going to hell, do you think anybody can count this big a number, just sitting in the Vatican?And no Christian has even questioned the stupidity of this man. That surprises me. I simply cannot believe it. On the one hand, Christianity says, if you fall into hell, it is finished; the door is closed forever, and eternally you will burn in hellfire.It was on this point that one of the most significant thinkers of this century, Bertrand Russell, dropped out of Christianity – on this point particularly. He wrote a book, Why I Am Not A Christian, and the first point is that “I cannot conceive that in one life…” because Christianity believes only in one life. In Hinduism, in Jainism, in Buddhism, you can commit millions of sins because millions of lives are available, backwards and forwards. You can go on doing so many sins, there is no need to count. But in Christianity, in Judaism, in Mohammedanism, there is only one life.“In one life,” Bertrand Russell asks the question, “how many sins can I commit? All the sins that I have committed, and all the sins that I wanted to commit but I have not committed, and all the sins I have dreamt of committing…Even if all these are considered to be sins, the hardest judge in the world cannot put me in jail for more than four and a half years. An eternity of hellfire? – I have not committed enough sins yet!”This is so absurd, that a man like Bertrand Russell…He has many other points, but this is the basic point: that it is absolutely absurd. If you go on committing sins from the time you are born, day and night, till you enter your grave, then too an eternity of hellfire is not justified. Seventy years continuous sinning – without sleeping, without eating – then too, seventy years are only seventy years. Even that many sins…although you cannot commit that many sins. You will need some time to eat, some time to sleep, some time to love, some time to go to the movies. And what will happen to television?But Christianity goes on, without giving any reasoning, insisting that if you commit sins…How many sins? At least a number should be given, that if you commit one dozen sins nothing is said about it. You can commit one sin, you can commit a thousand sins…the punishment is the same. What kind of justice is this?And these people who have been counting the devils…In the Middle Ages they were killing women, calling them witches.The word witch is not a bad word. In its origins it means a wise woman. But Christianity polluted the word, destroyed its beauty. And what was the process – how do you find a witch, how do you prove that she is a witch? Once proved, the only punishment was to burn her alive at the crossroads in the main part of the city.A special court was arranged by the pope to find all the witches and destroy them, because they were “possessed by the Devil.”Nobody knows anything about God, nobody knows anything about the Devil, and thousands and thousands of women were burnt alive! How did they manage it? – a simple process.Anybody could inform, even anonymously: “I suspect a certain woman in my neighborhood is a witch.” That woman would be caught immediately by the court, forced into jail, tortured, beaten, sexually abused.I remembered those women when my back was bad, some eight years ago. A traction machine was brought to pull my body – the legs in one direction, the head in another direction – to put the backbone straight. At that time I remembered that this traction machine was invented by the Christians to torture women. I have known a little bit of torture on that machine, but those women were torn apart. Sometimes legs would come off…sometimes there was no need to burn them alive. The head would come off….Big blocks of ice would be put on their chests. Unless they confessed, there was no way of getting out of the jail: “Confess that you are having sexual relations with the Devil!” Naturally, anybody would think it is better to confess than to go through all this torture. And this torture would continue until they confessed; there was no way out.And the bishops who were torturing them would teach them how they have to confess in the court. When they confessed that, “Yes, I have been having a sexual relationship with the Devil,” then the priest would tell them, “You have to tell the court how you recognize the Devil. You have to tell them that he has a forked penis” – so he can enter into the women from both the holes – “that’s how I recognized that it is a devil.”Those poor women had to confess this in the court. And the court would ask, “How do you recognize it is the Devil, not a man?” Then they would describe the genital mechanism of the Devil. It has certainly to be special, forked; that was enough proof.They created the confession, they created the proof, and the woman was burnt alive. They destroyed thousands of women in the name of God – because the Devil has to be destroyed.But now, seeing the number of devils…I don’t think that just by killing a few thousand women by burning you can destroy the Devil. You are destroying women, the Devil will find other women – and so many devils!Strange…you should have burnt the Devil, not the woman. The woman was a victim; the criminal was the Devil. But it is a strange logic: the victim is burned because you cannot find the Devil anywhere.No Devil exists, nor does any God exist. These are fictions created by the religions to torture humanity, to exploit humanity, to create fear and greed in mankind.And the theology of Christians has not changed. It is still the same.Moses, the founder of Judaism, certainly lied to the Jews when he said, “I have been told by God that you are the chosen people of the world, and he has told me to lead you to the holy land, Israel.”If he had been told exactly the address where Israel was, then why did it take forty years to find Israel? Forty long years of wandering in the deserts of Saudi Arabia…And my feeling, without any doubt, is that what he called Israel was simply to hide the fact that he had lied. Israel is just a poor place, mountainous, not rich; in no way can it be called God’s holy place.Moses recognized it when he left the people he had brought from Egypt. Almost three fourths of them had died of hunger, of thirst…forty years of wandering in the desert. The third generation of the people had come into being, who did not care much about Moses; they didn’t know anything about who this fellow was. Seeing the situation, he simply told them, “This is the place.”But life was going to be very hard, harder than it was in Egypt. And for four thousand years the Jews have suffered more than they ever suffered in Egypt. In Egypt they were slaves, but even that slavery was far better than this false promise and hope. And, seeing the situation, he must have been thinking, “These young people don’t know me, their fathers or forefathers had come with me. Seeing this hard land, unproductive, they are not going to forgive me for leading them to this place.” Just as an excuse to escape from Israel, he said, “One of our tribes has got lost in the desert. I am going to find them while you manage the holy land of God.”Moses went in search of the lost tribe, which had come to Kashmir. They had settled in Kashmir. Kashmir looks like a holy place. The first Mogul emperor, Babur – when he came to conquer India, he had to enter through Kashmir – looking at the beauty of Kashmir, he said, “If there is any paradise, it is here. It is here!”Moses came to Kashmir; his grave is in Kashmir. And because he had given a false idea of superiority, the Jews have suffered immensely. Their suffering has not yet come to an end. The whole responsibility goes to Moses.Religious founders have been lying in every possible way. Moses lied to his people that on the Sinai mountain he had seen God, and God had given him ten commandments. Nobody has seen God.Just think of yourself: if by chance you come across God, what are you going to do? Hit him hard and kill him, because all the suffering that humanity has been going through for centuries and centuries is the responsibility of the God who created man, who created the world.What was the need? Existence was perfectly silent and beautiful. What was the need to create Genghis Khan, and Tamerlane, and Nadirshah? Just between these three, they killed one hundred million people.What was the need to create Adolf Hitler? And strangely enough, he killed God’s chosen people: six million Jews in Germany! And he himself proclaimed that he was the reincarnation of a Jewish prophet, Elijah.Strange…a Jewish prophet killing six million Jews? He should have killed Germans. But the problem was, he had the same stupid idea: that the Nordic German race is the superiormost race; it is born just to conquer the world. Other races are subhuman. That was the clash. Two “chosen” races cannot live together. Their egos continuously get into conflict.All these religions say there is only one God – and one God creates three hundred religions just to fight with each other? This God must be mad, if he exists at all.I feel it is better that we should trust Friedrich Nietzsche’s declaration that he is dead, because to be dead is better than to be mad. At least you died in full sanity.My feeling is he committed suicide, seeing the situation and what a mess he had created.In India, God created the world – this is specially for the self-styled, cultured city of Pune. God created the world, and the first thing he created was a woman. The woman that he created was his daughter, but he became infatuated; he wanted to rape his own daughter.The woman became so afraid that she ran away and became a cow. Many women do that, it is nothing special. God, seeing that the woman had become a cow, immediately became a bull! And this is how the woman went on slipping from one body into another body, and God went on running after her, becoming another male of another species. That’s how all the species were created. This is the great religion of the Hindus – a cultured race, the most ancient religious people of the world.Even their God is a gunda, a hooligan, a rapist – and they call themselves cultured. These self-styled, so-called cultured people should look into their own scriptures, and they will be surprised.One of their reincarnations of God is Parasuram, perhaps the most violent man in the whole history of mankind. His father was a Hindu seer – I sometimes beat my head: a Hindu seer, and in his old age still jealous about his beautiful wife.There is no evidence for it, but the Hindus believe that the moon is a god, the sun is a god.The old seer, the father of Parasuram…I don’t know what his original name was, because parshu is a special kind of sword, very heavy, not as long as a sword, almost half the size, but broad enough. A single blow…it is so heavy that a single blow is enough to take your head off. I don’t know what his original name was, but because he continuously carried a parshu, he became Parasuram.His father one day called him, saying, “I suspect your mother. She is having a love affair with the god of the moon. When I go to take my bath early in the morning at three o’clock, the moon comes and makes love to your mother. I cannot tolerate it. I have always found whenever I go to the river, the moon hides in the clouds. I know perfectly well where he has gone.”Is it just idiots that you call seers? – they don’t even know that if a moon falls in love with a woman, the woman will be finished. You will not find even a fragment of the woman. It is so big – it is one eighth of the planet earth – that no woman can make love to one that size. How is she going to find where his mouth is? where his hands are? And how can the moon enter in the small hut of the Hindu seer?But still nobody has condemned Parasuram’s father, that he was a blind man, utterly blind – and you call him a seer? He was so blind with jealousy, so enraged that he was almost insane. The reality was that he had married a young woman, very beautiful, and he was old and finished.He ordered Parasuram, “You go, this is the order of your father” – and obedience is the greatest religion – “cut the head of your mother and bring it before me.”Parasuram is thought to be one of the reincarnations of God, and even he could not see that it was all nonsense. “How can the moon come when I am always here? You go to the river, and if the moon comes I will chop his head.” But he did not say anything. He simply went inside the hut and cut the head of the poor woman and brought it.The father was absolutely satisfied. And because he obediently went – even to cut the head of the mother, without even asking a single question – Hindus have accepted him as one of the incarnations of God, pure obedience.Pure obedience, or pure slavery?Pure obedience, or pure stupidity?And because the moon and the sun are thought by the Hindus, to belong to the race of the kshatriyas, the warriors – Hindus cannot think without bringing in their caste system – so the surya, the sun, and the moon are both warriors, kshatriyas, lower than the brahmins. Parasuram was a brahmin, and he was so angry with the moon that he decided to kill all the warriors of the country. And this man is thought to be an incarnation of God. What did the other warriors of the country have to do with his mother, or his father?And the strangest story is…He was a man of tremendous power. Sixteen times he destroyed the whole race of the warriors of this country. His whole life was wasted in killing and killing, continuously killing single-handedly sixteen times.From where then have the kshatriyas come? He has destroyed them all sixteen times. Do you need to destroy them sixteen times? One time would have been enough: all the kshatriyas are killed. How do you manage to get them killed sixteen times? That is another vulgar story of Hinduism.Hinduism allows its seers…On the one hand they are talking about celibacy, promoting celibacy as the highest religion, and on the other hand they allow the seers, the great saints: “If any woman comes to you and asks for a child from you, you cannot refuse.”That’s how…because Parasuram did not kill the women. The seers must have been having a jolly good life! Thousands of women, wives of kings, daughters of kings were coming to them on their own accord, praying to be given a child by them.What kind of seers…?These seers seem to be male prostitutes, and they are giving free service to all and sundry. The country is so big. Parasuram may be killing in the south; in the north new children are born. By the time he is finished in the south, again a new race of warriors has arisen. By the time he finishes the north, the east, the west, his whole life…And there were so many seers, and perhaps many were pretending to be seers. Such a good chance!These vulgarities, these obscenities nobody mentions, because they will destroy the ego of the country, that this is the country of the pious, of the spiritual, of the religious. Can you think that these seers can be called seers, they have seen the truth, they have become awakened? And Parasuram himself is the most unconscious human being. Without any reason, just because the Hindus believe that the moon is a warrior, all warriors should be killed. And he must have made the whole country into a whorehouse, but still he is recognized as one of the incarnations of God.In India, for almost ten thousand years…That is the calculation of the modern scientists. Christians never believed in ten thousand years because of their Bible; their Bible says God created the world only four thousand years before Jesus was born. That means only six thousand years from this moment. So everything has to be put in the framework of six thousand years. They decided that the Rig Veda was written five thousand years ago; they cannot go beyond that.But scholars have found that the Rig Veda was written ninety thousand years ago – with solid evidence, which cannot be argued against. The Rig Veda describes a certain constellation of the stars which only happened ninety thousand years ago. Unless the people who had been writing the Rig Veda had seen the constellation – it has not happened again…It is absolutely certain that these people watched the constellation, and they have described it in minute detail in the Rig Veda. But ninety thousand years is a long story and nothing is written about it.Most probably satipratha – when a husband dies the wife should also jump in the funeral pyre – is as old as the Rig Veda. If the Rig Veda is five thousand years old, then satipratha is five thousand years old; if it is ninety thousand years old, sati is ninety thousand years old. In ninety thousand years, how many million women – sometimes very young, just married a week before, or maybe a day before, even if the marriage is not consummated…? In India, even children used to be married – even now they are married, against the constitution and the law – even children who were in the mother’s womb were married. Just two friends would decide that, “If my wife gets a boy and your wife gets a daughter, or vice versa, they will be married.” This is decided. The marriage is final. You cannot send a one-day-old or a one-year-old girl to the husband’s house, but she is married. The marriage may never be consummated. The girl may be five years old and the husband may die. In fact there was more possibility of dying than being alive.In ancient India, up to the beginning of this century, out of ten boys, nine would die. And if you are marrying children – the wife has not even seen her husband, but if he dies she has to jump in the funeral pyre.I have been asking the shankaracharyas, the Hindu religious leaders, “If you think that it is a great spiritual phenomenon that the wife should die, should jump alive in the funeral pyre, why has no man done such a spiritual act?” Only women are to be spiritual, and men have to be bulls?I have seen with my own eyes live women burning. It is such a horrible experience to see, because a living woman tries to run out of the funeral pyre – she is alive – and brahmins are standing all around with big torches to force her back into it. So that it is not seen, much purified butter, ghee, is poured on the funeral pyre. It becomes almost a cloud of smoke, and you cannot see what is happening inside the cloud. Inside the cloud of smoke are standing the priests with burning torches to push the woman back into the funeral pyre, and outside there is so much music, bands, noise, that nobody can hear the woman praying, screaming, shouting “Help me! Save me!” Nobody can hear. All around a ceremony is going on, because one woman has become spiritual.I have been asking; nobody has answered me. I am perhaps the only man in the world who has not been answered on a single point.I have been to so many shankaracharyas – there are eight, one for each direction. “If spirituality is so easy, just jumping into a funeral pyre, why has not man attained such spirituality?” And they are dumb – they don’t have any answer. They have only one answer: to condemn me.But the fact is clear, it is a male chauvinist country. All religions are male chauvinist, against women.I have been in such horrible nightmarish situations. I have seen women burning and I have seen how they have managed it. One layer of great music, loud music; another layer, another circle inside it, with great reciting of Vedic scriptures; then the third layer, which is almost hidden in the cloud that the purified butter has produced – the priests. Should I call them priests? – they are the butchers. They are standing around the funeral pyre with burning torches forcing the woman who is running here and there, trying to find a way out. But there is no possibility.This you call spirituality, forcibly killing a woman? But the reason is, man’s possessiveness.All religions are male chauvinistic, they are in favor of the man. The man wants to possess the wife while he is alive and he wants to possess her even when he is dead. He will not leave her alone to have some love affair with anybody else.But as far as man is concerned, I have seen a wife burning on her funeral pyre and the husband talking with people: “Do you have some idea of where to find a beautiful girl? I want to marry again” – just on the spot. They cannot even wait for two, three days. At least let the fire disappear, let the woman’s body be burned completely. No, exactly at the funeral pyre, around it, people are sitting and discussing which girl will be suitable for the person. And the person may be old, it does not matter; a fifty-year-old may marry a girl of sixteen years of age.The crimes against humanity are immense.The crimes against nature…All the people who have been eating meat don’t think for a single moment it is coming from a living being. Just for your taste you are ready to kill anybody. What is wrong about cannibals?One man who was caught by cannibals but somehow escaped told me, “I had to eat breakfast because I am too thin. That’s why I could manage to escape – they were feeding me and preparing me.” Unless he becomes fat enough, there is no point in making a soup of him. That gave him enough time, but meanwhile he had to eat human meat, human flesh, and he told me, “I hate to admit it, but I cannot resist telling you the truth: it is the most delicious thing in the world.”Just because it is delicious, will you start eating human beings?Just because it is delicious, you have been eating all kinds of animals – that’s what the Bible allows you – birds in the sky, fish in the waters, animals in the forests. You are the only king of this whole nature: conquer, eat, enjoy. Just destroying the animals…! Finally, man had to start eating fruits as well because there were not enough animals.There was a stage when man was a hunter. There were no settlements, people were continuously moving wherever the animals were moving. The animals were escaping from human beings. But when they found a scarcity of animals they started eating fruits, they started cultivating. For cultivation they had to cut trees – trees which grow in two hundred years or three hundred years. There are trees which take four thousand years to grow. They destroyed those beautiful species forever. And they continued to produce more and more population, and the need for more land forced them to cut more trees. Without trees the oxygen layer on the earth has fallen very much. We are living on the minimum.There are strange catastrophes which will be called “natural,” but they are not natural. For example, in Nepal – it is one of the poorest countries in the world – they have sold their trees to the Soviet Union. Millions of trees have been cut, and the contract still remains intact for the coming thirty years. The Soviet Union does not use axes to cut the trees, it has very refined technology. In a day it can cut thousands of trees. Within seconds, trees which have grown in three hundred years will fall down. The whole of the Himalayas surrounding Nepal have become naked of foliage, and because of that…The Ganges used to flow slowly because there were so many trees; they were a kind of hindrance. The Ganges was coming slowly, slowly, slowly, to meet the ocean in Bangladesh. Now there are no trees, the floods come with such tremendous speed that this year three fourths of Bangladesh was flooded. It is also a poor country. Millions of people died. Millions of houses were simply washed into the ocean.Now, Bangladesh cannot do anything, and if you ask Nepal, the king says, “My people are so poor. We don’t have anything to sell. We have only trees, and I have to feed my people. It is not my problem what happens to Bangladesh.”Next year, perhaps the whole of Bangladesh will have gone into the ocean. And how long can Nepal live by selling its trees? In thirty years the Soviet Union will have taken every single tree out of Nepal. Then comes a great danger: if the eternal ice of the Himalayas starts melting. The trees were shading the snows from the sun rays – thick trees, big trees – and the snow in the Himalayas has never melted, it has been there since eternity. But now there are chances you will see a tremendous flood – and there is no Noah’s Ark available anymore.If the Himalayas melt, all the oceans around the world will rise by up to forty feet. Bombay will be drowned, New York will be drowned; they will all become ocean. Cars will not be of any help – boats. You cannot survive if all the oceans rise forty feet higher – and you will call it a “natural” catastrophe…?I don’t call it a natural catastrophe. I call it a man-manufactured catastrophe.The religious leaders have not been doing anything to prevent all these catastrophes. The population goes on growing; lands become poorer and poorer because they have been cultivated for thousands of years and they have not been nourished.I told you that just at the beginning of this century, nine children were dying out of ten. Now the situation is just the opposite: one child dies out of ten, nine children go on living, because of medical facilities. We have disturbed the whole ecology of the earth.Who is responsible?Certainly religious people, who should have warned humanity not to increase the population…but they all are in favor of more population. Even Indian religious heads are against population control, because they need more and more members in their organizations, in their churches. They are not concerned at all about the whole planet earth getting destroyed by our own hands. And these so-called religious people are such a lying gang of criminals.Just today I received my birth chart from one newspaper, Veer Arjun. The astrologer is K. A. Dube Padmesh. From where has this man got it? I don’t know my own birth chart. Nobody knows my birth chart. It has never been made. I was born in such a small village where there was no airport, no railway station, no buses reaching to the village, no roads – just two hundred simple villagers living. There was not any astrologer to make my birth chart. From where these so-called religious people…?Astrology is part of the Hindu religion. From their own imagination they managed to make my chart. I have come across many charts – during these thirty years I have come across at least two dozen birth charts. They are invented by astrologers – I don’t know from where – and then they interpret them. They invent the chart and then they interpret the chart. They don’t even ask me. I don’t have a birth chart.But lying has penetrated the religious people so deeply and fundamentally…. What do the great stars have to do with an ordinary human being like me? All these stars are deciding my fate? I am not a puppet.Once it happened in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan…. They used to have one of the very famous astrologers – astrologer to the king of Rajasthan. I was staying with the king. He called his astrologer, because I had no birth chart. The astrologer said, “There is no problem. I will read your hands.”The king told me, “This is a very costly man, but I will pay, don’t be worried.”I said, “No. Leave it up to me. Don’t interfere, just keep quiet.”He used to get one thousand rupees for one reading. He did the reading and then he waited for the one thousand rupees.I said, “You are a great man of predictions. You know everything, but you don’t know I am not going to pay!”He said, “What?”I said, “Yes, you wasted my time. You have to pay me.”He said, “This is too much. If you don’t want to pay it is okay, I will go. But you are asking me to pay…?”I said, “You have been holding my hand. I don’t allow anybody to hold my hand. You have been talking nonsense and wasting my time.”I told the king of Rajasthan, “Tell this man he should put one thousand rupees here.”The king said, “He is a poor brahmin. I will give you one thousand rupees.”I said, “It does not matter. Because money is money…you put one thousand rupees here.”The king had to put one thousand rupees. I returned it to him. I said, “I don’t need it for the time being. Sometime I may need it – with interest. You called this idiot and you told me, ‘He is the great astrologer in my kingdom….’”But religion has been lying in every possible way, exploiting people in every possible way. Unless religion dies, the true authentic religiousness cannot be born.A little biographical note before I talk about the sutras Maneesha has brought. These sutras belong to the world of Zen. To me, Zen is the only authentic religiousness. It has nothing to do with Buddhism, it has nothing to do with Taoism. In fact it is a rebellion against the traditions of Buddhism and of Taoism. But it has carried the essential message of Buddha. It has discarded all that was mere commentary. It has cut all rubbish out of the way. It is the very essence of Buddha’s experience – and that is also the experience of Lao Tzu, of Tao.Zen is paving the path for the future humanity of one religiousness.Zen is the only authentic gold that has come out of the whole past of humanity.My love for it is not in vain.I am trying to help you understand Zen for a particular purpose – because you are going to be the new man, you are going to create a new humanity, a new world, which essentially is growing towards buddhahood.The buddha is nothing to do with Gautam the Buddha; the buddha is your very nature. It means, the awakening. You are unconscious. Deep underneath your unconsciousness there is hidden a flame of awareness, alertness. That flame is buddha-dharma, that is your very nature. You don’t have to go anywhere to find it, you have to go inwards. No church, no organization, no religion…just a quality of religiousness.And what is the quality of religiousness? The quality of religiousness is to be centered in your witnessing being. Out of that witnessing a great awareness arises in you; the spring comes to your life and thousands of flowers of compassion, of love, of blissfulness. All around the fragrance of the ultimate surrounds you.This is a small biographical note about Fuketsu, a Zen master.Fuketsu (who was born in 896 and died in 973) first studied the Confucian classics.Confucius was not a religious man, Confucius was just a moralist. Confucius was just a parallel to Karl Marx. It is not a coincidence that China has turned communist, because Confucian ideology paved the way. All that matters is right manners, right morality, right etiquette; no mention of spirituality, only social behavior; no mention of your individual depth. Confucius was one of the most confused men that has been born in the world.Fuketsu first studied the Confucian classics, then became a priest. Later he learned from Kyosei, the disciple of Seppo, and then finally he went to Nan In – one of the greatest Zen masters – through whom he realized his enlightenment.Studying Confucian classics, he must have understood that Confucius deals only with the outer world, society, social manners. “This is not my search; I want to know myself. I want to know what is my being, in what way my roots are connected with the cosmos; from where comes my life, and to where it goes; whether there is something more than the body and the materials that constitute the body-mind system, or there is nothing except this body, which will be put on a funeral pyre, or in a grave, and will disintegrate into the earth, into its basic elements.”I am reminded of a disciple of Confucius. He asked Confucius, “I have heard so much about Lao Tzu….” They were contemporaries. Sometimes it happens almost like a chain-reaction….In China there was Confucius, a great thinker but materialist; Lao Tzu, a great buddha; Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu. In India there were Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, and six others whose scriptures have been burnt by the Hindus, whose statues have been destroyed; just their names remain in the words of Buddha, or in the words of Mahavira. At the same time, in Greece there were Socrates, Heraclitus, Dionysius, Diogenes. Suddenly the whole world was afire with a new insight.Confucius’ disciple asked him, “You must have heard about Lao Tzu. He talks about a space inside where there is only peace and nothing else, utter silence and no disturbance. Will you teach me how to enter inside?”Confucius was very angry. He said, “Stop all this nonsense. Learn the morality, the virtue, avoid the sins, behave like a gentleman. Learn the manners of the society. As far as your inner world is concerned, when you die you will have eternity for that in the grave. You can search and meditate and find what is inside. But right now, don’t waste my time.” That was his attitude.But, by and by, many people talked about Lao Tzu. Finally Confucius gathered courage. He was very much afraid, because the stories that he had heard about Lao Tzu were so strange: “The man can do anything. He rides on a buffalo, facing backwards – a dangerous fellow.”But the more he wanted to avoid him, the more he became interested. That’s how the human mind functions. Whatever you want to avoid you will come across again and again. You will become enchanted. Finally he decided to meet him.Lao Tzu was not far away, just outside the capital in the mountains in a cave. Confucius went there. He stopped his disciples who had followed him outside the cave, because he was afraid: “That man can do anything. He may hit me, and I don’t want my disciples to see what happens to me.” He said, “I will tell you. First let me go and encounter that man.”Lao Tzu was sitting in the deep cave in darkness, very silently. He did not bother at all that Confucius had come. He did not say hello to him, he did not say, “Sit down, please.” He did not take any notice.Confucius said, “This is strange. At least you should behave like a gentleman.”Lao Tzu said, “I thought that you would not have the guts to enter into my cave. Here we don’t teach morality or gentlemanship. Here we teach how to die and get resurrected. Are you ready?” – looking into his eyes – and Lao Tzu pulled his sword.Confucius said, “Please forgive me. I will never again come in your cave!” – perspiring, and the cave was very cool.He came out and he told his disciples, “This man is dangerous. He is a dragon. He would have killed me.” He did not understand Lao Tzu at all. He was not talking about ordinary death, he was talking about the death of the ego. And unless the ego dies, you are not your authentic self, you are not your original face. Confucius missed.Fuketsu must have understood that “These classics are not going to help me.” He dropped Confucius and became a priest.But becoming a priest, worshipping statues and doing rituals, does not help either. The statue is as much outside you as anybody else; it does not lead you inwards. All your prayers, all your rituals are based on a fundamental lie: the existence of God.Finally he became disappointed with being a priest also. He came to Kyosei, a Zen master, the disciple of Seppo, another great Zen master.Kyosei told him, “Nan In is still alive. When the great buddha is still alive, why bother about small people like me? I can teach you, I can help you, but my first help is: go to Nan In. I am just a small pond, he is the very ocean. You cannot see the further shore.”This is the beauty of Zen. No other religion will send anybody to another master. There is conflict, competition. Everybody wants to be the greatest one. If somebody has come, he will grab him, he will not allow him to go anywhere else. He will take a promise: “I surrender to you.”Zen never wants anybody to surrender. No contract!Out of your freedom you come.Out of your freedom you learn.Out of your freedom you grow.Out of your freedom is going to happen your enlightenment. This is not an exception, it is almost the rule. If a master looks into the eyes of a disciple, he can see who will be the right master for this man, and he will direct him to the right man.And when a man like Nan In is alive, why not take the chance and the opportunity? It happens very rarely over the centuries. Centuries pass, then only you come across a man like Nan In.So he went to Nan In, through whom he realized his enlightenment.This is just a biographical note on Fuketsu.He stayed with Nan In for six years, and then became head of the temple at Mount Fuketsu, where he remained for seven years.It has been a tradition in the past in Japan: if a master makes a temple on a mountain, and he is enlightened, the emperor names the mountain according to the name of the master. Because Fuketsu has made a new monastery, a new opening, a new space for the seekers to come, the emperor of Japan named the mountain Fuketsu.He was Rinzai’s great-grandson in the dharma lineage.The sutra:Osho,Once, a monk asked Fuketsu, “What is the buddha?”Fuketsu replied, “The bamboo whips of Mount Jorin.”You will be surprised by the answer, but what he is saying is not exactly what he means. When he said, “The bamboo whips of Mount Jorin” – Mount Jorin was just in front of Mount Fuketsu – at that moment a breeze must have passed through the bamboos on Mount Jorin and the bamboos must have been making sounds, whipping each other, dancing in the wind, in the sun.At this moment, Fuketsu was asked by a monk,“What is the buddha?”Fuketsu replied, “This very moment…to be alert and aware this very moment is to be a buddha.Just see the bamboos whipping on Mount Jorin….”Zen trusts only in this moment. Zen cannot talk about some Gautam the Buddha hundreds of years past. When the bamboo buddhas are dancing in the air, making great celebrating noises, it is enough to indicate to the reality, this moment. That was Buddha’s essential message: to live in the moment, never in the past, never in the future. To live in the moment…and you have become a buddha. To be here and now, and you are a buddha.Another monk then asked, “What is the buddha?”because he could not understand what was going on. The man was asking, “What is the buddha?” – and you are talking about the bamboos.So the other monk asked again,“What is the buddha?”Fuketsu answered, “What is not the buddha?”This is a tremendous answer: “What is not the buddha?”Buddha is the very nature of existence. From the smallest grassleaf to the biggest star, everything is intrinsically, potentially, a buddha.Some buddhas are asleep, there is no harm in it.Some buddhas have awakened, there is no glory in it.Just take care, when you are a sleeping buddha – don’t snore, because that disturbs other sleeping buddhas. Not to disturb anybody, not to interfere in anybody’s territory – that is the only virtue I know of.There is not much difference…. I was asleep yesterday, today I am awake. Today you are asleep, tomorrow you may be awake – or perhaps today.The buddha is our intrinsic nature, hence Fuketsu has made one of the most significant statements:“What is not the buddha? You tell me.“You ask me, What is the buddha? Are you mad? Life itself is buddha. Existence itself is buddha.”Yes, buddhas are found in two categories: a few are asleep, may be tired, tired of many, many life circles, many, many births, many, many deaths, resting. But a few have rested enough. They are tired of rest, so they get up. But there is no essential difference: buddha awake, buddha asleep – both are buddhas.Neither can sleep disturb your nature, nor can awakening enhance your nature. Yes, asleep you don’t know who you are; awake, not only do you know who you are, you know the whole existence, its intrinsic quality – that of buddhahood. Once you become a buddha, suddenly the whole existence is a fire of awareness.Great is the answer of Fuketsu: “What is not the buddha?”A third monk said to Fuketsu, “The Western Patriarch came bringing his message; I ask you to tell me it point-blank!”He is asking about Bodhidharma. That is a constant question in the Zen world: Why has Bodhidharma come from India to China? What was his message?At this, Fuketsu replied, “When one dog barks at nothing, a thousand monkeys really show their teeth.”A strange answer, but significant. He is saying, “Why are you bothered about these things? Bodhidharma came to China to bark!”All the buddhas are doing exactly that: barking at sleeping people. Sleeping people means monkeys.“When one dog barks at nothing…”You must have seen dogs barking at nothing – great buddhas! Buddha’s only message is nothingness, or, more point-blank, no-thingness. You are not a thing, you are not a commodity. You are beyond thingness. You are a light unto yourself.“When one dog barks at nothing…”Remember clearly that Zen accepts that dogs have as much buddha-nature as you have. Every living being…the very life is essentially hiding the buddha in itself.“When one dog barks at nothing, a thousand monkeys really show their teeth.”When one Bodhidharma comes to China and barks, thousands of monkeys become Buddhists – but they have not understood the message. They laughed at Bodhidharma’s barking at nothing; they enjoyed. For them, entertainment is enlightenment. Monkeys are after all monkeys.But what he is saying, he is saying about humanity. If you are not a buddha, forget all about humanity. Of course you have the body of the human being, but inside, look at your mind – it is a monkey.Only a buddha stops the monkey completely. Only a buddha lives in no-mind. And no-mind makes you authentically human, authentically existential, authentically part of the cosmos, of eternity. You disappear in the ocean of existence, and that is the greatest blessing, the greatest ecstasy.On another occasion a monk asked, “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West?”The same question.Fuketsu said, “We know all the windings of the mountain stream, but not the mountain itself.”You have to note the fact. You can put the same question to the same master again and again, but you will never get the same answer again. A master responds to the moment spontaneously, he does not repeat from memory. His response is so pure….Everything goes on changing, but your reaction remains the same. Response goes on changing with the changing flux of existence.A master never reacts, he only responds.So the question is the same, but Fuketsu’s answer is totally different.He says,“We know all the windings of the mountain stream…”He is sitting on Mount Fuketsu, and a mountain stream is winding around the mountain. It is a present moment. He shows the questioner,“We know all the windings of the mountain stream, but not the mountain itself.To know the mountain you will have to become the mountain. To know Bodhidharma you will have to become a Bodhidharma. There is no other way.To know the Buddha you have to become a buddha. Being a Buddhist, you are monkeying, you are imitating. Monkeys are very great as far as imitation is concerned.All the so-called religions are full of monkeys.Christians are repeating Jesus; their famous classic is Imitation Of Christ. Nobody thinks that imitation is an ugly word. It is a very cherished classic of Christianity.Buddhists are trying – imitating – to be a Buddha. But by imitating you can act like a buddha, but you cannot be a buddha.If you want to be a buddha, forget all about Buddhas and Christs and Krishnas. Just be yourself, enter into yourself, and you will find the buddha – not by being a Buddhist, but by just finding your authenticity, your innermost center. Don’t be a monkey, ever.I am reminded of a beautiful story.A man used to sell Gandhi caps. Particularly at election time in India, Gandhi caps are very much in need. Everybody wants to prove that he is a Gandhian. The Gandhi cap is like a flag, showing to everybody that “I am a Gandhian. Vote for me.”A man used to make Gandhi caps for the election time, and he used to go from market to market selling the caps. It was a good business. The caps were in great demand.One day, he was so tired coming back home. He himself was wearing a Gandhi cap, and in his bag he still had many caps left. He was thinking to go to another marketplace, but he was so tired that under a huge bodhi tree, the same tree under which Buddha became enlightened…That’s why that tree is called a bodhi tree. It is named after Buddha. Bodhi means enlightenment.It is a strange tree amongst all the trees; it can grow as huge as you want. Its branches after a certain length become so heavy they drop down. Because their weight is so great, to protect themselves the branches send new roots to the earth. When the new roots reach the earth, they have a new support. And each branch goes on sending new roots, so there are huge bodhi trees.One exists in Adyar in the theosophical movement’s world headquarters. It is so huge that ten thousand people can sit under it. The Theosophists used to have their meetings under the bodhi tree.The man did not look at the tree, but it was full of monkeys. He was so tired, he just put his bag by his side and went to sleep. The monkeys watched. They could not resist the temptation of having a Gandhi cap. They came closer and they found that the man was fast asleep, so they pulled the bag open. Every monkey got one cap; only one monkey remained.When the man had rested, he looked around. His bag was empty, and he could not see anybody. Then the monkeys started giggling. He looked up. He said, “My God! So many Gandhians! Now what to do?” Then suddenly he remembered that monkeys are imitators. So he took off his cap and threw it. All the monkeys took their caps off and threw them. He collected the caps and went back home.The next year he fell sick at the time of the elections. He had prepared caps so he told his son to go to the marketplaces: “But remember one thing. There is on the way a very huge bodhi tree which is full of monkeys. And the shade is so cool…after miles of walking, one feels to rest. So I will tell you my experience, otherwise you will be in trouble. If it happens to you, remember, don’t be worried: monkeys are imitators.“If you want to sleep, go to sleep. If the monkeys take the caps, let them enjoy for a moment. When you wake up, don’t be worried, just throw your cap and they will all throw their caps. Collect the caps and go home.”The boy said, “That’s great.” In fact, he was looking forward to enjoying the great moment.Before going to the market – the father had rested when he was coming back – the boy thought, “Why not rest now and enjoy and then go to the market?” So with the full bag, he went to sleep. The monkeys came down, and when he woke up they were all wearing the caps.The boy looked up. They all giggled. The boy knew the trick; he threw his cap. No monkey threw his cap; on the contrary, one monkey who had not got a cap came down and took his cap and went back up.Not only had the boy’s father told him, the monkeys had also been told by their fathers, “If such a thing happens, don’t be deceived.”Basho wrote:Temple bells die out….Have you ever listened to the temple bells slowly, slowly dying out? The sound becomes less and less and less, or the echo in the valleys goes on dying, and then comes a great silence, greater than it was before the bells were rung.Temple bells die out.The fragrant blossoms remain –a perfect evening!Basho writes with such a golden touch.You can see it exactly! You can hear the bell ringing and dying into deep silence. You can see the blossoms still remain, and the fragrance.The silence deepens, the fragrance deepens…a perfect evening.Haikus are, as I have told you, word pictures. Without painting, just through words, the haiku paints a picture, a very living picture. With paints the picture is dead. The poet’s great art consists in painting a picture that will remain alive forever.Temple bells die out. The fragrant blossoms remain – a perfect evening!Maneesha has asked a question:Osho,Are we born with an innate, inward propulsion towards self-realization?Alternatively, is the nature of truth such that it attracts that which is of it? Or are there altogether different dynamics at play in regard to enlightenment?Maneesha, both the things function together.The magnet of your buddhahood pulls you inwards, and the thirst that is created out of disappointments in life makes you ready to search. You have looked all around and have not found anything. You have been thirsty, and thirsty, and thirsty, and everything has failed, all promises are broken.Then a moment comes, you start looking inwards. “You have looked outside enough, just give a chance to the inner” – that idea arises automatically, and there is your innate buddha pulling you. And once you look inside, both start functioning together, moving closer to each other. Halfway they meet.A Sufi saying is, “If you take one step towards truth, truth takes one thousand steps towards you.”No other dynamics is needed. All that is needed is a clarity about disappointment in the outside world, and an intelligence to remind you that you have not searched inwards. Just these two things are needed. A thirsty inquiry, and the buddha is sitting there like a great magnet pulling you towards him and also moving closer to you. The meeting is always in the middle.I help you to go inside in search of your inner center. That is the center where you will meet the buddha. He will come out from the hidden treasure of your being to welcome you at the gate. The center of your being is the gate of the cosmos.It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. In fact, it is late!Father Fungus has accumulated a huge gambling debt and needs some money fast. He has a bright idea for solving his problem. He wires up all the church seats with electricity.The next Sunday, Father Fungus is blasting out his sermon when he stops and shouts, “All those who will give one hundred dollars towards the church charity fund, stand up!”Fungus touches a button and twenty people spring to their feet.“Good!” says Father Fungus. “Now, all those who want to give five hundred dollars, stand up!”He touches another button and twenty more jump to their feet.“Excellent!” says Fungus. “Now, all those who will give a thousand dollars, stand up!”He throws the master switch, and fifteen visiting Scotsmen are electrocuted to death!Father Fumble is visiting his central Oregonian flock and comes to the Sheep-Shaggers’ farm near Fossil. He sees little Becky, the Sheep-Shaggers’ daughter, playing in the front yard and goes over for a chat.“Hello, my child,” says Father Fumble. “May I speak to your father?”“No,” replies Becky, shaking her head. “He’s in jail for molesting sheep.”“Really?” exclaims Father Fumble. “Then may I speak to your mother?”“No,” replies Becky, shaking her head. “She has been taken to the funny farm. She was talking to sheep.”“Really?” exclaims Fumble. “Then may I speak to your brother?”“No,” replies Becky. “He is at the university.”“How nice!” exclaims Fumble. “What is he studying?”“He ain’t studying nothing,” replies Becky. “They are studying him!”Muffin Snuffler, the White House cleaner, is polishing the floor in the Oval Office one day, when he looks up at George Washington’s portrait and sees the lips moving.Shocked and a little frightened, Muffin edges closer to the portrait and listens to America’s hero speak.“Bring me a horse!” commands Washington. “I am going to put this country in order!”Muffin races out of the office and bumps straight into President George Bush. “Mister President, sir,” he screams, “George Washington’s portrait just spoke to me!”“Don’t be an idiot!” snaps Bush. “Pictures don’t talk!” And he walks into the Oval Office and over to the painting. But before he reaches it, George Washington speaks again, “Hey, Muffin!” shouts Washington, “I told you to bring me a horse – not a donkey!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent…Close your eyes…Feel your bodies to be completely frozen.This is the right moment to look inwards, with your total life energy, with your total consciousness, and with an urgency as if this is the last moment of your life.Go as forcibly towards the center as an arrow, piercing all the layers of the body, mind, astral body.Just go to the center.As you come closer to the center, you are closer to the buddha.As you come deeper into yourself, you are approaching your very being.The moment you reach to the center, a great meeting happens.You and buddha merge into each other, just as two lights merge into each other, and a great silence descends, and a tremendous joy arises in you.Remember only one quality that buddha has. That quality is witnessing.Whatever is happening, just be a witness, don’t be identified.You are not the body, you are not the mind, you are not the astral body.You are not the silence, you are not all those flowers that are showering on you.You are only a witness.The witness is the very being of a buddha.At this moment I am facing ten thousand buddhas.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Help them to relax.But remember to witness everything that is happening within you. Slowly, slowly you will feel a tremendous melting into the ocean of consciousness that surrounds you. Ten thousand buddhas are melting into an ocean of consciousness without any ripples.Rejoice, cherish, this is the greatest moment of your life. You are the most fortunate people on the earth at this moment.Collect as much fragrance of the inner, as many flowers of the invisible, as much juice of infinity, of the eternal, as much dance of existence as possible.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but come back as buddhas, with great peace, silence, grace.Sit down for a few moments just to remember the golden path that you have traveled. And just watch: every day the distance between you and the buddha is becoming less and less.The day your center and your circumference become one, the day your day-to-day life is also an expression of your buddhahood – carrying water from the well, chopping wood for the winter – you will be a buddha in your meditation, you will be a buddha in all your activities. That day will be the greatest day in your millions of lives. That day you will be awakened from a coma, from a deep, deep sleep for the first time.For the first time you will know the beauty of existence, its truth, its splendor. Then all that remains for you is to share – share your joy, your ecstasy, with friends, with strangers.Except the whole earth becomes filled with this festival of being a buddha, there is no hope for man.But I trust in the intelligence of existence. You simply spread the fragrance. It will become a wildfire around the earth.One single seed can make the whole earth green.

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One Seed Makes Whole Earth Green 01-04Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

One Seed Makes Whole Earth Green 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Shojin Daishi came from India and said to Fuketsu, “We learners have the three of the body, the four of the mouth; I ask you to confess me!”At this, Fuketsu snapped his fingers and said, “May your sins disappear! May your sins disappear!”On another occasion, a monk said to Fuketsu, “People have collected like clouds; please expound the dharma!”Fuketsu replied, “People pursue a rabbit barefoot; they eat the meat with their shoes on.”Another monk said to Fuketsu, “Even without the practice of Zen, may we certainly attain buddhahood?”Fuketsu said, “The golden cock heralds the dawn; the pitch barrel sends out a dark radiance.”At another time, a monk asked Fuketsu, “Both speech and silence transgress. How can we not do so?”Fuketsu replied: “I always remember the spring in Konan, where the partridges sing: how fragrant the countless flowers!”Friends, I have never laughed in my life as much as I have laughed this last week. Every day something hilarious happens.Today I have received a message from the Dalit Elevation Republic Party, that I have to prove my sanity by a certificate from a psychologist. Only then are they ready to discuss matters with me.Under my guidance, almost one hundred psychologists are working, and hundreds more come and go to learn meditation here. Whom should I ask for the certificate?It reminded me…. When I graduated from the university I immediately went to the education minister of Madhya Pradesh. He was also the chancellor of the University of Sagar, where I had postgraduate degrees in psychology, in religion, in philosophy. Now that same person is the vice-president of India.I went directly to him. I told his secretary, “I am going to meet the chancellor of my university, not the education minister, so don’t come in between me and the chancellor. He knows me, he has been coming to the university every year for the convocation address. He has even addressed under my presidency the philosophical department of the University of Sagar. He knows me.”He informed the education minister, who called me in. He said, “What is the matter?”I said, “I have passed from your university, and I have topped the whole university. This is the gold medal. I need a teaching job in any university.”He said, “You qualify absolutely. All the way you have been a first-class first, and finally you have topped the university, so you will get a place. And I know you personally, and I have always loved and respected you. Because you have been presiding over the meetings in the university where I was a guest speaker, I have heard you.”So he looked at my papers, the application, and then he said, “One thing is missing, your character certificate.”I said, “I know it. But do you want me to have a character certificate from someone to whom I cannot give a character certificate?”He scratched his head. He said, “Perhaps you are right. What about your vice-chancellor? What about your head of the department of philosophy?”I said, “You know perfectly well my vice-chancellor is a drunkard. Do you want me to get a certificate from a drunkard about my character? I cannot certify my vice-chancellor for his character.“My head of the department of philosophy has never lived with his wife, has been living with another woman. He keeps his wife and children in Delhi just to avoid them, so that he can have all the women he wants. Do you want me to get a character certificate from him? I know him better; perhaps you don’t know him that well.”He said, “It is a difficult problem.”I asked him point-blank, “Do you want to give me a character certificate? Do you think you are qualified? No politician in this country is qualified to give me a character certificate. Either you accept my application without the character certificate, or you refuse it.“And I am here and you are asking for a character certificate. Look into my eyes! Look into my face! And do you have any understanding? Then don’t ask foolish questions.”He immediately gave me an appointment in a college. I took the appointment order from his hand. He said, “This is not the right way, it has to go through the post.”I said, “When I am going to the college myself, why unnecessarily waste postage stamps?”He said, “You are a strange fellow.”I said, “That’s correct. But to be a strange fellow does not mean a man without character.”So I took the appointment order, and the next day I appeared in the college where he had appointed me. The principal could not believe it: “Just in one day…where did you get this appointment order?”I said, “Directly from the education minister.”He said, “This is not routine. It should come through the post.”I said, “Just because of this routine your whole bureaucracy is stagnant. I remember many cases…. One postcard traveled from Katni to Jabalpur, only eighty miles by road, in forty years. Do you want me to be appointed alive or dead?”He looked at me, and he said, “That’s true, I have also read many cases where a postcard has traveled for seventeen years, eighteen years.”So I said, “That’s why I have brought it with me myself.” But he was a little hesitant. I said, “You can phone the education minister in front of me. If you cannot trust me, you can phone the education minister.”He phoned the education minister, who said, “That appointment order is signed by me. You don’t have to hesitate, give him the appointment!”There are hundreds of psychoanalysts, psychologists, therapists, believers in other different schools of psychology, who have been here under me to learn meditation – because psychology itself has come to understand that it is incomplete. Without attaining a silent mind, all that you can do is analyze dreams. And analyzing dreams is not going to give you the essential being of the person.Right now there are dozens of psychoanalysts, therapists present in this meeting – they have come from far away, well educated, trained, certified to practice psychoanalysis. But psychoanalysis itself is dying, because it has not cured a single person in the whole world. Twenty years of psychoanalysis…Millions of dollars are being paid – because psychoanalysis is the most costly profession. But even they cannot claim that they have psychoanalyzed a single person completely. The whole effort of psychoanalysis is futile. They are simply scratching on the surface of the mind, looking into dreams.Psychology does not believe in the soul of man. Psychology believes that mind is a by-product of the body, and the people who have not even inquired beyond the mind into the soul of man are making statements which are absolute lies. They have not inquired. The whole East has been concerned not with the mind, but with something beyond the mind.Now they are becoming aware that threshing the mind for years you gain nothing. There must be something more, otherwise psychoanalysis and all other different schools of psychology are going to die. They are already dying.One of the greatest psychiatrists of America, Dr. Weiss, for many years was thinking whether to say it or not – because it will create an uproar in the whole psychological movement around the world. He has been watching for years and seeing that psychoanalysis does not work. Unless something spiritual is added to it, it is on its deathbed.But just now he gathered courage and wrote a book, Many Lives, Many Masters, and declared that psychoanalysis and all its different schools are in their last death throes. He has shocked the whole psychological movement around the world.He is a graduate of Yale University and now one of the most respected American psychoanalysts – a psychiatrist, psycho-pharmacologist, writer of many books. A lifelong search has ended in the declaration that psychology is not enough.The East has been saying this for almost ten thousand years. For what reasons was psychology not born in the East?It is strange, because the East has been working on the inner world of man, and they did not develop a psychology. They did not bother about analyzing dreams, because they knew this is just treating the symptoms, and treating the symptoms does not cure the disease.The disease is deeper than the mind, and unless you give man a clear perception of his being, of his eternal soul, nothing can help humanity. Only an experience of the eternity, the immortality of consciousness gives man wholeness – and I call this the only holiness also.If these people whom I have been trying to help all my life…I have been in support of the oppressed, the suppressed, but they don’t understand. Neither have they read any book of mine, nor have they ever come to listen to me.I have six hundred and fifty books – perhaps nobody in the whole world has written six hundred and fifty books – translated into thirty-four languages of the world. And this uneducated, uncultured Dalit organization has some nerve to ask me that I should produce a certificate from a psychologist concerning my sanity.England’s greatest psychoanalyst, Ronnie Laing, has written just a few days ago. He has been sending his own patients, whom he could not cure in fourteen or sixteen years of work, to learn meditation. He wanted to come to be here for a few days. He wants to learn meditation – because mind is not enough; one needs something more of the eternity of existence.Eighty-four of the most prominent psychoanalysts, painters, poets, philosophers of Italy have protested to the Italian government for refusing me entry into Italy. The same is the case in Holland, in Greece, in other countries.Twenty-one countries have banned my entry into their territory. Never has there been an unarmed man…Just a word of truth creates fear in all those people who are living on lies.Even the German parliament – I have never asked to enter Germany – without my asking, thinking that perhaps some day I may ask, has passed a law in the parliament that not only can I not enter into Germany, but my jet plane cannot be refueled at any German airport, because I might corrupt their morality, their religion, their culture – just in three weeks. A culture that has been propagated for two thousand years, a religion that has lived for two thousand years, is afraid of a single man. If your two thousand-year-old culture, morality, religion can be destroyed by a tourist in three weeks, then it is not worth having.And if these people want to know, they can come to the ashram office. There are at least one thousand letters that were written to the American government when I was arrested there, from all kinds of prominent people around the world, condemning the criminal step of Ronald Reagan: arresting a man without any reason, without any arrest warrant. They had no evidence at all against me.I never go out of my room. I am not concerned with anybody’s morality and religion and civilization.According to me, all these things have not yet happened. Man has yet to wait. Man is still living in the darkness of the barbarous past.In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars – and you call this man cultured? Just Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah – amongst these three they have killed one hundred million people.The most cultured country, the most educated – which has created great philosophers like Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Karl Marx – is afraid of me. And this is the country of Adolf Hitler, who killed six million Jews in Germany in his gas chambers, and who killed in the second world war thirty million people. And they think they are civilized, they think they are cultured, they have a religion.But if this Dalit organization wants, it can come to the office and look at all the protests that have been made to the president of America for arresting a mystic who has not committed any crime at all.They fabricated, imagined, thirty-four charges against me, and not a single one had any truth in it. And the attorney general, Ed Meese, of America…When they forced me to leave America, after my leaving, Ed Meese’s representative admitted in a press conference, “He was innocent, he has not committed any crime.” But the fundamentalist Christians – and Ronald Reagan was a fundamentalist Christian – did not want “this man” to be in the country.One wonders, has man changed at all since Socrates, the greatest man of Greece, was poisoned? But the little man, the crowd of Greece, could not tolerate his height; they poisoned their own greatest genius. Since then Greece has never been the same. It committed suicide by poisoning Socrates. It is no longer a prominent country in the world. With Socrates it had been at the very peak of civilization.The Jews killed Jesus, crucified him without any reason or rhyme, with no evidence of any crime. And since then the Jews have suffered immeasurably all around the world.What crime had Jesus committed? What crime had al-Hillaj Mansoor committed? Mohammedans killed him, in a far more animalistic way than Jesus was crucified. They cut him piece by piece: feet, legs, thighs – they cut him piece by piece. And yet this man’s crime was that he kept making the statement “Ana’l Haq” again and again. It means “I am the truth.” That was the crime.It seems that thinking is a crime in the eyes of the world.One of the most important journalists, internationally well established, is M. V. Kamath. He has reviewed my books, and says that I am the greatest genius in the last part of this century. Mad people are never geniuses.Another great journalist of India, the late editor of the Illustrated Weekly Of India, has reviewed another book of mine on Friedrich Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.I am the only person who has commented on that book – because Adolf Hitler adulterated Friedrich Nietzsche’s statements according to his own will. Whatever he wanted to use he had chosen out of Friedrich Nietzsche’s work. And because of Adolf Hitler, Nietzsche became condemned. I had to pull Nietzsche out from Adolf Hitler’s hands.I have spoken on Thus Spake Zarathustra. Reviewing it, the editor of the Illustrated Weekly has compared me with Adi Shankara. He says in his review that “After Adi Shankara, there has never been anybody else of the same caliber and the same intelligence” – although I don’t agree with him.I would not like to be compared in any way to Adi Shankara. I accept Adi Shankara as one of the greatest philosophers, there is no doubt about it. But his philosophy and his lifestyle were contradictory; hence I don’t want to be compared with Adi Shankara.On the one hand he was saying, “We are all divine, we are all in our innermost being gods, the ultimate cosmic soul,” and on the other hand he was accepting the Hindu caste system. He was saying that everybody is god in a hidden way. But what about the sudras? Even their shadow makes you dirty.He was propounding the philosophy that the whole world outside you is illusory – but what about the sudras? They are the only real people it seems; everybody else is illusory.One sudra touched Shankara when he had come to take a bath in the Ganges in Varanasi. It was early morning, still dark, and a man touched him intentionally. Shankara would not have detected anything because it was dark and he could not see the man, but the man himself said, “Wait! You will have to take another bath. I am a sudra.”Shankara freaked out. You don’t expect a man of the intelligence of Shankara to freak out. He was so angry, so full of rage, he said, “Why have you touched me?”The man said, “It is a question of philosophy. You say everything in the world is illusory. What about me? Is my body different from your body? Is my soul different from your soul? In your philosophy you are saying totally different things. Please practice them also.”So I understand the great compliment to me as the greatest genius after Adi Shankara, but still I will not agree to be compared with Adi Shankara. His philosophy and his lifestyle are contradictory.The world-famous journalist and writer, Aubrey Menon, has written a book, The New Mystics. He has written about me in that book that when he encountered me in Bombay in a Cross Maidan meeting of almost fifty thousand people, he could not believe his eyes. He writes that he had been sitting in the front row when President Kennedy was speaking, but he could not feel anything. The speech was written by his secretary, it was not spontaneous. “It was ordinary, it did not touch anybody’s heart. I came away utterly frustrated.”He had been in the rallies of Adolf Hitler, who was thought to be one of the greatest orators. But, he says, when he heard me, he heard a totally different kind of being.Adolf Hitler was simply shouting slogans without any meaning, even nonsensical. He was telling the Germans, “All our miseries are because of the Jews.” The fact was that the Jews were the richest people in Germany, and his eye was on their riches. “Kill the Jews and take all their money and all their factories and all their businesses!” And he convinced the so-called intellectuals of Germany – even Martin Heidegger, one of the most famous philosophers of this century – that Jews were the problem. “Because of the Jews, Germany is not able to conquer the whole world, so first finish the Jews.”Absolutely absurd.Aubrey Menon writes, “I could not feel any conviction in what he was saying.”And when he heard me…I am absolutely spontaneous, simple. I don’t know what word is going to come next, I don’t know what I am going to say to you. I just face you and allow my being to be poured into your hearts. He felt it, and he could not believe that fifty thousand people were sitting so silently as if there was no one – pindrop silence. He says, “I understood the meaning of the phrase for the first time.”You can experience it here.These ten thousand people can testify for my sanity. Raise both your hands if you think I am sane.(With great laughter, everyone raises both hands.)Thank you.(More laughter and applause.)Now the sutras. Maneesha has asked:Osho,Shojin Daishi came from India and said to Fuketsu, “We learners have the three of the body, the four of the mouth; I ask you to confess me!”There are, according to Gautam Buddha, and according to all the mystics of the East – and particularly of India – three bodies. The one body you know is physical. Another body behind it is astral; it is made of pure light, hence it has no weight.When you die only your physical body dies. The astral body takes your innermost being to another womb, unless you have become enlightened. If you become enlightened, then except your innermost center everything dies, and the center is for the first time released from the prison of the three bodies. It simply melts like ice in the oceanic consciousness of the universe. That is the ultimate freedom. We have called it moksha, we have called it nirvana. All those words mean ultimate freedom from all bondage of body and action, of mind and thinking, of feeling and emotions.The third body is called the subtle body. It is completely made of something like air. You can see the second body if you have the eyes of meditation. You can see the body of light; light is perceptible. But air is not perceptible even to meditators. The third body is the subtle body.These are layers of protection.Behind these three bodies is hidden your real being, your great splendor, your ultimate ecstasy.And what are the four mouths? Gautam Buddha jokingly said, “Everybody has at least four mouths. You can have more, but everybody has at least four mouths.” He means masks upon masks.When you meet your boss you have a different face. When you meet your servant you don’t have the same face. Just watch. When you meet your wife you have another face. When you meet your girlfriend you have another face.You can watch from far away a couple walking towards you, and see whether they are married or not. The faces will show. The husband looks embarrassed, the wife is constantly being a detective. A beautiful woman passes by: the husband cannot look at her, the wife is watching.It is said that a few people get out of bed in the morning, take their breakfast and go to their job; a few people get out of bed and go to their home.When you see a man with a girlfriend, it is all joy. The same girlfriend will become a crucifixion.I am reminded of a great psychologist who was surveying a madhouse. The superintendent took him inside. In a small room one man was just weeping and weeping, tears and tears, and was holding a photograph on his chest. It was such a miserable situation.The psychoanalyst asked the superintendent, “What has happened to this man?”The superintendent said, “He wanted to marry a woman – he has the photograph – but he could not marry her, and he has gone insane.”They moved to the second cell, and another man was hitting his head on the walls. The psychoanalyst asked, “What has happened to this man? Why is he hitting his head?”The superintendent said, “You may not believe it: he married the same woman, and has gone mad!”Buddha says everybody has masks, and unless you are freed of masks, you can never know your original face. The original face and the finding of it is the whole search of authentic religiousness. So, Buddha said, drop as many masks as possible. Everybody, the poorest of the poor, has at least four masks, and he goes on changing his face.It starts even from childhood. You go to a school. If the teacher is not in the class, you watch the children. It is a chaos: books are being thrown, people are being beaten, they are writing anything they want on the blackboard. And the moment the teacher enters, absolute silence descends, everybody is looking at his book. They are not reading, but they are looking at the books.What has happened?Even small children…but we teach them. Mothers tell small babies, “I am your mother: smile.” If the baby is not feeling to smile, why should she smile? You are teaching diplomacy. Slowly, slowly the child learns, because he is dependent on the parents for everything. So when the mother comes, the child smiles. It is fake; he has no desire to smile. When the father comes, he smiles. It is fake.We are creating frauds from the very childhood: “Respect your elders” – whether you respect them or not.I was in constant trouble in my childhood. Anybody who was older, a distant relative – in India you don’t know all your relatives – my father would tell me, “Touch his feet, he is a distant relative.”I would say, “I will not touch his feet unless I find something respectable in him.”So whenever any relative was to come, they would persuade me to go out, “because it is very embarrassing. We are saying to you, ‘Respect the old man,’ and you ask, ‘Let us wait. Let me see something respectable. I will touch his feet – but without knowing, how do you expect me to be honest and truthful?’”But these are not the qualities society respects. Smile, honor, obey – whether it is right or wrong does not matter. You will have respectability.In the second world war, a professor in Germany, a professor of philosophy, was enrolled forcibly into the army. He resisted, he said, “You don’t understand. I am a philosopher. I cannot kill people without any reason.” But nobody listened to him.They said, “We will teach him. Just let him come to the army quarters. Under a loaded gun he will come to his senses.” But they had no idea of the man.They brought him for the first parade on the ground in the early morning. The commander-in-chief ordered, “Left turn!” Everybody turned left, but the philosopher remained standing as he was.The commander came to him and asked, “Why…? Are you deaf?”He said, “No, but I had told you beforehand: I don’t see any reason…why should I turn left?”And then, finally, people turned left and right and went forward and backward, and finally came back to the same place. The professor said, “Aha! If they were all going to the same position again, then what is the point? I have been standing here all the time!”The commander-in-chief thought, “This man is impossible.”He asked the general, “You have enrolled this man; I cannot cope with him. You give him some other job.”The general took him to the mess, and gave him a simple job: a pile of peas…. He told the professor, “You sit down, and sort out the bigger peas on one side, and the smaller peas on the other side. I will come after one hour – and take care that the work is done.”After one hour he came back. The professor was sitting silently; the peas were exactly the same as when he had left. He said, “What happened?”The professor said, “There are tremendous problems.”The general said, “What problems?”The professor said, “There are big peas; okay, I can put them at this side. There are small peas, I can put them at that side. But there are some in between: where to put them? If I don’t know where to put them I cannot sort it out.“In fact,” he said, “every pea is individual. I can make a line which will go miles away, the biggest pea, then the smaller, then the smaller, then the smaller. But this small mess will not do, I need a big ground!”The general said, “Please, you go back to the university.”The man was simple and innocent and had no masks.Buddha said everybody is a hypocrite. Everybody tries to show his face according to the expectations of the crowd. Everybody listens to the crowd, because the crowd never likes anybody who is a stranger, the crowd never likes anybody who is more intelligent.In America I had my commune in Oregon, and I told the news media, “The people of Oregon are retarded.” The politicians of Oregon were very angry, the governor was very angry, the attorney general was very angry. The supreme court of Oregon, the high court of Oregon – they were all angry.I said, “Anger won’t help. A survey is needed” – and an Oregon university took up the task. They came up with the conclusion: “He is right. The average Oregonian has only seven percent of intelligence functioning, and the average member of the commune has fourteen percent – double that of any Oregonian. You cannot start a case against the man. It is really a strange clarity of vision that he saw that the whole of Oregon is retarded. Seven percent is the intelligence of retarded people.”I have called the whole Indian parliament retarded, and the speaker of Lok Sabha wrote a letter to me, saying that “You have to apologize, you have insulted the parliament of the country.”I said, “I have not insulted anybody. First you get all the members of your parliament checked. If I am wrong, you can crucify me. And if I am right, then you all have to leave the parliament, and new elections will be needed.”He did not dare, because he knows…In the parliament people are throwing shoes at each other, using four-letter words which are not to be put on the record, shouting, wrestling with each other. He knows his parliament. He did not answer me, because that will be a strange phenomenon if by chance – and there is every chance – the whole parliament proves to be below seven percent. It will be a laughing matter for the whole world. It is better to keep quiet.Buddha said that the society lives in a very fraudulent way. It lives in lies, it lives in imaginary consolations. It has so many faces. According to the place, according to the person, it changes its face. And he was telling this so that anybody who wants to be authentically religious drops all these masks.You may not be aware that the word personality comes from Greek. It means the mask. In Greek drama, in the ancient days, every actor used to have a mask. Persona means mask, and from persona has come the word personality. Unless you drop your personality you will not be able to find your individuality.Individuality is given by existence; personality is imposed by the society. Personality is social convenience. Society cannot tolerate individuality, because individuality will not follow like a sheep. Individuality has the quality of the lion; the lion moves alone.The sheep are always in the crowd, hoping that being in the crowd will feel cozy. Being in the crowd one feels more protected, secure. If somebody attacks, there is every possibility in a crowd to save yourself – but alone? Only the lions move alone.And every one of you is born a lion, but the society goes on conditioning you, programming your mind as a sheep. It gives you a personality, a cozy personality, nice, very convenient, very obedient.Society wants slaves, not people who are absolutely dedicated to freedom. Society wants slaves because all the vested interests want obedience.The people who are in power, the people who have riches, the people who are the heads of religions, they all want one thing: you should not raise your head. You should live like a slave, pulled and pushed to this side and that side. You should not resist. You should not assert your being, your intelligence, your individuality.This is the fear, the reason why twenty-one countries are preventing me from entering their territories: because I am in absolute favor of personalities dying and individualities being regained. That is real resurrection.One great king, Prasenjita, contemporary to Gautam Buddha, had come to see Gautam Buddha for the first time. His wife had been a lay-disciple of Gautam Buddha for a long time before she was married to Prasenjita. She was a daughter of a greater king.So when Gautam Buddha came to Prasenjita’s capital, the wife said to the husband, “It does not look right that when a man like Gautam Buddha comes to your capital, you don’t go to welcome him. I am going. He is sure to ask about you. What am I to say?”The husband thought for a moment, and he said, “Okay, I am coming also. But because I am coming for the first time, I would like to give him some present. I have one very great diamond; even emperors are jealous because of that diamond. Buddha must appreciate it, so I will take the diamond.”The wife started laughing. She said, “Rather than the diamond, it will be better if you take a lotus flower from our big pond. To the Buddha the lotus flower is more beautiful. What will he do with the diamond? It will be an unnecessary burden.”He said, “I will take both and let us see who wins.”So he came on his golden chariot to the commune of Buddha, where ten thousand monks were sitting around him. Just before he was going to start his morning talk, the golden chariot of the king stopped, so he waited for the king to come in.The king came in front of him, and first he offered Buddha the diamond. Buddha said, “Drop it!” It was very difficult for Prasenjita to drop his diamond – that was his very life! – but not to drop it also was difficult. Before ten thousand people Buddha had said it – “and you have offered the diamond so it no longer belongs to you.”He hesitated. Buddha said, “Drop it!” So he dropped the diamond, reluctantly, and offered the lotus flower with the other hand.Buddha said, “Drop it!” Prasenjita thought, “Is this man crazy?” He dropped the lotus flower, and Buddha said, “Don’t you listen? Drop it!”He said, “Both my hands are empty. Now what do you want me to drop?”At that moment, one of the oldest disciples of Buddha, Sariputra, said, “You don’t understand. Buddha is not saying to drop the diamond, or to drop the flower. He is saying, ‘Drop your personality. Drop that you are a king. Drop this mask, be just human, because through the mask it is impossible for me to approach you.’”He had never thought about it. But a great silence, and ten thousand people…and he fell spontaneously at the feet of Buddha.Buddha said, “That’s what I have been telling you: drop it. Now sit down. Be just human. Here nobody is an emperor and nobody is a beggar. Here everybody is himself. Just be yourself. This being an emperor can be taken away from you.“Someday somebody will conquer your kingdom and you will be a beggar. This emperorhood is not your essential part. It can be stolen, it can be conquered, it can be destroyed. Better you yourself drop it – that is more manly – and just remain your authentic being.”Daishi had come to India to learn the teachings and the discipline of Gautam Buddha – long after Gautam Buddha, perhaps one thousand years after, looking for some awakened, enlightened person who can help him to understand what meditation is.He was told that we have three bodies and four mouths. He could not understand. What three bodies, four mouths? He went back to Japan and reached the great Zen master Fuketsu, and asked him, “Please explain to me what is the meaning of this puzzling statement. I have only one body, one mouth.”At this, Fuketsu snapped his fingers –just snapped his fingers –And said, “May your sins disappear! May your sins disappear!”This is the world of Zen, where an ordinary rationality is of no use. The man has asked something absolutely different, and Fuketsu answered in such a way that if you try to rationalize it you will be absolutely disappointed.He did not answer on the surface – just on the surface he did not answer – but underneath the surface he answered.I have to explain to you what was underground – that which cannot be said, but can be transferred. His statement, “May your sins disappear!” – just (Osho snaps his fingers) in a click…The word sin in its origin, in its roots, means forgetfulness. It does not mean what Christians have been telling the world. It does not mean sin, it means forgetfulness.And according to Gautam Buddha and Fuketsu that is the only problem. All other problems arise out of it, hence it can be called the original sin – forgetting yourself. And what is virtue? – remembering yourself. Being aware of your consciousness is virtue, and forgetting your consciousness and living an unconscious, robotlike life is the only sin.He did not answer the question as far as language is concerned, but he is answering it in a far deeper way. He said, “Forget about three bodies, four mouths, just remember yourself. Drop forgetfulness, drop your sleep. Drop your spiritual slumber. Wake up!”That is exactly the meaning of the word buddha, being awake.“May your sins disappear!” said Fuketsu, and repeated again, “May your sins disappear!”This will give you a taste of the way Zen works. It is very straight, but it is beyond your reason, your mind, your thoughts. It hits at the very center. Wake up, and all these problems and theorizations and ideologies will disappear. Why not cut the very root from where all the branches go on growing?All the religions of the world, except Zen, have been trying to prune the leaves. Drop this sin, drop that sin – and how many sins are there? Drop greed, drop jealousy, drop envy, drop anger, drop violence…And by the time you have been able to drop one, one life may not be enough.Gautam Buddha brought a rebellion into the world which still lives, aflame in the small stream of Zen masters. Just cut the very roots, don’t bother about the foliage, because you should remember: if you cut one leaf, in response to your arrogance, violence to the tree, the tree will bring three leaves. That’s how gardeners make trees thicker and thicker: by cutting their leaves, branches. You cut one branch, and two or three branches will sprout.The same is true about man. You cut one sin, and three more sins will arise, because how can you cut greed separately? They are all together – your anger, your violence, your jealousy – they are all one, branches of one tree. Don’t cut one; you will be cutting for lives together, and you will never come to the realization of the divine in existence. But if you cut from the roots, in a single blow, this very moment you can become a buddha. You don’t have to become a Buddhist.This is what is making the Buddhists go out of their senses.Buddha is your essential core. It is not a question of conversion, it is a question of transformation. You have to go within yourself and cut the roots of all your darkness. Then suddenly a flame jumps up from your very center and fills your whole being, and slowly starts radiating around you, in your presence, in your eyes, in your gestures, in your grace, in your blissfulness.The buddha is your birthright. It is not a question of imitating any buddha – there have been thousands – you need not imitate anyone. You have to find your own. You are carrying it from your very birth, perhaps for many lives, but you have never looked inwards.The idea of waking up simply means waking up from your very center, so that you can see your authentic nature. The buddha is your nature. The moment you realize who you are, you will suddenly start dancing, singing, in a drunkenness which is divine, because you have found the source of all life, you have found the connection with the cosmic whole. You are no longer imprisoned in the body, you have found the door going out of the prison, and disappearing into existence.This is called nirvana.This is called becoming a god in your own right.On another occasion, a monk said to Fuketsu, “People have collected like clouds; please expound the dharma!”Fuketsu replied, “People pursue a rabbit barefoot; they eat the meat with their shoes on.”He was asked to tell something about the ultimate nature, which in Pali is called dhamma, in Sanskrit, dharma. It means exactly, your ultimate nature, your eternal nature.The man was asking, “So many people have come, a great crowd like clouds has gathered around your temple, Fuketsu. You should teach the dharma.”Fuketsu replied in a way that means, “These people will not be able to understand dharma, they are so unconscious. These people pursue a rabbit barefoot.”He is trying to explain without saying directly that they are unconscious. Pursuing a rabbit barefoot is very unconscious. You may fall, you may trample on thorns. The rabbit will go zigzag in a forest; it is better to have your shoes on. But these unconscious people will pursue a rabbit barefoot, and“They eat the meat with their shoes on.”In short, he is saying, “These people’s actions are unconscious, they don’t know what they are doing. They don’t know who they are. They don’t know from where they are coming. They don’t know where they are going.”Everything about the masses is unconscious, but to tell them so hurts them. Rather than being thankful to you, that “You made me aware of my unconsciousness,” they will be angry at you. They will think that you are insulting them.A blind man was brought to Gautam Buddha. He was a great logician, and he defeated the whole village in a discussion about light. He insisted that there is no light, no sun, no stars, no moon – “because I don’t have any experience of them.”People tried to convince him that there is light: “The whole village says so.”He said, “You will have to prove it. Bring the light, I want to touch it.” Now, you cannot touch light, you cannot hold it in your fist.He said, “Okay. Hit the light, I want to hear the sound.” You cannot hit light either.He said, “Okay. You bring the light, I want to smell it” – but light has no smell.He said, “Then I want to taste it. These are the only senses I have got.” You cannot taste light, it has no taste.The whole village was greatly upset. They know light is there, but this man is blind. “We don’t want to say directly to him, ‘You are blind’ – but he is a great logician, we cannot defeat him.”Just then they heard that Gautam Buddha was to pass by their village. They said, “This is a great opportunity. We should take the blind man to Gautam Buddha. Perhaps he can convince him about light.”The blind man was brought by the villagers with great hope. But Buddha said to the villagers, “You are wrong. Seeing perfectly well that the man has no eyes, you are trying to convince him of light. He does not need a philosopher or a logician to teach him. I will give him my physical physician, and I hope his sight will be restored” – because he was not born blind.Within six months his sight was restored. Buddha had moved to another place, leaving his personal physician with the blind man. The blind man looked around at the beautiful existence, the rainbows, the sun, the moon, the stars, the flowers and their colors. He could not believe that he had been missing all this beauty his whole life, and he had been unnecessarily arguing with the poor villagers, who didn’t understand logic, but they were right.He went to the place where Buddha had gone, dancing, and he fell at his feet saying, “If you had not come into my life, I would have remained always blind. Now I can see the greatest gift in life is the eyes” – because eighty percent of our experiences depend on the eyes, only twenty percent on the other senses.A man without eyes immediately creates a great compassion in you. The same is not true when you come across a man who is deaf, or a man who has no legs. You feel pity, you feel sympathy, but not the same compassion as you feel when you see a blind man, because he is missing all the colors, all the rainbows, all the flowers, all the sunsets, all the sunrises, the whole starry sky; he is missing everything of beauty. The beautiful faces of men and women, the beautiful birds he is missing; that is the greatest calamity.We are also blind in a sense, because we are not looking inwards.In the East, particularly in this country, we have called it the third eye, which opens inwards just between your two eyebrows. When you go deeper in meditation both your eyes have to be closed, so no energy goes out and the whole energy concentrates just in the middle. And from there is the entry into the inner sky, which is far more beautiful, far more colorful, of tremendous ecstasy. The deeper you go in, the more you come close to the divine. When you have reached to the very source of your being, you have found the ultimate meaning and significance of life.The masses are unconscious. According even to psychologists, if we divide our mind into ten parts, only one part has become conscious; nine parts underneath it are completely in darkness.It is almost similar to an iceberg. Only one tenth of the iceberg shows above the surface of the sea; nine tenths is underneath. We are living at the very minimum, we don’t know how to live at the optimum, and religion is nothing but to give you life in its totality, to help you to live at the optimum. When you can live as a divine being, why live like unconscious animals?We have become human beings, but our innermost world is a complete darkness. We have never bothered even for a single moment to look inside.Hence, Fuketsu said, “The masses cannot be taught, unless somebody becomes thirsty, unless somebody becomes frustrated with the outside world and wants to enter into the inner core, to explore the last resource. Outside he has not found anything; perhaps one thing is still left – that is inside.”When somebody comes not for teachings, not for knowledge, but for experience, then there is a possibility for a master to show you the path. Nobody can lead you to your inner being, nobody can go with you. You will have to go alone. But the master can show you the golden path.Buddha says: I can show you the moon, but don’t take my finger to be the moon. Drop the finger and look at the moon.But this is the misfortune that has happened around the earth. Every religion is holding the finger! – somebody of Mohammed, somebody of Krishna, somebody of Buddha, somebody of Mahavira – and nobody is bothering where the finger points. The finger is not the religion. The teachings, the scriptures, they are all fingers, and people are worshipping scriptures.I was staying in the Punjab in the house of Punjab state’s Inspector General of Police. He was my host. When I went into my room I passed his temple. He had a small temple made in his vast bungalow. I looked in the temple, and there was Guru Granth Sahib, the religious scripture of the Sikhs. It was early morning, so he had put a toothbrush and a tube of paste by the side of Guru Granth Sahib.I said, “My God, what are you doing?”He said, “Just for Guru Granth Sahib” – “Sahib” makes the scripture almost look like a human being – “for his morning toothbrushing.”I said, “You are the I.G. of this whole state, and if you can do such a thing, what about the villagers? They may be giving him a bath, just a shower, feeding him food. They may have destroyed Guru Granth Sahib long ago. You are a reasonable man, well educated, in a high post, and you are behaving like a villager!”But this is the situation. If your foot touches Srimad Bhagavadgita, if you are a Hindu you will immediately touch the feet of Bhagavadgita. There are no feet! Scriptures have become reality, fingers have become the moon, for the unconscious masses.Unless somebody on his own comes to a master… The crowds cannot be taught the deeper secrets of life. They are going to live in superstitions, in all kinds of consolations, but they will never know the nature of the great reality that you are.On another occasion some monk asked Fuketsu,“Even without the practice of Zen…”Zen means dhyan, it means meditation. The word dhyan is Sanskrit. When it moved to the Buddhist language, Pali, it became zhan. When it moved to China it became chan. When it moved to Japan it became Zen. Zen means dhyan; dhyan means a state of no-mind.In English there is no parallel word. We use meditation because there is no other word which comes even close. Meditation is not the right word. The moment you say meditation, immediately the idea arises: meditating on what? It is always objective. Concentration is objective, contemplation is objective, meditation is objective; dhyan is subjective. It is not meditating on something, it is simply moving inwards, silently, without any object in your vision.Inside there is no object, only pure subjectivity – a silent lake of consciousness. And the deeper you go, the calmer and cooler and more blissful you become. When you reach to the deepest point in your being you have arrived home.Fuketsu was asked,“Even without the practice of Zen, may we certainly attain buddhahood?”An absurd question. Without dhyan, without Zen, nobody can attain buddhahood. It is saying, in other words, “Can we reach inside without going inside?” It is absolutely nonsense, the question.Fuketsu said,“The golden cock heralds the dawn; the pitch barrel sends out a dark radiance.”Just as the golden cock heralds the dawn, meditation heralds the beginning of your buddhahood. Without meditation, you cannot taste anything of religion. You can believe, but belief is always of the ignorant.I want you to understand absolutely: never believe in anything. Experiment. Take the belief as a hypothesis but never as a certainty. Unless you experience, no belief can help you.Can belief in water quench your thirst? Can belief in God herald the dawn? No belief system is of any help. You have to go inwards, alone, as deep as possible.Meditation is the very essence of all religions.Everything else is mere commentary.At another time, a monk asked Fuketsu, “Both speech and silence transgress. How can we not do so?”It is especially a Zen question, especially a question for great meditators. When you arrive at your very being you experience something which is beyond words. Now there are only two possibilities. Either you use words, which don’t justify your experience… They distort your experience, because the experience happened beyond words, far away, it cannot be dragged into ordinary human language.So the one possibility is to speak. That transgresses the experience. The other possibility is to remain silent, but that too is not right. If you are silent, how are you going to share your experience with those who are all groping in the dark? The man is asking a very important thing.When Gautam Buddha became enlightened, for seven days he remained silent, just thinking what to do. “If I speak, it is not exactly the truth, something is missed. And when you hear it, something more is missed because you will interpret it according to your mind, and you don’t have that experience from which those words are coming. It is a transgression against truth.“Should I remain silent?” Buddha thought. “But that seems to be very unkind, uncompassionate. So many people are searching, and I have found. At least I can help them in some way – if not through words, then through some devices. If not through words, then some other way has to be found to transmit the fragrance, the fire of my experience.”Finally, fortunately, he decided to speak. It would have been a tremendous loss to humanity if Gautam Buddha had not spoken. Although he always says, “Remember while you are reading my scriptures that the word is not the truth. It may indicate as a finger, but it is not the moon” – but who remembers?People simply get knowledgeable by reading scriptures – rabbis, bishops, popes – but they are all knowledgeable; they don’t have the experience. They have not known themselves, they have only believed. Belief prevents you from searching for the truth. Never stop at a belief. Stop only at an experience of your own.Fuketsu replied: “I always remember the spring in Konan…”…where he used to live before he came to Mount Fuketsu. The mountain was renamed by the emperor of Japan according to the name of Fuketsu. It became Mount Fuketsu because he lived there, an enlightened light for millions to come and quench their thirst.But before coming to this mountain, he used to live at another mountain.He says:“I always remember the spring in Konan, where the partridges sing; how fragrant the countless flowers!”Do you see the point? He is not answering directly. Zen does not answer directly. It answers in a very poetic and indirect way.He is saying:“I can remember the spring in Konan, where the partridges sing; how fragrant the countless flowers!”But you have never been to Konan, so you don’t know what spring in Konan is, you don’t know the flowers and the fragrance and the color and the beauty. Unless you go there, there is no way. “I cannot bring Konan and its spring and the flowers and the songs of the birds into my language. I can point you the way to Konan – go to Konan.”He is simply saying that the inner world has to be experienced. There comes a great spring…far greater than you have seen outside. There are flowers and fragrances of another world – a peace, a silence, a song, a dance that you have not known in the outside world. But the only way is: go in.Issa wrote:Pure simplicitymarks the arrival of spring –a pale yellow sky.But you have to see it.How many people look at the sky? I have been watching, standing by the side of the road: people are counting money on their fingers and they don’t see that the sun is setting and is throwing such psychedelic colors all over the horizon – and they are counting money. I can see their lips moving. They are talking to somebody who is not present, and the sun is setting with such grandeur. How many people get up early to see the sunrise? How many people watch the immense hypnotic power of the fullmoon night?Do you know, all those who have become enlightened have become enlightened on the fullmoon night, except Mahavira – just a single exception in the whole of history? Strange…why on the fullmoon night? The ocean rises to greet the moon on the fullmoon night. More people go mad on the fullmoon night; hence the word lunatic.Lunatic means luna, luna means the moon – moonstruck. Lunatic means struck by the moon. More people commit suicide on the fullmoon night – four times more than any other time – more people murder on the fullmoon night. It has been a strange thing: why should it happen on a fullmoon night?The full moon somehow makes you what you have been in some way repressing in yourself. If you have been repressing the desire to become enlightened, perhaps on the fullmoon night you will become enlightened. It exposes you. If you have been repressing the desire to commit suicide…Psychologists say there is not a single man on the earth who has not at some time thought of committing suicide. Not that everybody commits it, but there are moments of trouble, anxiety, anguish, when one thinks it is better to finish it all. But the psychologists are not aware that this idea happens only on fullmoon nights.The fullmoon night simply exposes you. If you are ready for enlightenment, if your meditations have ripened, you become enlightened. If you are ready to commit suicide and you have been somehow avoiding it – nobody wants to commit suicide, nobody wants to murder anybody, but the idea arises, and on the fullmoon night it is irresistible. Whatever you have been repressing, whatever you have been searching for is exposed.But everything has to be your experience.Pure simplicity marks the arrival of spring – a pale yellow sky.You cannot go inwards if you are not finished with the outside world – its beauty, its treasure, its immense vastness. If you have not become acquainted with it, you will never think of going in, because the inner is vaster, the inner is bigger, the inner is more intelligent. The inner is pure wisdom. It is truth, it is beauty, it is godliness.But first you should learn from the outside world. This is especially a Zen message. It is not against the outside world, it wants you to learn everything of the outside world so that you graduate from the outside to the inner.Maneesha has asked a question:Osho,Is enlightenment something like getting the punchline to the ultimate joke?Right, Maneesha. It is the punchline of the ultimate joke.This begins the time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.Percy and Porky Poke own a men’s clothing shop in downtown L.A.One day Buster Chubbs walks in and says, “I need a nice suit.”“Okay,” smiles Porky, jumping up. “We have Paris suits, Italian suits, Mexican suits, all kinds and all styles, from every corner of the world. Modern, classical, new wave, formal, business – any kind of suit.“You can get them in your favorite color,” continues Porky with his best sales pitch. “We have black, blue, gray, even orange – any color you want! What is your size?”Buster is really impressed as he looks around the shop. “I think I am size forty-two,” he says.Porky proceeds to bring every size forty-two suit in the store and has Buster try each one. Every time Buster comes out in a different suit, Porky spins him around to look in the mirror – back to front, and front to back, spinning him this way and that, to see it from all the angles.Half an hour later, Porky still cannot sell him a suit.Then Percy walks up with the last remaining suit, says a few things to Buster, and Buster buys it.When Buster leaves his shop, Percy turns to Porky and says, “See how easy it was? I sold it to him on the first try.”“Sure,” says Porky, “but who made him dizzy?”Boris Bagel gets invited to a fancy-dress masquerade and decides to go along dressed as Lucifer, the Devil.Unfortunately, on his way to the party, Boris gets lost and ends up walking into the middle of a Jimmy Bakker TV broadcast prayer meeting.The good folks, watching preacher Jimmy Bakker give his fire and brimstone sermon, take one look at Boris in his devil outfit and start to scream and run for the doors.In the panic, preacher Jimmy Bakker gets trampled to the floor and Boris, not realizing that he is the cause of the panic, goes over to help him up.“Ah, Satan!” shouts Bakker, terrified. “I have been running this special Christian church for twenty years, but I want you to know I have really been on your side all along!”Giovanni, the Italian, George, the Englishman, and Ivan, the terrible Russian, are working for the United Nations Army in Africa, when they are captured by cannibals.Chief Boonga, the cannibal leader, tells the men that they can have one last request before they get thrown into the cooking pot.“I-a want a plate of spaghetti!” says Giovanni.“I would like a bottle of beer, please,” says George.“Just give me a kick in the ass,” says Ivan.Giovanni gets his spaghetti, George gets his beer, and Chief Boonga walks over to Ivan and gives him an enormous kick in the rear-end.Immediately, Ivan pulls out a gun from his pocket, and shoots all the cannibals.“I say!” exclaims George. “Jolly good show!”“Mamma mia!” shouts Giovanni. “But what took-a you so long?”“Well,” explains Ivan, “being a good Russian, I could not attack until I was provoked!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent…close your eyes…Feel your body to be completely frozen.This is the right moment to look inwards. Collect your whole life energy, your total consciousness, and with a great urgency to reach to the center… One never knows, this may be the last moment of your life.Deeper and deeper…just like an arrow passing through all the layers of body, mind.As you come closer to the center, you are coming closer to the god….As you come deeper, nearer, you are coming closer to the buddha hidden in you.At this moment you are the most fortunate people on the earth, just because you are so close to your divine nature.Remember only one thing, which is eternal in you, and that is the witnessing consciousness. Just witness everything.The body is not you – witness.The mind is not you – witness.All the experiences that are happening to you – the great silence, the peace, the joy, the ecstasy, you are a witness. You remain always above and beyond.This beyondness, this witnessing, is your real buddha dharma, your authentic nature, your divine individuality.To make it clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax…But keep on remembering that you are just a witness.As the relaxation becomes more and more and more, you start melting like ice into a vast ocean of consciousness. Gautama the Buddha Auditorium, at this moment, has become an ocean of consciousness.Feel…and collect the experience.This is no belief, this is your own experience.This is no finger, you have come to the moon.And persuade the buddha to come along with you. He has to become your very life, your breathing, your heartbeat, your daily, ordinary activities.Chopping the wood for the winter, carrying the water from the well, he should be with you. In fact, slowly, slowly you will disappear, only buddha remains. That is the greatest day of your life, when only the buddha remains.The word buddha means the witness, the observer, the watcher – in essence, pure awareness. And pure awareness makes you one with the whole cosmos.Collect as much experience as you can, and persuade the buddha to come along with you.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back…but come back with grace, come back with blissfulness, come back as a buddha. And sit down for a few moments just to recollect where you have been, just to remember what golden path you have moved on.Inch by inch the distance between your circumference and the center is becoming less every day. The day your circumference and center become one, your actions and your consciousness become one, you have arrived home.One single seed can make the whole earth green. A single buddha can make the whole world afire with a new consciousness and a new humanity.You are the very hope of a world which is in great despair, in great anguish.It is not only a question of your individuality, becoming a buddha, it is a question of saving this whole planet. This planet can be saved only by people who understand that every living being is divine.To destroy anything is ugly and barbarous. Particularly to destroy life is absolutely disgusting, because if you cannot create life, you don’t have any right to destroy it.One seed makes the whole earth green.

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The Original Man 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Original Man 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Basui said:Imagine a child sleeping next to its parents and dreaming it is being beaten or is painfully sick. The parents cannot help the child, no matter how much it suffers, for no one can enter the dreaming mind of another. If the child could awaken itself, it could be freed of this suffering automatically.In the same way, one who realizes that his own mind is buddha frees himself instantly from the sufferings arising from ignorance of the law of ceaseless change within the six realms. If a buddha could prevent it, do you think he would allow even one sentient being to fall into hell? Without self-realization one cannot understand such things as these….In a dream, you may stray and lose your way home. You ask someone to show you how to return or you pray to God or buddhas to help you, but still you can’t get home. Once you rouse yourself from your dream state, however, you find that you are in your own bed and realize that the only way you could have got home was to awaken yourself.This kind of spiritual awakening is called “return to the origin” or “rebirth in paradise.” It is the kind of inner realization that can be achieved with some training. Virtually all who like Zazen and make an effort in practice, be they laymen or monks, can experience to this degree. But even such partial awakening cannot be attained except through the practice of Zazen. You would be making a serious error, however, were you to assume that this was true enlightenment in which there is no doubt about the nature of reality. You would be like a man who, having found copper, gives up the search for gold.Anando, Basui is apparently right, but there are possibilities that the enlightened man can create devices for the unenlightened. It is certainly one of the most impossible jobs, to talk to a sleeping man or to enter in somebody’s dreams. But I say that Basui is only relatively true, because I constantly enter into your dreams. There will be many witnesses for it.He is saying:Imagine a child sleeping next to its parents and dreaming it is being beaten or is painfully sick. The parents cannot help the child, no matter how much it suffers, for no one can enter the dreaming mind of another.There is no need to enter into anybody’s dreaming mind.By chance Anando is here to read the sutras instead of serious Maneesha.(Osho reaches toward Anando, his hands furiously quivering in a “remote-control” tickle. Anando, totally taken by surprise, collapses into uncontrollable laughter. Much taken by the infectious giggling, Osho then decides to tickle everyone, and for a few golden moments, ripples of tickling and laughter fill the auditorium.)The parents can do at least this much: they can tickle the child. No need to enter into his dreams, just wake him up. Existence manages so beautifully…that Maneesha is absent, by chance, and the right child is sleeping in front of me. And you can see, not only can I tickle her, the tickle spreads all over. Even the children of the neighborhood will be awakened!That’s why I say Basui is only relatively true. As far as I am concerned, he is not. I have tickled people, I have entered in their dreams. I constantly trespass, because you love me, you trust me. What is your trust for? If I cannot trespass, if I cannot interfere in your dreams, what is your love for me? There is no point in being here at all if I cannot help, in some way, to awaken you.So always remember, there are relative truths and there are absolute truths. Basui is saying a relative truth: ordinarily it is true, but only ordinarily. For an extraordinary master to create devices which can wake you up is just a playful game, because what are your dreams? – just imagination. What is your sleep…? Just a little cold water thrown into your face and the sleep will disappear. The master has just to be aware of who is prepared to receive the gift, the device, gratefully.But relatively it is true; nobody can enter into your dreams, into your sufferings. You have to wake yourself up. It is a very difficult task to wake yourself up. The enlightened person cannot wake you, and Basui is hoping that the sleeping person will wake himself up – not much chance! The sleeping person will go into another dream and another dream…Even his waking will be a dream. Just as the awakened person’s sleeping is a waking, the sleeping person’s waking is also full of dreams.Just close your eyes and you will see dreams floating. You are engaged outside so they keep waiting by the side for when you are finished with your work. But you dream day in, night out…continuously. You can change the names; you can call it imagination, fantasy, dreaming, but these are names for the same stuff that is not there, but you project it.Basui says:If the child could awaken itself, it could be freed of this suffering automatically.Obviously, but the problem is how the child can awaken itself. In the first place, in his dreams there is no dream of awakening. He has never seen the awakened one. He cannot even dream of a buddha, he cannot even dream of a dreamless state – how is he going to awaken himself? It can only be accidentally, not automatically.I take note even of simple words which one may ignore. Basui is saying, If the child could awaken itself, it could be freed of this suffering automatically.I have my objections. First, anything that you are freed of automatically you can be fettered with again automatically, because it was never in your hands. Your slavery was out of your hands; your freedom is also out of your hands. And ‘automatically’ is not the right word to use in the world of consciousness. In the world of consciousness things can happen spontaneously, but not automatically. Perhaps Basui is not well versed. He is a man who knows, but he is not a man who can express the inexpressible. He is trying his best.I say a child can awaken accidentally, for example, if a rat runs over the child. And if, for example, the child is Anando, can you think what will happen? – an explosion in Lao Tzu house! The rat is not concerned with your enlightenment, but you will become enlightened…at least for the moment. And then you can go to sleep again.Anything from outside can disturb your mind, and your dreams are nothing but your mind. So it cannot be said that the child can be freed of this suffering automatically. Once in a while it has happened that the child has come to the end of dreaming and is fed up with the dreaming. The child is only a symbol for a sleeping humanity. Everybody at a certain moment is going to get bored with what he is doing. And how long has he been doing it?Even in sleep…and everybody is in sleep with open eyes. The sleep does not denote your ordinary sleep, it denotes your spiritual sleep. You are not aware of yourself, that is the meaning of sleep. But for how long? It depends on your intelligence. If you have no intelligence at all then you never feel bored. Boredom is the measurement. Just watch a buffalo; you cannot find on the whole earth a buffalo that is bored, or even has thought about it – boredom? It has not come into the consciousness of the buffalo.In humanity, the people with the very highest intelligence – like Jean-Paul Sartre, or Jaspers, or Martin Heidegger, or Soren Kierkegaard – suddenly came out with a new idea which humanity had never thought about. That was the idea of boredom. Man’s real problem is boredom and he goes on avoiding it. He goes on hoping good days will come, that the night will be over, that sooner or later there will be a sunrise. But as far as boredom is concerned, it has been gathering since eternity.But only a very few intelligent people – who can be counted on ten fingers, from all around the world – have touched on the sense of boredom. And particularly the people who created the philosophy of existentialism based it on the question of boredom: man is so bored that except suicide there seems to be no exit.In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, perhaps the most important novel that has ever been written, one of the brothers – it is a history of the three brothers Karamazov – is an atheist and another brother is a very devoted theist. The atheist brother says to him, “Listen, if by chance you prove to be right and you meet God…I don’t believe that this is going to happen, because there is no God in my conception, but you insist that there is a God, so do at least a little service for your brother. Just tell your God, ‘My brother wants to get out of this existence. You have bored him enough.’”Suicide seems to be the only exit – not a very brave, not a very courageous one, but it looks like an escape. In existentialist circles this has been a continuous problem, that if we feel that suicide is the only thing then we should commit suicide. And the answer was always, “Who knows? After suicide things may be even worse. We don’t have any way to compare, we don’t have any alternatives, we cannot come back. If we commit suicide and then we think, ‘My God, what have I done? This is a far bigger hell that I have entered.’ Now there is no going back…So we cannot live peacefully, and we cannot die peacefully.”It is not something new. In the West it is new, but in the East, as far back as we can see, the question has been asked but has taken a totally different turn. In the West they think, “How to get out of this boring anguish that we have been told is life?” In the East we have also thought about life – but not going out of it, going beyond it.That is the difference between Western existentialism and Eastern existentialism. In the East there never existed a particular school because every seeker was seeking a beyond. Only more life can dispel the boredom – more radiant life, more vibrant life, more eternal life.The Western existentialism seems to be defeatist, a failure: this life is not worthwhile, the only way is to jump in a lake. But you should be aware that the whole East, in its long history – which is longer than the West’s – has never thought about suicide as a solution, because life continues. By suicide you simply miss a great opportunity for transcendence. Every master in the East has been against suicide because if you are so ready to commit suicide, then why not try a jump beyond life? You have nothing to lose; at the most it may be a suicide.Meditation is a jump beyond life. It is not getting out of life, it is getting to the very center of life. The people who have entered at the very center of life have shown such grace, such beauty, such presence that they have even become a tremendous inspiration for millions. Just their very presence has transformed people. The question is not of time but of understanding.Everybody can be freed from nightmares, from sufferings, from miseries, but of course not directly. The problem is that you cannot be freed from your suffering directly because you are clinging to it. It is not the suffering that is the problem, it is you who are clinging which is the problem. You don’t want to leave it. You brag about it, you talk about it. You even talk about how to get out of this misery. But one who has eyes can see that you are clinging to the misery as hard as possible.Just the presence of a master can help you to see whether the misery is clinging to you, or you are clinging to the misery. That is a very decisive point. Once you see that you are clinging to the misery, you are freed. Just the seeing of it, the very understanding, is freedom.Looking deep into your minds, you will find how you are clinging. Somebody insulted you ten years ago and you still remember it as if it is something precious. In fact it was his problem that he shouted and was angry, it was not your problem. If you had simply remained a watcher, there would have been no scratch in your mind for these ten years…and whenever you see the person, the scratch becomes deeper….All that is needed is to pass through life as a reflecting mirror, not as the film of a camera. The film of a camera catches hold of whatever is reflected on it – that is its function. The mirror also reflects but it never catches it. Things go on passing – the camera goes on filling with new pictures, reflections, but the mirror remains empty.Remain empty in this world not holding on to anything, and you have entered into a new field of energy which is your own. You have just been neglecting it because you were too occupied with unnecessary non-essentials.In the same way, one who realizes that his own mind is buddha frees himself instantly from the sufferings arising from ignorance of the law of ceaseless change within the six realms. If a buddha could prevent it, do you think he would allow even one sentient being to fall into hell?He is making commonsense statements. It is true, if a buddha could prevent it then not a single human being would fall into the hellfire. But that does not mean that the buddha is not making every effort. The problem is that you are also involved in it; a buddha cannot disturb your freedom. If you want to go to hell he will simply show you the path. Out of compassion he will make it clear to you what hell is: “Do you know…?” But if you are bent upon going to hell – it is an experience…!A buddha – anyone who is awakened – without any effort creates an energy field. It is not right to say that he creates it, he finds an energy field spreading around himself. Whoever is touched by that energy field will not be the same again. He will start changing and transforming in a miraculous way. Sometimes even in spite of himself, he will do things which only a buddha can do. His old habits, his ignorance, his unconsciousness, all will be against it, but the feeling of a buddha, his presence…It may be a very slight experience, a very small flame, but it is enough to dispel the darkness of millions of years.Don’t think that it is small. Just one evening’s meditation, if you really touch the inner center, is more powerful than all your ignorance that you have lived for centuries, is more powerful than all your habits, is more powerful than all your personality. Just a single flame, and slowly it becomes a great fire in which all that is false is burned, and only the pure gold remains behind.Without self-realization one cannot understand such things as these….In a dream, you may stray and lose your way home. You ask someone to show you how to return or you pray to God or buddhas to help you, but still you can’t get home.In a dream, whatever you do is part of the dream. It is a very mysterious realm. You can have in a dream another dream. For example, in a dream you think of your girlfriend. You go to the girlfriend’s home and you find that she has gone to see a movie, and you go to see the movie. And you are surprised that you and your girlfriend both are playing a part in the movie…. A dream can be very complicated.You can dream that you have come home and gone to sleep, and that you are dreaming. A dream within a dream within a dream is possible…it just needs a very unconscious mind. You can also dream of meeting a god or meeting a buddha, but the gods of your dreams and the buddhas of your dreams have no value at all. They are still dreams, good or bad. When you wake up you know. You may have been a great king or you may have been a beggar – it does not matter. When you wake up both have disappeared.In a dream you may stray and lose your way home. You ask someone to show you how to return or you pray to God or buddhas to help, but still you can’t get home.Once you rouse yourself from your dream state…On this point he has given no explanation of why you should rouse yourself. There must be some causality; otherwise dreaming can be so sweet.A man was telling his friend, “Last night…My God what a dream! I went fishing and I caught such big fish that I had to carry them, with difficulty, one at a time to my home. The whole night I was fishing and fishing, but the fish were so big and huge…you should have seen them. It was the dream of the century.”The other man said, “This is nothing. Last night I dreamed that Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe both were sleeping in my bed, and I was in the middle. I thought, My God, I am a poor man and I have never thought that such great fortune…Marilyn Monroe on one side and Sophia Loren on the other side…!”The other man became angry. He said, “You say you are my best friend – why didn’t you call me?”He said, “Wait! I did call you. I immediately phoned and your wife said you had gone fishing.”Your dream world is just a reflection of your real world. You cannot wake up without a particular device that has been created for you. Once in a while a person comes to a point where he is fed up with everything, dreaming included. But that happens very rarely – in centuries, after millions of people have come and gone. So one cannot depend on it. It cannot be made a principle, it is so exceptional. It only proves the rule. It does not discredit the rule.The rule remains the same, that it is a transmission of the lamp from the master to the disciple. It can go on being transmitted for thousands of years. The master has just to be clear before he transmits it, that the disciple will be able to carry it.I will tell you a small anecdote from the inexhaustible history of beautiful Zen incidents….One great Chinese Zen master was ready to leave the body, so he called a gathering of the monks. The monastery had two wings, each wing having five hundred monks.So all of the one thousand monks gathered and he told them, “This week sometime, I am going to leave the body. I have not decided the day, because I have to choose the person to whom to transmit the flame. My method of choosing is that just in front of my hut, whoever thinks that he is capable of receiving the flame should write a sentence that describes the essence of Zen.”In those one thousand monks, there were a few very eminent scholars, and everybody thought that one of four people was bound to win the game. “We know much, but in a single sentence the very essence…and the master is not an ordinary master, you cannot deceive him.”Even the scholars were not ready to expose themselves, because it would be a great exposure if he said that what you have written is not the right thing. But one scholar who was the most famous in the monastery and its surroundings, went in the middle of the night so that nobody would know that he had written it. He wrote a beautiful piece that ordinarily would have been accepted. He said, “No-mind and the revelation of the buddha is the essence of Zen.”You cannot say anything against it. The poor fellow had done quite well. But in the morning when he saw it, the master said, “Who is the idiot? Catch hold of him…he has not signed his name.”Out of fear, the scholar had not signed his name. He was waiting so that if the master appreciated it he would come out, and if he did not appreciate it among one thousand sannyasins he would not be able to find who was the person who had written it.He told his attendant to clean the wall. There was a great discussion all over the monastery, “This is strange. This sentence was clearly showing the very essence of Zen: No-mind, the discovery of the buddha. This is the essence of Zen.”As much as it was discussed…it was so tremendously important who was going to be the successor. Two monks were discussing it while passing a monk who had been there for twenty years, doing nothing but cleaning rice for the monastery from the early morning when he would get up, until late at night. It was not an easy job to prepare rice for one thousand monks.Twenty years ago when he was young, he had come to the master and the master looked into his eyes and said, “If you really want to be here, just keep a few things clear. Never come again to me, just go to the kitchen. The man who used to work with the rice is dead, so you take his place. From morning till night just clean the rice, prepare the rice. You are not to participate in any sermons, in any meditations, or listen to any scriptures.”Strange conditions…a man comes to the monastery to know the truth not to prepare the rice. But the man said, “Once I have accepted you as my master, whatever you say is my way. You will never see my face again, unless you come to me.”And twenty years is a long time. The whole monastery had almost become unaware of the poor monk, because who takes notice of a man whose whole work is just to prepare rice day after day, year after year? He is not a scholar, he does not discuss anything with anybody, he does not talk with anybody, he has no friends. He was accepted almost like an automatic machine. Nobody took any notice of him.But that morning the master came to the man, looked into his eyes again and said, “Can you improve upon this? ‘No-mind, discovering the buddha. This is the very essence of Zen?’”He laughed and he said, “Some idiot must have done it. I have heard…just people walking here and there discussing it…”“What is your idea?” the master asked.The man said, “No-mind, no buddha, pure nothingness. What is the need to say this is the essence of Zen? It is. But no-mind, no buddha…”The master accepted him as his successor, gave him his robe, his staff – that is traditional in Zen – and told him, “Run away from the monastery as fast as you can, because I have created one thousand enemies for you. They would like to kill you because they think, ‘That rice monk…that idiot who never uttered a single word…’”So he took the robe and the staff, but he told the master, “Because you are telling me, I am doing it; otherwise I am not interested in being a successor. These twenty years have been such a silence. What can you think from morning to night, not talking with anybody, not a word? Just cleaning the rice, preparing the rice, everything has disappeared. And I say to you that when mind disappears completely, the very idea that ‘I am a buddha’ also disappears because that is part of the mind, the last part…only nothingness….“I am not interested, but if you say, I will take the robe and the staff. But I want you to know that if anybody asks me to give them the robe and the staff, I am not going to resist, I will simply give it. Who cares? I have come home. Now it does not matter whether I am a leader of a great monastery with thousands of monks and great fame and respectability. It does not matter. I am fulfilled unto myself just cleaning the rice. Leave me alone.”But the master insisted, “You have to take them, because there is nobody else to whom I can transmit the lamp.”The whole monastery laughed about it, but they had to accept the “rice monk” – as he had become known. They had never looked at him, they had never bothered about him. For the first time they saw that his presence was far greater than the master’s, his silence was far deeper than the master’s, almost tangible. You could touch his silence. You could feel around him a different kind of energy, a different void. You could look into his eyes. No other person tried to take the robe and the staff, even though he was willing.The rice monk assembled the monks and told them, “I have been chosen as the successor. This is the robe and the staff. If anybody is interested, he can take them, but the very interest will show that he is not the right person. The very motivation, the desire for power will show that he is not the right person. But still I will give them to him because I don’t want to be bothered with all kinds of things about the monastery. I am perfectly happy – I would go back to the kitchen.”But the monks realized that they had been wrong about the poor fellow: “He is not poor. He is the richest monk, although he knows nothing of the scriptures. But because he also dropped the buddha with no-mind, he shows his insight.”The moment you drop the mind, everything is dropped. You disappear just like a ripple in the lake, not leaving a trace behind.Once you rouse yourself from your dream state, however, you find that you are in your own bed and realize that the only way you could have got home was to awaken yourself.The example is right, but it very rarely happens. When you wake up, most of you find yourself in somebody else’s bed. To be true, it is very rare that you find you are in your own bed! Most people get up and go home.Who is at home? If you were at home then even the possibility of the dream would not exist. You have been traveling along, life after life. Even if you manage somehow accidentally to pass by your home, you will not recognize it. You have been away from it for so long that even the memory, the remembrance has to be a hit on your head that this is your home! What are you looking for…where are you going…?A master is almost an absolute necessity. You have not gone very far away from the home. However far you may have gone, it is not very far. You just need a magnetic force to pull you back.The master is only a magnetic force. He says nothing, but without saying, the magnet pulls. He describes the home so that you can recognize it when you have come close to it. He describes the experiences that will happen on the way back home, the blissfulness, the peace, the silence, the ecstasy, the utter relaxation. He describes everything just to remind you that when you come closer to home these things will start happening. They will help you to find home.Without the master, without someone who has already reached his home and knows what kind of experiences happen on the path, it is almost impossible to wake up on your own.This kind of spiritual awakening is called “return to the origin” or “rebirth in paradise.” it is the kind of inner realization that can be achieved with some training.Virtually all who like Zazen and make an effort in practice, be they laymen or monks, can experience to this degree. But even such partial awakening cannot be attained except through the practice of Zazen. You would be making a serious error, however, were you to assume that this was true enlightenment in which there is no doubt about the nature of reality. You would be like a man who, having found copper, gives up the search for gold.Basui seems to be a man who is awakened but is not articulate enough to transfer inwardly what he has experienced. There have been three kinds of masters. The first kind never speaks, knowing perfectly well that he is not articulate enough to use words for a wordless experience. It is better to be silent than to say anything that is not rightly directing to the moon. He knows his incapacity; he remains silent. He is called the arhata; He has conquered the enemy. Arhata means one who has conquered the enemy, the ignorance, the unconsciousness, but one who is not able to transmit the lamp to anyone else.The second category is of the bodhisattva, one who is articulate enough to manage words in such a way that they start indicating toward something beyond the words, who is capable of arbitrary devices so that you can become awakened.The third category has not been recognized in the ancient scriptures anywhere, but I want you to know that Basui belongs to the third category. It would have been better for him to be silent and be an arhat. Rather than being silent he is trying to be a bodhisattva. That’s why he is committing so many mistakes. Although he knows, he is not able to express it, or even to indicate it in a correct and adequate way.This category has not been recognized, but certainly there have been many, and I will tell you who the people are who belong to this category. It would have been better for them to remain silent like the arhatas, but perhaps out of compassion they tried their best. Intentions don’t matter; their expression is childish. They cannot be bodhisattvas. All their words are borrowed, although they have their own experience. So I will not call them the teachers.It is strange that this category has not been recognized separately. Perhaps very rarely people have tried the way Basui is trying – with all good intentions, with compassion – but he is not capable. You may have good intentions, but that does not mean you can play on a guitar. You may have all the good intentions, but that does not mean you can dance. It needs a totally different quality, a certain genius, which is missing.Whatever he is saying is more or less true, but not very sharp…like a sword cutting all that is false in a single blow. He is a very mild kind of bodhisattva, a lukewarm bodhisattva.Let us call this new category the lukewarm bodhisattva.Ryokan wrote:Without a jot of ambition leftI let my nature flowwhere it will.There are ten days of ricein my bag,and by the hearth,a bundle of firewood.Who prattles of illusionor nirvana?Forgetting the equal dusts ofname and fortune,listening to the night rainon the roof of my hut,I sit at ease,both legs stretched out.Now, this is a sharp, swordlike man saying things clearly….Without a jot of ambition left I let my nature flow where it will – no direction, no destiny. I give my nature total freedom.There are ten days of rice in my bag – enough. Who lives with certainty for more than ten days? Enough. Nature has taken care up to now, it will take care after ten days. So I don’t collect, it is enough.And by the hearth, a bundle of firewood – what a richness! What a contentment in utter poverty! Even kings will be jealous of this man.Who prattles of illusion or nirvana? – and who bothers whether I am awakened or not awakened, whether I am in an illusion, in a dream, or in nirvana…? In awakening, “who prattles?”Forgetting the equal dusts of name and fortune – all is dust of name and fortune.Listening to the night rain on the roof of my hut…both legs stretched out. Relaxed, listening to the dance of the rain on the roof – this is a right way of expressing the inexpressible. He is expressing utter relaxation, no concern even about nirvana, so silent….He is saying, I sit at ease, both legs stretched out, as if time has ceased, nothing matters. This is the space in which you can say you have come home.Dogen wrote:The world?Moonlit dropsshaken from the crane’s bill.Just a watcher, sitting silently, watching the world….“Moonlit drops shaken from the crane’s bill” – nothing to do, nowhere to go, just silently…to watch the whole drama.Anando has asked:Osho,What is it to be original? Is the awakened man, the man of Zen, the only truly original man?Anando, to be original simply means just as you were born – fresh, uncluttered by any garbage, theology, religion, politics, etiquette, manners. As you grow up, around you much garbage grows. The society helps to grow it; the whole educational system exists to support it. By the time you are still young, you have already lost your original home. You know so much, but you don’t know anything in fact. You pretend so much, you may even believe in your pretensions, but that does not make them true. The whole society up to now has been creating hypocrites.The original man is just the polar opposite of the hypocrite. He is simply natural, unpredictable. The hypocrite is predictable. You know what he is going to do – his reactions, his responses. You know his future, because he is a false entity not a living plant. You cannot predict in what directions the branches will go, on which branches the flowers will come. Everything is unpredictable, but with a plastic plant everything is known and predictable. Society wants you to be predictable, because its whole business depends on predictability.The day I entered America, the first question the immigration department asked me was: “Are you an anarchist?” I had been told beforehand that anarchists are not allowed in America.I told the man, “I am something more.”He said, “My God, for something more there is no regulation.” He had his book open: communists, anarchists are not allowed…but something more…?He looked at me and he said, “You look like something more, but you will be in trouble and you will create trouble for us.”I said, “I am a silent man. I don’t even leave my room.”He said, “That is the danger, but because in the rules there is no provision for preventing something more than the anarchist, I have to allow you.”And from that very moment the struggle began that lasted for five years.The original man is simply a natural man not nurtured by the society. He has kept himself aloof and individual. He has not allowed anybody to condition him.My father used to go to the temple to listen to the monks and the priests of Jainism, and he would ask me, “You are sitting here uselessly, why don’t you come with me?”I said, “You are going in search of something which I have found.”He said, “It is very difficult to talk with you.”I said, “It is.”He tried to persuade me many times: “A very learned monk is speaking today in the temple.”I said, “It does not matter who is speaking in the temple, in my temple there is absolute silence. Learning is all rubbish.”But my grandfather was a different kind of man. When my father had gone to the temple, he would say, “Now, come on. Let us have a little fun.”He was old but very childlike. He would provoke me, “Let us disturb the meeting. At my age it does not look right, but I will be your protector.”And he was one of the oldest persons in the community. So he said, “Don’t you be worried, you just create as much chaos as possible. I will not support you directly, but I will be there to see that no harm is done to you.”I said, “That’s okay.”Then my father would see that I had come with my grandfather, and then he would become afraid that now…And small questions would create trouble. Those learned monks…I would stand up in the middle, and people would start shouting, “Don’t stand up in the middle!”And my grandfather would say, “He will stand. Nobody can stop my child from asking a relevant question.”And I used to ask all kinds of questions which those poor fellows were not able to answer…just small things. In Jainism a woman cannot go into ultimate freedom, and if the man was talking about that I would ask him, “How do you know? Are you a woman?”He would look here and there…some support…?“On what grounds do you say that a woman cannot enter heaven?”All that he could say was, “It is written in the scripture.”I said, “Then it is not your experience. Have you been to heaven? Have you seen that there are no women there?”He said, “My God, nobody has asked about this, and nobody comes back from heaven.”“Then,” I said, “who has written that scripture? Somebody who has not gone to heaven writes that a woman cannot enter heaven, and you are repeating it like a parrot…?”The poor fellow’s learnedness was finished, and my grandfather would take hold of me and say, “Child, let us go.”Back home my father would say, “I asked you to come but at that time you were talking great philosophy. Why did you go with your grandfather?”I said, “I never deny him, he is so old. And I wanted him with me; otherwise you would have been preventing me. In his presence you cannot prevent me. I don’t trust that you will go against the so-called manners of your society. I trust him. In fact he is a revolutionary.”He used to take me to other religions’ meetings. He was so old and respected by the community, but seeing me with him, everybody became nervous that “something is going to happen. Both these fellows should not be seen together.” And he was always ready.Whenever I would find that something was happening, somebody was talking about God, I would tell him, “This is not a time to waste. You are tired, but you have to come, because alone, I am too small and they will all start shouting at me and trying to silence me.”He said, “Don’t be worried. As long as I am alive nobody can stop you from asking questions. The basic purpose of these assemblies is to find out, to inquire, to question.”And to the man who was speaking on God, I would ask, “Have you seen God with your own eyes?”He would look all around….I would say, “Are you looking for witnesses? Put your hand on your heart, and in the name of God be truthful: Have you seen God?”And in a temple these poor believers cannot lie! He would say, “No, I have not seen him…I believe in God.”I said, “Belief means nothing. One can believe in anything. You have some nerve to talk about God without having seen him. Have you heard that he is sick?”He would say, “I have never heard such a thing. God…and sick?”I said, “Why not? I was just preparing you for the bad news.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “Friedrich Nietzsche says God is dead. Can your belief protect God from dying? All this lecturing about God, not even knowing the abc of experience…. You are fooling and cheating people.”Then everybody would fall silent and my grandfather would say, “The work is done. He will never come to this town again.”And it used to happen that those people never came again, knowing perfectly well that I would be there.When I left the town and went to the university, I used to come back on holidays. My grandfather would say, “I miss you very much because those old idiots, knowing that you are not here, have started coming back. And I am too old to create a disturbance. You were a great help to me because I want to destroy all these nonsense beliefs.”One should either know, or should know that one does not know.The original man is simply a natural man who has survived the conditioning of the society, the manners of the society; who has asked everything before accepting anything; who has inquired into the truth of anything before accepting it. He is never a hypocrite.The Zen man certainly is the original man. It is the search for the original man, your very nature, where you are not a man, not a woman, not a Hindu, not a Christian; where you simply are – unfettered freedom, unscratched sky. The beauty of it and the benediction of it is infinite.Now it is time for a really original man….Sardar Gurudayal Singh got the point! He always gets it before anybody else. He is a bodhisattva.(Beturbanned Sardar, deep in belly laugh, has, as is now a nightly occurrence, sent ripples of laughter to every corner of the auditorium. Osho, has turned in Sardar’s direction and has also joined in the laughter.)Paddy is in town for a big party at the Wonky Donkey Pub. By five in the morning, Paddy has had enough. He leaves the party and makes his way back to his hotel. Staggering around, he climbs up three flights of stairs before he remembers that there is an elevator. Pulling open the elevator door, Paddy steps into the open elevator shaft and falls straight to the basement.Shakily, he stands up, brushes himself off and adjusts his cap.“Dammit!” Paddy shouts, “I said up!”Olga Kowalski wakes up late one morning. Her hair is full of curlers, her eyes are puffy and her face has a mud pack on from the night before.She plods downstairs to the kitchen in an old housecoat and a worn out pair of carpet slippers.Looking blearily out of the kitchen window, Olga sees that the garbage truck is about to move on up the street. She grabs her bag of garbage, dashes out of the house and races up to one of the garbage men, panting.“Am I too late?” gasps Olga.“No, lady,” replies the man, “just jump right in!”Zabriski calls for his little son, Albert, and gives him five dollars. “Albert,” he says, “go to the store and get three pounds of butter.”Albert dashes off, grabbing the family dog, Bucko, to take along with him. On the way to the grocers, Albert passes his favorite sweet shop and gets a better idea of what to do with the money.He runs into the candy store and buys sweets. Afterward, he sneaks back home and hides the chocolates under his bed. Then little Albert puts on a sad face and goes to see his father. “What happened?” asks Zabriski. “Where’s the butter?”“The dog,” says Little Albert, pointing to Bucko. “That son-of-a-bitch snatched the butter away from me and ate it all up!”Zabriski grabs the little dog and puts him up on the weighing scale. The scale indicates exactly three pounds.Zabriski scratches his Polack head, turns to little Albert and says, “Well, there’s the butter, now where the hell is the dog?”Now, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent, feel your body to be frozen.Close your eyes and all the doors that open outward.Gather your life energy inward; move as deep as possible. There, is waiting your real being, the buddha.Rejoice this moment – the experience of being a buddha. The clouds overhead are very happy.Deeper and deeper, so your memory becomes engraved with the reality of your being.Essentially everyone is a buddha. It is only a question of remembering itTo make the perception more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax. Drop the body, drop the mind, drop everything…. Just remain a watcher.This witnessing is the ultimate experience of life because it opens the doors of miracles. The first miracle is, it makes you aware of your originality. It takes away all the dust that has gathered upon your mirror. It washes away all thoughts and leaves behind only the original man.The original man is the buddha – they are synonymous.Remember your natural self twenty-four hours – silently, running like an undercurrent in all your activities. Never lose track of your original being and you have found eternity, and you have found divinity, and you have found all the treasures of the world.To be natural, to be original is just to be in tune with existence. And slowly, slowly even this much separation disappears. You are not in tune, you are no more. Only a great universe is, with all its ecstasy, with all its joy, with all its blessings.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but don’t come back as your old self. Come back with this new originality, with this new, natural….Sit down for a few minutes, just rejoicing the fact of your buddhahood, of your original man.Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas gathered?

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The Original Man 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Original Man 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Rinzai said:If you meet a buddha, cut him down; if you meet a patriarch, cut him down; if you meet an arhat, cut him down; if you meet your parents, cut them down and if you meet your relatives, cut them down.Only thus will you be liberated, and if you are not held by externals, you will be disengaged and comfortably independent.After this mountain monk has said that there is no dharma externally, students who do not understand this immediately make their interpretation of the internal. They then sit against the wall with the tongue touching the palate, to be in a motionless position and regard this as the Buddha Dharma of the patriarchs.The greatest mistake is that if you take still immobility as the right state, you will mistake the darkness for your master. This is what an ancient meant when he said, “In complete darkness, an abyss is dreadful.”If you take the moving state as the right one, all plants and straws can move. Are they Tao? Therefore, the moving is the element wind, and the unmoving is the element earth. Both the moving and the unmoving have no nature of their own. If you want to catch it in the moving, it will go to the unmoving; and if you want to catch it in the unmoving, it will go to the moving. It is like a fish concealed in the water which it can stir into ripples through which to skim.Virtuous Ones, the moving and unmoving are two kinds of states, but the man of Tao can make use of both the moving and unmoving states.Anando, one of the fundamentals of Zen that makes it a totally unique religion, more than any other religion of the world, is that it does not want to exclude anything from your life. Your life has to be inclusive. It has to comprehend all the stars and the sky and the earth. It is not a path of renouncing the world.What Maharishi Mahesh Yogi calls Transcendental Meditation, Rinzai is condemning. You teach people to sit silently with their tongue touching their palate, so even inside their mouth they cannot make any movement of the tongue, and the whole body should be just a statue – then only you can realize the truth. But it is only half of the truth. And a half truth is more dangerous than a total lie; at least a lie is total.Life is both rest and movement.If you go sometime to Bodhgaya, where Gautam Buddha became enlightened, there stands a temple in memory of his enlightenment, by the side of the tree where he used to sit and meditate. That was his routine: for one hour he would sit under the tree and meditate, then for one hour he would walk by the side of the tree. Even the places where he moved are marked by stones to show you, a small path.One hour he would walk and meditate, showing perfectly that life, if it is unmoving, is dead. And life – if it has no rest, goes on moving – it too will end very soon. Life is a balance between rest and movement. And when the harmony is achieved between rest and movement, you come to the very center of your life, which is always with you whether you are sitting or moving, whether you are awake or asleep. Its existence is absolutely certain, but not by reading scriptures. You have to experience it, then you can do anything. Then there is no problem for you, because whatever you do will be done out of a buddha nature.It happened…A young beautiful prince got initiated by Gautam Buddha. In those days, Vaishali was one of the richest cities in India. Buddha was staying for the monsoon near Vaishali. So the prince and every other monk used to go into the city to beg for their meals.In the city there lived one of the most beautiful women in history. There are only two names that have been known as the most beautiful: one was an Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, and another was Amrapali of Vaishali.Amrapali was so beautiful. It was a tradition in Buddha’s time that the most beautiful woman cannot be married to any man. She cannot be the monopoly of anybody; she’s so beautiful, she should remain free and available to anybody she likes.Even kings stood in a queue in front of her house. Just to be with her for a few hours, tremendous money was paid. She had become so rich that even the king used to borrow money from her.Those days were of a different quality of mind. They did not call her a prostitute, they called her nagarvadhu – married to everyone. She was so beautiful that it would have been absurd to tie her to one person – she would not have remained tied. Soon somebody else would be more attractive; you would be putting her into an unnecessary nightmare. Let her be free – her beauty was such that it could not be owned but everybody was capable of rejoicing in it, according to her will. Such great respect for beauty. ‘Nagarvadhu’ means married to all.When this monk of Buddha, who used to be a prince just a few years before, was seen passing by, Amrapali sent a servant to prevent him and tell him: “You don’t have to go anywhere. Today, please accept my invitation.”Other monks were following him, because with Gautam Buddha were ten thousand monks who always followed wherever he went. They could not believe that this monk was entering the house of a prostitute. They rushed back. A few even did not go to beg. It was their prior concern to report to Buddha, “This man has betrayed you. He has entered into a prostitute’s house.”Buddha said, “I know him. You need not be worried about him. Whatever happens in his life is coming out of the very center of his being; it can never be wrong. But I will take care of it; let him come.”Soon a few more monks came rushing. They cried, “It is too much! Amrapali has asked him to stay with her at least for the monsoon while we are in Vaishali. And he has accepted!” They could not believe it. They wanted immediate expulsion: “He should be disrobed!”Buddhasaid, “Wait, let him come here. I know him just as I know you. You have not come here to save somebody’s virtue, you have come here out of jealousy. You have always been jealous of that young man because he is so beautiful, so attractive, so articulate, and wherever he goes he gets more respect, more love, more dignity.”And then the prince returned, because he had told Amrapali, “I accept your invitation because it is against my master to refuse anything; it is cruel. But I have one condition: I have to ask the permission of my master. From my side there is no objection, but if my master objects I’m helpless. I have surrendered myself totally to my master. If he says yes, it is yes; if he says no, it is no. So please forgive me if I don’t return. But most probably I will return because I know my master.”There was great uproar, gossiping, and the prince returned to ask the permission of Buddha. Kneeling down before him, he said, “I’m asking permission for a very strange thing: a prostitute has asked me, with so much love and so much prayer, to stay with her during this monsoon season while you are here. I have given her my agreement with the condition that “if my master agrees, I will stay with you, but if my master says no, that is absolute – then no question arises at all.”The whole assembly of monks was utterly silent, listening to what Buddha would say.Buddha said, “You should go and stay with the woman because I know that a man who has entered into his own center cannot be influenced by the non-essentials of life. Moreover I know that when after four months you come back, you will not be alone – Amrapali will be coming with you to become a sannyasin. I trust you – you can go with my absolute agreement.”It was such a shock to the thousands of monks. They started saying to Buddha, “What are you doing? You are destroying a young man; the woman is too beautiful – you don’t know, you never go to the city. The woman is so beautiful that kings from other kingdoms come and stand in a queue for their turn, just to have one night’s stay with the woman. And she’s not only beautiful, she is a great singer and a musician. You are sending our young monk into the lion’s den, unnecessarily putting him in trouble.”Buddha said, “You wait, the four months will soon pass.”Amrapali did everything to make the prince comfortable. She played on musical instruments, she danced, she had delicious dishes made for him. She closed her door for four months to any other visitor, even if he were a king or an emperor. She hoped, deep down, “This young monk will melt, will fall in love with me. I have been searching and searching, but I have not found a man with whom I can live my whole life. This is the man.”But the prince sat in the lotus posture. While she was dancing, he was meditating. While she was making all kinds of loving gestures, he was simply watching.For four months he lived in her house and finally the day of departure came. He thanked her, saying, “It has been a great discipline for me, and the whole credit goes to you. My meditation has deepened. I am more at home than ever before. My master will rejoice seeing me.”Amrapali said, “Perhaps you do not know that your master will not only see you, he will also see me reformed. I can see all the fallacious world of lust and love and power. Also I can see, against it, a totally different world of watchfulness and peace and serenity. You say you are grateful to me – I say I am immensely grateful to you. Just help me, so that your master does not reject me.”The young prince said, “He never rejects anybody.” They both came. They both touched the feet of the master, and the young monk asked, “Amrapali wants to be initiated…”And as an initiation gift…They were staying in a very big mango grove – it must have been, because ten thousand people were there and every man had a place under one mango tree. There must have been more than ten thousand mango trees…Before coming Amrapali had asked the owner of the land if he would sell it.He said, “I cannot sell it; it has become sacred for me. Buddha has stayed here; it has now become part of history. This land is no longer ordinary land.” Amrapali said, “You don’t know how much I can pay.” The man said, “If you really want to purchase it, my price is very high. I’m putting it so high that nobody can purchase it – not even the emperor!”Amrapali said, “You simply say it – no haggling.”His price was certainly very strange. He said, “You can have the land if you put golden coins all over it, covering it completely. I don’t know how many millions of coins will be needed.”The woman said, “It does not matter. The land is mine; you come with me and count the coins and measure the land.”So the young monk said to Buddha, “This woman has bought this whole beautiful mango grove to be used only for meditators, and she has asked me to ask you for her initiation because she has seen something in me that is missing in her.”And Amrapali said, “I don’t even have the face to ask for initiation. I have been a sinner all my life. You must know that I’m a prostitute. Your young monk – I hoped to change him, but on the contrary, he has changed me. Now I don’t have any desire, except to sit at your feet and follow the path where one comes to one’s own innermost center. Now I know – up to now I have not even been aware that there is an inner center of life.”That inner center is the most powerful thing in the world. That innermost center is not of the individual. With that innermost center we are all joined. It is the center of the whole cosmos. And once you feel yourself as part of the cosmos – eternal and immortal…Amrapali said, “The bliss and the benediction I have seen radiating from your disciple in these four months – I myself could not resist.” The people who had been so anxious for this day to come so they could inform Buddha, “Now look what has happened, your disciple has not returned,” were very much ashamed. Not only had he returned, he had brought with him a transformed human being.Anando, the meditation that Buddha gave to the world is perhaps one of the most significant. There are many meditations, many ways to enter into yourself, but Buddha’s is sharp, almost like a sword – it cuts everything that hinders. And even in a split second, you can reach to your ultimate destiny.But for that, Rinzai says: If you meet a buddha…He does not mean the actual Buddha, because where will you meet him now? Even when he was alive – I mean Rinzai – Buddha had been dead for almost fifteen hundred years. So what is the meaning?If you meet a buddha, cut him down…It is a meditation process. When you go deeper into yourself, you are bound to meet figures which are very close to your heart. If you have loved Buddha, you are going to meet Buddha before you meet yourself. It will be just an image, but in the silences of the heart that image will be so radiant that there is a possibility you may sit by the side of the image and forget that this is not the goal.If you meet a buddha, cut him down –Immediately! If you meet a patriarch, a master, cut him down – immediately!…if you meet an arhat, cut him down; if you meet your parents, cut them down and if you meet your relatives, cut them down. Only thus will you be liberated…It is an inner psychological process – making you free from the master, from the parents, from the friends. It has nothing to do with the outside world, it is your inner world where images go on gathering. And unless all these images are dissolved, you cannot see yourself. They are preventing your perception. Rinzai’s description of the Buddhist meditation is excellent.And if you are not held by externals, you will be disengaged and comfortably independent.Now, the internals you have cut down. The images, your dreams, your love affairs, you have destroyed all of them and made the path toward you clean, but you may still be attached to externals. You may be ready to cut away your parents’ image and be free of it, but the desire for power in the world, the desire to be the richest man in the world…A thousand and one desires surround you in the external world.Now the second step is easier. Rinzai begins with the hardest because he knows if you can do the hardest, the easier can be done without any difficulty.If you are not held by externals, you will be disengaged and comfortably independent.After this mountain monk has said that there is no dharma externally, students who do not understand this, immediately make their interpretation of the internal.Rinzai is saying that it is very easy to misunderstand a master. In fact, it is easier to misunderstand a master than anybody else, because he is talking a new language, giving new meanings to words, talking about spaces you have never been to. It is almost human to be mistaken, to misunderstand.He says: After this mountain monk has said that there is no dharma externally…There is no religion externally. Going to the temple or to the church or to the synagogue, reading scriptures, ancient holy books – these are all externals and there is no dharma as far as externals are concerned. They are dead skeletons, remnants of somebody who attained, but now it is too difficult to decode the scriptures. The man is no more there, only the skeleton of the man which cannot speak, which cannot explain, which cannot help you in any way.You can go on carrying scriptures, but those scriptures will be your interpretations not the meaning of the masters. Outside you can go to the temples, but what are you doing? Man-made temples, man-made gods – and you are worshipping those stone gods. And you are not alone! Almost the whole world is worshipping something or other as a god. But in this way you cannot find the essence of dharma. It is a very upside down, disturbed and perverted situation when man starts worshipping gods he has made himself.You have to know the source of life – the source from which you spring, just as roses spring. And it is not a question of prayer, it is a question of intense exploration inside to find your roots. And you will be surprised: your roots are the roots of the moon, of the sun, of the stars – of the whole existence. You are just a small branch of a vast tree. Once you know it, there is no fear of death. You cannot die – you belong to immortality. There is no more desire.What more can you have? You have the whole universe in your hands. You are already everything you could have dreamed, desired, asked to be. A great contentment descends over you. In this contentment are all the qualities of blissfulness, of ecstasy, of all that is a continuous dance, a festivity, a ceremony.Rinzai says, “But I can be misunderstood” – and the misunderstanding will be Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation. “When I say there is no dharma externally,…they then sit against the wall with the tongue touching the palate, to be in a motionless position and regard this as the Buddha Dharma of the patriarchs.Just sitting…how long can you go on sitting? And when you stand up, Bodhidharma or Buddha or Rinzai will say, “What happened to the buddha?”The buddha was sitting; sitting has become your form of experience, but standing, it will disappear. Walking, you will be walking away from sitting. Rinzai is trying to say things in simple terms and he had to be very simple because he was the man who brought Zen from China to Japan. He was talking to absolutely unconcerned people who had never heard about meditation.The greatest mistake is that if you take still immobility as the right state, you will mistake the darkness for your master.Immobility is only a rest period. Existence is motion, continuous motion. Yes, there are moments of rest, but if you choose the moments of rest as the whole truth, you are accepting darkness as your master. You are cutting life in two: darkness and light.Have you watched one thing? Darkness is stable. It never goes anywhere, it is always here. You bring light – you cannot see darkness. You take the light away and darkness is there. It does not come running from MG Road. It is never late, not even a single moment. If it had gone out for an evening walk or just to have a look at what is happening around the world, there would be gaps when you had taken the lights away and still the darkness was not there. But there is never a gap. The reason is, darkness is always here even when light is here; it is just because of the light that you cannot see the darkness.Even in the motion, the action, the gesture of a buddha, there is a certain restfulness. That restfulness brings a grace to it, a beauty to it.This is what an ancient meant when he said, “In complete darkness, an abyss is dreadful.”Meditation is not meant to cut your life and your existence in two parts and then to choose one, the internal. A perfect meditation is all-inclusive. It transforms you, and with your transformation your vision of things transform, but nothing is excluded.If you take the moving state as the right one, all plants and straws can move. Are they Tao? Therefore, the moving is the element wind, and the unmoving is the element earth, and both the moving and the unmoving have no nature of their own. If you want to catch it in the moving, it will go to the unmoving…They are continuously changing places: day becoming night, night becoming day; life becoming death, death becoming life. Don’t hold onto anything. It will immediately change into its other.It is like a fish concealed in the water which it can stir into ripples through which to skim. Virtuous Ones, the moving and unmoving are two kinds of states, but the man of Tao can make use of both the moving and the unmoving states.The movement and the non-movement are both in your hands. You are the watcher, neither the moving nor the unmoving.You simply are.You have never moved, so the question of unmoving does not arise. The question of movement or no movement is irrelevant to your witnessing consciousness.Your witnessing consciousness is just existential. It is here. And if your meditation does not bring you to this state of watchfulness, it is a false meditation. If it brings you to any god, you are befooling yourself, you are dreaming. If it brings you to Jesus Christ, then…Jesus Christ!Rinzai is saying if you meet Jesus Christ, give him another cross – immediately! “That is your work, what else are you all doing here?” Even Buddha is not spared – and they are all disciples of Buddha. If you meet the Buddha on the way, cut his head immediately!Nothing is more important than your own internal watchfulness. That is the very stuff the universe is made of.Basho wrote:A wintry gustdisappears amid the bamboosand subsides to a calm.What is our so-called life? A wintry gust disappears amid the bamboos and subsides to a calm. Just a little drama, just a little playfulness and you are gone.Our so-called life is so momentary that one should not get attached to it. Its only function – only proper function – can be to find the immortal. Hidden behind every moment is the eternal. But you can go on moving on the surface, never going deeper into your consciousness. You will move for millions of lives on the surface like ripples. It is sheer wastage of an immense awareness that can open all the doors of your originality, of your creativity, of your beauty, of your joy. Each moment becomes such a dancing moment.Another Zen poet wrote:Where the interplay of “is” and“is not” is fixed,not even the sages can know.There you are – not in terms of “is” and “is not,” in no duality.All duality can be watched. That which can be watched, you are not. You are always the watcher. And remember: you cannot watch the watcher. That is absolutely impossible. If you watch the watcher, then one is just mind – which you are calling the watcher – and the other is the real watcher. But the real watcher is your ultimate. You cannot go beyond it, it is the boundary of existence.Where the interplay of “is” and“is not” is fixed,not even the sages can know.Now there is nothing to know. Watching silently, everything disappears. An immense silence opens its doors. There is nothing to know. Knowledge becomes absolutely futile. You, for the first time, come home. This is ultimate rest.Anando has asked:Osho,I thought enlightenment was the end of all problems. After last night I realized it could be the beginning of a new one: how to avoid becoming a lukewarm bodhisattva?Anando, enlightenment is the end of all problems. But if you cling to enlightenment, then you create a problem. Experience it and drop it. Don’t carry it. You have experienced it, you have become it; now there is no need even to think about it.Do you think in my silent nights and days I have ever thought that I’m enlightened? I don’t remember, even for a single moment. It is just like you are a man – do you remember in twenty-four hours sometimes that you are a man and not a lion or a parrot or a rat? Neither do parrots think about it.Once you are enlightened, what does it mean to be enlightened? It simply means all problems are dissolved.But you can make a problem. Man has the capacity to make a problem where there is no problem at all.It is just old habit – you can start thinking, is this true enlightenment or not? Is this lukewarm enlightenment or a hot potato?Anando, even if you want to become a lukewarm bodhisattva you cannot – you are a hot potato. You may not know it but everybody else knows it – that this Anando is a hot-potato buddha.Satisfied?Now everybody will taste you. And just feel whether she is really a hot potato! Don’t take my word, experience it.There is an even bigger hot potato, Avirbhava. She is taking a suntan somewhere in Singapore just to become more hot. Within two or three days you will hear her. She is bringing a whole load of old gods…forty she has already collected. Anando is her associate director. You can call the museum the Museum of Gods, or you can call it the Museum of the Hot Potatoes – they are synonymous.Olga Kowalski gets out of bed and goes into the bathroom. She has forgotten her husband’s warning about sitting on the newly-painted toilet seat. She sits down and makes herself comfortable. But half an hour later, when Olga tries to get up, she is stuck to the seat.Kowalski comes home late and finds Olga freaking out in the bathroom. He manages to unscrew the seat from the toilet and then phones for the fire department. While the fire truck is on its way, Kowalski helps Olga into the bed, and then covers her ass with his ten-gallon cowboy hat.Just then, Fire Chief Muldoon and his crew burst into the bedroom carrying hoses. Muldoon drops his ax and goes over to examine the situation carefully. After a few moments he pulls Kowalski aside and whispers to him, “We can save your wife, but I’m afraid the cowboy has had it!”Big Leroy is coming home from work one day, when he stops in the fish market and buys himself an eel for his dinner. He slips it into his coat pocket and goes into the Crazy Crocodile Pub for a drink.Some hours and drinks later, Leroy reels out of the pub and stumbles home. When he gets there, he wobbles into the bathroom to relieve himself.Swaying backward and forward, Leroy fumbles in his pants and pulls out what he thinks is his prick. He feels a warm trickle running down his leg, and looks down with wide-eyed disbelief.“I knew you was big,” mutters Leroy, “and I knew you was black. But I sure did not know you had such beautiful blue eyes!”Bernie Bush, the ace political reporter for the American Righteous News, is having a day off with his family at the zoo. They are walking by the lions’ cage, when Bernie notices a young boy reaching his hands through the bars to pet one of the lions.Another huge lion suddenly leaps forward with a tremendous roar, but at the last second, the boy is swept to safety by a man in the crowd.Spotting a sensational story, Bernie approaches the man and says, “Excuse me, sir, but that was an incredible display of instant courage. I want to write a story about you for my newspaper. Tell me, where do you get such courage?”“Simple,” Swami Deva Coconut said, “I’m a disciple of Osho.”“What?” shouts the right-wing reporter, turning and walking away, “This will make a real story for sure!”The following day, the headline of the American Righteous News reads: “OshoDisciple Snatches Lunch From Hungry African Immigrant!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent, close your eyes.Feel your body to be frozen…Gather your life energy to the very center of your being. The more concentrated is the life energy…it suddenly bursts into a flame. This flame burns everything that is false in you and brings back the original man – the way nature intended you to be, not the way you have been nurtured to be.The original man is the buddha.Not to be a hypocrite is the only discipline.Just drop everything false. And the deeper you go, the false starts dropping on its own accord. It is an exploration of tremendous meaning.If you can find your original man, you have found everything that this existence contains – all the splendor, all the glory, all the ceremony, all the joy.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax. Let the body be there, let the mind be there, and you are simply the watcher. You have nothing to do with the body or the mind.Just be clear that you don’t get identified with the body-mind system. You remain a pure watcher, unconcerned.This brings you to the very center of your life, and to the very center of the universe too.Drink it deeply – the experience – so that it remains all the day long with you, running like an undercurrent.For this moment you are a buddha. I want you to be a twenty-four-hour buddha, no holiday.To be your original being is the greatest dignity that the universe can confer on you. It is nothing to do with the society, nothing to do with any religion, nothing to do with any philosophy. It is pure existence conferring on you all the joys, all the flowers, all the stars.The whole universe becomes your home.This is the dance which shows the fulfillment of meditation.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back all the buddhas, carrying your experience with you. Sit down slowly, silently, gracefully, remembering the place where you have been.Buddhahood is not an achievement, it is only a remembrance.You are a buddha whether you know it or not.In this peace, in this silence, how beautiful becomes the whole universe…Can we celebrate the assembly of ten thousand buddhas?

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The Original Man 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Original Man 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Shoitsu said to Chimoku:Since the buddhas and patriarchs, there have been three general levels of dealing with people. On the uppermost level there are no further techniques, no meaning of principle; verbal understanding is impossible. If you take it up directly at this, then there is no difference from “The cypress in the garden,” “Three pounds of hemp,” “Swallow the water of the West River in one gulp.”On the second level, it is just a matter of bringing out a question, going along to break through; this is like Rinzai questioning Obaku and getting hit sixty times.On the third level we enter the mud and water, setting down footnotes, blinding people’s eyes, destroying the lineage of the Buddha.But a true, patch-robed one must search out and investigate the living word, not go for the dead word. Eminent Chimoku, you are pure and true. If you can attain realization at the living word, you can be teacher of buddhas and patriarchs. Not begrudging my family way, I have shown you three levels of device.Anando, what Shoitsu is saying to Chimoku is of tremendous importance for you to understand, for everyone who is on the way. Shoitsu said:Since the buddhas and patriarchs, there have been three general levels of dealing with people. On the uppermost level there are no further techniques, no meaning of principle; verbal understanding is impossible.That’s the best and the most perfect way – a simple transmission from the master to the disciple; nobody knows about it, nobody sees it. It is simply energy moving from one fire to another possibility of fire, and making the hidden, possible fire in the disciple awakened.This first principle is really the only important principle, but it needs tremendous trust on the part of the disciple – an opening of the whole heart, coming as close to the master as possible so his flame can reach your heart and can start another flame within you, can awaken you to your buddhahood.Shoitsu is right that in this category, the uppermost category, there are no further techniques. It is not a question of technique, it is a question of love, of trust. Trust is not a technique, love is not a technique. It is not something that you use, that you do, it is something that happens to you. Suddenly you see the master and your heart starts dancing and rejoicing, knowing that you have found. There is no doubt in it, no question in it; it is just like falling in love. You can define trust as rising in love because falling in love is going down – it is biological. Rising in love is going upward – it is your spiritual principle.No meaning of principle, no teaching; verbal understanding is impossible. The phenomenon is so great – the transmission of the lamp from heart to heart, from being to being – that no word is big enough to contain it or even to indicate toward it. Nothing is said but something tremendously important happens; it is spontaneous.The best disciple receives the light without words – just by opening himself, holding nothing back.If you take it up directly at this, then there is no difference from “The cypress in the garden,” “Three pounds of hemp,” “Swallow the water of the West River in one gulp.”These are traditional answers given by different masters when they were asked, “What is the buddha?” And it is absolutely impossible for people who are not acquainted with the Zen tradition to understand it. If you ask a master, “What is the buddha?” he points you to the cypress tree in the garden and says, “That is the buddha.” Now it is so illogical, apparently irrational…or he says, “Three pounds of hemp – that is the buddha.”In this category, any kind of answer is possible, because in this category it is understood that the whole cosmos is the buddha. So anything belonging to the cosmos – whether it is a cypress tree, or a rosebush, or a lotus flower, it does not matter. Every stone on the path is nothing else but a buddha, because the buddha becomes now the very fabric of the whole existence.The second category needs techniques. This second category needs methods and devices for the simple reason that the disciple is not able to open on his own. The master has to make artificial, arbitrary arrangements. And because it is helpful, Buddha has defined it: “Whatever is helpful on the path is right. It does not matter whether it is a lie or a truth, the consequence matters.”A house is on fire, small children are inside playing. A great crowd gathers around shouting to the children, “Come out, the house is on fire!”But they don’t listen. They are so involved in their game, and they don’t bother – they don’t know. What does it mean? The house is on fire, so let it be. They don’t see the implication that they will be burned.Then their father comes from his shop. He sees the crowd which gathers around him shouting, “Somehow save the children! They don’t listen at all, they don’t look at all. They are so involved in their games and the fire has almost reached to every nook and corner of the house. Soon they will be burned.”The father shouted from a small window which was not yet touched by the fire, “What are you doing? I have brought you all the toys you had asked for” – and they all came to the window.The father said, “Jump out! All the toys are in my bag!” They jumped out and then he said, “You have to forgive me, I had to lie to bring you out. I forgot to bring your toys, but tomorrow, certainly I will bring you all those toys.” And then they could see. He said, “This fire is burning the house – it would have burned you also. I had to lie!”It is not a question of always being truthful. At least a master is allowed to use even a lie as a device.All devices are lies.This second category is important in the sense that it is through this second category that most of the buddhas have realized their essence.The first category is very rare, very unique. It is not in your hands. The second category has created many more buddhas than the first, because in the second category the master is trying to help you to drop your differences in strange ways. Nobody in the world has used devices as Zen has.Now, hitting a disciple sixty times…Certainly I cannot do it – just because of the counting…! Who is going to count up to sixty? But the master must have had great compassion to count up to sixty.But why is he beating the disciple? He is not beating the disciple, he is beating the disciple’s ego, bringing him to his senses: “Here, personality and ego won’t do.” And these hits are not received by everybody; they are received by only the great disciples with great gratitude.It is certainly because of compassion that the master comes to the point of hitting the disciple – because he is so close. Just a little push and the whole sky will open up.He had to hit sixty times because the disciple must have been very stubborn. He went on getting hit after hit but remained closed. And I think the master would not have stopped at sixty. At sixty, by chance, the disciple must have decided, “Now it is better to open. Why torture this old man?”He relaxed and opened, and the hitting stopped.The hitting is just a device. It is neutral; it has nothing to do with truth or untruth.And this kind of device is used only for the most prominent disciples. Other disciples feel jealous. They say, “Somebody got sixty hits – so much love. The master will not leave him closed – whatever happens.”And there are a thousand and one devices. Every master creates his own devices. The only question is to somehow throw ice-cold water in your eyes so that you open your eyes. You may be angry, you may be annoyed: “You are disturbing my morning sleep!” But you have asked for it. The day you asked for initiation, you have agreed that whatever the master wants to do is okay to bring you closer to yourself.This category is secondary, but as far as the number of buddhas is concerned, this category is more important. More people have become buddhas because of the second category.On the second level, it is just a matter of bringing out a question, going along to break through; this is like Rinzai questioning Obaku and getting hit sixty times.Western psychology is aware of a certain state of mind they call “breakdown.” When a person is too tense, so that he cannot hold himself together, then it is a breakdown. He goes insane. He cannot keep his personality, his mask, anymore. The burden is so much that he is dying under it. He tries hard, but there is no way – the tension goes on growing. The more he tries to control himself, to keep himself in control, the more difficult it becomes. Sooner or later a breakdown is absolutely inevitable.But Western psychology does not know anything about the “breakthrough.” Breakdown is leading you toward insanity, and breakthrough is leading you to an open, transcendental sky. Breakdown is losing your mind and becoming just a vegetable. Breakthrough is also losing your mind but gaining something far bigger, far greater – a pure consciousness. Breakdown is simply losing your mind. The small consciousness that you had – even that is gone; now you are just a vegetable. You may be a cabbage, or a cauliflower, because those who know, say there are two categories of vegetables, cabbage and cauliflower. Cauliflower is with a college education; cabbage is just a villager with no education at all.But it does not matter whether the madman is educated or uneducated. Mostly the educated man goes mad. The uneducated never has too many tensions. He never worries about any war, he never worries about nuclear missiles. He is not concerned about all these things; he is a simple man. It is impossible for him to be mad.But the educated man…as he becomes more educated, he becomes more aware of the tremendous problems that humanity is facing. He’s also a part of it. Whatever is going to happen he will also be in it. His tensions increase. Ordinary men will not understand his tensions because the ordinary man’s comprehension does not include the problems of tremendous significance, problems such that they can even destroy all life in existence. But breakdown, whether educated or uneducated, leaves behind just an insane being.Breakthrough is going beyond mind, not below mind. Breakthrough brings you to the open sky of your being. It also leaves the mind behind, but it becomes the master of the mind. The master is awake now – is at home. And the servant who has been there taking care of the home has even forgotten about the master, because it has been thousands of years since the master has been at home. The servant has become the master – obviously.All the devices of Zen are to wake up the sleeping master. And as the master wakes up, the servant immediately surrenders. The servant immediately becomes a very efficient mechanism. It is a beautiful mechanism, but as a servant only, not as a master. As a master, it is the most dangerous thing. As a master, it will lead you into dreams, fantasies, imaginations which are never fulfilled. And finally, there is nothing but emptiness in your hands, utter frustration.The awakening of the master is the breakthrough. Mind is in its place now, as a servant. When the master wants, it functions; when the master does not want, it remains silent and quiet.On the third level we enter the mud and water, setting down footnotes, blinding people’s eyes, destroying the lineage of the Buddha.On the third level is the student. On the second level was the disciple. On the first level was the devotee. The lowest level is to study. To make an effort through words, scriptures and heritage to understand what is within you, is so foolish. It is as foolish as when you stop a man on the road and ask him, “Please can you tell me who I am?”The man will shrug his shoulders and say, “If you don’t know yourself, how do you suppose I will know? The fact is, I don’t even know who I am. I’m in the same boat – as ignorant as you are.”Searching in the scriptures for the answer that will give you the ultimate freedom, that will make you part of the cosmic whole, that will give you the dignity of a buddha, the awakened, the enlightened, is absolutely a hindrance.Thousands of people work on the third level because it is the easiest to read the sutras, to cram the holy scriptures. But you are still as ignorant as you were before. Now you are just decorated with beautiful words. Your ignorance is now deeper than it was before. Before, your ignorance was not deep, it was just on the surface – a little hit and your waking would have happened. But as knowledge becomes thicker and thicker and thicker, as more and more layers of knowledge are added, you are farther and farther away from yourself.On the path, the third category of student means to enter the mud and water, setting down footnotes, blinding people’s eyes: destroying the lineage of the Buddha.Buddha’s basic contribution to the world is to say that you are a buddha, don’t look anywhere else. Don’t search anywhere else, don’t go to any holy place – just go in.But a true, patch-robed one must search out and investigate the living word, not go for the dead word.The living word is only possible with a living master. So the real search for truth is ninety-nine point nine percent the search for a living master. Point one percent I’m leaving for that rare breed in the first category where it happens spontaneously.In the second category, every effort is made to allow the student to open up. In the third category, the student simply becomes more and more knowledgeable. But to be knowledgeable is not to be a knower. To carry a load of scriptures will not make a donkey into a rabbi, or a pope, or a shankaracharya. These are dead words. Where can you find the living word?…a true, patch-robed one must search out and investigate the living word, not go for the dead word. The word is living only in the energy field of a master. When you listen to a master, it is not only the word that you listen to. By the side of the word also enters the wordless message. The words simply function as a boat. Hidden in the boat is the real message. It is not in the meaning of the word. The word is used only as an arrow; it hits your heart. Don’t look for its meaning in the dictionary. Look within your heart, whether it has reached deep and touched your being.The living word means to be with a living master. Reduced to its minimum, the search for truth is the search for the master. But it is a difficult search, because there are so many teachers pretending to be masters. In the dictionaries they have become almost synonymous – teacher and master. They are as different as day and night. The teacher only carries the dead word. Once the word may have been a living word, once it may have had breath, once it may have had a heart of its own. But once the master is dead, the word becomes a footnote. It loses all life; it is just a photograph.I have told you…Once a beautiful woman, an old friend of Picasso, came to see him after a few years. Picasso was sitting in a room where a big photograph of him was hanging on the wall. The woman looked at the photograph and said, “Very beautiful. Is it you? Because I have not seen you for many years, and you have changed so much.”Picasso said, “This picture is certainly not me, because if it were me, it would have kissed you! Just come near, so that I can show you the real Picasso.”The dead word cannot create a fire in you. It is in the master’s presence that the ordinary word takes on an imminent, significant splendor – it suddenly becomes breathing.Eminent Chimoku, you are pure and true. If you can attain realization at the living word, you can be teacher of buddhas and patriarchs. Not begrudging my family way, I have shown you three levels of device.Chimoku has come to Shoitsu to know how to discover himself. Shoitsu belongs to the first category.It is very rare for the first category of people even to talk about any other category, but seeing in Chimoku the possibility that he’s so close, Shoitsu decided that it would be better to describe all the categories to him. The third-rate quality certainly has to be avoided. You don’t have to be a student, a scholar – that is a hindrance. The second category is a lower category, but you can still become a buddha. And who cares, when you become a buddha, by what ladder you have reached?Once a buddha, you are a buddha.The difference is only that someone needs a ladder, and someone simply jumps. Somebody needs to go step by step…very calculative, thinking himself very clever and intelligent.The first category belongs to the people who have a lion’s heart. They don’t calculate – they simply enjoy taking risks. And there cannot be anything more risky than to be close to a living master. He’s going to burn you as you are and bring out a totally new being in you, with which you were not acquainted, but which was your real soul, your real existence. It is a great risk. Whatever you know about yourself will be burned, and only whatever you don’t know about yourself will remain in its purity. Chimoku seems to be a man who may take the jump and belong to the first category. If not, then at least the second category is open for him.These categories are not hierarchical. Remember, it is not that the first category of buddha is higher than the second category of buddha. The difference is only in their jumps. The first is the quantum leap; the second has a ladder. But once you are a buddha, by which path you have reached does not matter. Buddhahood has no hierarchy. No buddha is more buddha than anybody else.Chimoku seems to be a very potential candidate for buddhahood. That’s why Shoitsu says to him, Not begrudging my family way…He’s talking about his family of lions, who have become buddhas without any devices – even without a master.I am showing you three levels of device: first, avoid, absolutely avoid the lowest one. The second is good: you can follow a master, trust a master; let him destroy you so your authentic reality starts flowering. Unless a seed dies in the soil, the plant will never come. And the roses are far away – miles away. The seed needs to be courageous enough to be destroyed, to be swallowed by the earth.So in the second category you have to find a master. But if you are really a lion – as I see you – you can take the jump without finding a master. The question is not outside you; you have to find your inner space. No device is needed, but unfortunately, people won’t listen; they have to be given something to do. They are so habituated to doing, that to tell them not to do anything…Sitting silently by the ancient ponda frog jumps in.A little sound – and great silence….They will say, “It is all okay in poetry, but what happened about my buddhahood. How am I going to get it?”It is not a question of getting it – you have it!It is a well-known fact that sometimes people who use glasses for reading become so accustomed to them, that even without the glasses they feel that the glasses are there. And sometimes, because of this long familiarity, they have the glasses on while they are looking for them.And if you ask them, “What are you looking for?” they will say that they are looking for their reading glasses. And you have to tell them, “Those reading glasses are sitting on your nose!” Only then will they feel them, because the glasses had become almost a part of their body.For whom are you looking? – you are it. A man of deep courage simply looks in and finds it. No need of any scripture, no need of any device, no need of any master….It is very fortunate to find a man like Shoitsu, who said to Chimoku, the seeker, “my family way.” By “family” he is referring to all the buddhas who have become buddhas without any master, without any device, without any technique, any scripture. “Not bothering about it, seeing the flame is ready to burst open in you, I tell you about these three categories.” The student has to be avoided: either be a disciple or be a devotee. The devotee is the highest form as far as reaching to your innermost blossoming is concerned. The devotee means a lover, a man who trusts – he is ready to do anything.I am reminded of Bodhidharma, who introduced Zen into China…. He sat for nine years facing the wall in a small temple on the hills. Many people came because his fame had reached all over China. He was, at that moment, perhaps the greatest living master. Even the emperor had come to receive him. He wanted Bodhidharma to come to the palace and teach the people. But he did not understand that Bodhidharma’s family is not that of teachers. And the emperor had no idea that there are categories of seekers.Some stop at being students; they will have to go through the round of birth and death many more times yet. The second category of disciple is very difficult for the emperor – to touch the feet of the master, to open a little bit – because he cannot think that somebody else is higher than him. Even touching the feet is difficult – he knows he is the emperor of the biggest empire. This poor fellow – and Bodhidharma was a very strange master.From the very first moment he entered China, the emperor had come to receive him on the border. It is a rare thing that an emperor should come to receive a beggar, and the beggar behaved in such a strange way that the emperor could not swallow it. He could not understand – and if it were somebody else in Bodhidharma’s place, the king would have cut his head immediately, because he was behaving in such an unmannerly way.In the first place he came with one shoe on his head and one shoe on his foot. The emperor tried to avoid – being a gentleman, well cultured – seeing that shoe. But for how long? Again and again his eyes would go to Bodhidharma’s head, thinking, “This man I have come to receive, and he seems to be absolutely mad.”But he thought it was better not to talk about the shoe: “It is his business. I should talk about something else.” He had created hundreds of temples, made thousands of buddha statues. He had used the whole empire’s treasures. One thousand scholars were continuously translating Buddha’s words from Pali into Chinese, and ten thousand Buddhist monks were fed by the imperial treasury. So he had done much to make China Buddhist. Obviously, he thought that he would be appreciated, so he said, “I have done these things. What do you think – what will be the virtue attained out of all this?”Bodhidharma said, “Virtue? You idiot!” – in front of the whole court, because the court had come with the emperor. There was silence. He said, “You will go directly to hell!”The emperor could not understand. He said, “I don’t see why you are so angry.”Bodhidharma replied, “You are destroying a living word, and you are feeding these scholars who have nothing to contribute to the consciousness of the people. Still you have the nerve to ask if you are doing great virtue? You will suffer in hellfire.”The emperor thought, “How to get out of this man’s trap? I have entered in a lion’s den and now it is very difficult to get out…” So he asked, “If you say this…Up to now all the Buddhist monks have told me that my virtues are so great that paradise is certain. Who are you to say that I will go to hell?”Bodhidharma said, “I don’t know. It is not a question of knowing. I am a man of not-knowing.”The emperor could not understand, but his eyes were continuously caught by the shoe on Bodhidharma’s head. Before retiring he asked, “What is the purpose of one shoe on the head and one shoe on the foot?”Bodhidharma said, “You are the purpose. I wanted to see whether you are a curious child or a mature man. A mature man will not bother where my shoes are. Are you a shoemaker? Why are you concerned with my shoes? It is my head, and my shoe.”The emperor thought, “This is impossible!” He went back, and Bodhidharma never crossed the Chinese boundary. He remained in the hills just outside China’s boundary.Sitting in a temple, facing the wall for nine years, he declared, “To talk to people who don’t understand is just like talking to a wall. But talking to a wall at least one has a consolation that it is a wall. When you are talking to people and you see that they are functioning like a wall, one feels to cut their heads! I will turn my face only when I see that somebody has come who is worthy of listening to the living word.”Nine years is a long time – and what a man! He went on sitting, and finally one morning the man came. He said, “Listen, I think I am the person you are waiting for.” As a proof he cut off one of his hands with his sword, threw the hand into the lap of Bodhidharma and said, “Turn toward me; otherwise I will cut off my head and you will be responsible for it!”Bodhidharma turned immediately. He said, “This is enough. This is enough proof that you are as crazy as I want! Sit down. There is no need to cut off your head – we have to use it; you are going to be my successor.”A man who cuts his hand just to give proof of his sincere search…and there was no doubt in Bodhidharma’s mind that if he did not turn he would have cut his head. Unnecessarily, he would be burdened with the responsibility of killing a man, and such a beautiful man, so courageous. And certainly the man was Bodhidharma’s successor.But what happened between these two, nobody knows. Not a single word – Bodhidharma just turned toward him, told him to sit down, looked into his eyes…and they both sat down. The snow was falling and there was an immense silence all around. It is known that for three years the successor remained, and then Bodhidharma said, “It is time for me to go back to my home.”But nothing is known of what transpired between these two fellows. They were just sitting silently. First Bodhidharma was sitting alone looking at the wall; then they were both sitting looking at the mountains, at the trees – but in utter silence. Not a single question was asked, and not a single answer was given. But something must have transpired, otherwise Bodhidharma would not have chosen him as his disciple.The day of his leaving – by that time many more disciples had joined Bodhidharma, because now he was not sitting facing toward the wall – Bodhidharma called four disciples to stand up so that he could choose his successor. Everybody looked at each other. He was a very dangerous fellow, one never knew what he would do. Still, the four men came out and he asked the first man, “What is the essence of Zen?”The man said, “Very clearly, the essence of Zen is to know yourself.”Perfectly right as far as any examination is concerned, but not right enough for Bodhidharma. He said, “It is good, you have my skin. Just go there and sit down.”The second one said, “Silence, absolute silence is the essence of Zen.”Bodhidharma said, “A little better. You have my bones. Just sit down there.”The third man said, “Nothingness is the essence of Zen.”Bodhidharma said, “Good. But still not up to my standard. You have my flesh. Just go there and sit down.”He turned to the fourth one, and this was the man with one hand, and he asked him, “What is the essence of Zen?”That man, with tears in his eyes, fell to the feet of Bodhidharma, and did not say anything. Bodhidharma said to all of his disciples, “This is the man I choose as my successor, because even to say nothing is to say something. Just tears of gratitude and not a single word, only a gesture of deep gratitude. This man has my very heart – I am not going without leaving something of myself behind.”In Zen the best, the very best, happens only spontaneously.A haiku runs:The mouth desires to speak,but the words disappear;the heart desires to associate itself,but the thoughts fade away.He is describing exactly the state of meditation. I will repeat so that you remember what meditation is:The mouth desires to speak,but the words disappear;the heart desires to associate itself,but the thoughts fade away.And when nothing remains, you are.In this very nothingness is your being.Shinsho’s haiku:Does one really have to fretabout enlightenment?No matter what road I travel,I’m going home.These are the lions who don’t care even about enlightenment. He is saying: Does one really have to fret about enlightenment? – talk about it, discuss it, read about it, listen to it…?No matter what road I travel…It may be a long road or a short road, it may take millions of lives or just a single moment – one thing is certain, I’m going home. A man with this certainty will reach to his home this very moment. He will become enlightened but will not bother to talk about it. This type of enlightened person is called an arhata. He has known, but he keeps quiet; he is very secretive.The man who knows and tries to spread the fire, is known as a bodhisattva. The arhata seems to be a little hard. His understanding is: “Just as I have found my enlightenment, so everybody should find their own enlightenment. Why should I interfere into anybody’s sleep?”He has a point. His understanding is that this goes against compassion. Somebody is sleeping and snoring, having beautiful dreams, and you unnecessarily push and pull the man. You wake him and tell him, “Become enlightened, become awake. All that you are seeing is only a dream. Don’t be lost in dreams.” But certainly it is a kind of interference, poking your nose into somebody’s affairs. The arhata has a point but it looks a little hard.The bodhisattva also has his point. His point is: when I have found – I know everybody has it, just a little recognition is needed – if a little push can help, then not to push is cruel. If a little device can help the man to wake from his dreams and sleep, then not to create that device looks very uncompassionate.But my feeling is that people are unique in their ultimate enlightenment too. I will not say anything against the arhata because that is his uniqueness. It is his way of seeing things, not to interfere. Interference is taking away the freedom of somebody else. It may be well intentioned but you are disturbing somebody’s sleep.I will not say anything against the bodhisattva. He is also right in his own way, that when you know and don’t share it, you are very hard-hearted. When you know and you see people are stumbling, falling in their blindness, and just a small effort on your side will open their eyes, it is not compassionate not to do anything. Only a small effort is needed. Fire can spread and thousands of sleeping buddhas can become awake, suddenly awake, after centuries of sleep. Both are right, both are different, both are unique.Anando has asked:Osho,Shoitsu had three levels of device, but I suspect you have a lot more than that up your abundant sleeve. Do we have to wait until we too, are pure and true, before you will reveal your devices to us?Anando, each and every moment I am devoting to you. My work was long ago finished as far as I am concerned. I am living for you.Each moment I am creating devices for you. My hope is to spread the fire around the world. Up to now the greatest buddhas have remained confined to very small places. For example Gautam Buddha, the greatest, remained confined to a small state, Bihar; he never went out of Bihar. Perhaps I am the only one who is concerned with the whole world.I would like, in every country, hundreds of buddhas. And it is so simple that it can be done – just a little support from your side, Anando. It cannot be done against you. It can be done only if you are open, available, waiting for it – then it is going to happen.This time the transmission of the lamp is going to happen to millions of people.Those old buddhas had a very small company; my company is worldwide. I don’t belong to any nation, to any religion, and I don’t want you to belong to any nation or any religion. I want you to belong to the whole universe and spread the fire!Carry whatever experience you gain here, because I cannot move. I wanted to move around the world for the remainder of my life, but every country believes that I am a dangerous man. I will not say that they are wrong – I am a dangerous man. But it does not matter whether I go anywhere or not, I can remain here in my room, and those who have the potential of becoming buddhas will reach me from every nook and corner of the world. They will carry the fire around the world, spreading it.This time is a very ripe time.Either the buddhas are going to win or the ugly politicians are going to destroy the whole earth, the whole of life. The whole contribution of all the poets, painters, sculptors, dancers, mystics, they are ready to destroy at any moment. Only one thing can prevent them from destroying the world, and that is spreading meditation, silence, love, joy, dance; making the whole life a celebration, a continuous ongoing festival.That is the meaning of your name, Anando; it means bliss. And since yesterday your name has gained a new title.For centuries you will be remembered as, Anando: The Hot Potato Buddha…!Swami Bharti Barfi is sitting in Bodhidharma Tea Garden with Swami Beyondananda.“Hey, man!” says Barfi. “Your girlfriend…wow! Every day I see her with a different guy!”“Really?” replies Beyondananda. “It can’t be true.”“Come with me,” says Barfi, and the two friends go to the smoking temple.There is Beyondananda’s girlfriend, Ma Mango Milkshake, wrapped around another man.“See!” says Barfi. “Aren’t you going to go over there and primally encounter that guy to show him what you learned in your group?”“Well,” sighs Beyondananda. “Let’s meditate for a few minutes until she grabs someone more skinny!”Grandma Swinger goes to see Doctor Gasbag for a medical checkup.“Mrs. Swinger,” says Gasbag, “you are sixty-five years old. Your health is perfect, but I have one question for you. Your record here shows you as Mrs. Brooks, Mrs. Goldstein, Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Jones. You have been married four times. But I see you are still a virgin. I don’t get it!”“Oh,” says Grandma, “it is easy. My first husband was a poet, so he only dreamed about it. Then I married a musician – he only played with it. Then I married a weather forecaster – he always missed it. And finally, I married a plumber. I’ve called him twenty times already, but he never shows up!”Harvey Hornbee owns the Weird Wild Animals pet shop. His store is famous for strange creatures of all kinds – eccentric pets for exotic people.One afternoon, luscious Miss Willing walks in and approaches Harvey.“Hello,” she says, seductively. “I’m looking for a pet that will keep me from feeling lonely at night.”“Well,” Harvey splutters, eyeing the woman up and down, “I’ve got just what you want. Follow me.”He leads Miss Willing to a black curtain. Throwing it open, he reveals a huge, soft velvet pillow. Sitting in the center of it is a very large and handsome frog, named Doobee-doo.“This magnificent frog,” says Harvey, “will make wild and passionate love to you.”“Really?” replies Miss Willing, giggling over the frog. “I can’t believe it!”“Okay,” says Harvey, enthusiastically. “Just undress, lay back on the pillow, and Doobee-doo will do the rest.”The shop bell rings and Harvey goes out, drawing the curtain behind him.Half an hour later, Harvey goes to check up on the amorous couple. He opens the curtain to see Miss Willing sprawled naked on the pillow, with a disappointed look on her face.“What is the matter?” asks Harvey.“That frog just sits there and looks at me!” she replies.“Really?” says Harvey, shaking his head in disbelief. He picks up Doobee-doo and sits the frog on the side of the pillow.“Okay, Frog! Pay attention!” exclaims Harvey, exposing his own machinery, “It is the last time I’m going to show you how to do this!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent…close your eyes. Feel your body to be absolutely frozen, no movement. Gather all your life energy and consciousness deep inward.Find out the deepest point. The deeper you go within, the closer you are to yourself.At the deepest point you are the buddha. Feel it as deeply as possible. It is your own territory – nobody can enter here. It is absolutely your space, your universe. There is no need to fear.With freedom, open yourself. This moment you are the eternal buddha, the luminous buddha, the ultimate principle of life and existence.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax. Just feel the body lying there, the mind lying there and you are just a watcher. This way you will reach to the deepest and the innermost core of your being.Just be a witness.Remember this space around the day, running like an undercurrent, and your whole lifestyle will start changing.You will be surprised yourself. The things that you are saying, the gestures that you are making are so new, are so fresh.You have found the original man.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but come back with the original man throbbing in your heart, the buddha, not a memory but a living experience.Sit down for a few moments just to recollect the experience, to drink it deeply. Be drowned in it. Let it sink into every fiber and cell of your life.There is no other virtue in the world other than to be the original man. We call the original man the buddha because he is dropping sleep, and waking up. The word buddha means the awakened one.And everybody who can sleep is capable of being awake. Whatever you have done in your sleeping stage has been nothing but dream.You may have been a saint or you may have been a sinner, it does not matter. Once you are awake you are just pure clean space.Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

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The Original Man 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Original Man 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Dokai said:As soon as I get up on the seat to speak, I am already involved in the dusts. If I go on and freeze my eyes, it would just show a flaw. The special transmission in a single statement is taking in a thief who ransacks your house. Not losing the fundamental source is like a fox fond of its den. Therefore true thusness, ordinary and holy, is all dream talk; buddhas and sentient beings are expressions of assumptions.When you get here turn the light around to shine back, let go your hands and accept it – even then you still will not have escaped being like a cold cicada clinging to a dead tree, not turning his head when his crying ends.Dokai raised his staff and concluded:If you can get it here, it is all something set up by the buddhas. Even if you can spring up in the East and disappear in the West, open out or shut away freely, you still haven’t even dreamed of seeing what was before the buddhas.You should know that there is one man who doesn’t get anything from others, does not accept any teaching or command, and does not fall within the scope of grade or rank. If you know this man, your life’s study is completed.Here Dokai paused and suddenly called out to the assembly, saying, “If you freeze your eyes any more, don’t bother to see me.”Anando, the original man is the constant concern of Zen. In your innermost being no dust has gathered from outside, no thought is capable of reaching there. It is as pure and clean as ever. It never becomes old, it never becomes stale; its freshness is its nature.But it is deep down hidden inside you. Many layers have been put upon it: layers of knowledge, layers of respectability, layers of morality; all kinds of honor, all kinds of belief systems. It has become a very thick wall, although it is only of words. And a courageous and intelligent man can cut the whole wall in the single blow of a sword. Otherwise it takes lives and lives, taking away one layer, then another layer. And while you are taking away layers, new layers are gathering. You have to clean your mirror every day; otherwise in twenty-four hours new dust will have gathered.So enlightenment has to be in a single blow; otherwise it will take an infinity of time. You cannot go slow, you cannot postpone it. You have to take the leap this very moment, because the next is never certain. Roads turn, and friends who are together become enemies. That which was possible this moment may not be possible the next moment.The whole world is a chaos and in a mess. It is not only now that it is in a chaos, it has always been in a chaos, because so many millions of unconscious human beings are creating all kinds of dreams, projections, expectations, frustrations. The whole air is heavy with the clouds of unfulfilled hopes, incomplete desires. Even failures in success: knowing that you have achieved the goal that you had determined, you are still as ignorant and empty, inside, as you were before.They say in a proverb that nothing succeeds like success; it is only a half truth. I want to make it complete: nothing fails like success. And the second part is more important; otherwise kings would not renounce their kingdoms, Gautam Buddha would not have been born. There comes a moment when you are successful moneywise or powerwise, you are famous…Rousseau has lamented in his autobiography that, “When I was young the only desire in me was to become world famous.” One never thinks what you will do when you become world famous. One simply never asks these questions. One simply gets caught in a net: “Everybody is trying to be successful and famous – I should be the first in the queue.” It is a long struggle and conflict.Finally, Rousseau became a world-famous philosopher. But unfortunately in France in those days there was a tradition that if you tear off a piece of cloth from a world-famous man, that piece of cloth brings success to you. This became such a trouble that he could not go even for a morning walk. He would come home naked, with scratches all over, and crowds were preventing him from escaping. He could not go to the railway station; he had to be escorted by the police. And even the police, in the end, would snatch sometimes…He writes in his autobiography, “When I was nobody I suffered, when I became somebody I suffered. Suffering is there, whatever you do.”So one day one comes to know that one layer is finished, but there are other layers. Zen’s insistence that it should be in this moment, not to be postponed, has a very significant implication. It shows that if you cannot do it now, tomorrow is not going to be different, just a little more difficult, because within twenty-four hours more dust will have gathered. The sooner you do it the better.And the reason for doing it is to find what nature has desired you to be: whether you are a seed of a lotus flower or a seed of something else. These layers don’t allow you even to be acquainted with your potentiality, your seed. Not only do they prevent, they actively take you astray. They create new goals which have nothing to do with your innermost being.A great surgeon was celebrating his sixtieth birthday. He had trained hundreds of surgeons during his professorship in the university. They all had gathered and they were drinking and dancing, and then somebody noticed that the old surgeon was not there. So one of his friends went out to see – perhaps he had gone out for some air. He was sitting, crying, underneath a tree.The man said, “Are you insane or something? We have come from faraway places to celebrate your birthday and you are sitting here and weeping.”The surgeon said, “The reason is, I never wanted to be a surgeon. That was not my longing. I wanted to be a dancer, but my parents, my teachers, my colleagues, everybody forced me to be a surgeon, because to be a surgeon is respectable. And who knows? As far as dancing is concerned you may turn out to be just a beggar. Dancing is not a certain profession.”And the old professor said, “Now I have succeeded as the greatest surgeon in the country, but there is no fulfillment. The tears are because my whole life was wasted unnecessarily. Even if I had been a street dancer, just dancing for any crowd that wanted to see my dance, I would have felt more fulfilled. I would not have felt this discontent. Now there is no way to go back, it is too late.”Always remember, time is running fast – every moment you are becoming older. What is possible today may not be possible tomorrow; hence don’t take unnecessary risks.The discovery of the original man is absolutely essential, because hidden in the original man is your destiny, what nature wanted you to be. Unless you become that you will remain frustrated, you will remain angry. You will not be able to love, you will not be able to dance, you will not be able to relax. Your whole life will become just a sickness until death.The discovery of the original man is the discovery of the eternal element in you. And once you have discovered it and allowed it spontaneously to go anywhere it wants to go – without bothering about your parents, your well-wishers, your teachers, your preachers – you may find that your original being in its ultimate fulfillment, flowering, is the buddha. The buddha is nobody else.You are the seed buddhas. The buddha is the lotus, not the seed. This is not much of a difference, but we make it such a long journey, unnecessarily.Dokai said:As soon as I get up on the seat to speak, I am already involved in the dusts.As far as the inner innocence is concerned, the experience of your original source is concerned, Dokai is making really a great statement. And he has not uttered a single word, he has simply got up on the seat to speak. But just the intention to speak has already raised much dust – just the intention. The words are going to raise much more dust! Hence the emphasis of Zen that words are absolutely impotent in conveying the experience. You can have it as a transmission, as a synchronicity with the master or with the universe.The master is simply a door to the universe. It is easier to get in harmony with the master – he is a living human being. Once you know the art of how to get in harmony, the master’s work is finished. You can get in harmony with the stars and the mountains and the rivers…and the whole universe becomes your home. Now you are as natural as a rose, as a lotus, as a bird flying in the sky.Except man everything is original.Only man has gone astray.Don’t take it as unfortunate. Going astray means man has come to a point where he has the freedom to go astray or not to go astray. Other than man, the whole existence is centered, natural but unconscious. It cannot go astray. The rose cannot become something else; it cannot become a marigold. The whole existence, except man, lives naturally, but this naturalness is not out of freedom. Only man has this great destiny: he can choose to be a fake or to be real.The joy that comes to man by being original does not come to the whole of existence, because they are natural, they cannot go beyond that. They are not freely natural, they are automatically natural. Their being natural is a kind of bondage. The rose is bound to be a rose, and the grass is bound to be grass. And the trees, however they may try, cannot reach to the stars.Everything is in a universal slavery. That’s why there are no accidents. Millions of stars don’t clash…no traffic control. They are all moving with tremendous speed, but there are no accidents anywhere…no universal ambulance rushing to this star, rushing to that star!And just in Pune, this dirty, tiny village, utterly polluted – look at the traffic…! It seems all the mad people of India have become rickshaw drivers in Pune! In every direction they are going, and the miracle is, rarely any accident happens. As far as I am concerned, I think it is a miracle that people reach home. No traffic seems to be enjoying so much freedom as Pune traffic.Nature is in a bondage; it is not even aware that it is in bondage. It is the privilege of man to know that he is in bondage. And when you know that you are in bondage, you also know, simultaneously, that freedom is possible.If you know that you are in prison, you can start finding ways how to get out of it, how to have some contact with the outside world, how to find some way, some ladder, some hole to get out of the prison. But if you think the prison is your home, then naturally there is no question of inquiring.Millions of human beings think that whatever they are, this is what they are supposed to be. They are suffering and they are miserable; they are in anguish, they are in absolute angst; their life is a tragedy. But they go on living, saying, “What is the point of committing suicide? Who knows…?” At least while you are alive you are surrounded with the crowd, which is also as miserable as you are. You have friends – you can tell your misery to them and console them, and they can console you in return, and there is something to gossip about!Committing suicide is entering into a dark tunnel where no one knows what is going to happen. At least one thing is certain: you will be alone. There is no guarantee that the misery will not be there; there is no guarantee that your anxiety will not be there. But there is one thing certain, that with all this, one new thing will be added: you will be alone. And there will be darkness and no electricity!No scripture says that there is electricity in hell, or in heaven. You should not expect these things there. Even if you can find fire…perhaps they have fire in hell to torture people. But it is not known whether in heaven they even have fire for cold nights or to put small lights in your houses, or some petrol lighters for your cigarettes…. It is certain that in heaven there is no shopping mall – saints don’t need anything!By committing suicide it is not certain that you will reach heaven. Most probably you will simply wander in the darkness and you will not reach anywhere because you don’t have any map and you don’t have any virtue. The only possibility is that by chance you may enter into hell. That too by chance! It is a vast universe. It is not that you just get out of your home and enter into hell; it is not so easy, otherwise most of the people would never return home. There are problems in hell, but nothing compared to the home, “Home Sweet Home…” These miserable creatures sing songs, and they think they are befooling others.The experience of enlightenment, or the experience of the original man, is inexpressible, so inexpressible that Dokai says:As soon as I get up on the seat to speak, I am already involved in the dusts. If I go on and freeze my eyes, it would just show a flaw. The special transmission in a single statement is taking in a thief who ransacks your house.A very original statement about the one-blow enlightenment. He says it is like taking in a thief who ransacks your house.I am reminded about Sheik Farid, a great mystic…A thief entered his house. He had collected a few things from the neighbors and he thought, “By the way, have a look into this poor monk’s house.”As he entered he found nothing but a begging bowl, a staff – things like that, that are needed even by the poorest man, but he collected all of them. Farid was sleeping, or pretending to sleep, just looking from the corners of his eyes at what was going on. When the thief had bundled everything up, he went out of the house, mixing Farid’s things with the other things that he had stolen from other houses. He made a huge bundle of all those things, and started to carry it.After a few steps the thief found somebody was following him. He looked and he was surprised. Sheik Farid was well known – “and this fellow was asleep…why is he following me?” And suddenly the thief asked, “Why are you following me?”Farid said, “Why? We are changing houses.”The thief said, “My God, this means I have to take you also to my house?”Farid said, “You are taking everything else!”The thief said, “I have never seen such a strange fellow. Take away your things!”Farid said, “Fifty-fifty.”The thief said, “My God! But these are not your things, they belong to others.”Farid said, “No. Either fifty-fifty or I am coming with you.”Fifty-fifty he had to agree to – crying, because he had stolen those things at so much risk. “And this fellow, sleeping perfectly well, did not speak a single word; otherwise I would not have touched his things. They are of no value at all.”And Farid said, “Of course I am the chooser, so I will choose which things come to my lot and which things go to your lot. I am always a master of any situation.”He said, “That I can see. You just choose quickly, otherwise the neighbors will wake up and everything will be gone. You just take away whatever you want. Don’t bother whether it is exactly fifty-fifty or not.”Farid was a very humorous man. He writes in his biography, “That was such a joy to share. In the morning I went around and told people, ‘You can come and take if your things are here. I could not manage one hundred percent, because that would have been very difficult – that man was tough. But still, at least sixty percent I have managed. So take away your things and be careful about thieves. As for me it is okay. What can he take away from me?’”Dokai is saying that, in a single moment, to find the original man within you, is like taking a thief into your house who steals everything that you have collected around yourself, and leaves you naked as if you are just born. From this just-born nakedness you may for the first time feel a new throb, a new heartbeat, a new source of breathing and a new growth. No longer conditioned by the society or by religion or by education, you will start being yourself according to this vast universe’s desire.And the difference between you and the trees, and the flowers, and the mountains will be that they are mountains not out of freedom. Roses are roses not out of freedom, but whatever you are, you will be out of your freedom. Originality and freedom – these two qualities combined make you the awakened one, original and with freedom. Naturally, with freedom, nobody is going to choose something against his nature. With freedom one is going choicelessly with the flow of the wind, with the flow of the river, wherever it leads.Finding the original source, one finds a tremendous trust in oneself, because one is now connected with the universe. Otherwise we are rootless people, disconnected, just going here and there for no reason, for no purpose – just tourists.The easiest way to waste your time is to be a tourist. That is the worst category of human beings: people who have nothing else to do, who just know how to carry big suitcases and cameras and run from this place to that place. And they are in such a hurry; they don’t see the Taj Mahal, they just take a photograph. At home, at ease, they will look at the picture. They are making an album which they could have purchased in their own city, only more professional, more accurate. All this running away…But that’s what is happening in our actual lives. What are you trying to be? Is it something that the society has told you to be, or is it out of your autonomous freedom? Every child is being asked again and again, “What are you going to be?”In my childhood they used to ask me, “What are you going to be?”I said, “That is not your concern. I am keeping it a secret.”They said, “Strange, we have asked many children. Every child says he is going to be a doctor, he is going to be an advocate, he is going to be a leader, a politician, or he is going to be a sannyasin. You are the only person who is saying, ‘This is not your concern’ – and to whom are you talking?”I said, “I know, you are my uncle, you are my father, but that does not mean that my growth is your concern. Just keep yourself out of my way. I know where I am going!”They said, “Remember, you will end up as nothing!”I said, “I know.”And by chance I ended up as nothing. But I am so happy in my nothingness, because it is my whole freedom. Nobody has imposed it on me, it is my own choice. I have not allowed anybody even to touch it. This has been my constant stand, from my early childhood up to university.The question was asked many times, “What are you going to be?” And when they heard that “This is not your concern. You should take care of yourself, I will take care of myself. Just don’t collide with me,” my professors were hurt. They said, “We were asking out of sympathy.”I said, “I don’t want anybody’s sympathy. Never mention that dirty word!”They said, “My God, sympathy, you call a dirty word?”I said, “It is, because it is a substitute and all substitutes are prostitutes.”They said, “Strange, from where do you get these ideas?”I said, “I don’t get them from anywhere. Can’t I make them up myself? I don’t have to quote anybody, I quote myself.”Everybody is trying to be somebody else, because the whole pressure of society is to be somebody else. Nobody even takes note of what your original program is, what the program you brought with you at your birth is.In a natural, peaceful, intelligent society this will be our first task: to help every child to find out his program, not our program. And even if his program goes against our program, it is out of love that we should support him. We may not agree with him, but we should support him. He has to follow his nature.Zen is so insistent on the original man – not without reason, because everybody has become a carbon copy of somebody else. This has become almost a rule of the game. Zen is a rebellion: a rebellion against the whole society’s past, a rebellion for the individual and his freedom to choose his own destiny. It is not an ordinary revolution – a communist revolution, a fascist revolution, a Gandhian revolution; these are just mundane revolutions.Zen is the deepest revolution within the individual himself. It has nothing to do with the outside structure. And just to be oneself is the greatest blessing and the greatest ecstasy.Not losing the fundamental source is like a fox fond of its den…Don’t lose the fundamental source of your life.Therefore true thusness, ordinary and holy, is all dream talk; buddhas and sentient beings are expressions of assumptions…Only a great master can say such things. What is he saying? He is saying that somebody is trying to be a buddha, somebody is trying to find the original source – these are all mental assumptions. Even the buddha is a concept.You will have to drop the buddha. You will have to drop all your assumptions and just look at the very center of your being, where there is no assumption, where you are drowned into your original source. Get rooted there, and then branches will shoot on their own accord and flowers will come in their own time. You need not worry. Your only worry should be that you are not distracted from your original source, that you are not bribed from your original source, that you stick to one point: “I am going to be myself, neither Gautam Buddha nor Jesus Christ…”Sometimes I think it is good that they crucified Jesus, because that fellow was pretending to be the son of God. That is absolute fantasy, and we should not allow these kinds of people, otherwise somebody will say, “I am the father of God.”If Jesus is the son, somebody must be the father. And what about uncles and aunts and the whole family? And you cannot prevent…if you accept Jesus as the son, without any certificate, without any indication from God himself, what is the problem in saying, “I am the grandfather of Jesus?”These are all assumptions. One should be just oneself. The moment somebody tries to pretend to be somebody else, crucify him because he is spreading a sickness in the society. He is going to pollute the minds of people: “You have to be somebody special. You have to be a prophet, a messenger, a messiah; otherwise you are just ordinary.”Nobody wants to be ordinary. Even those you think are ordinary, in their minds they think they are extraordinary. They smile without showing you that “you are an idiot, I am extraordinary. You can go on thinking that because you have a little more riches or a little more political power…but that does not matter. The real thing is, I am so extraordinary. I don’t care about riches or about political power.”Dokai is saying: Not losing the fundamental source is like a fox fond of its den…Cling to your source. At any cost you have to remain being yourself. You may end up just like me, into nothingness. I can only share my experience, that being nothing is the greatest joy. But I don’t want you to become nothing, I don’t want you to imitate! Remember the difference.I am saying, being yourself, the worst that can happen to you is that you may end up into nothing. That happened to me, and I am feeling so blissful that I cannot stop spreading the fire around, making people courageous enough to explore their original source – even if they end up into nothing.Not losing the fundamental source is like a fox fond of its den. Therefore true thusness, ordinary and holy, is all dream talk; buddhas and sentient beings are expressions of assumptions.How do you know that a man is a buddha? Because he has said it to you, but this is very gullible. How do you know that Jesus Christ is the son of God? In the first place nobody knows about God, and suddenly, this carpenter’s son – not actually the son of the carpenter, but of somebody else who pretended to be the holy ghost…He is talking about being the son of God, and the only son – and people are trying to be like Jesus. One great classic of Christianity is The Imitation Of Christ. How to imitate so that you can also become Jesus.I used to see the principal of a Christian theological college on the way to the university, and we became friends. While coming and going I was always stopping at his house for a little talk – certainly a great theological talk. I would create some trouble in his mind for the whole twenty-four hours until I saw him again.Finally, he said, “This stopping every day is very dangerous, because it has taken away my peace of mind. You ask such questions!”I had asked him: “I am reading The Imitation Of Christ, but the ultimate should be the crucifixion; otherwise you are just a half-baked potato. So what do you think about this great classic? At what point do you stop following Christ? If you are really following him you will have to bribe a few people to crucify you, because nowadays nobody is interested in crucifying anybody. People have their work, their concerns – who is interested?”He said, “The whole night I could not sleep. I had always thought that The Imitation Of Christ is a great book and you disturbed my whole idea. Even in my dream I dreamed that somebody was crucifying me.”He said, “My God, this is enough! I don’t want to discuss theology with you because you create such strange theological questions which are never discussed by great theologians. For example, this grandfather…it is absolutely rational; otherwise the whole thing seems to be so phony. God has no father; the son is a bastard; nobody knows who this Holy Ghost is – some gangster? What kind of theology is this?”Don’t be distracted either by Buddha or Jesus or Mahavira. Don’t be distracted by anybody, including me. You have to be just yourself, purely yourself. Only then can you attain to the ultimate bliss possible to man.Only then can you blossom into many flowers, and your life can be a life of fulfillment, contentment, peace, without any tension at all.The enlightened man is the original man come to his ultimate growth, not imitating anybody but just insisting on being himself. The whole society is trying to drag you somewhere else.When you get here, turn the light around to shine back, let go your hands and accept it – even then you still will not have escaped being like a cold cicada clinging to a dead tree, not turning his head when his crying ends.Dokai raised his staff and concluded:If you can get it here, it is all something set up by the buddhas. Even if you can spring up in the East and disappear in the West, open out or shut away freely, you still haven’t even dreamed of seeing what was before the buddhas.You can think of East and West, you can turn this way and that way, but you are in the mind – you are not going out of the mind. You can think, I am a buddha. There are religions which repeat it as mantra: I am a buddha, I am a buddha. And if you repeat it many times continuously, you may start thinking you are.The Hindus go on thinking, aham brahmasmi, I am the ultimate – and repeating it again and again and again. Naturally, the memory goes on deeper and deeper and you may even, at the risk of your life, repeat aham brahmasmi. That does not prove that you have reached the ultimate. Al-Hillaj Mansoor was also crucified because he was saying “Ana’l haq!” – I am God and I have sent Mohammed as a prophet. Now, Mohammedans cannot accept even for a single moment somebody calling himself God and reducing Mohammed to just a prophet.Mansoor’s experience that “I am God” may have been just a mind trip. That’s what his master Junnaid was telling him continuously, “Okay, you are God, but what is the need of proclaiming it? Just keep quiet. Yes, you are God but don’t say it to anybody.”Mansoor said, “But when I am God, why should I not say it?”It was a beautiful dialogue between the master and the disciple. Junnaid said, “In that case I am also God. And you know perfectly well there are not two Gods.”He said, “That’s right. There is only one God.”And how to deny the master – his own master? He says, “I am also God, but I don’t say it to anybody because I don’t want to be unnecessarily crucified. What is the point in it?”It is a suicidal instinct according to Junnaid, and I think he is right – that it is very psychological. But Mansoor did not listen to him – and he was a very beautiful man. But the experience should not be expressed by the word God, because that word is contaminated. That word has become an obsession for millions of people of different religions. It is better to avoid it.He could have said, “I am pure consciousness,” and nobody would have bothered about it. Who bothers about pure consciousness? If you are pure consciousness, be! Nobody objects. If you say, “I am the original man,” perfectly good! All those things are synonymous.Zen chooses the most simple and most humanitarian words: the original man. It contains all the buddhas and it contains all the gods, because it contains the essence of the very existence.You should know that there is one man…This is the man I have been talking about.You should know that there is one man who does not get anything from others, does not accept any teaching or command, and does not fall within the scope of grade or rank. If you know this man, your life’s study is completed.Here Dokai paused and suddenly called out to the assembly saying, “If you freeze your eyes any more, don’t bother to see me.”He is saying that if you still go on reading the scriptures and freezing your eyes, or meditating and freezing your eyes, don’t come to me again. Come to me again when you have found your original man. I have described the man. I have given the indications and the qualifications of the man.Ikkyu wrote:The mind of manis without sound,without odor.He who answers when calledis nothing but a thief.He is saying that when you are so silent that there is no sound, no odor, and somebody asks you, “Who are you?” only silence is the answer. If you answer anything else – that I am the God, that I am the only begotten son of God, that I am a messiah, that I am a buddha – then you are nothing but a thief. You have borrowed these words from others, from scriptures, but you have not known your original man.Another poet wrote:In the landscape of springthere is neither high nor low;the flowering branches grow naturally,some long, some short.The poet is saying that in nature there is no gradation, no inferiority, no superiority.Those who are short don’t feel inferior, those who grow long don’t feel superior. Everything is accepted in its suchness. The original man, once found, and you will not think in terms of gradations; you will not think in terms of who is superior and who is inferior.I was staying in a government guest house and two old men came to see me….Both must have been eighty or eighty-five, and they told me, “We have been friends from our childhood, but we have been in a constant quarrel about the existence of God.” One was an atheist – he did not believe in God. The other was a theist – he believed in God. They said, “We heard you are here, so we thought it will be good to get another opinion about it.”I asked those old fellows, “Have you seen God?” – first to the man who believed in God.He said, “No, I have not seen him. I believe, I don’t know.”I asked the second man, “Have you seen that there is no God?”He said, “No, I have not seen. But I believe that there is no God.”I said, “There is no disagreement between you two.”They said, “What?”I said, “You both believe. On the point of seeing you both agree that you have not seen. Where is the disagreement?”They looked at each other. They said, “The point is worth considering, because neither I know nor you know, and we have been quarreling for our whole lives.”I said, “Better discover, rather than believe. In believing you have wasted your whole life.”Discovery is possible in a single moment, but first you will have to drop your beliefs. Disbeliefs are also beliefs, they are just negative beliefs. There is no difference between theists and atheists. Both are believers – one positively, one negatively. The seeker has to be completely free from belief and disbelief. He has to be completely open and available.The original man is not far away on any star – he is hidden within you.Anando has asked:Osho,Dokai says it is all dream talk. Are your words then just an excuse to lull us into a space where hopefully, some day, we may be ready for the special transmission?You are ready for the special transmission right now, Anando. It just needs courage to accept it.The society has condemned you so deeply, the condemnation has gone so deep in you that you never think you are worthy of anything. And to be “worthy” of being the original man is not a question of worth, it is not a question of deserving.You are.Even if you deny it, still you are.Even if you try to escape somewhere else, it will be within you.So, Anando, Dokai is right when he says all is talk. You just stop talking, stop thinking – and the original man is there. All that is needed is to give a little gap and you will find a fresh growth, a flame, arising from your very center. That’s what we are trying to do.First, I am trying to convince you that I am not a scripture, I am a living human being as you are. I am not superior, I don’t have any relationship with God – I am not even a faraway cousin! I am simply just as you are. The difference is so small, it is not even worth mentioning: I know it, and you are looking here and there, not looking at the right point.On the contrary, you are avoiding it, because if you find it there may be troubles. Do you want to be crucified? Do you want to be poisoned? Do you want to be killed? It is better just to be a doctor, a grocer, a film actress, a hairdresser, and not to bother about this original man. These original men have always gotten into trouble – it is better to avoid.The whole history of man is wrong because it has always crushed the original. It wants carbon copies, it wants slaves; it does not want independent people.Independent people will always be rebellious, rebellious in the sense that they will do something only if it fits with their nature. They will not do anything that goes against their nature. The society wants slaves, the society wants obedience.That’s how the Bible starts the story of the world. Adam and Eve are thrown out of the garden of God because they disobeyed. Disobedience is the greatest sin, because disobedience means you are going to be a rebellious person. You will do things which you like. You will not be enslaved by vested interests. Otherwise no problem is there preventing you from asserting your original nature. This very moment you can say, “I am my original nature,” and you can drop all the faces, masks, personalities. You will just be simple.People are so unbelievably stupid. In the Middle Ages in England, even dogs had clothes, because to see a naked dog is pornography. Strange, what about the horses and the donkeys and the elephants? How are you going to put clothes on all these people? The whole of humanity will be involved in dry cleaning continuously. There will be no other business. Even the legs of chairs and tables were covered because ‘legs’…the word reminds you of something. But in fact the covered legs remind you more. Uncovered they are just wooden legs, but covered, one never knows…!People have been hiding nature in every possible way: trying to pretend, in the name of etiquette; smiling when you really want to hit, holding back your tears when you want to cry, because a man should not cry; it is only for the weaker sex, for women, to cry to their hearts’ content – and they do. That’s why they are less sick, live longer, are healthier in every way than men, more joyous…and they have a sense of humor.Man is such a dodo. But he has been made a dodo. All his reality has been covered. He has to behave like a gentleman.Otherwise, Anando, there is no problem at all. I am talking to you to destroy the conditionings, and I am helping you to enter into meditation so that you can find your original self. I don’t give you any ideals. I don’t want you to be somebody other than yourself. And if you are taking time, I am not responsible for it. I am reaching you every day, but I find your doors are closed. The moment your doors are open, the transmission will happen immediately.The transmission is a simple phenomenon. It is just waking you up, but you are sleeping with closed doors. I cannot even enter in your room. Sleep with open doors, don’t be afraid. If I don’t enter, somebody will enter and wake you up. The whole question is of waking you up.Every day we are meditating, you reach very close to the center, but the conditionings are millions of years old. You go with hesitation. I go on forcing you: “A little more, a little more.”Poor Nivedano has to go on beating his drum, and the drum is becoming enlightened, not Nivedano. Nivedano is Nivedano, he will always beat the drum. And when he sees that you are not getting the point, he beats more, but he is completely unaware that he has also to become enlightened. I am leaving him for the time being. When you all have become enlightened, then you can all beat Nivedano. And in a single moment he will jump up, and he will say, “I am enlightened. No need to beat me!”I trust him – that’s why I am not putting him into meditation. But he is earning great virtue by trying to beat the drum, and he is enjoying.Anando, it is just a question of dropping all conditioning. You can do it retail or you can do it wholesale. I would prefer that you do it wholesale because retail is a long process. This day is as good as any day. This moment is as good as any moment. But I will go on trying, inch by inch, that you go in; little by little, that you gather courage.I am not going to leave you unless you jump into your original source. You can delay, but you cannot stop. Before Nivedano tries to drum your heads…He is not beating his drum, remember, that is just an excuse. He is beating your heads. Before getting into that serious work of finding the original man, a few laughs will make you ready.Leroy, a huge black guy, walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder.“Hey!” says the bartender, “Where did you get that?”“Africa,” replies the parrot.Kowalski’s son, Kowalski Junior, comes back from college and asks his dad a riddle: “What is long and hard and leaks?”“Son!” exclaims Kowalski, “I can’t believe you would use such vulgar expressions.”“Don’t get excited, Dad,” says the boy. “It is a pen.”Kowalski is very amused by this trick, and he decides to repeat it at his next church gathering.“My son told me this riddle which he heard at college,” brags Kowalski, proudly. “What is long and hard and leaks?”There is a gasp from his listeners and the ladies all raise their hands to their mouths in horror.“Don’t get excited, ladies,” says Kowalski. “It is a pen, not a prick!”Old man Finkelstein, the shopkeeper, is waiting at the entrance to the Pearly Gates while Saint Peter speaks to Leroy, a big black guy, who has also just died.“You can have anything you want,” says Saint Peter.“I’d like a million dollars,” says Leroy.“Done!” says Peter, and Leroy walks away with a suitcase stuffed with dollar bills.Then St. Peter turns to Finkelstein and says, “You’ll be granted any wish you make. What would you like?”“Well,” says the Fink, “I’d like twenty dollars worth of fake jewelry, and about ten minutes with that black guy!”Mildred Maxwell is surrounded by all of her sad friends as they look down into her husband, Melvin’s grave.“I’m so sorry,” says Mildred’s priest, Father Flab. “What did he die of?”“Gonorrhea,” replies Mildred, sadly.Then her neighbor, Peaches, comes up and says, “Oh Mildred, I’m so sorry this happened. What did the poor man die of?”“He died of gonorrhea,” says Mildred somberly.Old Mrs. Hucksteen comes to give her condolences.“The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away,” says the old lady. “And now he has taken Melvin. What was it dear, a heart attack?”“No,” says Mildred quietly, “gonorrhea.”Mildred’s sister Mabel finally comes up to her. “Mildred!” whispers Mabel tensely, “What are you telling people? Melvin did not die of gonorrhea, he died of diarrhea!”“I know,” says Mildred. “But I would rather people think he went out like a playboy, and not like the shit he was!”Now, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent, close your eyes.Feel your body to be completely frozen, no movement.Gather your consciousness inside, and just like an arrow, let this consciousness go deeper and deeper until it hits the source of your being.There is no fear because on this road to your self you are not going to meet anybody.Deeper and deeper.This moment you are the original man.This moment you are the buddha.Remember it, twenty-four hours – not like a parrot.Let it become your breathing, your heartbeat, your blood circulation, so that in every action and gesture this originality, this spontaneity is expressed without any effort.Meditation is the greatest revolution in the world because it brings the original man into existence. It is always there but every society pushes it under many, many covers. Our work here is to throw all those covers, all those layers and find the real, the original, the natural.Start your growth from your natural center. Then whatever you may be, you will find contentment, you will find great joy in life. You will find not only joy in life, but in death too, because your original nature is eternal.Birth is a drama, life is a drama, death is a drama.Only your original consciousness is the watcher.Dramas change, the watcher remains.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax, let go. The body is lying there – you just be a watcher of body and mind both, simply a watcher. This watcher is the original man.Rejoice that you have found it. Feel silently grateful that you have found it. Now don’t forget the root.Every day go on pushing deeper and deeper, because the original man has a circumference and also a center. First you will touch the circumference, and then your arrow will enter into the center.Once you have entered into the center, you have gone beyond life and death. You have become one with the universe.Nivedano, make your drum enlightened again!(Drumbeat)Come back, slowly, so that you can carry the experience with you. Silently, gracefully, sit down as a buddha, without any hesitation, without any doubt.You are the buddha, the awakened soul.At least for this moment you are blessed with the ultimate ecstasy, and all the invisible flowers are showering over you.Feel grateful.There is nothing more religious than gratefulness.There is no other prayer than gratefulness.It is a Thank You to existence.Can we celebrate the gathering of the ten thousand buddhas?

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The Original Man 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Original Man 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Manzan said:The ultimate way is the one real great way. The Mind of faith is the non-dualistic, inconceivable Mind.Mind and the way do not decrease when in illusion, nor increase when in enlightenment; everything is perfect reality, each particular is complete – you can’t grasp or reject anything.However, even so, “If you do not practice it, it will not become manifest; if you do not realize it, you cannot attain it.”It is like having a jewel hidden in your pocket and suffering for want of food and clothing.On another occasion Manzan said:Great perfect awareness is the ocean of ultimate peace. Still and silent, myriad forms and images reflect therein. Yet suddenly, when the wind of objects arises, it turns into an ocean of birth and death, with waves of consciousness and feelings billowing day and night, where all sentient beings appear and disappear, with no end in sight. Although the two oceans seem different, really they come from the same source – Mind.Originally, there is no sign of distinction in the Mind source. Life and death and nirvana all revert to the essential nature of the source.Therefore, when you realize the Mind-source, the whole universe is a great, round, perfect ocean.But how to realize the Mind-source? You must liberate body and mind on the sitting cushion before you can do so.Anando, before we discuss Manzan and his statements – a few necessary things.One is the word mind…In Sanskrit, there are two words: one is man from which the English words mind and man both have been derived; another is chit, which can be approximately translated as consciousness, awareness, watchfulness.The translating of these words has taken such a long journey. With Gautam Buddha already it was not Sanskrit; it was a small branch of Sanskrit, Pali. The words have already begun to waver and to take new shapes and forms.Then when they reached China, they took even more unrecognizable forms, and after China, they reached Japan. They have gone so far away from their origin that to translate them from Japanese into English is really a gymnastics!This translator has used a certain method: wherever man, the ordinary mind, is concerned, he uses a small M. And wherever chit, the universal consciousness, is concerned, he uses mind with a capital M.In writing, it is perfectly good; in reading, it becomes more difficult. Whether the M is a capital or a small M, in both cases you are going to call it “mind.”So remember, all the time he is using mind…I will remind you when it is a capital M and when it is a small M. You have the small-M mind, a dewdrop of the universal Mind. When this dewdrop disappears in the ocean, it becomes a capital-M Mind. It is no longer yours, it is nobody. It is simply the universal, existential, awareness. It does not belong to anybody, it is nobody’s possession.Secondly, it has always been a difficult process for an enlightened man to bring his experience into language. Everybody falters. It is not the person’s fault; the very process is one of trying to do the impossible. The experience of the universal consciousness is so far away from language that when you drag it down to language, it becomes something else. Then it can have many interpretations.Your experience was one, absolutely singular, absolutely clear. There was no question of any alternative meaning or any interference. But when you bring it down to the level of language, then thousands of problems arise.You have to remember the difficulty of the enlightened man, and you have to be compassionate, because our language is so poor that it cannot contain things of the beyond.For example, Krishna’s Shrimad Bhagavadgita has one thousand interpretations. Now, either Krishna was so mad that he would speak words with one thousand meanings…A word with one thousand meanings means nothing! And those meanings are contradictory to each other. But in bringing them to language, they become vulnerable. There are one thousand great commentaries on Krishna’s Gita, and they all condemn each other. They all project their own mind – and they are free, because Krishna is not there to interrupt, to say, “This is not my meaning.”A word can have many meanings. Particularly older languages – Sanskrit, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic – have a beauty but also a difficulty. Their beauty is that they are very poetic. Poetry needs as much freedom to use words as possible. Even to use the same word in different meanings gives the poet a great freedom.But you cannot write science in the same way as you write poetry. It has to represent exactly the one thing that you are trying to pinpoint. You cannot write a treatise on science in Sanskrit; it is impossible, because immediately there will be commentators and there will be differences, and it will simply create confusion.Science is very much prose. But the inner world of man is just the opposite; it is very much poetry.So it was very good that these ancient languages were capable of having one word with many meanings, and many words with one meaning. They could manage to convey something which is not possible to convey in prose.Many times I will have to remind you where the translator has misunderstood Manzan.Manzan is an enlightened master. What he is saying is absolutely true, but the way he has been translated…and I cannot blame the translator either. Manzan is speaking from high on top of the mountains, snow-peaked, and the translator is translating in the dark valleys of the unconscious mind. It is almost like a conversation between a sleeping man and a waking man. The waking man says something and the sleeping man, if he hears at all, hears something else. Most probably he does not hear; he goes on weaving his own dreams.A conversation between the sleeping and the awake is the same as the conversation of the masters with the seekers. If the seeker is just a student who has come to acquire knowledge, he will catch hold of the words but he will forget that those words are empty. Just surrounding the word somewhere was the hint; the word was not the real thing. The word was used just as a vehicle, but it was carrying something invisible.Only a disciple can understand the invisible because he is not interested in acquiring knowledge, so he does not pay much attention to the word. He gives much more opening to the wordless transmission. It is a very difficult task, but if you are alert and open, it is possible to understand even a man who has gone beyond language.Manzan has certainly gone beyond language. He says:The ultimate way is the one real great way.To truth there cannot be many ways. To truth there is only one ultimate way. Reduced to its simplicity, it is dis-identifying yourself from the body and the mind and just being a witness, without any judgment, without any appreciation, without any activity on your part – just a reflecting mirror. This is the ultimate way and this is the only real way. There are a thousand other ways proposed, but they don’t lead to truth, they lead to different places….For example, if somebody is reciting the name of Buddha…Buddha never became a buddha by reciting his name. He followed the ultimate way – and that too in a strange situation because he had no master. He stumbled and groped for six years continuously, from door to door, from master to master, but nobody satisfied his thirst. They talked about great things but he could see that those great things had not happened to them. They were just like parrots, repeating. They were learned scholars but not experienced wise people.After six years of strenuous search, one fullmoon night he sat under a tree near Bodhgaya. And he was so tired of this whole search – and this has been missed by the scholars completely, that he was so tired of the whole search, so fed up that he thought, “I have renounced the world – now let me renounce this search too. I’m so utterly tired, I don’t want to do anything.”That night he slept for the first time in six years without any tensions, without any anxieties, utterly relaxed. And when he opened his eyes, the last star in the morning was just disappearing.Seeing that star disappearing, desiring nothing, wanting nothing – not even truth, not even enlightenment – suddenly he became a mirror. In the mirror, as the star disappeared in the sky…from his mirror everything disappeared. He became enlightened not because he was longing for it, he became enlightened at a moment when he had dropped all longing. Every longing is the longing of the mind, and mind is the only barrier.So what is the ultimate way, the Great Way? To get detached from the mind and the body structure. These are your imprisonments. And as you become detached, away and away, beyond and beyond, suddenly you see that you consist only of pure consciousness. Your consciousness was imprisoned in a certain body form, in a certain mind. And you have been imprisoned for centuries, for many, many births. Just a small glimpse of the beyond and the heart throbs with a new joy. A dance descends on you. Life becomes just a ceremony, a moment-to-moment festival, because now you are no longer a prisoner or a slave. You are freedom itself.Manzan is saying: The ultimate way is the one real great way. There are many ways propounded…and they will lead to some place. If you go on chanting a mantra, you may feel a certain peace, a certain health, a certain well-being, but this is not enlightenment. You may worship a god with as much belief as possible…because total belief is impossible; doubt is always hidden behind it. If there is no doubt there is no need of any belief. Belief is simply covering the doubt. So you go on worshipping – obviously, with great belief – but you know that by the corner of your eye there is a little doubt about whether this god exists or not. You may not say it to anyone – you may not say even to yourself, but you know it; the doubt is there.But if you go on worshipping a god, you may start having visions of the god, which are hallucinatory, which are just like dreams. It is such an easy process. Just go to a mountain cave for three weeks on a fast – fasting helps very much. That’s why all the religions have accepted fasting as a great religious phenomenon.What fasting does is to take away all the activity of your digestion; your energy that is involved in digestion is freed. And then concentrate on one god: Rama or Krishna or Christ. Now the whole energy is available. You may have felt in your ordinary life that if your stomach is empty, you cannot sleep. What is the problem? The energy that is involved in the stomach goes into the head and it keeps you awake. A good meal and you immediately start snoring, because all the energy is pulled down to the stomach. The mind no longer has its quota to think, to dream, to hallucinate; it will have to wait for some time.There is much dream research going on around the world. Many psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, are looking into dreams and are surprised that only the first two hours, when you go to sleep, are mostly dreamless. After those two hours, dreams start.In eight hours’ sleep, six hours you dream and only two hours you sleep. But those two hours are the early hours. Once your food has been digested and energy is released, the mind starts functioning. It is the same energy. The mind starts functioning, creating dreams. Unfulfilled desires, repressed inhibitions, all start bubbling up.If you go to a cave in the mountains for a three-week fast, exactly on the fourth or fifth day your appetite will disappear. And once your appetite disappears, you have lost your connection with the earth. Now you are just a mind, and your whole energy is available to the mind. And if you are concentrating on some god, you will start seeing that god. Nearabout the fourteenth or fifteenth day, you will have the first encounter with your god.By the time your three weeks are over, you will start even talking and receiving answers from your god – and you are doing both the things! And it is not that you are asleep – fully awake, open eyes. You can go into any madhouse and you can see people talking to somebody; you don’t see to whom they are talking. They are not only speaking, they are also answering. And the strangest thing is that when a madman asks a question, he has a different tone, a different voice. When he answers, he has another tone. Obviously! It is somebody else who is answering him. If you cannot see anybody, that is your problem.The people who have declared their realization of God are great hallucinators. Their way is not the way to truth. Their way is the way which makes the untrue, the illusory, appear as if it is true. It is the way of “as if.”But it is simpler, it is in your hands. You can create any god. You can talk, you can receive the answer to your prayers, and you can be immensely satisfied. But you will not be transformed. Back home, you will be the same man, perhaps a little more egoistic. And the pious egoism is more poisonous than any other. You have realized God; everybody else is inferior to you, just ordinary mortals who don’t know anything about the immortality that comes by encountering God and that only God can confer on you.Zen has nothing to do with any god. No sincere man, no intelligent man has anything to do with any fiction. He searches within. He looks within – because he is life, so there must be some center within himself from where the life arises.And that center cannot be separate from the universal life – from where will it go on being fueled? Once you have found your center of life, you have also found, on the other side, that this is the way to universal life. From here you have roots into the universe.You are not without roots. All your nourishment is coming from a source hidden within you.Zen is the search for this life energy. You can give it any name. This translator has called it the Mind of faith. Most probably he is a Christian, because many Christian missionaries have translated ancient scriptures of the East. Because of that, the Christian language and the Christian way of expressing things has entered into non-Christian scriptures – not intentionally, very unconsciously.I am reminded that one Christian missionary went to Rinzai, the great Zen master from China who introduced Zen to Japan….The missionary was absolutely certain that if he read the Sermon on the Mount, he would be able to convert this fellow Rinzai. And he seemed to be very influential; if he were converted, all his followers would be converted.He asked Rinzai’s permission: “I want to read something from my scripture, and I want to know your opinion.” He started reading the Sermon on the Mount, and after just maybe two paragraphs, Rinzai stopped him. And he told him, “Whoever wrote these lines is a bodhisattva. One day he will become a buddha.”The missionary was very much shocked….Everybody is a bodhisattva. Bodhisattva means, in essence you are a buddha – just a recognition, a remembrance, and you have never been anything else.The Sermon on the Mount is a beautiful piece of literature, but Rinzai stopped the missionary and said, “Don’t waste time. Whoever has written these lines is certainly a bodhisattva of great merit. One day he will become a buddha.”The Christians translated the Eastern and Far Eastern scriptures in order to show the Christians, “Look, these primitive people think they are religious!” But the whole thing backfired. It took a little time, but as people started looking deeply into the Eastern scriptures, they found their Bibles and their Korans to be very ordinary, very mundane.It is because of this translator’s Christian mind, which is attuned to faith…Zen does not need any faith. “Faith” certainly means you don’t know and yet you believe. Zen is against any faith. It is for inquiry, not for faith – intense inquiry.Zen comes closer to science than any other religion for the simple reason that it does not require any faith. It requires of you only an intense inquiry into yourself, a deepening of consciousness, not concentration – a settling, a relaxing of consciousness, so that you can find your own source. That very source is the source of the whole existence.The Mind of faith is the non-dualistic, inconceivable Mind…Now please change “Mind of faith” into “consciousness.” Consciousness is non-dualistic, and because it is non-dualistic it is inconceivable, inconceivable to the mind.Mind can conceive only the dual – day and night as separate. Mind cannot conceive that day is just another form of night; light is a little less dark and darkness is a little less light. The distinction between them is not of duality but only of relativity. They are one. That’s why it happens so easily that night changes into day, day changes into night. If there were any duality, then at any time, night might have said, “I don’t want to go,” or the sun might have said, “Enough! Today I’m going fishing.” But they are not separate. They are just two phases of one energy.In the same way, life and death are two phases of the same energy. Death is not the end of life. Death itself is part of life, and life goes on. You have died many times, and still you are alive. Your life is eternal. Death is a small episode here and there, when you change your house, but the essential of your being remains the same. How many times you change houses does not matter, but it is inconceivable to the mind.Mind and the way do not decrease when in illusion, nor increase when in enlightenment; everything is perfect reality.Again, I would like you to read instead of ‘mind’, consciousness:Consciousness and the way do not decrease when in illusion.They are simply forgotten, not decreased. They are covered with clouds but not decreased.When the moon is covered with clouds, it is not decreased – it is exactly the same whether the clouds cover it or go on their way somewhere else. Clouds or no clouds, the moon remains in its perfect beauty without any increase or decrease.Consciousness and the way do not decrease when in illusion, so when you are not a buddha, don’t think that you are something less than a buddha. You may know, you may not know, but your buddhahood is exactly the same. If you don’t know, your buddha is covered with clouds.The mind is nothing but a cloud. The identity with the body is nothing but a cloud. And you are lost in the clouds and forget yourself. To forget oneself is very easy, the easiest thing in the world. Because you know, whether you forget or not, it is there. You don’t forget anything else, but you can forget – you have forgotten; you have no idea who you are. But whether you forget or remember, these are only clouds or no-clouds, but the moon is in its full glory, shining in its full beauty. Your buddhahood never increases, never decreases.When in enlightenment, everything is perfect reality, each particular is complete – you can’t grasp or reject anything…Because awareness is non-judgmental, just like the mirror. It only reflects, it does not say, “You are really a great beauty!” It does not say, “You are really very homely – just get out of the way; it hurts to see you. From where have you got this face?”The mirror simply reflects without in any way judging, appreciating, saying anything about what is reflected in it. And once the thing is gone, the mirror is empty again.Zen has been described by the great masters as the empty mirror.The mirror does not cling to something because something beautiful is passing by. It does not catch hold of the sari…”Where are you going, sweetheart? Let us go for dinner.”I have told you yesterday about the great TV potato movement. On the way back, Anando told me that the news has just come that now in New York, great hotels are giving special service to TV potatoes. Because they cannot leave their chairs, they just have to phone the hotel and the hotel prepares whatever they need and brings it to their chair, where they eat and continue to look at the television. But they have to be members.That movement is going to spread all over America and Europe and maybe Japan. It is really a non-political, non-religious, very special movement – nothing like it has ever happened before. And people are wearing badges saying that they belong to the Couch Potato Movement. It is a great respectability; not everybody can afford it. Seven and a half hours per day of watching television is a basic requirement. Only idiots can do it.I call television the “idiot box.” Television goes on supplying all kinds of nonsense; television is becoming a great problem. It could have been a great solution; it could have been a great instrument in educating people. But on the contrary, it is destroying people. Nobody reads, and if nobody reads you can’t think that there will be born again a Leo Tolstoy or Fyodor Dostoevsky or Anton Chekhov. You cannot conceive of there being great poets, great philosophers; nobody is ready to read.People are just glued to their television set, which is almost seventy-five percent advertisements and twenty-five percent entertainment. It is going to destroy people’s intelligence…because you don’t have to think anything, you don’t have to answer anything, you just relax there. Television can be a great calamity, as it is going.It can be used in a very great way – to educate people for peace, for love, to educate people for music, for dance. Thousands of dimensions are possible that television can make available. You need not travel around the world, you can just sit in your chair and the television can bring the whole world moving before you – the Taj Mahal, and Ajanta and Ellora, and Bodhgaya and Khajuraho in all their detail, with all kinds of information. It can become a living experience, because reading is one thing; seeing is another.When you are reading, you are reading just dead words. When you are seeing, the Taj Mahal becomes alive in front of you. You don’t have to move, the Taj Mahal will move and show its beauty from all sides, at different times of night…you can know more about the Taj Mahal sitting in your chair than a man can know wasting years of time, because the Taj Mahal changes its beauty on different nights.On the night of the full moon, nearabout nine o’clock, the Taj Mahal has such a dreamlike quality that you have a tremendous urge to touch it and feel whether it is real or you are imagining it. In the daytime, the same Taj Mahal looks ordinary – nothing special.But television is bringing people to a primitive state. Nobody is reading great novels; nobody has time. I have come across people who have not heard even the name of Tolstoy, because it is not on television. They have not heard the name of Dostoevsky. They don’t have any idea what a great novel or a great poem is. They are fed with junk and they collect that junk.And the problem is that these people will never think of meditation, because you cannot see the television with closed eyes. You can eat your food…People are making love looking at television! What kind of love must these people be making? One is really surprised at the ingenuity of human beings.The television is on from morning until midnight. Television has become the whole world. All that you know is television. And all the great art, poetry, novels, dramas – they have completely disappeared. Who cares for books?In America, people purchase only paperbacks, because they are cheap and you can look here and there and leave them in the airplane. Nobody wants to purchase a hardbound book because it is heavy to carry and it is costly to throw away. Book lovers have disappeared, and with them, great books with aesthetic value are completely gone.People are falling into a primitive state. Certainly, these people become very gullible. Constantly, these are the faithful people, faithful Christians. Whatever the television goes on saying…”This is the best chewing gum” – you start chewing that gum because if television is saying it, it can’t be wrong. And not one television – every television, from all directions the same advertisement, the same chewing gum. And the same beautiful woman is saying to you, “How great is this chewing gum. You have to purchase it!”And if you are a member of the Couch Potato Club you just phone the store, give your number, and the chewing gum will be supplied to you! Now television is ruling people’s minds.Meditation has become almost non-existential. You don’t have time to meditate, because meditation means sitting silently without doing anything and the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. Sitting silently for a few moments is impossible. The television – you cannot miss this football match! And people become so much involved and identified that they shout, they jump up and down in front of their television sets because their side is winning and they have to give moral support.I have seen a person throw his television set on the floor because his side has lost the football game! I asked him, “What are you doing? This is not the fault of the television set.”He said, “I’m feeling so angry, I could do anything.”So much identification…And meditation is just the opposite – no identification. You simply sit with closed eyes and you have a natural, biological television screen in your mind. And it brings great things to you! You just watch and you will see Sophia Loren…but don’t judge. Don’t even say hello. She will come and go, you just wait. Just be patient. Don’t ask her to join you for dinner at the Blue Diamond.Identification, or justification, or judgment, are all against meditation. You simply see. Whatever comes before your eyes, just see it as a cloud passing by. And everything passes by and if you can be patient enough, soon the screen is empty. When the screen is empty, you have gone beyond the mind. You have entered the world of Zen.However, even so, “if you do not practice it, it will not become manifest; if you do not realize it, you cannot attain it.” It is like having a jewel hidden in your pocket and suffering for want of food and clothing.What Manzan is saying is: You are a buddha. You will remain a buddha whether you recognize the fact or not. But if you do not practice…and by “practice” is not meant what you understand. “If you do not practice” means if you do not make a small effort to continuously remember who you are, you will remain a buddha but it will not be a manifestation.What is the point, if you have a lamp in your house and you have covered it with a blanket? It cannot manifest its light. Our forgetfulness is a blanket over ourselves. It does not allow our buddha to radiate. It does not allow our buddha to be seen and experienced by others.If you do not realize it, you cannot attain it. Realization and attainment are simply the same. In fact, that is the problem I have told you about in the beginning. Neither realization is needed nor attainment is needed. What is needed is a deep silence in which you can find exactly what is your source of life.Attainment is about objects – somebody attains to the Everest, somebody attains a Nobel Prize, somebody attains to being the greatest rich man in the world…. Attainments are outside you. They take you away from yourself.Your self, your very being, is already there – it has not to be attained. Neither does it have to be realized.Do you understand the meaning of realization? – to make something real which was not there.For example, a painter makes a painting. He realizes something. It was in his dreams; he projects the dream and “realizes” a painting.But your buddha is not your dream. Your buddha can neither be realized nor attained; it can only be remembered.The person who has translated this sutra must be thinking in Christian ways. There is no other way in Christianity – you have to “attain.” You have to have the heart of faith; you have to reach God through Jesus, a direct approach is not allowed. Jesus has to recognize you, that you are an authentic believer, and he will pray to God to let you in. The missionaries were accustomed to their own language.Zen is not in any way similar to any other religion. Its uniqueness is inconceivable. How has it become so unique? All religions are repetitive of each other: they may have different gods but they have gods; they may talk in different languages but what they say can be compared.Now there exists in the universities of the world a new subject, “Comparative Religion.” Zen cannot be included in that subject. It is not comparable to anything, it is just itself. It has a very unique way: no achievement, no attainment, because you are it. So just a very simple thing is needed, a remembrance.I have told you an ancient story….A lioness gave birth to a child while she was jumping from one hillock to another hillock. Between these two hillocks was passing a great crowd of sheep. The child fell in the crowd of sheep, and it grew up with the sheep. It became a lion, which was a little strange, but it was accepted by the crowd. It had never misbehaved.It was a strange phenomenon, but he remained a grass-chewing sheep, very nonviolent, and as much afraid of wild animals as other sheep. And he was so friendly that the sheep never bothered about his shape, his height, his length. He was a full-fledged lion.One day, an accident happened. An old lion saw this procession of sheep and among them, in the middle, a great lion. He could not believe his old eyes. He has seen much, an experienced old man…. He said, “My God, what has happened to this lion?” So he rushed into the crowd of sheep – the crowd ran away and the lion also ran away, but the old lion got hold of him. He shrieked and he said, “I want to go with my people, so don’t harass me!”The old man said, “Be quiet! I’m not harassing you. Just come with me.”Nearby there was a small lake, a silent pool of water. The old lion took away the young one very reluctantly, but he had to go. He knew that old lion could be dangerous. He had accepted himself as a sheep, obviously, and not to follow the order of the lion could be a question of life and death.He took the young lion by the side of the lake and told him, “Look into the lake and see my face and your face.” Trembling, he looked; he had to look. But as he looked into the mirror of the lake, immediately a great metamorphosis….He roared like a lion – he had never roared before. The old lion said, “My work is done. You had forgotten yourself; now you have remembered.”All the buddhas are nothing but old lions, forcing you to see your original face just so that you can remember: you are not what you think you are; you are something vast, something great, something universal, something eternal.There is no need of any realization, of any attainment. But certainly one has to remember.Meditation is only an effort to remember.It does not give you anything; it does not take anything away from you. It simply makes you aware of being a lion…and suddenly, a lion’s roar.One of Gautam Buddha’s sermons is called The Lion’s Roar.On another occasion Manzan said:Great perfect awareness is the ocean of ultimate peace. Still and silent, myriad forms and images reflect therein. Yet suddenly, when the wind of objects arises, it turns into an ocean of birth and death, with waves of consciousness and feelings billowing day and night, where all sentient beings appear and disappear, with no end in sight. Although the two oceans seem different, really they come from the same source…the same universal consciousness.The marketplace and the temple are not two separate things. The mind in turmoil and the mind in peace are not two things. A lake disturbed by the wind filled with waves and a lake silent without any waves is the same lake.To be a buddha or not to be a buddha are only two aspects of one consciousness.It is your decision to remain outside yourself or to go in, once in a while at least. Because if even once you go in, you will be a different person – even on the outside. The taste of the inner, the fragrance of the inner will start coming through you – through your gestures, through your eyes, through your words, through your silences. Everything will show that you have found something that others are missing.Therefore, when you realize the ultimate source, the whole universe is a great, round, perfect ocean.But how to realize the great source? You must liberate body and mind on the sitting cushion before you can do so.This last statement is what meditation is – liberating yourself from body and mind. And that is not a struggle. It is simply not being identified. Just remaining silent and aware, soon you are liberated. You see your body from the inside for the first time, the skeleton and the flesh and the skin bag. For the first time you see your body from within and you see your mind just full of rubbish, all kinds of thoughts, all borrowed. And you are beyond both.This beyondness, this watcher on the hills, is the recognition of your buddhahood.A Zen haiku:Perceiving the sun in the midst of the rain,ladling out clear waterfrom the depths of fire.We are surrounded with many clouds, much rain.Remembering yourself…not to get lost.Ladling out clear water from the depths of fire. It is as impossible a thing as ladling out pure water from fire. But howsoever impossible it may be, it happens. This is the mystery of existence.Here, fire turns into water. Here, the dance of rain declares the sun. There is no opposition in existence, no contradiction. Everything supports everything else.Another haiku:The mind –what shall we call it?It is the sound of the breezethat blows through the pinesin the India-ink picture.What shall we call the mind? That is a constant question. It is just soap bubbles – or wind blowing through the pine trees. It is not substantial.Your thoughts are not even ricepaper thick.They are just signatures on water.But they dominate your life.You allow them to dominate your life.It is ultimately your responsibility. You can stop this very moment and get out of the slavery – nobody is forcing you to be a slave of your mind.You can just move any moment you decide.There is no need to delay or to postpone.Anando has asked:Osho,Does Manzan make it as a master?Certainly, Anando. He made it as a master.He sounds good, except when he talks about the Mind of faith.I have told you the translation is by a Christian missionary. To them, faith is the great thing.To a Zen master, faith is the barrier. You have to be clean of all faith and all belief. You have to be just silent, searching, your eyes having no dust in them. All faith and belief is nothing but dust.Not being realized ourselves, is there anything other than intuition we can use to tell the difference between the teacher and the real thing?Anando, there are many things that you can use to recognize the difference.The teacher will be always speaking in quotes. He will be quoting the scriptures. His words will not carry any authority; his words will not be coming from his very being.His presence will be different. The teacher’s presence has no aura to it. The master’s presence has a certain energy field. Those who are receptive, sensitive, can almost touch it; it is tangible.It is a question of being open, and immediately you can recognize who is only a teacher and who is a master. The difference is very great, but very subtle. And all depends on your receptivity. All depends on your open heart. Only your heart can say whether you are confronted by a master or just listening to a teacher.With a teacher you don’t have a love affair.With the master you have a great love affair.With the teacher, you may be convinced by his arguments. With the master, the arguments don’t matter but his presence, which quenches your thirst. Just being close to a master, you start feeling a new, fresh breeze. The teacher is stale, carrying old, rotten scriptures. He does not have a fresh experience of the truth.Traditionally, seekers would go from one master to another master just to find a place where they could feel a kind of rapport, where they could feel with the master a certain oneness. Then they stop. They have found the master.But one has to be very intelligent, very receptive, very sensitive, because the energy of the master is the most subtle energy possible.If you are open, and you are thrilled and your heart dances and you want to sing, you have found the man.This is called, in Zen, the Great Love Affair.There are ordinary love affairs, which are biological. You cannot even explain those, why you find a certain man or a certain woman and suddenly you feel you have fallen in love. You know it. Something has clicked in you, but you cannot give any explanation. All your explanations will look absurd, idiotic. Just try. When you have fallen in love with a woman or a man, just try to explain to somebody who knows nothing of love – “Just look at her hair…”He will say, “What nonsense! You have fallen in love with hairs?”“Just look at her nose, just look at her eyes…” And whoever you are giving the explanation to will think you are a little cuckoo!A person falls in love not with noses and eyes and hair but with a total being.Zen is a great love affair. It is not biological. Hence, it becomes even more difficult but it goes very deep.The biological affair can change – has to change. It is a temporary phenomenon. The same woman for whom you could have died, now you want to kill.I have heard about a psychologist who was taking a round of the madhouse and the superintendent was explaining to him whatever he wanted to know about. In a small room, a young man holding a picture to his heart was weeping and weeping.The man asked, “What has happened to him?”The superintendent said, “It is a tragedy. He is a very intelligent man, but he has fallen in love with a woman. He is holding the picture of the woman – waking or asleep he does not leave the picture. But the woman married somebody else; that has driven him mad.”The professor said, “It is really a sad story.”In the next room a man was hitting his head on the wall. He said, “My God! What is he doing?”The superintendent said, “He married that same woman! Now he wants to kill himself, so he has been put in the madhouse.”At the biological level things are continuously changing. It is very natural that they should change.At the spiritual level, where being is never changing…if you have found the master, then there is no way to go anywhere. But if you have not found, then it is better not to waste your time.And it is a question of your inner thrill, inner click. You can call it intuition. I don’t want to call it intuition because that makes it more mathematical. It is not that mathematical.I can call it a click. Something simply happened to you. You cannot explain, nor is there any need to explain. Just being with the master you will see the transformation happening. Whether your click was right or wrong, time will prove.If no transformation happens to you, that means either you are with a teacher who pretends to be a master or you may be with a master, but you are not open; you don’t want to change. No master forces change on you. He creates all the situations in which the change, if you are ready, will be spontaneously happening.Whatever happens spontaneously is beautiful. Whatever is rehearsed and practiced and disciplined creates hypocrisy. No master will support any hypocrisy.Before we enter into our inner world, just to remind you that you have to come back…we will be waiting here for you.You can go as deep as possible, but don’t get stuck somewhere, howsoever beautiful and howsoever enchanting.When Nivedano calls with his drum, come back.My whole effort is to bring buddhas into the marketplace. I don’t want you just to be a buddha and escape. Even Sardar Gurudayal Singh comes back every day. He reaches as deep as possible, but he always thinks, “Who knows what kind of joke is going to be told tomorrow?”These jokes are keeping him in the world; otherwise, he would have gone long ago.Paddy and Sean are walking to the Christ is Love Pub, when all of a sudden they hear an explosion. They run around the corner to see that the pub has been blown up by the IRA.They are looking through the rubble when Paddy finds a head. He picks it up, holds it in the air and says, “Sean, isn’t this Danny O’Riley?”“No,” says Sean, “it can’t be. He was not as tall as that!”Two rats in a laboratory are having a conversation through the bars of their cages.“Tell me,” says the first rat, “how are you getting along with Professor Katzoff?”“Pretty good,” replies the second rat. “It took me a while, but now I have finally got him trained. Whenever I ring the bell, he brings my dinner!”Father Finger, the priest, is reputed to have an enormous prick. It is so large, that he has great difficulty in getting any of the local women to sleep with him.“Sorry, Father,” is the reply he always hears. “I wish I could, but your member is just too big for me!”Feeling desperate, Father Finger goes to Mother O’Mary’s whorehouse on the other side of town where he is not recognized. He quickly chooses a girl and she takes him to a room upstairs. Closing the door behind him, Father Finger tells the girl that he is very shy, and would like to undress with the lights off.“It is okay with me,” agrees the girl, and the two of them undress in the dark.When Father Finger gets into bed, he immediately climbs on top of the girl in the missionary position.“Do you know, Father,” says the girl, “I’m really glad that this is what you came here for. When I saw you coming in, I was sure you were going to talk to me all about…Jeezus Christ!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent…close your eyes. Feel the body completely frozen. Look inward…go as deep as possible.There is nothing to fear; it is your own space.Deeper and deeper. When you are deepest in your being, you are at the source of life, and you will also find the roots into the universe.This is your buddha-nature.Blessed is this experience of your own being, a buddha. Remember it. Let it become your very breathing and heartbeat…twenty-four hours, day in, day out.This very remembrance will change everything in your actions, in your gestures; it will bring a grace, a beauty, which is not of this world.To make it more clear that you are not the body nor the mind, but just a pure awareness…Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax…let go.The body is there, the mind is there – you are neither, you are just a watcher…Just a mirror.This quality of being a mirror is what makes you a buddha. Drink from this universal source as much as you can.Let it sink into your every fiber and cell.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)You can come back – but come back with your experience, don’t leave it behind.Silently, gracefully, sit down for a few moments, reminding and remembering your inner purity, your inner beauty…your inner innocence.Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

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The Original Man 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Original Man 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Basui said:If you would free yourself of the sufferings of the Six Realms, you must learn the direct way to become a buddha. This way is no other than the realization of your own Mind.Now, what is this Mind? It is the true nature of all sentient beings, that which existed before our parents were born and hence before our own birth, and which presently exists, unchangeable and eternal. So it is called one’s original face.This Mind is intrinsically pure. When we are born it is not newly created, and when we die it does not perish. It has no distinction of male or female, nor has it any coloration of good or bad. It cannot be compared with anything, so it is called buddha-nature. Yet countless thoughts issue from this self-nature as waves arise in the ocean or as images are reflected in a mirror.If you want to realize your own Mind, you must first of all look into the source from which thoughts flow. Sleeping and working, standing and sitting, profoundly ask yourself, “What is my own Mind?” with an intense yearning to resolve this question. This is called “training” or “practice” or “desire for truth” or “thirst for realization.” What is termed “zazen” is no more than looking into one’s own Mind.Because searching one’s own Mind leads ultimately to enlightenment, this practice is a prerequisite to becoming a buddha.Anando, it is a great moment of rejoicing that finally Basui has come home.Old habits die hard. He is now a master, but here and there, a few pieces from before, from when he was just a teacher, are still present. Now they can be avoided, or they can be given the right direction. But the man has arrived. He has started speaking out of his own experience. He is no longer a parrot.To be a parrot is so easy, just to repeat somebody else, to be an echo. But to be a master needs a steel spine – to be oneself and to be utterly aware so that nothing enters and pollutes your purity. The master is perhaps the most miraculous, the most magical phenomenon in existence.He knows and he cannot say he knows. He is and he goes on saying that he has disappeared. He discovers the buddha in himself, perfect – but he has to say that he has become a buddha. But nobody becomes a buddha. It is not some kind of graduation, education, discipline or practice. But the difficulty of the master is that he has to use words that you can understand.But now I can see and I will tell you where the points are which make me certain about Basui. Although he has been long away, falling and rising, moving on this way or that way – his night has been long and dark – finally he has reached to the sunrise. It is light all over.The moment you are enlightened, the whole existence is enlightened. And even if old habits are there, your new experience will express itself from nooks and corners of your old habits. It is just like a house which is dark and suddenly you bring a light inside. The walls may hide that the house has light now, but the windows, even the closed windows will show that that light has arrived. The house is no longer dark.The situation is similar in the case of a teacher. An innocent man moves very easily into masterhood, because for him to be a disciple is a very simple and spontaneous act of love. But for the scholar it is difficult, and the more profound his scholarship is, the harder it is for him to even think that anybody else can know more than he knows – and he knows nothing. All that he considers knowledge is just crammed by the memory. Somebody else may have experienced it, but he is just a repetition. He is not the original man. I was hoping that some day Basui would say something that would reveal his splendor and his glory.Basui said:If you would free yourself of the sufferings of the six realms, you must learn the direct way to become a buddha.You have to remember that because of his profound scholarship, the statements are mixed up.When he says, If you would free yourself of the sufferings of the six realms, you must learn the direct way to become a buddha, he is for the first time speaking of the direct way, the only one way, the way in.You don’t have to wander around the world. Just a small turning in is enough, and all that you have longed for, for lives, is suddenly revealed to be your own self. You were searching for yourself, and that was your suffering: you could not find yourself. You could not find yourself in riches, or in power; you could not find your so-called love. You have looked everywhere, you have walked thousands of ways in thousands of lives, but you have never reached to yourself. This is the basic suffering: not to know yourself. Not to be aware of your eternity is the only misery – all miseries are small expressions of it.But now Basui says there is a direct way. The direct way is simply to close your eyes and turn inward. Forget the world as if it is a dream. It does not mean that it is a dream, it is just a way to concentrate your whole life energy inward. Forget the whole world as if it is a dream, as if it does not exist. Only you are – then the whole energy starts flowing toward your center. There is nowhere to go; all doors are closed.There is a very strange story of the Jaina tirthankara, Mahavira….He remained for twelve years in absolute silence. He would not even indicate anything, or make any sign, because that is again a language, you are conveying something, some message. He did not convey a message, he did not ask a thing. For twelve years, he remained naked in the deep forest.One day it happened that he was standing there by the side of the river, and a man who was looking after many cows had brought them to the river to drink water and he found Mahavira.He asked him again and again, “Are you going to stay here?” But Mahavira would simply look at him and not say anything – no emotion even on his face to show that he had heard.The man said, “I have to go urgently, I have just been informed that my house is on fire. And I cannot take all these cows, I have to run! So you please take care of my cows. Anyway, you are not doing anything, just standing naked like an idiot – at least you can take care of my cows. I will be coming back soon!”The man was very much amazed that Mahavira did not show any sign, whether he was deaf or not. He shouted, but there was no effect. He had to run, his house was on fire. So he said, “Okay, whether you say anything or not, I assume that you will look after my cows. But if you don’t, you will find that I am a very evil man!”But there was no sign of response. Nobody has lived in silence like Mahavira.The man went home. And hours later, by the evening, he came back. Mahavira was still standing in his place, but all the cows were gone.He asked, “Where are the cows?” But he was as deaf as before.The man said, “This is such a weird man. At least he could tell me where my cows have gone. If he does not want to speak, he could indicate by his finger where they are.”But Mahavira would not use even his hand because that is also a language; a gesture is also a language. He was very clear about it, that no language means no language.The man ran around and found all the cows gathered behind the bushes. So he thought, “This man is very clever and cunning. He is hiding the cows behind the bushes and when the sun sets and it is dark, he will take them all away.”It was a natural conclusion for an ordinary man. And he was getting enraged because Mahavira was not answering. He could not conceive that somebody could be in such silence.So he got burning torches and said to Mahavira, “Up to now you have been pretending that you cannot hear, but from now on you will not be able to hear.” And he forced the burning torches into both his ears. Mahavira did not say anything.The man was very much puzzled. But now nothing could be done, he had destroyed his ears. Perhaps he was wrong, perhaps he was unnecessarily doubting the man.It is a mythological story from this point onward. Up to here it seems to be factual, because Mahavira remained deaf after this time, and his ears remained burned, but after this the disciples must have elaborated it. I don’t want you to believe in the elaboration, but it is significant to know it….The god Indra, who rules over the clouds and the rainbows, saw all this happening and felt very sad and sorry for poor Mahavira, who had never done any harm to anybody. He thought, “He needs a bodyguard at least.” So he came down.With him it was possible, without using any language, without using the body or the mind, to have contact, communication. It was not against silence, it was beyond silence.The communication was that Indra, without speaking, not visible or audible to anybody, said, “I feel very sorry for you. I would like to appoint one or two bodyguards because you remain absolutely silent; anybody can do harm to you.”Mahavira communicated, “This man has done me a great service. Up to now my silence was only half. I was not speaking but I was hearing, and the hearing was also a disturbance. I’m grateful to him that he destroyed my ears; I don’t need any guard, because the guard can only defend my body, not me. Nobody can harm me – you know it. So don’t be unnecessarily worried, be at peace and go back to your work.This part seems to be mythological because there is no god of the clouds and rainbows, but it is significant in the sense that Mahavira was not angry. On the contrary he said, “Up to now, my silence was only half – I was not speaking but others were speaking and I was hearing. And nature has not provided any way to close your ears just as you close your eyes, so he was certainly a very good man and he has done me a great service. He has now made my silence complete.”Such silence, which is complete, is the direct way.This way is no other than the realization of your own mind.The word mind is from his old habit as a teacher, but he is using it with a capital M, and that is equivalent to no-mind. The old mind is no longer there, but he uses the word out of habit.Teachers have used, instead of mind, transcendental mind, Mind with a capital M. But a man who is not a scholar will simply say, “There is no mind anymore…why do you even talk of transcendental mind?”That which is not – you cannot transcend it. He is still carrying dead bones; what he wants to say is right, but his old habits of speaking are there and he is still using them.He says,…the direct way to become a buddha…But nobody ever becomes a buddha. That is the language of the scholar, the teacher, the preacher, the philosopher. The experience of the existential man, the original man, is that you are always a buddha. You may not recognize it, you may even deny it, but that does not matter. A fish can deny the ocean because the fish has never known the ocean. It has been born in it, it has lived in it and one day it will disappear in it; it is just a solid wave.There is an ancient Sufi story….A young philosophically minded fish starts inquiring, “I have heard so much about the ocean. Where is the ocean?”Nobody could answer. They were all in the ocean. All around was nothing but the ocean. An old fish said to the young philosopher, “Ocean and we are not separate. You are the ocean. We are just waves in the ocean.”You need not become a buddha. You have just to be silent, to experience that which is already there.Now, what is this Mind? – again, with a capital M. He is trying to make a distinction but it would have been better to ask, “What is this buddha-nature? What is this consciousness?” The word mind can be deceptive.It is the true nature of all sentient beings…His description is correct, that’s why I say he has come home – of course he is late, but he has arrived.…the true nature of all sentient beings, that which existed before our parents were born and hence before our own birth, and which presently exists, unchangeable and eternal. So it is called one’s original face.Now, something new, the original face, the ultimately original face. This is not a repetition. His old structure of language is broken down. Fragments of it will hang with him for a few days, perhaps more. But by and by they will drop, because the essential is grasped. It is called one’s original face. The buddha is your original face.This Mind is intrinsically pure.Now you can see what I mean, the old habits. Again, he brings the word mind in. “The Mind is intrinsically pure.” He should say that the no-mind is intrinsically pure. Mind is the impurity; no-mind is the purity. But he has to learn the ways of expressing as a master. He knows how to express as a teacher but he has now become a master. We can understand his difficulty.This no-mind is intrinsically pure.When we are born it is not newly created, and when we die it does not perish. It has no distinction of male or female, nor has it any coloration of good or bad.The description shows that he has begun to see and feel.It cannot be compared with anything, so it is called buddha-nature. Yet countless thoughts issue from this self-nature as waves arise in the ocean or as images are reflected in a mirror.If you want to realize your own Mind…Please, always replace his word mind with no-mind. I don’t have to remind you again and again. Whenever he says mind – you hear no-mind.…you must first of all look into the source from which thoughts flow.He is doing his best to get rid of his old scholarship and to bring a freshness to his expression, and once in a while he succeeds.You must first of all look into the source from which thoughts flow. Sleeping and working, standing and sitting, profoundly ask yourself…This is an old habit. A man of understanding simply knows, there is no question, no answer. If you are still asking that means you have not found it.He says:Ask yourself, “What is my own Mind?”There is no need. You are it. Experience it. Who are you questioning? Do you think anybody else will answer it? You can taste the sweetness of a fruit, you can smell the fragrance of a flower, but you cannot say what it is exactly in words. And this is a far deeper realm.…with an intense yearning to resolve this question.There is no question anymore. It is just his old habit, his old mind – the mechanical mind, which goes on repeating his old scholarship days.This is called “training” or “practice.”Once you see your self-nature, there is no practice and no training, or any desire for truth or thirst for realization. In the assembly of masters, he will look such a novice if he says,This is called “training” or “practice” or “desire for truth” or “thirst for realization.”If you have realized, there cannot remain any thirst for realization. Just drink a glass of pure water – which is difficult to find in Pune!Existence plays strange games. It has made this place to awaken you, but it has no qualifications for it. If you drink even the polluted water of Pune, your thirst will be gone. You may have amoebas – that is another thing, not at all a concern of Zen. I have gone through the whole literature of Zen; they never talk of amoebas. But you know that you have to pass through the amoebas before you can reach to truth and become a buddha. You have to suffer amoebas. It is a new kind of hindrance imposed on the potential buddhas.Gautam Buddha will be in difficulty. He will have to be hospitalized because he will not know anything of amoebas. This is a great specialty of Pune. But it is good; it wakes you up, it keeps you aware. It helps you to become a watchful consciousness. Avoid amoebas!What is termed “zazen” is no more than looking into one’s own Mind– again, remember, it is no-mind,Because searching one’s own Mind leads ultimately to enlightenment– not mind. Mind has to be dropped long before. You have to search into no-mind, into that silent space where you will meet yourself, your buddha.Because searching one’s own no-mind leads ultimately to enlightenment, this practice is a prerequisite to becoming a buddha.It is not a prerequisite to becoming a buddha, it is a prerequisite to discovering the buddha. These are small differences of words but they show that the moment you talk about becoming, you are talking about a process of change. Becoming is change, but the moment you talk about being, you are talking about is-ness. There is no change. The buddha is your being, not your becoming. But I can understand Basui’s difficulty; he is saying right things but in the wrong words.I hope he will do a little more homework.Jakuan wrote:Perfect melody – like windamong the pines of far-off slopes.Mind is washed sky clean:hear it beyond itself.A master, in this simple statement, says the whole scripture: Perfect melody – like wind among the pines of far-off slopes. Mind is washed sky clean: hear it beyond itself.Another Zen expression:Better to see the facethan to hear the name.You have heard too much about the buddha, now it is time to see the face.Anando has asked:Osho,Last night I heard you refer to Zen as “the great love affair.” yet, rarely are love or compassion mentioned in Zen anecdotes or discourses of the masters. Why is this?Anando, when you love a person, you don’t harass him by saying “I love you” again and again; otherwise, he will kill you. There is a limit to how much you can listen to “I love you.” One gets fed up.Just try it on any lover and see how long the love remains. The boyfriend or the girlfriend will disappear, because you can eat sweets but there is a limit, otherwise sickness will follow.Zen never mentions love. My own understanding is that the man of Zen simply loves as he breathes. It is not something special, there is no need to mention it. Don’t you feel my love although I never say it? Do you want me to say it to you again and again?Zen does not say it, that is a great indication that it understands. Love should not be said, but shown in every gesture – through your eyes, through your hands, through your silence. It should radiate around you. It is the same with compassion. It is not mentioned either.Zen is not born in America, where there are great thinkers who can be great only in America, like Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill….Dale Carnegie’s books have been best-sellers in America, second only to The Holy Bible. He used to run classes and schools where people were taught that whether you love or not does not matter. What matters is the word, the expression. Who can tell about the inside? Before going out of the house, kiss your wife and say, “I love you, sweetheart. I will miss you so much.”You may have other thoughts inside, absolutely contrary to this: “Now is the time to enjoy…” Or you may be thinking of your girlfriend! But that is all inside – your wife is not a mind reader. So just say it, and it does not cost anything to kiss her, at least three times a day. When you come back from the office, again kiss your wife and say to her, “I love you, darling.” And again before going to bed; don’t forget. These idiots like Dale Carnegie are thought to be great philosophers who are helping people in their relationships.Real love has no words to express itself. Real love is a presence, you can feel it. It surrounds you like wind, it rains over you like rain. A roseflower does not say, “How beautiful I am.” And if roseflowers start studying Dale Carnegie and start saying to you, “Where are you going, darling? I love you so much. And I’m so beautiful,” you will have to say, “Shut up! Just be a flower – don’t bother me!” – what else can you do?Your question is very accurate. Zen is love, and Zen is compassion, but there is no need to make a manifesto, a declaration of it. In utter silence – the transmission of the lamp.Now before you go in, I have to say a few jokes so that you can come back; otherwise, this world is not worth returning to. I make every effort that at least our small world is joyous, laughing, so that when you go in you will not remain there, you will bring the buddha out. You don’t have to remain there. Just carry the buddha out – in your actions, in your feelings, in your love. But come out!And just to make sure, I have to tell you a few jokes so you don’t become serious and remain inside thinking the world is a dream. It is all a changing flux – “Why bother…nobody is going to miss me anyway, and it is so peaceful here…” From this peaceful space, going to the canteen is a quantum leap.You are here being buddhas, and then seeing the same buddhas eating in the canteen – one is simply shocked. I don’t know where your canteen is, I never go anywhere. Just so as not to see some buddha doing something which is not buddha-like, I keep myself closed in my room. I come only in the evening to see you, when you are ready to be buddhas – just for a few minutes, then you are free.Kowalski is standing at the urinal quietly pissing, when he notices that he is being watched by a midget.Kowalski continues his pissing, when suddenly he sees the midget dragging a stool up next to him. The midget climbs up and proceeds to admire Kowalski’s machinery from close by.“Wow!” exclaims the midget. “You have the nicest balls I have ever seen.”“Well, er…thanks!” says Kowalski, surprised and flattered. Then he begins to move away.“Listen,” says the midget. “I know this is a rather strange request, but I wonder if you would mind if I touch them?”Startled, Kowalski hesitates. But seeing no real harm in it, he says, “Okay.”Standing on his tip-toes on the stool, the midget reaches up and gets a good grip on Kowalski’s balls. Then in a loud voice, the little guy yells, “Okay, buster! Hand over your wallet, or I will jump!”Giovanni is holding his head in despair.“It-a is a tragedy!” he exclaims to his friend, Luigi.“Why-a?” asks Luigi.“I come-a home last night, and what do I see?” says Giovanni. “My wife is-a in bed with a Chinese!”“Really? What did-a you say?” asks Luigi.“What could I say?” shouts Giovanni crazily. “I don’t-a speak Chinese!”Terry Turkeynose is snoring sweetly one night, when he starts dreaming that God is talking to him.“Terry!” booms the voice of God. “I have big plans for you, so you had better clean up your act!”The next morning, Terry races out of the house. He goes to the Facial Fixit Clinic, gets a nose job, a hair transplant, new teeth, a suntan, and then blows the rest of his money on some really snappy clothes.He is walking home totally exhausted and aching after such a frantic day, when he hears a deep rumbling in the heavens above. Terry looks up nervously, and gets run over by a bus.The next thing he knows, he’s in Heaven, standing in front of Almighty God.“Holy shit!” shouts Terry at God. “Are you nuts?”“Hey, I’m sorry,” says God, picking up Terry’s new false teeth from the ground and giving them back to him.“So why the hell did you put me through all that trouble,” screams Terry, “and then rub me out!”“Hey, look, man,” booms God, “I said I’m sorry – I just did not recognize you!”Okay, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be frozen.Gather all your consciousness at the center of your being – not going out, but going in. As the consciousness goes inward, it becomes very crystallized, and a great joy arises.For the first time you feel you are blessed, because for the first time you are a buddha.Let this recognition go deep into every fiber of your being, so that you can remain a buddha twenty-four hours.It is such a joy, such a dance, such a beauty, such a grace to remain a buddha twenty-four hours. It is your own being, expressing itself in its glory and splendor.Deeper and deeper…Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax. Let the body remain there, and the mind – but you are neither. You are just a pure consciousness, a no-mind, a watcher on the hills.This is your original man.The original man is the buddha.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back. Bring your experience with yourself…Slowly, silently, gracefully, sit down just like a buddha, without any hesitation.It is something that you had forgotten, it is remembered again. Recollect the experience of the inner space, the silence and the grandeur of it, the peace and the splendor of it…These are the few moments which will prove the most precious in your life. And if you are alert enough, you will spread these moments all over your life and death, because the experience of the buddha within you is the experience of eternity within you.Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

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The Original Man 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Original Man 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Tozan said:Subtly included within the true, inquiry and response come up together. Communing with the source and communing with the process, it includes integration and includes the road.Merging is auspicious. Do not violate it. Naturally real, yet inconceivable, it is not within the province of delusion or enlightenment. With causal conditions, time and season, quiescently it shines bright. In its fineness it fits into spacelessness. In its greatness it is utterly beyond location. A hairbreadth deviation will fail to accord with the proper attunement.Now, there are “sudden” and “gradual” in connection with which are set up basic approaches. Once basic approaches are distinguished, then there are guiding rules. But even though the basis is reached and the approach comprehended, true eternity still flows.Outwardly still, while inwardly moving, like a tethered colt, a trapped rat – the ancient saints pitied them, and bestowed upon them the teaching.According to their delusion, they called black as white.When erroneous imaginations cease, the acquiescent no-mind realizes itself.When the wooden man begins to sing, the stone woman gets up to dance; it’s not within reach of feeling or discrimination – how could it admit of consideration in thought?Practice secretly, working within, as though a fool, like an idiot – if you can achieve continuity, this is called the host within the host.Maneesha, before I discuss the very beautiful statements of Tozan, I have to introduce to you a few new friends of Avirbhava for the Museum of Gods. Something has to be said before she brings her new acquisitions. Our researchers have been working day and night to find out about all the birds that have been worshipped as gods, but they were very much surprised to find that parrots have never been worshipped anywhere. They looked into this encyclopedia and that encyclopedia. They found every possible source to look into…and they were worried about what to do because she had brought such beautiful parrots. I am going to allow her these parrots in the Museum of Gods for my own reasons.Why have parrots not been included among the gods by any race, in any country, at any time? It is very clear to me that it is because parrots are just like rabbis, pundits, popes – they repeat, they don’t have any spontaneous response to anything. And priests and rabbis and popes have always been called parrots. Naturally they could not allow their competitors to be gods, and except for this I don’t think there is any reason. But as far as I am concerned, for this reason only I will allow parrots into the Museum of Gods. They are the only ones who represent the whole priesthood of all the religions.The researchers have sent their report to me:Many birds have been objects of worship down through history. Among the Indians of the northwest coast of America, the crow and raven are worshipped. They believe that the birds produce dry land by the beating of their wings. In India offerings are regularly made to crows, which are believed to be ancestors.The Apaches of North America believe that there are spirits of divine origin in the eagle and other birds. The Ostiaks regard a tree as holy on which an eagle has nested. The eagle owl is worshipped as a mediator, and the owl is particularly important among the Ainus; its cry may not be imitated, since it is believed to be capable of bewitching. In parts of Australia, the wren is worshipped. In Central America, Brazil, and West Africa the thunderbird is known as the god of the tempest. In many countries the swallow is regarded as a sacred bird. Misfortune will come to anyone who kills it, and it may not be touched or caught. It is also taboo to take the nest of a swallow.In India itself the Hindus have believed that the fish is the first incarnation of God, the tortoise is another, the pig is another. But the researchers were concerned that parrots are not mentioned anywhere, and they could not find the reason. It is clear that the parrot is so much like the pundit, or the rabbi, repeating the scriptures; so much like the priest, bishop, cardinal or pope that they cannot allow these fellows. It is a question of business. These parrots repeat whatever you say, they don’t answer.I will tell Avirbhava to bring her parrots and to show how they repeat. Avirbhava, bring your gods.(Avirbhava rests two huge parrots on their perches on each side of Osho on the podium. In the middle she places a small pink cockatoo which flutters in front of him.)Just say something…(She leans over to the parrot on the right and says, “Yaa-hoo!” Then she goes to the one on the left and says even more loudly, “Yaa-hoo!” The one in the middle now starts chirping…. And Osho chuckles away while Avirbhava rushes from parrot to parrot saying, “Yaa-hoo! Yaa-hoo!” But the parrots’ replies are drowned in wild laughter. Osho too is laughing and enjoying the show tremendously.)One joke for the parrots….Klarrot the Parrot has abandoned her perch and is sitting on the lampshade near the telephone when Kowalski gets home. Kowalski opens the door, and steps into a huge mountain of birdseed.Immediately, Kowalski makes a dive for the lampshade and grabs Klarrot.“Did you order more birdseed?” he bellows at the parrot, clutched in his hand.Klarrot remains silent, and glares at Kowalski with her beady eyes.“Did you order more birdseed?” Kowalski screams again.Klarrot does not blink.“Right!” shouts Kowalski, and he takes the parrot upstairs to the attic and ties her to a beam with her wings stretched out.Kowalski stomps downstairs and Klarrot is left staring into space. She looks around and can just see Jesus on a crucifix, nailed to the opposite wall.In a quiet whisper, Klarrot asks, “Did you order more birdseed, too?”When you do your gibberish, bring your parrots. They can do the gibberish with you.Tozan said:Subtly included within the true, inquiry and response come up together.If your inquiry is honest, with your total being, you will want to know that the response will come immediately. There will not be a gap of time between your inquiry and the response from existence. Existence is very responsive. If no answer comes, that simply means your inquiry is not total. Existence responds only to totality. Be a hundred percent in your inquiry, and existence will not fail you. It has always responded.Communing with the source and communing with the process it includes integration and includes the road.Communing with the source – once you have come in communication with the source, existence has started responding to you. Then the whole process, the integration of your being and the road that you follow, is seen clearly as one. The road is none other than the goal, and your integration is none other than your totality. The whole process of being a buddha is nothing but a response from existence to an honest inquiry. It includes all.Merging is auspicious. Do not violate it.Perhaps the only thing that can be called auspicious is merging with the whole, taking away all your barriers, hindrances and defenses, just jumping into the ocean and disappearing into the ocean without leaving a trace. What is the point of being a dewdrop when you can be the very ocean?Merging is auspicious. Do not violate it. Naturally real, yet inconceivable, it is not within the province of delusion or enlightenment.Because of our mind we always divide everything into opposite polarities. Delusion and enlightenment, night and day, birth and death, they are all one process but the mind cannot conceive it. It is intrinsically incapable of conceiving of the oneness of life and death, of light and darkness. And even if somehow it can be proved logically that they are one, the greatest problem arises about delusion and enlightenment. Are they one?Tozan shows that he is a great master by saying that they are one. The moment delusion disappears, enlightenment also disappears. It is not that delusion disappears and you remain enlightened. The very idea of remaining enlightened is part of delusion. They both remain together, or they go away together, leaving you alone, neither deluded nor enlightened, but just simple, ordinary – a nothingness, a nobody, a pure space.With causal conditions, time and season, quiescently it shines bright.This nothingness shines bright. It is not your idea of nothingness. You think nothingness means nothingness. By nothingness Tozan or any buddha means no-thingness. It is not a thing that you have arrived at. It is a space. It is consciousness, it is being, it is silence, it is beauty, it is truth. It is nothing that is graspable by your hands.In its fineness it fits into spacelessness.This is going really to the very peak, the ultimate peak. Meditation begins with finding a space where there is no thought, where there is no body, no form, no mind. This is the beginning. But space is still there. At the ultimate point space also disappears. Then what remains? That is the indescribable. As for space, language is capable…beyond space we are absolutely dumb. In its greatness it is utterly beyond description.A hairbreadth deviation will fail to accord with the proper attunement.Now, there are “sudden” and “gradual” in connection with which we set up basic approaches. Once basic approaches are distinguished, then there are guiding rules. But even though the basis is reached and the approach comprehended, true eternity still flows.Since Gautam Buddha it has been a continuous question whether enlightenment is gradual or sudden. If it is gradual that means it will be partial, step by step; slowly, slowly you become enlightened. A part of you becomes enlightened but the remaining part remains unenlightened.This is absurd. But it has appealed to many people who think, “How can we attain enlightenment suddenly?” Nothing can be attained in the world suddenly. You cannot become the richest man in the world suddenly. It is a gradual process of acquiring money, wealth, power – everything in the world is gradual.Just for this reason – that everything in the world is gradual – I say unto you that enlightenment cannot be gradual because it does not belong to this world. It has to be sudden. There is no other way, because you cannot dissect it; you cannot say fifty percent enlightenment, you cannot say, “Here goes a ten percent enlightened person.”One is either enlightened or not, there is no other possibility. Because it has to be total, it means that it is already there. If it had to grow, it would have been gradual. No growth can be sudden. Every growth is gradual – a child becomes a young man, the young man becomes old, a small plant becomes a big tree. But everything that grows is gradual.Enlightenment does not grow and does not decline. It is already there in you. It needs only a recognition and recognition can be sudden. It just needs a total quest and a turning in – and suddenly you are no more what you used to be. You are a buddha. It will be very difficult for you to tell anybody. It will be very difficult for you even to accept that you are a buddha. But whether it is difficult or impossible, it does not make any difference to the reality: you are a buddha.Sometimes you forget and sometimes you remember. Forgetting, remembering, forgetting, remembering – a point comes when remembrance becomes so solid that you don’t forget. But it is a sudden phenomenon. It is the only sudden phenomenon because it is not of this world.Outwardly still, while inwardly moving, like a tethered colt, a trapped rat – the ancient saints pitied them, and bestowed upon them the teaching. According to their delusion, they called black as white.When erroneous imaginations cease, the acquiescent no-mind realizes itself.The realization of no-mind is just like a lake which had waves moving on it. Now the winds are gone and the waves have become silent. It was the same lake while it was in a turmoil, it was just our delusion that it had changed. It is the same consciousness when it gets identified with things. Our nature does not change any more than the lake’s nature is changed by waves. Soon the winds will be gone and the waves will disappear from the lake and the lake will become just a quiet mirror. It is the same lake. It is the same consciousness which is in delusion, disturbed. It is the same consciousness which in enlightenment is undisturbed. The only difference is of disturbance. So find out what causes the disturbance in your consciousness. Drop those causes and the disturbance will disappear.Enlightenment is not some achievement. It is simply the absence of all causes of disturbance. When the lake becomes silent, a mirror, it simply means that the winds have gone home, the cause of the disturbance is no more there.What is the cause of your disturbance? The one cause is identification: my body, my mind, my religion, my country, my race…There are thousands of examples but always there is identification. Drop all identifications because they are simply mind projections, they don’t have any reality.What do you mean, to say that you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian? You were not born a Christian, you were not born a Hindu. Your parents may have believed in Hinduism, in Buddhism, in Christianity, but their belief cannot enter into the child that is born.The child is pure and still, there are no waves stirring its lake of consciousness. It is for this reason that it has been recognized by all the mystics of the world that finally the mystic becomes like a child.In Tozan’s words he becomes almost a fool, an idiot, because he knows nothing of the worldly wisdom. He behaves so spontaneously that he is always out of place. He is a misfit. You can forgive the child because he is a child, but you cannot forgive an old man who behaves like a child. Hence you have not forgiven saints, you have started worshipping them. That is a way of not forgiving them – making them dead gods, saying that they are special people, incarnations of God, prophets, messengers, messiahs, and we are just ordinary people.The truth is just the opposite. They are the most ordinary people, the most simple – so simple that you can even call them fools or idiots. You are the extraordinary people in your egos.The first, most fundamental cause is identification. So UNidentification becomes the process. Go on unidentifying – with your body, with your mind, with your feelings. Go on eliminating all identifications. Then what is left? Just a pure space – that is the last thing to be dropped.It is simply a process of merger into the ocean, into the whole. You cannot remain separate. Being separate from the whole is the cause of all our misery. Being one with the whole, there is no possibility of any misery, you are no more. To be miserable, first you have to be.When erroneous imaginations cease, the acquiescent no-mind realizes itself.When the wooden man begins to sing…When you dance, if you are not identified with the body, what is the body? Just a skeleton. Tozan is saying:When the wooden man begins to sing, the stone woman gets up to dance; it’s not within reach of feeling or discrimination – how could it admit of consideration in thought?If you are not identified with the body or the mind, if you are just a watcher, then if a song arises in you, it is arising and flowing through your dead body. A corpse is singing, and if you start dancing, a corpse is dancing. You remain, in every movement, in every gesture, just a watcher.This is the simple secret of all religiousness, just to be a watcher. It cuts through all identifications in a single blow. It leaves you in a pure space. That is the beginning of spacelessness. If you have come to the space within, you have come to the gates of the temple. One step more and you will be drowned in spacelessness. Tozan says:Practice secretly, working within, as though a fool, like an idiot – if you can achieve continuity, this is called the host within the host.Man’s many problems arise from his desire to exhibit. In psychology they call it a disease. You want to exhibit who you are. When you are putting your tie on rightly, looking in the mirror, your whole desire is to be recognized as a man of dignity. I am not against dignity and I am not saying that you should put your tie on backward. I am saying don’t be identified with this personality. Remain continuously watching yourself and what you are doing. There is no need to change it. If it changes on its own, it is just because of your watching, and that is one of the secrets.Albert Einstein came to know what mystics have known in their own way. When you look inside the atom…the atom consists of three particles. They are moving in a certain way. But the moment you look at them, they just stop, and begin moving in a different way.It is exactly like when you are in your bathroom singing some stupid songs, cleaning your teeth and singing at the same time, making faces in front of the mirror – and suddenly you become aware that somebody is looking through the keyhole. You change your posture, you become a normal person, what nonsense were you doing? Just a little moment of freedom was there, and now that has been taken.It may be that it is just a small child looking through the keyhole but that watchfulness of the child changes your behavior. It has no reason to it, he is not saying anything. In fact the child will enjoy it if you are making faces: “Daddy is doing great things! He never does these things outside” – but you stop immediately. It is automatic. It is not that you make an effort to stop; you simply stop, knowing that somebody is watching.This is perfectly good for human beings. But Albert Einstein came across the fact that when you look deep into the constituents of atoms, just the very fact that you are looking changes their behavior. They don’t behave the same as they were behaving just a second before. They change their course, they become more gentlemanlike.It has long been an understanding of the mystics that the moment you become a watcher, just your being a watcher is enough. You don’t have to change anything in your behavior, your behavior will change accordingly. It will become more spontaneous, it will be more in communion with existence. It will be more loving, it will be more compassionate. It will be more joyful, more graceful, more grateful.Your whole past will have to be dropped, but it is not that you have to drop it. It will drop by itself. A new man, a fresh man, arises out of watchfulness. This secret has not been revealed by the priests of any religion, that there is only one way of transformation and it is not discipline and fasting and standing on your head and doing all kinds of contortions of your body. There is only one way to go through a metamorphosis from the mortal to the immortal, from the prison of your identifications into the freedom of the skies.The key is watchfulness.A haiku:When the stone man nods his head,the wooden pillar claps its hands.The master who has written this haiku – his name is not known; he just remains unidentified. He is saying that what is happening in the world is that…the stone man nods his head, and the wooden pillar claps its hands. Nobody is conscious. Everything is happening in unconsciousness almost as if we were somnambulists, sleepwalkers. This situation of sleep can change just by bringing a little consciousness, a little awareness. I say “a little awareness” just not to freak you out, because the little awareness is not little. If you bring just a little consciousness, a little watchfulness, the whole ocean drops into you. Just give way and you are gone, and what remains is the truth, the eternal truth.Here we do meditation every day. By your meditation this place becomes auspicious. But yesterday I saw Proper Sagar…it was not unexpected. He is so proper that he cannot fall without proper adjustment, so he was the only person who was sitting when everybody else was dead. But that way he was showing his stupidity. It is not allowed here.If people are behaving like this then I have to keep a few guards to make them dead. If they need proper guidance to die, somebody will have to give them proper guidance: this is the way to die! But I hope it will not be needed.Proper Sagar has been from the very beginning proper. Everything that he does has to be proper, British. He cannot get out of that insanity. At least here you need not be insane. But his problem must have been how to fall – some lady is lying beside you and if you fall somebody may fall over you and everything will become improper. Nobody cared about him, but the guards informed me that Proper Sagar was not participating in the meditation.It is for you all. Anybody who does not want to participate in the meditation totally is not allowed in the discourse either. The meditation is simply the justification, the experiential justification of whatever has been said. I talked about Tozan, and now we have to feel an experience. What is Tozan saying? What truth is there?This is not a question of manners and proper behavior and etiquette. Here nobody is a gentleman or a lady. Here are simple human beings without any claim of specialness. This is the basic ground of approaching into your being, otherwise you will remain standing.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Tozan speaks of “proper attunement…”Yes, he speaks about proper attunement, but he does not speak about Proper Sagar!Is not proper attunement, or being in harmony with the master, a truer expression of what transpires between master and disciple than surrender? Or is surrender a prerequisite before one can hope to be in tune?Maneesha, surrender has nothing to do with it as far as meditation is concerned. You don’t surrender to anybody, you are simply going inward. There is nobody except you. You will not find anybody on the way except you.But surrender does have a totally different significance. When you have known yourself and you have felt the cosmic relationship that you are part of this great universe, then you cannot go against nature. That is what surrender is. Surrender is not something to be done, it is just knowing your cosmic naturalness, your buddhahood. You cannot go against the cosmos. This not going against the cosmos, but remaining in trust and love and absolute surrender…wherever the wind takes you, you are available to it. Surrender is a by-product, not a prerequisite; it comes on its own accord.Before we enter in…I am always concerned whether you will come out or not. Poor Nivedano can go on beating his drum, and you may not come. You may have already merged, you may not think it proper to come back. What is the point to go in every day and then to come back? It seems not very proper – either go in and be finished, or don’t bother about it. But there is a reason for going in every day and going deeper and deeper every day. It is because there is an infinity within you. There are no milestones and there is no end to the road, so come back every day whether you have gone in or not. You will have to measure it by your changed behavior in the outside world. There is no other way to know how deep you have gone. Have you reached the buddha? Then it will affect your whole individuality. You will have to arrange your whole life in the new light.So every day go deeper and deeper, but always remember that when you have enjoyed the inner space and Nivedano calls you forth with his drumbeat, be compassionate to him. Silently gathering the experience that you have collected, watching the way by which you entered, slowly move outward again.By and by, as the Sufis say, “If you pass through a garden of roses – even if you don’t touch the roses, your clothes will get the fragrance.” When you go in, your consciousness will start moving into your actions, your blindness will start disappearing, your darkness will become less. You don’t have to do anything. That is the most important thing about meditation – that it is a single thing, not so many things and so many rituals. It is just a simple process of going in and letting that experience change your whole life structure. You don’t have to do anything else.Before you go in, a few laughters, so at least you remember that the path is full of laughter. I don’t want you to be serious meditators, I want you to be laughing buddhas.“He looks so blissful,” sobs Molly Mooch over her husband Marvin’s coffin.“Yes, he does,” agrees Mr. Koff, the undertaker.“But there is just one thing,” sniffs Molly.“And what is that?” asks Mr. Koff, with a concerned voice.“Well,” explains Molly, “green was never his color. I think he would have been much happier wearing a blue suit, like that gentleman in the other coffin over there.”“Don’t worry, Mrs. Mooch,” says the undertaker, “I can fix it, if you will just go to the waiting room for a few minutes.”Less than a minute later, Mister Koff calls Molly back into the showroom. Sure enough, Marvin is wearing the other man’s blue suit.“That’s wonderful!” gasps Molly in admiration, “but how did you change them so quickly?”“I didn’t,” replies Mr. Koff. “I just switched heads.”“My husband is fantastic!” exclaims Doreen to Mabel and Blossom over coffee one morning. “He bought me a mink coat and a diamond wristwatch.”“That’s nothing,” snaps Mabel. “My husband has bought me a luxury sailing boat and a speed boat.”“My husband is poor,” admits Blossom, “but he is very special. He has a prick so long that twelve yellow canaries can stand on it side by side.”There is long silence.“Girls,” says Doreen, “I must admit I was lying. My husband didn’t buy me those fancy things. He bought me a plastic raincoat and a cheap watch. But I’m very happy with them.”“Since we are telling the truth,” confesses Mabel, “I should tell you that I didn’t get any fancy boats. All I got was a rowboat ride on the river.”Doreen and Mabel look at Blossom. “Okay, okay!” says Blossom. “I’ll tell you the truth, too. That business about twelve yellow canaries standing side by side on my husband’s prick is not true. The twelfth bird can only stand on one leg!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be frozen.Gather your whole consciousness inside. Concentrate it more and more deeply in the center.Deeper and deeper…there is no question here.It is your own space you are entering, your own sky.This is your buddha-nature, beyond the body, beyond the mind. Just a watching, just a witnessing is the buddha.To make it clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax. See the body lying there, see the mind lying there, but you are neither. You are standing aloof, watching, just watching. All clouds disappear and the moon shines bright.Carry this experience twenty-four hours, as an underlying river expressing itself in your actions, words, responses, gestures – in your silences.Waking and sleeping will not make any difference. Your buddhahood is there, a watcher on the hill. In the darkest night you are still a light unto yourself.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back all the buddhas, carrying your buddhahood with you. Slowly and gracefully, just sit down for a few moments without any fear, remembering that you are a buddha. And that from this moment you will act as a buddha, you will behave as a buddha, you will love as a buddha.It is a very simple phenomenon, because it is your ultimate reality. The question is just how to express it, how to recognize it.Meditation gives you both.It allows you to recognize it and then to carry it into the marketplace, to manifest it.Always remember, the world was never in as much need of buddhas as it is today.The future of humanity will depend on whether we can spread buddhahood like a wildfire around the earth. There is no other alternative.Can we celebrate the gathering of the buddhas?

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The Original Man 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Original Man 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Rinzai said to a monk, “Sometimes, a shout is like a hard and durable jeweled sword. Sometimes a shout is like a lion, crouching on the ground – strong and powerful. Sometimes a shout is like a weed-tipped fishing pole, attracting and probing the unwary. And sometimes a shout is not used as a shout. How do you understand all this?”As the monk was thinking about it, Rinzai gave a shout. He then turned to the assembly and said, “You monks should be very careful about all this. When host and guest meet each other, there is always an exchange of words or discussion, in which are exhibited either the form appropriate for the moment, the function in full, expedient devices with either joy or anger and incomplete manifestation, or the rider on a lion or the Lord of Elephants.“For instance, a true disciple would, upon arrival, give a shout, thus presenting a tray of glue. An incompetent master who does not know that this is just an object, would step into the glue, putting on high airs with his learning. The disciple would shout again, but the incompetent master would refuse to retreat from his wrong position. This is a mortal disease, which is incurable and is called ‘a guest looking at his host.’“It might happen that a competent master would not use any object, but would merely follow the disciple’s question, to strip him of his graspings, while the latter would refuse with all his strength. This is ‘a host looking at his guest.’“It might happen that a disciple just coming out of a still state of meditation would present himself to a master who knows that such a state is merely the object, and snatches it away from the former, throwing it into an abyss. The disciple would praise the enlightened master, who would reply, ‘You do not know what is good and what is bad.’ Thereupon, the disciple would bow his thanks. This is ‘a host looking at a host.’“It might happen that a disciple, already wearing handcuffs, would present himself before a master, who would put additional handcuffs on him. The disciple, however, would be joyful, and both would not see anything wrong in all this. This is ‘a guest looking at a guest.’“Virtuous Ones, what this mountain monk has just said, is how to distinguish a demon from an unusual man, in order to know which is heterodox and which is orthodox.”Maneesha, Rinzai is trying to explain one of the mysteries of Zen which has remained very strange to outsiders. It is the sound of Kwatz! It does not mean anything. We can substitute it with Yaa-Hoo! That means much more. Kwatz! is a single sound; Yaa-Hoo! is a double sound. In fact, Yaa-Hoo! should be used in future Zen instead of Kwatz! Whichever the sound, Rinzai has explained that although it is not meaningful, it is very significant.Before we enter into his statements, a few preliminary things have to be understood, otherwise you will lose the whole track.First is the sound. It is not a word, it does not have a meaning in any dictionary or in any language. When a sound comes from your very deepest core, it is something of a miracle. You see it happening every day here. When you say Yaa-Hoo! with your total energy, the sound comes from your very center, stirring your whole body, the periphery, the mind, every nerve.You can say it in a lukewarm way – then you will miss it. It has to be said exactly like the lion’s roar, which comes from the belly. It is not just from your tongue – not even from your throat or your heart. It exactly hits just below the navel – two inches below to be exact.You should watch. Whenever you do it, you should keep an eye on where it is coming from – that is the way for you to go in. It is clearing the way, it is making a passage in a forgotten land, giving you a direct line. It connects you with yourself.Don’t be bothered about idiots. They don’t know anything and still all over the country they have either laughed at the Yaa-Hoo! in newspapers and magazines, or they have made skeptical remarks, not even knowing what the significance of it is. This only shows their blindness, unintelligence and stubborn stupidity.Before saying a word about something unknown, you should think twice. You may not find the meaning in the dictionary because it is not a word. You will have to find the significance in experience. You have to do it – only then you can have it. But then you will still not be able to explain it to another. The mystery is very profound.In Zen, Kwatz! has been used for almost fourteen hundred years – in different situations for different purposes. Rinzai is trying to explain it to his disciples.Rinzai said to a monk, “Sometimes, a shout is like a hard and durable jeweled sword.”If it penetrates you and reaches deep down into your very source, it has done a tremendous work, it has created a way.“Sometimes a shout is like a lion, crouching on the ground”– sometimes it is simply an expression that you have come home –“strong and powerful. Sometimes a shout is like a weed-tipped fishing pole, attracting and probing the unwary.”It does both jobs. It attracts those who are seekers of the path, and keeps away those who are just poor curiosity-mongers. They won’t enter in a place where people are shouting, “Yaa-Hoo!”To their intelligence – whatever they have of it, it will seem a maddening phenomenon. All that is beyond their reason they call mad. Only what is reasonable is acceptable. In this way the reasonable man confines his reality to the very small circle of his mind. Only the irrational person – capable of going beyond reason – opens the doors of the beyond.Rinzai is trying to explain that the shout can be used in many ways.“And sometimes a shout is not used as a shout”– but as a salute.“How do you understand all this?”As the monk was thinking about it, Rinzai gave a shout– the shout is Kwatz!He then turned to the assembly and said, “You monks should be very careful about all this. When host and guest meet each other, there is always an exchange of words or discussion, in which are exhibited either the form appropriate for the moment, the function in full, expedient devices with either joy or anger and incomplete manifestation, or the rider on a lion or the Lord of Elephants.A small sound can do many things because it has no meaning. You can use it in different devices. Two friends meet – not just familiar ones, acquaintances, but friends, connected deep down in their roots. They both will give the shout to show the whole universe, “We are one.” When a man for the first time becomes enlightened he gives a shout, not to anybody in particular but to the whole existence, “Let it be noted that I am no longer an ignorant and unaware man.” His shout is existential language.In Zen they have symbols which are very significant. When you are out of yourself roaming around the world, you may be immobile in the body, but your mind is roaming around. This roaming mind is a guest, and the unchanging consciousness within you is the host. So there are many possibilities….Two guests may meet who both are out of themselves. Their shout will be very shallow, just an etiquette. They themselves are not thick enough, just a thin facade. But it can happen that a guest can meet a host. One who has arrived is a master; when you come to him you are coming to a host. Your shout will be a declaration: “I am ready.” The master’s shout will be a declaration: “You are accepted.”Sometimes it happens that two hosts meet – both masters. They will give a shout which will penetrate to the very foundation of existence.This sound of Kwatz! has never been understood by the intellectuals, and will never be understood by them. They understand only superficial words. Words cannot go as deep as sounds.Rinzai is describing situations:For instance, a true disciple would, upon arrival, give a shout…Only a true disciple will have the courage to give a shout to the master, because it is a challenge – a challenge to transform him, a challenge to accept him for the journey, a challenge to take him in his caravan. The false disciple, who is only a student gathering fragments of knowledge here and there, will not have the nerve to give the shout. If he gives the shout he will receive the master’s staff on his head to put him right.The shout needs your earnest inquiry, not just curiosity. And the difference is clear, it is a nuance. The sound is the same but the earnest seeker will have a power in his sound. If the seeker is earnest and gives a sound and the master is not a true master but only a teacher, then the disciple is presenting a tray of glue.An incompetent master, who does not know that this is just an object, would step into the glue, putting on high airs with his learning.It is a touchstone also. When a true disciple meets a true master there is no way of saying how the master will respond. But one thing is certain: if the master is not true himself, he will fall into the trap of the true disciple whose shout is a tray of glue. He will start thinking that he is a great master. He will put on high airs, and start talking like a parrot – he will show his learning. But the true seeker is not in search of learning or knowledge, nor is the true master interested in teaching.The true master is interested in transforming your being, in bringing you home, in making you a host rather than a guest. You have been a guest in many forms, in many lives. The true master’s function is to show you the way home where you are not a guest but a host. Enough of caravansaries, enough of five-star hotels, enough of the friendly, familiar, businesslike, worldly reception as a guest. Unless you find the host you are going to remain superficial, just a personality.The true disciple would shout again…He would give another chance to the master, because it is thought to be a responsibility of the master not to be dishonest.But the incompetent master would refuse to retreat again from his wrong position. This is a mortal disease…Rinzai calls it a mortal disease; every mortal is prone to it: the ego.The ego does not cherish the idea of revealing the truth, because revealing the truth is the death of the ego. It goes on saying that which is untrue, but it cannot hide from authentic seeking eyes. They will uncover that the master is just a parrot – he repeats correctly but he knows nothing.This is a mortal disease, which is incurable and is called “a guest looking at his host.”The master himself is a guest but pretending to be a host.It might happen that a competent master would not use any object, but would merely follow the disciple’s question, to strip him of his graspings, which the latter would refuse with all his strength. This is “a host looking at his guest.”If you are facing and encountering an authentic master he will start destroying your personality immediately. And if you are a true disciple, you will stand naked, not hiding anything. This he calls “a host looking at his guest.” To somebody who needs protection, shelter, guidance, the true master becomes everything: a guide, a friend, a shelter, a way, a companion unto the ultimate.It might happen that a disciple just coming out of a still state of meditation would present himself to a master, who knows that such a state is merely the object, and snatches it away from the former, throwing it into an abyss. The disciple would praise the enlightened master, who would reply, “You do not know what is good and what is bad.” Thereupon, the disciple would bow his thanks. This is “a host looking at a host.”Both understand the meaning. The shout has joined them both. The disciple is coming out of the meditation. He knows the path where he is coming from, and he knows that the same is the path of the shout. He has no fear. If the master takes away anything that is a hindrance, he will not cling to it. On the contrary, he will relinquish it with joy and thank the master, bow down before him.This is called a host looking at a host. Both have arrived; one is a senior host, the other is a junior host. One has just arrived, but both have arrived.It might happen that a disciple, already wearing handcuffs, would present himself before a master, who would put additional handcuffs on him. The disciple, however, would be joyful, and both would not see anything wrong in all this. This is “a guest looking at a guest.”Neither the master is true nor the disciple is true. The dishonest master can only live by putting more ornaments on his disciples. They look like ornaments, but in fact they are chains to bind them. This is the ugliest situation: you have been in search of freedom, and you fall prey to a man who puts you deeper into slavery.Ryota wrote:They spoke no words.The visitor, the host,and the white chrysanthemum.“They spoke no words…” There is a possibility that if the two persons meeting are both great masters – not fresh young flowers, but seasoned – then there is no speaking, no words. The visitor is there, the host is there, but there is no one who is a guest. The host is visiting another host.Issa wrote:Under cherry treesthere areno strangers.These are ultimate expressions. When two masters meet under the cherry tree, they may not know anything about each other, but just the sound of Kwatz! and they are no strangers. They know that they both are connected to the same source.I have not used the sound Kwatz! It is old, traditional; it has become a convention. This is the unfortunate history of everything – soon it becomes a dead ritual. That’s why I have used Yaa-Hoo! At least for my present people around the world, it will be a living sound. And when you shout Yaa-Hoo! you have to watch from what source it is coming. You have to go inward to that source.So every night before the meeting, I help to show you the way without saying anything. Then in the meditation you are amazed that this is the same path. And as I leave, I remind you again of your origin.A sound that can thrill each fiber and cell of your being can give you a dancing quality; it can give you a music unheard, a life that was asleep. An authentic sound penetrates so deep that you cannot remain asleep.Maneesha has asked a question:Osho,Rinzai said: “When host and guest meet each other, there is always an exchange of words or discussion.” But he did not know about you. I wonder what Rinzai would make of a dancing master and our Yaa-Hoo! shout?He would understand it perfectly. He is saying that when a host and guest meet, there is discussion and talk and conversation, but when two hosts meet, not a single word passes between them. Their meeting is that of presences. Their meeting is that of being – not of words and language.So, Maneesha, I can say without any doubt that Rinzai would understand our Yaa-Hoo! shout. It does not matter what sound you use. Perhaps he would appreciate it better, because in Yaa-Hoo! two are present. Both can be the host, or one can be the host and the other can be the disciple, or both can be disciples. But the quality of their Yaa-Hoo! will change accordingly.And you can feel it here when some spectator enters the assembly by chance. Just out of courtesy, we don’t stop him. He also raises his hands, but you can see how reluctantly. He also gives the Yaa-Hoo! shout, but you can see what a mouse he is.It is a lion’s den.If you are really here to participate in what is happening – then be total! It is not a place for spectators. I know Rinzai; hence, I assume, he knows me.Before we enter the source of our being…The clouds have come to listen for your laughter. This earth has become so dry – nobody laughs, nobody even smiles. Even if they smile, it is just a painted smile, a lipstick smile.I want my people to laugh like a lion’s roar. Then even laughter becomes a tremendous experience, because it is intelligence at its peak.“You would not believe it,” says Zabriski in the bar, “but I think my milkman is turning gay!”“Why,” asks Klopski, “what happened?”“Well,” says Zabriski, “my wife was sick in bed the other morning. So I stayed home late to take care of her. Suddenly, the milkman started ringing the doorbell, and since I was naked, I slipped on my wife’s bathrobe and went downstairs.“As I opened the door, the milkman jumped into my arms, started kissing me, and trying to take the bathrobe off me!”“Hey, man, don’t worry,” says Klopski.“He’s probably not gay, that was just a coincidence.”“A coincidence? What do you mean?” asks Zabriski.“Well, it is obvious,” explains Klopski, sagely, “his wife must wear a bathrobe the same color as your wife’s!”On a trip to Rome, Sarjano is driving down the street in Jayesh’s bright red Ferrari at about a hundred and fifty miles an hour.Suddenly, from a side street, the Popemobile pulls out in front of him. With no time for Sarjano to hit the brakes, there is a colossal collision.The next thing they know, Pope the Polack and Sarjano are watching their souls departing the earth together. Of course, there is a bureaucratic, computerized mix-up on the way to Heaven, and as a result, Sarjano is sent to the Pearly Gates, while Pope the Polack is sent to Hell.The Polack pope, obviously pissed off that he is in the wrong place, soon convinces those in charge that there has been a mistake. And in the blink of an eye, he is transported to the Pearly Gates. As he walks into Heaven, he meets Sarjano just coming out.“I’m really sorry about this,” says the pope, bending to kiss the Gates, “but I have waited all my life to kneel at the feet of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the purest virgin who has ever lived.”Sarjano flashes a bright smile at the Polack pope.“Sorry, Father,” he says, buttoning his pants, “But you are-a too late!”Walter Wibble arrives at the Pearly Gates and is given a tour of Heaven by Saint Peter. They are walking around Gabriel’s garden when a small bell starts tinkling. All the angels and saints fall to their knees and begin to pray.“What is going on?” asks Walter, looking at this amazing sight.“Oh,” replies Saint Peter, “an innocent child has just told her first lie. All the angels and saints are praying for her.”A short while later they are inspecting the Harp and Hallelujia Bowling Club, when a large bell starts ringing. A bus load of angels screeches to a stop in the street outside, and all the angels fly out, onto their knees, and start praying.“What is happening now?” asks Walter.“Ah,” replies Saint Peter, “an adult on earth has just told another lie, and all the angels and saints are praying for him.”Later, they are walking through the Heavenly Dollar Shopping Mall, when suddenly, hundreds of bells start ringing. There is such a terrible noise that Walter drops to his knees, covers his ears, and starts praying.“Good God!” exclaims Saint Peter. “Ronald Reagan and his gang are discussing Osho again!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent…close your eyes. Feel your body to be frozen. Gather all your consciousness, your life energy inward, and go deeper without any fear.It is your own being, and unless you know it, you will suffer from death and life and a thousand miseries.Knowing your own being frees you from all misery, from all suffering, and brings you a world full of joy, blissfulness, ecstasy.It all depends on you – how deep you go.Just become an arrow, deeper, deeper and deeper.This is you – the original man, the buddha.With deep gratitude enter in. Don’t remain standing outside the temple. And you will find inside nobody but yourself. What was moving around outside was just a projection.The real host is within you always and always.To make it clear, absolutely clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax…let the body lie there, the mind far away, and you are simply a watcher.Nothing has to be done, just watch. This watching is your original nature, unspoiled, undisturbed.It is just like a mirror. It has reflected many things, but it is still empty and silent.Drink from this well of your being and remember the way. Twenty-four hours, whenever you have a little time, just look within. It is not far away.Refresh yourself twenty-four hours with your buddhahood, so that all doubts drop, and it becomes a spontaneous roar within you. Your buddhahood is no longer a thought, but in the roar of your whole being it becomes your ultimate experience.You are beyond time and beyond mind, you are beyond space. You are the eternity, and you are the immortality. The whole sky is yours, all bondages fallen away, ultimate freedom achieved.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back. But bring your buddha with you, bring your host with you. Slowly, silently, gracefully, sit down for a few moments, rejoicing and remembering the benediction that has happened to you.You have been to the holiest of the holy.You have seen the original man.Let this experience flow like an undercurrent in every act and gesture of your life.Slowly, slowly it becomes just like a heartbeat or breathing, spontaneous and of its own accord.Waking or asleep you remain the buddha, and because of this undercurrent, all your character, all your ideas of good and bad, all your actions will be completely transformed – to a totally new form that you have never imagined, never dreamed of.Change comes from inner experience, not vice versa. People try to change their character to know their buddha. They will never be able to succeed. All the religions are doing that, I am teaching you just the opposite.First, experience the buddha, and that experience will start changing you, your love, your compassion. Everything around you will have a new light, a new aura, a new fragrance.To me, the true religion begins from within and spreads outward, not the other way.Can we celebrate the gathering of the buddhas?

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Om Mani Padme Hum 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Om Mani Padme Hum 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Would you like to say something about the famous Tibetan mantra, “Om Mani Padme Hum”?The only country in the world which has devoted all its genius to the inner exploration is Tibet. Its findings are of tremendous value. Om Mani Padme Hum is one of the most beautiful expressions for the ultimate experience. Its meaning is “the sound of silence, the diamond in the lotus.”Silence also has its sound, its music…although the outer ears cannot hear it, just as the outer eyes cannot see it. We have six outer senses. In the past man knew only that we have five outer senses; the sixth is a new discovery. It is inside your ears; hence people failed to recognize it. It is the sense of balance. When you feel giddy or when you see a drunkard walking, it is the sense of balance that is affected.Just as these six senses are used to experience the outer, exactly the same six senses exist to experience the inner – to see it, to hear it, to feel its utter balance, its beauty. It is invisible to the outer eyes but not to the inner. You cannot touch it with your outer senses, but the inner senses are absolutely immersed in it.Om is the sound when everything else disappears from your being – no thought, no dream, no projections, no expectations, not even a single ripple – your whole lake of consciousness is simply silent; it has become just a mirror. In those rare moments you hear the sound of silence. It is the most valuable experience because it not only shows a quality of the inner music – it also shows that the inner is full of harmony, joy, blissfulness. All that is implied in the music of Om.You are not to say it. If you say it you will miss the real thing. You have to hear it, you have to be utterly calm and quiet and suddenly it is all around you, a very subtle dance. And the moment you are able to hear it, you have entered into the very secrets of existence. You have become so subtle that now you deserve that all the mysteries be exposed to you.Existence waits till you are ready.In the East all the religions without exception agree on this point, that the sound which is heard in the final, highest peak of silence is something similar to Om.The word Om is not written alphabetically in any language of the East because it is not part of language. It is written as a symbol; hence the same symbol is used in Sanskrit, in Pali, in Prakrit, in Tibetan – everywhere the same symbol, because all the mystics of all the ages have reached to the same experience, that it is not part of our mundane world; hence it should not be written in letters. It should have its own symbol which is beyond language. It does not mean anything as far as mind is concerned, but it means tremendously much as far as your spiritual growth is concerned.All music, particularly the classical music, has been trying to catch the sound of silence so that even people who have not entered into their beings can experience something similar. But the similar is not the same, it is a very faraway echo. Even the greatest musician has to use sounds, but howsoever beautifully he arranges them, he cannot be absolutely silent. He gives gaps of silence in between; the whole play is between sound and silence. Those who don’t understand hear the sounds, and those who understand hear the silence, the gaps between two sounds.The real music is in the gaps.It is not created by the musician – the musician is creating the sounds and leaving the gaps as a contrast, so that you can experience something of what happens to the mystic in his inner world.Om is one of the great achievements of the seekers of truth. There have been cases which are absolutely unbelievable, but they are historical….When Marpa, a Tibetan mystic, died, his closest disciples were sitting all around him…because the death of a mystic is as tremendously valuable as his life, perhaps more. If you can be close to the mystic when he is dying, you can experience many things, because his whole consciousness is leaving the body – and if you are alert and conscious, you can feel a new fragrance; you can see a new light, you can hear a new music.When Marpa died he was living in a temple. And all his disciples became suddenly surprised – they looked all around – from where is the sound of Om coming? Then finally they realized that it was not coming from anywhere – it was coming from Marpa! They heard it by putting their ears to his feet, to his hands, and they could not believe it – inside his whole body there was a vibration creating the sound of Om. He had been hearing that sound for his whole life since he became enlightened. Because of his constant inner experience of the sound, the sound had entered even into his physical cells. Every fiber of his body had learned a certain synchronicity, the same wavelength.But it has been experienced with other mystics also. The inner starts radiating, particularly at the moment of death when everything comes to a crescendo. But man is so blind and so utterly unintelligent: knowing that the mystics experience the music of silence within them and they name it om, people started repeating om as a mantra, thinking that by repeating it they will also be able to hear it.By repeating it you will never be able to hear it. Your mind is functioning when you are repeating it. But perhaps I am the first person to tell it to you; otherwise for centuries people have been teaching: Repeat om. That creates a false experience, and you can be lost in the false and you will never discover the real.I say to you not to repeat it but simply be silent and listen to it. As your mind becomes calm and quiet, suddenly you will become aware: like a whisper, the Om is arising within your being. When it arises on its own, it has a totally different quality. It transforms you.Modern physics says that everything in the world is constituted of electrical energy. According to modern physics even sounds are nothing but electric waves. The physicists have been working from the outside.The mystics say just the opposite, but I don’t see that they are contradictory. They say the whole existence is made up of the soundless sound Om. And even electricity or fire are nothing but a certain condensed form of the sound.In the East it has been known: there have been musicians who could create by their music a flame on an unlit candle. As the music falls over the unlit candle suddenly the flame arises. It was a test in the ancient days, that unless a musician could create light, fire, flame, with his music he was still amateur. He was not recognized as a master.The explanations of physics and the mystics look different, but perhaps there is some deeper source which can withdraw the contradiction and opposition. Perhaps it is only a different interpretation, because the mystic is coming from the inside and the physicist is looking at the outside. What the physicist feels as electricity, the mystic feels as the music of the whole existence. They are both saying the same thing in different languages. And if there is a choice, I would choose the mystic, because he is experiencing it in his very center. His experience is not just an experiment on objects, his experience is an experiment on his own consciousness. And consciousness is the very cream of existence.This mantra has many secrets in it. The first wordless word is Om, and the last is Hum. The first is the flowering and the last is the seed.The Sufis don’t use the whole name of Allah – that is the Mohammedan name for God. They simply use Allah Hoo, and slowly, slowly they change Allah Hoo into simply Hoo, Hoo. They have found that the sound of Hoo strikes exactly at the life source just below the navel. You were connected with your life, with your mother, from the navel. Just below the navel is the source of your own life.Just try: when you say Hoo the hit is below the navel. That’s what we are using in our Dynamic Meditation. It is a Sufi discovery, but it can also be done in the Tibetan way. Rather than Hoo – Hoo seems to be a little harsh – Hum seems to be a little softer. But the softer will take a longer time to wake up your energies. It is possible that in the particular climate of Tibet, the softer was perfectly good. They did not need such a harsh sound in order to hit the life source. But in the harsh desert of Arabia where Sufi mystics started using Hoo….I had a choice when I was working on the Dynamic Meditation, whether to use Hum or to choose Hoo. I tried both and I found that perhaps in India, Hoo is better than in the colder heights of Tibet where things are bound to be different. Just Hum is perfectly right for them.Hum is the hit to create Om in you.If you hit the seed of your life it starts disappearing in the soil and green leaves, sprouts start growing. Between the two – Om and Hum – is Mani Padme. I don’t think anybody has been able to express the ultimate experience, the ultimate beatitude, better than Mani Padme. You have to visualize it. The lotus flower in the East is the most beautiful, the biggest flower. And if you put diamonds on the lotus flower in the early morning sun, you will have a tremendously beautiful experience…the lotus flower with diamonds.It is very difficult to say anything about the ultimate experience, but Tibetan mystics have tried the best. Many things have been said about it, but “diamond on the lotus” seems to be the best expression – because it is the greatest, most beautiful experience, and they have chosen two of the most beautiful things of the ordinary world, the lotus and the diamond. It is just a visual expression of the beauty that you come to see within yourself.This mantra Om Mani Padme Hum has a whole philosophy within it. Start with Hum, the last word, and the first will arise on its own accord. And when your inner being is filled with the sound of silence, you will also have the beautiful experience of seeing a lotus with a diamond in the early morning sun. The diamond is radiating. The lotus is so soft, so feminine, so delicate – it has no comparison in any other flower.It became so important to the mystics…you must have seen Gautam Buddha’s statues sitting on a lotus. They are showing symbolically that he has reached the ultimate; his own inner lotus has flowered. And not only the lotus has flowered, the diamond hidden behind it, inside it…as it opens its petals, you find a Kohinoor. The diamond has a quality – that’s why it has been chosen. It is symbolic of eternity. The diamond is for ever, it knows no death; it is immortal. The experience is beautiful and eternal.But unfortunately, Tibet has fallen into a darkness. Its monasteries have been closed, its seekers of truth have been forced to work in labor camps. The only country in the world which was working – a one-pointed genius, all its intelligence in the search for one’s own interiority and its treasures – has been stopped by the communist invasion of Tibet.And it is such an ugly world that nobody has objected to it. On the contrary, because China is big and powerful, even countries which are more powerful than China can ever be, like America, have accepted that Tibet belongs to China. That is sheer nonsense – just because China is powerful and everybody wants China to be on their side. Neither the Soviets nor America have challenged the claim of China. Leave America and the Soviets aside – even India has not objected. It was such a beautiful experiment, and Tibet had no weapons to fight with, they had no army to fight; they had never thought about it. Their whole thing was an introverted pilgrimage.Nowhere has such concentrated effort been made to discover man’s being. Every family in Tibet used to give their eldest son to some monastery where he was to meditate and grow closer to awakening. It was a joy to every family that at least one of them was wholeheartedly, twenty-four hours a day, working on the inner being. They were also working but they could not give all their time; they had to create food and clothes and shelter, and in Tibet it is a difficult matter. The climate is not very helpful; to live in Tibet is a tremendous struggle. But still every family used to give their first-born child to the monastery.There were hundreds of monasteries…and these monasteries should not be compared with any Catholic monasteries. These monasteries had no comparison in the whole world. These monasteries were concerned with only one thing: to make you aware of yourself.Thousands of devices have been created down the centuries so that your lotus can blossom and you can find your ultimate treasure, the diamond. These are just symbolic words, but the destruction of Tibet should be known in history, particularly when man becomes a little more aware and humanity a little more humane….This is the greatest calamity of the twentieth century that Tibet has fallen into the hands of materialists who don’t believe that you have anything inside you. They believe that you are only matter and your consciousness is only a by-product of matter. And all this is simply without any experience of the inner – just logical, rational philosophizing.Not a single communist in the world has meditated, but it is strange – they all deny the inner. Nobody thinks about how the outer can exist if there is no inner. They exist together, they are inseparable. The outer is only a protection for the inner, because the inner is very delicate and soft. But the outer is accepted and the inner is denied. And even if sometimes it is accepted, the world is dominated by such dirty politicians that they use even the inner experiences for ugly ends.Just the other day, I came to know that America is now training its soldiers in meditation so that they can fight without any nervous breakdown, without going mad, without feeling any fear – so they can lie down in their ditches silently, calm and cool and collected. No meditator may have ever thought that meditation can also be used for fighting wars, but in the hands of politicians everything becomes ugly – even meditation. Now the army camps in America are teaching meditation so that their soldiers can be more calm and quiet while killing people.But I want to warn America: you are playing with fire. You don’t understand exactly what meditation will do. Your soldiers will become so calm and quiet that they will throw away their weapons and they will simply refuse to kill. A meditator cannot kill; a meditator cannot be destructive. So they are going to be surprised one day that their soldiers are no longer interested in fighting. War, violence, murder, massacre of millions of people – this is not possible if a man knows something of meditation. Then he also knows not only himself, he knows the other whom he is killing. He is his brother. They all belong to the same oceanic existence.In the Soviet Union, also, they are interested in meditation. But the purpose is the same – not realization of yourself, but making you stronger so that you can kill and bomb and use nuclear weapons and missiles to kill whole nations.But they are both going on a dangerous path, unknowingly. It is good, they should be helped. Once meditation spreads among their soldiers, those soldiers will become sannyasins! So I am immensely happy that their idea is different, and they don’t know anything about meditation. They have only heard that it makes people calm and cool so they can fight without any fear, without looking back. Meditation gives them a feeling of immortality; hence their fear will disappear.But meditation not only gives them the experience of their own immortality – it also gives them the experience that everybody is immortal. Death is a fiction. Why unnecessarily harass people? They will be living, you cannot kill them. Not even your nuclear weapons are going to kill them.Krishna, in the Gita, has a beautiful statement: Nainam chhindanti shastrani; Naham dahati pavakahr. “Neither can any weapon destroy me nor can any fire burn me.” Yes the body will be burned, but I am not the body….Meditation gives you the feel, for the first time, of your authentic reality.If humanity were a little more aware, Tibet should be made free because it is the only country which has devoted almost two thousand years to doing nothing but going deeper into meditation. And it can teach the whole world something which is immensely needed.But Communist China is trying to destroy everything that has been created in two thousand years. All their devices, all their methods of meditation, their whole spiritual climate is being polluted, poisoned. And they are simple people; they cannot defend themselves. They don’t have anything to defend themselves with – no tanks, no bombs, no airplanes, no army. An innocent race which has lived without any war for two thousand years…. It disturbs nobody; it is so far away from everybody – even to reach there is a difficult task. They live on the very roof of the world. The highest mountains, eternal snows, are their home. Leave them alone! China will not lose anything, but the whole world will be benefited by their experience.And the world will need their experience. The world is getting fed up with money, power, prestige, all that scientific technology has created – people are getting fed up. They are finished with it. People in the advanced countries are no longer interested in sex, are no longer interested in drugs. Things are falling away, and a strange despair like a dark cloud is descending on the advanced countries – of deep frustration, meaninglessness, and anguish. They will all need a different climate of meditation to dispel all these clouds and bring again a new day into their lives, a new dawn, a new experience of themselves, a discovery of their original being.Tibet should be left as an experimental lab for man’s inner search. But not a single nation in the world has raised its voice against this ugly attack on Tibet. And China has not only attacked it, they have amalgamated it into their map. Now, on the modern Chinese map, Tibet is their territory.And we think the world is civilized, where innocent people who are not doing any harm to anybody are simply destroyed. And with them, something of great importance to all humanity is also destroyed. If there were something civilized in man, every nation would have stood against the invasion of Tibet by China. It is the invasion of matter against consciousness; it is the invasion of materialism against spiritual heights.The word mantra is untranslatable in English, in any Western language, but its meaning, its significance, can be explained to you. A mantra is not just something to chant. It is not chanting. A mantra is something to let sink deep in your being, just as roots go deep into the earth. The deeper the roots go into the earth, the higher the tree will go into the sky. A mantra is something like a seed to be allowed to go deep into your being so that it can send its roots to the sources of your life and finally to the universal life. Then its branches, its foliage will go high into the sky, and when the right time comes, when the spring comes, it will be filled with thousands of flowers.Unless a tree blossoms, it knows no blissfulness. It goes on feeling something is missing. You may have all the pleasures and comforts and luxuries of the world, but unless you know yourself, unless your inner lotus opens, you will go on missing something. You may not be certain what you are missing but a feeling…that something is being missed, that “I am not complete,” that “I am not whole,” that “I am not what existence wanted me to be.” This “missing” feeling goes on nagging everybody. Only the expansion of your consciousness will help you to get rid of this feeling, of this nagging, of this anguish, this angst.Even people like Jaspers, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Marcel, Jean-Paul Sartre, the highest geniuses of the West, are agreed on a few things: that life is nothing but boredom, that life is nothing but anxiety, anguish, that life is accidental, it has no significance…that it is absolutely futile to search for any blissful space; there exists none. And when great philosophers like these agree on such points, the ordinary masses simply follow them.Whatever they are saying is absolutely wrong, because none of them has ever meditated, none of them has entered into his own subjectivity. They are just in their heads. They have not even moved to their hearts, what to say about their beings? What to say about their disappearing into the universal?Unless you disappear into the universal ocean just like a dewdrop, you will not find significance. You will not find your real dignity. You will not find that existence showers so much joy and so much celebration on you that you cannot contain it; you have to share it. You become a rain cloud which is so much burdened with rain that it has to shower. A man of deep insight, a man of intuition, a man who has reached to his being becomes a rain cloud. He is not just a blessing to himself, he becomes a blessing to the whole world.This Tibetan mantra Om Mani Padme Hum is a condensed form of the whole inner pilgrimage. It says how to start, what will happen when the flower opens, what will be your ultimate experience of your inner treasures.Eastern languages are very rich in the sense that they have made very condensed statements which can be unfolded into big scriptures. The reason was that when these mantras were created there was no writing. People had to remember them. When people have to remember them, you have to be very telegraphic, as condensed as possible. Once writing came into existence, that condensedness disappeared. Now you can explain with page after page of writing. But have you ever thought that when you receive a long letter…the longer the letter, the less is the meaning. But when you receive a telegram, naturally…just eight or ten words, but the meaning is immense and the impact is immense.These are telegrams. They can easily be remembered, they can be passed from one generation to another generation without any fear that they will be distorted.You have not to repeat the mantra, you have to understand its meaning and let that meaning sink into you. Sitting silently, be utterly quiet, unmoving. Watch your mind. A few thoughts will be there, but as you become silent those thoughts will disappear, and suddenly you hear a humming sound all around you.That humming sound is not made by you.It is at the very center of existence.It is the sound of the skies.It is the sound of space.It is the sound of the universe; it is its indication of aliveness. It is vibrating with dance and music.This Om is perhaps the greatest symbol in the whole world.Osho,Can it be that crying is my celebration at the moment? When I look at you, my heart is turning inside out and a whole monsoon is breaking loose, leaving me helpless.Who is it that is crying?It looks a little strange but it is true: you can transform anything into a celebration. Just as you can transform any celebration into a miserable affair – it all depends on you.I have heard, in a small school the drawing teacher made a painting on the board. He was a good painter, and he was showing his students that the artist can change, just by a little touch, the whole meaning of the painting.It was a portrait of a man, very sad. He touched the lips and immediately the sadness disappeared from the painting – the man was smiling. And as the man started smiling, the whole painting had a different perspective.Just then a little boy stood up and said, “This is nothing.”The painter said, “What do you mean this is nothing?”He said, “My mother, just giving me a slap, changes the whole world! I may be smiling and when she hits I start crying, and when I look all around it looks so sad. You need a brush and the painting and all this; my mother needs nothing.”You are saying, “Can it be that crying is my celebration?” If you feel blissful in crying, there is no harm. It is perfectly beautiful. Tears can be of joy, of love. Tears can show that you are overfilled with something that starts flowing through the tears. It need not be sadness, it need not be mourning; it can be festivity. It all depends on you. And you have to feel what it is, because you will be absolutely certain whether your tears are coming out of frustration, out of sadness, out of failure, or they are coming out of love, joy, gratitude, prayer.Tears are one of the most mysterious things you have. They can have all the colors of the rainbow. It depends on your consciousness what colors you give to them.I have heard a very beautiful story.It is Julius Caesar’s birthday, and after breakfast the Roman senators are eager for him to take a chariot ride with them to view their present to him.Caesar is delighted to find the whole of the driveway to the imperial palace is lined with crucified Christians. As they drive along, Caesar brings the procession to a sudden halt. “That man there!” he cries. “He must be alive – his lips are moving. I want to hear what he is saying.”The senators raise Caesar on their shoulders. “Closer, closer!” he shouts. “I can’t hear.”Finally, with his ear almost touching the man’s lips, he hears, “Happy birthday to you.”One can change every situation. Now he is being crucified, but he has no complaint. Within minutes he may be dead, but his heart wants to say, “Happy birthday to you.”And he must have embarrassed Caesar; he must have created a deep impression on him. From that day onward, Christians were not crucified again in Caesar’s time. He felt so humble. He felt so sorry about what he was doing to these beautiful people, who are capable of rejoicing in his birthday and are being crucified as a present.It all depends on you.Old man Finkelstein suspects that his butler has been stealing cigars and shouts to him in the next room, “James, you have been stealing my cigars.” There is no answer so he repeats it louder. There is still no answer, so he goes into the next room and confronts his servant. “James,” he says, “didn’t you hear me speaking to you just now?”“No, sir,” replies the butler, “there must be something wrong with the acoustics.”“Really,” says Finkelstein. “Well, you go next door and say something and we will see whether I can hear it.”James goes into the next room and yells out at the top of his voice, “Some fat son-of-a-bitch has been screwing around with my wife.”He then returns. “Did you hear me, sir?” he asks nonchalantly.“You are right, James” replies Finkelstein, blushing, “I could not hear a word. Have a cigar.”If you are feeling blissful, peaceful, silent in your crying, in your tears, and if after tears you feel relaxed, relieved of some burden, it is perfectly good. Don’t try to stop it…because humanity has been given such wrong training about so many things that it has not left any human being natural. Everybody has become artificial, and particularly men – every society has forced them not to cry; it is against your manliness.It is okay for women to cry and weep. They don’t belong to your status, they are second class citizens. But you, being first class, should show your strength. Your tears expose your weakness. But if you go on for thousands of years teaching every child such nonsense, he starts holding his tears back. Nobody wants to be exposed as a weakling. But the simple truth is, nature has given you exactly the same glands for tears as nature has given to women.And if nature is listened to, then stopping your tears is a dangerous thing. It is not only tears that will be stopped – you will become less sensitive, you will become less loving. You will become harder, you will become cruel, you will become a sadist. This will be the outcome of a simple thing. You will go neurotic, psychotic – four times more men end up in insane asylums than women. And the reason is that women know how to cry and weep. They know how to let their burdens and tensions be relieved through tears.Man goes on accumulating and one day it is too much. Then either he jumps from a sixty-story building and finishes himself off…There are strange people.A man jumped from the eightieth floor and he passed the window where one of his friends was standing. The friend said, “Good-bye,” and the man also waved his hand. And soon he was flat on the ground, finished.People came running to his friend and said, “Have you seen anything?”And he said, “Yes.”They said, “Your friend has committed suicide!”He said, “This is strange, because just a few minutes before, he was perfectly okay. While he was passing my window, we even said hello to each other.”Man has been prevented from being natural so that he can be made into a soldier, so that he can be made into a harder personality, to compete in the world. Because the woman was not going to compete in the world, and she was not going to wars either, there was no need. She could be allowed to cry and weep. It became a distinction, that it is manly not to weep, not to cry.It is simply against nature. The women don’t go so mad because in their tears they are throwing away all their tensions. They don’t accumulate to such a point that it is beyond their capacity to control it and everything goes through a breakdown.Exactly four times more men commit suicide, although at least forty times more women threaten to commit suicide. But they don’t. Women have remained in a way closer to nature because they were deprived from participating in man’s power struggle. In disguise, this curse proved a blessing.Man made himself more and more tense, neurotic – and then there comes a point where life becomes so heavy, each moment such a torture, that it is better to commit suicide.Women just talk about it. Even if sometimes they try with sleeping pills – not jumping from buildings, because that is dangerous – they will take just a few sleeping pills which will be enough to harass the husband and will make him more henpecked, because he will remain always alert that the whole neighborhood condemns him… “You must be treating your wife badly; otherwise why does she try to commit suicide?” The doctor is angry, and the wife is enjoying a good sleep! Once in a while a woman, just by mistake, takes too many pills – it is not really the intention, just a mistake.It is good to enjoy your tears. And don’t keep them only for tensions and anxieties and frustrations and moments of sadness. No, that is using them in a wrong way. Use them when you are in love. Use them when you are feeling peaceful. Use them when you see a beautiful sunset.What can be said to the sunset? It won’t understand any language. But your tears, perhaps, will be understood. When you see a beautiful flower, how can you resist having a few tears that existence is so beautiful? If you see a Gautam Buddha and you don’t have tears in your eyes, then you are behaving inhumanly, unnaturally. Seeing Gautam Buddha, you should be in such a celebration – at least one of us has reached to the ultimate potential of his being, and he is a proof that we can also reach.You are also saying, “When I look at you my heart is turning inside out and a whole monsoon is breaking loose, leaving me helpless. Who is it that is crying?”It is your original being. The false never cries. The hypocrite never cries. It is only the original, the authentic.This is the whole purpose of the communion that is happening here – to fall into a synchronicity with my heart. Naturally your heart will have to change. It will have to take a new rhythm, a new harmony, a new wavelength. And it is natural to feel helpless because you have been told that tears are a sign of weakness, helplessness.Tears are your strength, not helplessness.Tears show that you are alive, that you have not shrunk and lost all your juice. Tears show that your heart still feels, still can dance, still can rejoice.There is a statue of Mahavira in Rajasthan. It is very famous because it is made of a very strange stone – which is not found in India, but is found in Africa. Somebody must have brought that stone. But in India it has become a miracle because it perspires; tears flow from the eyes. And the people who follow Mahavira, naturally, are deeply impressed. They think perhaps he is weeping for us out of compassion.One woman had come to me and she said, “I have never been impressed by anything so much as the tears coming from a stone statue of Mahavira.”I said, “You don’t understand; I have seen the statue…” The statue is in the middle of the lake – a small temple, an open temple, just pillars. And because the statue is porous, when the vapors are rising from the lake because of the hot sun – and Rajasthan is very hot, it is a desert – that porous statue goes on soaking up much of the vapor that is moving around. You will not find that statue in summer with tears or perspiration or anything, but in winter when it is cold the vapors that it has soaked up start becoming water again. Because of the coldness, they start coming out of the rock.I told the woman, “You are impressed by it, and you are not impressed by millions of people who cry? And that stone is not doing anything as far as compassion is concerned; it is just that this kind of stone is not available in India.”She was very much shocked because I hurt her religious feelings. I said, “I am not hurting your religious feelings. I am simply making you aware that if you can be so much impressed by the tears of a stone statue, what about living human beings?”But tears are taboo – one of the things that have been repressed. Friedrich Nietzsche is quoted as saying that he smiles because he is afraid if he does not smile he will start crying and tears will come to his eyes. His smile is just a protection; it keeps him occupied, he remains with a false smile so that authentic tears cannot come out. Naturally, for a German, it is a question of manliness. How can a German cry and weep and have tears?But more or less all men around the world are Germans. They are all male oriented, trying to impose a supremacy of men over women. But I say unto you, your tears are far more valuable than man’s domination. His supremacy is nothing. He has suffered much because of this stupid attitude. Allow those tears. They are not of helplessness, they are of tremendous joy.And you ask, “Who is it that is crying?” It is you in your originality, not you in your personality.“I am leaving home,” shouts Giovanni to his parents. “I want wine, women, adventure.”His old father gets up out of his chair.“And don’t you try to stop me,” cries Giovanni.“Who’s trying to stop you?” exclaims the old man. “I’m coming with you!”Just be a little more understanding of all your sentiments, emotions – they all have a certain place in the total harmony of your being. But we have been kept almost blind to our own potentialities, dimensions. Be a little more alert about everything, and remember that the natural is the superior and the unnatural is phony and American.Rabbi Finklebaum had never gambled in his life, so one day he went to the horse races just for the experience. Before the first race he saw a priest making some strange sign over a horse and then watched the priest put ten dollars on the horse to win. And sure enough, the horse won the race. So he followed the priest and watched him make signs over another horse. This time the rabbi went off and put fifty dollars on the horse and it won at ten to one.Again he followed the priest and saw him make weird signs over another horse, so he went off and put all the five hundred dollars he had won on the previous race on this horse. He ran up into the stand to watch the race, hoping to make a fortune, but this time the horse he had backed fell at the first fence and died.The rabbi ran off and found the priest. “Look here,” said the rabbi, “what was the meaning of all that? The first two horses you made signs over won, and then the third one fell at the first fence and I lost all my money. What is going on?”“I am sorry, rabbi,” said the priest, “but I can’t help it if you don’t know the difference between a blessing and the last rites.”There is so much misunderstanding. You don’t know what is real, what is unreal. You don’t know what has been imposed on you by others and what you have brought from existence itself as a gift.You have to discriminate, and always choose the natural. Even if it goes against all traditions, all religions, all cultures, don’t be worried: except the natural, there is no authentic religiousness anywhere. Except the existential, there is nothing holy that you can find…in the Bible, in the Koran, in the Gita.Just watch – inside you is nature, inside you is the existential. Always follow it, and you will never be going wrong. To be natural, to be in tune with existence, is the only authentic spirituality.

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Om Mani Padme Hum 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Om Mani Padme Hum 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is blissfulness an expression of gratitude toward existence?It is just the reverse. Blissfulness is not an expression of gratitude; on the contrary, gratitude is an expression of blissfulness. First comes the experience of bliss. First you attain to the state of consciousness where ecstasy is natural, where your potential blossoms to its ultimate expression. A great dance arises in you, a tremendous peace and a deep silence – but it is not the silence of the graveyard, it is a silence fully alive, throbbing with a heartbeat. This whole experience is bliss. And because of this bliss that existence makes available to you, a feeling of gratitude, a thankfulness arises.To me, this is the only authentic prayer. Not the prayers that are being done in the churches, in the synagogues, in the temples, before stone statues of God – those prayers are full of greed. They are asking for something; in other words they are complaining about something. Something is wrong in life and God should put it right. There is no gratitude in those prayers; on the contrary, they are absolute indicators of ungratefulness.The moment you ask for something, you are saying that what you deserve has not been given to you, that what is your birthright has not been fulfilled. You are throwing the responsibility upon existence. Rather than being grateful for what has been given to you, you are showing ungratefulness out of what your greed demands, your ambition demands, out of what your desires are manipulating you toward. The prayers in the so-called temples of God are not true prayers. They are full of your greed, desire, lust.The authentic prayer arises only to the meditator. It is not addressed toward a god – which is only a hypothesis; there is no proof for any God. Yes, there is absolute proof for godliness: a quality of divineness in the sun rising in the morning, in the starry night, in the beautiful flight of a bird on the wing, in the flowers, in the trees, in the oceans.All this vast universe is enough unto itself. It needs no God – God is only a consolation for the ignorant. The meditator encounters existence itself. His own being becomes the experience of godliness. He knows that in his own inner being he is part of eternal life. There is no death, there has never been any death. Experiencing this, there arises a dance so subtle…there arises a deep gratitude, not addressed to anybody in particular but simply addressed to the whole cosmos. To the stars, to the trees, to the earth, to the moon, to the animals, to people…it is an unaddressed gratefulness.And unless you experience an unaddressed gratefulness, you don’t know exactly the meaning of prayer. The word prayer gives a wrong connotation; it should be changed into prayerfulness, just as I am changing God into godliness.H. G. Wells has written one of the most important histories of the world. And when he comes to write about Gautam Buddha he has a tremendous statement to make. He says Gautam Buddha was the most godless person, yet the most godly. Gautam Buddha did not believe in any god, but he believed that everybody can become a god. To be a god is nothing but the realization of your total potential. Your seed is carrying within itself, in its womb, the ultimate flowering of the lotus paradise. There are possibilities of as many gods as there are living beings in existence, if every one comes to its ultimate expression.The very idea of one god creating the world is dictatorial. It is the fanatic’s idea; it is fascist. One god is very dangerous to all democratic values, and once we accept one god as the creator of existence we are depriving man of his dignity, his freedom. He is reduced to a puppet. If God is the creator, you can’t have any freedom. If there is a God who is ruling the world, then what freedom can you have?In India they say that without God’s will even a small leaf does not move. They think they are being very religious when they make such statements. But if without God’s will even a leaf of a tree cannot move in the wind, then what freedom can you have? Then we are only puppets; our strings are in the hands of an unknown God. If he wants us to be miserable we will be miserable. If he wants us to be blissful we will be blissful. It will not be a dignity; it will be simply that everything is in his hands. We remain beggars.People like Gautam Buddha want you to be emperors. They give you back your dignity, your honor, your self-respect. God and self-respect cannot exist together. There is no coexistence possible.Gautam Buddha denied God not because he was an atheist; he denied God because he was a lover of ultimate freedom. His denial has a totally different reason. Atheists have been denying God not for the freedom of man, but just to give man a licentiousness: “Eat, drink, be merry, because there is no God and you need not be worried. You need not feel any responsibility toward life, toward yourself.” Atheists make people irresponsible. They make people synonymous with vegetables. They deny your inner being; they deny your very spirituality.Gautam Buddha is not an atheist. He certainly is not a theist – he does not propose any hypothetical god who has to be worshipped. On the contrary, he changes the whole dimension of religion. The people who are looking toward a god in the sky are looking outward. Gautam Buddha insists there is no god; there is no need to look outward – look inward. And if you can look inward, with your eyes closed in deep silence, you will start feeling a new quality to your life, to your existence; a quality that can only be called godliness, that can only be called divine…something more than matter. You don’t end with matter.Matter may be the foundation of life, but it is not its highest peak. Matter may be the roots of the tree, but it is not its flowers. And unless you know the flowering consciousness in you, you cannot feel bliss.Bliss is the ultimate experience of your coming home, of your feeling at ease with existence, relaxed, in a total unity and harmony.The moment your heartbeat and the heartbeat of existence become one, the moment your small dance is in tune with the vast dance that goes on around you, the moment you become part of this celebration that is existence, there arises a tremendous gratitude. You don’t have to do it. You simply find it arising from you, just as fragrance arises from the flowers. It is a spontaneous thing.This is true prayerfulness.I have told you a beautiful story by Leo Tolstoy. An archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church was very angry because thousands of people were going to see three absolutely unknown villagers who lived on a small island in a lake. People thought they were saints.Now in Christianity, unless the church certifies you as a saint, you cannot be a saint. This is such a stupidity that you cannot conceive…For centuries this has been going on. In fact, the English word ‘saint’ comes from sanctus. It means sanction by the church. Unless the church gives you a sanction…it is almost like getting an honorary DLitt from a university.Sainthood cannot be certified by anyone. There is no one who has the authority to certify anybody’s sainthood. Sainthood is, in itself, self evident. The moment you see it, you know it. The moment you feel it, you know it. It needs no other approval.But the archbishop was very angry; “Without my permission, without my sanction, how have three idiots from a village become saints?” And people were not coming to his congregation; people were going to visit those faraway saints.Finally he decided to go and see for himself what was going on. He took a motorboat, reached the small island. It was so small that there was only one tree on the island, but with beautiful foliage, and all those three saints were sitting underneath it.Just by looking at them the archbishop knew: These are absolutely uneducated villagers – who has created this rumor? And how gullible are people that they are worshipping these people? And as he descended from his boat all the three villagers touched his feet. He was immensely happy.He said, “Are you the three priests the whole country is talking about?”They said, “We don’t know. People come to us, we cannot prevent them coming. All that we know is that we are absolutely contented. All that we know is that there is no more desire, no more ambition. Life is just a tremendous blessing, and we are enjoying it. More than that we don’t know. We are uneducated, we are villagers.”The archbishop was very happy. He said, “What kind of prayer do you do?”Those three saints looked at each other ashamed, embarrassed. Finally one said that it was not much of a prayer. “We have created it by ourselves. We don’t know what is the authorized prayer of the church, but whatever we have been doing we will tell you.”Christianity believes in the trinity of God – that God is the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, three together. And those three villagers said, “Thinking that he is three and we are also three, we have made our prayer: ‘You are three, we are three, have mercy on us!’ More than that we don’t know.”The archbishop was very angry – “This is not the right thing for a Christian to do! How have you dared to create such a stupid prayer? I will tell you the authorized version which the church accepts.”They said, “We will be very grateful, but make it a little short, because we are uneducated and we cannot remember anything long.”The archbishop said, “You will have to remember it!”They said, “We will try if you insist.”The archbishop recited the whole prayer. It was really long, and when he had said the whole prayer one of the three said, “You will have to repeat it at least three times, because we are three. Be kind and compassionate so we can remember it.”He repeated it three times, they listened silently, and the archbishop was very happy. They touched his feet again, and he said, “You are nice people, but remember the prayer that I have taught you.” And then he left in his motorboat.When he was just in the middle of the lake he saw something almost like a cloud, running toward the boat. He could not figure out what was happening. Then he saw – those three saints were coming, running on the lake. They said, “Wait! We have forgotten the prayer, so we thought it would be better to catch hold of you. At least three times more; have mercy on us.”But seeing them walking on water, the archbishop thought, “Perhaps I have unnecessarily disturbed these beautiful people.”He said, “Forgive me for interfering. You continue your old prayer, which has been heard. My prayer has not been heard yet. My prayer is nothing but my intellectual approach to a hypothetical God. Your prayer comes from your very heart. Your prayer is not to ask for something, your prayer is just a thankfulness because you are feeling so contented. You don’t have anything, but you have tremendous contentment. Your bliss is enough. Then, whatever way you want to give thanks is up to you. There is no need for you to know about the authorized prayer. On the contrary…I’m feeling miserable; I have missed my whole life in reading, learning, accumulating knowledge, holy scriptures. But I cannot walk on the waters. Your simple prayer has been heard.”This small story from Leo Tolstoy has always appealed to me tremendously. The implications of the story are great. You need not believe in God to be religious. First you have to be religious to know something about godliness. All the religions are putting the bullock behind the cart. Hence the whole humanity is suffering – no movement, no progress, no spiritual growth.Your religiousness, your blissfulness, your meditativeness, your experience of your own interiority, your own subjectivity…coming to the very center of the cyclone, you will be able to dance a prayer, to sing a prayer, and it need not be anything intellectual. It has to be something coming from your being spontaneously.It will be a simple thank you.And not to any personal god, because there is no personal god – a thank you to the whole universe. The whole universe is intelligent. The whole universe is divine.You are asking “Is blissfulness an expression of gratitude toward existence?” No, it is just vice versa: gratitude is an expression of blissfulness. Without knowing bliss, how can you be grateful? Grateful for what?Put things right: first, search for those rare moments when you are in tune with existence. Seek the inner path so that you can know who you are.Knowing oneself is the whole of religion. Anything else is just a footnote.The essential religion is simply expressed by Socrates in two words, “Know thyself.” In fact, within these two words are included all the holy scriptures of the world and all the mystical experiences of people who have come to know themselves. The moment you know yourself you have known the most precious thing in existence; your consciousness, your bliss. And you have known the most beautiful, almost unbelievable experience – what we were talking about this morning: Om Mani Padme Hum. You have come to experience something which can only be called the sound of silence, the diamond in the lotus – an experience of a beauty which cannot be seen with open eyes, a sound of silence which cannot be heard by your outer ears. But at the very center it is already present; you just have to go there.I teach you not to be bothered by any scriptures, not to be bothered by any churches, not to be bothered by any philosophical or theological systems.Religion is a very simple and humble affair.Just go withinward.Know thyself; be thyself.And all blessings will shower on you as if thousands of roses are showering. Only out of that experience will gratitude arise. Gratitude is not possible before experiencing something of the ultimate.Osho,Experiencing headache, I discovered my male nature. Experiencing heartache, I discovered my female nature.Is there also going to be a being-ache?There is no such thing as being-ache. The being knows superb wholeness, health. It knows no disease, no sickness, no death. To go beyond your head and your heart is to transcend the duality of existence. This transcendence brings you to your being.Being simply means you have dropped the ego that was part of your head. You have even dropped the separation, very subtle and delicate, that was part of your heart; you have dropped all barriers between you and the whole. Suddenly the dewdrop has slipped from the lotus leaf into the ocean. It has become one with it.In a sense you are no more and in a sense you are for the first time. As a dewdrop you are no more but as the ocean you are for the first time, and this is your nature.One of the great psychologists, William James, has contributed tremendously by coining a new word for spiritual experience, the “oceanic” experience. He is perfectly right. It is the experience of expansion, all boundaries disappearing farther and farther and farther away. A moment comes when you don’t see any boundaries to you; you become the ocean itself. You are, but you are no more in a prison. You are, but you are no more in a cage. You have come out of the cage, you have come out of the prison, and you are flying into the sky in total freedom.Remember one thing: a bird on the wing and the same bird in the cage are not the same at all. The bird in the cage is no more the same because it has lost its freedom, it has lost its tremendous sky. It has lost the joy of dancing in the wind, in the rain, in the sun. You may have given it a golden cage but you have destroyed its dignity, its freedom, its joy. You have reduced it into a prisoner – it looks like the same bird but it is not.A man confined to the boundaries of the mind and the heart and the body is imprisoned, walls upon walls.In the last prison where I was in America they had three doors. It was the most modern, ultramodern, technologically; the first jail of its kind made in America. It had been opened just three months before. Everything was electronic. Those three doors were almost impossible for any human being to cross. First they were all electrified – just to touch them was enough and you would be dead. And they were so high that no ladder or anything was possible. And then…one after another, three.They opened only by using a remote controller, which my jailer used to keep in his car. He would press the button, and the first gate would open. It was almost like a mountain, so big, so high, and as the car entered, it would have to wait for the first door to come down. Only when the first door had come down would the remote controller work on the second door. And when the second door had come down, then the remote controller would work on the third door.When I entered for the first time that jail in Portland I told the jailer, “Perhaps you don’t know, but you have managed a perfect symbol.”He said, “Symbol of what?”I said, “This is the situation of man: the body is the first door, the mind the second, and the heart is the third. And then behind these three doors is the poor soul.”He said, “I never thought about it. It must be just coincidence; nobody has thought about it, that three doors…why three? Why not four?” He said, “I don’t know. I have not made it.”But I told him, whoever made it perhaps unconsciously felt something of the symmetry, the correspondence between the imprisonment of human consciousness and being an architect for making a prison for human beings. Once you get beyond the body… which is not very difficult, because the body is very beautiful in a way because it is still in tune with nature. Hence to go beyond it is very easy; it does not give much resistance. It is very cooperative.The real problem is the mind, because the mind is created by human society, specially designed to keep you a slave. The body has a beauty of its own. It is still part of the trees and the ocean and the mountains and the stars. It has not been polluted by the society. It has not been poisoned by the churches and religions and the priests. But the mind has been completely conditioned, distorted, given ideas which are absolutely false. Your mind is functioning almost like a mask and hiding your original face.To transcend the mind is the whole art of meditation, and the East has devoted almost ten thousand years to a single purpose – all its intelligence and genius – of discovering how to transcend the mind and its conditionings. That whole effort of ten thousand years has culminated in refining the method of meditation.In a single word, meditation means watching the mind, witnessing the mind. If you can witness the mind, just silently looking at it – without any justification, without any appreciation, without any condemnation, with no judgment at all, for or against – simply watching as if you have nothing to do with it…it is just the traffic that goes on in the mind. Stand by the side and watch it. And the miracle of meditation is that just by watching it, it slowly slowly disappears.The moment mind disappears, you come to the last door which is very fragile – and that too is not polluted by the society – your heart. In fact, your heart immediately gives you a way. It never prevents you, it is ready almost every moment for you to come to it and it will open the door toward the being. The heart is your friend.The head is your enemy. The body is your friend, the heart is your friend, but just in between the two stands the enemy like a Himalaya, a big mountain wall. But it can be crossed over by a simple method. Gautam Buddha called the method vipassana. Patanjali called the method dhyan. And the Sanskrit word dhyan became, in China, ch’an and in Japan it became zen. But it is the same word. In English there is not exactly any equivalent for zen or dhyan or ch’an. We arbitrarily use the word meditation.But you should remember: whatever meaning is given to the word meditation in your dictionaries, is not the meaning as I am using it. All the dictionaries will say meditation means thinking about something. Whenever I say to a Western mind, “Meditate” the immediate question is, “On what?” The reason is that in the West, meditation never developed to the point dhyan or ch’an or zen have developed in the East.Meditation means simply awareness – not thinking about something or concentrating on something or contemplating something. The Western word is always concerned with something. Meditation as I am using it simply means a state of awareness.Just like a mirror – do you think a mirror is trying to concentrate on something? Whatever comes before it is reflected, but the mirror is unconcerned. Whether a beautiful woman comes before it or an ugly woman comes before it or nobody comes before it, it is absolutely unconcerned; a simple, reflective source. Meditation is only a reflecting awareness. You simply watch whatever comes in front of you.And by this simple watching, mind disappears. You have heard about miracles, but this is the only miracle. All other miracles are simply stories.Jesus walking on water or turning water into wine or making dead people come to life again…all are beautiful stories. If they are symbolically understood they have great significance. But if you insist that they are historical facts, then you are being simply stupid. Symbolically they are beautiful. Symbolically, every master in the world is bringing people to life who are dead. What am I doing here? Pulling people out of their graves! And Jesus pulled out Lazarus after he had been dead only four days. I have been pulling people out who have been dead for years, for lives! And because they have lived in their graves so long they are very reluctant to come out. They give all their resistance – “What are you doing? This is our house! We have lived here peacefully, don’t disturb us!”Symbolically it is right: every master is trying to give you a new life. As you are, you are not really alive. You are just vegetating. If the miracles are interpreted as metaphors, they have a beauty.I am reminded of a strange story which Christians have completely dropped from their scriptures. But it exists in the Sufi literature. The Sufi story is about Jesus.Jesus is coming into a town and just as he enters the town he sees a man whom he recognizes; he had known him before. He was blind and Jesus had cured his eyes. That man is running after a prostitute. Jesus stops the man and asks him, “Do you remember me?”He said, “Yes, I remember you and I can never forgive you! I was blind and I was perfectly happy, because I had never seen any beauty. You gave me eyes. Now tell me – what am I to do with these eyes? These eyes are attracted toward beautiful women.”Jesus could not believe…he was stunned, shocked: “I thought I had done some great service to this man and he is angry! He is saying, ‘Before you gave me eyes, I never thought about women, I never thought that there were prostitutes. But since you have given me eyes you have destroyed me.’”Jesus leaves the man without saying anything – there is nothing to say. And as he moves on he finds another man lying in the gutter, saying all kinds of meaningless things, completely drunk. Jesus pulls him out of the gutter and recognizes that he had given him legs. But now he is feeling a little shaky himself. He asks the man, “Do you know me?”The man says, “Yes, I know you. Even though I am drunk, I cannot forgive you: it is you who disturbed my peaceful life. Without legs I could not go anywhere. I was a peaceful person – no fight, no gambling, no question of friends, no question of going to the pub. You gave me legs, and since then I have not found a single moment of peacefulness, of sitting silently. I am running after this, after that, and in the end when I am tired I get drunk. And you can see yourself what is happening to me. You are responsible for my situation! You should have told me beforehand that if I was getting the legs, all these problems were going to arise. You did not warn me. You simply cured me without even asking my permission.”Jesus became so freaked, he left the city. He did not go any further. He said, “Nobody knows what kind of people I am going to meet.” But as he was coming out of the city he saw a man who was trying to hang himself from a tree. He said, “Wait, what are you doing?”He said, “Again you have come! I was dead, and you forced me to be alive again. Now I don’t have employment, my wife has left me because she thinks a man who has died cannot be revived; she thinks I am a ghost. Nobody wants to meet me. Friends simply don’t recognize me. I go into the city and people don’t look at me. Now what do you want me to do? And again when I am going to hang myself you are here! What kind of revenge are you taking? Can’t you leave me alone? Now I cannot even hang myself. Once I was dead and you revived me – if I hang myself you are going to revive me again. You are so intent on making miracles, you don’t even care who are the sufferers of your miracles!”When I came to see this story, I loved it. Every Christian should know about it.There is no miracle except one, and that is the miracle of meditation which takes you away from the mind. And the heart is always welcoming you. It is always ready to give you a way, to guide you toward your being. And the being is your wholeness, it is your ultimate well-being.A policeman notices a car weaving dangerously along the road, and when he pulls it over a beautiful woman gets out. She is clearly under the influence of drink but to make sure, the cop gives her a breath test. Sure enough, she is over the limit, so the cop says, “Lady, you have had two or three stiff ones.”“My God,” cries the woman, “it shows that too?”Headache is okay, heartache is okay, but don’t go beyond that. Beyond that there is no ache, no pain, no suffering. Beyond the heart is all that you have always longed for – knowingly, unknowingly – searched for, consciously or unconsciously.Your journey is long. Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism – three religions which were founded outside India – have all committed one great mistake: they have given people the idea that you have only one life. That has created many problems.In the East all the religions have agreed on one point: that you have been here for thousands of lives; this is not the only life you have. You have lived many lives; the pilgrimage is long, and you have been going almost in circles. So your consciousness has not grown; you are committing the same mistakes again and again. Each life is wasted almost in a repetitive way.People say history repeats itself. History has no business to repeat itself; it repeats itself because we are unconscious so we go on making the same mistake again and again. Our consciousness remains the same. That’s why in every life we live on the same miserable plane. We never grow up.This is time enough. You should start working deeply on your being, searching for it, because once you have known your being then you are not going to be born again in a body. Then you are not going to be in another prison, then you will be freed from all prisons. And this ultimate freedom is the only lesson worth learning through all these lives.But we are functioning almost in a drunken way.Ruben Levinsky is telling his friends at the club how his five-year-old son got his nursemaid pregnant.“But that is impossible!” cries Sollie.“Unfortunately it is not,” replies the embarrassed Ruben. “The little wretch punctured all my condoms with a pin.”It is a very strange world. I have heard a proverb, very ancient: “God made women without a sense of humor so they could love men without laughing at them.”Hymie Goldberg is sitting in a bar one night when the man sitting on the next stool slides off and lands on the floor.Feeling that there is no way the man will make it home on his own, Hymie finds his address in his wallet and decides to help him. Slipping an arm around his waist, they head for the door. But immediately the man’s legs crumple and he collapses.“You drunken bum,” complains Hymie, “why the hell didn’t you stop drinking sooner?” The man mumbles something, but Hymie is in no mood to listen. Feeling as righteous as Mother Teresa, Hymie throws his shoulders beneath the man and carries him home. Knocking indignantly, he strides in when a woman opens the door, and dumps the man on the couch.“Here is your husband,” says Hymie. “And if I were you, I would have a serious talk with him about his drinking.”“I will,” promises the woman. “But tell me,” she continues, looking outside, “where is his wheelchair?”It is a hilarious world. Everything is going so unconsciously. The only thing worth remembering is not to lose the opportunity that you have to develop your consciousness to the point where you have the same vision, the same clarity, the same intuition, the same understanding as a Gautam Buddha. Unless you become that much awakened, your life is going to repeat again and again the same mistakes. An unconscious man cannot be expected to change his life’s course. It is only consciousness, growing consciousness, that is going to change your lifestyle.And once you are fully awakened, enlightened, you need not come back again into another womb. The enlightened being disappears into the womb of the universe itself. Not that you are no more, but in fact you are for the first time – as vast, as infinite as this universe is, with no boundaries, and expanding continuously.All your misery is because you are so vast and you have been forced into a small body, into a small mind, into a small heart. Your love wants to expand but your heart is too small. Your clarity wants to become as clear as a sky without clouds, but your head is too small and too crowded. Your being wants to have wings and fly across the sun like an eagle, but it is encaged – three walls around it; it is almost impossible for it to get out of this prison.The East has been working only for one thing – that’s why it has not created much science, much technology, because all its geniuses were concerned with only one thing, and that was the innermost core of your being. They were not objective people. They were more and more interested in subjectivity. The East has found the golden key. It can open the doors for you, of infinite bliss, of all the splendor that is hidden in existence. It can allow you to receive gifts from all dimensions.You are not a miserable creature. You are carrying a god within you, and you have to discover this god. This is the only miracle I believe in, the only magic. Everything else is non-essential.

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Om Mani Padme Hum 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Om Mani Padme Hum 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Why is childlikeness compared to meditation?When a man is reborn, only then he understands the beauty and the grandeur of childhood. The child is ignorant; hence he is unable to understand the tremendous innocence that surrounds him. Once a child becomes aware of his own innocence, there is no difference between the child and the sage. The sage is not higher and the child is not lower. The only difference is, the child knows not what he is and the sage knows it.I am reminded of Socrates. In his very last moments of life he said to his disciples, “When I was young I used to think I knew much. As I became older, as I knew more, a strange thing started happening: an awareness that knowing more was bringing me to knowing less.”And finally, when the Oracle of Delphi declared Socrates to be the wisest man in the world…the people of Athens were very happy and they went to Socrates, but Socrates said, “Go back and tell the Oracle that at least for once its prophecy has been wrong. Socrates knows nothing.”The people were shocked. They went to the Oracle…but the Oracle laughed and said, “That’s why I have declared him the wisest man in the world! It is only the ignorant people who think they know.” The more you know, the more you become innocent.According to the Socratic division, there are two categories of people: the ignorant knowers and the knowing ignorants. The world is dominated by the second category. These are your priests, your professors; these are your leaders, these are your saints, these are your religious messiahs, saviors, prophets, all proclaiming that they know. But their very proclamation destroys the utter simplicity and innocence of a child.Bodhidharma remained in China for fourteen years. He was sent by his master to spread the message of meditation. After fourteen years, he wanted to come back to the Himalayas; he was old and was ready to disappear into the eternal snows. He had thousands of disciples – he was one of the rarest people who have existed on the earth – but he called only four disciples and he said, “I will ask only one question: what is the essence of my teaching? Whoever gives me the right answer will be my successor.”There was great silence, tremendous expectation. Everybody looked at the first disciple, who was the most learned, most scholarly. The first disciple said, “Going beyond the mind is what all your teaching can be reduced to.”Bodhidharma said, “You have my skin, but not more than that.”He turned to the second disciple who said, “There is no one to go beyond the mind. All is silent. There is no division between the one that has to be transcended and one that has to transcend. This is the essence of your teaching.”Bodhidharma said, “You have my bones.”And he turned to the third disciple, who said, “The essence of your teaching is inexpressible.”Bodhidharma laughed and he said, “But you have expressed it! You have said something about it. You have my marrow.”And he turned to the fourth disciple who had only tears and utter silence, no answer. He fell at the feet of Bodhidharma…and he was accepted as the successor, although he had not answered anything.But he has answered – without answering, without using words, without using language. His tears have shown much more than any language can contain…and his gratitude and his prayerfulness and his thankfulness to the master…what more can you say?The great gathering of disciples was very much disappointed, because this was a man nobody had ever bothered about. The great scholars have been rejected; the great knowers have not been accepted, and an ordinary man…But that ordinariness is the only extraordinary thing in the world…that childlike wonder, that childlike experience of the mysterious all around.Remember one thing: the moment you start knowing something you are not a child. You have started becoming part of the adult world. The society has initiated you into civilization; it has distracted you from your essential nature.When the child is surrounded by the mysterious all around, everything just a mystery with no answer, with no question, he is exactly at the point the sage ultimately reaches. That’s why childlikeness is compared again and again to meditation. Meditation would not have been needed if people had remained in their essential childlikeness.Do you know the root of the word meditation? – it comes from the same root as medicine. It is a medicine. But the medicine is needed only if you are sick. Meditation is needed if you are spiritually sick. Childlikeness is your spiritual health, your spiritual wholeness; you don’t need any meditation.Little Ernie wants a bicycle, but when he asks his mother, she tells him he can only have one if he behaves himself, which he promises to do. But after a week of trying to be good, Ernie finds it impossible. So his mother suggests, “If you write a note to Jesus, maybe you will find it easier to be good.”Ernie rushes upstairs, sits on his bed, and writes: “Dear Jesus, if you let me have a bike, I promise to be good for the rest of my life.” Realizing that he could never manage that, he starts again: “Dear Jesus, if you let me have a bike, I promise to be good for a month.” Knowing that he can’t do that, he suddenly has an idea.He runs into his mother’s room, takes her statue of the Virgin Mary, puts it in a shoe box and hides it under the bed. Then he begins to write again: “Dear Jesus, if you ever want to see your mother again…”When the Goldberg family moved into their new house, a visiting relative asked little Herschel how he liked the new place.“It is terrific!” he says. “I have my own room, Ruthie has her own room and Sarah has her own room too. But poor Mom is still in with Dad.”A few maxims for you to meditate on. Perhaps your dormant childlikeness may start becoming active. The first maxim:“Smile – tomorrow will be worse.”“Nothing makes a woman feel older than meeting a fat, bald man who knew her at school.”“There are no important differences between men and women, but the unimportant ones are the most interesting.”“If it can’t be done in bed, it is probably not worth doing.”“Success for some people depends on becoming well known. For others, it depends on never being found out.”“The seven ages of women: the right age, and the six wild guesses.”“A woman, generally speaking, is generally speaking.”“Old age is when you put on your glasses to think.”“The honeymoon is over when she stops calling you ‘honey’ and starts calling you ‘listen!’”“The honeymoon is over when a quickie before dinner is a drink.”“The honeymoon is over when the dog brings your slippers and your wife barks at you.”“If you are lonesome as a bachelor, take the big step – get a dog. The license is cheaper and he already has a fur coat.”For absolutely irrational reasons, man has been dragged into seriousness. All religions have played their role in poisoning man. The people who are going on any kind of power trip are bound to destroy man’s laughter, his innocent wondering eyes, his childhood. The giggle of a child seems to be more dangerous to these people than nuclear weapons.And in fact they are right – if the whole world starts laughing a little more, wars will be reduced. If people start loving their innocence without bothering about knowledge, life will have a beauty and a blessing of which we have become completely unaware.Just today, Hasya brought me a letter from a sannyasin who says that for seven years he has been so cowardly…because he has wanted to tell me something, but was afraid. Somehow he has gathered courage and he has written. His question was, “Whenever you quote any scientific theory, it is not up to date.” Now, I am amazed! Do you think science can ever be up to date? By the time it is up to date it is already out of date. What was up to date yesterday, today has become out of date. What was up to date today will become out of date tomorrow. Seeing this stupidity, I simply dropped the idea of being up to date. What is the point?And you have not come here to learn science. If once in a while I mention any scientific theory it is not to explain the theory to you, it is to indicate toward something else. It is just an arrow pointing beyond, and if you don’t look at the beyond and you get entangled with the arrow, you have missed the point.If you are so much interested in science, you should go to a science college. Libraries are full, there are hundreds of universities. This is not the place for you. This is the most unscientific place you can find in the world! And when I say unscientific, I mean exactly that. Science means knowledge – this place is not for knowledge.This place is for innocence.I am not imparting more information to you. My effort is to take away your information and give you a transformation.You unnecessarily waited for seven years. But now there is no need; the choice is clear. Here we have gathered to forget all that we know, and if you are still interested in accumulating borrowed knowledge, then I feel sorry for you.All the religions try to insist that what they are saying is true, although all their truths have been found to be superstitions. Three hundred years ago the shift came – from religion to science. And science started emphasizing that whatever it says is true. It was an old habit gathered from religions. Soon they became aware that at least religion remained for ten thousand years with the same knowledge…because the knowledge in the religious area was such that there was no way to find out whether it was up to date or out of date, whether God was still alive, or dead, or sick. So God remained. In fact, nobody ever knew whether he had been born yet or not. Heaven and hell all remained true for thousands of years without any change. The reason was not that they were true, the reason was that they were simply fictions and there was no way and no criterion to judge.Science took the same attitude toward its own theories, but soon the fallacy was found. Science was not talking about fictions but about facts. And as you know more facts, you have to change your old theories every day. In fact, it is said that today you cannot write a very big, comprehensive book on science because by the time the book is complete, all that you have written will be out of date. You can write only papers, and in that too you have to be very quick to read them in some conference or publish them in some periodical, because you are not alone in the world. Many people are working on the same facts. Somebody may come with a better fitting, more adequate ideology.Albert Einstein was asked, “If you had not discovered the theory of relativity, do you think it would have been discovered ever?” And naturally the questioner was convinced that unless there is a mind like Albert Einstein, the theory cannot be discovered.But he was shocked when Albert Einstein said to him, “If I had not discovered it, within three weeks at the most it would have been discovered by somebody else. Thousands of scientific minds are working. It was just fortunate that I jumped quickly and published my research.”And strangely enough it was found that another German physicist had discovered the theory of relativity before Albert Einstein. But he was a lazy guy; he simply waited. What is the hurry? He was thinking that nobody else was going to discover such a complicated theory. He had all the notes prepared, only he had not put them together. But do you think Albert Einstein is up to date today? You are wrong. In science, nobody can remain up to date. Maybe for a few moments, a few days, a few weeks…I am not concerned with the temporal and the ephemeral and the timely. My concern is with the eternal. And the eternal has nothing to do with science or knowledge; the eternal has something to do with the mysterious and the innocent.Be childlike, with open eyes, without any prejudices hidden behind the eyes. Just look with clarity, and small flowers or grass leaves or butterflies or a sunset will give you as much blissfulness as Gautam Buddha found in his enlightenment. The question is not dependent on things, the question is of your openness. Knowledge closes you. It becomes an enclosure, an imprisonment. And innocence opens all the doors, all the windows.Sun comes in, cool breezes pass through.Fragrance of flowers suddenly visits you.And once in a while a bird may come and sing a song and pass through another window.Innocence is the only religiousness.Religiousness does not depend on your holy scriptures. It does not depend on how much you know about the world. It depends on how much you are ready to be just like a clean mirror, reflecting nothing.Utter silence, innocence, purity…and the whole existence is transformed for you. Each moment becomes ecstatic. Small things, sipping a cup of tea, become so prayerful, no other prayer can be compared to it. Just watching a cloud moving freely in the sky, and in innocence a synchronicity happens. The cloud is no more there as an object and you are no more here as a subject. Something meets and merges with the cloud. You start flying with the cloud.You start dancing with the rain, with the trees. You start singing with the birds. You start dancing with the peacocks, without moving, just sitting, your consciousness starts spreading all around you.The day you have touched existence with your consciousness, religion is born in you, and you are born again.This is your real birth.This real birth I have called sannyas.One birth is from the mother and the father; another birth is that which happens between the disciple and the master. And the second birth opens all the doors and all the secrets to explore. Life becomes a continuous adventure, a moment to moment excitement, a day and night ecstasy. Neither life disappears into death nor day dies into the darkness of the night. Suddenly you become aware that day and night are two wings of the same bird, that life and death are two wings of the same bird.The whole sky of consciousness is yours.You don’t have to be a Christian, you don’t have to be a Hindu, you don’t have to be a Mohammedan. You only have to be a child.Just a few jokes, for you to laugh….Gordon MacTavish becomes the head of the Clan MacTavish and inherits a fortune. His friends at the pub fear that his new wealth will change him. There is a big discussion at the pub when the door bursts open and in strides MacTavish, waving them all to the bar.“When MacTavish drinks,” he booms, “everyone drinks!”When everyone has had a drink, he slaps down a dollar bill on the bar and announces, “And when MacTavish pays, everyone pays!”Hamish MacTavish is flying from Los Angeles to New York to go to his company’s annual sales meeting. He is sipping his complimentary champagne in the first class lounge when a gorgeous blond sits down next to him. He is trying hard not to look at her ample chest, and when she says, “I know you must be wondering about my T-shirt,” Hamish is very pleased to be able to look straight at her bulging breasts with the initials N.N.A. printed across them. He admits that he is curious, so she tells him it stands for the National Nymphomaniacs Association. And as it turns out, she is also going to her annual national convention.Excitedly Hamish asks, “What kind of man do you prefer?”“Well,” she confesses, “my absolute favorite is mature American Indians.” But then noticing Hamish’s disappointment, she quickly adds, “But a close second, Jewish businessmen.”“In that case,” says Hamish, unable to contain himself any longer, “let me introduce myself.” He then raises his champagne glass and says, “My name is Geronimo Goldberg.”The young minister decides to get married. In his innocence he finds a girl who has had much experience with men. On the wedding night he gets into his pajamas while his wife strips naked and jumps into bed. Kneeling beside the bed, the minister prays, “Ah God, on this great night, give us your guidance.”“Don’t worry about that,” says his wife. “I’ll give the guidance, just pray for endurance!”

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Om Mani Padme Hum 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Om Mani Padme Hum 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What does it mean to “meditate over” something? I know what it means to “think over” something; that's what the mind is continuously doing: remembering, analyzing, planning, imagining, et cetera.I also came to know a state of meditation where the “I” is no more, where all the boundaries are lost, just a melting into the whole, a disappearing, weightlessness, light, and bliss.But what do you mean when you say to us, “Meditate over it”?The languages of the West have no equivalent to meditation. It is sheer poverty of experience and poverty of language – just as in the East you will not find many words which exist in the Western hemisphere, particularly scientific, technological, objective. So the first thing to be understood is that we are trying something almost impossible.In the East we have all the three words that English has, but we also have a fourth word that English – or any Western language – has missed. And the reason is not just linguistic; the reason is that this kind of experience has not been available to them.The first word is concentration. In the East we call it ekagrata, one-pointedness.The second word is contemplation. In the East we call it vimarsh, thinking, but only about a particular subject. Not diverting, going astray, but consistently remaining with the same experience and going deeper and more comprehensively into it. It is a development of concentration.The third word is meditation. In the West, since Marcus Aurelius, meditation has been in a mess. His was the first book written in the West about meditation. But not knowing what meditation can be, he defines it as a deeper concentration and a deeper contemplation. Both definitions are unjustified.In the East we have another word, dhyan. It does not mean concentration, it does not mean contemplation, it does not mean meditation even. It means a state of no-mind. All those three are mind activities – whether you are concentrating, contemplating, or meditating, you are always objective. There is something you are concentrating upon, there is something you are meditating upon, there is something you are contemplating upon. Your processes may be different but the boundary line is clear-cut: it is within the mind. Mind can do all these three things without any difficulty.Dhyan is beyond mind.This is not the first time that the difficulty has been raised – it has been raised by many people. After Gautam Buddha, his disciples reached China nearabout eighteen hundred years ago and they were faced with the same difficulty. Finally they decided not to translate the word because there is no possible translation. They used the word dhyan, but in the Chinese pronunciation it became ch’an. And when fourteen hundred years ago the transmission of the lamp reached to Japan, again there was the same difficulty: what to do with ch’an? The Japanese had no equivalent or even similar word for it. So they also decided to use the same word; in their pronunciation it became zen.And it is a strange story, that Gautam Buddha himself never used the word dhyan, because he never used the Sanskrit language. It was one of his revolutionary steps to use the people’s language, not the language of the scholars. Sanskrit has never been a living language; it has never been used by the people in the marketplace. It has been the language of the learned, the scholars, the professors, the philosophers, the theologians, and there was a tremendous gap between the world of scholars and the world of the ordinary human being. It was tremendously courageous of Gautam Buddha not to use the language in which he was trained, but to use the language of the people. He used a language called Pali. In Pali, dhyan becomes jhan. Jhan and zen are not very far away, and ch’an also fits perfectly well between the two.But the people who translated the first scriptures describing meditation thought that they understood the meaning of dhyan. Most of them were Christian missionaries, and naturally they had nothing beyond the conception of mind. Christianity has never thought about going beyond the mind; hence the possibility does not exist for anything like dhyan. The closest they could come was meditation. But the moment you use meditation, it becomes, automatically, meditation upon what? Meditation is intrinsically objective – the word. Dhyan is not.When you use dhyan, it does not mean on what. It simply means going beyond the mind. And the moment you go beyond the mind, you go beyond all objects. You simply are. Dhyan is not a process, but a state of being. Not a duality between subject and object, but simply a dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf into the ocean.Talking to you, when I say, “Meditate over it” I know the word I am using is wrong. But the reason that I am using the wrong word is because only the wrong people are around me! All the misfits of the world…they fit me very well! But you can be reminded that language should not become a barrier.Meditation is a state. You are simply silent – no thought to concentrate on, no subject to contemplate, no object to meditate over. The other has disappeared. And remember, the moment the other disappears, you cannot exist. You are part of the other. Just as if light disappears, there will be no darkness; if life disappears, there will be no death; they are intrinsically joined together. “I” and “you” can either exist together in a certain kind of coexistence or we have to disappear and then what remains is neither me nor you. What remains is the universal energy.Meditation is disappearing into the universal.Mind is the barrier. And the more you concentrate, the more you contemplate, the more you meditate upon something, you will never go out of the mind. And mind is the dewdrop I have referred to. So the first thing to understand is that for meditation, only in the East and particularly in India was the first word coined. Words are coined only when you have a certain experience which is incapable of being expressed in the existing language.For ten thousand years India has been pouring all its genius into a single effort, and that is dhyan. If you use the word dhyan, you will not ask, “On what?” The very word dhyan has no intrinsic duality. Dhyan means simply silence. Utter silence, serenity.Your question is significant. You are asking, “What does it mean to meditate over something?” It means nothing! Never meditate over something; otherwise it is not meditation.You are saying, “I know what it means to think over something. That’s what the mind is continuously doing – remembering, analyzing, planning, imagining, et cetera.” Everybody knows that.“I also came to know a state of meditation where the ‘I’ is no more.”My own understanding is that up to this point you were talking about your existential experience; beyond this point you are simply borrowing words which you have not experienced. You say, “I also came to know…” Who will come to know? If the “I” is there, then the “thou” is there. If the experiencer is there, then the experience is there. Still the duality exists; you have not gone beyond the mind. You have not attained what you call a state of meditation.You say…“where the ‘I’ is no more…” These are words which are beautiful and you must have loved them, but you don’t know the meaning of them. This is the point I was talking about last night, when Bodhidharma chose as his successor the disciple who did not answer. Because any answer will be wrong; any answer will mean “I am still here.” Any answer will mean mind is still functioning. Any answer is bound to be wrong. The man who was chosen as the successor had only tears of joy and fell at the feet of Bodhidharma in tremendous gratitude and thankfulness.Nothing can be said.The moment you say something you have to use the mind, you have to use language, and then naturally all the fallacies of language and all the boundaries of the mind come in.You say, “…where the ‘I’ is no more…” If you are no more, then the question should have stopped here. Now who is prolonging the question still further? You go on, saying, “…where all the boundaries are lost…” Whose boundaries? Certainly you are there, seeing that boundaries are getting lost. But if you are there, boundaries cannot be lost. That is a contradiction in terms.You are saying, “…just melting into the whole…” Have you ever heard any dewdrop shouting to the world, “Listen, I am melting into the ocean”? One simply melts and there is nothing to say.And silence prevails.But you go on describing all the beautiful words that you must have read, you must have heard: “…just melting into the whole, a disappearing, weightlessness, light and bliss…” But to whom are all these experiences happening? You are no more! For all these experiences to happen, at least you are needed. Your mind is needed, your language is needed, and again you ask. If this were an existential experience, in the first place you would not have said anything.I am reminded of a great Zen master who was sitting on the sea beach when a king happened to pass by. He had always wanted to see the master, but there was no time – the affairs of the kingdom and the worries and the wars…this was a golden opportunity. He stopped his chariot, got down and went to the master and asked him, “I don’t have much time, but I want to know what the essential teaching is. I don’t want to die ignorant.”The master remained silent.The king said, “I can understand, you are very old and perhaps you have gone deaf.”The master smiled.The king shouted in his ears, “I want to know the essence of your teaching!”The master wrote with his finger on the sand, “Dhyan.” He did not speak.The king said, “But that does not make much sense to me. I have heard that word many times. Elaborate a little more.”The master said to him, “I have already fallen for your sake. Otherwise the right answer was the first, when I had remained silent. But perhaps you don’t know the communion that exists in silence. Out of compassion, I wrote ‘dhyan’; now you want elaboration. I will try.” He wrote again in bigger letters, dhyan.The king was getting a little angry. He said, “What kind of elaboration is this? It is the same word!”The master said, “You will have to forgive me, because I cannot fall more. Just for your sake, I will not let the centuries laugh about me. Nobody has said anything about dhyan, and nobody can say anything about dhyan.”Then what have the masters been doing down the ages? They create devices, situations in which they hope that perhaps in a thousand people one may get an insight. Those devices are not meditations. Those devices are only to bring you to a point in your own inner space where suddenly you realize and you say “Aha!” And the moment you understand the state of meditation, all methods of meditation become futile. Those methods are just arbitrary, created out of compassion for people to whom there is no other way to communicate a higher reality than the mind.If what you say has been your experience, then the last part will be missing. You say, “But what do you mean when you say to us: ‘Meditate over it’?” I say to you, “Meditate over it” with all the explanations that there is no “it” and there is no meditator. When I say “Meditate over it” I mean exactly the opposite:No it, no meditator.Just be.But language is very poor. Even the very cultured languages are poor as far as the interior space of man is concerned. They don’t have any indicative words because millions of people have lived but nobody has looked within. And when once in a while somebody looks within, he finds a space which cannot be translated in any way. You should understand not only your difficulty – your difficulty is very small – you should understand the difficulty of the man who has existentially reached the spot which he cannot translate.One of the most beautiful mystics of India, Kabir, was asked the same question. He laughed and he said, “I cannot exactly give you an explanation, but I can give you some indication. It is like the experience of sweetness to a dumb man. He knows it, but he cannot speak it. The dumb man has no incapacity to experience the sweetness of something, but if you ask him what is his experience, he cannot express it.” This inexpressibility has misguided many people. They think that a thing which cannot be expressed cannot exist. They think expressibility and existence are bound to be synonymous. It is not so.What can you say about love? Whatever you say will be wrong. In fact, when you are in love you don’t even say “I love you,” because that seems so small in comparison to your experience. My own understanding is that people start saying to each other, “I love you” when love has disappeared.The American philosopher Dale Carnegie – and a man like Dale Carnegie can be called a philosopher only in America – suggests in his book, which has sold second only to the Holy Bible: “Whenever you come home, kiss your wife and say, ‘I love you.’ Whenever you go out of your home, kiss your wife and say, ‘I love you.’” And there are millions of idiots who are doing it! The wife knows that this is only bluffing; the man knows it is all bluffing….When you love, love is so tremendous and so vast that you simply sit hand in hand, not uttering a single word.The actual experience of love has never been expressed by any poet and will never be expressed. And love is part of our ordinary reality, just as sweetness or bitterness is. These inner spaces of meditation are not our usual experiences, so when somebody stumbles upon them he is at a loss to say what he has found.There was a man in Japan whose name people have forgotten – they only remember the “Laughing Buddha” because he never said anything. Ask him anything, his answer would be the same: he would laugh. I think he was a very sincere man, utterly authentic. He did not compromise with any language, with any mind, with any expression. He simply laughed. And if you can understand through his laughter, his smile, it is up to you. Most of the people thought he was mad.When Bodhidharma became the state of meditation, the first thing that happened to him was to laugh loudly. But Bodhidharma was a learned scholar, not like a simple, Japanese laughing buddha. He did not laugh. He was asked later on by his disciples, “Please fulfill our curiosity: when you became enlightened, what was the first thing that you wanted to do?”He said, “The first thing? I was no longer there – a tremendous laughter – but I had not to go on laughing. Otherwise people would think me just a madman. And my master’s advice was, ‘Even a very wise master rarely finds authentic disciples. If people start thinking you are mad, then the possibility of transforming anybody is almost negligible.’ So I reminded myself: laugh within yourself as much as you can, but don’t show it!”Have you seen Bodhidharma’s pictures? You can use those pictures to scare your children! Nobody has inquired what happened…because he was a prince; this face that is depicted is not the face of a beautiful prince. But I know the reason. The reason is, he is holding his laughter inside! And because of this holding, his whole face has become distorted. His eyes are bulging. He has decided to remain serious. But I don’t think anybody has ever analyzed why Bodhidharma, one of the most beautiful men, should have such a ferocious look. I can say with absolute certainty that he is in tremendous trouble. If he had laughed, you would have seen his beauty, but the master had said not to laugh, otherwise nobody was going to take him seriously. So the poor fellow became too serious, and when you are containing a belly laughter inside you everything becomes distorted.First you have to sort out what is your experience and what is your knowledge. Knowledge is simply bullshit. If you don’t like the word bullshit, then you can call it cow dung, because that is a holy thing. And as you are scraping it away, you will find something of tremendous value, of your own experience. That experience will give you the meaning of meditation.I cannot give it to you.I can only show the path, how it is gained.But to say what it is, I am as dumb as anybody else has ever been.Wishing to surprise her husband with a new wig she has just bought, Ruthie Finkelstein strolls unannounced into his office.“Do you think you could find a place in your life for a woman like me?” she asks sexily.“Not a chance,” replies Moishe. “You remind me too much of my wife.”So beware of wigs! And remember one thing, that whatever grows within you undistorted, unpolluted, unpoisoned by the millions who are around you, trust it. That is your potential. And remember that in your potential, you will not find your self. And the moment you don’t find your self, there is lightness, there is blessing, there is ecstasy, but you cannot say it. The one who used to say is no more.The Sufis have one of the most holy books in the whole world, perhaps the only holy book. For fourteen hundred years that book has existed. No publishing house has been ready to print it, because there is nothing in it to print. It is just absolutely blank.The first master who had the book used to hide it under his pillow. His disciples were very curious… “He says everything, but if you ask about the book he simply smiles.” They tried in every way: they would leave the windows open so that in the night when there was nobody and the master took out the book to read it…They even climbed over his roof, removing a few tiles to see what was written in the book. But the master was reading next to a small candle, and it was very difficult to figure out what was there. And immediately, as soon as he became aware of anybody, he would close the book and put it under his pillow.The day he died, nobody was so much interested in his death – everybody was interested in the book! They pulled out the book and they were amazed: there was not a single word written anywhere. Those who had the perceptivity could see the great compassion of the master, that he never said anything about the book. He left it for them to discover.That book still exists – in a distorted form, because one publisher in England has published it but he was also worried about who is going to purchase it. A pseudo-Sufi has written an introduction and its whole history of fourteen hundred years. So there is something written to be read, but that has destroyed the whole mystery of the book.You are the mystery which cannot be contained in words. And remember it as a criterion: whatever can be reduced to language is just your mind functioning. Meditation is a state when mind stops functioning; you are simply consciousness. Not even conscious of yourself, but pure consciousness. Not even the slightest idea that “I am this,” that “I am enjoying bliss and I am enjoying ecstasy.”When ecstasy comes, the flood is so big, “you” cannot remain in that flood. When blessings shower on you, you evaporate.Gautam Buddha is right when he says, “I can only point to the moon, but don’t cling to my finger. The finger is not the moon.” But you will be surprised about human stupidity. After Gautam Buddha… because he said, “Don’t make statues of me, because I am not here so that you should worship me. I am here so that I can awaken you.” But he has not prohibited…he may not have even thought about how deep is the ignorance of man. People created temples, with a finger carved in beautiful marble, and everybody forgot the moon. And people worshipped the finger and the whole point was missed! What Gautam Buddha was saying was that whatever he was doing for forty-two years continuously was nothing but a finger pointing to the moon. Leave the finger aside and look at the moon.What I am saying to you is, don’t get involved in the linguistics, in the language, in the grammar. Those are all irrelevant. Just look at the moon. Even a finger which is not very beautiful can point to the moon – words are not very beautiful, but if you are wise enough you can leave the words and listen to the essence.But don’t start believing in that essence and talking about it. Let it become your experience. And even when it becomes your experience you will not be able to give any explanation to it. You can cry out of joy, you can laugh, you can dance…perhaps those gestures signify more beautifully than the ordinary language.Meera danced – she is one of the most beautiful women in the world. Perhaps no other woman has reached to the heights Meera reached. And she was a queen, but the day the moment arrived and the space within her opened, she forgot all her palaces. She started dancing in the streets of her own capital. Naturally, the family was very much disturbed – a queen dancing in the marketplace! They came to persuade her, but she said, “I have found something that can only be expressed by dancing. I will dance all over the country.”She danced all over the country. Nobody knows how many people understood the dance. She sang beautiful songs. They are not philosophical treatises, but they have beautiful gaps. If you can catch those gaps, you can enter into the unknown. Her dances are a language of a totally different caliber. If you can understand her dance, perhaps something will start dancing in you. All that is needed is an openness, a receptivity, so that her dance can trigger the dormant energy in your being. And if you can also dance, you will have communicated, you will have understood what meditation is.And here there is not one Meera, there are many. If you cannot understand meditation here, there is not much possibility to understand it anywhere else. The world is too worldly; and their antagonism toward me is because I am trying to take you away from the crowd on untrodden paths where no guide exists, no maps exist. And the crowd is worried. Whether the crowd is of Christians or of Hindus or of Buddhists, it doesn’t matter. The crowd does not want anybody to get out of its fold; that reduces its political power.All your religions are simply political powers; in the name of religion the greatest cheating and exploitation of humanity. I want to take you away from the crowd, whichever crowd you belong to.I respect the individual, because only the individual can know what meditation is and only the individual can know the beauty, the ecstasy, the dance of this immensely beautiful existence. Crowds have never become enlightened, it has always been the individual.I create the individual.Just the other day, one of my old sannyasins, Amrito from Holland, told Hasya that he is writing a book called Ten Years Of Preparation. He is a man of great intellectual capacity, an intellectual giant, but his heart is just like that of a small child. Because of his intellect, he has been going to all kinds of people – Da Free John, J. Krishnamurti, whenever he hears of somebody he will immediately rush there. In these ten years he must have encountered many so-called enlightened people.He had a personal interview lasting one hour with J. Krishnamurti, and he showed the script to Hasya. Krishnamurti talks about me: “The gentleman in Pune is just a ladder. As far as I am concerned, I am an elevator.”I have sent a message to Amrito that I don’t think of it as a criticism of me, I accept it as a compliment! With a ladder you are free; it is not so with an elevator. In an elevator you are encaged, you cannot go anywhere, and the elevator never goes anywhere – it simply goes up and down. And Krishnamurti, for ninety years, was going just like an elevator, up and down, up and down. With an elevator you are not the master; you are subservient to a mechanical device which depends on many complexities – electricity, engineering, electronics. You can get stuck in the middle and you cannot do anything.With a ladder, you are absolutely free! You are the master: you can take the ladder wherever you want, you can leave the ladder wherever you want. The ladder will not cling to you and the ladder will not ask you for any kind of surrender. I love the idea! I am certainly an old-fashioned ladder.My whole effort is to make masters of you. Krishnamurti has not even been able to make disciples of you.I have called Amrito tonight to ask, “What other nonsense have you been listening to from these so-called enlightened people? You are my disciple and you have to finish your book with my declaration that you are now a master! Without that, the book will remain incomplete. But first tell me what all these idiots have been telling you so I can answer them; otherwise your book will remain incomplete.”There was a man in Bombay, Nisarg Datta Maharaj. Nobody knew this big name; he was known to the masses as “Beedie Baba” because he was continuously smoking beedies. You can find in every village such kinds of beedie babas. I think India has seven hundred thousand villages and each village must have at least one; more is possible. And Amrito wrote a few days ago to me, because another young Dutchman became very much involved with Beedie Baba… The man seems to be very sincere, but the trouble is that the people who come from the West have a very childlike heart, very trusting, and they are unaware that in India spirituality is just a routine. Everybody talks about great things and their lives are as ugly as possible.When Beedie Baba said that he would speak only to this young Dutchman, naturally his ego must have felt tremendously vast.The crowd that surrounded Beedie Baba was also of the same quality…rickshaw wallahs waiting for their passengers, sitting by the side of Beedie Baba. And when he said he would not speak to anybody unless it was this Dutchman… So he spoke to the Dutchman, who has now compiled books on Beedie Baba.Now in India it is almost parrot-like, but to the Westerner it seems to be a tremendous revelation – when Beedie Baba said, “Aham brahmasmi; I am God, I am that” the young Dutchman immediately wrote a book: I Am That! Because for the West, spirituality is a foreign affair, just as for the East, science is a foreign affair.I have heard: In a factory in Bombay, they installed a very costly mechanism. Two days it worked, and then it stopped. It worked for two days because the expert was present, and the moment the expert was gone the mechanism stopped. They phoned the expert – “What to do?”He said, “I will have to come and it will cost a lot of money, ten thousand dollars.”But to keep the factory closed was even more costly, so they had to allow the man to come. And the man came and just hit the machine and it started working! The industrialist asked him, “Just for this hitting you are costing me ten thousand dollars?”He said, “It is not for the hitting. For hitting it is only one dollar, but to know where to hit it costs money.”When Amrito’s letter came to me about this Dutchman, saying that “Many sannyasins are going to him, and I am also going to him,” I talked about it. He heard it, and he took the tape to the man. The man heard it, and he was very grateful but baffled also, because he was gathering a big crowd of disciples. But because he felt baffled and he was grateful that I had talked about him…I would like Amrito, when he goes back, either to bring the man to me or send him to me. Because I know where to hit!

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Om Mani Padme Hum 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Om Mani Padme Hum 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,When I heard you say that you are here for us and we are here for you, I was so touched by the simplicity and the truth of it. It went to my heart like an arrow. Oh beloved, it's all so deep.Truth is the most obvious and the most simple thing in existence. This has created tremendous difficulty – the mind is not interested in the obvious. The mind is not excited by the simple, because deep down mind is nothing but your ego, and the nourishment of the ego comes from the challenge of the far away. The more arduous, the more torturous, the more difficult an achievement is, the more the mind becomes fascinated. It is ready to go to the farthest star, not even bothering what it is going to get there; that is irrelevant.I remember a remark by Edmund Hillary, who was the first man to climb Everest, the highest mountain in the Himalayas. When he came down, the whole world’s media was interested to know what his experience was, what he had gained. Before him, for almost a hundred years, hundreds of mountaineers had destroyed their lives in the same effort of achieving Everest.Edmund Hillary could not answer. For a moment there was silence, and then he said, “Just because it is there, a challenge to humanity – that was enough for me to risk my life. I have not gained anything, I have not experienced anything.”The truth is, whenever I think of Edmund Hillary standing on the Everest, alone, he looks to me to be embarrassed, utterly idiotic. And in fact he did not stay there longer than two minutes. For those two minutes he risked his life.This will give you an insight into the human mind and its workings. That which is available cannot be made an achievement. And that which is not available, the farther away it is, the more nourishment there is to the ego. The obvious, that which you already have, has no interest at all for the mind.That’s why millions of people have lived on the earth and missed their own being. They traveled far and wide, world travelers – Marco Polo, Columbus – they tried to conquer the whole world, like Alexander the Great. But they forgot one thing: they have not even known themselves; the question of conquering does not arise.Alexander was on the way to India when he heard about a very strange man, Diogenes, who lived just by the side of the road. Alexander had heard many stories about the man; he was a legend in his own time. He lived naked.In India it is easy, but in the West it is not so easy – in India thousands of Jaina monks have lived naked. But you will be surprised to know why Jainism never reached outside India – the nakedness prevented it. Buddhism spread all over Asia to Tibet, to China, to Korea, to Japan, because they were not living naked. Mahavira was a contemporary of Gautam Buddha, but he could not move – neither have any of his disciples in twenty-five centuries moved – out of India.But Diogenes must have been a more courageous man than Mahavira. He lived in Greece absolutely naked. All his possessions consisted only of one ordinary old-style lamp that he carried twenty-four hours, lighted, even in full daylight. Whenever he would meet anybody he would bring his lamp close to the person’s face…and you could see the disappointment, the frustration on his face. People would ask, “What are you trying to find?”He said, “I am simply trying to find an authentic man, a simple man, a sincere man – a man without a mask, just natural, as if he has been born just now.”The day Diogenes died, people gathered, and they asked, “For your whole life, your search has been only one. Did you succeed in finding a natural, simple, innocent man?”Diogenes said, “Don’t ask such depressing questions. All that I can say about men is that they have not stolen my lamp yet.”There were many stories about the man. Alexander stopped his army and said, “I would like to see him.”The first question that Diogenes asked Alexander is the first question every intelligent person has to ask himself.Diogenes did not waste a single moment. He said, “Alexander, you are trying to conquer the whole world. What about you? Will there be time enough after you have conquered the world to know yourself? Are you certain about tomorrow, or the next moment?”Alexander had never faced such a man. He had conquered great kings, emperors, but he could see that Diogenes is a lion of a man. With downcast eyes, Alexander said, “I cannot say that I am certain about the next moment. But one thing I can promise to you, that when I have conquered the world I would love to rest and relax just like you.”Diogenes was having a morning sunbath by the side of a river, surrounded by beautiful trees. He laughed…sometimes I think his laughter must be still echoing.People like Diogenes belong to eternity. Their signatures are not made on water.Alexander felt offended and asked, “Why are you laughing?”Diogenes said, “It is so simple! If I can rest and relax without conquering the world, what is preventing you? The river is big enough and I have no objection. You can take any place you want – even if you want my place, I can change. Rest now if you ever want to rest. Relax now. Now – or remember, never.”What Diogenes was saying was absolute truth, but to a man who is on an ego trip it was too obvious, too simple. Just to relax on the riverbank does not give any nourishment to the ego. What have you conquered? What is your achievement?People measure their own lives according to their successes, according to their money, according to their power. There is no way to measure your success if you simply settle with the obvious and the simple. The obvious is nothing but a graveyard for your ego.Remember: truth is always simple. It is the untruth that is complex. If you are accustomed to lie, you will have to have a good memory. But if you are simply stating the truth, you don’t need to have any memory at all. Lies are so complex, they need a very complex bio-computer which you call memory. Truth is so simple, it does not even need to be said.I am reminded of Lao Tzu. He used to go every day for a morning walk, early, before the sun rises. Just by the side of his village there was a small hillock which was the most beautiful spot to see the sun rising. One of his neighbors asked him, “Can I also come with you?”Lao Tzu said, “Whether you can come with me is not the right question. The road does not belong to me; neither the mountains, nor the sunrise. If you can come by my side but not with me, everything is okay. But remember: you are alone, I am alone. Nothing has to be said; no word has to be uttered.”The man had known Lao Tzu for a long time. He agreed. But one day the neighbor had a guest and the guest was also excited and wanted to follow his host, to go with Lao Tzu on his morning walk. The neighbor explained to him: “Lao Tzu has no other conditions except that you are alone; he does not want to become a crowd. Language is prohibited. You should not say anything, and I don’t think he will object.”He did not object, and the guest remembered…but how long can you remember? When the beautiful sun started rising out of the morning mist he forgot all about what his host had said to him. And he said a simple thing, which should not be objectionable; he said, “What a beautiful sunrise!” And then suddenly he remembered: you are alone, you are not supposed to use words. Only mad people use words when they are alone.They came back. Reaching the house, Lao Tzu said to his neighbor, “Please tell your guest never to come again. He is too talkative.”In a two-hour morning walk he had uttered only that small sentence – “What a beautiful sunrise!” But still Lao Tzu is right. Because the guest tried to argue with him – he said, “I simply expressed my feeling.”Lao Tzu said, “I was also present, I was also experiencing the sunrise and the beauty. We were all surrounded with the same blessing, the birds singing and the flowers opening. I am not blind; I also have a heart. You insulted me by saying, ‘What a beautiful sunrise’ – do you think I cannot understand the beauty? And moreover you forgot your promise. You are not a man who can be relied upon, you are not a man of your word.”These strange people like Lao Tzu or Diogenes are the authentic people of the world. And they have known the truth not by conquering the world, not by becoming astronauts, not by climbing Everest; they have known the truth just by sitting silently doing nothing. And obviously, the grass grows by itself!You don’t have to do a thing. And when truth comes to you in its utter simplicity, it goes deep to the very center of your being because it is not a mind fabrication; it is not a thought, it is something existential.Your experience is perfectly true. “It went,” you say, “to my heart like an arrow.”Yes, it goes into the heart just like an arrow. And after such experience you are never the same person – you cannot be. Just think of a blind man: if his eyes can be cured and he starts seeing the light and the colors, do you think he will remain the same man as he was when he was blind? He will be a totally new person.Perhaps you are not aware that your experience of life comes eighty percent from your eyes. Only twenty percent is divided among the other four senses. It is not coincidental that a blind man attracts your sympathy more than anybody else. A man who is deaf, a man who cannot smell, a man who cannot walk – of course they create a certain sympathy in you, but the man who cannot see takes the major portion of your sympathy.Without knowing the reasoning, you are functioning naturally. The blind man is living only twenty percent of his life. Eighty percent of his life does not exist – no colors, no paintings, no flowers, no butterflies…not all the greenery of the world, not the mountains with eternal snows. No sky full of stars, no beautiful sunrise, no beautiful sunset. His life is reduced to such a minimum….I have heard…A young man had just won a lottery, and he was passing over a bridge. He always used to give some money to a blind beggar there, but that beggar was not present – somebody else was present. But he was still spreading his hands asking for the money “for a blind man.” So the young man gave him a rupee. The blind man immediately told him, “It is a false coin.”The man said, “Are you blind or not?”He said, “I used to be blind before, but people were cheating me. Then I changed my profession; I became deaf and dumb.”The man asked, “And what happened to the blind man who used to sit here?”He said, “It is his holiday, he has gone to a movie.”Your experiences, unless they transform you, are not experiences. They are only clouds in your mind. If you have felt the truth, then it is going to transform your whole life. It will have its impact on your every action, on your every attitude. There is no other way to know whether a man has found the truth or not. The only way is, all his gestures, his eyes, his very presence will start affecting you in a totally different way than you have ever been affected by another being, another man.He may not say a single word, but his silence will overwhelm you. He may not look at you, but his eyes you will not be able to forget, ever. They will haunt you, they will follow you like a shadow.His words will be just the same as your words. Dictionaries cannot make any distinction, but you are not a dictionary – when a man like Gautam Buddha speaks, he uses the same words that everybody else is using but his words have a flavor, an authenticity, a sincerity of the heart, a tremendous love and compassion which the word itself does not necessarily carry.But if you are open, available – if the arrow has struck you in the heart – then it opens a window that has remained closed perhaps for millions of lives. And from that small window tremendous experiences can float inward, can transform you so totally….It is said that in the great capital of Vaishali there used to be a thief, a master thief. He was known as a master thief because he was never caught; in fact the situation had become such that people bragged if the master thief had entered their houses. It became something prestigious, because the master thief would not go to a beggar. He would go to the emperors, to the kings, to the richest people.Mahavira was staying for four months of the rainy season in Vaishali. The master thief was training his son in the art of which he was the master.He said, “Listen, one thing: never go to hear this man Mahavira. Even if by chance you are passing and you hear a word or a sentence from the man, close your ears. Because he can destroy just with a single word my whole effort of making you my successor.”Naturally it created a great curiosity in the young man. The father has been training him for years, and he is so afraid of a man that just a single word from him and the whole discipline can be destroyed! He might never have heard Mahavira, but his father created the curiosity. One day he went, but he heard only one sentence and became afraid of his father, because his father was no ordinary man – if he comes to know, he will kill him! There is no other punishment. But he heard one sentence and escaped.That night his father was in the palace of the king, and much jewelry was stolen. The father escaped. The son was not part of the stealing process but the son was caught. He was coming from the discourse of Mahavira where he had heard only one sentence, which was absolutely meaningless.The sentence which he heard was that in heaven men and women have a few strange things about them: one is that their feet are not the same as ours. Their feet are backward; they walk forward but their feet are backward. This is not great philosophy.But the young man was caught in place of his father because they looked alike. There was a difference in age, but in the dark night…The police used a strategy to make the young man confess. He was given so much alcohol that he fell asleep. When in the middle of the night he opened his eyes, he was in a beautiful palace, with such beautiful women – he has never seen such beautiful women – all kinds of delicious foods, ready for him. He thought, “Perhaps I have died and I have entered heaven!”Then he suddenly remembered what Mahavira was saying, that in heaven the feet are backward. So he looked at the feet – they were not backward. Otherwise he would have been caught, because those beautiful women were asking him: “Tell us everything you have done in your life. You are just in the reception room of heaven, and this is customary, to give your whole record before you enter heaven.”He was just going to give them an account of his whole life but he stopped. He said, “My God! If I had not heard that one sentence, I would have been finished today. Although I have not done great robberies, I have done smaller things. This has been my whole training.” He simply remained silent. Asked again and again, he said, “I don’t have any record. I am a man of silence, not a man of action. I am a meditator.” There was no other way – in the morning he was released.He did not go to his home, he went to Mahavira and he said, “Your single sentence, which was absolutely irrelevant, has saved my life. Now this life belongs to you, not to my father. And if your single sentence can save my life I can conceive the tremendous transformation that can happen if I understand all your words, and if I can understand even your wordless silences.”Mahavira said, “I will accept you only on one condition: you go and tell your father what has happened. It is your duty. Your father also needs to be saved. What he is doing is utterly stupid.”The son was very afraid but he had to go. He told the whole story. The father was shocked at first, but then he realized the truth of it. And the story is that both became initiates of Mahavira.A man of the qualities of Mahavira not only transforms his actions, they change automatically. His words also start growing new meanings, new fragrances. His silences are also messages.Prem Jivan, what has happened to you is going to happen to everybody who is sincerely here to be transmuted, who is not here for any ego trip, who is here for a deeper understanding of himself.The miracle of the deeper understanding of oneself is that simultaneously you understand the whole mystery of existence. Just one thing to be remembered: when I use the word ‘understanding’, I don’t mean knowledge. You feel it, you touch it, you live it. You sing it, you dance it, but you don’t know it. It never becomes knowledge; it becomes your very life.You are it.But unfortunate are those who are just curiosity-mongers, who are just beggars in a way, collecting dregs from scriptures, from other people, from the rotten old past, and then covering their ignorance with their so-called knowledge. These are the most stupid people in the world, but they dominate the world because they are knowledgeable people and knowledge gives them a certain power.A man who wants to understand the mystery of existence has to drop the idea of power completely. He has to be utterly non-existential, as if he is not, and all the doors suddenly open.Paradise is not somewhere else.Paradise is the moment you are available to existence in totality. On this same earth, in this same time, you have entered the lotus paradise of Gautam Buddha.Those who teach you about a heaven above in the sky are the greatest criminals the world has known, because they are depriving you of the paradise that is herenow available.Osho,Being with ‘not knowing what is' seems a better pointer now, but it is still contaminated with becoming. Can insight really stop the movement of becoming, or is this theoretical?Deva Amrito, the question you have asked is significant for every seeker on the path. You are asking, “Being with ‘not knowing what is’ seems a better pointer now, but it is still contaminated with becoming. Can insight really stop the movement of becoming, or is this theoretical?”First: being is becoming.They are not two things.It is the language that creates the fallacy of division. When you see a river, you don’t really see a river, you see a rivering because the water is continuously flowing. It is never in a state of being, it is always in a state of becoming.You see a tree, you see a child, you see a bud – everything is always in a state of becoming. But the language has changed verbs into nouns. It calls flowing water a river. It has forgotten completely the great insight of Heraclitus, that you cannot step in the same river twice. Where are you going to find the same river twice?But if I happen to meet Heraclitus some day – and nothing is impossible in this mysterious existence – I am going to hit him hard! Because although he has stated something tremendously beautiful, it is only half true.I would like to say, you cannot step even once in the same river because when your feet touch the surface, the water underneath is flowing. When you reach the middle, the waters on the surface and underneath are flowing. When you reach the bottom, it is not the same river that you had entered. Even once is impossible, such is the river’s aliveness.Nothing is dead in existence. But language has made everything dead.We call somebody a “child” and somebody a “young man” and somebody an “old man” – as if there are milestones where you can say that on a certain Monday, this man became old, this child became a young man. The young child is flowing continuously into the youth; the youth is flowing continuously into old age. Old age is flowing continuously into death and death is flowing continuously into future life.There is no place where existence knows any stop – not to mention stop, it knows not even a semicolon or a comma; it is an unending sentence which goes on and on from eternity to eternity.Amrito, you are making it a theoretical question. You want to be satisfied with being. But you don’t understand the nature of being: the nature of being is becoming. Once you see the point – that the nature of being is becoming – there is no question of any conflict. You don’t have to repress becoming, you don’t have to force yourself into being. You can allow your being its natural course of becoming.Who are you? You are the being and you are the becoming and they are not two separate things.Mind has a tendency to divide things and then create categories and hierarchies, and then create problems: how to achieve this, how to achieve that.One Zen master, Lin Chi, used to say to his disciples, “I am going to ask a question. If you answer, whatever the answer, I am going to hit you. If you don’t answer, I am still going to hit you.” He left no other possibility; any answer will be a wrong answer, and in being afraid that all answers are going to be wrong answers, your silence is also an answer. You are trying to be clever. Lin Chi will not leave you alone, he will hit you in any case.When Lin Chi’s successor arrived, as usual Lin Chi said, “I am going to ask the question…” And the successor said, “You need not. If you ask the question, I am going to hit you – whatever the question. And if you don’t ask I am going to hit you.”In a gathering of disciples, this stranger…and Lin Chi hugged him and said, “So you have come! Take the seat, because I am retiring.”Ed Meese comes into the oval office one morning and says, “Mr. President, I was wondering, sir, if it might be possible for my son to work somewhere in the White House.”“Of course,” replied Reagan, “what does he do?”Meese throws up his arms and says, “Well, actually he does nothing.”“Excellent,” replies Reagan, “we won’t have to train him.”Amrito, you don’t need any training. You just enjoy whatever you are – being, becoming…don’t miss a single point. Life appears from the outside as static. From the inside, it is a constant flux. And once you know life from outside and inside, the flux and the stasis are no longer different. And this is the revelation: one becomes absolutely happy, contented, fulfilled in any situation, in any state of affairs. One has no complaint, no grudge. One is simply utterly satisfied with existence as it is.Ronald Reagan dies and goes to hell. The Devil ushers him in and Reagan is very surprised: instead of the eternal fires he had always expected, there is only a big pool full of shit. The Devil explains that the more evil you were on earth, the more you are covered with shit here. And indeed, Reagan looks around and sees many former friends and colleagues.One scene catches his eye. In a far corner there is a short, black-haired man with a tiny mustache whose right arm is raised to the sky in salute, and the shit only comes up to his ankles. Reagan calls to the Devil and asks, “What about this man? He was very evil on earth – why is he only covered in shit up to his ankles?”The Devil shouts, “Hey, Hitler, when will you learn to stand on your own feet instead of always standing on the pope’s head?”

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Om Mani Padme Hum 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Om Mani Padme Hum 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is total acceptance?The very word total acceptance has somewhere in it the shadow of non-acceptance. Total acceptance has been preached because people are living in total rejection; whatever happens to them, they are bound to find something wrong in it.It is something very important to understand that all our so-called religious qualities are reactions. People are violent – we create a reaction, and a philosophy of teaching nonviolence comes out of it. A man who has been violent may become intellectually convinced that it is not right. He may even strive to become nonviolent, but his nonviolence will also carry the same violent attitude.And this is not only true about ordinary people; even people like Mahatma Gandhi, who became the apostle of nonviolence, carried a deep-rooted violence all his life. I will give you few examples so that you can understand….Mahatma Gandhi was against everything that has been developed by technology, science, and man’s intelligence, after the spinning wheel. With the spinning wheel, history stops for him. Now, nobody can see directly why this should be violent. But if man stops with the spinning wheel, almost one tenth of the population of the world will die. Certainly Gandhi is not proposing the death of one tenth of humanity, but that is the implication. And those who remain will be undernourished, hungry, starving, without enough shelter. And all this is covered with a beautiful word – “nonviolence.”In his own life, Mahatma Gandhi was as violent a man as you can find. His eldest son, Haridas, wanted to be educated and Gandhi was against anything that has come from the West. Now this very attitude is antagonistic; it is not the attitude of a compassionate man. The compassionate man, the man of love, knows only one world. And the measure he took against Haridas was this: he said, “If you want to be educated, you will never see my face again.” Do you see any nonviolence in it?He closed the doors to Haridas. In India, it is the tradition that when the father dies, the eldest son gives the fire to his funeral pyre. Haridas was not allowed. Gandhi had made it clear: “Either living or dead, I have nothing to do with Haridas.” And what was his crime? – just that he wanted to be educated!Gandhi had very fanatic ideas, and fanatic ideas don’t go together with nonviolence. Everybody had to clean the toilet…and when I say clean the toilet you should not understand the Western toilet – the Indian toilet is the ugliest, the dirtiest. He forced his wife to share the cleaning of his ashram’s toilets. She could not understand it. She refused. But Gandhi said, “If you refuse, then this is not your house and I am not your husband.” This is suitable to a dictatorial, unloving, violent person, but not to a loving person.Once, at a train station, Haridas was hiding in the crowd; Gandhi was passing by on the train and Haridas just wanted to see his father’s face from far away, his mother’s face – he won’t allow himself to come close. But Gandhi was informed by his followers that Haridas was waiting at the coming station. All the windows, all the doors of the compartment were closed, and Gandhi told his weeping wife, “You stop your tears, because they show that you are not with me but with Haridas.”And what crime had Haridas done? He simply became educated in a contemporary way. And there are so many instances in Gandhi’s life in which he is utterly violent, but the umbrella of “nonviolence” covers everything.You are asking, “What is total acceptance?” The first thing to remember: either acceptance is total or it is not acceptance. “Total acceptance” shows that you have repressed something deep into your unconscious and to keep it repressed, you are using your total force.Acceptance should be simple.It should be spontaneous; it should not be out of a certain ideology. It should be out of your understanding. Then there is no question of total or untotal acceptance.A clarity of vision will show you either acceptance or non-acceptance. But “total acceptance” has never been looked into deeply – why the emphasis on “total”? The emphasis is because it is a repressive measure; you have not understood it. Hence the same things exist in many dimensions: total abstinence, total celibacy, total surrender. I hate the word total! Look into your ordinary way of life…do you say to some woman, “I love you totally”? Just to love is enough, more than total. The moment you insist, “I love you totally,” it creates suspicion. You are trying to hide something behind the great word “total.”Acceptance is beautiful, but total acceptance is not. Acceptance means it is arising out of your own awareness, not out of the teachings, scriptures and so-called masters roaming all around the world. It is your own understanding. In fact, when it is your own understanding, even the word acceptance becomes futile.This moment – this silence, the birds in the trees, the sunrays reaching to you – is there any question of acceptance? It is simply happening. It is not a theoretical mind discipline. You are not sitting here with a forced discipline. You are sitting here in this enormous silence without any effort. It is so beautiful that any effort will destroy it.Let me repeat it in another way:Do you love with effort? Are you compassionate with effort? Are you living with effort, breathing with effort? Is there any effort in your heartbeats?Just the same way, the whole of life becomes a spontaneous flow. Your perceptivity, your clarity decides which direction to move. But there is no effort, because effort implies you are divided – one part of you is trying to take you in one direction, another part is trying to take you in another direction. Then comes the effort. Only schizophrenic humanity lives with effort.I don’t know any effort in my life. And I cannot conceive that a man of effort can ever be in tune with existence. With whom are you fighting? Effort is a fight.I don’t give you any discipline, I don’t give you any commandments. I don’t want you to be anyone else than you are. It is perfectly beautiful the way you are. The day you understand it…No trees are making any effort. Small bushes are perfectly happy with being small. Tall cedars of Lebanon are perfectly happy with their tallness, but there is no comparison; they don’t look at the small bushes as inferior – that is their spontaneity, that is how they are. In this relaxedness comes a shadow, silently, without even making any sound of footsteps – acceptance.But I don’t like the word, because acceptance means that something in you is not accepting – maybe it is a minority part. To repress that minority part, you bring total acceptance.A young man came to me some twenty years ago and said, “I want to totally surrender to you.” I said, “Then you have knocked on the wrong door – go back. The day there is no idea of total and there is no idea of surrender, my doors are open to you. I will rejoice in you as you are – not pruning your branches, molding you into a certain ideal.” But all the so-called religions of the world have been doing the same. They are asking of you only one thing: “Don’t be yourself, be somebody else.”Just the other day, I was talking to Deva Amrito. I told him, “These should be the last words in your pilgrimage, in your seeking for the truth…” His book is going to be called Years Of Preparation. That gives a dangerous meaning: it means you are moving to achieve something, to become something. There is a certain ideal, far away – you would like to be a Gautam Buddha, a Bodhidharma, a Chuang Tzu or a Jesus Christ. The figure may not be very clear, but there is some faraway star that you are striving to reach. I told him, “These are my words, and should be put in quotation marks: All these years of preparation were futile. You are exactly the same as you have always been.”But there are types…people like me are very lazy. I know that this is my place; I don’t go running around and then come to this seat. Years Of Preparation – and to achieve something you have always been? And you cannot achieve anything that you have not always been.He told me – he is a very nice heart, very childish and very loving – “I am disillusioned with money, with power, with love, with relationships…”I said, “You have to be disillusioned about one thing more.”He looked at me – “What else is there to be disillusioned about?”I said to him, “This is the last disillusionment, this striving to become someone. You are it. Now be disillusioned that all your pilgrimage has been an exercise in utter futility. You have been standing in the same place and only dreaming of preparations. And if your years of preparation have not brought you to this disillusionment, they have been in vain.”Everybody enters the world searching, seeking; it is in a way natural. But maturity comes when you realize, “My God, I am the one whom I have been seeking!” So the title of his book will look a little strange to the person when he comes to my conclusion in the end. Years of preparation for what? To know that there was no need of any preparation.I also told Amrito about a tremendously beautiful pack of cards that existed in China, in the days of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. It has ten cards describing the search, the pilgrimage. Those ten cards are called The Ten Bulls of Zen. In the first picture, the bull is lost. And naturally, the owner is looking all around, thick forest, and he cannot see his lost bull.In the second picture he finds footprints; now he has some clue. In the third picture he sees the bull – not completely, but just his tail – by the side of a huge tree. But now things are becoming more certain. In the fourth picture he sees half of the bull.In the fifth picture he has found the bull in its completeness. In the sixth picture he holds the bull by the horns. In the seventh picture he is riding home on the bull. In the eighth picture the bull is put in his place, and in the ninth picture the man is sitting outside his house, playing a flute.When these ten pictures were transferred to Japan, they cut out the last picture. They accepted only nine pictures. What more is there? You have come home, you are playing the flute, everything is beautiful. That which was lost has been found.But when I looked at the tenth picture I said, “These people got stuck at the ninth. The tenth is the most important.” But it went against their ideological, religious, moral training. The tenth picture is: the man is going toward the marketplace with a bottle of wine. The buddha has now really come home.Unless a buddha becomes absolutely ordinary, it is still an ego trip. To be as ordinary as the trees, as the birds, as the animals, as the mountains – no bragging about any spirituality, because even the bragging about spirituality is nothing but a very subtle ego trip…It hurts me to say to you that Gautam Buddha declared, “I am the only enlightened man in the whole history of man. My enlightenment will never be superseded” – this is the ninth picture. The same was the situation with J. Krishnamurti; he could never get out of the ninth picture. He could not become what he has always been.Mind’s ways are very cunning. It will become the richest man, it will become the most powerful man, it will become the “most” of anything. But it has to be on the top. It will be difficult for you if you find a Buddha in a pub, but that is the right place. He has come home, he has accepted his natural spontaneity.Don’t ask about total acceptance – ask rather about more clarity, more spontaneity, more naturalness, and acceptance will come just like a shadow. You don’t have to bother about it.Paddy is a private in the British army during World War II. One day, the general calls him to his tent and says, “Private Murphy, you have been chosen for a very special mission. You will be parachuted at night behind the enemy lines, where you will be met by a jeep. And the driver will give you your orders.”So that night, Paddy goes up in the plane. They are approaching the enemy lines when Paddy turns to his officer and says, “But sir, I have never parachuted. What should I do?”“Don’t worry,” replies the officer. “All you do is jump. Then three seconds later look up and you will see your parachute open. If it does not, just pull your emergency cord and your second parachute will open. When you land, the jeep will be there to meet you.”“Okay,” says Paddy, and jumps out of the plane. Three seconds later he looks up, but nothing happens. So he pulls the emergency cord and still nothing happens. “My God,” says Paddy as he rushes toward the ground. “And I bet that bloody jeep won’t be there either!”Life is, intrinsically, a tremendous acceptance without your knowing. Have you accepted your eyes totally? Have you accepted your body totally? Have you accepted your situation in life totally? This idea of total acceptance imposed on you makes you miserable, because it continuously creates comparison. Somebody has more beautiful eyes and somebody has a stronger body. Somebody is more knowledgeable. And you are always feeling inferior and this inferiority goes on eating your heart. You become more and more miserable, but the reason is that you have unnecessarily created it. There is no need to compare, because there is nobody you can be compared with.You are a unique individual. And whatever you are, that’s the way existence wants you to be. Enjoy it.Change the word acceptance, because that is not very blissful. Acceptance is something that you have to do, what else to do. There are more beautiful people, there are richer people, there are stronger people, what to do? Accept.I don’t teach you acceptance in that way. My idea of acceptance is totally different from all religions.I declare your uniqueness.You are just yourself and there is not a single person – either in the present or in the past or in the future – who is exactly like you.Existence gives you such a unique individuality – rejoice in it. And out of that rejoicing, acceptance will come; that is not to be bothered about. I have never felt that I have to become somebody. If existence wants me to be nobody, I am immensely happy.In my childhood, my teachers used to say, “You will end up being nobody.” And they were right! I have ended up as nobody. But I am immensely happy, and all those teachers who have been trying to be somebody are all miserable.Once in a while I used to go to my village and ask them how things were going…“because I am feeling so good being nobody, and you always look miserable.”Once you start rejoicing whatever you are, life takes such psychedelic colors, your each moment becomes so juicy… your whole life becomes a celebration.Drop those ideas of total acceptance. Why should you accept? It is a very depressing idea that “I accept myself.” Rejoice! dance! sing! Let the whole world know that you are alone and unique and nobody can replace you. To me, this is the way of an authentic search of oneself. There is no comparison – there is no need.You may be surprised to know that even the so-called great men of your history were all suffering from inferiority. Napoleon Bonaparte was not tall enough, he was only five feet five. And that tortured him all his life. His guards were taller than him. One day he was fixing a picture in his bedroom but he could not reach it. A bodyguard said, “Wait, I am higher than you, I can fix it.” Napoleon Bonaparte was very angry. He said, “Change your word ‘higher’. Simply say you are taller!” What is the difference? The difference is, “higher” hits hard; you are inferior, lower. Say “taller” – that takes much of the pain away.But I have always wondered: I am exactly five-five, and I have never felt any inferiority. You may be seven feet tall – that does not mean that my feet do not reach to the earth. And as far as the sky is concerned, neither you reach nor I reach! So the only decisive factor is: if your feet can reach to the earth, it is perfectly good.But it is not only about one man…. Abraham Lincoln was not a very beautiful man; moreover, he stuttered and he was very much conscious of it because a presidential candidate stuttering, not looking beautiful, has not much chance in America. Just a small girl suggested to him, “Uncle, if you grow a little beard that will give a more beautiful shape to your face.” According to that small girl’s suggestion, he grew the beard. Abraham Lincoln did not succeed in being the president, the beard succeeded! But his whole life he was harassed, haunted by the idea – “What to do with stuttering?” He felt inferior to ordinary people.You will find, as a great psychological insight, that all politicians are born out of an inferiority complex. Because that inferiority is such a wound, they want to prove to the world that they are not inferior: “I am the president, I am the prime minister.” Any man who is happy with himself will be the last to join the line of politicians in the gutter.The day humanity is rejoicing in itself politicians will disappear, religions will disappear, saints will disappear, so-called moralists will disappear. These are ugly people who are trying to hide their inferiority by becoming something – at least pretending something. They are all hypocrites. And a world without saints, without politicians, without priests, without the so-called learned people, will be such a peaceful world – as peaceful as a garden full of flowers, as peaceful as this morning. There is no need for any war, there is no need for any nations. There is no need for anybody to pretend to be higher, there is no need for anybody to suffer a wound of inferiority.My whole approach is to make each individual as authentic as he is intended by nature to be, and all the problems of the world will disappear. There is no other way; these problems are created by schizophrenics, neurotics, psychotics…all kinds of madmen are posing as the richest, as the most powerful.Just see a simple thing: in America, there are thirty million people dying on the streets because they don’t have food, they don’t have clothes, they don’t have shelter. And exactly the same number – thirty million people – are dying in hospitals because they eat too much, and they cannot stop stuffing themselves continually. They have been forced to be hospitalized, because in their homes it is impossible to control them.It is a strange situation. Exactly thirty million people are dying because of starvation and thirty million people are dying because of overeating. Just a small understanding, and sixty million people can be saved. Both are suffering. A hospital is not the place to live nor is the street a place to live. And I take this example from America because America pretends to be the richest country, but I don’t see that it has yet become even psychologically normal. The same is being repeated in other countries on a vaster scale. It seems we are dominated by a certain madness.All that is needed is to drop this madness.The richest man in the world is in Japan…he has twenty-one billion dollars. The richest man in America has only four and a half billion dollars. But can you understand a man having twenty-one billion dollars – what is he going to do with it? It is absurd. And millions of people are dying. Ethiopia is facing again another famine which will be greater than the past one. In the past famine one thousand people were dying every day. In the coming one perhaps two thousand, three thousand people will be dying. And in the European Common Market, every six months they go on drowning so much food in the ocean – mountains of butter – just the cost of drowning it comes to two billion dollars. It is not the cost of the foodstuff, it is the cost of carrying the food to the ocean. And just by the side, in Ethiopia people don’t have water to drink, people don’t have food to eat.The situation has fallen so low that in Palestine the government was forced by the people to agree that they should be allowed to eat human bodies – of course of those who had died naturally. But this is the beginning…what is the problem if somebody has not died naturally, but has committed suicide, has hanged himself? The difference is not much. And what is the problem if you can get hold of some Israeli? It is a simple question, whether to eat the dead man first or to first make him dead and then eat. For the first time in history, a government has accepted that it is no longer a crime. And this is about human beings eating human beings. What about animals?If you look around the world it seems to be a madhouse. But the mad people are in the majority, and the maddest of them are chosen to be the presidents, to be the prime ministers, naturally.It happened in a madhouse. The old superintendent doctor was retiring and the new doctor was going to take charge. They celebrated the occasion in order to give a farewell to the retiring doctor and to give a welcome to the person who was coming in. When the old doctor was speaking, everybody was silent – no emotions, no expression, no clapping, no laughter, as if no one was there. But when the new doctor started speaking, a tremendous change happened. People were clapping, shouting, jumping, laughing. The new doctor could not understand – what is the matter? He asked his assistant, “What is happening?”He said, “I should not say it but I cannot hide it either. The mad people think you look more like them. You are the right person; the older one was a little too sane.”If man accepts whatever he is and uses his capacities for creativity – and everybody is born with certain capacities, certain talents, a certain creativity – he will be immensely happy in being nobody. You don’t have to be happy only if you become the richest man or the most powerful man. These are the childish ways of primitive man which we have carried up to now.I would like to say to you: drop the words “total acceptance.” Instead, replace them with the simple words, rejoicing in yourself. And the moment you rejoice in yourself, the whole existence rejoices in you. You have fallen in tune with the harmonious dance that is going on all around.Only man has fallen apart, and the reason he has fallen apart is because he wants to be somebody special. If you want to be special, you will have to accept some kind of madness.A psychoanalyst was asked, “I have heard many times these words ‘neurotic’…’psychotic’…but I don’t see what is the difference?”The psychoanalyst said, “The difference is very delicate. The psychotic thinks that two and two make five, and he is fanatically determined about it. Nobody can change his mind.”The man asked, “What about the neurotic?”He said, “The neurotic is one who knows that two and two are four, but is very uneasy about it.”Delicate differences…. Unless you rejoice in whatever you are, wherever you are, whoever you are, you are not sane. According to me the definition of sanity is a man rejoicing in his nature.Just not to leave you serious….A Chinese laundryman living in San Francisco opens a savings account at the bank and goes regularly to deposit his profits.After several months he has saved up a considerable sum. One day, he comes into the bank and says that he wants to withdraw all his money. The clerk is surprised, so the Chinaman explains that he is about to get married and go on his honeymoon. The manager is called and tries to persuade the man to just withdraw enough for his immediate requirements. He also explains that if he takes out all his money, he will lose the interest. But the Chinaman will not be persuaded and so eventually he walks out with all his money.A few weeks later, the bank manager meets the Chinaman on the street and asks him about his honeymoon and married life. The Chinaman has only this to say:“No good. Honeymoon and married life are just like banking – put in, take out, lose interest.”

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Om Mani Padme Hum 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Om Mani Padme Hum 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,It seems that an automatic process, more like a pregnancy, has taken over the steering wheel. I don't have to do a thing, though I can't stop listening. Insights present themselves even if not asked for. Is this the meaning of the expression “a good sadhana is effortless”? Please comment.Deva Amrito, it is the right time for you to see the truth in its utter nudity. Many ears may not be ready for it. But even though they are not ready for it, they are on the way to being ready one day. Let this be a seed in them: The truth about a good sadhana is that it is no longer a sadhana at all. A “good sadhana” is still a bad sadhana.The word sadhana has to be understood. It comes from the root sadhan; sadhan means methods, paths, ways, techniques. The so-called sadhanas of all the religions are just spiritual games people like to play. The word spiritual makes them more piously egoistic.Somebody is interested in football, somebody else is interested in playing cards – these are thought to be worldly games. But as I see it, there are no otherworldly games; all games are worldly. Somebody is trying to achieve more success, somebody else is trying to become richer, somebody is trying to be more powerful, and all these have been condemned by so-called religions without any exception.But when somebody starts moving toward higher planes of being then you forget completely that it is the same game, only the label has changed. It is the same ego trying to prove itself special, higher than others, better than others. It is still the same comparative mind, and the comparative mind is a mind in confusion, in a mess.A comparative mind is an insane mind.Amrito, if you simply allow things to happen – not even choosing; whatever comes to you is deeply, respectfully and gratefully accepted as a gift from the great existence – then you have become effortless. Even a slight choice on your part…“if it would have been just a little bit different”…and you have missed the point.To see existence as it is, choicelessly, is what is meant by effortlessness. It does not mean that you don’t have to do anything….Misunderstandings are so great, and particularly in the world of seekers, that they can make an effort to be choiceless. They can make an effort to be effortless, and they will not see what they are doing.The people who have known reality not as a knowledge but as an experience, have emphasized one point tremendously: that you are already what you can ever be. Your essential reality has already been given to you. It is not going to happen in the future. It is possible you may not realize it in the present – that does not mean that it is not present, it simply means your eyes are closed. You can stand with closed eyes before a sunrise and you will remain in darkness; that does not deny the existence of the sun. It simply shows your stupidity. Just open your eyes…and in fact all that you need is already given to you.I am reminded, Amrito, of a Sufi story. A very strange mystic, Junnaid, used to pray and every time he would pray – in the morning, in the evening, in the night – he would end up his prayer with a deep gratitude toward existence: “Your compassion and your abundance of gifts to me is so much that I feel embarrassed. How am I going to repay it? Except my empty gratefulness and my tears, I don’t have anything to give to you.”They were on a pilgrimage. He had many disciples with him. It happened that one time, for three days continuously, they passed through villages where there were fanatic Mohammedans. They would not give Junnaid and his disciples food, not even water. There was no question of shelter either. For three days in the desert without food, without water, without shelter…but the prayer continued to be the same and the gratefulness toward existence did not change even a little bit.This was too much for the disciples. When days were good, it was perfectly okay to be grateful, but for three days they have been starving, thirsty, in the cold nights of the desert – no shelter, and there is no hope that tomorrow things are going to be better. Finally, they encountered their master Junnaid and said, “There is a limit to everything. We have listened to your prayer for years, and we thought it was perfectly in tune with existence. Existence was giving us everything. But these three days we have waited, thinking that perhaps you will stop being grateful or maybe you will even complain, but you seem to be the same. Again the same gratitude, the same tears – we can’t understand it. For what are you being so full of gratitude?”Junnaid laughed and he said, “These three days were the most important in my life. These three days showed me whether I have any gratitude or not. Is my gratitude simply a bargain, a persuasion, or is my gratitude something that has grown in my heart? It doesn’t matter – as far as I am concerned, I don’t have a choice. Whatever existence gives to me is needed by me. These three days of starvation were absolutely needed by me; for it to be otherwise is not possible. These three days of thirst, coldness in the night, almost facing death, were absolutely my intrinsic needs. I don’t know about you – my gratitude is not conditional. My gratitude is unconditional, it is not because God is good to me. It has no reason at all; it is simply my joy, my blissfulness, my prayerfulness to existence. I don’t have a choice.”A choiceless awareness simply means whatever happens to you is perfectly the right thing to have happened. You don’t have any judgment about it. It does not mean that you will stop doing things; you will continue doing things but your doing things will be more like a man flowing in the current of the river, not swimming, not swimming against the current.The effort comes when you are against the current: existence wants you to move north and you want to move toward the south. There comes the struggle, there comes your effort, there comes your separate existence as an ego. But if you are simply flowing with the river wherever it is going, you don’t have a goal, because a man with a goal cannot be choiceless. You don’t have a destination, because a man with a destination cannot relax and cannot be choiceless. He has already chosen.There were two temples in Japan that were traditionally antagonistic to each other. For centuries they had been fighting, arguing against each other’s theology. Both the temples had two old priests, and two young boys to serve their small needs. Both the old monks had told the boys, “You should not talk with the other boy. We are not on talking terms; we are traditional enemies.” But boys are boys. They wanted to play with each other. In that lonely forest, far away from the nearest village, they were the only two persons who could have some communication with each other.One day, one boy dared to disobey the old monk. He stood by the road. He knew that every day the other boy would also come out of the temple to go to the market to fetch vegetables and other things. The boy came. The first boy asked him – very friendly – “Where are you going?”But the other boy said, “Wherever the winds take me.”The answer was not a friendly one; the answer was not to start a conversation. The boy just said this and moved away. The first boy felt very bad and he thought that his master was right: “These people are very ugly. I was asking a simple question and he is talking metaphysics.”He went to the temple and said to the master, “Please forgive me, I disobeyed you and I have been punished already.”The master listened and he said, “Don’t be worried. Tomorrow you stand at the same place and when the boy answers you by saying ‘Wherever the winds take me’ ask him: ‘If the winds are not blowing, then?’ You have to stop him, you have to defeat him. It is a question of our prestige.”Early in the morning the boy was ready – he had repeated many times what he had to say – and then he asked, as the boy was approaching near, “Where are you going?”And the boy said, “Wherever my legs take me.”Now this was too much! He had crammed his answer the whole night, and now the answer is absolutely irrelevant! With great anger he went to the master and he said, “Those people are really cunning. They are not people to be relied upon, they change their answers.”The master said, “I had told you before, but now you have started an unnecessary trouble. Tomorrow you stand there again, and when he says, ‘Wherever my legs take me’ you ask him, ‘If you had no legs, then?’”Ready with the answer, again the same situation; the boy asked, “Where are you going?” and the other boy said, “To fetch some vegetables from the market.”Now, what to do with these unreliable people?Whenever you have something fixed in your mind, you are going to be disappointed by existence. The old proverb has some truth in it: “Man proposes and God disposes.” But it is not that there is a God who disposes you. In your very proposition you have disposed yourself.Don’t propose and there is no possibility of anybody disposing you. Don’t have a goal and you will never be a failure. Don’t make a destination and you will never go wrong.But to understand it simply means you will have to go on floating with the river – whether it leads anywhere or not is not your concern. You are enjoying the moment. This very moment, with the sun shining and the birds singing and the trees around the river, is enough unto itself.But a tremendous calamity has happened to humanity, and the calamity has been brought by your so-called religious founders, by your so-called great moral leaders, your politicians, your priests, your professors; because for centuries these people have been telling you that as you are, you are not worthy enough. Condensed, their whole teaching is that you have to become worthy, that you have to deserve some respectability, some prestigiousness. As you are, you are empty.They had their own vested interest in it. The moralist goes on telling you that you are immoral; you are born in sin. He creates a certain psychology of guilt. It is a strategy. Once a man starts feeling guilty, he becomes sick. He loses his dignity, he loses his individuality, he loses his courage. He starts looking up to someone else to lead him, to guide him, because as far as he is concerned, he is born in sin and whatever he does is going to be wrong. He has lost his guts.And all your leaders are living by destroying you. They are leaders because you need someone to lead you, and to make you so condemned in your own eyes that you cannot ever think that you can stand on your own feet, that you can declare to the world that, “I am alone and as I am, I am absolutely right. This is the way existence has created me.”A tremendous revolution is needed in the world where each individual declares his individuality. But you declare yourself a Christian and you have lost your individuality; you declare yourself an Indian and you have lost your individuality. You declare yourself part of any organized ideology and you have moved into a miserable situation, out of which it is very difficult to find a way. You will be getting more and more, deeper and deeper, into the mess. Because all those people are enjoying their greatness by making you small.I am reminded of one of the great emperors of India, Akbar. He had a great joy in accumulating all kinds of geniuses in his court from all over the country, and he loved to ask questions and to listen to their discussions.One day he asked a very strange question. He came to the court, and on a blackboard he drew a straight line and asked the people of his court: “Without touching this line, can you make it smaller? There is a great prize waiting for you…” and he had a very beautiful diamond in his hand as a prize. Everybody started thinking…without touching it, how can you make it smaller?He had a man in his court who was a man with a great sense of humor. Since nobody else was standing up he went to the board and drew a bigger line underneath the smaller line. Without touching it he made it small.The emperor Akbar remembers the incident in his autobiography, Akbarnama: “Even I had not thought about it, I had just looked into small children’s books and found the puzzle. I thought, this is great! Because I could not figure out myself how you could make it small without touching it.” But in this small incident is hidden the whole misery of humanity. You have been made small without touching.Great stories have been propounded about Mahavira, that he does not perspire. Now only a man who has no skin and is made of plastic can manage not to perspire, and certainly plastic was not available twenty-five centuries ago. But why create such a story? Just to make you small – you perspire, you are ordinary mortals. Mahavira belongs to immortality, he does not perspire.I have inquired as deeply as possible…neither Krishna ever becomes old nor Buddha ever becomes old nor Mahavira ever becomes old. There is not a single statue, not a single picture, not a single description; they are always young. Just go into any Buddhist temple, any Jaina temple, any Hindu temple – it is strange. These people don’t grow. They seem to be like old gramophone records which get stuck and go on repeating the same line again and again and again.But they are kept young just to make you realize that they belong to a separate category, a higher category. They don’t belong to you. A snake bites Mahavira, and instead of blood, milk comes out….Some thirty years ago, I had come to Bombay for the first time, invited by a conference celebrating Mahavira’s birthday. Just before me, the most prominent Jaina monk described exactly this incident to prove that Mahavira is no ordinary mortal; he has come from the beyond to save you, to save humanity.Just by coincidence I was the second speaker and I asked the monk, “Have you ever thought about it? If the milk comes from the feet, then the whole body of Mahavira must be filled with milk because Mahavira cannot know where the snake is going to bite. And milk in a man’s body for forty years must have turned into curd, into butter. It cannot remain milk.“It is true that the human body is capable, particularly the female human body, but even a woman cannot produce milk from the feet. These are only simple conclusions: either Mahavira was just breasts all over the body, or he must be stinking! And the conclusion that you have drawn is that this proves him to be immortal, that he has come to save humanity…”But humanity does not seem to be saved.I have been wondering – so many saviors! Jesus is saving humanity, Buddha is saving humanity, Mahavira is saving humanity. Where is this humanity? We never come across the saved humanity, only these people who are bragging that they are going to save.I was sitting by the side of Christian College in Allahabad, on the bank of the Ganges. I was alone, it was getting darker, the sun was setting, and a man jumped in the river. I had no idea why he had jumped; it was not my business. And then he started shouting, “Help!” Only we two were there, and there was not time enough to inquire, “Why have you jumped? If you want to be saved, you were already saved…” But there was no time so I jumped, pulled him out – against his will, and that felt even more strange, that he was fighting with me.But somehow I pulled him out of the river and he said, “What kind of man are you? I was trying to commit suicide.”I said, “If you were committing suicide, then why were you shouting ‘Help, save me’?”He said, “It is human nature. I was determined to kill myself but when the cold water…and I realized that I don’t know swimming. I forgot all about the miseries which have driven me to commit suicide.”I said, “There is no problem.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “I don’t have to say anything.” I simply pushed him back into the river.He started shouting again. I said, “No more. It is your business. The first time I got trapped because I could not understand that a man who wants to commit suicide will shout for help, but now I know.”He came up one time, two times, and he said, “Save me, please, I don’t want to commit suicide!”I said, “Neither do I want to jump into that cold water again! I am happy where I am, you be happy wherever you are.”All these people are first forcing you to be sinners, immoral, unvirtuous, and then they are ready to save you. First they make you convinced that you are sick and then they hospitalize you. They run the hospital.All these people together, however differing in their philosophies, are absolutely in agreement on one point: that man has to be proved unworthy, undignified, undeserving. Only a humanity which has been forced into a state of having deep feelings of guilt can be enslaved – by the politicians, by the priests, by the pedagogues, but the basic strategy is the same.I am fighting against the whole human past, and I am fighting against all those who have been trying to save you. You are perfectly saved. There is no need for anybody to make unnecessary effort to save you.You are as good as existence needs you to be. In this moment, in this place, nobody else can replace you. You are irreplaceable. You are not a machine where parts can be replaced. That is your dignity.I was telling Amrito just the other night that there have been people like J. Krishnamurti who will not even create a disciple, and my effort is just the opposite. To me, the disciple is only the beginning of a master. My effort is to give you the dignity of being a master. And unless each of my sannyasins is a master unto himself, he is going to remain in different kinds of slaveries, consciously or unconsciously.Nobody in the whole history of man has tried to give man his dignity. Yes, Jesus says to people, “You are my sheep, I am your shepherd.” And I sometimes wonder: not a single man stood up to say, “Shut up, please! I am also a shepherd.”Gautam Buddha’s story is that he was born while his mother was standing under a saal tree. It is a strange way of being born, and not only that, he stood directly on the earth coming out of the womb. Ordinarily the head comes first. Once in a while the feet also come first, but nobody has ever heard that a just-born child stands on the earth and walks seven feet and declares to the world, “I am the most enlightened person in the whole existence.”My problem is that for twenty-five centuries nobody has criticized this man, what kind of nonsense…we have become so enslaved that we have lost the courage. Even when we see absolutely patent nonsense, we don’t raise a question. We simply accept it. We are left in such a situation that we have lost all our intelligence. And the profit goes certainly to the vested interests; they would like you to remain in the same situation.I would like you, Amrito, just to forget all about spiritual growth. Forget all about spiritual goals. Existence has no goal; existence is simply a tremendous playfulness of energy, not going anywhere. Rejoice in this dance, be part of this dance, and flowers of tremendous bliss will shower on you.Nobody has to lead you and nobody has to save you. All those people were nothing but very subtle egoists. They have dominated humanity up to now, and this is the result that we see all over the world – just misery. People go on living, because what else to do. They go on dragging themselves knowing perfectly well that in the end is the grave. Hoping, dreaming, imagining, but not living.I teach you life, and life is now and here.It is always now and always here and except drowning yourself into life in all its dimensions, in all its colors, there is no paradise. There is nothing else but this sheer dance.People go on changing their illusions. When they are young somebody has the illusion of love; perhaps love will open the doors of all the mysteries. It opens the doors, not of the mysteries, but of the miseries. Somebody is running after money. And a man like Henry Ford, when asked, “You have earned more money than anybody else in the world. Now, at the top, how do you feel?” said, “Utterly frustrated, because at the top there is nothing. All that I have learned in my whole life is climbing ladders. I went on climbing hoping that on the next rung may be the fulfillment…but the fulfillment never comes.”I have said to Amrito that when people are finished with their worldly hopes, illusions, dreams, then they change and they start hoping about spiritual growth, about God, about paradise. These are the same people and this is the same mind which has not learned anything at all.Unless you are completely disillusioned – that means now you don’t think of tomorrow at all – you will not know the pure truth of existence, which just exists in this moment. You will not fall in tune with it. You are always moving away, postponing. You are going, you are always on the go.It is time for you to be completely disillusioned – of worldly illusions, of otherworldly illusions, of love, of money, of enlightenment. Just simply be whatever you are, and you have arrived home.In fact you have never left it.You have always been here.Just to bring you back to your senses….Grandma Faginbaum, out walking her dog, goes into the local supermarket and leaves the dog tied to the railing outside.Immediately, the dog is surrounded by all the neighborhood dogs who come to sniff.A cop, standing close by, watches this and calls to the old woman, “Lady, you can’t leave your dog alone like that, she’s in heat.”“Eat?” says Grandma Faginbaum. “She’ll eat anything.”“No, no!” shouts the cop. “The dog should be bred.”“Bread, cake, biscuits,” calls out Grandma, “she’ll eat anything you give her.”Becoming frustrated, the cop yells out, “Your dog should be screwed!”“So screw her,” calls back Grandma. “I always wanted a police dog.”

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Om Mani Padme Hum 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Om Mani Padme Hum 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,A few weeks ago, I was awake, and suddenly there was only talking. There was no talker. For years I had listened to the statement that the observer and the observed were one. I saw there was no room, no necessity for a thinker; only consciousness and the arising of phenomena. Instead of jumping out of bed, I turned around and slept.Insight seems to be like a gentle breeze, a whisper. Will you say something about the non-dramatic quality of real insight?Deva Amrito, J. Krishnamurti has made it known worldwide that “the observer is the observed.” I want to refute him completely. The moment there is no observer, there is nothing to be observed. The observer and the observed disappear simultaneously – and there is only silence; neither the knower nor the known.This is something very complex to understand, because the mind always wants duality. With the two the mind is absolutely at ease. The knower and the known…and the two always create the third, the knowledge. The observer and the observed are bound to create the third, the observation. And then there is no end to this infinite regress.My own silence is, that there is no observer and there is no observed. Hence nothing can be said about it. The moment you say it, you lie.It is one of the reasons Lao Tzu never said anything, never wrote anything. He had a great following, but a very strange following. Every disciple had come to listen, to understand, to know, but Lao Tzu insistently, his whole life long, refused to say anything about truth, or to write anything about truth. He was ready to talk about anything else – but the people had come to know about the truth….Finally the day came. Lao Tzu left for the Himalayas to enter into the eternal peace of those beautiful mountains. But the emperor of China was also interested to know what Lao Tzu had been hiding and not telling, not even giving a hint about what truth is. He ordered all the borders to be closed to Lao Tzu: “He cannot leave China unless he writes something about truth.”Lao Tzu was caught crossing the border toward the Himalayas – respectfully, lovingly; the emperor was not an enemy but a disciple.The emperor himself was present there, because that was the route they assumed he would take toward the Himalayas. A beautiful house was made for him so that he could rest and write down his experience of truth. Unless he did it, the doors would not be open for him, and he was guarded continuously. This was a strange situation – perhaps no other master has ever encountered such a situation – loaded guns in the hands of the disciples!And we can understand the situation of the disciples: they wanted to preserve the most important experience of truth for future generations. Under compulsion, Lao Tzu closed himself in the house and wrote a small book. The first sentence in that book says, “That which can be said cannot be true. That which can be written is bound to be a lie. Remember these two statements while you read my book.”Even loaded guns cannot force a master to say something which cannot be said. When the emperor got the book, Lao Tzu was released. But he had deceived them. If you remember these statements, that truth said becomes untrue, truth expressed loses the quality of being true – if these conditions have to be remembered while reading the book, in fact there is no point in reading it! But Lao Tzu was gone.What had been the difficulty for Lao Tzu? Because every Tom, Dick, and Harry is talking about truth. Only Toms, Dicks and Harrys can talk about truth because they know nothing about it. To enter that silence where the two disappear….Krishnamurti has chosen to say that when the two disappear only one remains. But that goes against all the mystic experiences of the world. Because if one remains, the other is just around the corner; you cannot conceive what one means if you do not have some idea of the two.A great mystic, Shankara from India, instead of using one tried a different way. It makes not much difference, but it is certainly better than J. Krishnamurti’s idea. Shankara says a nonduality remains. He does not say one remains, because one reminds you of two. He reverses the process. He says the two are no more – that will remind you of the one. But even reminding you in an indirect way is still the same.Perhaps Gautam Buddha comes very close to saying the unsayable, but I am saying “very close.” I am not saying that he has said it – almost. He denies rather than affirms. Krishnamurti affirms: “the observer is the observed.” Gautam Buddha says, “Neither is there an observer nor is there the observed.” In the whole history of mankind, perhaps he comes closest. He simply denies, and his denial is such that it does not provoke the idea of one; neither the observer nor the observed. And he keeps silent about what remains. Just pure silence, nobody even to experience it, nobody even to express it.I repeat that J. Krishnamurti has been confusing thousands of people in his long life of ninety years. If you ask me, Amrito, I will say just be quiet about it.Let it be.Don’t try to describe what it is.This is a deep itch in the mind, to describe everything. Unless the mind describes it, the itch remains. It is a kind of sickness. When everything has come to a standstill, when you are not, who is going to experience? Who is going to observe, and what is going to be observed? Just a stillness…you have disappeared in it and the observed has also disappeared in it.This is unsayable and will remain unsayable. Howsoever close you come to it, you are still far away. My own understanding is just to avoid talking about it. Don’t mention it. Experience, but there should be no experiencer.In ordinary human life, there is nothing which can be compared to this experience – that creates great difficulty. Otherwise some indications, some hints…and all kinds of ways have been tried:“It is one.”“It is not two.”“It is neither this nor that.”Just one thing has been left, which I am trying:It is that neither are you an observer nor is there an observed. A pure oceanic vastness, an utter silence which cannot be reduced into language in any way….But the mind is more cunning than you understand it to be. I will read your question to show you how the mind brings everything from the back door. “A few weeks ago I was awake…” You were there, and you were also experiencing that you were awake. The observer was there, the observed was there. The duality was perfectly following you.“…and suddenly saw there was only talking…” Still the duality – who saw the talking? You were still there, listening to the talking. Because you were listening, you thought there was only talking, but the talking cannot exist without a listener. This is something to be understood.The moment you leave your room and lock it, do you think your clothes in the room continue to remain the same color? The white remains white, the blue remains blue, the green remains green? You are wrong. The moment you are out of the room and there is nobody to see, colors disappear. For a color to exist, the eyes are absolutely necessary. Who is going to see the color? Ordinarily we don’t think so – that the moment you leave your room everything changes – but the fact is scientific, that every color disappears with you. And the moment you look through the keyhole they all come back! It looks strange, but the whole of life is such.You stand and look at the sun. There is light, tremendous beauty. But close your eyes: for you, the sun is no more a light, and it creates no more colors. For you, all flowers lose their colorfulness.It is not a new question. For almost five thousand years in India the philosophers have discussed it, and the discussion still continues even in this century. One British philosopher, Bradley, and his colleague, Bosanquet, insisted that if a man is deaf no sounds exist for him, and if all people become deaf there will be no sounds. If all people become blind there will be no colors, no flowers, no rainbows, no stars. It looks very illogical, because the flower has its own color…It does not have.This strange experiment has finally come to the conclusion that when you see a color as red, it is all colors except red. Why does it look red? Because the sunrays fall on your bodies, on your flowers, on your trees; every flower absorbs rays from among the seven colors of the rainbow. Perhaps if all colors are absorbed, then the flower will look black. But if the flower resists and does not allow the red to be absorbed, the flower will look red. The red is the rejected ray of the sun that reaches your eye. And if the flower rejects the whole range of seven colors then it will look white.It is not coincidental that in all the traditions of the world white has always been thought to be something pure – without knowing exactly why; the reasonings that science has produced are very new. But white somehow represented purity, innocence, cleanliness. And every religion has depicted the devil as black. These are symbolic. The devil is nothing but greed. He goes on absorbing everything; he never rejects anything. The white is non-greed. It never accumulates anything, it goes on reflecting it back to its source. The devil is a beggar; hence he has been depicted as black. But the white is utter simplicity. These symbols have persisted for thousands of years, but their implications and their scientific reasons have become available only now.When you say, Amrito, “Suddenly I saw there was only talking,” you forgot the seer, the listener. You became so much focused on listening that you forgot “who” is listening. This is what I call mind’s very subtle cunningness. It was still two, but it managed to deceive you as one: “There was no talker.” These are the rationalizations of the mind. It said, “Look, there is only talking, no talker!” But what about the listener?Wherever there are two, there are three. And you became impressed by the fact that there is no talker and the talking is going on, and you forgot – who is being aware that there is no talker? And who is being aware of the talking? You were there, perfectly there, and the duality had not disappeared.“For years I had listened to the statement that the observer and the observed were one.” You have listened to that statement by J. Krishnamurti. But sometimes I feel so strange that J. Krishnamurti perhaps talked more than anybody else before him…I am saying before him, not after him – I am still alive; that poor fellow is dead! When he said the observer and the observed were one, who was making this decision? Who was being aware that the observer and the observed are one? Who was the witness?And not a single person throughout his fifty years of continuous teaching ever raised the question, that “I can understand the observer is the observed, but who is the witness?” Certainly a witness is needed, somebody who is standing behind and seeing that the observer and the observed are one. Again he has fallen into the same fallacy. That’s why I said I am going to refute it completely.You say, “I saw there was no room.” Then where were you?The word room is very meaningful. It simply means space. People have completely forgotten the root meaning of the word ‘room’. When you take out all the furniture from your room, all the bookshelves, everything out, you say, “Now the room looks roomier.” All those things were obstructing the room. They were filling the space. If you say, “I saw there was no room” you were there, and your very presence needs a certain space. That is your room. There may not be walls to your room. Even if you make the whole sky your room – it does not matter how big the room is; if you are there, you will be surrounded by space. Without space you cannot be there. And that space is the real room.I used to stay in a very rich man’s house. He was so rich that he used to collect all kinds of junk, and in the guest house where I used to stay, he had put everything you can possibly conceive. When he took me for the first time to the guest house he said, “This is going to be your room.”I looked inside and I said, “But where is the room?” A big, beautiful piano, radios, very costly furniture, many paintings and even though television had not come to that city at that time, he had a beautiful television set. Some day, television will come. I said, “I can see so many things, they have destroyed the room completely! If you want me to stay in this place, I refuse. You take all this junk so that I can have some room.”He could not understand me. He said, “What do you mean by room?”I mean that “room” simply means spaciousness. The room can be bigger, can be smaller, but if you are there, your very presence creates a room around you. As far as you can see – that is the wall of your room. They will both disappear together. But then there will be no one to say, “The room has disappeared. I have also disappeared.” You cannot say that “I have also disappeared.” There will be nobody to say anything.No room, no you, no observer, no observed.Just a pure silence without any ripples.A famous Sufi story about Mulla Nasruddin…He was always bragging in the town’s cafeteria that he is a very generous man, very compassionate. People were getting tired of it. They said, “We have listened to this so many times, but we have never seen a single act of compassion, generosity, friendliness. Prove it!”He said, “Okay, you are all invited” – a group of a hundred people from the cafeteria – “to come to my house for dinner today. Just follow me and you will see the act.”In the heat of discussion he said this, but as he started approaching closer to the house he realized what he had done. In the morning his wife had sent him to fetch some vegetables from the market, and the whole day he had been wandering here and there. He had not come back all day to the house. And he knew perfectly well, as every husband knows, that there is only one kind of husband in the world: they are all henpecked.He was also aware that there was nothing in the house for one hundred people – and he has invited them for dinner! He cooled down, slowed down, and then finally he said, “Listen, you are all husbands and we all know the real situation. I don’t have to explain it to you. You please wait outside the door. First let me go in and find a way to tell my wife that without informing her, I have invited one hundred guests for dinner.”It was understandable. Everybody was a husband, so there was no question of not understanding it. They remained outside. Mulla Nasruddin went in, closed the door…and the wife was furious! The whole day she had been waiting, hungry because there was no food, no vegetables, nothing in the house. Mulla Nasruddin said, “That is a secondary problem. I am in a more troublesome state. First help me.”The wife said, “What is the trouble?”Mulla Nasruddin said, “In the heat of discussion, I have invited one hundred people for dinner. They are standing outside the house.”The wife said, “My God, are you mad? There is no food even for two of us! Now what do you want me to do?”He said, “Just a simple thing. You go out and ask them why they are standing there. Naturally they will say, ‘Mulla Nasruddin has invited us for dinner.’ Tell them that there must have been some misunderstanding because since the morning he has not been seen: ‘Where did you see him? I am waiting for him.’”The wife also felt a little weird, because Mulla was standing inside the house…but there was no other way. Finally, hesitantly, she went to the door, just opened the door a little bit and asked, “Why this crowd? What are you doing here?”They said, “We are not a crowd. We are friends of Mulla Nasruddin, your husband. And he has invited us for dinner.”The wife said, “He left the house in the morning and since then he has not returned. There must be some misunderstanding.”They said, “There is no misunderstanding. A hundred people are witnesses: he came with us and he entered this door.”The wife was at a loss what to do because the Mulla was inside. Mulla was also listening. He went upstairs and from the window he said, “Listen you fellows! Can’t you understand a single thing, that Mulla may have come with you and may have gone out from the back door. And feel ashamed! Arguing with a poor woman!”Sufis have used the story for centuries. These stories are so simple and so beautiful, but so pregnant with meaning.You say, Amrito, “I saw there was no room.” It is impossible. You will have to understand Mulla Nasruddin’s situation. He is denying that he is in the house. His very denial is a proof that he is in the house.You cannot say, “I am not.” Then who is saying it? In saying “I am not,” you have proved that you are.You go on saying, “…no necessity for a thinker…” Who is thinking this no necessity for a thinker? It is certainly a thought. The necessity or no necessity are both thoughts. “Only consciousness”… but that is again a thought – “and the arising of phenomena.” So everything has come back from the back door! “Arising of phenomena” – certainly you are the observer and the phenomena is the observed. The mind has come back, saying to you, “There is no necessity of thinking.” But this is thinking. If you are, you cannot get rid of the other. The other will follow you just like your shadow. You may become oblivious to it, you may not see it. Mind knows very cunning ways.And I am analyzing your question for a certain reason, because it is going to be everybody’s problem sooner or later. A man comes to me and says, “I experienced bliss.” It is nonsense. Either you can be or bliss can be. Both cannot be together. And if there is only bliss, who is going to report it?Lao Tzu’s greatest disciple was Chuang Tzu. He was moving on the path. He was reporting every day his experiences – arising of spiritual phenomena, experiences of light, lotuses flowering – but Lao Tzu never paid any attention to what he was saying. The only thing that he could see from Lao Tzu’s face was, “Don’t waste my time. Just go, start meditating again.” But one day Chuang Tzu never came – he used to come early in the morning. Lao Tzu waited for him. It was time for sunset and he inquired, “Where is Chuang Tzu?”They said, “He is sitting under a tree. From the morning he has been sitting there.”Lao Tzu said, “It seems I will have to go and see what is happening. Something is certainly happening for the first time.” And he went, shook the body of Chuang Tzu and said, “Aha! But keep your mouth shut! Now there is no need every day to come to me to describe all that rubbish.”And Chuang Tzu fell at the feet of Lao Tzu with tears of joy and he said, “Your compassion is great. How many years have I tortured you? And your compassion was so great, you never said anything. You simply said, ‘Continue.’ You never denied. And today you have come to me just to say, ‘Aha!’”Nothing more can be said.“I saw,” you are saying, Amrito, “there was no room, no necessity for a thinker; only consciousness.” Why are you putting the word only? Unconsciously you are also aware that if there is only consciousness, there is no need for the adjective “only.” You know perfectly well you were there, and with you all the luggage that you have been preserving in the mind was there.“…and the arising of phenomena. Instead of jumping out of bed, I turned around and slept.” That is the only good thing that you did! And if ever again such stupid things happen to you, remember – don’t jump out of the bed, just take a turn and go to sleep. Sleep is far better than dreaming. Your experiences were nothing but dreams, soap bubbles, with no validity of their own.“Insight seems to be like a gentle breeze.” Insight does not “seem to be” like a gentle breeze. It is. And the difference is great. Do you say to someone, “It seems I love you…it almost seems I love you”? Either you love or you don’t.Again you have started dreaming, because just turning on your side does not make much difference. You can dream facing to one side, you can dream facing to another side and there are dreamers who are dreaming with open eyes walking in the streets. Dreaming is possible in every situation. “Insight seems to be like a gentle breeze, a whisper.” No. When the insight opens there is no way to describe it, you cannot say it “seems like a gentle breeze” or “a whisper.” It is absolute silence. A whisper is too loud, and a gentle breeze is far below.In our ordinary experiences nothing exists that can be compared to the flowering of your insight. Those who have come to the insight have suddenly become utterly silent because they cannot find how to say it, what to say about it, whom to say it to. Who is going to understand?Gautam Buddha became enlightened one full-moon night and for seven days he did not utter a single word. The story is so beautiful. It needs to be understood from different angles, because it brings new meanings, new implications. Why did he remain silent for seven days?First, he was so overwhelmed there was no question of doing anything about it. Everything was happening….Later on…he had five disciples. He thought, “At least I should say something to those five disciples. I was ignorant, but I pretended to be a master.” And there are many who are doing the same all over the world, because it is easier to be a master than to be a disciple. The disciple has to go through such a transformation.He felt compassion for those five who had followed him, but what to say to them? Will they understand? He knew perfectly well that if he himself had not been overwhelmed with the explosion, nobody could have explained it to him. He would have laughed. And he does not want to become a laughingstock, but the compassion is there…which is intrinsic as you become more and more centered, more and more yourself, more and more inseparable from existence. Compassion simply comes to you. It is not something to be cultivated, not something to be disciplined. Just as the spring comes and the flowers start blossoming, the morning comes and the trees start awakening, something spontaneous…so is compassion.He tried hard – in what way to convey it? But all words were empty. All words were contaminated. And the problem was more complicated: he will speak the word, and something of the truth will be lost in speaking. Then the person will hear it, and whatever is left will be lost in his hearing, because he is going to interpret it in his own way according to his own prejudices.On the seventh day he decided not to speak at all. Those seven days were a continuous anguish – “I know it now, but I am absolutely helpless.” The story is that five gods…in Buddhism there is not one god, there are as many gods as there are living beings, because every living being ultimately has to flower into a god. As far as the question of gods is concerned, Mohammedanism, Judaism, Christianity, are very dictatorial. Their gods resemble Ronald Reagan more than anybody else. Buddhism has a very democratic idea about god. Everybody has the potential. It is up to you when you realize it. And there is no hurry either, because eternity is available.Five gods came to Gautam Buddha, prayed to him, “It happens very rarely, in millions of years, that a man comes to this state, to this space, to this blissfulness, to this truth. And the whole existence waits that now your fragrance will raise the consciousness of all those who are ready to move, who are ready to transform, and you have decided not to speak! We have come to pray to you, please speak.”They had to argue with Gautam Buddha for many days, because each argument was refuted by him. And the gods also felt that he was right: nobody is going to understand, everybody is going to misunderstand. Rather than helping people, the greater possibility is that the people will stone him to death!But they were adamant. They went aloof into the forest to prepare for the final argument with Buddha…“Whatever he is saying, he is right and we cannot convince him to speak. First, the truth is unspeakable. Second, it is not understandable. Thirdly, it goes against people’s ideas of truth, and that creates enmity.”I can say it from my own experience….Dale Carnegie wrote a book, How To Win Friends And Influence People. My own experience is in how to influence people and create enemies! I have created so many enemies around the world, perhaps nobody can be a competitor to me. Twenty-five countries have passed laws in their parliaments that I cannot enter their countries. Not only can I not enter, I cannot even land my airplane at their international airports to be refueled. It takes not more than fifteen minutes. In fifteen minutes at the international airport – and I will not be coming out of the plane – their whole morality is in danger. Their thousands-of-years-old tradition is in danger. Their church is in danger. Their whole new generation can be corrupted just by me sitting in an airplane at an international airport!The gods worked hard – how to persuade Gautam Buddha? Arguments don’t seem to lead anywhere. Finally they came the last time and they said, “Whatever you have been saying to us is true. Just one point more: there are millions of people who will not understand you, and there are millions who will become antagonistic to you because your truth is going to destroy their lies. And their lies are their comforts, their consolations, their only hope. Your truth is too dangerous. We are convinced of your arguments; just one simple point: among millions of people, there may be one person…You cannot deny the possibility of one person who is just on the boundary line and needs only a little push. Are you not going to help that man to cross the boundary line?”Gautam Buddha agreed: “There is a possibility of someone, somewhere, who is just at that point but is clinging because he is afraid of moving into the unknown. A little push, and even before he realizes it, he has opened his wings and flown into the unknown. I will speak. I will speak to the last of my breath.” And he spoke for forty-two years. He was a man of immense commitment to his promise. To the very last, he continued – an impossible task. To stand for truth is to stand against the whole history of mankind. To stand for truth is to stand absolutely alone against the whole world. And I am saying this from my own experience.Just the other day I received a letter from a man who works for Time magazine in America. He has asked two questions – one is important for you. He says, “Your effort is to save humanity; then why have you spoken against Jesus?”In the first place, I am not making any effort to save anyone. And I have spoken against Jesus because he was giving consolations to people…“I will save you.” That is the most dangerous and poisonous statement. It makes you relaxed – you need not worry, you simply believe in Jesus and he will save you. On the last day of judgment, Jesus will sort out his sheep and tell God, “These are my people.” They will enter into paradise, and the remaining humanity will fall into the abysmal darkness of hell for eternity. I am against such consolations.And the man seems to be a Jesus freak. He cannot even understand what question he is asking. Who is saved by Jesus? He could not save himself, and at the last moment on the cross he became utterly disillusioned. Very few people have lived in such deep illusions as Jesus Christ, because he believed he is the only begotten son of God. What happened? – God started using birth control methods? Why only one begotten son? The reality is, Jesus was not the son of his own father, Joseph. Some hooligan has played a trick on the poor innocent Mary. That hooligan has become the Holy Ghost.If such things are holy, then what is unholy? Making other people’s wives pregnant without their permission – if this is holy then there is nothing unholy in the world. But he remained with this idea that he is the only begotten son of God and he has come to save humanity.On the cross…because people finally got too bored; Judea was a very small place and he was roaming around Judea saying the same thing; “I have come to save you.” And everybody knew he was uneducated, uncultured. He knows nothing of the scriptures, he is not even a rabbi, he has been working with his so-called father Joseph in his carpentry workshop, and suddenly he has become the only begotten son of God. Naturally he irritated people, annoyed people. If you don’t want to be saved you will be annoyed if somebody comes every day knocking on your door to say that he has come to save you.Jesus was crucified for different reasons than Socrates was poisoned. Socrates was poisoned because he had a truth which made the consolations of people absolutely absurd. Jesus, on the contrary, is giving consolations. Who were the people who gathered around him? He had twelve apostles. All were fishermen, farmers, gardeners. Except Judas, nobody was educated. And naturally they thought, “This is a good chance. On our own we cannot hope to be saved. And this man is so authoritative, let us cling to him. There is nothing to lose.”But on the cross, even Jesus became suspicious. Because he was waiting – God will come sitting on a white cloud, create a miracle, save his only begotten son and prove to the Jews that “You have been wrong, you have mistreated my son.” But nothing happened, not even a white cloud. He looked again and again toward the sky. There was no indication of any miracle, not even a rehearsal. Everything was silent and finally he blurted out, “Father, have you forsaken me? Have you forgotten me?” But still there was no answer.There is no father in the sky and the skies don’t answer anybody.This man from Time magazine says to me, “You have come to save humanity…” Who gave him that idea? I don’t want to save anybody. It is your business, why should I interfere in your life? even if the interference is for the good. I can explain my own experiences, I can indicate possible ways, but I am not going to save anybody. You have to walk the path alone, without any illusions.Yes, certainly if I find someone just on the borderline, I will push him. I am lazy, but that much I can do. I am trying to push Amrito; he is just on the borderline, but there is always a nostalgia to look backward…the beautiful experiences of the mind, and ahead is an open sky with no limits. It creates fear and trembling. But Amrito has come closer and closer to me so I am going to take the risk and push him into the unknown.He is saying, “Will you say something about the non-dramatic quality of real insight?” In real insight there is no drama; it is absolutely ordinary. People like drama, although they know it is only a drama. All the religions are creating dramas for people’s entertainment. People love to be entertained. But Amrito, now there is not going to be any dramatic experience – just a push and a sound following you, “Aha!”Milarepa has asked, “Why do you like the childlike quality?” The reason is very simple. Because they are such innocent people, so nonserious, unaware of all kinds of games people play – mundane, sacred, human, superhuman. I will give you a few examples so that you can forget Amrito and what happened to him.The Goldberg family is on a picnic. Hymie is standing near the edge of a high cliff, admiring the sea crashing on the rocks far below.Little Herschel comes up to him and says, “Hey Dad, Mom says it is not safe here. So either you stand back or give me the sandwiches.”Little Ernie is at the seashore when a pretty blond comes out of the surf and finds that she has lost the top half of her bathing suit.Embarrassed, she crosses her arms in front of her chest and hurries across the beach.She almost reaches to where she has left her towel when little Ernie asks, “Lady, if you are giving away those puppies, could I have the one with the pink nose?”Miss Goodbody, the teacher, is approaching her classroom when little Ernie comes toward her from the other direction, deliberately winking his left eye.“Ernest,” says Miss Goodbody, quite shocked. “Are you winking at me?”“No,” says Ernie, making a left turn into the classroom, “I have just got my turn signal on.”

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Om Mani Padme Hum 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Om Mani Padme Hum 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,You have now been enlightened for almost thirty-six years. How does it feel to be beyond the beyond the beyond?P.S. Can I meet you in the pub afterward?Vimal, it seems you have taken too much drink, because we are in the pub! This place can only be described as belonging to those who are drunk with the divine…so drunk that they have forgotten their nationality, forgotten their church, forgotten even who they are.Vimal is asking me if I can meet him afterward in the pub, but beyond this pub there is no other place so drunk with the divine dance and song. What I am teaching you is to find a source within yourself which can make you a drunkard.The joy of this life, the bliss, the ecstasy, belongs only to those whose wine is not coming from the outside – that is very ephemeral, very temporal, made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. There is another wine which grows within you. The moment you start moving inward, there is no need for anything else to make you oblivious to all the misery that surrounds you. There is no need for any other drug.A few idiots in the West have started calling a drug “ecstasy.” Now that is absolutely against all the laws of the world, because ecstasy has been for centuries copyrighted by my people! And it is not an outside drug, it flows in the very juices of your life. You don’t have to move even an inch; wherever you are you can be surrounded by all possibilities of blissfulness. And these possibilities of blissfulness are not temporal; it is not that tomorrow morning you will have a hangover. The more you drink, the more sober, the more sane, the more alert, the more conscious you become.Unless a drug is found within your being, you are bound to look for it somewhere else. It raises a tremendously significant question. As long as we can remember in human history…the oldest, ancientmost scripture is the Rig Veda of the Hindus, and the Rig Veda talks about a certain drug, somrasa.One of the most intelligent men of our century, Aldous Huxley, became very interested in searching for what this somrasa was, because the seers of the Rig Veda used to drink it and dance around the fire. Certainly it seems it must have been a drug, and particularly to the Western objective thinker it cannot be anything else than a drug.Aldous Huxley experimented with all kinds of drugs and finally he decided that LSD seems to come very close to the description of somrasa. In the hope that in the future LSD will be more refined – because it is a synthetic drug, manufactured; hence there is every possibility to improve upon it, to take away all the ingredients which can be harmful and leave only that which brings health, wholeness, awareness, and a tremendous insight into the mysteries of existence…Hoping that some day scientists were going to discover it, Huxley had already named it soma, just to pay respect to the ancient seers of the Rig Veda.But Aldous Huxley was in a deep misunderstanding. The somrasa that is being described in the Rig Veda is certainly a drug just like marijuana which used to grow in the Himalayas. Perhaps it still grows there but we have not been able to find the place where it grows.And the fire they were dancing around has nothing to do with the inner fire of life. I have looked into the Rig Veda as deeply, as sympathetically as possible. The people who are talking about the somrasa and the fire ritual were even sacrificing human beings, not to mention sacrificing other animals. The Hindus, who go on continuously making trouble in this country because of their insistence that cow slaughter should be stopped, should read their ancientmost scriptures. All their priests were slaughtering cows as a sacrifice to the fire god, and they were all eating the meat of the cows. Now, these people cannot be said to be meditative.I absolutely deny the Rig Veda and the prestige that it has in the minds of men, because people don’t read it and people don’t analyze it and people don’t see its stupidities and all kinds of inhumanities.In the Rig Veda women are just a commodity. You can purchase women in the marketplace in any auction. Even the so-called seers had many wives, and they were not even satisfied by that. That is an absolutely ugly state, that any human being reduces so many women into cattle. Over and above all that, they were continually purchasing beautiful girls in auctions.People have forgotten – times change, words take on new colors. Now in India the word vadhu simply means the newly-married woman. But in the times of Rig Veda, vadhu meant a woman who has newly been purchased from the market. Every so-called seer had two kinds of women: one group were his wives and the other were vadhus. The word vadhu is not respectable; it simply means a prostitute, purchased – a commodity, not a human being. It can be sold at any moment.And the miracle was that the children from the married wife would be the legitimate children, and the children from the purchased wife would not be legitimate. Man has done so much inhumanity to other human beings that it is incalculable. How can a child be illegitimate? Parents can be illegitimate, but a child cannot be. Every child is as innocent as any other child. It does not matter whether the child is born to a prostitute or to a purchased woman or to a married woman. In all cases the child is absolutely legitimate. But people are very cunning in throwing their responsibilities on others. Parents are never called illegitimate. Children are called illegitimate.These seers accumulated immense wealth, had many slaves, used to eat meat – I cannot conceive that they had found the inner ecstasy I am talking about. All the circumstantial evidence goes against them. And look at their prayers – their prayers are so stupid that one feels embarrassed that these people were called great seers. Their prayers are in the Rig Veda, and the Rig Veda consists ninety-eight percent of prayers. Only two percent can be sorted out, cleaned, interpreted in a way that makes some sense. Otherwise, ninety-eight percent of it consists of such prayers that you will not believe….One seer is praying to God, drinking that ancient LSD of Aldous Huxley, “This time, my God, listen to my prayer: your clouds should rain only on my fields, not on the fields of my enemies. You have never listened to me but this time I am sacrificing so many cows, so many horses, and you have to listen. Give more children to me, and don’t give a single child to my enemies.” And who are the enemies? – other seers, and they are also praying! Prayers which look so stupid… “If you are compassionate, give a proof to me: the milk in the breasts of my enemy’s cows should dry up.”These are religious people? “Give victory to me, to my friends, and defeat to my enemies and their friends.” I cannot think of these people as meditative. Aldous Huxley was absolutely wrong. Somrasa was nothing but some herbal drug; perhaps it may have been marijuana, because it still grows in Kulu Manali and in other parts of the Himalayas. There is no need to cultivate it, it simply grows naturally. Those are the places where the Rig Veda was composed.As far as I am concerned, my interest is that all the governments of the world and all the religions of the world, all the moral teachers of the world have been against drugs; still drugs are more predominant today than they have ever been. The more they have been condemned, prohibited, made illegal, the more attractive they have become. People used to drink and take drugs at a certain stage, but the latest information from California is that school children are taking drugs, and small boys and girls are suffering in jails because they have been found taking drugs.It is a strange story – all the religions are against drugs, all the governments are against drugs, all the teachers, all the moralists are against drugs, and the influence of drugs goes on growing. There must be something deeper in it than people have looked into.My understanding is that unless man finds a drug within himself, which I call ecstasy, he will go on finding some kind of drug as a substitute in the outside world. Only meditation can stop a person from taking drugs. No law can prohibit them – all laws have failed. It only creates hypocrites.I am not against ecstasy, but when I say ecstasy I don’t mean the drug that is available in the market. I mean the ecstasy that you are born with, that you are still holding inside you, and you have not touched. Just a little taste of it and everything else on the outside immediately becomes meaningless.You have the source of the infinite ecstasy within you.Yes, I teach you to be drunkards, but your drink has to come from your own innermost center. And the difference can be very easily understood: every outer drug will make you unconscious, addicted, and every time you will need more and more of it because your body will become immune to it.Still, in India, there are a few ancient traditions which have fallen into the same fallacy as Aldous Huxley. But they have gone farther than Aldous Huxley; they drink all kinds of alcoholic beverages, they use all kinds of drugs. A moment comes when no drug can make them unconscious, no drug can bring them what they have been trying to find – a way to forget themselves, to forget this miserable world, to forget all these people. The last resort is that there are ashrams in Assam; they are the only remnants of a very long-standing tradition. They keep cobra snakes as a last resort – when no drug affects you, the cobra is allowed to bite you on your tongue. Only then do you feel a little shaken, but the miracle is that the cobra dies! The man is so full of poison…but the poor cobra was not aware; otherwise he would have escaped.I have been concerned about why man has remained so much interested in poisons. The reason is not too far away to see; you just need a clarity. Man is so miserable that he cannot live consciously with this misery. He needs a few gaps, at least a few holidays from this miserable anguish, anxiety, and all kinds of tortures. Drugs have been a tremendous help. But not only the chemical drugs – Karl Marx is right when he says that the religions of the world are nothing but opium for the people. These religions have also proved to be consolations. They have also given hope, they have also given a certain future and taken away your consciousness from the present and its misery. That’s the function of any drug.My effort here, Vimal, is to make you drop all future, all hope, all illusion, and just relax in the moment knowing perfectly well that this is the only moment which exists. All else is either memory or imagination.One who is in the present immediately drowns in his own well…of something which is not poisonous, but it is certainly ecstatic. And once you have known your own source, there is no need to go anywhere, to any pub or to any church or to any temple.The young doctor, inexperienced with operations, is instructed to stand at the head of the patient so that without getting in the way, he can watch the expert do an abdominal operation. He is also instructed not to speak, but after a while he can’t resist: “How’s your end, sir?” says the young man. “All right,” says the expert, looking up, “why?”“I only wondered, sir,” says the young man, “because my end’s been dead for ten minutes.”Because he was told not to speak, he remained silent! The man is dead and the surgeon goes on operating….There are a few things which all traditions have prohibited people to speak, and it needs immense courage to go against the whole tradition of mankind. For example, everybody has been told not to support any kind of drug in any way, and people have remained silent. I have not come across a single statement in which somebody has dared to say that the predominance of drugs shows something immensely significant, and it cannot be simply outlawed; it cannot be simply prohibited. But I want to say it.Let it be on record that unless man finds the authentic drug which is in his own being, there is no force on the earth which can prohibit alcohol, which can prohibit marijuana, which can prohibit hashish, which can prohibit LSD. More and more drugs will be coming in, and the miracle is that the people who are trying to prohibit these things – ninety percent of them are themselves using them.Just a few days ago in America there was an international conference of homosexuals, and one MP from England represented the homosexuals of England. He is a member of the parliament, and certainly he is a homosexual; otherwise why should he be their representative? And in the conference he said, “You must be thinking that I am a strange person, being a member of parliament and representing the homosexuals, but I want you to know that at least fifty-six members of the parliament in England are homosexuals.” They may not have the courage to come out…and these people will make laws against homosexuality!Perhaps you have never thought about it that Jesus continued to drink alcohol, but no Christian has the guts to say that a man with the qualities of Jesus should not drink alcohol. Only if he has not found the alcohol within is there a possibility to search for alcohol without. Every night it was party time – and it is strange that even after two thousand years, people drink alcohol in the name of Jesus. Naturally, if Jesus can be an alcoholic then why make it a prohibition? If even Jesus needs it then I don’t think anybody can be in a position who does not need it.I have heard about a strange ritual that happens every year in the Vatican. The pope comes out in all his regalia, with the cardinals following, and the rabbi from Rome comes with a big scroll. He hands over the scroll to the pope, the pope looks at the scroll, gives it back to the rabbi and everybody wonders what is the matter. What is written on the scroll? Finally one young man dared to ask, “It has been going on for two thousand years; now we should at least know the content of the scroll. The whole ritual…and there seems to be no meaning.”The scroll was opened for the first time, and it was found that it was the bill for the Last Supper! And the question is, who is going to pay it? Obviously, Jesus was a Jew – the rabbis should pay it, but the rabbis had denied Jesus, they crucified him. They don’t accept him as one of them; the pope should pay it. But the discussion is such that there is no way to decide. Jesus is a Jew – of course his followers are Christians – and why should Christians pay for a Jewish party? So every year the bill comes, the bill goes back.Vimal, the way to understand me is to always remember that I am insisting – from every corner, in every possible way – only on a single target, and that is your innermost being. Whatever I may have said…never be too much concerned with what is said. Be concerned about what it indicates.I want you to drop all games – worldly games, spiritual games, games that the whole of humanity has played up to now. These games keep you retarded. These games hinder you from growing into consciousness, into your own ultimate flowering. I want to cut away all this rubbish that prevents you.I want to leave you alone, absolutely alone, so that you cannot take anybody’s help, so you cannot cling to any prophet, so that you cannot think that Gautam Buddha is going to save you. Left alone – utterly alone – you are bound to find your innermost center.There is no way, nowhere to go, no advisor, no teacher, no master. It seems hard, it seems harsh, but I am doing it because I love you, and the people who have not done it have not loved you at all. They loved themselves and they loved to have a big crowd around themselves – the bigger the crowd, the more they feel nourished in their egos.That’s why I called even enlightenment the last game. The sooner you drop it, the better. Why not just simply be? Why unnecessarily hurry here and there? You are what existence wants you to be. Just relax.Farmer Giles is worried about the performance of his prize bull; he doesn’t seem to be interested in the cows. So he goes to the vet who prescribes a course of pills for the bull.A few weeks later, a friend comes by and asks Farmer Giles how the bull is getting on.“Just great!” says Giles. “The vet gave me these pills for the bull and from the first day the old fellow has been unstoppable! In fact, I am making a fortune; the local farmers can’t get their cows ‘round here fast enough!”“Great!” says his friend. “And what are these pills then?”“Well,” says Farmer Giles, “they are great big green ones – and they taste just like peppermints.”Osho,Has Jesus ever laughed?Irven N. Resnich reports on the controversy between philosophy and theology about laughter:Aristotle, in his second book of poetics, raised laughter to the standard of an art, whereas Christian theology has been against laughter since the days of the Bible. For monks, a life of penance does not allow laughter. Basilius Caesarea and Hugo of St. Victor totally condemned laughter; in some monasteries it was only tolerated if it did not spread.The question came up of whether laughter darkened the human nature of Jesus. According to Christian tradition, Jesus himself never laughed, although the philosophical traditions of Aristotle, Quintillian, Porphyry and Boethius, emphasize that laughter is a typically human ability. The clergymen gave various answers, but many of them pointed out that a lot of saints had never laughed either, and that Jesus, as a human being, was of course able to laugh, but he voluntarily renounced it. Not a theologically satisfying solution.Doctor Amrito, only on one point do I agree with Christian tradition: Jesus certainly never laughed. As far as I can see, he had nothing to laugh at.First, he is a bastard. Others may have laughed, but you cannot expect Jesus to laugh. Jesus was a poor carpenter, undernourished – laughter needs some overflowing energy. And to look at Jesus’ statements – he seems to be a crackpot. Crackpots never laugh. They have to keep their seriousness. Laughter brings you down to the status of ordinary humanity. Those who want to pretend to be special – how can they laugh? Such a mundane activity.All these controversies are absolutely futile. I will give you a few reasons to contemplate which will make you clear why he did not laugh:“An ancient tradition says: before Jesus Christ, nobody knew what a headache looked like.”“True misery for a man is when there are no more problems to be solved.”And Jesus had no more problems to be solved. He was the only begotten son of God. He knew everything. Not a single time in his whole life – which was not very long, just thirty-three years – did he ever say about anything, “I don’t know.” He knew everything, and whenever a person is so knowledgeable, laughter becomes impossible.“Women do have a sense of humor – look at their boyfriends!”Poor Jesus was never chosen by a woman as a boyfriend. And still you want him to laugh? You are expecting too much from a poor carpenter.His teaching life was only three years, from thirty to thirty-three. And in these three years his whole effort was to frighten humanity as much as he could, because his whole business depended on people becoming afraid of hell. That was the fundamental psychology he was working on. But when you are teaching people about hell, laughter will not fit in.“There is always more hell that needs raising.”And in three years how much hell can you raise? You may not be aware, it is an unrecorded fact but passed on by word of mouth, from generation to generation, that when Jesus used to threaten people with hellfire, particularly women used to faint. Men started trembling, perspiring. Now this is not a situation for anybody to laugh, and particularly Jesus himself.“A man can learn much by imitating the behavior of a duck – keep calm and unruffled on the surface, and paddle like crazy underneath.”Jesus managed it perfectly well. All that unruffledness, all that seriousness is just on the surface – underneath he is also paddling like crazy, but you cannot see it. So nobody has ever observed him laughing.“It is said, a change of trouble is as good as a vacation.”He never changed anything. In those three years of his teaching, he continuously insisted on the same thing….There is a contemporary parallel – J. Krishnamurti. He managed for a longer time than Jesus. He started teaching when he was twenty-five, and he went on teaching till he died at the age of ninety. Nobody has ever seen him laughing. In fact, if you are laughing and by chance you come across him, you will stop. Just his face…He used to come to India once or twice a year, and he used to speak only in three or four places – Delhi, Bombay, Varanasi, Adyar. I had told my sannyasins everywhere to always sit in the front row, and the moment he would see my sannyasins with their red clothes and malas, he would completely forget what he had come to teach about. He would become so angry…his people came to me to say that “This is not right; he is getting old, he may have a heart attack. And you are making it such a trouble for him that wherever he goes, he finds sannyasins sitting in the front row. Then he forgets everybody else. Then he forgets for what he has come, what was the subject that he was going to teach – furious, so furious that he starts hitting his own head!” Now seeing such a man, can you laugh?“The happiest time in anyone’s life is just after their divorce.”But that time never came into Jesus’ life. I have tried to find something the poor fellow might have laughed at, but there was nothing in his life. Sitting on a donkey, moving with twelve fools – you are a laughingstock, you cannot laugh.And it is not only true about Jesus. It is true about almost all your saints – Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, it doesn’t matter to what church they belong. The saint is not supposed to laugh. The reason is simple: the saint is supposed to be working hard, moving toward the ultimate goal of life. There is no time for laughing. The whole thing is too serious. And because ordinary human beings laugh, obviously, the logic is clear: if you want to prove that you are extraordinary, you have to stop laughing. You have to stop doing many things which ordinary people do. You may even start doing things which are absolutely stupid and idiotic, but you have to be certain only about one thing – that ordinary people don’t do those kind of things.You will see saints standing on their heads. Now, if existence wanted you to stand on your head, the feet would have grown out of your head. But any kind of nonsense…Mahavira used to pull out his hair. He would not allow a small razor to shave his head – every ordinary human being is doing that. And because he was pulling out his hair, thousands of people would gather to see this tremendously sacred event.If you look at your saints and their histories, you are bound to come to the conclusion that almost a hundred percent of them needed psychiatric treatment. But we have lived under their influence, and they have such a long tradition that its burden is heavy on our hearts, too.He has been warned that Paddy is a bit of a fool, but the postmaster decides to hire him anyway, because the post office is really short-staffed. His first day on the job, Paddy is given the work of sorting letters, and to everyone’s surprise, he separates the letters so fast that his motions are literally a blur.Very pleased about this, the postmaster approaches him at the end of the day.“I want you to know,” he says, “that we’re all very proud of you. You’re one of the fastest workers we’ve ever had.”“Thanks a lot,” replies Paddy, “and tomorrow, I’ll try and do even better.”“Better?” asks the postmaster, astonished. “How could you possibly do better?”“Well,” says Paddy, “tomorrow I’m going to read the addresses.”All kinds of idiots have become your saints. In fact, a man who is intelligent is not going to become one of your saints, because to be a saint literally means to be a slave of the crowd. The crowd dictates. The crowd tells the saint how he has to live, what he has to eat, where he has to sleep. The saint is simply the slave of a vast crowd and because he obeys, the crowd pays him with deep respect.And remember one thing: in life everything needs a certain qualification, except being a saint. Nobody is asked for any qualification, no interview.Pope the Polack goes to the optician for an examination. “I want to make a few tests,” says the optician, “so cup your hand and put it over your right eye.”The pope cups his left hand and places it on his forehead.“No!” says the optician. “Cup your hand and cover your eye.” This time the pope cups his right hand and covers his forehead.In desperation, the optician takes a large paper bag and places it over the pope’s head.Then, he cuts out a hole in the bag over his left eye. Before he can ask the pope to read the chart, he sees his eye is full of tears. The optician immediately cuts a hole in the bag over his right eye, and tears fall from both the pope’s eyes.“For God’s sake!” shouts the optician. “Why are you crying?”“Ah!” sobs Pope the Polack, “I was really hoping for something more stylish.”

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Om Mani Padme Hum 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Om Mani Padme Hum 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Are idiots born or trained?It is a complicated question. Almost ninety percent of idiots are trained. Ten percent are born. And the ten percent are born because of those ninety percent who have been trained.Man from his very beginning has lived a very weird life – weird in the sense that it needs idiots. If you don’t have idiots you will not have wise men; if you don’t have the idiots, you will not have the so-called giants of intellect. It is almost a necessity that the category of idiots should remain.Nobody has looked into the deeper layers of how the society has functioned up to now. But the way it has functioned can only be described as utterly criminal. The society needs categories, hierarchies. It has been up to now a competitive society, and the very idea of competition is dangerous to human beings. You call one man an idiot only in comparison – in comparison to someone who seems to be intelligent.A small boy told me – I was a guest in his house; I was sitting in the garden in the evening and he was the only child of the family. He was not more than six years old. I asked him, “What is your name?”He said, “As far as my name is concerned, up to now I used to think that my name was ‘Don’t!’ Now I have started going to school, and there I discovered that that is not my name.”He is saying something tremendously important. Whatever a child is doing, the adults are there to say, “Don’t do it!” Nobody is allowed to blossom according to his own intrinsic nature. And that is the fundamental cause of creating so many idiots in the world. But they are serving a certain purpose. If people were allowed to blossom according to their nature, without any comparison and without any ideals and without enforced discipline, do you think anybody in the whole world would have accepted Adolf Hitler as a leader? Just look at your leaders….In America, the average American is sitting glued to his chair in front of the television set. The television has become his whole life. Now television can be used in a dangerous way, and it is being used. Ronald Reagan would not have been able to become the president of America if there were no television. The television has changed the whole structure of the American mind. Now, the leader need not be wise, but he has to be photogenic. Now what has being photogenic to do with being a president? He has to be a good showman, an actor. Ronald Reagan understood the situation. He was a third-rate actor in Hollywood, a cowboy actor. I don’t think any society would have chosen him to be the president, but television changed the whole situation. He could act on television and fulfill a new desire in the people that the president should look strong, should look authoritative, should be able to look at least handsome.And this he learned when Richard Nixon was defeated by Kennedy, because Nixon was not aware that now the contest is not one of intelligence; the whole area of contest has changed. Kennedy looked younger – well dressed, well spoken, although some ghost writer had written his speeches and he had rehearsed them. With both men on the television screen, the comparison was very simple: Nixon looked lousy, his clothes were not up to date. He had never thought about it, that these things matter. He had not rehearsed what he was going to say. That used to be the way, always – a more spontaneous person was thought to be more intelligent. To be photogenic is one thing; to encounter the people directly is a totally different thing.Nixon was defeated and his advisors suggested to him that he would have to change a few things. He had to become a little more photogenic, with a better hairstyle, better clothes. And spontaneous speeches won’t do; you will have to rehearse them. There is no need for you to create your own speeches, there are far better writers – let them write the speech. And the second time, he came on television as a totally different personality. The same Nixon appeared now to be matured, capable, and he was chosen.When Nixon was chosen as president, Ronald Reagan tried to be the governor of California. And he was immediately chosen, because the other contestants had no idea that you have to be a showman, that you have to be an actor. These have never been the qualities of leaders. Once he was governor, he knew that the presidentship was not far away. And he became the president.The people who are continuously watching television…and seven and a half hours average per day is not a small amount of time, it is one third of your life. You are being imposed on by ideas, by personalities, continuously repeated. People have forgotten to read; there is no time. In America people read only trashy novels – that too when they are traveling in the trains or in the airplane.In America, the beautiful hardbound book has disappeared. Who is going to purchase it? Cheap literature cannot create a Leo Tolstoy, or a Dostoevsky or a Maxim Gorky. In a certain way, television has introduced a new kind of primitiveness, because the primitive man depended only on his eyes – whatever he saw, that was his only knowledge.If you look into small things you will be surprised…. Before the fountain pen came into existence, people had beautiful handwriting. Tremendous effort was made to write beautifully, because it was signifying your personality, your intelligence, your aesthetic sense. But the moment the fountain pen came in, beautiful handwriting disappeared.Right now you still have memories; soon you won’t have. Everybody will be carrying his own computer, which can be carried in the pocket and which can contain all the knowledge contained in all the libraries of the world – you just have to know how to make it function. Man will fall tremendously as far as intelligence is concerned, memory is concerned. Everything that comes into existence brings changes so silently that you don’t see them.The idiots have been an absolute necessity for a few people to proclaim their egos, for a few people to rise high and become Nobel Prize winners.Just think for a moment – if everybody were living according to his own nature, not trying to be somebody else, a tremendous intelligence would explode within you. It is something of the fundamental law of life and existence. It is good that flowers don’t listen to your teachers and your leaders and your politicians. Otherwise they would say to the roses, “What are you doing? Become a lotus!” Roses are not so foolish. But if, just for the argument’s sake, roses start trying to become lotuses, what is going to happen? Two things are certain: there will be no roses, because their whole energy will be involved in becoming lotuses, and the second thing, a rosebush cannot produce a lotus. It is not in the inbuilt program of its seed.Have you ever come across a tree that you can say is an idiot? Or that it is very intelligent, a great giant, deserves a Nobel Prize? Man has been distracted. Everybody from your parents to your teachers, the school, the college, the university, your religion, your preachers, your neighbors – everybody is trying to make you somebody else whom you cannot become. You can only become yourself, or you can miss, becoming just an idiot.I call this whole history of mankind a long, unjustified crime against every human individual. It has served the vested interests: the people who are in power, the people who are scholars, which is another kind of power, the people who are rich, which is another kind of power. They would not like everybody to be centered in himself because a man centered in himself cannot be exploited, cannot be enslaved, cannot be humiliated, cannot be forced to grow a cancerous sense of guilt. These are the reasons humanity has not been allowed its growth.In Japan they have very ancient trees, four hundred years old…and they think that it is an art because the tree’s height is only six inches and it shows signs of old age. But a special strategy has been used, the same that has been used against humanity. They are rooted in pots, but the pots don’t have any bottom. So their roots are continually cut, and if the roots cannot go deep the tree cannot go high. There is a certain balance. The highest tree needs very deep roots to stand; otherwise it will fall. And if you go on cutting the roots, the tree goes on becoming old but it does not grow higher, to its natural intrinsic capacity. I don’t consider this an art, it is a crime against poor trees.But the same crime has been committed against man. Your roots are being continuously cut. And that creates a retarded humanity.Turgenev has a beautiful story, The Fool. A sage comes to a village, and a man comes to him with tears in his eyes and he says, “I don’t know how to get out of this suffering. My whole village thinks I am an idiot. If I say something, they immediately condemn me, criticize me. If I don’t say anything they laugh and they say, ‘What can he say? He is an idiot.’ I am in such a fix. Hearing that you are a sage I have come for some advice.”The sage said, “Don’t be worried. A very simple technique will change the whole situation within a month. And after one month I am coming back again on the same route, so I will be able to see whether the change has happened or not.” And he gave a very simple technique to the man.The technique was, “Don’t make any statement on your own. Just wait for somebody else to make the statement. Somebody says, ‘How beautiful is the sunset!’ That is the point – immediately jump and ask him, ‘What is beautiful in it? Define it! Explain! Do you know what beauty is? And if you don’t know what beauty is, how can you say that the sunset is beautiful? Before anything can be called beautiful, beauty has to be defined.’”But even the greatest poets, philosophers – particularly those philosophers like Croce who have been dedicated to a single object, aesthetics – have not been able to define what is beauty. Although everybody knows…but to know is not enough.Everybody knows what is good, but if the question is raised…define it! And one English philosopher, perhaps one of the most intelligent Englishmen of this century, G.E. Moore, has written a book, Principia Ethica. The whole book is devoted to a single question: what is good? And in two hundred and fifty pages of very arduous, very subtle, logical argumentation, the concluding remark is that good is indefinable.Naturally, when after one month the sage came back, the idiot had already become the wisest man in the village, because he had stopped everybody. You say something and he would criticize it and ask for fundamental definitions. You could say a woman is beautiful and he would ask, “What is beautiful in that woman? Bones? A long nose? Stinking perspiration? What do you consider beauty?” There was no way to answer, and when people saw that they could not answer, they immediately started thinking that the man had been absolutely misunderstood. “He is not an idiot, he is a great thinker, a wise man, more intelligent than anybody else.”The sage was very happy; he said, “Are you happy now?”The man said, “I am absolutely happy.”The sage said, “Remember always, never make a statement on your own. Just wait; somebody is going to say something – criticize. Somebody talks about God – criticize, ask for the evidence, ask for proofs. And there are no proofs and no evidence. Just remember one thing: never make a statement on your own; otherwise they will immediately jump on you and you will be an idiot again.”From the very childhood, everybody is condemned – whatever he says, whatever he does, it is never right. Naturally he becomes afraid of saying anything, of doing anything on his own. He is appreciated if he is obedient, he is appreciated if he follows the rules and the regulations made by others. Everybody appreciates him. This is the strategy: condemn the man if he is trying to stand on his own feet and appreciate the man if he is just an imitator. Naturally his inner seed, his potentiality, will never have a chance to grow.I am reminded of my own childhood. The thing has become so ancient that nobody even questions it…. If I was sitting silently, somebody – and in India there are still big families, joint families; in my family there were at least fifty people – somebody was bound to come by and ask, “Why are you sitting silently?” Strange, I cannot sit silently, and if I make noise and jump around the house… “Are you mad? Why are you jumping around the house?” Seeing the situation I decided that it would be better to begin the fight from the very beginning. Because once you get caught with these people it will be very difficult to come out of the crowd.My father was very much amazed; he said, “You never answer the question. On the contrary, you ask another question.”I said, “I have figured it out: When I am sitting silently and you ask, ‘Why are you sitting silently?’ I will not answer. I will ask, ‘Why should I not sit silently? You have to answer. You are a grown-up man, experienced – I am just a child. You answer me – why should I not sit silently?’” The whole family by and by understood… “You cannot get any statement from this boy. He immediately turns the question around and you are in trouble.” They stopped asking me anything.The situation came to the point that I might be sitting, and my mother would say, “I don’t see anybody in the house” – and I was sitting in front of her! “I need vegetables; somebody should go and fetch vegetables.”I would say, “If I come to see somebody, I will inform you.” I was taken as almost absent. And I proved it – because unless you prove it, it is very difficult. In the beginning they used to send me: “Go to the market. It is the season of beautiful mangoes – bring mangoes.”I would go to the shop with the worst mangoes and ask, “Just give me the worst ones and charge me for the best ones.”Even those shopkeepers were amazed – “What kind of customer are you?”I said, “What kind of customer? You have seen many customers… I am a unique customer.”And the man was perfectly happy to give me the rotten and charge the price for the best. I would come home and give those rotten mangoes and say, “These are the best, and I have paid for them.” And they were stinking. My mother would say, “Just throw them out!”I said, “Why throw them out? There is a beggar woman, I can go and give them to her.” Even the beggar woman would not accept them. She would say, “Never come to me, because whenever you come you bring something rotten. Throw them to the dogs.”And I was very much surprised that even dogs were afraid of me. If I would throw something toward them, they would escape!Slowly they settled that “It is better to let him be, whatever he is. One thing is certain, that he is going to be nobody special in life.”They were right. I have proved their prophecy.I am nobody special in life.But who cares about being special? I am myself and that’s enough, more than enough. Each moment of my life I had to struggle to protect myself; otherwise everybody is ready to cut your roots.In the schools, in the colleges, in the universities, I was expelled so many times. From the very first day I entered my high school…and the first period was history. The man, the teacher – very senior, very experienced – started talking about history. I said to him, “Please wait for one moment. Have you made any history?”He said, “What kind of question is this? I teach history.”I said, “I have not come to learn about idiots like Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah. If you can teach me how to create history, only then I can be your student. But you don’t have any idea how to create history. You are simply a parrot repeating all kinds of rubbish – which is not to be repeated to children, because it will get stuck in their minds. You are an enemy.”He said, “This is strange. I cannot tolerate your presence in my class.”I said, “You will not have it – I will stand outside the class, which is not your domain, and from the window I will create as much trouble as possible.”He came out, tried to persuade me, “Join some other subject. Why harass me? I am an old man. Can’t you find somebody else?”I said, “This is not the first time. When I went to the geography class the same thing happened. What concern have I to know where Constantinople is? And why should I bother about it? If you cannot teach something sensible, at least sit silently and let everybody else also sit silently.”The geography teacher said, “Then who is going to give the examination?”I said, “The examination about what?”He immediately took me to the principal and said, “I cannot accept this student.”The principal was very much in difficulty. He said, “No teacher is ready to accept you. Where should I send you?”I said, “You are not doing much, just sitting in your principal’s office. I can also sit here and if you have something sensible to say, you can say it. Or if I happen to discover something sensible, I will say it. Otherwise, silence is perfectly good.”The principal said, “Have you come here to learn something?”I said, “No, I have come here to be myself. If you teach me and help me and support me and nourish me to be myself, then I can remain in this school; otherwise I will find some other school.”But that went on…. In colleges I was expelled and the principals said to me, “We feel guilty for expelling you, because you have not done anything wrong. But you are a little strange.”The first college I entered, I wanted to learn logic. And the old professor, with many honorary degrees, with many books published in his name, started talking about the father of Western logic, Aristotle.I said, “Wait a minute. Do you know that Aristotle writes in his book that women have less teeth than men?”He said, “My God, what kind of question is this? What has it to do with logic?”I said, “It has something very fundamental to do with the whole process of logic. Are you aware that Aristotle had two wives?”He said, “I don’t know…from where are you getting these facts?”But in Greece it was traditionally known for centuries that women were bound to have everything less than men. Naturally, they couldn’t have the same number of teeth as men.I said, “And you call this man Aristotle the father of logic? He could have at least counted – and he had two wives available, but he did not count. His statement is illogical. He has simply taken it from the tradition, and I cannot trust in a man who has two wives and writes that women have less teeth than men. This is a male chauvinistic attitude. A logician has to be beyond prejudices.”Seeing the situation, the professor threatened the principal that either I should be expelled from the college or he was going to resign. And he stopped coming to the college. He said, “I will wait three days.”The principal could not lose an experienced professor. He called me into his office to say, “There has never been any trouble with that man, he is a very nice man. Just on the first day…what have you done?”I told him the whole story and I said, “Do you think it deserves expulsion from college? I was asking absolutely relevant questions, and if a professor of logic cannot answer, who is going to answer?”The principal was a good man. He said, “I will not expel you, because I don’t see that you have done anything wrong. But I cannot afford to lose the professor either, so I will make arrangements for you in another college.”But the rumor about me had spread in all the colleges. The city I was in had almost twenty colleges and finally it became a very prestigious university just by combining those twenty colleges. He sent me to another principal with a letter of recommendation, but he must have phoned him to say, “Don’t believe in the letter of recommendation. I had to write it because I have to get rid of that student. He is not wrong, but he is absolutely individualistic and that is going to create trouble.”I went to see the other principal, and he was waiting. He said, “I can admit you only on one condition: that you will never attend the college.”I said, “Then what is going to happen when it is time for my examination?”He said, “I will give you the necessary percentage for being present in the college, but this is a secret pact between me and you.”I said, “It is perfectly good – anyway your professors are out of date. But can I enter the library?”He said, “The library is perfectly okay, but never attend any class because I don’t want to hear from any professor the complaint that you are creating trouble.”And I have never created any trouble! I was simply asking questions which…if they were really gentlemen they would have said, “I will find out. For the time being, I don’t know.”But this is the most difficult thing in the world to say, “I don’t know.”As I approached the university, strangely enough, my first encounter was with the vice-chancellor. He was speaking – a series on Gautam Buddha – it was the first day, and he said, “I always feel a sadness in me that I was not born in the times of Gautam Buddha; otherwise I would have gone to him and sat at his feet.” And he was an old man. He had been the head of the history department at Oxford. Retired from there, he was chosen to be the vice-chancellor of this university.I stood up and I said, “You will have to consider again.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “In your own time, there have been J. Krishnamurti, Sri Aurobindo, Raman Maharshi…Can I ask, have you gone and learned anything from these people? And if you have not gone to these people, on what authority are you saying that you feel a certain sadness that you were not born in the times of Buddha? I can say with an absolute guarantee: you would not have gone to Gautam Buddha either.”In the auditorium there was utter silence.But the vice-chancellor was certainly a gentleman. He said, “I understand your point and I take my words back. I know Sri Aurobindo, but I have never gone to him. I know Raman Maharshi and I have not gone to him. I know J. Krishnamurti, but I have not gone to him. You are right. You see me afterward…”I went to see him. He said, “It was perfectly good that you encountered me, but don’t do this thing to any other professor because people are not courageous enough to accept their ignorance. They don’t have guts to say, ‘I don’t know.’ As far as I am concerned, I am immensely grateful to you because it must have been an unconscious thing in me. I was not lying, I was just feeling that when Gautam Buddha was alive I would have gone to be showered by his blessings, by his presence. But you have put me right. I would not have gone.”It is very difficult to find human beings in society who will allow you the freedom to be yourself. That has created a retardedness all over the world.Nations need idiots – otherwise, who is going to fight the wars? The world needs idiots – otherwise, how are people going to become richer and richer on the labor, on the blood of others? This civilization needs as many unintelligent people as possible – otherwise, who is going to be a Catholic, who is going to be a Protestant, who is going to be a Hindu, who is going to be a Mohammedan?The whole structure of the society has been managed in such a way that very few people exploit millions of people. And they have given consolations to those who have been exploited: “It is because of your past life’s evil acts.” You don’t know anything about your past life; now this is a good consolation – “What can I do?” Or they say, “This is a fire test of your faith in God. Be contented as you are and you will be rewarded a thousandfold beyond death.” Either religions have taken refuge in the past…Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism; they are all past-oriented. Or the other three religions – Christianity, Mohammedanism, Judaism – have taken refuge beyond death.There is not much difference. All that is happening is happening in life and they are postponing it. Either before birth or after death, the strategy is the same. The whole point is that you should allow people to exploit you, you should allow people to drink your blood, with the deep contentment that “this is how things are.”I want to say to you very emphatically that all these religions have played into the hands of the vested interests. All your priests are nothing but in the service of your politicians.The whole history of mankind has been a disaster. And unless we start revolting as individuals, dropping all nationalities, all religions, all races, and declare that this whole globe belongs to us and all the lines of the map are bogus and false; unless individuals start changing the whole educational system…The educational system should teach you the art of living, it should teach you the art of loving, it should teach you the art of meditation, it should teach you finally the art of dying gloriously. Your education system is not educational. It only creates clerks, stationmasters, postmen, soldiers, and you call it education. You have been deceived. But the deception has been going on so long that you have completely forgotten. And you are still going on in the same old rut.I raise my hand against the whole past of mankind. It has not been civilized, it has not been human. It has not been in any way helpful for people to blossom; it has not been a spring.It has been a calamity, a crime committed on such a vast scale…But somebody has to stand against it, and somebody has to make the point: We disown our past. And we will start living according to our own inner being and create our own future. We will not allow the past to create our future.Hymie Goldberg buys himself a fancy pair of Italian shoes in a Beverly Hills boutique, and wears them home to show them off to Becky.Becky does not appear even to notice the new shoes, so Hymie waits until she is in bed and then walks in, stark naked except for the shoes.Posing, he exclaims, “It is about time you paid some attention to what my prick is pointing at!”Looking down at the shoes, Becky replies, “It is too bad you didn’t buy a hat!”In the middle of his sermon the priest stops, sniffs the air, and then holding his nose, calls the head usher to the front.“Please go through the church,” says the priest, “and see if some stray dog stole in, stooled, and then stole out again.”The usher immediately begins his inspection and after some minutes comes back to make his report.“No, Father,” he says, “I did not see where some stray dog stole in, stooled, and stole out again. But I did see some very positive signs where some creeping cat crept into the crypt, crapped, and crept out again.”I would like you to accept only one prayer, and that is laughter, because when you are totally laughing you are in the present. You cannot laugh in the future and you cannot laugh in the past. All those people who have created this retarded humanity have taken away all juice, all laughter, all smiles, and dragged everybody into being inauthentic. And if you are inauthentic, insincere, you can never grow the seed that has been given to you by this great compassionate universe.An unshaven, dirty, bedraggled panhandler, with bloodshot eyes and teeth half gone, asks Paddy for a dime.“Do you drink, smoke, or gamble?” asks Paddy.“Mister,” says the bum, “I don’t touch a drop, or smoke the filthy weed, or bother with evil gambling.”“Okay,” says Paddy, “if you will come home with me I will give you a dollar.”As they enter the house, Maureen takes Paddy aside and hisses, “How dare you bring that terrible looking specimen into our home!?”“Darling,” says Paddy, “I just wanted you to see what a man looks like who doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, and doesn’t gamble.”Life should be not a serious thing. It should be a deep playfulness, a fun. And every individual should be allowed absolute freedom to be himself. The only restriction will be that you cannot interfere in another individual’s life sphere – it may be your wife, it may be your husband, it may be your child, it does not matter. A tremendous respect for the individual is to me the essential core of being truly religious. Be yourself and let others be themselves and this life, this planet, can become the lotus paradise herenow.But something has to be done and done very soon, because all those idiots are preparing for a global suicide. Unless you revolt against the past, and the whole heritage of the past, you cannot save humanity, these beautiful trees, these birds singing, this small planet which has just developed to the stage of being conscious. Scientists guess that there may be millions of other planets in the universe, but there is not even a single piece of evidence yet…The only evidence of life growing to this stage of consciousness – of love, of silence, of experiencing the cosmos – has happened on this small earth. At any cost, this earth and the people of this earth have to be saved from the calamity that is coming from your whole past.An absolute discontinuity is needed; all history books should be burnt. The whole educational system should be centered on playfulness, on love, on freedom, on consciousness, and a tremendous respect for everything that is alive. This is my vision.The time is very short. Those idiots have been working for thousands of years and they have come to a point where they are capable of destroying this earth seven times. So much destructive force is accumulating that unless a few individuals gather courage and revolt against all that is past…I am not telling you to choose, to choose that which is good and leave that which is bad. They are altogether; you cannot do that. The past has to be simply erased, as if we are for the first time on the earth and there has been no history. That is the only possibility to create a beautiful world full of love, full of fragrance, with deep respect for everybody. The past has lived centered on hate. The future can live only if it is centered on love. The past has been unconscious. The future can only be conscious.To many this may seem almost an impossible dream. But remember, whatever you are is not because of the politicians, is not because of the priests. Whatever you are, if some flame is still alive in you it is because of the poets, the dreamers, the mystics.We can either die with the past or we can be reborn with a new future.Revolutions have failed; hence I talk about revolt. Revolution means a crowd, a class, fighting against the ruling class. But they have failed because of an intrinsic necessity: if you fight with the ruling class you will have to use the same means to fight, and the moment you are in power you will start doing the same nasty things to humanity as your predecessors.Revolt has a beauty because it is individual. And there is nothing to fight with – one has simply to throw the whole past from one’s consciousness. Clean yourself and become Adam and Eve again. Disobey God again. Only then is there a possibility for this vision to become a reality.Don’t be concerned about the whole world. If we can create the idea of revolt in a small minority in the world, that will do. A single seed can make the whole earth green, and a single man in revolt can create a totally new world, a totally new humanity.I am not in favor of any organized revolution because all organizations basically destroy the individual. I am in favor of the individual and his dignity. There is nobody above the individual. We have to take this tremendous quantum leap, from organized living to individual flowering. It is possible. If it is possible for me – because I don’t belong to any religion and I don’t belong to any nation and I don’t belong to any kind of organization – it is possible for you too. And if this fire of individuality spreads, it can become a wildfire, because deep down every individual is suffering. He wants to revolt against all that has been repressed, all that has been imposed on him.You will not find a better moment. This century is coming to its end – one thing is certain, the old world cannot continue to live. All the prophets have been declaring the end of the world with the year 2000. None of them has said a single word about what happens beyond this century.I want it to be clear to you, to my people around the earth, that the old world does not mean the planet. The old world means the old structure of humanity – it is going to die. But if we can save a few individuals, a new beginning is very close. Rather than being concerned with the old, rejoice for the new.As far as I am concerned, I am absolutely certain that in moments of crisis – and this is the greatest crisis man has ever faced – people gather courage and take a quantum leap into something absolutely unknown. You are here from different lands, from different races, from different organizations; you will be spreading all over the world.You are going to be my ambassadors.They can prevent me from entering their countries, but they cannot prevent my ambassadors. So I am going to declare soon, in all the countries, my ambassadors – propagating the birth of a new man and a new world.

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Om Mani Padme Hum 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Om Mani Padme Hum 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is enlightenment beyond the nature of things?Enlightenment is “the very nature of things.” But it has never been said that way; on the contrary, people’s minds have been corrupted by creating a goal against nature, giving it beautiful names, “supernature.” And man was caught in this because of a very simple reason:The nature of things is already where you are.It is not an excitement and it is not a challenge and it does not call on you to prove your ego. It is not a faraway star. Mind wants for its nourishment something very difficult, something almost impossible. Only if you can achieve the impossible can you feel you are somebody special.Enlightenment is not a talent. It is not like somebody being born a painter or a poet or a scientist – those are talents. Enlightenment is simply everybody’s very source of life. You have not even to go out of your house to look for it. To go out of your house to look for it, you have missed it, and nobody knows when you will be able to come back home.Enlightenment is nothing but realizing the fact that “I am that which I have always wanted to be, and I have never been anything else and I cannot be anything else, ever.” The very definition of nature is that you cannot go beyond it. You can make the effort and create misery, anxiety, anguish, but you cannot go beyond it.It is you.How can you go beyond yourself?It is your very life source, your very existence. Wherever you will go, you will be it.There have been records of people whose first experience of themselves was just a belly laughter. Seeing the absurdity of what they were trying to do…they were trying to be themselves! That is the only impossible thing in the world, because you are already it – how can you try to be it?But the priests, so-called religious leaders, and all those who have wanted you to be enslaved have given you ideals. They have told you, “Unless you behave in a certain way, you are wrong.” Unless you do the things that they prescribe, you are not good.Nobody ever asked these people, “Who has given you the authority to decide for others? If you think something is good, do it, but you have no right to tell anybody else to follow you.”The great corrupters, the great poisoners are the people who have created following, because following simply means you are being put into an absurdity against yourself: you are being told that you have to be somebody else that you can never be. This has created the whole world of tremendous misery.Unless we see the roots, this misery cannot disappear. We can go on increasing our gadgets, our technology, but the misery continues. It is not that only the poor man is miserable; my own experience is that the poor man is less miserable than the rich man – the poor man at least has a hope. The rich man is living hopelessly. Now he knows that he has done all he could, and his life is as empty as ever – perhaps more empty. And death is coming closer; life is becoming every moment shorter and he has wasted it in accumulating money, power, prestige. He has wasted his life in being a saint, praying before man-manufactured gods.And all this has been done so that you can never simply be just yourself.I teach you only a simple morality, and that is: never go against your nature. Even if all the buddhas of all the ages are standing against it, don’t pay any attention. They have nothing to do with you. They did what they felt was right for them, you have to do what you feel is right for yourself. And what is right? It cannot be defined by any scripture. It cannot be defined by any outer criterion.There is an intrinsic criterion to be understood:That which makes you happier is good.That which makes you blissful is the only morality. That which makes you miserable is the only sin. That which takes you away from yourself is the only thing to be avoided.Just rejoice in yourself and you are enlightened. You have always been enlightened, there is no way to be unenlightened.I have tried in many ways, but I have to concede to you that I have failed: I could not become unenlightened. In whatever position, doing whatever kinds of things, I was surprised: whether I go north or I go south, I remain enlightened!In Japan, they have a very beautiful doll…perhaps they are the people who make the most beautiful dolls. And this doll is no ordinary doll. In Japan its name is daruma, but it is the Japanese distortion of the name of Bodhidharma – the doll is made according to Bodhidharma’s insight.The doll is heavy in the legs and very light toward the head. So you can throw it anywhere you like, but it always gets into the lotus posture. You cannot do anything to it. People may have forgotten; it has become just a doll for children to play with. But it represents what I am saying and what Bodhidharma was saying, that there is no way for you to be unenlightened.Who has put this idea in your mind that you have to become enlightened?Miss Prim, the elderly spinster, is giving an introductory talk at the girl’s college. “Now, girls,” she says, “whenever you go out, remember: no smoking in the streets, no bad conduct in public and when the men bother you, ask yourself: Is an hour’s pleasure worth a lifetime of disgrace? Now, girls, are there any questions?”A voice from the back of the hall cries, “How do you make it last an hour?”There are people around you driving you crazy. Otherwise everything is perfectly as it should be. This is the most perfect world, nothing is missing. But a few crackpots cannot sit at ease unless they drive a few other people into running after shadows which can never be realized.And the more they feel they cannot be realized, the more meaninglessness, the more hopelessness, the more the feeling of utter emptiness…and a sadness settles and becomes thicker as time passes by.Never accept any criterion that makes you miserable. Never accept any morality that makes you feel guilty. Never accept anything that is trying to enforce something upon you against your simple nature.Just be yourself and you are perfect.Move away from yourself and you are in for great trouble. Everybody is in trouble. My own experience of coming in contact with thousands of people is that I have never seen a man who is really miserable. On the contrary – I have seen people enjoying their misery, exaggerating their misery. One feels immensely compassionate that people who could have blossomed into beautiful flowers are shrunken. They have lost the way to their own home, and everybody is trying to help them to go somewhere else – “become a Buddha, become a Jesus, become a Moses.” But nobody ever says to you, “Just be yourself.”What connection exists between you and Moses? What are the ties between you and Jesus Christ? But people are worshipping, praying, hoping that some day they will become the ideals of their imagination. Naturally they are always failures. You are a roseflower and you are going to be a roseflower. Let the whole world condemn or appreciate – it does not matter.Once a man takes this stand that “I am going to assert myself” – it has nothing to do with ego, it is simply protecting yourself against a criminal world, corrupted for thousands of years. You have every right to protect yourself, not to be poisoned. And there will not be any need in you for any god, for any religion, for any moral code, for any methodology, for any effort to become enlightened. Just being natural is more than you can ever imagine.Except man, the whole of existence is enlightened. Nobody is trying for anything else; everybody is at ease, at home with the universe.One of the great scientists, Julian Huxley, has a certain hypothesis – there is no way to prove it, but it seems to have certain significance. After his whole life’s research he concludes that, “It seems something has gone wrong in the very mechanism of man. Because no tree seems to be in anxiety, no animal commits suicide in the wild, no animal becomes a homosexual in the wild.” But something strange happens in the zoos. When animals are kept in a zoo, they start getting some great qualities of your humanity: they become homosexuals. Animals have even been found to commit suicide in zoos. They become perverted, they start doing things which none of their ancestors have ever done, in millennia. What happens in the zoo? They become part of the human society. They start imitating human beings. They become distorted, they become unnatural.As far as I am concerned, except man, the whole existence is perfectly healthy, perfectly at ease. Julian Huxley’s idea has some pragmatic value. It may not be possible to prove what has gone wrong, because man is a very complex mechanism. But something certainly has gone wrong.In my vision, it is not something hereditary that has gone wrong. It is something that happens to every child again and again, because every child is born in a society which is not sane. And he has to learn the ways of the people who are insane. By the time he is capable of some intelligence, he is already poisoned. It is already too late, he has become an imitator.Children are innocent. They come into the world without any idea of what is going to happen. Naturally, finding themselves surrounded by people, they start imitating them. That is their way of learning. But in this very process of imitation and learning happens the great mistake which Julian Huxley thinks is genetic. It is not genetic, it is cultural. It is because of the grown-ups. The child has no other way; he has to learn from people who are sick. And these sick people will not tolerate anybody who is not sick.Anybody who is healthy, anybody who is sane is going to be hated, is going to be poisoned, is going to be stoned to death, because the crowd has to choose between two things: either this single individual is right – then the whole crowd and its whole history is wrong. Or if the whole crowd and its long past, which it calls its “golden past,” is right, then this man has to be erased; otherwise it is a constant question mark.It is not without reason that Socrates is poisoned. Socrates is intolerable. His very presence hurts you because his height, his intelligence, his honesty, all prove you to be hypocrites. Certainly the crowd is not willing to accept a single man’s standard against the whole history of mankind. It is better to destroy this man, to get rid of this man. He is a constant nagging; he is telling you that you are dishonest, that you are living in lies, that your gods are false, that your hopes are nothing but consolations, that you are trying to hide your nudity.You know perfectly well that behind your clothes, you are a totally different person. These people are reminders, and it hurts to be reminded of your dishonesty to yourself. It hurts to know that your love is not love but jealousy; it is a diluted form of hate. It hurts to know that your gods are absolutely bogus, your own creation; your holy scriptures are as unholy as a book can be. The easier thing seems to be to remove any man like Socrates and be at ease with your misery and again start making efforts to become enlightened.It is a very strange situation. Whenever somebody is natural and is enlightened, you destroy him and then you try to find out how to become enlightened. Perhaps your quest of how to become enlightened is nothing but a cunning strategy to postpone enlightenment.In fact, even to say postponement is not right. You are enlightened and you are trying not to be enlightened. Your whole effort of being a Catholic, being a Protestant, being a Hindu, being a Mohammedan, is nothing but a device not to recognize your enlightenment.When Socrates was poisoned, Athens was a city state, a direct democracy. Every citizen except the slaves had the right to vote and every decision had to be made by the whole city. The chief justice who was going to decide whether the majority of Athenians were in favor of poisoning Socrates or in favor of saving him, was very much puzzled. He must have been a man of some intelligence. He saw that Socrates was a simple, innocent, almost childlike person. He had not committed any crime, he had not done any harm to anybody. And that’s what Socrates had appealed to the court – “Just tell me, what is my crime?”There was no crime, there was no charge against him. The chief justice whispered in his ear that “Your crime is that you are a natural being. I cannot say it aloud, because I know if they cannot forgive you, they cannot forgive me either. But I have immense respect for your innocence and I don’t want a man like you to be destroyed. You are an exception, but you prove the rule that every man can be so innocent and so sincere and so alive and so joyous. I give you three alternatives….“First is that Athens is a city state; its laws are not applicable outside the boundary of the city. The simple thing is for you to move outside the city. You can open your school, your academy, and those who love you will be coming there. And I know for certain that the younger generation is immensely impressed by you. It is the older generation…”But in the past, the older generation was always the majority, because out of ten children, nine used to die within two years after their birth. Now the situation has reversed: out of ten children only one child dies, nine go on living. It is for the first time that young people are the majority in the world. Never in the past were the young people in the majority. They were always a minority group.The chief justice said, “You simply move out of the city.” Socrates said, “That will be cowardly. As far as death is concerned, it is going to come sooner or later. I am already old enough. But I don’t want the future generations to remember that Socrates moved out of Athens because of the fear of death. Please forgive me, I cannot go out of Athens.”The chief justice said, “Then the second simple thing will be that you stop teaching. Live in Athens, but don’t talk about your truth. And don’t talk about people being sincere and authentic.”Socrates said, “You are asking me to do things which I cannot do. What is the purpose of my living if I cannot blossom into my absolute potential? When a tree blossoms, flowers are bound to be there and the fragrance is going to reach those who are receptive. I will continue to speak and I will continue to talk about truth and I will continue to provoke people to be natural and not to become hypocrites according to the so-called religions.”The chief justice said, “Then I am helpless. Then the third alternative is that you have to accept poison. Because the majority, although they have no evidence against you, simply say that your very presence is corruptive. Your very presence is destroying the youth; your very presence is taking the youth away from the old path trodden by the ancients. Your presence is making individuals assertive, giving them courage to be free and to stand alone even if it comes to be against the whole society.”Socrates said, “There is no problem about poison. That I can accept. I am dying for a beautiful cause. I lived in absolute glory and I am dying with a crescendo.”And while he was lying in the bed and the poison was being prepared, the man – who had prepared poison for many other prisoners – was trying to delay, because he also felt, “The man is absolutely innocent. If I can give him a few minutes more to live…I am a poor man, I cannot do anything more.” So he was preparing the poison as slowly as possible.But Socrates would come to the door and say to the man, “You are not being sincere, you are cheating. The orders are that as the sun sets, the poison should be given to me. And the sun has set and you have not prepared the poison. I feel you are trying to give me a few more minutes, but there is no point. I am ready to go into the unknown. Life I have known enough. Don’t delay; let me go into the unknown mysteries of death.”He was one of the most sincere men in the sense that he never said anything about what happens beyond death. He always said, “First let me die. Unless I know, I cannot say anything about beyond death. Those who have said something are all lying, deceiving, cheating, because they are still alive and they don’t know anything about death. Don’t force me to be in the same company. I will say only that which is my experience.”He told the man who was preparing the poison, “Be quick, because my disciples are waiting. Perhaps I can give them a few indications about death as it is experienced.” The poison was given – and this is when Socrates comes into his purest awareness. He said to his disciples, “Up to my knees, I don’t feel.” He pinched and he said, “Up to my knees, the poison has worked. But one thing you should remember: the knees are gone, but I am as complete and entire as I have been before. Nothing has been taken away from me.” And then the whole legs, and then the hands…and then the breathing started slowing. And Socrates said, “Perhaps I may not be able to say anything more. I want you to know that almost my whole body is dead. Just the last few breaths more…and I will be gone. But I am as entire and as total and as whole as I have ever been. My awareness is crystal clear.”This shows the sincerity of the man. Only such a man can say that your sources of life belong to eternity, they don’t die with your bodies. They only change houses. You have been here always, and you will be here always. You are part, an essential part, inseparable part of this immensely beautiful dancing existence.Just be natural so that you can remain in tune with existence. So that you can dance in the rain and you can dance in the sun and you can dance with the trees, and you can have a communion even with the rocks, with the mountains, with the stars.Except this, there is no enlightenment.Let me define it: Enlightenment is to be in tune with existence.To be in tune with nature – the very nature of things – is enlightenment. Against nature there is only misery – and misery created by yourself. Nobody else is responsible for it.Two Irish leprechauns arrive at the convent door and ask to speak to the Mother Superior. They are led to her office, where one of them respectfully asks, “Excuse me, your holiness, but are there any leprechaun nuns at this convent?”The Mother Superior looks shocked and assures him that there are not. The little guy then asks if there are any leprechaun nuns in the neighborhood. Again the reply is no.The leprechaun then asks, “Begging your pardon, Holy Mother, but would you know of any leprechaun nuns anywhere?”The nun shakes her head, at which the little man turns and shakes his friend by the shoulders. “You see! You see!” he cries, “I told you, you fucked a penguin!”This is prayer time.Old man Finkelstein tells Ruthie that he is going into town to apply for an old age pension. Ruthie says, “Sam, you don’t have a birth certificate; how are you going to prove your age?”“Don’t worry Ruthie,” says old man Fink and he leaves for town.Sure enough, he is back in a few hours and reports that he will get his first check on Monday. “So how did you prove your age?” asks Ruthie.“Easy,” says Fink, smiling, “I just unbuttoned my shirt and showed them all the gray hairs on my chest.”“Well, while you were at it,” snaps Ruthie, “why didn’t you drop your pants and apply for total disability?”At a doctor’s convention, a conversation is taking place in the pub at the end of the day’s activities.An Israeli doctor says, “Medicine in my country is so advanced that we can take an eyeball out of one person and put it in another and have him looking for work in six weeks.”A German doctor says, “Ja, that’s nothing. In Germany, we can take a lung out of one person and put it in someone else and have him looking for work in a month.”A Russian doctor says, “In my country, medicine is so advanced that we can take half a heart from one person, put it in another, and have them both looking for work in two weeks.”An American doctor, not wanting to be outdone, says, “That’s nothing. We can take an asshole out of Hollywood, put him in the White House, and have half the nation looking for work the next day!”

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Om Mani Padme Hum 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Om Mani Padme Hum 12 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I can relate to the taste of good German chocolate, but what about the taste of enlightenment?Mind has an incurable disease: the name of the disease is duality. It does not matter what the mind is focused on, it immediately creates a division – in the knower and in the known, in the observer and in the observed, in the subject and in the object; in short, between I and thou.One of the most prominent thinkers of the twentieth century was Martin Buber, and his contribution is of great importance. His whole philosophy he has condensed into a book called I And Thou. And he has given the philosophy the name, “dialogue.”As far as the mind is concerned, what he is saying is true and relevant. But mind is not the ultimate judge of existence. I had written a letter to Martin Buber when he was alive. I was very young, but I pointed out to him that a real dialogue is not between I and thou, the real dialogue begins when the I and the thou start merging and melting. The dialogue can even be silent, but its basic requirement is that the division should not be there. He did not reply. I wrote him again and I told him, “Your not replying to me shows that you yourself are not convinced of what you are saying.”You are asking, what is the taste of enlightenment? There is no taste, because you are alone. At the most, in language we can say there is a certain sensitivity, a fragrance, but it is not separate from you. It is you yourself. The taste and the taster need to be separate, and in enlightenment the only barrier is separation.Just the other day I received, from the same insane Catholic man from the staff of Time magazine, another question: “You teach love, you teach compassion; then why did the people of Oregon in America become enemies to you?” I don’t ordinarily reply to people if I see that they are basically insane, and the question shows insanity absolutely clearly. If he were intelligent enough, first he should have asked, “Jesus has also preached love, has preached compassion, has preached forgiveness – then why was he crucified by the Jews?” If his question were relevant and had not come from a Catholic prejudice, he would have seen the contradiction. And certainly the people of Oregon have not crucified me yet.Moreover, I was only a tourist in America. Jesus was a Jew, belonged to the same people, was born among them, was brought up by them. And whatever he was saying was not contradictory to the Jewish scriptures. In fact, he was trying to argue for the Jewish tradition; still the people of Judea crucified him. And this fellow, after two thousand years, has the guts to ask me, “If you teach love, if you teach compassion, then why were the people of Oregon not friendly to you?” The fact is that we have lived a past so insane, so insecure, that we are afraid of strangers. And America could not find a stranger man than me. I was not part of their world, I did not believe in their values. I was really making a commune absolutely against all American tradition and pride.I am basically against marriage; obviously the question of divorce does not arise. I am against the accidental birth of people, because that is the basic cause for the earth being burdened with the retarded. I am in absolute agreement that love should be just play; the moment you start producing children it becomes business. And I cannot agree to produce this kind of humanity. I was teaching that whenever a couple…of course unmarried, because the law has nothing to do with your love. Love should be a freedom between two persons, and if from even one person love disappears they have to separate, as friends, with gratitude for all the beautiful moments they lived together. Loving affairs ending in the courts are absolutely ugly.And when a couple wants more than love, wants a child, the decision has to be made by medical science, not by them. Because neither the father knows nor the mother, what is going to be the outcome. Adolf Hitler, Ronald Reagan? These idiots could have been avoided.In a single lovemaking the man releases almost one million sperm, and from that point starts your ugly civilization. All those one million sperm have a life span only of two hours; within two hours they have to reach the mother’s egg. You have seen marathon races, but you don’t understand that the real marathon race is for the poor sperm. It is so small you cannot see it with your bare eyes. In relation to its size, the track that it has to pass to reach the mother’s egg has been calculated as almost two miles. In these two miles, one million people are struggling for survival. It is absolutely understandable that the wiser ones will stand by the side, and the idiots will do everything to reach the mother’s egg. It is not a coincidence that the world is full of retarded people. And once a single sperm reaches the mother’s egg, the egg closes; the remaining one million people are defeated. They have to die, there is no way for them to be alive.It is almost amazing that a few wise people have also reached the mother’s egg. It seems just accidental. A Gautam Buddha or a Bertrand Russell – perhaps they got into the crowd and could not get out of it. The crowd is not small. And they were simply pushed by the crowd; perhaps some idiot was pushing them from behind. I cannot conceive them to be so competitive that they would have reached on their own. Some accident, perhaps just chance that they entered the track first, because one million people cannot enter the track simultaneously. And there is no referee to give them a signal – Go on! So a few enter first, a few later. It seems to be just chance.If you look at humanity, how many people of any worth have you created? And how many people have lived without any dignity, without any joy?I am in absolute agreement with the idea of a scientific determination, and not to leave it – because this is the most important thing – to the idiots themselves. They can be eliminated, but then we will have to think in a totally new way. We will have to manage our lives not according to the old, which was not management but an absolute chaos.It is not necessary that your sperm will have an Albert Einstein, a Rabindranath Tagore, or a Picasso. I don’t see any reason why we cannot have banks in the hospitals, medical colleges, where people can contribute their sperm just as they contribute blood. Now science is ready to read the intrinsic program of the sperm: how long it will live, whether it will be strong or weak, whether it will suffer diseases, whether it will be intelligent, whether it will have a certain genius. This is an old stupidity that your child should be only from your sperm. From the sperm bank you can choose. If you want a scientist, if you want a poet of the qualities which only very few people have attained in the whole of history, if you want a painter, if you want an absolutely healthy human being, intelligent, beautiful, you can choose.And rather than you injecting it, let medical science inject a single sperm so there is no possibility for any Ronald Reagan to reach the mother’s egg. These people have to be eliminated completely. They don’t have a place in the future vision of mankind.Just think of a world of utterly talented people, healthy, with a longer life span, creative, sensitive. We can make this world really a garden where every plant blossoms, releases its fragrance, joins the dance that is existence.This man’s question reminded me how blind people can be and never be aware of their blindness. Jesus is crucified – that is perfect – and after Jesus, the Christianity that he unknowingly produced has burned thousands of living beings alive. No other religion is so criminal as Christianity, but this man cannot see that. He can see only enough to ask why I was not liked by the people of Oregon. It simply shows that the people of Oregon are the most retarded people in the world. After Oregon I have been trying to find someone who can defeat them, but I have not been able to find anyone. They are absolute idiots.Just because they were afraid of me and my people – afraid, because things happened when we purchased the land in Oregon. The land was for sale for almost forty years and nobody had purchased it, at any price, because it was only a desert. What are you going to do with a desert, one hundred twenty-six square miles?I wanted to make the point that the people who surrounded that desert were not inventive, not intelligent – we changed that same desert into an oasis, and that hurt the Oregonians. Because when we had purchased the land they laughed. They used to come and say, “What are you doing? You can pour in millions of dollars; this desert is not going to produce anything.” And we made the desert one of the most beautiful places you can conceive. That became a wound in the hearts of the Oregonians.And the United States Attorney blurted out after deporting me… he was asked by a reporter in a press conference, “Why have you not jailed Osho?”He said, “There are three reasons. One, our priority was to destroy the commune…”That shows the reason – why should they destroy the commune? We had created a desert into a living place. Five thousand sannyasins were living there; we made roads, we made dams, we had grown sufficient food for ourselves. We made all kinds of arrangements – a small oasis. We had fifteen thousand specially-made tents which could be air-conditioned, which could be heated so that they could be used around the year. Each celebration day – and the celebrations used to last for three weeks – there were twenty thousand people from all over the world. Oregon was shocked, they could not believe it.We had every facility. There was not a single beggar – and the people who come to me are, of necessity, bound to be the most intelligent ones. The unintelligent cannot even conceive of what I am saying.There was a heart surgeon who was known all over the country. We had our own hospital, the most qualified doctors, nurses. We had our own school, and I had made it a point that the children should not be part of the family, they should be part of the commune. Their fathers and mothers could meet them, could invite them for a visit, but they could not prejudice their minds. Those children were growing – for the first time in the whole of history – without being conditioned that they were Christian, that they were Hindu, that they were communist. No conditioning – we were allowing them to grow to whatever their inner potential is.I don’t believe in poverty. And the man from Time magazine has asked, “If you love people, you are compassionate, then why did you have ninety-three Rolls Royces?” But he is not aware that I don’t have a single cent. Those ninety-three Rolls Royces had come from people who loved the commune. Of course, nobody can use ninety-three Rolls Royces simultaneously, and they were all the latest model, the same model. I am not mad! It was just because of the gratitude of my sannyasins that they did not want to use a car that I was using. But they had their own cars.The commune had two hundred cars of its own, one hundred buses of its own, four airplanes and a small airport of its own. We changed the whole shape of the desert, and everybody was working not as a laborer but out of love, out of creativity. And even after working the whole day, people were dancing in the evening; late in the night you could hear the flutes, the guitars. This was the pain in the neck of Oregonians, that “We have been living here for three hundred years and we could not make any use of this land. These people within five years have changed the whole face of it.” We created the most luxurious commune that has been ever created. The whole commune was centrally air-conditioned….And we were not at all concerned with America or with Oregon. The nearest Oregon town was twenty miles away from us and people were so happy in the commune, nobody wanted to go anywhere. Finally we had to get rid of so many cars, airplanes, because what is the point? Nobody wants to go anywhere.And the poor fellow is still haunted by my ninety-three Rolls Royces. He does not think for a moment that I have not kept any Rolls Royce from those ninety-three; I have not even looked back toward them. I never went to the garage. They were not mine.But he is asking the question, “When the whole world is poor, how could you manage a commune to live comfortably?” What do you mean? If the whole world is sick, do we also have to be sick? If the whole hospital is filled with sick people, do you want the doctors and nurses also in the beds?I am absolutely against poverty. That became the problem, that I had abolished poverty in the commune. And what can be done in one place can be done in every place, because it is the same earth – better earth. The commune became their priority – to destroy it so nobody could compare, and nobody could ask why America has thirty million beggars.We had absorbed three hundred beggars from America into the commune. And the beggars themselves told me, “For the first time we have recognized that we are human beings, because nobody here treats us the way we have been treated our whole life, like stray dogs. We have felt for the first time that we are also human beings, and a tremendous dignity and self-respect has arisen in us.”Now this was the problem: if the commune was going to become well known all over America, the American politicians would have been in tremendous difficulty. Hence the Attorney General – who is a close friend of Ronald Reagan; they have been educated in the same schools, same colleges, and they were also working in Hollywood together. And as Ronald Reagan became the president immediately he called his friend to be the Attorney General of America….The second reason the United States Attorney gave was: “We did not want Osho to remain in jail because we were afraid that would make him a martyr.” You can see the meaning hidden in it – the desire was there, but because of the fear that if they kept me in jail, then sannyasins all over the world were going to protest, were going to become stronger, were going to be in every way against the American domination of the world….And the third thing is really hilarious. He said, “And moreover, the third thing is that we don’t have any evidence for the charge that Osho has committed any crime.” Now the US Attorney says he doesn’t have any evidence against me! Then why am I being punished with a fine of almost half a million dollars? Why have I been harassed into six jails unnecessarily? Why was I arrested in the first place without any arrest warrant, just under the threat of loaded guns? Why was I not allowed bail?And the woman magistrate who did not allow me bail behaved so strangely…I had never expected a woman to behave that way. The government attorney for three days continuously tried and failed to prove that there was any reason for my arrest. The question of bail does not arise – in fact the people who arrested me should have been punished! And the government attorney accepted in his final statement, the concluding line was, “We have not been able to prove anything against Osho.” But the magistrate…and that was such a surprise to me; she said, “You may not have been able to prove anything, but I have reasons of my own and I am not going to give him bail.”I have respected women more than any man in history, but unfortunately I have to exclude this magistrate in Carolina from my respect. And she must have suffered a deep guilt, because what was she doing? I was told by my jailer, because he could not believe it either. He was on the point of retirement, he had a lifetime of experience, and he said, “I have never seen such a case. When you cannot produce any evidence and still you refuse to give bail, this is unheard of!” And he told me that the reason was that the woman was being bribed from the White House. She was just a magistrate, and she had been bribed that if she refused bail to me, she would be made a federal judge.For this promotion, she must have felt deep guilt. Just the other day I came to know that she is suffering from cancer, is on her deathbed. That guilt must have created the cancer; otherwise the woman was perfectly healthy, in fact more healthy than ordinarily you expect women to be. I feel sorry for her. She got the promotion, but in a wrong direction.And my chief attorney Niren is here – he is my sannyasin. He has been going through all the jails where they mistreated me in every possible way. And they are lying – I have to speak with Niren about the points where they are absolutely lying. I have an inner, intuitive guarantee that in the Oklahoma jail I was poisoned, poisoned with thallium, which has shown its effects over the last two years. It remains deposited in the body and becomes active over a period of time. But it has to be given in small doses; if you give it in a big dose, then the effects will be immediate. This was the reason why the bail was refused and I was dragged for twelve days from one jail to another jail.And in Oklahoma – Niren has been there – they simply denied that I have been in that jail. I knew that’s what they were going to say. I reached Oklahoma in the middle of the night; it was purposefully arranged so that the whole airport was dark and there was no traffic, and still they were afraid that somebody might see me. They took me out through a secret door, out of the airport.At the airport the man who was giving my charge to the US Marshall who was driving the car whispered in his ear…but I was sitting just behind him, and what he whispered made me certain about my intuitive feeling. The man said, “Remember one thing: this guy is world famous and all the world media are focused on him, so don’t do anything directly. Be very cautious whatever you do.” Now these words indicate with absolute certainty that they were ready to do something, and the instruction was given: it has to be done in such an indirect way that nobody will ever be able to find….But I was not alone in the car. Another prisoner, a woman, was also sitting by my side. I told her, “Listen carefully to what is being said.” Niren has to find that woman, because all records have disappeared – records about me, records about that woman, because she will be the witness. When Niren reached there he found that on their computer there is no record. They have made their records on the computer since 1986. He had to force his way, insist that “I have an absolute guarantee that he has been in this jail and I want to look into the records in your basement.”In the middle of the night they took me through the back door into the jail. There was nobody else, they eliminated any kind of witness, but existence has its own ways…. And the US Marshall who brought me insisted that I could not write my own name, I had to write the name of David Washington. I should be called David Washington while I am in the jail, and I have to respond to this name.I said, “I am not going to write anybody’s name. You are forcing me to do something illegal and unconstitutional, for which you will suffer one day.”He was also tired, in the middle of the night; half an hour we struggled. He said, “You are a strange person, I want to go home!”I said, “You can go to hell! But I am not going to write David Washington.”Then he said, “I will fill in the form.” And he filled in the form – my understanding was that this would be an absolute proof. He filled in the form and I signed my own signature. He looked at my signature…of course he could not understand; nobody can understand what I write.He asked me, “What have you written?”I said, “It seems it is David Washington.”Niren found the document and he has brought a photocopy of the document, but my signature is missing. Still, that document indicates one thing: “David Washington, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon.” And that is in the handwriting of the US Marshall of that jail. My feeling is they have simply destroyed the form on which I have signed, knowing that it will create difficulty, and they have filled in another form. I would like Niren to go back to Oklahoma, because the question is very simple, that on this form there is no signature, either of Osho or at least of David Washington. Some signature is needed; otherwise what is the value of this record?I entered the jail, that is certain now. That “Rajneeshpuram” they have forgotten is enough proof. Niren has to take whatever he has managed to get to the experts. Whose handwriting is that? And he has to insist on getting the signature, because I have signed it, so either they are hiding the original and they have managed another, or they have destroyed it. But the man has to be caught.And these people go on lying. He said to Niren, “I treated Osho the best. In no other jail he was treated the way I treated him.” In fact the truth is that I was treated the worst in Oklahoma. And I have witnesses. Just by chance they put me in an isolation cell with a small window – and the glass of the window was completely dark, so dirty you could not figure out what was beyond the window. But just across from me there was another person. I don’t know him, but one thing is certain: he was an orthodox Hindu sannyasin, because he had orange robes. And his face…I tried in every way to clean the window and to see that man, and just a few days ago that man was here – perhaps he may still be here – and he told Anando, “I am a witness that Osho was brought to Oklahoma and was put into the cell just across from me.”Niren has to find the girl, who was released that very night. She is a fat girl, nearabout thirty years of age – but a courageous one; almost a jailbird. The way she was behaving in the jail was as if it were almost her home. Niren has just to advertise in Oklahoma and the girl will respond.Niren has also to ask the pilot of the plane, because there is only one US Marshall’s plane – that makes things simple. They all became very friendly to me – the pilot, the copilot, and a woman who was serving food to people. And they all felt that this was strange: “From North Carolina it is only five or six hours’ flight to Oregon, and you are being tortured unnecessarily for twelve days! There is no rationality in it.” So he has to interview those people about whether they had dropped me in the middle of the night at the Oklahoma airport. And particularly the woman, because she was very much concerned about my well-being. There was no vegetarian food but she managed some fruits, some juices, and she was sorry…“We never thought that in America such uncivilized behavior, such undemocratic behavior, is still prevalent.”And when these government people say things to you – I have to listen to Niren’s interviews; he has brought all the tapes – don’t trust them. Because in those twelve days they were all lying to me. Every time I was taken from one jail to another jail they would say, “You are going to Oregon,” and I would end up somewhere else. It continued for twelve days – free travel all over America! I enjoyed it. And I became convinced that if this is the situation of the country proclaimed to be the most democratic, what will be the situation of other countries?Just by chance Niren met Judge Leavy, who finally gave me the punishment of four hundred thousand dollars, deportation for five years from America…and for fifteen years if I come back to America and commit any crime, then there will be no trial for it; I will be jailed. It will be enough that somebody has complained against me.Niren met him on the plane and for two hours they were together. Niren asked him, “You were watching Osho for three days; millions of people see something in his eyes – have you looked into his eyes?” And Judge Leavy was lying, because I was looking into his eyes and he was avoiding; he has not looked into my eyes. And even if he had looked into my eyes, he would not find anything. He has lived with criminals his whole life. He knows the eyes of crime, he does not know the eyes of innocence.I had my cap, and he said to Niren, “I hesitated whether to tell him to remove the cap or not” – because this stupid idea exists in America that to wear a cap in the courtroom is insulting to the court. My own understanding is that to cover your head is a respectful gesture. A court has to be a temple of justice. But he said, “Finally I asked him to remove his cap.” I removed the cap and with the removal of the cap I removed all my respect for American courts and the American constitution.I am not fussy about small things. But from that moment, whatever I have heard about Judge Leavy became absolutely absurd. He is not a man of justice. He knew perfectly well that I have not committed any crime, and he punished me. Four hundred thousand dollars, knowing perfectly well that I don’t have a single cent, and he deported me without any reason. I looked at the man…he will suffer for it; perhaps he has also been bribed in the same way, because now he has moved to a higher court. Just one step more and he can move to the Supreme Court. If he is a man of any guts, he should admit that he was not concerned with justice, he was concerned with his own promotion.I can understand Niren’s difficulty, but you have to gather courage and you have to encounter these people. When Judge Leavy said, “I did not see anything in his eyes,” you should not have remained silent. Because if a blind man cannot see the sun, that does not mean the sun is not there, or if a man who is interested in climbing ladders cannot see the roses, it is not the fault of the roses. To see the sublime, to see the divine you have to be unprejudiced, you have to be open and receptive.For three days I also watched him. Just a dead man with no guts, hoping for perhaps just one more promotion. He may not have seen anything in my eyes but I have seen even into his soul.According to me, our judges are greater criminals than our criminals. Moving from one jail to another jail I have seen such innocent people. But I have not seen in the courts, in the officers, in the marshals, in the judges, anybody who can be called innocent. They are all playing into the hands of those who can give them a little more prestige, a little more respectability. I would like Niren to tell Judge Leavy that what I have seen in him is just a dead soul – utterly ugly, criminal, without any guts; just a greedy person and nothing else.Enlightenment is not something separate from you. What is the taste of innocence? What is the taste of silence? What is the taste of purity? You cannot taste them because they are not objects.You are the taste!And when everything else has disappeared in your utter aloneness, a merger, a meeting with the cosmos happens. You cannot call it a taste, the word ‘taste’ is too small. It certainly creates a dance in every cell of your being, in every fiber of your being. It transforms you from base metal into gold. But it is not a taste, it is a transformation.You cannot describe it, you can only enjoy it.Now it is time for prayer….“How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you are on.”This is the whole philosophy of relativity of Albert Einstein!“When you read a biography, remember that the truth is never fit for publication.”Truth is so simple, there is no sensation in it. No publisher is going to waste money in publishing truth. These thousands of papers, magazines, weeklies, are full of untruth. The more untruth, the greater is their subscription rate, the more they are read. But remember it: for this untruth we are destroying beautiful trees around the world.“The quickest way to make anti-freeze is to hide her nightdress.”“Prepare for eternity: tidy up your room.”“To live to be a hundred, first you have to live to be ninety-nine and then be very careful for a year.”“When a woman steals your boyfriend, the best revenge is to let her live with him.”“If you are not confused, you are not paying attention.”“There is only one way to handle a woman. The trouble is, nobody knows what it is.”“If you are single, all the good men are married. If you are married, all the good men are single. If you are over sixty-five, all the good men are dead.”“Misery to a woman is an alive secret and a dead telephone.”“There is nothing like good food, good wine and a bad woman.”“Love may be blind, but it knows its way around in the dark.”“You have not lived until you die in California.”“A wedding is a ceremony where a man loses control of himself.”“Success is relative. The more success, the more relatives.”“It is better for a woman to be beautiful rather than intelligent, because men’s eyes function better than their brains.”A sexy blonde with a stunning figure boards a bus and finding no empty seats, asks a gentleman for his, explaining that she is pregnant.The man stands up at once and gives her his seat, but can’t help commenting that she does not look pregnant.“Well,” she replies with a smile, “it has only been about half an hour, and it really makes me very tired!”Paddy is obsessed by golf – it has become his only topic of conversation.Maureen is slowly going bananas with the constant discussion of birdies, drivers and sand traps, of his golf clubs, his caddies and his scores.Finally at dinner she snaps, “I am tired of you talking about golf twenty-four hours a day! I don’t want to hear about it at this meal!”“But what shall I talk about then?” asks Paddy.“About anything,” says Maureen. “Talk about sex for goodness’ sake!”“Okay,” says Paddy, “I wonder who my caddie is screwing these days?”After the prison riot, the head warden calls the three ringleaders into his office and says, “Now then, I would like to know two things: First, why did you revolt? And second, how did you get out of your cell?”One of the men steps forward and says, “Warden, we rebelled because the prison food is so awful.”“I see,” replies the warden. “And the cell, what did you use to break the bars?”The prisoner steps back in disgust and says, “This morning’s toast!”

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Om Mani Padme Hum 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Om Mani Padme Hum 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,In the West, celebration is associated with the American idea of having a good time which is synonymous with noise, loud music, watching movies, smoking, sex, and release of energy as such, while silence and serenity are automatically associated with boredom and excessive accumulation of energy which results in tension and anxiety. Could you say something about silence and celebration of life?The question you have asked has many implications. It is not a single question; it is one question consisting of many questions of importance. I would like to go into each dimension of the question; only then you may be able to find the answer.The first thing to remember is that man consists of two worlds, one that leads outward and one that leads inward. Man is a duality: he is a body and a soul. And because of this tremendous duality, all the problems of the world have arisen. The duality is not a simple one. It is what I have called a “gestalt duality.” In a gestalt duality you can never see both worlds together; if you choose to see one you have to forget about the other. As an example I have told you about a small children’s book where they have a picture made of simple lines, but in those lines there are two possibilities: if you fix your eyes on the picture, either you can see an old woman or you can see a beautiful young girl. You can see each separately. If you go on staring at the old woman, suddenly you will find a strange change: the old woman has disappeared and a beautiful young girl is in front of you.If you still persist in staring…because the eyes are not meant to stare; naturally they are continuously moving. Movement is intrinsic to your eyes. They get tired of staring at a thing, they are always in search of something new. Because of this, soon you will find the young woman disappearing and the old woman replaced again. They are both made of the same lines, just different combinations, but you cannot see both together. That is impossible. Because if you see the young woman, where will you find the lines that make the old woman? If you see the old woman, you don’t have extra lines to create the young woman. You can see each separately, but you can never see them together. This is gestalt duality, and this is the reality of man.The East has seen man only as a soul, as a consciousness, as an introvert being. But because it has chosen one gestalt, it has to deny the other. That’s why in the East for centuries the mystics have consistently been denying the reality of the world. They say it is just a dream, it is maya, it is illusion. It is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. It is not really there, it is only a mirage, only an appearance. The East has denied the outside – has to deny, because of the inner necessity of the gestalt duality.The West has chosen the outside world and has to deny the inner world. Man is only a body. Physiology, biology, chemistry, but not a consciousness, not a soul; the soul is only an epiphenomenon. And because only the outside is considered to be real, it was possible for science to develop in the West. Technology, thousands of gadgets – possibilities to land on the moon, and the vast universe that surrounds you. But knowing all this, there has been a deep emptiness in the Western mind: something is missing.It is difficult for the Western logic to pinpoint what is missing, but it is absolutely certain that something is missing. The house is full of guests but the host is missing. You have all the things of the world, but you are not. A tremendous misery is the outcome. You have all the pleasures, all the money, all that man has ever dreamt of and in the end of centuries of effort, suddenly you find you don’t exist. Your inside is hollow, there is nobody.The East has also faced its own misery. Thinking that the outside is unreal, there is no possibility of scientific progress. Science has to be objective – but if objects are only appearances, illusions, there is no point in dissecting illusions and trying to find out the secrets of nature. Hence the East had to remain poor, had to remain hungry, had to remain under all kinds of slaveries for centuries.These two thousand years of slavery are not just an accident. The East was prepared for it. It has accepted it – what does it matter, in a dream, whether you are a master or a slave? What does it matter if in dream you are being served with delicious food or you are hungry? The moment you wake up, both dreams will prove invalid. The East has consented to remain starved, hungry, enslaved, and the reason is that it has chosen a different gestalt: the real is the inner.The East has learned ways to be silent, to be peaceful, to enjoy the bliss that arises as you drown deeper into your interiority. But you cannot share it with anybody else; it is absolutely individual. At the most you can talk about it. So the whole East for thousands of years has been talking about spirituality, consciousness, enlightenment, meditation, and on the outside has remained a beggar, sick, hungry, enslaved.Who is going to listen to these slaves and their great philosophies? The West has simply laughed. But the laughter has not been only on one side. The East has also laughed, seeing that people are accumulating things and losing themselves.We have lived in a very strange, schizophrenic state of mind for thousands of years.You are saying, “In the West, celebration is associated with the American idea of having a good time.” That brings me to another implication. Only a miserable man needs a good time. Just as a sick man needs medicine, a miserable man needs a good time; it is a very cunning strategy to avoid your misery.The misery is not avoided; you only forget for the time being that you are miserable. Under the influence of drugs or under the influence of sex or under the influence of your so-called having a good time, what are you actually doing? You are escaping from your inner emptiness. You are getting involved in any kind of thing. One thing you are afraid of is your own self.It has created a certain madness, but because everybody in the West is in the same boat, it becomes very difficult to recognize. Millions of people are watching football – and you call these people intelligent? Then who are you going to call retarded? And not only are these people immensely involved in games like football, they are jumping, they are shouting, they are fighting. And because there are no stadiums big enough to accommodate the whole country, everybody is sitting glued to his chair in front of the television. And they are doing the same stupid acts – sitting in their chairs, shouting….I know one man – because his team was losing, he became so mad he destroyed his television! I was staying with the man and I asked him, “Are you ready to go into an insane asylum? In the first place, football should be for children. You have passed that age long before, but mentally your age is not more than twelve or thirteen years. And what you have done with the television makes me suspect that not only are you retarded, you are insane too.”Just last year in California, the University of California made a survey, a whole year’s survey about boxing matches. Each time there are boxing matches – which are ugly, inhuman, animalistic – the rate of crime in the whole state of California rises by thirteen or fourteen percent. And that rise remains after the matches are finished; it goes on lingering for at least one week. Slowly, slowly it comes back to normal.People start murdering, people start committing suicide, people start raping; all kinds of crimes suddenly start growing. Still, boxing is not condemned by any country as a criminal game which should be stopped immediately. And if any government tries, the whole country will stand up against the parliament and will protest, because boxing is such a “good time.” Two idiots are doing things on your behalf. You also wanted to do the same things, but you kept yourself in control. Now it is “having a good time” because somebody else is doing it and your own repressed energies are expressed.It is something to be understood: why should you be interested in two persons behaving barbarously, harming each other? Certainly you also have the same desires. Perhaps you don’t have the guts….But it is something much more complicated: the whole West has become slowly slowly just an observer. Somebody else makes love in the film, somebody else fights in the boxing matches, somebody else plays football, and deep down you get identified with these people. It is good that in movie houses it is kept dark, because I have watched people crying in a movie house, knowing perfectly well that it is an empty screen and a film is being projected. I have seen people laughing, I have seen people standing up, thrilled, and I have always wondered…it seems that man has left everything to the professionals and he has become just a watcher.Obviously the professional can do the thing better than you can. But remember: things are not going to stop here. In one existentialist novel, the writer has a very definite clarity about the future, that soon only servants will be making love. Why should you bother? – you can pay the servant. But why should your wife bother? She can also pay another servant.I am reminded of a very rich man who was bothering and torturing his psychoanalyst. The psychoanalyst in the West is the highly paid professional; hundreds of dollars per hour. Very few people can afford to be mad. But this man used to talk two hours, three hours…. The patient talks on the couch and the psychoanalyst listens, but there is a limit. The man was driving the psychoanalyst mad, every day the same story. And he could not even stop him because he was paying so much; he was his best client.Finally he thought of a plan and he told the man, “Because of you, I cannot see my other patients. A simple device will be very helpful: I will leave my tape recorder. You talk to my tape recorder as long as you want, and in the night I will listen to whatever you have said to the tape recorder more silently, more attentively than I can in the office, because I am worried about other patients who are waiting.” The rich man immediately agreed.The psychoanalyst was not thinking that he would agree so easily. The next day when the psychoanalyst was entering the office, the rich man was coming out. He said, “What is the matter? Where are you going? What about your session today?”He said, “The session is over, because I have also worked out a plan: in the dark night, in the silence, without any disturbance of you and your presence, I talk to my tape recorder. Now my tape recorder is on the couch talking to your tape recorder. Why should I waste my time?”People have become so outward that they cannot even for a single moment sit silently; that is the most difficult thing in the world. People are fidgeting. What is the fear? The fear is, you may encounter your emptiness and once you encounter your emptiness, your life will lose all interest, all juice, all meaningfulness, all significance.Everybody is running from himself. And this running from themselves people call “having a good time.”Western man’s life can be divided in two parts – and I have moved around the earth and watched all kinds of idiots. These are the two parts: first is having a good time and second is having a hangover. By the time the hangover is over the time comes for having a good time. In a vicious circle, they go on between these two, wasting their lives and reaching nowhere.Reaching to the grave cannot be called reaching somewhere. It simply means that now the wheel is so tired and so bored with having a good time and suffering hangovers that it wants to rest inside a grave.People rest only in their graves.Out of the grave, there is no time to rest.In the East, we chose the opposite gestalt. We found treasures and mysteries and secrets, but the difficulty with the inner is that you cannot materialize it. You cannot prove it in a court; you cannot even have a witness. Except you, you cannot allow anybody else into your inner world. Naturally, the East slowly slowly created isolated individuals. These isolated individuals were constantly harassed by the crowd, by the marketplace. They wanted their inner silence, their inner serenity, their calmness, undisturbed. The conclusion was: renounce the world, move to the Himalayas or deep into the forest where you can be absolutely yourself.But both the alternatives are choosing half the man. And the moment you choose half the man, you are going to fall into some kind of misery. The miseries may be different, but misery is absolutely guaranteed. The East is miserable because of its Gautam Buddhas, Mahaviras, Bodhidharmas, Kabirs. It is in misery because of its greatest inner explorers. And the West is in misery because of Galileo, Copernicus, Columbus, Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell. These are the great people of the West and the East, and all these great people have chosen man in his half. To choose man in his half has been the root cause of human misery up to now.I teach you the whole man. The inner is real – as real as the outer. And the outer is as significant as the spiritual. You have to attain to a certain balance, a balance in which neither the inner predominates nor the outer but both are equally complementary to each other. This has not happened up to now. But unless this happens, there is no possibility for any humanity to exist in the world.The West is dying of its own success. The East has already died of its success. It is a very strange story that people have died because of their victories – choosing the half is dangerous. But choosing the whole needs courage, insight and overwhelming understanding. And a mobility…just as you come out of your home and go back inside the home, your coming out of your being and going into your being should be as simple as that.Whenever you are needed in the market, you should be in the market with your totality. The market cannot destroy your soul. And anybody who has preached to the world to renounce it, was against humanity. Neither does going inward, being in a meditative silence, take away anything from the outside world. You don’t have to condemn it, and you don’t have to declare it illusory. It should have been so simple to see, that I am amazed why thousands of years have passed, and still it is not a recognized fact around the whole world.I am reminded of a great Indian mystic, Adi Shankara. He is one of the proponents of the philosophy that the world is absolutely illusory. One morning he is coming out of the Ganges, after taking his early bath before going into prayer. The sun has not risen yet. It is dark. He is coming up the stone steps in Varanasi and a man touches him. It would not have been much of a trouble, but the man simply said, “Forgive me. I am not supposed even to come close to you. I am a sudra, an untouchable. Even my shadow is evil.”Shankara was very angry. He said, “I will have to take another bath to purify myself.” But he was not aware who the man was.The man said, “Before you take another bath, you will have to answer a few questions. One is, if the outside is unreal, do you believe me to be a reality? I am certainly outside you. And if the outside is unreal, then what is the reality of the pure River Ganges of the Hindus? It is also outside. And what do you think about your own skin? Is it inside or outside? Unless you explain it to me, I am going to remain here. You can take as many baths as you want; I will touch you again and again.”Hindus don’t like to talk about the incident. And Shankara does not seem to be an honest man, because after this incident he continued to preach that the outside is illusory. Every day you need the outside food and every day you need the outside water, and still the outside is illusory? It is such pure nonsense that it is time to condemn all these people who have renounced the world and who have been teaching the world that the outside is nothing but a dream.I cannot believe it – if the outside is unreal, whom are you teaching? If the outside world is unreal then what are you renouncing, where are you going? To the Himalayas? The Himalayas are as much outside as M.G. Market!And the same kind of stupidity has been dominating the Western mind. A scientist is perfectly rational when he is working in his lab on objects, but the moment you ask him about himself, he starts saying that there is nobody inside. He cannot see what an irrational statement he is making: if there is nobody inside, who is working in the lab? If there is nobody inside, then who is watching, calculating, coming to conclusions? The science is true and the scientist himself is saying that he is not true.These two idiotic ideologies have destroyed the whole of humanity – its peace, its love, its grandeur, its dignity. It has to be restored. I deny Adi Shankara and I also deny Karl Marx in the same breath; I am against the atheist and I am against the theist because both are trying to divide reality, which is indivisible. The outer cannot exist without the inner. Neither can the inner exist without the outer. They are both two sides of the same coin.But believe it or not, there is not a single statement in the whole history of man declaring that man is one, that the outer and the inner are not contradictory but complementary, that they cannot exist in separation, that they are supported by each other and they should be used together. Only then man can rise to his real heights and blossom into his ultimate flowering.You are asking, “…associated with the American idea of having a good time which is synonymous with noise, loud music, watching movies, smoking, sex, and release of energy as such.” This is the half side – the people who have chosen to be extroverts and have forgotten their own inner center. But they are getting fed up with it. Now the greatest philosophers in the West like Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Marcel, Jean Paul Sartre, all are in absolute agreement that life is meaningless, that it is nothing but boredom. And the only conclusion out of all these philosophies is a very simple one: except suicide, there is no way. But there are wonders and wonders: of all these great philosophers I have named, none have committed suicide.It reminds me of a great Greek philosopher, Zeno, who was teaching the same thing two thousand years ago. He lived a long life, he died when he was ninety, but he was such a convincing, impressive personality that thousands of people committed suicide because they could not prove what is the meaning of life. If there is no meaning, then you are simply a coward and you go on dragging yourself – gather courage and commit suicide! When he was dying, one man asked him: “Zeno – following you, thousands of young people have committed suicide. A question arises: why did you not follow your own philosophy?”But philosophers are basically very clever people. Zeno said, “I had to suffer life just to teach people the truth.” He has been a martyr, because he lived for ninety years! You should worship him, because he lived so you could commit suicide.All these five great philosophers of the West – and these are the topmost – are not interested in committing suicide, they are only interested in writing about boredom, meaninglessness, anguish, angst. They all come to the conclusion that suicide seems to be the only way out, but nobody gets out of the way.The West has reached, by its own success, to the ultimate failure. And this failure of nerve is very dangerous, because they are in control of enormous destructive power, nuclear weapons. They can destroy the whole planet not only one time, but as many times as you want. Ordinarily every human being dies only once, except Jesus Christ. But the politicians and the scientists of the West have been making arrangements for everybody to die seventy times.I don’t think anybody is going to have seventy resurrections. One time will do – perhaps once in a while, somewhere, some Jesus Christ…but even Jesus Christ cannot survive seventy times. There are people who suspect – and I am one of them – whether he even survived one time. I have been to his grave – his grave is in India, in Srinagar in a small village, Pahalgam.In the Kashmiri language pahalgam means the village of the shepherd. Jesus used to call himself the shepherd. He escaped; it was not resurrection. He had never died in the first place.The Jewish cross is a very crude instrument for killing a person. For a healthy young man like Jesus – he was only thirty-three – it will take at least forty-eight hours of being on the cross before he will die. It is because the Jewish cross slowly takes out your blood; it does not kill you immediately.There was a conspiracy between the disciples of Jesus and Pontius Pilate, who was not a Jew. The land of Jesus, Judea, was under the Roman Empire; it was a slave country. Pontius Pilate was the governor, the Roman governor. He had no interest in killing Jesus. In fact, he could not conceive why Jews were so insistent to kill this innocent young man who had not committed any crime at all. He was a politician; he could not arouse the whole of Judea against the Roman Empire just because of a young man. But he managed an agreement with the disciples that Jesus would be crucified on Friday – as late as possible, because as the sun sets on Friday, Jews stop every kind of work. Certainly Jesus would have to be taken down from the cross before sunset. He was only on the cross for six hours, and then he was put in a cave which was guarded by Roman soldiers.The conspiracy worked perfectly well. In the night, Jesus was removed and as he became healed, he was taken out of Judea. Because the Jews would have crucified him again.The only place where he could find people who would understand his language, people who belonged to his race, was Kashmir. Kashmir is basically Jewish, and you will be surprised to know that when Moses had taken the Jews out of Egypt, one of the tribes of the Jews got lost in the desert. It took forty years for Moses to find the promised land, which is nothing but a desert land and Jews have never been able to forgive Moses. He gave them Israel, which is not in any way like the promise he made to them. They were torturing him continuously – “Where have you brought us?” In forty years of wandering in the desert, almost ninety percent of the original people had died – the third generation was now with Moses. And Moses had lost every contact with his own people, because these new people had no idea what Moses had done. They had only complaints against him.Somehow he managed to convince them: “This is the promised land. You remain here and I will go back to find the tribe that has been lost in the desert.” That tribe reached Kashmir…and Kashmir seems to be far closer to the promised land Moses was talking about, because there is no place on the earth which is more beautiful than Kashmir. And Kashmir has both the graves of Moses and Jesus, because Moses came in search of the tribe and found it in Kashmir, and after Judea, there was only one place – Kashmir – where Jesus could have been welcome.He remained there – a long life, one hundred and twelve years. And you can see the Kashmiris: you can see Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi…just look at their noses and you will be convinced that these are Jews. Mohammedans converted the Jews, but because they also accepted Moses and Jesus as prophets, they left those two graves without destroying them. They also left a family of caretakers, which is still Jewish.Those are the only two graves in the whole of India on which there is an inscription in Hebrew. The family that has been taking care of those two graves is the only family Mohammedans have left unconverted. They are still Jews, for so long a time. And on the graves the inscription is so clear: it says “Joshua” which is the name of Jesus in Hebrew.Jesus never knew that he would be known to the world as Jesus. His parents, his friends, his followers knew him as Joshua. The inscription says, “Joshua, the Messiah, lived in this place with his followers, a long life of one hundred and twelve years.” And because of him, the village is still called Pahalgam.But the politicians are ready to destroy the whole planet seventy times. This is the success of the Western approach of taking the outside man as the whole reality. And nothing better has happened in the East. Almost fifty percent of the people in the East are hungry, starved, undernourished. And by the end of this century at least five hundred million people will die, only in this land; I am not counting people who are going to die in China, in Taiwan, in Korea, in Japan. Just in this country five hundred million people are going to die within ten years. The earth cannot support this huge humanity which goes on growing, unless we also start being scientific, being technological.Science is capable even now to support a humanity seven times bigger than the present one. Right now, there are five billion people in the world. Science has the capacity now for seven times more people to live comfortably – but science cannot do it on its own. It needs scientific minds, it needs people who are technologically expert.My own understanding about the East is that even if people come from the West, well-educated in science and technology, their old stupidities continue inside their being. I have seen D.Sc.’s worshipping before a monkey god, Hanuman. I cannot believe my eyes! Sometimes I think it would have been better to be blind. These people who are worshipping monkey gods, elephant gods – these people don’t have scientific minds. They may have had a scientific education, which is a totally different thing.To know about science is one thing and to be creative about science is another thing. To know about meditation is one thing and to meditate is totally different. The West needs a more meditative mind and the East needs a more scientific mind. Then we will be able to create a humanity which can live without poverty, without hunger – a healthier, longer life, which you cannot even think of.The scientific calculation is that the present body that we have is capable of living at least three hundred years – just the right food, right medical care, right ecological environment and these people can live for three hundred years. I cannot conceive what treasures will be revealed if a Gautam Buddha can live three hundred years, if Albert Einstein can live three hundred years, if Bertrand Russell can live three hundred years.Up to now the way we have lived is such a sheer wastage. People who are trained, educated, cultured, become old, die at the age of seventy. And new visitors, absolutely uneducated, barbarous, go on coming from the wombs. This is not a very scientific way of arranging the world. You have to force people to retire, and these are the people who know. And you have to employ people who know nothing.Men’s lives should be made longer and birth control should be more strict. A child should be born only when we are ready to allow a Bertrand Russell to leave the world – only a replacement, and unless we can find a better replacement we are not going to allow Bertrand Russell to leave the world. And there is every possibility to find a replacement, because we can read the whole program in the genes, all the possibilities that a person is going to pass through – whether he is going to be a painter of the quality of Picasso or he is going to be a poet of the genius of Rabindranath Tagore; how long he is going to live, whether he will be healthy or sick. And not only can we read the future program of the genes, we can change the program also. The sick person can be made from the very beginning to live a healthier life and the idiots can be avoided, the retarded can be avoided.Existence gives everything with such abundance that if you don’t choose, things are going to be a chaos. Every single human being…a male, if he has not been corrupted by religions, will have at least four thousand times an opportunity to give birth to a child. And each time he releases one million sperm. That means each human male can create a whole India! Such abundance simply means you have to be very choosy. Naturally, in this crowd you cannot find many Rabindranaths. Rabindranath himself was the thirteenth child of his parents; before him, the parents had given birth to twelve children not of any value. They could have been avoided. Rabindranath could have been their first child. And who knows how many other Rabindranaths are not making their way into the world? We need a very scientific approach about the outside and a very meditative approach about the inside.You are saying, “…while silence and serenity are automatically associated with boredom and excessive accumulation of energy which results in tension and anxiety.” If things remain the same then this is a truth. If you don’t exert your energy…with your food, your continuous breathing, your drinking water, you are generating energy. It has to be used; otherwise it is going to become a tension, and finally it is going to become anxiety. But if my idea is understood…I am saying you are half outside, half inside.Use your energy in the outside world in creative activities, not in football. There is so much to create, so much to discover, such a vast universe is standing there as a challenge to explore. Use your energies to make the world more beautiful, more poetic, more healthy.And when you feel that you are exhausted, tired, move withinward. Rest. And your rest will become your meditation, because meditation does not need any exertion of energy. On the contrary – it conserves, it preserves; it makes you a pool of great energy. When you feel that your serenity and your silence and your joy inside wants to dance outside, both are yours: then sing, then dance, then create. And if your creativity comes from your silences of heart, it will have a different quality, a different flavor.It is only a question of a little intelligence and balance. Inside is the source of your energies; outside is the world, to let that energy create – be a creator.But you cannot be a creator unless you are a meditator.My sannyasin has a new definition; it is not the definition of the old. In the old definition sannyas meant renouncing the world. My sannyas means rejoicing in the world. But before you can rejoice, you should accumulate energy so much that you start overflowing with love, sensitivity, creativity, poetry, song, dance….And certainly these things will have a very compassionate quality. They will not be violent. I cannot conceive of a meditator playing football. I cannot conceive a Gautam Buddha having a boxing match. But a Gautam Buddha can create a beautiful garden of roses. A Gautam Buddha can paint. And his paintings will be far superior to the paintings of Picasso, because Picasso is almost insane. If you look at the paintings of Picasso, you will feel a kind of sickness to throw out. Just keep a Picasso painting in your bedroom and you will have nightmares, because those paintings have come from nightmares of Picasso – air-conditioned nightmares.There have been meditators who have created. You can see the Taj Mahal…that has been created by the Sufi mystics. Just watching it in the full-moon night, you can suddenly fall into a deep silence which you have never touched within yourself. If you can sit silently by the side in the deep night, the beauty of Taj Mahal starts changing something within you. The Taj Mahal does not remain just there outside, it starts becoming a part of your own being.I used to live in Jabalpur for twenty years. I had a professor, I loved him very much. He was an old man; he had taught me in my post-graduation classes and I had asked him many times to come to Jabalpur, because Jabalpur has something which is unique and is nowhere to be found on this earth.But the old professor was very stubborn in the sense that he had been around the world, he had seen everything…he had been a professor in many countries. And he could just not believe that there was something which he would be surprised to know. But I am also very stubborn. I made that old fellow agree: “You remember, I am going to take you to my place. You think you are stubborn? I am going to prove to you that although you are stubborn, you are number two.”And one day while I was driving him to his home, rather than going to his home…he started shouting, “Where are you going?”I said, “I am going to the place I have been telling you about for almost two years.”He said, “This is strange. It is my car, you stop it!”I said, “Nobody can stop this car. And you sit silently; otherwise I will take the car up to its full speed.”Of speed, he was very much afraid, and when he saw that the car was going a hundred miles per hour, he closed his eyes and remained silent – because the car could go to one hundred and forty miles.I took him to the famous marble rocks in Jabalpur. They are thirteen miles away from Jabalpur, and even when you have reached the point, you don’t know that just within two minutes you are entering into another world. A beautiful river, Narmada, flows for two miles continuously between two mountains of white marble. In the full-moon night, if anything defeats Taj Mahal it is the marble rocks of Jabalpur. For two miles continuously, high rocks of white marble, reflected into the river. Absolute silence prevails, not even a bird. I took him in a small boat without an engine, because that engine creates a disturbance. As he entered, he looked at me, he could not believe….He said, “My God! If I had died without knowing this place, I would have lived without meaning. But please take me close to the rocks – I want to touch them, to feel that they really exist, because it is so dreamlike.”I had to take the boat close to the rocks. He touched the rocks, he felt the rocks, and he said, “Now I am convinced that you have not created some delusion, that you have not given me some drug, that I am perfectly in my senses.” And he pinched himself to see whether he was in his consciousness or not.There are temples in China, in Japan, in India, created by meditators. Just sitting there and you will find that what has been so difficult for you, to stop your thinking, stops itself. The whole atmosphere of the temple, the fragrance, the incense, the statues…they are all creating a certain space within you.Once humanity learns both things together – meditativeness and a scientific approach about the world – we will have entered into a new phase, into a totally new phase discontinuous with the ugly, unhealthy, sick and insane past.I don’t want to leave you in this silence….Mendel Kravitz is a fitness freak; he lifts weights and jogs five miles a day. One day, he is admiring his body in the mirror. He notices that he is really suntanned all over, except on his prick, so he decides to do something about it.He goes to the beach, undresses, and buries himself in the sand, except for his prick which he leaves sticking out.Two little old ladies are strolling along the beach, and one looks down and says, “There really is no justice in this world!”“What do you mean?” her friend asks.The first old lady says, “Look at that! When I was ten years old, I was afraid of it. When I was twenty years old, I was curious about it. When I was thirty, I enjoyed it. When I was forty, I asked for it. When I was fifty, I paid for it. When I was sixty, I prayed for it. When I was seventy, I forgot all about it.“And now that I’m eighty, the damn thing is growing all over wild!”

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Om Mani Padme Hum 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Om Mani Padme Hum 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,As you greet us, and again as you leave, you are pouring your energy on us. How come my body doesn't gracefully bow down to you? I know my heart does! Am I a rock among the waves?Deva Ashu, I myself have been watching. On your face there is some stoniness, and you stand out because everybody is bowing down and you remain stiff. Now you yourself have asked the question.The first thing: it is very difficult to know your heart, and it is very easy to say anything about your heart. It is something invisible, non-objective. But your face, your eyes, your body, give indications of your heart. So please, don’t be deluded that your heart is full of grace and the body seems like a rock in the river.The heart is part of your body. If the heart is graceful, the body is a very obedient servant. It simply follows the heart. But you have not mentioned anything about your face, naturally, because you cannot see it. I have seen your face.You have been deeply connected with me. Deva Ashu has been my personal dental nurse. That’s where the problem is – you must have come with unconscious expectations that you would be received in the same way as you have been received for many years. But life stops for no one; now somebody else is functioning in your place, and that must be the basic wound in your being.I know you love me, but your love is not unconditional. It is not just a pure gift. Unconsciously it wants to be replied to, recognized – you have been important in the sense that Devageet, my dental surgeon, was working and you were participating. That closeness you are not finding anymore; you are feeling as if you are no longer significant or important. This is how the mind creates stupid expectations and then suffers from them.Looking at you, I have remembered all these days you have been here. You are showing the face of a martyr. And there must be some jealousy too because now another nurse has replaced you. If your love is unconditional then your concern is not who is helping me to remain in the body – your concern should be that it is more than enough that I am in the body.It may look hard to you, but there was no other way. You will be surprised to know that when Nityamo replaced you, because you were not here, the first thing I told Nityamo was, “For years I have been accustomed of Ashu, and when I am in the dentist’s chair I may use the name ‘Ashu’ for you. Don’t feel offended, because my dentist chair is not just a dental affair….”With me everything is a little strange. From the dental chair, I have created three books! It must be absolutely unprecedented, because people are so afraid of the dental chair and the dentist. I have enjoyed it so much – but it created difficulties for poor Devageet, because you cannot work on the teeth while I am talking. What he could have done in ten minutes would take two hours!You are missing that privacy, that intimacy, when I was talking to only two persons, Devageet and you. And I have my own games to play. I had put you against Devageet – you are his dental nurse. I can experience whatever is happening, even under a high dose of laughing gas, and I used to remind Ashu again and again: “Don’t listen to Devageet. As far as this dental room is concerned, I am still your master.” Even with closed eyes…because they tried that too. They blindfolded me so I could not see what was going on, but I could see that the gas was not at the maximum. And I was beating Ashu continuously – “You are listening to Devageet!” Devageet stopped talking. He managed to give messages by signal.It was a beautiful time, and many things that I would have never bothered to talk about, I talked about in the dental chair. I was creating difficulty for them – because how can you work inside the mouth when I am speaking? But my sensitivity is such that just a lower degree of gas and I would hit Ashu immediately. She was in a great difficulty…she has to listen to the doctor, but as far as I am concerned the doctor and the nurse both are my disciples. I have beaten Devageet so much that sometimes I feel sad about the poor fellow. He has been doing his best, but he was doing it according to his medical understanding. With me, things cannot be in any way ordinary.Ashu has been here – as far as I am concerned there is no change. My love is as available to you, but because you are no more in that intimacy, where you were even put in charge of the doctor to take care that he did not interfere in whatever I wanted to do…It is against medical practice; the doctor should not listen to the patient. But here the situation is totally different – I am the doctor and you are the patient, it does not matter!So just a little understanding, Ashu, and your stoniness will melt. I know you have a graceful heart, but because of your mind you are feeling almost a foreigner here. Drop all this nonsense. You are the same to me.Even if people have betrayed me, my love for them remains the same because I had not given my love with any condition. People have lied about me, have written books with complete fictions, but my love for them still remains the same. All that I know is that they are unconscious people, and they don’t know what they are doing.You have to be a little conscious. It is good that you asked the question. There is something more you have made part of your question which needs a totally different dimension of answer. You are saying, “As you greet us and again as you leave, you are pouring your energy on us. How come my body does not gracefully bow down to you? I know my heart does. Am I a rock among the waves?”As for your own psychology, I have said everything that you needed. Relax – you will remain in my heart just as any sannyasin, with the same love, with the same compassion, because I don’t ask anything from you. I have such an abundance flowing that I don’t know what to do with it. I have to share.But the second part of the question takes a totally different dimension. In a flowing river, a few rocks have their own beauty. A river without rocks loses sound. A river with rocks is a singing and dancing river. If your heart feels graceful, flowing, don’t be worried about a certain stony feeling in your body. That too has its own place. Rather than fighting with it, rejoice in it. You are not an ordinary river but a river that sings, a river that dances. Without rocks, rivers are very poor.I loved the place where I stayed in Kulu Manali for the simple reason that the river passing by was so full of rocks…day in, day out, there was music, there was dance. But as you know about me, even in my own country I am a foreigner. The government to which Kulu Manali belongs started freaking out. They had made a law that a man who is not born in their state cannot purchase any land – just to prevent me. But I needed a vast land for my commune, and it is as retarded a part of the country as you can conceive – uneducated, poor, completely in the grip of the politicians.You will be surprised that the day I left Kulu Manali, the arrangement was that they were going to arrest me on a very fictitious, absurd account. To them it may have looked like very solid ground…. As I left Kulu Manali, just within one hour the arrest warrant reached the place I had been living in. The arrest warrant was hilarious – and makes me feel about our experts that they are donkeys loaded with knowledge.The reason for arrest was that I had paid four hundred thousand dollars in fines in America, so I have to pay tax and I have to explain from where I got the money. I have never paid any fine anywhere in the world. I don’t know even the names of the people who paid the fine. Even my jailer was surprised, because they were not expecting it, knowing perfectly well that I don’t have a single cent to pay. And imposing four hundred thousand dollars…it is nearabout sixty lakh rupees. From where am I going to pay it?But I am not a man who worries about anything. Not for a single moment did the idea even arise in me that this could be a strategy – to keep me in jail until the fine was paid.And I never think of the tomorrow. Today is too beautiful and too fulfilling – who cares about tomorrows which never come?As I was fined…it is a strange thing but it has to be stated publicly to the whole world. They had thirty-four charges against me, all fictitious, and they agreed with my attorneys that if two of the crimes were accepted, I would be freed.My problem is, what about the other thirty-two crimes that I have committed? The government of America is deceiving their own nation. If I have really committed those thirty-two crimes, then there is no other way; I should be punished. But for the first time I realized that in America, justice is part of business. Accept two crimes and the other thirty-two crimes disappear – and any two crimes; they were not even insistent about what crimes. And the two crimes were so stupid that nobody can think that a person should be fined even if he has committed them.Four hundred thousand dollars…and to ask a man, knowing perfectly well that he has not touched money for almost thirty years – I had been in America for five years, and I don’t know how the dollar bill looks. But I have thousands of people who managed immediately, within ten minutes. Even Judge Leavy was surprised that they paid the fine. And the crimes, if you look into it, are not even worth paying two rupees.One crime was that I had inside myself an intention to become a resident of America. I never thought that people had yet found any way to know the intentions, the dreams, the imaginations of people’s minds – and when I am saying that I don’t have any intention to live in this most ugly and obscene society.And the second crime was that I have arranged thousands of marriages. I was for three and a half years silent, not speaking, not meeting any sannyasins except my secretary, to be informed how the commune was going. I have not told anybody to get married because fundamentally I am against marriage. And if I can manage one thousand, or thousands of marriages, why can I not manage a marriage for myself? If that is the way to get residence, I could have married as many American women as they want! But I am absolutely against marriage, and the man who was making all these charges said such a hilarious thing – that I have arranged thousands of marriages which are fake, but certainly at least one marriage I have arranged….Now the man is only certain about one marriage. On what logical grounds does he stretch it to thousands of marriages? He himself admits that he is certain only about one marriage. And strangely enough, all the other marriages were not recognized – only that marriage was recognized, given a green card for employment and residence. This is strange. This is bribery – they have purchased those two persons, and neither of them has ever talked to me. And as far as marriage is concerned, not even the word had been uttered by those two persons or by me. They had no way to meet me.On these two flimsy grounds, four hundred thousand dollars as a punishment! I don’t know who paid those four hundred thousand dollars, because hundreds of sannyasins were there in the court. The court was almost my court. Strangely enough when I entered the court people stood up, and when the judge entered it was announced: “Stand up; the judge is coming in.” Sometimes I wonder…who is the judge?And now the government of the state of Kulu Manali wants to arrest me. I don’t even know the names of those who paid the fine. I have nothing to do with it, I have never paid a single rupee to anybody. In the first place I don’t have it – and a very logical thing has to be understood….I always left in the right time. That’s what I say: existence manages things if you leave it to existence. I left Rajneeshpuram in America. The next day they were going to bring four helicopters – their helicopters were coming every day to find my house, and from the helicopters they were going to drop paratroopers to arrest me. Just a few hours before, I left Rajneeshpuram to go to a beautiful mountain resort that belonged to my sannyasins. They had been insisting for two years – it is strange that on that day I decided that okay, two years were enough. They had prepared the place; they just wanted me to rest there. And the government was in shock – their whole program had failed.I left Kulu Manali just one hour before – I was still at the airport when they reached the hut where I had been living near the river. And now again the Indian government is continuously sending letters saying that I have to pay taxes. It is such a stupid and illogical step – in logic they call it infinite regression – if I pay the tax, then I have to pay tax on the money that I am paying as tax. Naturally…where is it going to end? Whenever I pay tax, I owned that money – on that money I have to pay the tax again. And it will go on infinitely. Either you stop at the first step or there is no way to stop. And they know perfectly well that I don’t have any money, I don’t have any possessions. Everything the people who love me allow me to use, belongs to them.But governments are always stupid. In fact, if you are not stupid you are not qualified to be in the government. Can’t they see the point? If somebody else has paid the fine, and I don’t even know their names, how can I be asked to pay tax?But the same foolishness prevails over the whole world in all the bureaucracies. It seems the moment they become bureaucrats their minds stop functioning.I have heard about a politician who was going through mind surgery. But when the doctors opened his mind, it was so full of crap that it needed a dry cleaning, so they took out the whole brain and brought it into the other room. While they were cleaning his mind, a man came rushing in and said to the politician, “What are you doing here lying in the hospital? You have been chosen president!” And the politician disappeared.When the doctors had finished cleaning they could not find the man. They came to know from the newspapers that he had become the president, so they approached him: “You have left your brain with us.”The president said, “To be a president, the brain is no longer needed. You keep it. When I am defeated or when I am no more in power, perhaps I may need it.”There is a law, which is a very significant law, that all our bureaucracies and governments function in such a way that the most inefficient, inadequate person finally reaches to the top.Hearing it for the first time it seems, how can it be? But if you see the whole process…A clerk is doing perfectly well. Because he is doing perfectly well as a clerk, he becomes the head clerk. He knows nothing about being the head clerk, but if he still has some sense left he will function better than other head clerks. He will become the superintendent.You are moving people from places where they are efficient because of their efficiency, but you don’t understand a simple thing, that to be efficient as a clerk does not mean that you will be efficient as a corporation commissioner. So all the heads of the bureaucracy are absolutely inefficient. They had been efficient in some area, and that has taken them to higher posts. The higher they go, the less efficient – until they reach to the ultimate inefficiency. Then they become the presidents, the vice-presidents, prime ministers – the whole world is being dominated by all kinds of idiots.Deva Ashu, you should not feel at all tense; my love is not the love that disappears. It goes on growing – whether you are close to me or far away, it does not matter. And remember that your body is a very significant signal. To know about the heart is a difficult job. Your body indicates that your heart is no longer graceful, no longer loving – listen to the body first because that is the most visible sign. And then move inward…the body has to be graceful, the body has to be beautiful, the body has to be deeply alive, and then only can you find the grace of the heart and ultimately, the grace of your being.But start from the door and then enter into the temple. Don’t be disturbed because you have recognized that the body is not so graceful, is not so receptive – it is a great insight. Look around at all the causes that have made it so, and immediately the ungracefulness will disappear.And whenever you can manage here, you can be my dental nurse, because Nityamo was very graceful when I told her, “If I sometimes call you Ashu, don’t feel offended.” She said to me, “Ashu is my friend, and if you call me Ashu it is perfectly good.” Nityamo is not your competitor. Here, nobody is a competitor. Only once in a while some idiot enters.One German has written a letter to me. Only a German can do it…“You have been pouring so much juice over Deva Amrito, why don’t you declare him your ambassador?” But he is not aware: there are three Amritos here. And as far as his suggestion is concerned, although it is coming out of jealousy the suggestion is perfectly right. Even before receiving his letter I had told Deva Amrito that he is going to be my ambassador in Holland.Once in awhile somebody brings the outside world into this oasis of different consciousnesses. Certainly he is not aware that he has become jealous, but I have my own reasons why I have answered Amrito’s questions. He is writing a book. I don’t have time to answer all his questions, because he wants it to be his whole pilgrimage, the seeking and the search, and he wants to end it by finding me. He has already written eight books on me and he thinks this book is going to be very comprehensive – answering everything, destroying all lies that have been spread by governments, by politicians, by journalists, by all kinds of criminal people who are around.It was because of this reason that I took his questions and answered them, and his questions were significant for you too. But the German mind becomes tense. Don’t be worried. Meditate so that you are no more a German. The day I see that you are no more a German, I will also make you the ambassador for Germany.In fact, every sannyasin is my ambassador. To make a certain man responsible is not making him a dictator for you. It is making him a help, a contact center, because the fight is going to be all over the world. Twenty-five countries have prevented me from entering them. Now I have to find my own ways to enter. And in each country I am going to have my embassy.For the first time, a single individual is going to have embassies around the world.And those embassies will be your meeting places, because the fight is going to become more and more intense. Because I cannot enter, in every country sannyasins have to fight their own governments and their stupidity.And the fight is so total that I disagree with the past on every point. It is not a question of choice – it is a question of breaking away with the past completely and creating a new man. I can see the new man arising in you on the horizon. And with this new man will be born a new humanity, a new vision, and a new way of life.I am not interested in creating a religion, which is a very simple affair. I am interested to create as many religious people as possible – an atmosphere of religiousness, with no organized church but every individual having his own individuality as his religion.Man has never been given that freedom. I want every individual to have his own religion – in other words his own lifestyle, his own philosophy – and to live according to his own deepening insight.You have to be alert of a tremendous responsibility that I am handing over to you:You have to be the harbingers, you have to be the dawn of a new, totally new humanity, completely discontinuous with the past.The past has played tricks with you to keep you encaged. Every religion condemns jealousy and every religion creates jealousy. I am surprised that for thousands of years nobody has seen the connection. If you are competitive you cannot drop jealousy. Jealousy is the energy in you – ugly, stinking, but it keeps you competitive. And every religion teaches you to be competitive, to be more “good,” to be a greater saint, to be a more moral person. But then when you come across a person who is a bigger saint than you, jealousy will be the by-product. And they all condemn jealousy.All the religions have condemned stealing, but no religion has condemned people accumulating riches. And these are two sides of the same thing. If people go on accumulating riches, they are forcing people to be poor, to such an extent that the poor has only one choice if he wants to survive – he has to become a thief.All the religions are against sex, but they all preach celibacy. And celibacy makes sex unnatural, perverted.The responsibility that I am giving to you is to see clearly how the past has destroyed man – beautiful names hiding ugly realities. And unless you drop those beautiful names, you cannot discover those ugly realities. They live together, they are part of one another.Each sannyasin has to be a revolt in himself – transforming his own being, cleaning his own mind, and spreading the message of freedom. Not of Christianity, not of Hinduism, but simply the dignity of the individual and his total freedom.Unless we can create this planet consisting of free individuals, we cannot survive anymore. The old, the past, has come to its very end. It can only manage a global suicide. I am fighting against the global suicide of a beautiful planet which has evolved more than any other planet in the world, which has come to some consciousness that can be increased very easily.My teaching is very simple: the whole man, inside a meditator and outside a creator.But if you get into small jealousies that you have been carrying from your heritage…rather than making it a problem simply drop it. It has not helped you, it has only made you more miserable.Paddy is on his deathbed, groaning, when his wife Maureen walks into the room and asks if he has any last requests.“Yes dear,” says Paddy, “there is one thing I really would like before I go off to that great shamrock patch in the sky.” And then he whispers, “A piece of that wonderful chocolate cake of yours.”“Ah, Patrick,” says Maureen, “have a potato instead. I am saving the cake for the party after the funeral.”Five of the most important men in a woman’s life are,The doctor: He says, “Take off your clothes.”The dentist: He says, “Open wide.”The hairdresser: He says: “Do you want it teased or blown?”The interior decorator: He says, “You will like it once it is in.”And, the milkman: He says, “Do you want it in front or in the back?”Paddy and Sean are watching Molly being chatted up in the pub. When she leaves with the man, Sean turns to Paddy and says, “I can’t understand it. Molly is one of the ugliest girls around, and yet all the men seem to find her attractive.”“It’s because of her speech impediment,” says Paddy, sagely.“Her speech impediment?” asks Sean astonished.“Yes,” says Paddy, “she can’t say ‘no.’”Ashu, you have to learn to say yes. Yes to the rocks, yes to the flowing river, yes to your totality as you are. And your song and your dance will return to you. In my vision there is no greater word than yes. Yes to existence without any conditions. And you will find relaxation and you will find a communion and you will find both the worlds, the inner and the outer.You can call my approach the philosophy of yes. All other philosophies and all other religions are more interested in teaching you no’s. I teach you, without any conditions, to say yes to yourself in whatever situation you find. And each situation is changed miraculously the moment you are capable to say yes.This silence is immense…but I always like you, when I leave you, to be in as hilarious a mood as possible. I know the trees also understand the jokes, and I have a deep compassion for them because they cannot laugh.Man is the only being on the earth who has come to the understanding of laughter. Buffaloes don’t laugh – they are very saintly. Donkeys don’t laugh – they are too philosophic. Idiots don’t laugh because they are afraid of being caught doing something that they don’t understand.The Englishman laughs only once, not to let anybody understand that he has not understood. The Frenchman laughs twice – once to accompany other people out of courtesy and then, in the middle of the night when he gets it. Germans simply don’t laugh. On the contrary, they are worried – why are people laughing? They inquire of others – what was the matter? Jews don’t laugh; on the contrary they say, “Shut up, it is an old joke and moreover you are telling it all wrong.”But I want my people to understand that because only man is capable to laugh, that means laughter is the highest point of consciousness, the highest point of understanding, the highest point of evolution. That’s why I have started calling laughter “the prayer time.”Waking up with a terrible hangover after the office party, Paddy turns to his wife Maureen and says, “Jesus! Would you believe, I can’t remember a thing that happened last night!”“It’s just as well,” replies Maureen. “You got into an argument with the boss and he fired you.”“He did?” shouts Paddy. “After all I’ve done for him? Well, screw the bastard!”“I did,” says Maureen. “You go back to work tomorrow.”Moishe Finkelstein is walking down the street one night in New York. Suddenly a man jumps out from the side alley and puts a gun to Moishe’s head.“Give me your money,” he threatens, “or I’ll blow out your brains!”“Blow away,” says Moishe. “In America you can live without brains, but you can’t live without money.”

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Om Mani Padme Hum 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Om Mani Padme Hum 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,The more I trust in meditation the more I feel my heart opening and vastly present. At the same time I lose knowledge about who I am, why I am here and for what. I can't do anything about it except watch, cry, laugh, sing, giggle. Something is happening for which I have no name. It is just throbbing. The other night I woke up suddenly knowing, oh, I am just human, a human being. It sounds funny, but it's been such a joy feeling so accepted. Would you please help me understand what is happening?The question you have put is not coming from your mind; that’s why it looks a little strange. Mind is very clever – it knows how to ask a question. It does not know any answer as such.Whenever such a thing happens to a meditator – which is bound to happen if you don’t stop before reaching your inner being – that you suddenly feel a change of climate; the questioning mind is no longer there and you are standing before the answer, it certainly feels very weird. You don’t have a question – what is this answer all about? Our very training is that the question should come first and then the answer.But existence is absolutely, fortunately, uneducated. It brings the answer first and then you have to start questioning: What is happening? Where am I? You see things are happening: there are tears of joy, there is a song in the heart, there is a rejoicing which cannot be named but can certainly be experienced. And you are surrounded by all these mysteries without any explanation. One thing certainly you can see: that the knowledge about who I am, why I am here and for what, has completely disappeared. It is for the first time, so you are still looking for it. But trust me – you will never come to know.I myself don’t know. Just think about these questions – “Who am I?” Do you think you can know it? The very process of knowing involves a duality between the knower and the known. And you are the knower, you can never be the known. It takes a little time to relax and accept the fact that “I am” without ever bothering about “who am I?”Why am I here? Why are the trees here? And why is this whole sky with the stars here? Why is anything in this universe here? Because people could not relax in this innocence, they manufactured fictitious answers. “God made the world; that’s why it is here.” But they forgot that sooner or later somebody is going to ask, “Why is this God here?”The ultimate – and the ultimate is the immediate – is simply here for no reason at all. The day you can accept it without any kind of effort you will find a tremendous opening, of a totally new vision and perception, in which everything is accepted.The question is really a way of not accepting things as they are. First you want to know why they are here – you may not have thought that this urge to know why is a kind of mental scratching. The more you scratch, the better it feels, but finally it starts bleeding. In the beginning it gives a sweet feeling. You can try – scratch. But don’t scratch too much. That sweet feeling is leading you in a wrong direction.The relaxed approach toward life is not to be worried about why I am here, who I am, and for what. If you can drop these “What, Why, Who”…these three are the Christian God, Holy Ghost and Jesus Christ. They are haunting you. They have haunted the whole humanity’s past. All your philosophies and all your theologies are born out of these three.I am not a philosopher. Neither am I a theologian nor am I interested in any kind of stupid mind gymnastics. I simply want you to know I am here, you are here. There is no reason why we are here and there is no purpose, and this is the beauty of existence. Now you can laugh and nobody can ask why you are laughing. You can dance and nobody has the right to ask why you are dancing.I am reminded of Pablo Picasso; he was painting a beautiful flower, sitting by the side of a rose bush, and a man was watching very intensely, knowing perfectly well that Pablo Picasso is not an ordinary man. But he could not contain his curiosity and finally he asked Picasso, “Forgive me; I should not interfere, but I am helpless. I can’t understand what you are painting and why you are painting – what is the purpose of it?”Picasso looked at him and said, “Do you think I know?”The man was even more surprised. He said, “If you don’t know, then why are you doing it?”Picasso said, “Knowing has nothing to do with doing. Look at the rose bush – nobody asks these flowers, ‘Why are you here? What is the purpose?’ And if you were not here, nobody would have felt your absence. Nobody asks the trees, nobody asks the clouds, and yet all the idiots are after me. Wherever I go they start asking me, ‘What is it?’ If the whole existence has no answer, from where can a poor Pablo Picasso find the answer?”It looks absurd. But it looks absurd because we are looking for the meaning.The moment you drop the whole process of asking the meaning of things, everything is perfectly beautiful in its absolute absurdity.A very rich woman asked Pablo Picasso, “I have never seen a portrait made by you and I am ready to pay any amount you ask. I want my portrait to be painted by you.”Picasso said, “I have not painted portraits because then I will have to answer so many questions for which I don’t have any answer. If you promise me that you won’t ask any question after the portrait is made, and simply give me the check, then I can do a portrait for you. This will be my first and last portrait.”The woman was very proud, having the only portrait by Pablo Picasso in the whole world. She was ready to pay any amount and she said, “You need not be worried about the check; I will give it to you in advance and I promise not to ask any question.” Ten million dollars, and the woman gave him the check immediately.Pablo Picasso painted her portrait for almost a whole week, every day a two or three-hour session, and the woman forgot the condition. In fact anybody would have forgotten the condition, seeing the situation of the portrait. She could not find any relationship either to her face or to her clothes or to her body, and the man was painting madly. But she must have been a very controlled and disciplined woman. She waited…at least let him finish first.The seventh day he said, “The portrait is complete.”The woman said, “I have just a very small question.”Pablo Picasso said, “You have forgotten the condition! That’s why I never made any portrait. What is your question?”She said, “It is not a big question. I simply want to know, where is my nose? Because if I can find my nose in the portrait, I will start figuring out where are my eyes, where is my mouth. But I don’t see my nose anywhere.”Picasso simply returned the check and he said, “You get out of my house. I had made it clear from the very beginning. Why should I paint your nose? What purpose is the nose going to serve in the portrait? The portrait is not going to breathe.”Never again in his life was he asked for a portrait. It was good – he could go on doing any kind of painting; at least if he is painting the clouds you cannot ask him stupid questions like “Where is the nose of the cloud?”I am in absolute agreement with Pablo Picasso. He was one of the most existential geniuses mankind has produced. He does not paint for any purpose. Painting is his dance with colors. Painting is his joy expressed with colors. You never ask when you see the sunset and the beautiful colors on the horizon – Picasso’s paintings belong to the same category. They are immensely beautiful but absolutely irrational. Existence is irrational, it is not Pablo Picasso’s fault.You had entered into a beautiful space but you carried your old habits with you. You are saying, “I can’t do anything about it.” There is no need to do anything about it. Doing anything will be a great disturbance; the whole beautiful space will disappear.Yes, you are allowed to watch it. You are allowed to cry, you are allowed to laugh, you are allowed to sing, you are allowed to giggle, you are allowed to do anything that happens in the moment without ever bothering the rationality of it, the relevance of it.Bodhidharma entered China fourteen hundred years ago. Emperor Wu had come to receive him at the border…it was an extraordinary situation. China has remained up to now the biggest land in the world. The Chinese empire was the most vast empire you can conceive, and for the emperor to come to receive a beggar…because in Buddhism the sannyasin’s name is bhikkshu. Bhikkshu means the beggar. It does not have the condemnatory tone which it has in English; it has, on the contrary, tremendous respectfulness. A bhikkshu is not one who has nothing, a bhikkshu is one who has renounced everything because what he has inside himself is so valuable he cannot carry unnecessary luggage with him.The emperor had heard so many strange stories about Bodhidharma that finally he became so excited that he could not wait for him to enter the capital. On the contrary, he traveled hundreds of miles to receive him on the borders of China. But he could not believe his eyes. He remembered those stories… “They were right! I should have believed those stories rather than traveling so far, taking unnecessary risks.”Bodhidharma was coming with one shoe on his head, and one shoe on his foot. Obviously curiosity arises, although the Chinese emperor and the whole Chinese culture is based on Confucian etiquette. Wu tried to avoid seeing the shoe on his head, because it is not mannerly for a man like him to point to the shoe. But it is very difficult. He remembered that even Confucius in his Analects has no mention of it, that if you see a man with a shoe on his head….You should not ask because it is unmannerly; it might make the other man feel embarrassed, and it is not right for a man who is cultured. But the shoe was so prominent that everything else that he had thought about on the way…he was going to ask Bodhidharma about the lotus paradise, what is enlightenment, what is the essential teaching of Gautam Buddha – everything became secondary and the shoe became primary. In spite of himself he blurted, “Why are you carrying the shoe on your head?”Bodhidharma said, “I will not enter into the territory of your empire. If a man is not even free to have his own shoe on his own head, this is not the place for me. This shoe was simply to check you out.”He never crossed the Chinese boundary. He remained outside in a mountain cave. Wu was very much disturbed. Certainly he was right; the shoe was his, the head was his, and who are you to ask? This is interfering. He had to go to offer an apology: “I am absolutely sorry and I will never be able to forgive myself for interfering in your freedom.”But Bodhidharma said, “I am not very far away from your boundary. Whenever you have any essential question to ask, you can come to me.”He said, “I have an essential question. So many Buddhist monks have arrived before you and I have opened many monasteries, many temples. I have put the whole empire’s treasure into translating all the Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. Thousands of scholars are working. What will be my reward for all these virtuous acts?”Bodhidharma said, “It is better you do not come near me because your question has not changed, it is still the shoe. You think you are doing anything virtuous? The very idea that you are doing something virtuous and you are asking what reward you are going to get shows the mind not of an emperor, but the mind of an ordinary businessman. You are trying to do business with existence, and existence is not available to the businessman’s mind. The businessman is always trying to have more by giving less. That is simply the whole economics of business. Give less and get more – that is the profit.”Bodhidharma said, “Existence is not for people like you. Existence is for those who can give everything without asking for anything in return, knowing perfectly well that what they are giving already belongs to existence, it is not theirs.”Do you think you have anything that has not been given by existence to you? And in returning it, you want some reward? You want some respectability, some prestige, some power? You have not understood even the abc of the communion with nature. When you know that as a separate entity you don’t exist, then there is no question of giving and taking. You are in existence, you have been in existence, you will be in existence. And this very understanding that “I am an essential part of this vast beautiful universe” will make you dance, will make you celebrate.There is no need for any reason for dancing, for singing, for celebration. Just to be is enough. Out of this being will flow all your joy, all your laughter, all your gratitude, all your prayers.I teach you this simple religiousness which has no doctrine, which has no reward for virtue and which has no punishment for sin. All those are fictions created by cunning priests and cunning founders of your religions. I want to erase the whole insane past of humanity completely, as if we are here for the first time.You had touched a beautiful space, but because of old habits…it happens to everybody. Old habits follow you just like a shadow. You could not enjoy laughing, because your old habit was standing by the corner asking, “What are you doing? Have you gone mad? I don’t see anything, any reason to laugh, and you are laughing. Why are you crying? There seems to be no reason for tears.” Old habits have to be understood and renounced. All the world religions have taught you to renounce the world. I teach you to renounce your old habits.And then you say, “In the night I woke up suddenly knowing, oh, I am just human, a human being. It sounds funny…” It does not sound funny, it is funny! You and a human being! Still the old categorization that you are human beings, others are animals, and there are others which are trees. Why make these categories?Can’t you simply experience “being,” in its purity, without putting a label on it?I am making it emphatically clear to you, because one label will follow another label. Labels have that habit. First you will say “human being” and then you will say, “Human being? I am an American, I am not an African Black. And I am Catholic Christian, I am not a Hindu. And particularly, I am a woman, I am not a man.” And there is no end to this long process.Simply accept that you are. This pure isness without any labels is the inner unfolding of your potential. There is nothing more that you can aspire to.It is all in all.And it is so much that it is difficult to contain it; one starts sharing the joy….A drunk is standing at the bar one day, when he turns to the man on his right and says, “Did you pour beer in my trouser pocket?”The man says, “I certainly did not.”Then the drunk turns to the man on his left, and says, “Did you pour beer in my trouser pocket?”The man says, “I most certainly did not pour beer in your trouser pocket.”“Just as I thought,” says the drunk, “an inside job.”You are asking me what is happening? It is an inside job. Enjoy!It is our mental training always to look for some cause somewhere outside. Our whole training is meant to be for outer exploration. Even if the stars are so far away that there seems to be no possibility ever to be in contact with those faraway stars, billions of light years away, still there are thousands of scientists around the world who are wasting their lives finding out some way to have contact with other planetary beings.In America – I have just remembered what I am going to say to you – sitting in the court, listening to the government attorney…He had a list of thirty-four crimes that I had committed. The truth is, I cannot even remember those thirty-four crimes. In fact many times I forget whether there were thirty-four or thirty-five. One time I even reached the number sixty-five!The man was very seriously insisting to the judge, and finally he said the first crime was that I had come to America as a tourist, but with an inner intention to remain there forever. I wondered, in what way can anybody know my inner intention? And if my inner intention is a crime, then what about the dreams in which you have killed people, raped women? There is no way to prove what my inner intentions are.And the second thing he said was that I had arranged thousands of marriages in America. For three and a half years I was silent and I was not meeting people; I was living in isolation. I wondered, from where is he getting these figures? Thousands of marriages I have arranged and I have not been able even to arrange my own marriage? This man seems to be absolutely mad! A man who has failed even to arrange his own marriage is being charged with arranging thousands of marriages.I looked at the man, and he realized the fact that he had exaggerated the thing. If I should ask him for the evidence, he would have to produce thousands of husbands and thousands of wives in the court. So he immediately said, “At least this man has arranged one marriage, certainly.” Now I wondered…from one “certain” marriage, this government attorney can go on creating a fiction of thousands of marriages! And even about that one marriage I had no knowledge.In fact, I am the only person in the world who is against marriage. I don’t want a single marriage in the world. Because to me, unless marriages disappear, prostitutes will remain; you cannot get rid of them. Homosexuals will remain; you cannot get rid of them. All kinds of sexual perverts will remain – and psychoanalysts say almost ninety percent of their patients are psychopaths, but their psychopathology is rooted in their sexual perversion.And there are millions of divorces. Children become orphans, unnecessarily. Their mothers are alive, their fathers are alive, but because of the divorce they have become orphans. And the root cause is marriage. Just remove marriage and you will have removed almost half the miseries of humanity. It is not a small percentage.There will not be any need of prostitutes, there will not be any need for every husband and wife to fight every day. There will be no need for children to learn from their fathers and mothers the behavior of a married life. There will not be homosexuals and there will not be any need of diseases like AIDS.Strangely enough, a man who is preaching against marriage is being charged with arranging thousands of marriages. Sitting there…I was not allowed by my attorneys to say anything because they were worried about me. Every day they tried to convince me, “You should not speak, because a single word from you and the case will become very complicated. It will take twenty or thirty years to solve it, so you simply remain silent.”There were moments when I had to tell them, “It is going very hard, because such stupid charges are put against me and I have to remain silent. And you don’t have any courage to stand up and say something.” I said, “I have thought many times in these twelve days that it would be better to be thirty years fighting in the court. These courts of which America is very proud have to be put right.”Even the judges were sitting wrongly. A judge has to sit facing both the parties. And I told my attorneys, “Don’t stop me. It is intolerable for me to sit there the whole day, seeing the judge changing the position of his chair and just looking at the government attorney. Is he a judge or just part of the same government? He should not behave as part of the government; otherwise there is no question of justice.” Those judges were not even looking at my attorneys, they were not even listening to their arguments. Even if they stood and wanted to raise an objection, the judge would not listen to their whole sentence. Just in the middle of a sentence he would say, “Overruled!”I said, “It will be better for me to suffer thirty years in jails, or a crucifixion, but seeing such unjust behavior…you are asking me to do the impossible. I would put that judge immediately right. He will have to turn his chair, because he cannot sit this way and he cannot behave this way.”But slowly I felt the problem was, my attorneys were also Americans. Perhaps deep down they were also wanting the commune to be destroyed, that I should not by any chance be victorious in the case. I am not saying that they were intentionally or consciously doing that, but the unconscious plays so many games. They were paid, highly paid, so they were fighting for me, but they were fighting for money. They were not fighting for truth. They believed that they were fighting for truth, but I did not see a single instance…except my own sannyasin, Niren, who is also an attorney. He was my attorney, but he is a younger man and some of those attorneys were his professors, some were nationally famous people. So obviously he could not fight against them.But there came a moment when even he felt…because once a person is a sannyasin, he is no more an American, he is no more an Indian. He came to me in the jail to say that one of our most important attorneys – and he had been Niren’s professor; he is the head of the law department of the University of California, Peter Schey – was not ready to make a statement under the oath of truth. Without the oath he was ready, but if the oath had to be taken then he would not make a certain statement.I cannot conceive that an oath can make any difference to any man of understanding. This was simply a strategy not to make the statement, because that statement would have changed the whole course of things. I told Niren, “Pull Peter Schey back and you go on the stand and you make the statement.”And what is an oath? In fact an honest man will refuse to take the oath. I myself have refused to take the oath. The reason is clear: if you ask me to take the oath you are certainly insulting me; you are telling me that without the oath I cannot speak the truth. You are telling me that only under oath am I reliable. And that means my whole life is a life of lies. Nobody is taking an oath every moment – before making a statement, first he takes the oath, touches the Bible and says, “It is nine o’clock.”The first time I appeared in an Indian court, I refused. The magistrate was shocked. He said, “Why are you refusing?”I said, “There are many reasons. First, on what book do you want me to put my hand? The Bible? Even the contemporaries of Jesus did not believe him, and the man was put on the cross. He was considered a greater criminal than any other criminal by his whole contemporary world. And you want me to put my hand on his book?”He said, “No, you can put your hand on Bhagavad Gita.”I said, “Then you are going from bad to worse, because this man Krishna has stolen sixteen hundred wives from people, married women, and he himself was not a man of his word or promise. He has broken his promises, he has gone against his own word, and you want me to put my hand on his book? Then I will have to wash my hands!”The magistrate said, “Then forget about the books. You simply say yourself that whatever you say will be true.”I said, “You don’t understand even simple logic. If I am a man of lies, what is the problem for me to say that whatever I say will be true? It is still going to be a lie. Either you accept me as a man of truth…but don’t ask for an oath.”This is the world that we have created – where in the name of justice all kinds of injustices will be done, where in the name of truth all kinds of fictions will be invented, imposed, conditioned. And you are carrying the whole past, so whenever you really touch an original space in your being, your whole past will try to distract you. You have to be very alert and very conscious not to be corrupted by your own past, not to be corrupted by your own scriptures, not to be corrupted by your own history. Unless this awareness is there, you may come around the right point many times and again you will go astray, far away.It is very rare to come to such moments, but you went very easily satisfied, feeling that, “I am a human being.”Do you think that has solved the question of who you are? If you had felt that “I am a monkey” would that make any difference? Because the monkey also has consciousness, just as you have….No – no answer is to be accepted, because any answer is going to come from your past conditioning. It is better to remain without the answer, utterly silent, and learn a totally new perception that is without labels. Just pure joy, pure consciousness, a communion with existence and a dance for no reason at all – a dance simply as a prayer of gratitude.Pope the Polack is working on a crossword puzzle one Sunday afternoon. He stops for a moment or two, scratches his forehead and turns to one of the cardinals.“Can you think of a four letter word for ‘woman,’” he asks, “which ends in u-n-t?”“Aunt,” replies the cardinal.“Ah, thanks,” says the pope. “Do you have an eraser?”Just old habits. You may become the pope, it does not matter.The priest and the rabbi are sitting next to each other on a flight from New York to Chicago, when the captain announces that there is some engine trouble. Then he announces that they are going to fly through some rough weather.Finally he suggests that anyone on board who feels religiously inclined should say their last prayers.The priest falls on his knees in the aisle and starts kissing his crucifix. And then he notices that the rabbi is crossing himself.As it happens, the plane levels off and things begin to look more hopeful. The priest turns to the rabbi. “So,” he says, looking smug, “when you truly fear death, you turn to Almighty Jesus for help!”“Not at all,” says the rabbi, crossing himself again, “just the usual check: spectacles, testicles, money and cigars.”It does not matter who you are. Only one thing has to be remembered, that every impression on your being left by the past – and the past is very long, millions of years of experiences and they are all present in you, and your own space has become smaller and smaller because the junk goes on gathering every generation, more and more. For the meditator, the greatest problem is to cross the boundary of the past and to enter into the present moment, in your purity of consciousness, without asking any question. Because the answer will come from the past.Just wait. Let your present experience itself become the answer.It will take time. Just a little patience on your part, and a tremendous explosion…your whole being becomes free from all chains, from all prisons, from all conditionings, and you are for the first time yourself. And strangely, the moment you are yourself you are the whole existence.Then you are flowering in the roses.Then you are dancing in the trees.Then you are singing in the rivers.Then you are roaring in the oceans.Then the silence is yours and the beauty of sound is yours.Once you are finished with your past the whole of existence suddenly becomes your own kingdom.I call this the kingdom of god.There is no God – you are the god of this kingdom.And no effort is big enough. If you are an honest seeker you will be able to pass all these hindrances and relax into the silent pool of your being.

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Om Mani Padme Hum 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Om Mani Padme Hum 16 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is the psychology of the buddhas? It sounds like a science only for enlightened beings who need to pull, push, seduce, hit or kiss their disciples at the right moment, so that they don't wobble, get stuck or fall into traps. Can you please reveal some of your findings of the past thirty years?The question you have asked is fundamentally unanswerable. But a few indications, a few hints can certainly be made available to you – with absolute certainty that you will not be able to get the point, but that is not my problem. I will try my best.On your part, if you can be just a passive, silent mind, simply listening as if you are listening to the sound of the birds, not interpreting them, perhaps a certain door may open for you. It all depends on you. The process is not very difficult. It is just an old addiction – we cannot simply listen the way we listen to music; we immediately start reacting, interpreting, trying to find the meaning of it. We get lost into our own minds and the music passes by.The first thing…I have used the term “the psychology of the buddhas” not to mean what it means. The man of enlightenment has gone beyond mind. In fact, the mind has faded just like dreams fade away. All the psychologies in the West are concerned with figuring out the functioning of the mind, how it works, why it sometimes works right and sometimes wrong. They have accepted one basic hypothesis which is not true: the hypothesis is that you are no more than mind; you are a structure of body-mind. Naturally, physiology looks into your body and its functioning and psychology looks into your mind and its functioning.The first point to be noted is about those who have come to know a different space in themselves which cannot be confined by the mind and which cannot be defined as part of the functioning of it. That silent space with no thoughts, no ripples, is the beginning of the psychology of the buddhas.The word psychology is being used all over the world absolutely wrongly, but when something becomes conventional we forget. Even the very word psychology indicates not something about the mind but about the psyche. The root meaning of psychology is “the science of the soul.” It is not the science of the mind. And if people are honest, they should change the name, because it is a wrong name and takes people on wrong paths. There exists no psychology in the world in the sense of a science of the soul.You are, for arbitrary reasons – just to be able to understand – divided into three parts. But remember, the division is only arbitrary. You are an indivisible unit.The body is your outer part. It is an immensely valuable instrument that existence has given to you. You have never thanked existence for your body. You are not even aware what it goes on doing for you, for seventy years, eighty years, in some places one hundred and fifty years – and in a few faraway parts of the Soviet Union, even up to one hundred and eighty years. That leads me to make the statement that the ordinary conception that the body dies at the age of seventy is not a fact but a fiction that has become so prevalent that the body simply follows it.It happened…before George Bernard Shaw reached the age of ninety years – his friends were very much puzzled – he started looking for a place outside London, where he had lived his whole life. They asked, “What is the point? You have a beautiful house, all the facilities; why are you looking for a new place to live? And in a very strange way – a few people think you have gone senile.” Because he would go around to the villages, not into the towns but into the cemeteries, and he would read what was written on the stones of the graves. Finally he decided to live in a village where he found a gravestone where it was written that “This man died a very untimely death – he was only one hundred and twelve.”He said to his friends, “As far as I am concerned, it is a worldwide hypnosis. Because the idea of seventy years has been insisted on for so many thousands of years, man’s body simply follows it. If there is a village where a man dies at a hundred and twelve and the villagers think he died ‘very untimely,’ that this was not the time for him to die…” He lived in that village during his last years, and he completed the century.In Kashmir, the part that is being occupied by Pakistan, people live up to a hundred and fifty without any problem. It is just that the idea of seventy years has not poisoned their minds. In Azerbaijan, in Uzbekistan, faraway corners of the Soviet Union, people live at least one hundred and eighty years, and not just a few people – thousands of people have reached to that point and they are still young. They are still not retired, they are working in the fields, in the gardens.I had told this to one of my professors – he did not believe me. He said, “I am a professor of philosophy and psychology, and I cannot agree with your idea that the whole humanity is dying because of a psychological conditioning.”I said, “I will show you.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “Just wait a few days, because no argument will prove it. You will need evidence.”One day…he used to live almost one mile away from the philosophy department in the university campus. He was perfectly healthy; he used to walk every day to the department and back to his home. I went to his wife and told her, “You have to do a favor to me. Next morning when Professor S.S. Roy wakes up you just say, ‘What happened? Could you not sleep well? You look so pale, do you have some fever?’”And he simply refused to listen. “What kind of nonsense are you talking? I am perfectly okay. There is no fever and I have slept well. I am feeling perfectly well.” I had told his wife to write down exactly what he said in a note and later on I would collect those notes.I told his gardener, “When he comes out you simply say, ‘What has happened to you? You look so sick.’ And remember to write down what he says.” And to the gardener he said, “It seems that I could not sleep well in the night.”After his house was the post office, which he had to pass. The postmaster was a friend to him, and I told the postmaster, “You have to do this…”He said, “But what are you trying to do?”I said, “It is an argument between me and Professor S.S. Roy, and I am going to prove something to him. I will tell you later on, the whole story. You just do one thing: when Professor Roy passes the post office, you come out. Just hold him and tell him, ‘You are wobbly, don’t go to the university today. I will inform the vice-chancellor that you are not well.’”And the professor said, “I was also thinking not to go. Something certainly seems to be wrong with the body.”And finally I had to persuade the peon of the philosophy department, because he used to sit in front of the department. It was very difficult to convince him, but he knew that Professor S.S. Roy loved me so much, I could not mean any harm. I told him, “The moment he comes, you simply jump up – take hold of him. Even if he resists, don’t bother; make him lie down on the bench and tell him, ‘This is not the time for you to walk a mile, you are absolutely sick.’”He said, “But I am a peon, a poor man…”I said, “You don’t be worried. For that I give the guarantee that you will not be disturbed. Just remember to write what he says, and remember also whether he resists or not.”He did not resist. He simply followed the peon’s idea, lay down on the bench and told the peon, “If you can bring the departmental car and tell the driver to take me home…because I don’t think I will be able to manage walking one long mile again. I am utterly sick.”Then I collected all those notes. S.S. Roy was lying down on a couch like the ones psychoanalysts use for patients, looking as if he had been sick for months. Even his voice showed that he could only whisper. I told him, “You are certainly very sick, but how have you managed just in one night to be so sick that you look as if you have been sick for months? Just last evening when I left you, you were perfectly okay.”He said, “I am also puzzled.”I said, “There is no need to be puzzled, read these notes!”Reading the notes – from the wife to the peon – he suddenly became perfectly okay. He said, “You are such a fellow that it is better not to get in an argument with you! You could have killed me. I was already thinking to make my will.”I said, “This is the answer to what I have been talking about with you a few days ago – that the body follows the ideas the mind gets.”Seventy years has become a fixed point, almost all over the world. But it is not the truth of the body. It is a corruption of the body by the mind. And strangely enough, all the religions are against the body – and the body is your life, the body is your communion with existence.It is the body that breathes, it is the body that keeps you alive, it is the body that does almost miracles. Do you have any idea how to change a loaf of bread into blood and sort it out into its different constituents and send those constituents where they are needed? How much oxygen your brain needs – have you any idea? Just in six minutes, if your brain does not get oxygen, you will fall into a coma. For such a long time the body continues to supply the exact amount of oxygen to your brain.How do you explain the process of breathing? Certainly you are not breathing, it is the body that goes on breathing. If you were breathing, you would not have been here. There are so many worries, you could have forgotten to breathe, and particularly in the night – either you can breathe or you can sleep. And it is not a simple process, because the air the body takes in consists of many elements which are dangerous to you. It sorts out only those which are nourishing to life and breathes out all that is dangerous to you, particularly carbon dioxide.The wisdom of the body has not been appreciated by any religion of the world. Your wisest people were no wiser than your body. Its functioning is so perfect – its understanding has been kept completely out of your control because your control could have been destructive.So the first part of your life and being is your body. The body is real, authentic, sincere. There is no way to corrupt it, although all the religions have been trying to corrupt it – they teach you fasting which is against nature and against the needs of the body, and a man who can fast longer becomes a great saint. I will call him the greatest fool who has been dominated by the foolishness of the crowd.The religions have been teaching you to be celibate, without understanding the mechanism of the body. You eat food, you drink water, you breathe oxygen. Just as blood is created in you, your sexual energy is also created – it is beyond you. There has not been a single celibate in the whole world. And I challenge all the religions who pretend that their monks are celibates to have them examined by scientists. They will find that they have the same glands and they have the same energy as anybody else.Celibacy is a crime – it creates perversions – just as fasting is a crime. Eating too much is a crime; not eating enough is also a crime. If you listen to the body and simply follow the body, you don’t need Gautam Buddhas to teach you, or Mahaviras or Jesus Christs to teach you what you have to do with the body. The body has an inbuilt program, and that inbuilt program you cannot change. You can pervert it….I have come across so many saints of different religions, but I have not come across a single saint who seems to be intelligent. He cannot be. His whole discipline destroys all intelligence.There are thousands of people in this country – and now the disease is spreading to the outside world – who are standing on their heads. And they don’t know that too much blood reaching the head destroys the very subtle nervous system that creates your intelligence. Hence you will not find a yogi intelligent – it is impossible. He has destroyed the very possibility.Man became intelligent because he was not moving like other animals, horizontally. When the animal moves horizontally, as all the animals move, then the blood is circulated all over the body, including the head, in the same amount. If you stand on two feet, because of the gravitation of the earth the head is the last place where the blood will reach, fighting against gravitation. This is the reason why man became intelligent, started being poetic, creative…painters, dancers, mystics. But you are not aware of it. It has been kept outside of your control; otherwise there is every danger you will destroy yourself.So I teach you, first, a deep respect, love and gratitude for your body. That will be the fundamental of the psychology of the buddhas, of the psychology of the awakened ones.The second thing after the body is your mind. Mind is simply a fiction. It has been used, in fact used too much, by all kinds of parasites. These are the people who will teach you to be against the body and for the mind.There is a mechanism called the brain. The brain is part of the body, but the brain has no inbuilt program. Nature is so compassionate – leaving your brain without any inbuilt program means existence is giving you freedom. Whatever you want to make of your brain, you can make. But what was compassionate on the part of nature has been exploited by your priests, your politicians, your so-called great men. They found a great opportunity to stuff the mind with all kinds of nonsense.Mind is a clean slate – whatever you write on the mind becomes your theology, your religion, your political ideology. And every parent, every society is so alert not to leave your brain in your own hands, they immediately start writing the Holy Koran, the Holy Bible, Bhagavadgita – and by the time they call you adult, capable to participate in the affairs of the world, you are no more yourself.This is so cunning, so criminal, that I am surprised that nobody has pointed it out. No parent has the right to force the child to be a Catholic or a Hindu or a Jaina. The children are born through you but they don’t belong to you. You cannot be the possessors of living beings. You can love them, and if you really love them you will give them freedom to grow according to their own nature, without any persuasion, without any punishment, without any effort by anybody else.The brain is perfectly right – it is the freedom given by nature to you, a space to grow. But the society, before you can grow that space, stuffs it with all kinds of nonsense.There was a man I knew, Professor Bhansali – he lived in Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram. It is not much of an ashram, just a few widows and a few weirdoes, and not more than twenty. But free food, free clothing, free shelter, and all they have to do are some stupid things. They call it worship, they call it prayer.Professor Bhansali was an educated man, but it does not matter. Before your education you are already contaminated, polluted. He went on eating cow dung for six months, drinking cow’s urine – that was his whole food, and this made him a great saint. Even Mahatma Gandhi declared that he had attained enlightenment. If enlightenment is to be attained by eating cow dung, then better enlightenment will be attained by eating bullshit, obviously! And when Mahatma Gandhi says about him that he has become enlightened, the whole country simply believes it. I have not found a single man criticizing it.I told Professor Bhansali, “As far as I am concerned, you are the most stupid man in this country.” It is a very difficult competition, but look at all your religions, what they have stuffed in your mind….Every Hindu when he goes to urinate has a thread around his body…that thread ceremony is almost like Jews circumcising their children. And will you believe that I have come across a statement by a rabbi that the reason Jews are so intelligent is because of the circumcision. Mohammedans do the same but at a later age.Jews have their own baptism. Hindus have their way of introducing the child into the Hindu society with a thread ceremony. Just a thread is put around his neck, and he is surrounded by people chanting from holy scriptures. And every Hindu is expected, when he goes to urinate, to take the thread out of his shirt and wrap the thread around his ear. I have seen professors, vice-chancellors doing the same stupid act.One vice-chancellor, Dr. Tripathi…I caught him red-handed. I threatened him that, “Either you take this thread off your ear, or I will not allow you to urinate.”“But,” he said, “it is my religion.” And he was a well-educated man.I said, “Can you give me any rationalization for it?”He said, “Certainly. If you put the thread around your ear, it keeps you away from sexual ideas, sexual dreams. It protects your celibacy.”I said, “You are a man, perfectly educated in the West” – and he had been teaching in the West – “you will have to come with me to the medical center.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “I want it to be confirmed by medical scientists that putting the thread around the ear protects a person from becoming sexual.”He said, “You always come with strange ideas.”The simple proof was that he had thirteen children. I said, “With this thread, you have produced thirteen children; without the thread you would have threatened the whole humanity! And still you have the nerve to say that it protects your celibacy?”But the same kind of ideas everywhere you will find forced into the brain. I want it to be clearly understood: the brain is natural; mind is what is stuffed into the brain. So the brain is not Christian, but mind can be; the brain is not Hindu, but the mind can be.The mind is the creation of the society, not a gift of nature. The first thing the psychology of the buddhas will do is to take away this whole junk that you call mind and leave your brain silent, pure, innocent, the way you were born.Modern psychology all around the world is doing something stupid: analyzing the brain, analyzing all the thoughts which constitute your mind. In the East we have looked into the innermost parts of humanity and our understanding is, the mind needs no analysis. It is analyzing junk. It needs simply to be erased. The moment the mind is erased – and the method is meditation – you are left with a body which is absolutely beautiful, you are left with a silent brain with no noise. The moment the brain is freed from the mind, the innocence of the brain becomes aware of a new space which we have called the soul.Once you have found your soul, you have found your home. You have found your love, you have found your inexhaustible ecstasy, you have found that the whole existence is ready for you to dance, to rejoice, to sing – to live intensely and die blissfully. These things happen on their own accord.The mind is the barrier between your brain, your body and your soul. You can see the difference: the psychology born in the West is concerned with the most non-essential part of you; it goes round and round analyzing the mind. The psychology of the buddhas, in a single hit, will drop the mind and accept only that which existence has given to you, not the society you were unfortunate to be born in.But every society is unfortunate, every religion is unfortunate. This is the greatest calamity under which humanity has lived up to now. What is the difference between a Mohammedan and a Christian, except the mind? What is the difference between a communist and a spiritualist? – just the difference of the mind. Each has been cultivated differently.So the first and the most basic thing is, the psychology of the buddhas has evolved methods of meditation which are really nothing but surgical methods so that the mind can be removed – it is the worst cancerous growth in you. Other than the mind, everything is absolutely beautiful. It is because only the mind is man-manufactured; everything else comes from the eternal sources of life.You are asking, “It sounds like a science only for enlightened beings who need to pull, push, seduce, hit or kiss their disciples at the right moment so that they don’t wobble, get stuck or fall into traps.”It does not appear as a science to the enlightened person, but just like a spring cleaning. For the unenlightened it appears to be what you are describing: “To pull, to push, to seduce, to hit, to kiss their disciples in the right moment.” This is how it appears from the outside. As far as the master is concerned, every moment is the right moment.There are no wrong moments in the world.And certainly it is not a science in the sense you understand, because science remains confined to the mind. It is more like an art. The master watches the disciple, goes on making every possible effort to wake the disciple. The moment the disciple is awake there is no difference between the master and the disciple – and he can use any kind of arbitrary method. But the methods are arbitrary, they are not scientific.I will give you an example to show that science is a very much lower phenomenon….One morning Chuang Tzu sat up in his bed – which was strange, because he used to get up and get out of his bed. Why is he sitting and looking so sad? He was not a man of sadness.In fact I have not found anybody else in the whole world of literature who has written such beautiful absurd stories. They don’t make any sense, but they are beautiful.He was again creating a situation.The disciples were worried; they came and they asked, “What is the matter?”Chuang Tzu said, “I am in a very great fix: last night I slept, and I knew perfectly well that I was Chuang Tzu. But in the night I had a dream that I had become a butterfly.”The disciples laughed. He said, “Shut up! It is not a matter to laugh about, my whole life is at risk!”They said, “Master, it was only a dream!”He said, “First you should listen to the whole thing. Then in the morning I woke up and the idea arose in me that if Chuang Tzu can become a butterfly in dream, what is the guarantee that a butterfly cannot become Chuang Tzu in a dream? And now the question is, who am I? The butterfly dreaming, or…?”Certainly the situation he has created is almost insoluble. Do you think there can be any rational solution to it? His question is very pertinent: if Chuang Tzu can become a butterfly in a dream, perhaps the butterfly has gone to sleep and has become Chuang Tzu. The problem is that Chuang Tzu is losing his identity. He told the disciples, “Meditate and find a solution. Unless you find a solution I am going to sit in my bed without eating, because it is a question of life and death.”They went out, they discussed it… “This is absolutely absurd! We have also dreamt, but this idea…” But the idea is such that there is no way out of it!Then came Lieh Tzu, Chuang Tzu’s chief disciple, and all the disciples asked him what to do. He said, “Don’t be worried,” and rather than going to Chuang Tzu, he went to the water well. They said, “Where are you going?”He said, “You just wait. I know my master.” He pulled out a bucket of water – it was a cold winter morning – and he brought the bucket of water and poured it on Chuang Tzu!Chuang Tzu laughed and he said, “If you had not come, my life was at risk. You saved me!”Lieh Tzu said, “Just get out of the bed, or I am going to bring another bucket of water. All that you need is to be brought out of your dream. You are still dreaming.”He said, “No, I am going to get out!”The masters cannot create a science, because science can only be objective. At the most you can call it an art, because the art has more flexibility, more different approaches….Now what do you call Lieh Tzu’s bringing a bucket of water? A scientific method? Just a clear insight, and out of that clear insight arises an arbitrary, artful, but intelligent method.In fact, Chuang Tzu was waiting for some disciple to do something – it was not a question to be solved by sitting and pondering over it. It was a question that somebody has to do something and show by his act, his clarity. This was the moment Chuang Tzu declared Lieh Tzu to be his successor. All the other disciples could not understand what had happened – what kind of solution is this?The psychology of the buddhas is not a science, is not a philosophy. At the most we can call it a very flexible art. Hence, there are no fixed answers for anything.I will give you another example.One morning, it must have been such a beautiful morning, a man comes to Gautam Buddha and asks him, “Does God exist?” Everybody is curious to know what Buddha answers.Buddha said to the man, “There is no God – not only now, there has never been. It is simply a fiction to exploit the fools.” The man was very much shocked.In the afternoon, another man came and he asked, “What do you think about the existence of God?” Again the same question….Buddha looked at the man and said, “Yes, there is a God and there has always been.”And in the evening, another man came and said, “I don’t know anything about God. I am absolutely ignorant. Knowing that you are here, I have come to be enlightened about the subject.”Buddha looked at him and then closed his eyes. No answer – and strangely, the disciples saw that the other man also closed his eyes. One hour must have passed when the man opened his eyes, touched Gautam Buddha’s feet and said, “You have answered it, and I am immensely grateful.”Ananda, who used to be the attendant of Gautam Buddha twenty-four hours a day, became very much confused. Anybody could have become confused – in the morning he says one thing, in the afternoon he says just the opposite, and in the evening he says nothing and the man gets the answer, touches his feet with tears of joy and leaves! When everybody was gone, Ananda said, “I cannot sleep tonight until you tell me which one is the true answer.”Gautam Buddha said, “The first thing you have to remember – none of the questions were yours. Why should you be worried about the answers? You have been with me for forty years. If you had any question, you could have asked. Those were questions of three different people.”Ananda said, “I am sorry, it is true. None of them was my question, but I have ears and I heard. And all three questions and the three answers are so contradictory that it has become a turmoil in me.”Buddha said, “You don’t understand another thing. The first man who had come to see me was a believer in God. He was a theist, and all he wanted was not an answer but a support to his belief. I cannot support anybody’s belief. My function is to destroy all beliefs, so that you yourself can see what is the truth. That’s why I denied absolutely that there is any God and said there has never been any God.“The man who came in the afternoon was just the opposite; he was an atheist. He did not believe in God and he had also come to be supported so that he could tell people that ‘not only I am an atheist – Gautam Buddha himself is an atheist.’ But this was also a belief, not an experience, because the experience never asks questions. It is always the belief that goes on creating questions.”Your mind is full of beliefs, with no experience at all. That’s why Gautam Buddha said, “I had to be very strict with the fellow, and I told him there is a God and there has always been a God.”These are arbitrary methods to destroy different kinds of beliefs. But the basic purpose is to destroy belief so that you can find your own heart, your own trust.“And the third man was a very innocent man because he accepted his ignorance, and he did not propose any belief. He had not come to be supported, he had come to be really helped. And there is a difference in being supported and being helped.“Because he had no question, there was no need to answer. I closed my eyes, and he understood that he had also to close his eyes: perhaps this is the way Gautam Buddha is going to answer him. And he was right – innocence is always right. In that one hour, my silence infiltrated his being. My presence surrounded his being. He was immensely fulfilled, contented.“God is nobody’s business – certainly it was not the business of that man. All he wanted was a certain communion with existence, whatever name is given to existence. I gave him the taste, I gave him the experience; I shared myself with him – that’s why he was so grateful. You are puzzled that the man said, ‘I have received the answer’ although I had not answered in words. And in gratitude, he touched my feet, with tears of joy. But in each case I had to use a different, arbitrary method because those three persons had three different minds.”The psychology of the buddhas cannot be a science. Science is always objective, it is about the other. It is never about your own being. It is extrovert, it is never introvert.But the man who has become awakened finds ways to shake you from your sleep, to wake you from your mind, which is your coma, which is your blindness. That’s why different masters in different countries have used different methods. No method is scientific. It depends on the person who has to be operated upon. The surgery cannot be a definite science. As far as the psychology of the buddhas is concerned, it is going to be very flexible.Yes, sometimes the master may hit you and sometimes the master may hug you. But it all depends on what kind of mind he is working on, and he is working on different kinds of minds. You don’t have the same minds; otherwise the same method would have been enough.Traditionally there are one hundred and eight methods of meditation. I have gone through all those methods – not just by reading them; I have tried every method. My search was to find what is the essential core of all those one hundred and eight methods, because there is bound to be something essential. And my experience is that the essential of all meditations is the art of witnessing.And then I created my own methods because I had found the essential core. Those one hundred and eight methods have become, in a way, out of date. They were created by different masters for different kinds of people, to transform different minds. The contemporary mind did not yet exist; the contemporary mind needs new methods. The methods will differ only in non-essentials. The essential core, the very soul of the method, is going to be the same.This silence is beautiful, but each laughter makes the silence go deeper. Have you observed it or not? After each laughter, there is a deeper layer of silence revealing itself to you. It is almost like being on a road, and a car passes with its headlights on. Suddenly there is light where there was darkness. But once the car has gone, the darkness becomes darker.Something almost similar happens; hence I have started calling my jokes “the time for prayer.”Herman Levinsky is standing in front of the gorilla’s cage in the zoo one day, when the wind blows a piece of grit into his eye.As Herman pulls down his eyelid to remove the particle, the gorilla goes crazy, bends open the bars and beats the poor fellow senseless.When Herman regains consciousness, he explains to the anxious zookeeper what happened. The zookeeper nods sagely and explains that in gorilla language, pulling down the eyelid means, “Fuck you!”This explanation doesn’t make Herman feel any better, and he swears revenge.The next day, Herman arrives at the zoo with two large knives, two hats, two whistles and a large sausage. Putting the sausage in his pants, he hurries to the gorilla’s cage, into which he throws a knife, a hat and a whistle.Then Herman puts on his hat. The gorilla looks at him, looks at the hat, and puts it on.Next, Herman picks up the whistle and blows it. The gorilla looks at him, looks at the whistle, and then picks it up and blows it.Then Herman picks up the knife, whips the sausage out of his pants, and slices it neatly in two. The gorilla looks at the knife in his cage, looks at his prick, looks up, and pulls down his eyelid.